I was very impressed by the construction of diagonal numbers (of Georg Cantor) as described in one of the books I am reading: Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. Decimal representations of fractions were printed in a list, one below the next, with their decimal places aligned. The diagonal number’s digit are made […]
Red and blue is less than everything to the left, according to this parking lot (photograph).
Maybe the math of parking lots is color coded…
A lot of art today relies on technology. I’ve been reading a bit lately about the dawn of tech in the arts. I have also been reading about the beginnings of Abstract Expression in the 1940s and 50s, and the studios near 10th Street and 4th Avenue in New York City. I was surprised to read […]
Fantasy on the Meaning of Life My father was an applied mathematician. He went to work every day and sometimes taught at night. He tried to help me with my homework in high school and I would often zone out during his explanations. I never thought of him as an author, but after he retired, […]
Kandinsky describes a ‘spiritual triangle’ as one which is divided into unequal horizontal segments. The bottom segment is the widest and, as one approaches the apex, they get more and more narrow, with spirituality increasing with successively higher levels. Within the triangle is the world’s population. “Because the inhabitants of this great [lower] segment of […]
The first line of his A Mathematician’s Apology, G.H. Hardy, world renown English mathematician of the late 19th, early 20th century, notes his state of mind at the time of writing as one of melancholy. This is understandable given his sentiment that ”[e]xposition, criticism, appreciation is work for second-rate minds.” Added to the fact that he was pursuing […]
G.H. Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology Mathematics I must have read the back cover of A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy, before I bought it. The notes included an endorsement by Graham Green, who “hailed it alongside Henry James’s notebooks ‘as the best account of what it is like to be a creative artist’.” I have […]
Dad died 7 years ago yesterday (November 30 by the lunar calendar). Thoughts of him have been in the back of my mind all month. Although I wasn’t conscious of it, this may have prompted me to read A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H Hardy, a book that had been sitting on my shelf for quite […]
It has always been difficult for me to have faith, in almost anything. The disillusionments of childhood, starting with my unreachable older brother, may have had a lot to do with it. Mike is autistic, profoundly retarded and nonverbal. It would have been so much easier to abandon myself to a strong belief, dismissing evidence […]
