Logos con carne

March 1, 2024

Friday Notes (Feb 30, 2024)

The weather has been so weirdly warm this month that I never got around to a Friday Notes for February, so I’m extending the month. Call it a leap year “plus one”. Truth is, I’m at long last finally starting to reach the bottom of my pile. A lot of what’s left is trivial, silly, or outdated, and I may end up doing a thorough spring cleaning on them.

The ultimate goal is for the Notes to be about contemporaneous things rather than from old notes that have been fermenting in the pile.

But for a bit longer, it’ll be a combination of both, so off we go.

13 Comments | tags: global warming, language, Lee Smolin, linguistics, Schadenfreude, square, temperature, Weltschmerz | posted in Friday Notes

February 29, 2024

BB #90: The Growth Paradigm

By Wyrd Smythe

My final post in 2023 was about growth curves. It focused on the difference between geometric growth versus exponential growth — which turns out to be not much — and compared them to polynomial growth (see that post for the math-y details; this post isn’t a math post, so relax and read on).

A key characteristic of all these growth curves is that they grow without limit. If we treat the horizontal axis as time, then the longer the growth continues along the curve, the greater whatever growing grows.

The problem is that nothing in the real world can grow infinitely without limit. At some point, something has to give.

9 Comments | tags: Earth population, global warming | posted in Brain Bubble, Society

February 26, 2024

BB #89: The Irrational Square

By Wyrd Smythe

Consider the lowly square, a four-sided shape with sides of equal length meeting at right angles. The embodiment of what we’re referring to when we refer to square miles, square kilometers, square inches, or square whatevers. The two-dimensional version of any one-dimensional length.

A trivially easy shape to draw, all you need is a straight edge and a compass — the latter for ensuring your corners are right angles (see Plato’s Divided Line for more on using a straight edge and compass). The only simpler shape is the circle.

Yet the simple square threw early mathematicians into a serious tizzy!

12 Comments | tags: irrational numbers, Pythagoras, square | posted in Brain Bubble, Math

February 15, 2024

Winter Finally Showed Up!

By Wyrd Smythe

February 15, and winter finally decided show up:

And it’s awfully pretty, I gotta give it that!

8 Comments | tags: snow, winter | posted in Life

February 14, 2024

BB #88: Boltsmann Brains

By Wyrd Smythe

An article in a recent issue of New Scientist caught my attention on two counts: firstly, in what it said about my old friend wavefunction collapse and the measurement problem; and secondly, in mentioning Boltzmann Brains. Both set off my “Yeah, but!” reaction.

I’ll touch (as briefly as possible) on the first point, but this little Bubble is mainly about the second one.

Boltzmann Brains bug me.

3 Comments | tags: measurement problem, quantum mechanics, wave-function | posted in Brain Bubble, Physics

February 13, 2024

BB #87: Two = Zero!

By Wyrd Smythe

You may have, at some point, seen one of those bits where a series of seemingly simple math operations somehow end up proving that 1=0 or something equally clearly wrong. Most of them accomplish their joke by sneaking in a hidden division by zero. From that point on, all bets are off (see Divide by Zero).

Recently, on a YouTube channel I follow, I saw a clever example that uses a much sneakier trick. It’s harder to spot because the operation it uses is legit in two of the three possible cases.

The gag, of course, uses the third one.

7 Comments | tags: fun with numbers, imaginary unit, numbers | posted in Brain Bubble, Math

January 23, 2024

Sideband #80: Divide by Zero

By Wyrd Smythe

You may remember learning way back in grade school that you can’t divide by zero. You may remember being told that division by zero is undefined. But have you ever wondered why we can’t divide by zero? Couldn’t the answer just be zero? We get zero when we multiply by zero, so why not when we divide?

But dividing is the opposite (or inverse) of multiplying, so if multiplying by zero gives zero, then maybe dividing by zero gives us… infinity? But infinity isn’t a number (it’s an idea), so that doesn’t work, either.

In this post I’ll dig into why division by zero is undefined.

4 Comments | tags: division, fractions, zero | posted in Basics, Math, Sideband

January 19, 2024

Friday Notes (Jan 19, 2024)

By Wyrd Smythe

The first Friday Notes of 2024. (The title nicely caps the 2024, 2023, 2024, 2023 series from the titles of the previous four posts.) We’re well past the glut of holidays, and it’s back to business. There is also the fresh-start sense of the new year. I’m already thinking about all the stuff I want to throw away this coming Spring Cleaning.

My various piles of notes grow smaller and smaller! In some cases, because I deleted notes that seemed to have aged beyond their lifetime. But these Notes posts have been instrumental. In some areas, I’m actually scraping the bottom of the barrel.

But I still have notes, so here we go again…

2 Comments | tags: Amazon Prime, commercials, die spammers, liars, politically correct, YouTube | posted in Friday Notes

January 17, 2024

2023: All the Charts

By Wyrd Smythe

This post contains the post statistics charts I didn’t have room for in the 2023 wrap-up post. There are a lot of them, and I don’t imagine they’re of much interest to anyone but me. I post them mainly to document the blog. A set of milestones, if you will.

I confess to being fascinated — and utterly befuddled — by which posts receive attention and which little piggies get none. It’s particularly interesting to me when an old post — especially one that never got many views — suddenly gets noticed and sometimes even slightly popular.

Mostly the stats are similar to previous years, but 2023 did bring a few surprises.

3 Comments | tags: blog, blogger, blogging, charts, posting | posted in Life

January 16, 2024

2024: Looking Ahead

By Wyrd Smythe

The other face of Janus looks forward to the Christmases yet to come. Or words to that effect. The last post looked back at some highlights from 2023; this one looks forward to the hopes, plans, and guesses for 2024.

Hopes and plans are easy enough, but when it comes to guesses, I’ve never thought much of futurists. I don’t have much truck with “could” and “might” when it comes to the actual world. Science fiction is my favorite fiction, but futurists claim to be prescient, and I very much doubt it.

Regardless (and heedless), some hopes, plans, and wild-ass guesses, for 2024.

1 Comment | tags: blog, blogger, blogging, Happy New Year, January, Janus | posted in Life