Saturday I posted about a joke I did in a college math class. That math class did witness a great joke, but not by me, and it may only make sense to people who have done advanced math. The professor was going to prove that a certain group, which is a precise mathematical concept, had a certain property. The group is the set of symmetries of an icosahedron. The property[…] Keep reading →

I try to post things of substance or that will make you think and act. Today might be more silly. More self-indulgent. I’m posting a pun I stumbled on—that is, someone was saying something and the pun came to mind. I liked it enough to burn a post on it. Background: Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, one of the best known commercials began, “I’m not a doctor, but[…] Keep reading →

Last week I posted The most amazing “You Are Here” map you’ve ever seen, which featured a map that referred to itself. In the closing paragraph I referred to a book—Godel, Escher, Bach—on recursion. I’d read and reread the book in the 1980s and it stuck with me. Not sure if anything would come of it, I wrote the author, Douglas Hofstadter, with a link. Beyond writing back that he[…] Keep reading →

I live in Greenwich Village. Here’s an old map of the neighborhood: It’s a tall building. From the roof, I can see across the street to a playground for a school between a couple brick buildings: You probably see marked on the ground the two basketball half-courts on the left and the blue track that curves beside them. You’ll also see a colorful block pattern inside the track. Let’s look[…] Keep reading →

A reader contacted me and suggested I read the book “Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story,” by Jim Holt. The author writes for the New Yorker among other things, which implies I’ll enjoy his writing. The book promised to explore the question why the universe exists as opposed to not existing. Why being and not nothingness. I borrowed the book from the library. I hadn’t considered its[…] Keep reading →