Foudre en boule

My Grandmother once told me that as a child, when she used to stay in the countryside with her uncle and there was lightning, it was quite frequent that the thunder would come through the fire hole. The thunder ball would then go around the room and find the nearest exit. My Grandmother's advice: "Stay very still and it won't hit you". Of course I could never be sure she was telling the truth until I saw Tintin:

Another advice my Grandmother gave me about thunderstorms is: "In case you're walking outside and there is lightning, wear nothing but a silk scarf and you'll be safe." If you decide to try it, send me a picture ;-)

Farm life

One of my favorite times on the farm when I was little was when the power would go out. It was such an adventure! We had a wood burning stove in our house, so we could still see, stay warm, and cook. It was such a novelty to put the pan on top of the stove just like they did in the olden days. We would usually cook something out of a can as it was easy. I remember feeling very industrious and pleased to live on a farm, because that meant that we could survive anything! We had all the tools and supplies we needed. Living in the city now is the complete opposite, just like Philonous said, you look around and realize how entirely vulnerable you are. Imagine just trying to get out of the building and having to rush down 7 flights of stairs- what if the door wouldn't open because the buzzer was off? Our urban societies are much more fragile than we think.

Power Cut

Earlier this evening, the electricity supply for some reason cut out. I was at the time surfing the web on a laptop so the instant the power went off, the network connection disappeared. Having fumbled around the house for matches for a while, I finally managed to light a candle which for once wasn't being used for ambience. It suddenly occurred to me that without electricity it would be essentially impossible to survive in my flat. Being relatively new, my home depends exclusively on electricity for energy. From heating to cooking, everything in the house is plugged into the wall in some way. I had been planning to heat up some leftovers in the microwave. But now I couldn't use a microwave. Or a toaster. Or the oven. In fact, I couldn't eat any raw food at all - it was lucky that there were some leftovers, however cold. Sitting on the couch, swaddled in a duvet against the dwindling warmth, it occurred to me that by the next morning any remaining hot water in the tank would have cooled and anything in the freezer would have started to defrost. My only consolation was in reading a book by the flickering light of a couple of candles. No wonder Russia weilded so much power over the Ukraine when it came to energy supplies. There has been so much publicity over the rising cost of energy in general, but we at least still have access to energy, however expensive it may be. And then the lights came on again.

Technology- amazing.

Just saw an article in the Guardian that made me marvel at technology (how old do I sound?) There is an idea to put 'under floor heating' beneath road surfaces, but heating that is powered by solar energy, collecting it during the hot summer to melt ice in the winter and improve driving conditions. Wow. Now that's a good idea, and I hope it works. Read more here

I love you Google...

I'm glad I've got a google account (thanks to this blog) because now I've set up my iGoogle page, which is clever on their part, so now each day I'm greeted by new art, quotes, and words to ponder on. I never thought it would be so easy to enrich my life- it really seems like cheating. But here is a quote to start:

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

-John Le Carre

Save the animals - buy fur.

I must admit, the thought of buying fur makes me feel slightly queasy. I have no explanation for this other than an emotional response triggered by many years of exposure to the anti-fur movement's advertising. On the face of it, farmed fur really is a pretty horrible thought. Animals raised in captivity in terrible conditions just so that folk can be dressed from head to toe like someone from Dr Zhivago. Now that synthetic materials are avalailable which perhaps offer better protection against the elements than mother nature, it really does seem rather a cruel and distasteful fashion accessory. I was amazed therefore to read of fur as being marketed by various organisations as an 'eco-friendly' product. According to Canada's Fur Council. Their website in the optimistically titled 'Fur is Green' section argue that fur is a renewable resource and is fully biodegradable (as opposed to fake fur which is make from petroleum byproducts). Indeed they seem to imply that they are somehow in tune with (and I quote) 'the circle of life', calling it 'the ultimate eco-clothing'. I can see hundreds of hippies wandering round in bear-skin Birkenstocks right now... A slightly more serious claim to environmental responsibility in relation to fur is New Zealand's possum fur industry. Though quite cute, possums are considered eco-system destroying pests across New Zealand since their numbers have grown beyond all expectations. The trapping and poisoning of possums is in fact encouraged by the government in an attempt to preserve natural habitats from dessimation by these marsupials which were artificially introduced around 150 years ago. Amazingly, conservation organisations such as the WWF have endorsed the possum fur industry as essential for maintaining biodiversity.

Writer's block and favourite poem

I thought it would be nice to post my favourite poem. It was composed by the German dada artist Kurt Schwitters. It is a love poem that doesn't make sense (a translation is posted after the original):

o du, geliebte meiner siebenundzwanzig sinne, ich liebe dir! - du deiner dich dir, ich dir, du mir. - wir? das gehört (beiläufig) nicht hierher. wer bist du, ungezähltes frauenzimmer? du bist - bist du? - die leute sagen, du wärest - laß sie sagen, sie wissen nicht, wie der kirchturm steht. du trägst den hut auf deinen füßen und wanderst auf die hände, auf den händen wanderst du. hallo, deine roten kleider, in weiße falten zersägt. rot liebe ich anna blume, rot liebe ich dir! - du deiner dich dir, ich dir, du mir. - wir? das gehördt (beiläufig) in die kalte glut. rote blume, rote anna blume, wie sagen die leute? preisfrage: 1. anna blume hat ein vogel. 2. anna blume ist rot. 3. welche farbe hat der vogel? blau ist die farbe deines gelben haares. rot ist das girren deines grünen vogels. du schlichtes mädchen im alltagskleid, du liebes grünes tier, ich liebe dir! - du deiner dich dir, ich dir, du mir - wir? das gehört (beiläufig) in die glutenkiste. anna blume! anna, a-n-n-a, ich träufle deinen namen. dein name tropft wie weiches rindertalg. weißt du es, anna, weißt du es schon? man kann dich auch von hinten lesen, und du, du herrlichste von allen, du bist von hinten wie von vorne: "a-n-n-a." rindertalg träufelt streicheln über meinen rücken. anna blume, du tropfes tier, ich liebe dir! (Kurt Schwitters, An Anna Blume)

This poem has also inspired the German hip-hop band Freundeskreis:

Translation:

You, oh you, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love ya! - You thine thou yours, I you, you me. - Us? This (incidentally) does not belong here. Who are you, countless woman? You are - are you? - People say you are - let them say it, they don't know where the steeple is. You wear a hat on your feet and stand on your hands, on your hands you walk. Hello, your red clothes, sawed into white pleats. Red I love, Anna Blume, red I love ya! - You thine thou yours, I you, you me. - Us? That (incidentally) belongs in the cold embers. Red flower, red Anna Blume, what are people saying? Prize question: 1. Anna Blume has a bird. 2.Anna Blume is red. 3.What color is the bird? Blue is the color of your yellow hair. Red is the cooing of your green bird. You plain girl in an everyday dress, you dear green animal, I love ya! - You thine thou yours, I you, you me - us? That (incidentally) belongs in the ember box. Anna Blume! Anna, a-n-n-a, I am dripping your name. Your name drips like soft suet. Do you know, Anna, do you know yet? You can also be read from back to front, and you, you most marvelous creature of them all, you are from the back as you are from the front: »a-n-n-a.« Suet drips caress my back. Anna Blume, you droppy animal, I love ya!

I found this translation on http://www.jbeilharz.de/expr/expr_poems.html. Unfortunately the complex German grammar which Kurt Schwitters plays with in this poem cannot be translated into English.

Are you people or sheeple?!

Yesterday, I watched the "What would Jesus Buy?", a documentary following the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on its tour around the USA. The centre of the film is the charismatic Reverend Billy who urges devotees to stop shopping and turn around the consumer culture which they see as a marketing-driven addiction. He and his gospel choir preach and sing their message to various people around the USA in a protest against gentrification and large corporations. I found the film entertaining enough, but was never totally sure whether there was a religious aspect to Rev. Billy or whether this was all a humorous package for a serious message. Check out the trailer:

Also check out the Church of Stop Shopping's website.

100 hat solution

I suddenly realised that I haven't yet posted the solution to the hundred hat problem. In slightly mathematical language, here's the solution. Replace black by 0 and white by 1. Let the ith prisoner have hat colour c(i). The first person shouts out the value of

The next person does the calculation

and shouts his answer out. In general, since the kth prisoner knows c(2), . . . , c(k-1), (having heard them shouted), c(k+1), . . . , c(100) (being able to see them) and

courtesy of the first prisoner's shout, he can calculate c(k) = (c(k) mod 2). Of course, here we've set the number of prisoners to 100, but this isn't necessary.

For non-mathematically literate folk:

The idea really isn't complicated at all - if it seems so, then I've explained it badly. First of all, knowing if a hat is white or not is equivalent to knowing its colour since there are only two. The first person to go counts up the number of white hats he can see in front of him. If it's odd, he shouts 'white' and if it's even, he shouts 'black'. Prisoner number 2 then counts the number of white hats in front of him. He then figures out if it's odd or even. We know that

• (odd number) - (odd number) = even number
• (odd number) - (even number) = odd number
• (even number) - (odd number) = odd number
• (even number) - (even number) = even number

Prisoner 2 can use prisoner 1's shout as the first number and his own tally as the second. This spits out something on the right hand side. If he gets 'even' he shouts black, if he gets 'odd' he shouts white. Prisoner 3 has heard prisoner 1 and 2 and also knows whether the number of hats in front is even or odd. He then does a similar calculation and shouts out the right answer...and so on.

Perhaps this isn't perfectly explained. Never mind.

Adbusters adbusted?

Tonight I was wandering in Manchester city centre as one does when suddenly, a projection appeared on the side of the City Tower in Piccadilly Gardens. Since I'm not in the habit of carrying a camera/tripod with me on my strolls, I had only my mobile phone to take a quick snap. It's slightly hard to see, but there's a projection of a few pawprints and the text "Felix for Mayor".

On returning home, I went online to see if anyone else had noticed what was going on. Searching for the slogan "Felix for Mayor" brought up someone's flickr page with a picture of some advert in what I think is the London edition of Metro. It turns out that this is a publicity stunt by Purina, the multinational corporation responsible for the well known pet food brands Go-Cat, Bakers Complete, Felix as well as my favourite Bonio, no doubt after the eponymous character in Romeo and Juliet's raunchier sequel.

The spontaneity and slightly cobbled together advert reminded me a little bit of so called culture jamming. For those who aren't in the know (like myself until Le Fox kindly filled me in), culture jamming is the process of subverting corporate brands to expose various perceived social injustices. Most culture jammers don't seek to make any sort of profit and so can be seen as somewhere between part time artists and activists, promoting various often radical social perspectives through guerrilla-art. They could perhaps be thought of as media hackers who seek to bring what they think of as balance to capitalism's constant stream of advertising.

Tonight's event was part of a wider program of organised publicity stunts presumably to give the Felix brand a bit of a boost. While adbusting relies on twisting carefully planned and widely established corporate brand images to deliver high impact messages, it would seem that the the quirkiness and spontaneity characterising guerrilla art has been hijacked by a corporation. The social and political messages of culture jamming have been changed into an meaningless and inane phrase supplementing adverts in traditional media.

Seeing this, it occurred to me: has Purina managed to culture jam the notion of culture jamming itself? It would seem that it has.

Some links:

• New York Times "The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax" (December 23, 1990)
• Mark Dery's 1993 essay "Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs"
• Billboard Liberation Front
• Adbusters
• Purina's UK site
• Felix's "Mischief on Tour" calendar of planned spontaneity

Urban Orchards

After living in the Manchester's city centre for a couple of months you start to notice that something is amiss. In the back of your mind, there is something that itches away relentlessly. No matter how hard you try, you just can't put your finger on it...until... There aren't any parks! Ok. That's not strictly true. According to MEN, there are various green spaces to which you can slink away to "eat your lunch or take a break from a hard day's shopping", but anyone who lives in the centre knows that these rarely measure more than 3ft across and are normally surrounded by busy roads. Should anyone find a viable park in the city centre, please do let me know. Various cities have tried to combat the slow decline into a concrete jungle, perhaps most notably Singapore with its garden city drive since the 60s. LA has tried similar approach with its Million Trees initiative which aims to clear some of the pollution as well as providing some shade for residents. One great programme that has caught my attention recently is the Fruit Tree Tour through California. The poor quality of the diets of children worldwide has been a prominent source of controversy recently with government reports and a media frenzy attributing behavioural problems to deficiencies in diversity of food consumed. Apparently, only 11% of Californian children are getting their recommended daily allowance of fresh fruit and vegetables. The Fruit Tree Tour aims to tackle both this statistic and lack of greenery in cities by planting fruit trees. These urban orchards will provide fruit for local people as well as focussing communities on self sufficiency, ecology and various other noble (trendy?) causes. I think its an absolutely brilliant idea, though I'm not sure I'm totally in tune with the 'Mother Earth' songs they seem to be teaching all of the kids... Check out their promotional video:

100 Lamp solution, 100 Hat problem.

Yesterday, I posted a little puzzle about a hundred blind lamp lighters. Don't read on if you'd like to give this a go for yourself. Here's the solution: The squared number lamps will be on at the end, i.e. 1,4,9,16,25,36,49...etc. We need to find the number of lamps which are on at the end. So let's try and figure out in what circumstances a given lamp will be on. As an example, think about whether the 6th lamp will be on. It's turned on by the 1st guy, off by the 2nd, on by the 3rd, and then off by the 6th. Notice that we've just listed all of the numbers that divide 6, i.e. 1,2,3,6. In general, for a lamp to be off, the button should have been pressed an even number of times; for it to be on, the button should have been pressed an odd number of times. For the kth lamp, the number of times it is pressed is the number of numbers dividing k. Now let's look at another example. The 12th lamp will be pressed by guys number 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12. We can split these divisors into pairs: (1,12), (2,6), (3,4) where multiplying the numbers together gives 12. Since we can pair these things up, there is an even number of divisors. Suppose now for example, that we take the number 36. Here we have divisors 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 36. In this case, we have the pairs (1,36), (2,18), (3,12), (4,9), and 6 is paired with itself. Here we have an odd number of divisors, the reason being that one number (6) is paired with itself. So a general number k has an odd number of divisors if (and only if) one divisor is paired with itself, that is, there is some number which multiplied by itself gives k. In less obtruse words, k is a square number. And there's the proof. (Note that actually, the number of lamps doesn't matter as long as it's the same as the number of lamp lighters.) Last night after the Pure Postgraduate seminar, a post-pub discussion brought up the following hundred hat problem: Here's another problem, this time with a hundred hats. Suppose that there is a strange kingdom where logical prowess is prized above all other things. 100 prisoners languish in prison all sentenced to death. Since the king is a nice sort of fellow, he decides that he will set the following challenge: The prisoners are all lined up facing along the line so that a given prisoner can see all the people infront of him, but not himself or the people behind him. A hat is put on each prisoner, either white or black. The prisoner at the back (who can see everyone else's hat but not his own) then shouts out the colour he thinks his hat is. If he gets the answer right, he is allowed to live. If he gets the answer wrong, he dies. The same process is repeated by the prisoner second from the back and so on. The prisoners are allowed to confer before the whole process and so can decide on a strategy. How many prisoners can defintitely be saved by an appropriate strategy?

(Hint: At least half can be saved. The guy at the back can't be helped: he may as well shout randomly. He could however, help the guy in front of him. If they decide beforehand that the first guy will shout the colour of the hat in front of him, then at least he can save the second guy who will then know his own hat colour. Continuing the process, we can save for certain at least every other man. In fact, they can do a lot better...)

Too many Lamp Lighters

Yesterday, as on every Thursday, Manchester University's geometers, mathematical physicists and topologists gather for the Geometry Seminar. The talk itself was a really great proof of the Mischenko-Fomenko conjecture about the existence maximal complete commutative subalgebras of finite dimensional Lie algebras. Alexei Bolsinov gave a geometric proof of one of the subcases of the proof using some quite neat parts of the theory.

As per usual, we decamped to the pub afterward to discuss anything and everything. Soon enough, one of my supervisors started posing interesting little mathematical problems. Here is one which "of course, the school children know how to solve" which occupied a some minutes in an otherwise boring sleepless night.

Suppose there are a hundred push-button lamps and a hundred blind lamplighters. All lamps are initially off. The first lamplighter passes along the row and pushes each button in turn thereby turning every lamp on. The second lamplighter passes along the row afterward and pushes every other button regardless of whether the lamp is on or off. (So now all the even numbered lamps are off.) The third lamplighter passes along the row and pushes every third button, the fourth pushes every fourth button and so on. After all of the hundred lamplighters have passed by, which of the lamps remain lit?

For the answer and an explanation, see tomorrow.

Wings of Desire

On Sunday, I went with a few other folk to see Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), Wim Wenders' 1987 moody film which inspired the apparently insipid Hollywood remake - City of Angels. The basic story is about a couple of angels who live in Berlin in the late eighties. They seem to exist to quietly observe the human condition from afar and perhaps to console. Having observed the human race for a while, one decides to descend, no doubt inspired by his trapeze-artist love interest whose loneliness fuelled predilection for Nick Cave sees them united at a gig. I have to say, I don't know if I really got it in any deep sense of the word. There were certain moments where the characters seem to disconnect from the real world to spout some sort of existential poetic soliloquy which I don't think had the desired effect on me. They smacked of Alexander Nevsky's looking into the corner of the room before delivering some pro-Russian Stalinist agenda in Eisenstein's film of the same name. But then, I really liked that film. At least half of the film is shot in black and white.

If nothing else, it's worth watching just for the amazing framing of the shots and the graniness of the film. There's a great moment where the camera moves slowly backward from a view out of a window to a mother and son in a room; at each moment the shot could have been taken as a perfectly composed photograph.

All in all - I really liked it but was left wondering if there was any more to it than I'd taken away. Here are the first five minutes to give you some idea of the atmosphere - though a tiny youtube window hardly does it justice.

Picture of the Moment III

Woolf vs Schopenhauer.

I like this math

I'd like some of that cake

Ms Foxy Fox, can you please make me one of those cakes? I'm not handy enough to do it myself (and you look cute in an apron). On another note, a friend who works at a park in California sent me some advice on how to not be attacked by a mountain lion (a hazard in her work). Could prove useful one day- to quote Natalie (who I first met in Italy, but we're both from Ohio!) In the case that you should run into a mountain lion back there in Ohio- you are supposed to do three things. You shouldn't run (b/c then you are acting like prey). You should hold your coat up and open above your head so that you look bigger than you really are. And you should talk to it in a very firm and demanding way- "HEY- YOU- GET AWAY FROM HERE OR I'M GOING TO EAT YOU UP." So there we are. Cue 'the more you know' rainbow and music. On that note, 'the more you know' is a phrase I use often, and is lost on most of my non-American friends. It is a staple of American life, being a the tagline for 'public service announcements' which appear on tv, to teach people about all sort of things (health, environment, education, etc). It's been around for decades. I think this spoof from 'Scrubs' will give you the idea.

Avicenna's Argument

Avicenna was apparently one of the most important polymaths in the so called "Golden Age of Islam". He lived in Persia from 980 to 1037 and was renowned in many fields of knowledge, even to the extent that one of his textbooks on medicine was still used as the core text in Montpellier and Louvain in the mid 17th century. One of the great ideas of Avicenna was his argument for the existence of God which, to me at least, smacks very much of mathematical proof (and is therefore understandably quite appealing to one such as myself...). So, what's it all about? Avicenna uses heavily the concept of contingency. A state of affairs is contingent if it could have been otherwise. So for instance, my mother at some point had a child: me. It was by no means a logical necessity that she do this - I might not have been born. Therefore my existence is contingent upon the fact my parents decided to have a child. Similarly their existence is contingent upon their parents having had children, and so on... Avicenna's argument tries to construct a necessary object and then calls that God. Ok. So the world contains a great many contingent things (like me for instance). The existence of each one of these things must therefore have been caused by something else which is itself contingent and so on and so forth... Such and such a table was made by a carpenter whose existence was caused by his father and mother etc. So we get a big long causal chain of events which are all contingent. The usual (cosmological) argument for the existence of God says at this point that this chain must stop somewhere so we get an 'uncaused causer', which is taken to be God. Avicenna comes up with a slightly subtler approach. He basically defines 'the world' as the set of all contingent things and all the causes between them. He then states a principle of composition which, applied here, says that the set of all contingent things is also contingent. Since the world is therefore contingent, it must be caused by some object X outside the world. Suppose X is contingent. Then it must be part of the world, which is impossible. Therefore X was in fact not contingent, i.e. necessary. He defines this X to be God. Of course, as with any argument for the existence of God, there are quite a few problems with this:

1. What justification do we have that anything is contingent in the first place?
2. How do we know that this X is the God of (in Avicenna's case) Islam as opposed to just some abstract object? That is, how do we arrive at any of the traditional attributes of God such as omnipotence etc.?
3. What's all this principle of composition about? Admittedly, if I have a car, all of whose components are blue, then my car will be blue. But if I have a car, all of whose components are well made, then it's certainly not true that the car itself must be well made.

Despite all of these, I think it's a pretty cool argument and echos Russell's paradox which came much later. Here's a nice Rube Goldberg example of a set of contingent events:

Flame from lamp (A) catches on curtain (B) and fire department sends stream of water (C) through window. Dwarf (D) thinks it is raining and reaches for umbrella (E), pulling string (F) and lifting end of platform (G). Iron ball (H) falls and pulls string (I), causing hammer (J) to hit plate of glass (K). Crash of glass wakes up pup (L) and mother dog (M) rocks him to sleep in cradle (N), causing attached wooden hand (O) to move up and down along your back.

Little cake, bombastic effect

Have you ever wondered how to make those small hot chocolate cakes which you get in restaurants? This a French dessert recipe for all chocolate lovers... feeds 3-4 people Preparation time: 10 minutes Baking time: 10 minutes You need: - 4 ramekins - 100 grams + 8 squares of dark dessert chocolate - 3 eggs - 80 grams of sugar - 50 grams of butter + a little extra - 1 table spoon of flour + a little extra Then work your magic... 1. Pre-heat the oven at 260°C 2. Melt the chocolate and the butter 3. In a big bowl, mix the eggs, the sugar and the flour 4. Pour the warm melted chocolate and butter in the mix and stir 5. Butter and flour your ramekins 6. Pour 1/3 of the mixture in each of them 7. Place 2 squares of dark chocolate in each and cover with the rest of the mixture 8. Put the ramekins in the oven for 10 minutes Your little chocolate cakes will blow in a soufflé-kinda-way, the chocolate squares will have melted, and you will have the great pleasure to calm your chocolate craving. Enjoy!!!

Quotes

Spence from Ashburne emails me very frequently and always ends with different quotes, that I find really amusing a) because he has the time to find them and 2) the iniaitive to find them- both things I lack. Therefore, I am now going to make a considerable effort to 1) make more time for the small things in life and b) be more creative (like I used to be!) So here goes: Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going. Laurence J. Peter US educator & writer (1919 - 1988) I like this because I've often made bad jokes/metaphors about trains (like, I lost my train of thought, it jumped the track). I'm going to start working on my thought train, now! PS I totally cheated to find my quote, I just used Google and http://www.quotationspage.com

Covers

Johnny Cash famously covered Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails: it seems that a good song is good no matter what your personal take. Here, for your viewing pleasure are assembled a couple of my favourites. They are:

1. The Unforgiven - Iron Horse/Metallica
2. Baby one more time - Travis/Britney Spears
3. Holiday - Hayseed Dixie/Green Day
4. Love will tear us apart - Susanna and the Magical Orchestra/Joy Division
5. Satisfaction - Devo/The Rolling Stones
6. Ain't no Sunshine - Woven Hand/Bill Withers