Monthly Archives: March 2020
These days, during the regular baseball season, pretty much every game is broadcast on TV by someone, so it doesn’t take a lot of effort to see every game your team plays (it generally just takes money). But during Spring Training it’s rare that a game your team plays is televised.
I was looking forward to watching a Twins game yesterday — one of those rare Spring Training games that was being televised. After several months of winter (and no baseball), I’m ready to start seeing games again.
But I turned on the TV to discover the MLB cancelled Spring Training!
Continue reading
11 Comments | tags: baseball season, coronavirus, Major League baseball, Spring Training | posted in Baseball
In the Rational vs Real post I mentioned that real numbers were each “an infinitely tiny island separated from direct contact with all other numbers.” The metaphor of each real number as an island comes from how, given any real number, it’s not possible to name the next (or previous) real number.
It’s easy enough to name a particular real number. For instance 1.0 and 3.14159… real numbers. There are infinitely many more we can name, but given any one of them, there is no way to get to any other number other than by explicitly naming it, too.
This applies to a variety of numeric spaces.
Continue reading
9 Comments | tags: complex numbers, continuum, integers, math theory, mathematics, natural numbers, numbers, rational numbers, real numbers, Theory of Mathematics | posted in Math
They say you’re supposed to let sleeping dogs lie. Personally, I’ve always thought a sleeping dog was pretty honest — I’m not exactly even sure how anyone could lie in their sleep. Tell fibs in your dreams? (Some old sayings just don’t make any sense.) I don’t think we should let anyone get away with lying, sleeping or otherwise (especially Presidents).
I do think there is something extra sweet about a sleeping dog. Maybe it’s a matter of the trust they’re showing — how they feel safe with you. Next to you, they can relax and fall into a deep snoring sleep. Dogs can have concerns about being left home alone, and if they are in your lap they know right where you are.
In any case, from the terminally cute file…
Continue reading
3 Comments | tags: Bentley, dog yawn, dogs, Sabbath, sleeping dogs, Sunday | posted in Life
I’ll get to the delightful alien eyes later, but I want to start this Sci-Fi Saturday post with a different delight: A Trick of Light, a novel by Stan Lee. Yeah, that Stan Lee. Along with Kat Rosenfield. And no, there are no pictures, comic or otherwise.
What is there is a fast, breezy, comic-book-like story about a guy and a gal and some interesting stuff that happens to them. I read the whole thing in one long afternoon, night, and into the AM, because it was hard to put down. “Just one more chapter” grew to reading the whole thing. It was a lot of fun.
There is also an interesting but somewhat less delightful book (a trilogy, actually) to tell you about. I have some definite mixed feeling about the author and his books.
Continue reading
9 Comments | tags: A Trick of Light, Electric Dreams (TV series), Jack L. Chalker, Kat Rosenfield, Philip K. Dick, science fiction, science fiction books, science fiction TV, Stan Lee, Well World | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday
One of the great philosophical conundrums involves the origin of numbers and mathematics. I first learned of it as Platonic vs Aristotelian views, but these days it’s generally called Platonism vs Nominalism. I usually think of it as the question of whether numbers are invented or discovered.
Whatever it’s called, there is something transcendental about numbers and math. It’s hard not to discover (or invent) the natural numbers. Even from a theory standpoint, the natural numbers are very simply defined. Yet they directly invoke infinity — which doesn’t exist in the physical world.
There is also the “unreasonable effectiveness” of numbers in describing our world.
Continue reading
8 Comments | tags: math theory, mathematics, natural numbers, nominalism, numbers, Plato, Platonic, Platonism, rational numbers, real numbers, Theory of Mathematics | posted in Math, Philosophy
Well, I did my civic duty and privilege as a democratic citizen.
And it was a pretty easy vote in two regards.
Continue reading
12 Comments | tags: Amy Klobuchar, election 2020, election day, I voted, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Twitler, vote | posted in Politics
I cracked up when I saw the headline: Why your brain is not a computer. I kept on grinning while reading it because it makes some of the same points I’ve tried to make here. It’s nice to know other people see these things, too; it’s not just me.
Because, to quote an old gag line, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs… perhaps you’ve misunderstood the situation.” The prevailing attitude seems to be that brains are just machines that we’ll figure out, no big deal. So, it’s certainly (and ever) possible my skepticism represents my misunderstanding of the situation.
But if so, I’m apparently not the only one…
Continue reading
41 Comments | tags: algorithm, brain, brain mind problem, computationalism, consciousness, human brain, human consciousness, human mind, Matthew Cobb, mind, Theory of Consciousness | posted in Philosophy, Science
The last Sideband discussed two algorithms for producing digit strings in any number base (or radix) for integer and fractional numeric values. There are some minor points I didn’t have room to explore in that post, hence this follow-up post. I’ll warn you now: I am going to get down in the mathematical weeds a bit.
If you had any interest in expressing numbers in different bases, or wondered how other bases do fractions, the first post covered that. This post discusses some details I want to document.
The big one concerns numeric precision and accuracy.
Continue reading
3 Comments | tags: base 10, base 2, binary, binary digits, decimal, fractions, number bases | posted in Math, Sideband
Logos con carne 