Category:
TV
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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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30th October 2009Horizon – The Secret YouI last wrote about an episode of Horizon in February. For the benefit of a wide audience, Horzion is at a basic level, but although the majority of episodes teach me very little, occasionally the topic is something new or, if not, it's interesting enough that I watch it anyway. Last week's episode was a combination of a new and (to me) very interesting subject matter, so I decided to watch it. It was called "The Secret You". The episode was about consciousness, and was presented by Marcus du Sautoy, an Oxford mathematics professor who has written some books that I've ...
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18th October 2009TV NighttimeThere's something that bugs me about TV programs, sci-fi ones in particular. It came to my attention again recently when I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I think it was Data's Day. When Data takes the bridge, presumably he is relieving the previous officer of his position at the end of his shift, and Data tells his crew to "begin night watch". And then what happens? The lights dim, of course. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation usually follows the night shift, and there too the interior shots of their labs are always very dark. So much question is: why ...
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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.
