Landscape of Round Holes

THE gift

Scenario:

As a gift, a woman buys her husband/boyfriend a big screen HDTV, with surround sound, the full cable package, including all you can watch sports, and a DVR.

Question:

What would the equivalent gift of a man to his wife/girlfriend be?

Guys, feel free to get your ladyfreind's opinions before answering, though answering without said opinion will be enlightening just the same.

Fork or Spoon? You decide!

OK let's go ahead and officially TAG everybody that reads this.  Here are ten more questions. Answer each using any criteria you wish, and give a brief explanation as to your choice.

• turn the wheel or pull the lever?
• flying car or personal robot?
• noun or verb?
• fish or bird?
• shovel or pickax?
• pogo stick or jump rope?
• abacus or slide rule?
• miniature golf or skating rink?
• your weight in feathers or lead?
• 1 or 1 million?

Applying reason to nonsense since 1974

Here are five questions, answer each and give a brief explanation as to why you chose that answer.

• Fork or Spoon?
• Heads or Tails?
• 123 or 321?
• Circle or Square?
• Hammer or Screwdriver?

Steamed Fiction

Just saw Steamboy, directed by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, of Akira fame. While i don't remember much about Akira itself, as i was to really tired and/or stoned, i do remember not really liking it that much. I did like Steamboy though, very much, as well as Metropolis, which he helped screenplay.

I love science fiction that takes place in the past, and i especially like science fiction that takes place at or around the turn of the century. HG Wells' Time Machine, William Gibson/Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine,  even Alan Moore's A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and others. It's a small niche genre i know, but it does have a name, Steampunk. Isn't that a great name, summoning up all kinds of questions and immediately supplying answers in the form of images. It sprang form the cyberpunk genre, and was just as dystopian, but has since matured to include more than just that view, the name however was writ.

Steamboy may not be the best example of steampunk, but it is a typical one. Perhaps a good baseline for the genre, as it doesn't fly too far off in any one direction, but relies on just the basics - What if steam power were advanced enough at the turn of the century so as to duplicate more modern technologies. This does leave the writers room to express their point that technology should be used for advancement of peace and knowledge not warmongering and greed, and should make the point better than using a modern or futuristic setting. In the movie itself they did tend to overdo it though, instead of relying on the setting to help their point they just go ahead and tell you exactly that about every fifteen minutes or so and they just keep saying it more emphatically each time as the movie builds and builds, in can i say, typical Ôtomo style.

Addendum: I just love the time period, it was a time of such great discovery that the disbelief in the added fictional elements is a little easier to suspend and therefor enjoy. Similar sub-genre involving historical science fiction would be the 'atomic age' anything, like The Iron Giant; and 'clockwork fiction which would take place during the Renaissance and things like DaVinci or as far back as Galileo's works. And if anybody knows of a story involving science fiction during the time of the Greeks please let me know, that is a time period a close second in my heart.

Comic Book Movies

I have a thing for science fiction movies, and have been going through a comic book movie phase for a while now. I wanted to get a pulse on what others think of the sub-genre as a whole.  Are they good or bad movies in general, are they a respectable outlet for artistic expression, or a laughable attempt at milking the movie-goer out of more money.

Just to be clear, I am talking about the modern non-animated action/adventure superhero variety, like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, etc. And just to be completely clear here is a list that I tried to make as comprehensive as I could, if i missed one let me know.

Superman - 1978
Superman 2 - 1980
Flash Gordon - 1980
Swamp Thing - 1982
Superman 3 - 1983
Supergirl - 1984
Superman 4 - 1987
Return of the Swamp Thing - 1989
Punisher - 1989
Batman - 1989
Darkman - 1990
Rocketeer, The - 1991
Captain America - 1991
Batman Returns - 1992
Shadow, The - 1994
Crow, The - 1994
Darkman 2 - 1994
Judge Dredd - 1995
Batman Forever - 1995
Crow 2, The - 1996
Black Mask - 1996
Barb Wire - 1996
Darkman 3 - 1996
Phantom, The - 1996
Steel - 1997
Spawn - 1997
Batman & Robin - 1997
Blade - 1998
Crow 3, The - 2000
X-Men - 2000
Spider-Man - 2002
Blade 2 - 2002
Black Mack 2 - 2002
Bulletproof Monk - 2003
Hulk - 2003
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - 2003
X-Men 2 - 2003
Daredevil - 2003
Blade 3 - 2004
Spider-Man 2 - 2004
Catwoman - 2004
Punisher, The - 2004
Hellboy - 2004
Sin City - 2005
Fantastic Four - 2005
Elektra - 2005
Crow 4, The - 2005
Constantine - 2005
Batman Begins - 2005

I propose that the genre be looked at as having three periods roughly a decade long. The first, or early, period lasting from 1979 to 1989  and dominated, almost solely, by the Superman movies. The second, or mid, period going from 1989 to 1997 (the 90s) and overshadowed by the Batman movies, with a respectable showing by 'oldie's' (Rocketeer, Shadow, Phantom) and the 'new bloods' (Capt. Amer., Punisher, Darkman). Nothing to effects heavy yet. The third, or modern, period, I believe started with Blade in 1998, and is the beginning of the SUPERhero movies, ones which can utilize CG graphics to effectively reproduce the extraordinary powers of the characters that is so much the bread and butter of comic books, especially for the young audience. This being exemplified by the Marvel heroes (X-Men, Spider-Man,Fantastic Four, ET. AL.) but also making appearances are more stylistic movies, based on lesser-known comics, such as League of Ex. Gent. and Sin City.

So, let me know people, what do you think of CBMs in general, your thoughts on each of the periods, what the next stage might hold, what are some of your favorite CBMs, whatever?

Shades of Peter Parker

I just saw the animated Spider-Man TV show. Not the old one but a new and definitely improved version. It was CG and used 3-D modeling, but what was really great about this show was the stylistic appearance,a much more graphic approach as opposed to "the realer the better". Now I like "the realer the better" animation a lot - a la Final Fantasy, The Spirit Within, but I definitely don't like just that method, variety is the spice of life and all.

The method they used involved a new type of "shader" that gave the highly realistic models a very comic book look, which I think is a kind of best of both worlds scenario - the the control that 3D animating offers as far as shape, movement, voice, etc. combined with the artistic nuances of an imaginative mind. It gave the show a unique look and feel.

Very Large Numbers

What's the largest number you know?

I have always been somewhat intrigued by the large numbers. At one point in my life 10 was the largest number i knew. After the basic multiplication table, 144 was generally the biggest number i knew. Then came the mighty leap to the million and it's cousin's the billion and the trillion. Shortly after this however came the almighty infinity and the schoolyard requisite infinity plus one :). But was the game over? Was infinity the end-all-be-all of numbers. And was there really such a thing as infinity plus one?

I was always somewhat intrigued by very large numbers, they always blew my mind, and as a kind of intellectual narcotic i enjoyed that rush of awe followed by joy in finally comprehending the incomprehensible. Now the infinity hi' lasted for quite some time, after all it is larger than any number, but eventually I was able to wrap my mind around even the infinite and was left with withdrawal. I needed my big number fix. So, by analogy, having been to heaven and become bored i began to search for "heaven on earth", namely whats the largest number (being understood that infinity is not a number, just as heaven is not actually on earth).

Scenic views along the road to the largest number i know:

• The metric system - a kilobyte is a 1000 bytes, a megabyte is 10^6 bytes, followed by giga-, tera-, peta-, exa-, zetta-, yotta-, xenta-, wekta-,vendeka-, and finally udekta- which is 10^36 whatevers, which is a 1 followed by 36 zeros
• The google - It is 10^100, a 1 followed by 100 zeros - definitely a large number :) But no where even close to the googleplex which is 10^google, or 1 followed by a google of zeros - VERY large. The googleplex is considered to be the largest number for which there is a specific name for.
• Tetration - tetration is not a number but an operation. Addition is the simplest operation and multiplication is repeated addition (2x3 is 2 added three times or 2+2+2), exponentiation is multiplication repeated (2^3 is 2 multiplied three times or 2x2x2), and so tetration is exponentiation repeated (2 tet 3 is 2 exponentiated three times or 2^2^2=2^4=16). Tetrated numbers can get VERY big VERY quickly, for example 10 tet 4 is equal to a googleplex multiply by itself 10^8 number of times. So 10 tet 100 is freaking huge! and 10 tet google insane, and of course the ultimate so far - googleplex tet googleplex. Mind blowing, i love it.

To give you an idea i will list some large numbers from the real world

• number of people on earth - a paltry 6.4 x 10^9
• 1994 US national debt in dollars - 4.4 x 10^12
• number of cells in the human body - 10^14
• age of the universe in seconds - 4.1 x 10^17
• number of moves in chess - 1.8 x 10^19
• radius of the milky way galaxy, in meters - 3.9 x 10^20
• number of stars in the universe - 10^21, not bad
• grains of sand in the world - 10^23
• number of atoms in a human body - 10^27
• mass of the sun, in kilograms - 2 x 10^30, a respectable showing
• molecules of water on earth - 10^47
• number of particles in the universe - 10^85
• number of neutrons if the universe were completely filled with them - 10^128, this is it, the largest number for a real thing
• number of possible moves in the game of GO - 10^365, getting bigger
• number of games of chess - 10^450, very nice, but still small in the big picture :(

The largest number every used for a practical purpose, i.e. not just coming up with larger number for the hell of it, is called Graham's number and was used in a mathematical proof as an upper bound. If there is interest i will attempt to describe the number. It is SO FREAKING INCREDIBLY UNBELIEVABLY LARGE, so much larger than anything i have describe here today, and is a total mind blower, even better than infinity to me.

So, after that rather long winded post, does anyone out there care to take a stab at the largest number they know, either as a number or as a statement (like number of positions of a Rubik's cube), and see if it comes close to Graham's?

Hello

Well, my first post.

You may know me from Ojo Rojo's Cursed with Ambition blog where I posted as MathJames (don't know if I'm going to keep that moniker or not). I was encouraged to start my own blog, so i did, sorry for the delay and thanks to Very Metal, Ojo, and llogg, for their help and support.

OK, obligatory thanks done, now on the the egotistical ramblings of a self styled philosopher and humorist. I love asking and answering questions, from the trivial (What order do you dry off body parts when you get out of the shower?) to the profound (Can evolution be reconciled with religious doctrine?). I implore you to do the same. Word of warning: I will also use this vehicle for sounding off my likes and dislikes in an effort to rid myself of the prolonged effects of keeping such inane matters unvoiced. Hopefully it will be amusing enough to warrant it's continuation.

So, pull up a cyberseat and let the games begin.