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Complex Numbers
Complex Numbers
A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.
The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.
Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.
Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.
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You know, a couple entries back notwithstanding, I like the idea of neologisms. Hell, I even ran a (short-lived due to relatively low participation) neologism contest here a while back. I think it's a great idea when appropriate new words get... appropriated - or used in different ways.
That said, I present the Cracked list of
15 Words You Won’t Believe They Added to the Dictionary
http://www.cracked.com/article_17408_15-words-you-wont-believe-they-added-dictio...
Wait, does this mean if we invent a new word right now they'll be forced to include it in a few years, as long as enough readers use it? Good. Guys, the word is "dongtacular."
And now, back to cyberslacking. |
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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/oldestsculpture/
From a cave in southwestern Germany, archaeologists have unearthed the oldest known piece of figurative art. More than an ancient artistic impulse, it may signify a profound change in modern human brains.
Click on the link and go to the site, have a look and a read.
Done?
Okay, so they find a 30,000 year old product of the human artistic impulse (which is about 30,000 years older than some willfully ignorant and superstitious products of the same genetic line think the world is), and what is it?
Porn.
No, don't give me any "fertility goddess" crap. There are perfectly good fertility goddesses with perfectly normal (if somewhat idealized) figures. Nope - this one's some caveman's masturbation fantasy, I can practically guarantee it. Besides, if memory serves, 36,000 years ago, we hadn't gotten into the whole agriculture thing yet, which as far as I know is pretty much a prerequisite to have an Inanna or Astarte.
"Og carve chick with big bazoongas. Og be in his bunk." |
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Okay. I'm trying. I'm trying real hard to avoid getting pissed off at every little thing. It's a bad habit, and really, I don't have that much to be pissed off about.
So after I posted the Hello Kitty thing a few days ago, I took a few breaths, calmed down, enjoyed the weekend, and resolved never to drink Beck's again. Simple.
But then... today...
http://tinyurl.com/poas72
Welcome to the '[THAT WORD]' lifestyle
I will not type THAT WORD. I will not allow THAT WORD to appear in anything I write.
(CNN) -- The line dividing work and leisure time is blurring right before our eyes, says one expert, and it's creating a phenomenon called "[THAT WORD] time..."
Called by whom? Frakking idiots? Because only a frakking idiot would come up with THAT WORD.
I've put up with a lot, I think. It started with "guesstimate." Stupid portmanteau. I rebelled a lot against "metrosexual." I even got over "povel" (poem/novel, introduced to me by Crys-not really here  ).
But not this. The slippery slope ends here.
Anyone I catch using THAT WORD in real life will get smacked. I may serve a few months for assault, but it's a small price to pay.
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Today, I picked up Maggie's ashes from the vet. Included in a bag with the tin was some glurge about the Rainbow Bridge, which I suppose helps some people feel better, but doesn't do much for me; and a brochure for a pet loss support group.
I can't imagine going to a support group, but again, if it helps some people feel better, great.
How do I know it's really Maggie's ashes in there, anyway? They could have burned some old furniture and called it Maggie. I don't know. I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm probably being silly wanting to hang on to the physical remains of my cat, but when they asked, I wasn't exactly in a rational state of mind.
What I really need to do is find something different to store the remains in. The tin they gave me has pretty flowers on it. Flowers aren't meaningful to me in this context. Maggie didn't like them (she preferred catnip and grass, when she wasn't eating kibble or stealing nibbles of chicken), and in the culture in which I was raised, flowers aren't associated with death or remembrance - stones are. Right now, the tin is sitting in my office next to my picture of Maggie.
Perhaps I can find a nice box with calico-colored gemstones. |
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... we had a great time at the Bruce show. I went with my wife and ArtemisMad Scientist  , and somehow I'd managed to get seats in a weird partial row where there were only three seats. Suited me fine; usually, I end up next to Drunk Cellphone Guy at these things, and I have to work hard to resist the temptation to trip DCG off the balcony.
I won't bother with too much of a review; you can see one here:
http://www.brucespringsteen.net/news/index.html
On the sidebar to the right. And I'm too lazy to do one, and besides, if you haven't seen a Bruce show you won't understand; if you have, then you don't need me to tell you. |
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Yes, folks, I'm off to the concert.
I know I should say something funny here about Cinco de Mayo, but I don't see anything funny about putting mayonnaise in the sink. After all, someone's gotta clean that mess up, and my wife can't be everywhere at once, you know.
Speaking of which, this week's Comedy newsletter is about food humor - inspired by the event in the previous entry.
Also, in Japan and South Korea, it's Children's Day. So get your Japanese or South Korean child while you can!
Today is also my ex-wife's birthday. I celebrate that by not talking to her.
And after the concert, I May have to drink a Fifth. |
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As a result of the recent economic situation, we are now sharing office space with another company. Sadly, the other company consists mostly of "Sue"'s father, brother and sister, so I'm rather surrounded by family dynamics.
But today, when I went into the kitchen to see if anyone's eaten any more of my cheese, there's this cake on the cutting board in front of the toaster oven. In front of the cake there's a Post-It note with:
EAT ME
PLEASE!!!
(Not quite as creative as some of the notes posted at http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/ )
I saw it and laughed. I poked my head out and asked Sister, "Who's responsible for the note?"
Brother's voice from the other direction: "That's me. You like it?"
Sister's like, "What note?"
I go, "You have to see it." So she comes in and takes a look, sampling a few crumbs of the confection.
Without cracking a smile, she deadpans, "It's too dry. You should have made it more moist." |
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There's a quote attributed to Einstein to the effect that insanity is defined as repeating an action and expecting a different result each time.
With that in mind, I went back to the body pump class today. This time, Kirstin went with me. She said it was to be supportive, but I think she was afraid I'd seduce the instructor (which is nonsense; on the S/M scale I'm entirely S, and obviously, so is Amy).
This time, knowing a bit more about what to expect, I backed off a bit on the weights, and when it was done I was able to walk out instead of crawling on my belly.
The trouble with exercise is that it extends your life - by, apparently, the amount of time you spend exercising. So I'm still having trouble seeing the point. Except that, you know, I actually feel better afterward - if I haven't collapsed.
But what I'm really pumped up about is Tuesday night - when Bruce returns to my town! |
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The more I read, the more I think people is mostly dumb.
Case in point:
http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20090413-plight-africa-albinos-cameroon...
"I left my country to escape the widespread prejudice targeting albinos such as me. People are starting to talk more and more about the plight of albinos in Tanzania, but things are much the same in Cameroon. Different parts of our bodies are sought for their supposed miraculous powers: to become rich, win elections or concoct love potions.
In south-west Cameroon, where I studied, there is an old belief that when the local volcano erupts, only albino blood can placate the god of the mountain..."
Seriously, wtf? I've heard that there's a widespread rumor in some African countries that the way to cure AIDS is to have sex with a virgin, and since you never can tell who's a virgin they look for younger and younger "cures" - with the predictable (to us) result that AIDS becomes more widespread. To be fair, I have no idea if this is true or just rumormongering, but the fact that it's believable to me means that either a) I'm terribly prejudiced or b) Africa is so frakked up that it makes Japan look normal. I'm inclined to b) because of things like the albino story above.
"Oh, so what we need is more education!" I hear that a lot. "Education will end superstition!"
Well, actually, no. Education doesn't seem to make a dent in deep-rooted superstition. It wasn't that long ago that folks of Western European descent were burning witches, and we still turn to quackery when things get tough, despite scientific evidence. Here:
http://www.newscientist.com//article/dn17064-quack-remedies-spread-by-virtue-of-...
Eating a vulture won't clear a bad case of syphilis nor will a drink made of rotting snakes treat leprosy, but these and other bogus medical treatments spread precisely because they don't work. That's the counterintuitive finding of a mathematical model of medical quackery.
Ineffective treatments don't cure an illness, so sufferers demonstrate them to more people than those who recovery quickly after taking real medicines...
Okay, so it's not nearly as bad as cutting parts off of albinos to bring good luck (to the cutter, presumably, not the albino), but it's still quackery.
Nor am I immune. When my back was in persistent, unrelenting agony last year, I tried everything I could, including so-called "holistic" remedies. And hell, for all I know, they worked, because when the pain finally stopped, I couldn't point to any one cause for it to stop - though I'd tried standard medical treatments along with physical therapy, massage, herbal pills, and electrostimulation.
(If I had to guess, I'd venture that it was the electrostimulation - but I have no idea. At the very least, it didn't seem to cause harm)
Point is, I'm an educated guy, especially by world standards, and I was still willing to try, well, just about anything to make the pain go away (though I like to thing I'd stop short of harvesting albino parts, it's probably good that I don't have ready access to albinos). I can only imagine what people who have life-threatening or terminal illnesses are willing to do, with or without the benefit of science and education.
But why? Well, I'm not sold on the effectiveness of "scientific" treatments in many cases. From the second article linked above:
And in some cases, one peer-reviewed study may conclude that a drug works, while another shows it doesn't. "Even where there is a bit of clinical research, we don't really know yet whether at lot of medicines are effective..."
And what about prescriptions that turn out to be worse than the disease they're supposed to cure? How are we supposed to know? Hell, even putting aside medications, we can't even get it straight as a culture whether certain foods are good for you, bad for you, or neutral. Chicken eggs, for instance: during my lifetime, they've been nutritious, deadly, okay, harmful, helpful and now I think they're back to being nutritious, but I stopped giving a shit long ago and just enjoyed the occasional omelet.
Or how about aspartame, that artificial sweetener that's in bloody everything these days? No one seems to argue that it's beneficial in and of itself, but some say it's good in that it allows people to satisfy a craving for sweets without the attendant calories that can lead to obesity and complications thereof. Others assert that it's harmful in the long run because it doesn't really satisfy the craving for sweets, encouraging people to eat more to compensate. Me, I don't know; I just know I hate "high fructose corn syrup," which is what they put in Coke these days instead of sugar, so I drink Coke Zero instead. For whatever it's worth, the FDA considers aspartame safe.
But there was an email circulating a while back that blamed it for cancer, AIDS, spontaneous human combustion, and the takeover of the Republican party by religious fanatics (okay, maybe not anything quite as bad as the last item, but you get the idea):
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm
...I explained that I was there to lecture on exactly that subject. When the temperature of Aspartame exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol in ASPARTAME coverts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. (Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants). The methanol toxicity mimics multiple sclerosis; thus people were being diagnosed with having multiple sclerosis in error. The multiple sclerosis is not a death sentence, where methanol toxicity is... (this text is quoted from the circulating email, which is widely accepted as false).
From page 2: Martini's answer, as I mentioned above, is pat and comes in the form of a conspiracy theory: the NutraSweet Company has used its deep pockets to buy all but a very few critics off. I.e., the only sources you can trust, including doctors and scientists, are those approved by Martini.
You know, if you have an assertion to make, you're not helping your credibility to proclaim that everyone who disagrees with you is part of a vast, overarching conspiracy. Then again, maybe the author has simply consumed too much Splenda. Point being, if we don't have pre-existing superstitions about something, we seem to have to make them up.
So who can we trust, when it comes to deciding what to put into our bodies or not?
No one, of course.
But science is still better than superstition. Unless, of course, science is actually a giant conspiracy that will not rest until we are destroyed. |
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Hooray, hooray, the first of May
Outdoor fuckin' begins today!
I'm really not sure where that charming couplet comes from, but I always found it amusing.
May is, in the Northern hemisphere at least, traditionally associated with fertility - not the troublesome fertility of March and April that prompted T.S. Eliot to pen the line, "April is the cruelest month..." No, May is fertility in full flower - lush, verdant, and sappy. Literally sappy - my truck is covered in pollen stuck to sap. I'd wash it, but it'd just get all messy again, so what's the point?
Personally, I'm not into fertility in the traditional sense - but metaphors are powerful, and I could sure use some metaphorical fertility. Story ideas, humorous situations, scenes describing conflict... writing's not much fun without these things. So I'm hoping May will provide.
If not, well... at least it's finally warm. |
© Copyright 2025 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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I'm more than happy with Carrion Luggage, however.
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