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30 aug 06 "What is the most simple, yet elegant mathematical expression; which is the fundational of the basis of the use of abstractions and logical reasoning, evolved from counting, calculation, measurement, and the study of the shapes and motions of physical objects?" fundational? "foundational" is a word, one of which "fundational" is a plausible typographical error, but it doesn't fit with the grammar. -ional words are always adjectives; i can't see anyone making a mistake like "this is the foundational of the principle". "foundation" fits the grammar, but its character structure is very different from "fundational" -- there's no way you'd accidentally leave out an "o" and then append "al". sorry, but you can't claim typo here -- this was either a bona fide brain-fart (which happens to me sometimes), or mild retardation. the first thing that comes to mind in terms of fundationality is e^(pi*i)+1=0, which a lot of non-math people know. it's supposed to be really neat because you have the five most "important" numbers there, all locked into a simple equation. but i think it's more "poetic" than it is "f(o)undational". back when i was over-excited about these things, i went so far as to make hats on cafepress with that equation on them. here they are. pretty embarrassing -- this was long ago. what's perhaps even more embarassing was my use of "www" on the teeheehee.net t-shirts. i believe my feeling at the time was that it was more symmetrical, but i realize now that the technical dumbness supercedes any design balance. "www" is a subdomain, one that's there to distinguish a web server from an irc server, an ftp server, an email server, etc. a "server" is a machine that feeds information, over the internet, upon requests from "clients". for example, you might tell your irc client to use irc.freenode.net, whereas you'd direct your web browser to www.freenode.net. what's more confusing is that irc.freenode.net can be accessed via web browser -- a web interface for the irc protocol, i believe. then, someone had the brillliant idea that if a server was being accessed via http, then it's probably on the web. duh. so, "www" (and other protocol-related subdomains) are most often redundant. there are a few websites that won't work unless "www" is there, and some that won't work if it's not there, but very few indeed. it annoys me a bit to hear, when someone is telling the address of a website, a carefully-enunciated "double-ya double-ya double-ya" preceding a domain name. on a t-shirt, perhaps the protocol subdomain is more useful, so you know i'm not advertising my irc server. however, there's some cultural common-law here -- if someone sees word.com, .org, or .net, then he knows it's a friggin website. if my site were http://teeheehee.cz (czech republic), then "teeheehee.cz" printed on the shirt might not be so obvious; perhaps in that case, a t-shirt would need the "www" to clarify that "teeheehee" is a web domain. but i wouldn't put it there anyway. of course, `http://` clearly identifies the web protocol, but this is sort of ugly and technical-looking, and doesn't make for good t-shirts. some countries are whoring their top level domains, like the island if niue (very nearly a bona-fide country, except that new zealand defends them with its mighty army, and it's not exactly resource-rich or economically independent) -- you can spot a few .nu websites out there; i think .nu was in-vogue for teen domains a few years ago. Visit Niue. Swim with whales and dolphins. Stroll on radiant beaches. Register domains. anyway, those hats represent dark days in the history of my affectedness. not in my defense, but rather as my plea of "guilty with an explanation", i made them when i suffered from a combination of vanity, over-excitabilty, and a sort of artistic space-cadet syndrome that caused me to generate cultural props around mathematics, which is pretty funny inasmuch as i only took two math classes. basically, a tragic lack of cynicism, knowledge, wisdom and practicality, combined with a need to feel smart (i admit it), which lead to goofy behavior. a lot of freshmen in college are unduly proud of taking calculus. "i'm taking calculus" manages to sneak its way into a lot of conversations where it probably doesn't belong. it seems this wistful longing to be competent in math and thereby demonstrate your smartness has been around for a while; i remember when i told my grandfather that i was taking it, he asked, eyebrows raised, "can you handle calculus?" it's got a socio-cultural location that dates at least back to...oh...1930. i've heard that math majors are more confident on the whole than any other subject majors. it makes sense -- everyone thinks you're smart if you're a math major. shit, i wanted to be a math major. a better candidate for "simple, elegant, and fundational" might be `x=x`, or something similarly axiomatic. imagine a universe where x!=x -- where a given thing was not equal to itself. all would be chaos and madness, and the domain of the Unlord. this is more or less how i feel navigating reality beyond my computer screen, like when i turn onto a road, and then two minutes later it becomes a different road, or when i put something down and it dissappears -- clearly, x!=x. |
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