Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Voices in my head

Did you know there's a beautiful and easy proof that the square root of 2 is irrational? The ancient Greeks evidently did. By this same beautiful method you can prove Theaetetus's statement that the diagonal of a square is incommensurate with its sides. And his teacher Theodorus already knew that the square root of all natural numbers 3 to 17 (excepting 4, 9 and 16 obviously) are irrational -- this in circa 450 B.C.! And yet it took me 2,500 years (plus 15 minutes of reading the history of calculus) to understand this. A bit slow on the uptake, I guess.

I have seen the future...... and it is one-tenth of a second ago. Click here to read about it. Amazing.

I have seen the past...... and it is ten thousand years ago. See here. Incredible.

Yes, those guys from an uncontacted tribe are trying to shoot down the surveying aircraft with bow and arrow! Cute. Imagine the story they were telling around the campfire that night: "Hey guys, you shoulda seen the one that got away! It was THIS big, made a terrible noise, didn't even move its wings, and had huge spinning tent-poles on its nose. I SWEAR ON MY MOTHER'S SPIRIT!"

I wonder if they also have skeptics, believers, and a concept of existential angst. Or maybe they (like me, matter of fact) are just trying to get through life without, well, dying in the middle. Which is a noble cause, I think.