Intelligence Or Imagination . . .

Tucson Weather Today

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Numerology is defined as any study of the purported divine, mystical or other special relationship between a count or measurement and observed or perceived events.

Mathematics has no generally accepted definition. Different schools of thought, particularly in philosophy, have put forth radically different definitions. All are controversial.

So, it seems to me that the recognized discipline of Mathematics can be perhaps better thought of as being Advanced Numerology.

More regarding this later . . . after I've  cogitated about (analyzed) it some more.

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A Useful Distinction

   Copied and Pasted from Pharyngula

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 WORD FOR TODAY

cisgender
 

Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook defined cisgender as a label for "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity", complementing "transgender".

 

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

NIKOLA TESLA

Born July 10,1856

Died Jan. 7, 1943

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist. He was an important contributor to the use of commercial electricity, and is best known for developing the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. His many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were based on the theories of electromagnetic technology discovered by Michael Faraday. Tesla's patents and theoretical work also formed the basis of wireless communication and the radio.

ALSO

FRED GWYNNE

 

Born July 10, 1926

Died July 02, 1993

Frederick Hubbard "Fred" Gwynne was an American actor. Gwynne was best known for his roles in the 1960s sitcoms Car 54, Where Are You? and The Munsters, as well as his later roles in Pet Sematary and My Cousin Vinny. He was recognized for his distinctive baritone voice.

ALSO

DAVID BRINKLEY

Born July 10, 1920

Died June 11, 2003

David McClure Brinkley was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997. From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top-rated nightly news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, with Chet Huntley and thereafter appeared as co-anchor or commentator on its successor, NBC Nightly News, through the 1970s.

ALSO

RON GLASS

 Born July 10, 1945

Ronald E. "Ron" Glass is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as the witty Detective Ron Harris in the television sitcom Barney Miller (1975-1982), and as the spiritual Shepherd Derrial Book in the short-lived 2002 science fiction series Firefly and its sequel film Serenity.

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The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
--Albert Einstein

Whaddaya Think?

Tucson Weather Today

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Black hole caught red-handed in a stellar homicide is the title of a piece I encountered recently in a press release from the Hubble Site. Below is one of the introductory paragraphs:

Supermassive black holes, weighing millions to billions times more than the Sun, lurk in the centers of most galaxies. These hefty monsters lay quietly until an unsuspecting victim, such as a star, wanders close enough to get ripped apart by their powerful gravitational clutches.

image source

Is it possible, I wondered, to present a scientific description of an event or principle to the student or non-academic layman (like me) without employing figures of speech such as the metaphor or an analogy. And I decided that it is not possible simply because to do so it would be necessary to employ mathematics instead of words, and who but a scientist could truly understand such a presentation?

I certainly cannot.

That revelation led me to question whether or not I am capable of even understanding anything unless the thing I am seeking to understand is compared with a similar thing that I already believe I understand.

And I am still considering that question.

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WORD FOR TODAY


Snottygobble

The Snottygobble is a species of tall shrub or small tree in the plant genus Persoonia, reaching 1 to 5 metres (3–17 ft) in height. It is found in the Jarrah forests of southwest Western Australia. This species is characterised by its long narrow dark green leaves, dark yellow to orange flowers and distinctive dark flaky red bark.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Robert Heinlein

Born July 7, 1907
Died May 8, 1988

Robert Anson Heinlein, author of Stranger In A Strange Land. was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers," he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre in his time. He set a standard for scientific and engineering plausibility, and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality.

ALSO


Ringo Starr

Born July 7, 1940

Richard Starkey, MBE, better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles.

ALSO


Shelley Duvall

Born July 7, 1949

Shelley Alexis Duvall is an American film and television actress best known for her roles in Thieves Like Us, 3 Women, The Shining and Popeye.

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"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."
-- Bertrand Russell

Titles Are For Suckers...

Announcement --

John McCain Defeated J.D. Hayworth in yesterday's Arizona GOP Senate Primary election.

. . .

Howard Zinn was born August 24, 1922 and died January 27, 2010. Among a multitude of published writings, he wrote the following:

"I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism."

Yes, Howard Zinn wrote that.

Okay. While I applaud those who would grant 'power to the people' one cannot help but take into account the instinctual nature of the human animal, which is first and foremost survival -- continuation of self, family, tribe, nation, and species. Socialism, as I understand it, is loosely defined as authority-enforced absolute equality for all citizens,and so is not amenable to the above mentioned self-perpetuating basic force of nature.

And that is my short and succinct opinion on the subject.

. . .

It seems impossible for one human being to communicate an imaginative and speculative radical 'concept' to another human being. For example: it is hilarious to watch the confused incredulity appear on the face of a scientist or an engineer when I say, "What if mathematics turns out to be a dead end? What if math is nothing more than the result of Emergent Thinking Man taking an initial mental 'wrong turn' in the formulation of human understanding?"

Well, to tell the truth, I have seen more than one well-educated and recognizably intelligent person shake his head in perplexity and walk away, seemingly astounded at how I could possibly ask such a ludicrous question.

But I have often mused upon the possibility that the entire field of mathematics is a flawed and limited discipline, and will eventually be abandoned and replaced by an alternative and more reliable method of arriving at workable conclusions (such as astronomical inter-dimensional navigation) -- a method based neither on numbers (calculational symbols) nor on words (communicational symbols) but instead upon absolutes gained from using intuition-derived unmistakable certainties.

That is how I see it.

And no, I can't express the thought in simpler terms.

. . .

Ray Bradbury is 90 years old

Click PZ Myers' blog if you are not prudish and then you can view both the above picture and a naughty YouTube video (you've been warned) plus a great many comments regarding same.

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In an article about planting potatoes (enclosed in a cocoon of leaf mulch for warmth) in the fall instead of in the spring, I noticed the following: "...noted that the tops of the plant were dieing and so it was time to harvest!"

The spelling of "dieing" stopped me. Is not 'dying' the correct spelling of that word? Dying, as in approaching death? Or is this one of those instances in which either way is correct?

Growing curiouser and curiouser, I did a little research. According to an online forum wherein students asked teachers questions and the teacher posts an answer, I found the following. . .

Question: I saw that both "dieing" and "dying" can be used as the present continuous of "to die". What is the most common one ? And why is "dying" also correct?

Answer: There is no such word as "dieing". www.websters.com which is a great source for spelling of English words returned no word with the "dieing" spelling entered. The correct spelling is "dying" which is 100% used.

That satisfied me and I searched no more.

. . .

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Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
--Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

A Little of This, A Little of That

While skimming the blogs I noticed this somewhat cryptic observation: It's worth pointing out that "X is true" and "People exist who believe X is true" are not actually the same statement.

Equally applicable to cultists and atheists.

My Unfamiliar Word Section

mutable [myoo-tuh-buhl]

--adjective

1. liable or subject to change or alteration.

2. given to changing; constantly changing; fickle or inconstant:

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

I recently read an interesting (to me) article in The Independent titled "Read 'em and weep: The literary masters of misery who delight in desolation." It will surely be of interest to both aspiring writers and intelligent readers.

After a modicum of deliberation and much procrastination I have finally given in to a curious inclination to learn to use the Linux operating system. I don't know why. Instead of downloading the free set of files, I opted to pay $4 (most of that for shipping and handling) for a certified copy on disk. I've had some bad experiences lately with downloads.

This is what's called a "Live Disk" and will allow the user to use Linux from the disk itself instead of installing it on a computer. That way one can try out and learn about Linux without disturbing the computer's existing system.

When the disk arrives I intend to also use it to try booting up my finicky old laptop which has decided that it can no longer find the (Windows 98) operating system.

What the heck, it's a new challenge of sorts.

I was at a loss as to the proper spelling of the medium. Is it "disk" or "disc" or both or neither?

At WiseGeek I found: For the most part, disc and disk can be used interchangeably to describe flat, round objects such as saucers or Frisbees. The British as a whole tend to prefer disc, while Americans generally use disk as their default spelling. Historically, the word disk entered the popular vernacular first, sometime during the 17th century. Many English words were formed from Germanic roots, which explains the use of a final hard K sound in words such as desk, whisk, task and disk.

WiseGeek's concluding paragraph begins with the sentence, "While there is nothing inherently wrong with either spelling, there are times when one is preferable to the other." and then it elaborates a bit.

A friend sent me a quiz that had been sent to him:

If

2 + 3 = 10

7 + 2 = 63

6 + 5 = 66

8 + 4 = 96

Then:

9 + 7 = ?

I puzzled out what seemed correct to me and then sent him my answer, which was 144. He replied that both he and his wife had independently come up with that same answer.

I have no idea if they and I are right or wrong.

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery."

--Virginia Woolf