New York Lottery, evening of
Monday, February 6th, 2012:
558 and 0608.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Random Walk
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Old Sport
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
A Larger City
| BOOKS OF THE TIMES
HOW IT ALL BEGAN Review by Michiko Kakutani As a historian, Henry acknowledges that he has “a soft spot for what is known as the Cleopatra’s nose theory of history— the proposal that had the nose of Cleopatra been an inch longer, the fortunes of Rome would have been different.” It’s a bit of a reductio ad absurdum, he admits, but nonetheless “a reference to random causality that makes a lot of sense when we think about the erratic sequence of events that we call history.” What Ms. Lively has done in this captivating volume is to use all her copious storytelling gifts to show how a similar kind of random causality rules individual lives, how one unlucky event can set off unexpected chain reactions, how the so-called butterfly effect— whereby the flapping of a tiny butterfly’s wings can supposedly lead to a huge storm elsewhere in the world— ripples through the ebb and flow of daily life. |
Rhetorical question—
"Why walk when you can fly?"
— Mary Chapin Carpenter
Rhetorical answer—
Two excerpts from a webpage on random walks—
A drunk man will find his way home,
but a drunk bird may get lost forever.
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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Tuesday June 24, 2008
Random Walk with
X's and O's
X's and O's
Part I: Random Walk
Part II: X's
3/22:
"Shakespeare, Rilke, Joyce,
Beckett and Levi-Strauss are
instances of authors for whom
chiasmus and chiastic thinking
Beckett and Levi-Strauss are
instances of authors for whom
chiasmus and chiastic thinking
are of central importance,
for whom chiasmus is a
generator of meaning,
tool of discovery and
philosophical template."
for whom chiasmus is a
generator of meaning,
tool of discovery and
philosophical template."
— Chiasmus in the
Drama of Life
Drama of Life
Part III: O's —
A Cartoon Graveyard
in honor of the late
Gene Persson †
Today's Garfield —
See also
Midsummer Eve's Dream:
"The meeting is closed
with the lord's‡ prayer
and refreshments are served."
† Producer of plays and musicals
including Album and
The Ruling Class
‡ Lower case in honor of
Peter O'Toole, star of
the film version of
The Ruling Class.
(This film, together with
O'Toole's My Favorite Year,
may be regarded as epitomizing
Hollywood's Jesus for Jews.)
Those who prefer
less randomness
in their religion
may consult O'Toole's
more famous film work
involving Islam,
as well as
the following structure
discussed here on
the date of Persson's death:
"The Moslems thought of the
central 1 as being symbolic
of the unity of Allah."
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Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Wednesday August 18, 2004
Dyer, Part II:
From Here to Eternity
“Dying, at its best, might be something like this. Everything was a memory, and everything was still happening in some extended present, and everything was still to come.”
— Geoff Dyer, quoted (in part of an entry, Dyer, for yesterday– the day mathematician Shizuo Kakutani died) by Ruth Franklin in
A Koan for Kakutani–
on a random walk, a bird, death, time, and eternity–
In a comment on the previous entry, a Xangan asks,
“How many drunk men could migrate to Argentina without a map?”
My answer: At least one.
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Wednesday August 18, 2004
Drunk Bird
T. Charles Erickson
Shizuo Kakutani
in the 1980’s
“A drunk man will find his way home, but a drunk bird may get lost forever.”
— Shizuo Kakutani, quoted by J. Chang in Stochastic Processes (ps), p. 1-19. Chang says the quote is from an R. Durrett book on probability.
Meaning:
A random walk in d dimensions is recurrent if d = 1 or d = 2, but transient if d is greater than or equal to 3.
From a web page on Kylie Minogue:
Turns out she’s a party girl
who loves Tequila:
“Time disappears with Tequila.
It goes elastic, then vanishes.”
Kylie sings
“Locomotion”
From a web page on Malcolm Lowry’s classic novel Under the Volcano:
The day begins with Yvonne’s arrival at the Bella Vista bar in Quauhnahuac. From outside she hears Geoffrey’s familiar voice shouting a drunken lecture this time on the topic of the rule of the Mexican railway that requires that “A corpse will be transported by express!” (Lowry, Volcano, p. 43).
For further literary details in memory of Shizuo Kakutani, Yale mathematician and father of book reviewer Michiko Kakutani, see
Of course, Kakutani himself would probably prefer the anti-Santa, Michael Shermer. For a refutation of Santa by this high priest of Scientism, see
(Scientific American, July 26, 2004).