Labyrinths

Labyrinths, mazes etc.

Ingres+David

Borromean rings

Borromean rings

Borromean rings at Wikipedia

Borromean rings at Wolfram's MathWorld

Experimental Videos

Experimental Videos

More Experimental Videos

Ότι απ’ την αρχή στραβά φυτρώνει και στα στερνά στραβά ριζώνει!

Καλή η επαφή με / αναγνώριση αισθηματων, αλλά ο χρονοπρογραμματισμένος βίος είχε μια θελκτική απλότητα

Κύριος τπυ εαυτού του είναι αυτός που βλέπει το πρόγραμμα του και δεν δεσεύεται από αυτό.

(Σαν λειτουργικό σύστημα? Σαν αυτοαναφορικότητα?)

What if the misery of last year was due to the monimization anxiety?

Εκλογίκευση της ορθότητας της παρούσας επιλογής ...

The American economy was too vast. Too many people depended on it. Most of all, it was too complex for one man or even twenty to comprehend it all. That was the problem with the models that everyone depended on. Sooner or later it came down to trying to gauge and measure and regulate something that simply was. It existed. It worked. It functioned. People needed it, but nobody really knew how it worked. The Marxists' illusion that they did know had been their fundamental flaw. The Soviets had spent three generations trying to command an economy to work instead of just letting it go on its own, and had ended up beggars in the world's richest nation. And it was not so different here. Instead of controlling it, they tried to live off it, but in both cases you had to have the illusion that you understood it. And nobody did, except in the broadest sense. At the most basic level it all came down to needs and time. People had needs. Food and shelter were the first two of those. So other people grew the food and built the houses. Both required time to do, and since time was the most precious commodity known to man, you had to compensate people for it. Take a car-people needed transportation, too. When you bought a car, you paid people for the time of assembly, for the time required to fabricate all the components; ultimately you were paying miners for the time required to dig the iron ore and bauxite from the ground. That part was simple enough. The complexity began with all of the potential options. You could drive more than one kind of car. Each supplier of goods and services involved in the car had the option to get what he needed from a variety of sources, and since time was precious, the person who used his time most efficiently got a further reward. That was called competition, and competition was a never-ending race of everyone against everyone else. Fundamentally, every business, and in a sense every single person in the American economy, was in competition with every other. Everyone was a worker. Everyone was also a consumer. Everyone provided something for others to use. Everyone selected products and services from the vast menu that the economy offered. That was the basic idea. The true complexity came from all the possible interactions. Who bought what from whom. Who became more efficient, the better to make use of their time, benefiting both the consumers and themselves at once. With everyone in the game, it was like a huge mob, with everyone talking to everyone else. You simply could not keep track of all the conversations. And yet Wall Street held the illusion that it could, that its computer models could predict in broad terms what would happen on a daily basis. It was not possible. You could analyze individual companies, get a idea of what they were doing right and wrong. To a limited degree, from one or a few such analyses you could see trends and profit by them. But the use of computers and modeling techniques had gone too far, extrapolating farther and farther away from baseline reality, and while it had worked, after a fashion, for years, that had only magnified the illusion. With the collapse three days earlier, the illusion was shattered, and now they had nothing to cling to.

And more than this, as a faculty of divination by means of dreams, which is the divines and most godlike of human faculties, the soul detects the truth all the more easily when it is not muddied by wine, but accepts the message unstained and scans it carefully. Anyhow, the explains of dreams and visions, those whom the poets call interpreters of dreams, will never undertake to explain any vision to anyone without having first asked the time when it was seen. For if it was at dawn and in the sleep of morning tide, they calculate its meaning on the assumption that the soul is then in a condition to divine soundly and healthily, because by then it has cleansed itself of the stains of wine. But if the vision was seen in the first sleep or at midnight, when the soul is still immersed in the lees of wine and muddied thereby, they decline to make any suggestions, and they are wise.

... solving a mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of particular data from which to infer a general law. It means, rather, facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing in common, and trying to imagine whether they could represent so many instances of a general law you don't yet know, and which perhaps has never been pronounced. To be sure, if you know, as the philosopher says, that man, the horse, and the mule are all without bile and are all long-lived, you can venture the principle that animals without bile live a long time. But take the case of animals with horns. Why do they have horns? Suddenly you realize that all animals with horns are without teeth in the upper jaw This would be a fine discovery, if you did not also realize that, alas, there are animals without teeth in the upper jaw who, however, do not have horns: the camel, to name one. And finally you realize that all animals without teeth in the upper jaw have four stomachs. Well, then, you can suppose that one who cannot chew well must need four stomachs to digest food better. But what about the horns? You then try to imagine a material cause for horns-say, the lack of teeth provides the animal with an excess of osseous matter that must emerge somewhere else. But is that sufficient explanation? No, because the camel has no upper teeth, has four stomachs, but does not have horns. And you must also imagine a final cause. The osseous matter emerges in horns only in animals without other means of defense. But the camel has a very tough hide and doesn't need horns. So the law could be ..." "But what have horns to do with anything?" I asked impatiently. "And why are you concerned with animals having horns?" "I have never concerned myself with them, but the Bishop of Lincoln was greatly interested in them, pursuing an idea of Aristotle. Honestly, I don't know whether his conclusions are the right ones, nor have I ever checked to see where the camel's teeth are or how many stomachs he has. I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. In the face of some inexplicable facts you must try to imagine many general laws, whose connection with your facts escapes you. Then suddenly, in the unexpected connection of a result, a specific situation, and one of those laws, you perceive a line of reasoning that seems more convincing than the others...

Platform.--This was a framework a hundred feet long and twelve wide, a ship's deck in fact, with a projecting prow. Beneath was a hull solidly built, enclosing the engines, stores, and provisions of all sorts, including the watertanks. Round the deck a few light uprights supported a wire trellis that did duty for bulwarks. On the deck were three houses, whose compartments were used as cabins for the crew, or as machine rooms. In the center house was the machine which drove the suspensory helices, in that forward was the machine that drove the bow screw, in that aft was the machine that drove the stern screw. In the bow were the cook's galley and the crew's quarters; in the stern were several cabins, including that of the engineer, the saloon, and above them all a glass house in which stood the helmsman, who steered
the vessel by means of a powerful rudder. All these cabins were lighted by port-holes filled with toughened glass, which has ten times the resistance of ordinary glass. Beneath the hull was a system of flexible springs to ease off the concussion when it became advisable to land.

Engines of suspension and propulsion.--Above the deck rose thirty-seven vertical axes, fifteen along each side, and seven, more elevated, in the centre. The Albatross" might be called a clipper with thirty-seven masts. But these masts instead of sails bore each two horizontal screws, not very large in spread or diameter, but driven at prodigious speed. Each of these axes had its own movement
independent of the rest, and each alternate one spun round in a different direction from the others, so as to avoid any tendency to gyration. Hence the screws as they rose on the vertical column of air retained their equilibrium by their horizontal resistance. Consequently the apparatus was furnished with seventy-four suspensory
screws, whose three branches were connected by a metallic circle which economized their motive force. In front and behind, mounted on horizontal axes, were two propelling screws, each with four arms. These screws were of much larger diameter than the suspensory ones, but could be worked at quite their speed. In fact, the vessel combined the systems of Cossus, La Landelle, and Ponton d'Am�court, as perfected by Robur. But it was in the choice and application of his motive force that he could claim to be an inventor.

Perhaps I can best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of a journey through a dark unexplored mansion. You enter the first room of the mansion and it's completely dark. You stumble around bumping into the furniture, but gradually you learn where each piece of furniture is. Finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly it's all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark.

Wiles+Fermat

Free Fonts

machine learning links
UCI Machine Learning Repository

Reading Baudrillard: Capitalist sublimation in the works of Mapplethorpe

PhD Comics

Dadada ... again

Κάθε που πίνω απ’ την πηγή σου
κάτι μου καίει τον ουρανίσκο
ψάχνω στο φως, μα δεν σε βρίσκω
μες' την αδιάκοπη ροή σου
(μες' την αδιάκοπη ροή σου)

Στου κόσμου της στοές χαμένη
μετράς τις πένθιμες βραγιές του
να 'σουν κορίτσι του Ηφαίστου
ή στάχτη από φωτιά σβησμένη

Δεν έπρεπε να 'σουν φωτιά
μόνο ένα κρίνο του πελάγου
να σ' αποκλείσω στη στεριά
με μοχθηρία αρχαίου μάγου

Τώρα τα γυάλινά σου μάτια
έχουν μιαν αίσθηση απορίας
σπασμένη σε μικρά κομμάτια
σαν κρύσταλλο άγριο της Τσεχίας

Δεν έπρεπε να 'σουν ζωή
μόνο μια πεταλούδα χιόνι
να μου σκεπάζει την ψυχή
κι από το κρύο της να μη λιώνει

Μουσική/Στίχοι: Μικρούτσικος Θάνος/Αλκαίος Άλκης

Ουτοπία είναι αυτό που όταν κάνεις ένα βήμα για να το φτάσεις εκείνο κάνει δύο πίσω. Όταν κάνεις και δεύτερο βήμα για να το φτάσεις, εκείνο κάνει αλλά δυο πίσω.

Και τότε σε τι χρησιμεύει η ουτοπία???

Σε κάνει να βαδίζεις μπροστά!

Eduardo Galeano Ουρουγουανός ποιητής (και Τάσος)

You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Ψυχή μεγάλου κυβισμού ... Αυτό που άγουμε το λέμε λογική, αυτό που μας άγει συναίσθημα.

Greek University Reform

«Ο τρόπος παραγωγής είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Η εξουσία είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Η Αστυνομία είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Η φυλακή είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Η Δικαιοσύνη είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Η ανεργία είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Το ταμείο ανεργίας είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Η κερδοσκοπία είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Το χρηματιστήριο είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Οι τράπεζες είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Οι ιδιωτικοποιήσεις είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Το εκπαιδευτικό σύστημα είναι μια νόμιμη βία. Η κατάσταση έκτακτης ανάγκης είναι μια νόμιμη βία.

Κι όσο αυτή η νόμιμη βία θα ονομάζεται δικαιοσύνη, τόσο η δικαιοσύνη των νέων θα ονομάζεται βία».

ΡΟΥΣΣΟΣ ΒΡΑΝΑΣ- «ΝΕΑ»

Oddio Overplay: Free Weird Music

You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'

Tarski's undefinability theorem informally states that arithmetical truth cannot be defined in arithmetic. The theorem applies more generally to any sufficiently strong formal system, showing that truth in the standard model of the system cannot be defined within the system.

Tarski's undefinability theorem
Tarski's Theory of Truth

In this Stage, you now begin to draw in your agreements, Karma, and Support for new perspectives, or reconnect/stabilize existing ones. The positive pole maintains clear communication, acknowledgment of Traveling Companions, and a more accurate view of the future. You now see with clarity the long-term impact of your efforts alongside the current “demands”. Those who find themselves in a state of rejection, isolation, and depression, have chosen to experience the negative pole. A sense of deep longing begins to unfold in the negative pole of Stage 6, since so much has been deemed “unacceptable”. This stage opens you to your perceptions of Truth.

Channeling
Channeling Wiki
Michael
More Michael

Some Kafka Stories

Άρης Αλεξάνδρου: Το Κιβώτιο

Kaleidoscopes

A Zillion Interesting Links

Good Math Site

Τα προβλήματα δεν λύνονται όταν βρούμε την λύση τους, λύνονται όταν καταλάβουμε γιατί είναι προβλήματα.

(Problems are not solved when we find their solutions, they are solved when we comprehend why they are problems.)