links for 2010-05-03

  • If you're not already a fan, this might encourage you in that direction. Among the serendipitous gems in the accompanying text, I quote this passage:

    Lovelace and Dodgson both loved Euclid (Lovelace: “It is a very pretty little Theorem, so neat and tidy: the various parts dovetail so nicely!”) and the emerging field of symbolic logic, and both stumbled through the Nameless Wood of calculus. Lovelace wrote to De Morgan “these Functional Equations are complete Will-o-the-wisps to me”, and Dodgson, after four years (!) of studying Mathematics at Oxford and despite coming at the top of his class, writes “talked over the Calculus of Variations with Price today; I see no prospect of understanding the subject at all.” You may need to recalibrate your judgements of people’s math by the way: Carroll was already lecturing in mathematics at Oxford when he described the end of Differential Calculus as “new to me” as late as the 1850s!

links for 2010-05-02

  • really worth your time: "…the rise of Oncorhynchus mykiss contains a bizarre and fascinating cache of insights into human motivations and misunderstandings… the rainbow trout is –like corn– both biological instantiation and evolving allegory for our complex relationship with nature, our misguided interventions, and their unintended consequences…"
    (tags: ecology food whoa)

Fragments found while cleaning the desk

A couple of haiku inspired by mass media triumphalism of a year or more ago (just how long ago unclear, desk stratigraphy being undated and undatable), but sure to be relevant again before long:

moral certitude
inspires the cannon fodder
waving flags: Huzzah!!

another martyr
ours or theirs: keep careful count
a winner someday

The camera’s eye

I spend a lot of time looking at photographs, what with my own digitization projects and my wanderings in photographic history. The frame centers the viewer’s attention on details, and allows the photographer to express an aesthetic of composition. Sometimes one finds delicious bits within photographs. Here’s one from this morning’s Shorpy posting:

Shorpy detail