I may be late, but I'll be up to date when I can shimmy like my sister Kate
Here is one of the ways in which mathematics has blown my mind recently: it turns out that it is possible to construct a bijection between the natural numbers and the set of all primes. That is to say, if we take the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, and so on) and the prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, and so on), there exists some function (beats me what, but we can prove it exists) which links each and every natural number to some specific prime number, and vice versa. This seems deeply and profoundly whacked on an intuitive level: if we just think about the numbers from 1-10, well, there are ten of these and only four primes among them. As we go to higher numbers primes get fewer and farther between; clearly (one would think) the primes are a relatively small subset of the natural numbers. And yet we can construct a bijection between the two sets, which means there are exactly the same number of primes as natural numbers. WHACKED. RIDICULOUS. Yet true. Ladies and gentlemen, the beauty of mathematics.
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Linkspam:
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Linkspam:
- Garfield Minus Garfield. Talk about engaging in new kinds of dialogues with our texts. And it really is better this way, I think.
- Battlestar Galactica S4 promo pics. Gosh. I hadn't really been all that excited, somehow; I don't know if it's because I know it's (probably) coming to an (unsatisfying and abrupt) end, or just because it's been so long since the last season that I hardly remember what's going on -- but looking at these pictures just reminded me how much I adore them all, unnaturally gorgeous bunch of space refugees that they are.
- sonatine put her mad library science skillz to use and found me the company which makes those Post-it notes I mentioned the other day: Knock Knock. The Post-its are great, as are the notepads (I'm particularly enamoured of the "Roommate FYI" and "Why I Must Have Sex With You" ones, for, uh, no particular reason or anything), but the flashcards are deeply hilarious as well.
- I've been meaning to post this for weeks, so it's a bit old now and those who would care have probably seen it (well, probably read Pitchfork), but regardless: here is a great, multi-author article on that weird, wild, wonderful thing, Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea -- which, as I was saying to Jem a while back, I think I'm officially calling my favourite album ever, because I've loved it consistently since I was fifteen, and I really can't think of much else which falls into that category. It's wrapped so inextricably in memories of that time, too, which are sort of funny and bittersweet, because I remember how sad and confused and bleak and SRS BSNS everything felt at fifteen -- but then I remember, too, that those were the days of the best friendships of my life, the days I was in love for the first time, rockstar days, rooftop days. And In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is all the good parts of that time, without the bad, without all the burnt bridges between then and now, and a really stunning piece of work in its own right.
- Also old, still hilarious: lolcats for Obama. I'm not sure I ever wanted to see the convergence of this particular twain, but I laugh every time I look at it, so.