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An unidentified body, unidentified means of death (suicide?, murder?), a scrap of cypher written on a piece of paper... Thus begins one of Australia's most enduring mysteries.
Read more here: Wiki on the Taman Shud
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And now, since in the previous link I suggested (and then retracted) the fact that a certain blogger's illustrations looked like they were done while on crack, I thought I'd clarify by providing you with a link to an artist who cheerfully noted the drug and dosage before attempting his self portrait. Which is a curious insight into how specific drugs affect specific areas of mind....I'll let you come to your own conclusions.
Link: Self Portraits - Bryan Lewis Saunders
Note that even on drugs he is still a far more high-functioning artist than myself.
Note as well there are some parallels with Art and Mental Illness - so I've provided more links below:
Link: Art By the Famous Mentally Ill, NY Times Article that argues the link between creativity and mental illness, An article from the American Journal of Psychiatry that disproves psychiatrists can diagnose mental illness based on artwork, Wiki on Savants and finally, a favorite painting below by Richard Dadd. Food for thought and dessert for the eyes...
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Now it seems like a simple enough thing, the invention of or discovery of zero. And if you're me, where the sum of your bank account/groceries/life savings/investments/ is nil, then it's a logical enough extension to assign it a value. But really - think about it - that point where all quantities become equal - where you can compare all things - for zero apples is indeed equal to zero oranges, and think of how much our current number systems, computing, banking - depend upon the number zero, and maybe you'll realize that it's not such a small discovery. Or invention - (another post - are numbers and their inherent laws invented or discovered?). But as my mind certainly isn't up to fathoming the intricacies and nuances of such accounting, here are a few sites to lead your thinking on:
"Without the notion of zero, the descriptive and prescriptive modeling processes in commerce, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and industry would have been unthinkable."
Link: Wikipedia on the Number Zero
Link: Zero Saga
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Consider the circle. In it are embodied a multiplicity of ideas and questions - emblematic of perfection, (think of the Halo), of completeness, the perfect 2 dimensional shape (and in 3 dimensions the Sphere, but arguable the Sphere stems from the circle and so we'll limit ourselves here). There is no way to accurately - precisely - calculate it's area - PI being only an approximation, an irrational number, yet it's appearance belies it's complexity.
Think of a circle in motion, rotating around a central axis. An infinitely large circle - at it's center - absolute center, there is a point of absolute rest - no motion whatsoever. And then it's diameter, drawn far enough out, vastly exceeding the speed of light and as a consequence going back through time.
Or if this is too much consider that there's no simple way - in fraction or decimal - to express PI. There therefore can be no circle whose area is a whole number - by definition it will always involve some uncertainty or remainder.
Or consider some of the open questions about PI, reprinted here from Pi History:
- Does each of the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 each occur infinitely often in π?
- Brouwer's question: In the decimal expansion of π, is there a place where a thousand consecutive digits are all zero?
- Is π simply normal to base 10? That is does every digit appear equally often in its decimal expansion in an asymptotic sense?
- Is π normal to base 10? That is does every block of digits of a given length appear equally often in its decimal expansion in an asymptotic sense?
Links: Wiki on the Circle & Squaring the circle
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Now this is just an idea, but take a look at the "average" facebook user and you'll see that they have 100, 200, 300 or more friends.
More friends than one could ever possibly keep in touch with on anything approaching a meaningful basis. But there's a sort of prestige to this social networking thing, defined by your number of friends, so people keep on collecting them despite the fact they never chat, see each other or in anyways meaningfully communicate. I'll ignore this though as it's irrelevant to the purpose I'll describe.
This is it: Once a year - We'll call it "Facebook Friend Swap Day" (or "FFSD" as the internet loves acronyms). On that day facebook will automatically send you a list of friends (and a simlar list to your friends, and all users) that you/they haven't communicated with for, say, 6 months.
6 months is arbitrary, depending on how the idea takes hold we can adjust this. It's 6 months for the sake of argument.
Now with this list is a letter suggesting that they or you perhaps recommend to them friends more to your/their tastes. And so you drop them and take on a new friend request - someone with whom you'll doubtless have a little more in common with. It doesn't even have to be a "drop", which by implication is negative (and who likes to drop or be dropped?), it could simply be recommendation to a new friend, the acceptance of which constitutes a "swap".
Single people (Note the bare-chested profile photos of "Men interested in Women") will certainly benefit, as obviously they weren't doing so well if they're still single and they'll have a whole new cadre of unsuspecting suckers friends to try their charms upon. Those not single will benefit by having new friends possibly a little more to their tastes. And everyone will have a chance to make new friends and to exchange (without seeming rude) those friends they've very little in common with.
Facebook Friend Swap Day. I should start a group.