Category:
Creative Media
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4th December 2009The Black and White PastAn old mental_floss post begins with a section which makes me think someone is reading my thoughts ((Maybe I should don a tinfoil hat.)): ...having seen mostly black-and-white pictures of the world pre-1960 or so (I’m not counting Technicolor movies), I begin to imagine the past unfolding in monochrome. I almost always imagine the time before the 60s in black and white: The Titanic, the Victorians and the World Wars ((Though, strangely, before the 1700s, everything - from the Tudors to the Egyptians - I imagine in colour. That adds evidence to my hypothesis that my imagination is prejudiced by the viewing ...
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4th December 2009SmugopediaI like this Smugopedia entry on Malcolm Gladwell: The problem with Malcolm Gladwell is that he writes too well: when you read him, you don't know if you're agreeing with his controversial ideas because he's right, or because he's enchanted you. The site hasn't been updated for a while, it's still worth the time to read it if you haven't before.
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1st December 2009The Blessing and The CurseI call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed; That's from The Bible; Deuteronomy 30:19. I've just watched the final episode of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". There's a load of fanboyism surrounding "Cosmos" - and indeed anything to do with Sagan - but I believe that the hype is justified. Few things have ever so inspired me. According to Sagan, "the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be". A ...
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27th November 2009Koch Snowflake (Horizon – How Long is a Piece of String?)NB: If you're just interested in the maths, click here. My most loyal reader and commenter, Sir Terry Kumblemann requested: "Posts about maths (seriously). To be more specific, sequences like the Fibonacci sequence and similar (or completely crazy sequences)." Now, I'm into maths, particularly all things patterny and numbery, but is my knowledge suitable for blog posts? I know that there are many crazy sequences - I could reel off the first 20 numbers of a sequence ((The Fibonacci sequence is particularly interesting, popping up all over nature as if by magic. But I wouldn't give it justice if I wrote about it ...
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26th November 2009Disappointing HorizonsThis post is provided as an appendix to the proceeding post, which will discuss fractals - a topic mentioned in last week's Horizon. I introduce this list by saying: sadly, I can't say that the rest of the current series of Horizon has been as good as "The Secret You" ((Which itself isn't the highest bar to pass.)). "Why Do We Talk?" spends an hour pointing out: "Hey, you know that language thing, it's so weeeeird. Innit?". When the programme concludes I was left with the feeling that my time would have been better spent on reading a book or meeting a ...
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About Wilf's Blog
I'm a mathematician, but apart from that, I'm a fairly normal guy. I used to write a blog - this blog. I write (wrote) about whatever is on my mind. It can get quite personal sometimes.
