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Usually March 14, one month after Valentines. In certain Asian countries Valentines Day is observed by the women, who buy men chocolates, the quality of the chocolate indicative of the mans relationship to her. March 14 is the day the favour is returned, with the gift from the man 2 to 3 times that of the woman's. Read more here. Which could be interpreted as proof that the price of love is high, or simply that they acknowledge that men (generally) make far more than women. Or in any number of other ways, stretch your imagination a bit...
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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