φ (phi), also known as the Golden Ratio, was thought by the ancient Pythagoreans to have mystical properties. Even the more level-headed Greeks ascribed it artistic ones, for instance considering the most eye-pleasing rectangle to be one where the ratio… Continue Reading
Professor Phil O’Mathy would lecture at the same speed at which he thought, which was so fast that his poor students had no hope of keeping up. Finally, a delegation of them went to his office to plead with him.… Continue Reading
Our assignment was to read the third and fourth issues of Fables and Reflections (issues 38 and 30… yeah, the numbers get all wacky in this book… the stories, respectively, Convergence – The Hunt, and Distant Mirrors – August). Mike and Jaybird (Mike… Continue Reading
Professor Phil O’Mathy was asked by a philosopher friend to be part of a panel addressing the question “Is the external world real?” When his turn came to speak, O’Mathy said “Mathematicians cannot answer this question; the best we can… Continue Reading
Professor Phil O’Mathy wrote a long string of symbolic logic on the blackboard, telling his class, “I think you’ll all agree that this is obvious.” Done, he looked at his work once more and his face clouded. “Just a moment,”… Continue Reading
Mathematics is a universal language, and the homes of its greatest poets circle the globe: Greece gave us Pythagoras and Euclid, England Newton and Russell, France Descartes, Germany Gauss, India Ramanujan. These are geniuses who will never be forgotten. Yet… Continue Reading
I just checked and my March Madness brackets are officially losers. I will finish either second or third in my league of 6. And I know this even though he scores are pretty close together and the only team anyone… Continue Reading
I took my daughter to the Giants-A’s exhibition game tonight, which was notable for a few things: The Giants played like absolute crap There was a big, sepia-toned full moon just above the horizon The seagulls which usually arrive as… Continue Reading
Naysayers like some of my co-bloggers notwithstanding, if you asked 1000 people the question “Who’s the best band of the rock era?”, the overwhelming response would be Those Four Guys From Liverpool (or Lau Gibelaigerilekua Gizonak Dutenek, as our Basque… Continue Reading
[This has been cross-posted at https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2013/03/seder/ . Please comment there.] In many Jewish families, there’s a Passover question that logically precedes the canonical Four Questions: where are we going to have the Seder this year? Perhaps at the synagogue, or the… Continue Reading