“Brion knew it wasn’t William’s fault. But in terms of the general popular culture not recognizing the importance of his contribution, there was a little bitterness.” — phantasmagoric freethinker Genesis P-Orridge interrogates issues around Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.
Elsewhere other-posted:
1/29[b=2] = 0·0000100011010011110111001011… (l=28)
1/29[b=3] = 0·0002210102011122200121202111… (l=28)
1/29[b=5] = 0·00412334403211… (l=14)
1/29[b=7] = 0·0145536… (l=7)
1/29[b=11] = 0·04199534608387[10]69115764[10]2723… (l=28)
1/29[b=13] = 0·05[10]9[11]28[12]7231[10]4… (l=14)
1/29[b=17] = 0·09[16]7… (l=4)
1/29[b=19] = 0·0[12]89[15][13][14]7[16]73[17][13]1[18]6[10]9354[11]2[11][15]15[17]… (l=28)
1/29[b=23] = 0·0[18]5[12][15][19][19]… (l=7)
1/29[b=29] = 0·1 (l=1)
1/29[b=31] = 0·1248[17]36[12][25][20]9[19]7[14][29][28][26][22][13][27][24][18]5[10][21][11][23][16]… (l=28)
1/29[b=37] = 0·1[10]7[24]8[34][16][21][25][19]53[30][22][35][26][29][12][28]2[20][15][11][17][31][33]6[14]… (l=28)
1/29[b=41] = 0·1[16][39][24]… (l=4)
1/29[b=43] = 0·1[20][32][26][29][28]7[17][34]4[19][11][37]2[41][22][10][16][13][14][35][25]8[38][23][31]5[40]… (l=28)
1/29[b=47] = 0·1[29]84[40][24][14][27][25][43][35][30][37][12][45][17][38][42]6[22][32][19][21]3[11][16]9[34]… (l=28)
1/29[b=53] = 0·1[43][45][36][29][12][42]… (l=7)
1/29[b=59] = 0·2… (l=1)
1/29[b=61] = 0·26[18][56][48][23]8[25][14][44][10][31][33][39][58][54][42]4[12][37][52][35][46][16][50][29][27][21]… (l=28)
1/29[b=67] = 0·2[20][53]9[16][11][36][64][46][13][57][50][55][30]… (l=14)
1/29[b=71] = 0·2[31][58][53][61][14][48][68][39][12][17]9[56][22]… (l=14)
1/29[b=73] = 0·2[37][55][27][50][25][12][42][57][65][32][52][62][67][70][35][17][45][22][47][60][30][15]7[40][20][10]5… (l=28)
1/29[b=79] = 0·2[57][16][27][19]5[35][32][54][38][10][70][65][29][76][21][62][51][59][73][43][46][24][40][68]8[13][49]… (l=28)
1/29[b=83] = 0·2[71][45][65][68][57][20]… (l=7)
1/29[b=89] = 0·36[12][24][49]9[18][36][73][58][27][55][21][42][85][82][76][64][39][79][70][52][15][30][61][33][67][46]… (l=28)
1/29[b=97] = 0·3[33][43][46][80][26][73][56][83][60][20]6[66][86][93][63][53][50][16][70][23][40][13][36][76][90][30][10]… (l=28)
Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:
• Brit Grit – Granite and Grit: A Walker’s Guide to the Geology of British Mountains, Ronald Turnbull (Francis Lincoln 2011)
• Singh Summing Simpsons – The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, Simon Singh (Bloomsbury 2013)
• Go with the Quo – Status Quo: Still Doin’ It – The Official Updated Edition, compiled by Bob Young, edited by Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt (Omnibus Press 2013)
• Breeding Bunnies – The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the Extraordinary Number of Nature, Art and Beauty, Mario Livio (Headline Review 2003) (posted @ Overlord of the Über-Feral)
• Brit Bot Book – Reader’s Digest Field Guide to the Wild Flowers of Britain, J.R. Press et al, illustrated Leonora Box et al (1981) (@ O.o.t.Ü.-F.)
Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR
I feel odd when I consider this possibility: that all my thoughts are strictly determined, no more under my control than a straw in a gale or a stone in an avalanche. It seems paradoxical to have strictly determined thoughts about strictly determined thoughts. But is it? And is strict determinism fatal for finding the truth? I don’t think so. In fact, I think that strict determinism is essential for truth. But irrelevant associations get in the way of our understanding this. If our thoughts are determined, they seem like automatic trains running on rigid tracks. We might want to go to the station marked “Truth”, but if the switches are set wrong, the train will never get there. Or it will thunder through and never stop.
Continue reading The Brain in Train…
A square can be divided into four right triangles. A right triangle can be divided into a square and two more right triangles. These simple rules, applied again and again, can be used to create fractals, or shapes that echo themselves on smaller and smaller scales.
Stand and see, some sun o’clock,
Wet flame devour the headland rock.
The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the Extraordinary Number of Nature, Art and Beauty, Mario Livio (Headline Review 2003)
A good short popular guide to perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most irrational, of all numbers: the golden ratio or phi (φ), which is approximately equal to 1·6180339887498948482… Prominent in mathematics since at least the ancient Greeks and Euclid, phi is found in many places in nature too, from pineapples and sunflowers to the flight of hawks. Livio catalogues its appearances in both maths and nature, looking closely at the Fibonacci sequence and rabbit-breeding, before going on to debunk mistaken claims that phi also appears a lot in art, music and poetry. Dalí certainly used it, but da Vinci, Debussy and Virgil almost certainly didn’t. Nor, almost certainly, did the builders of the Parthenon and pyramids. Finally, he examines what has famously been called (by the physicist Eugene Wiegner) the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics: why is this human invention so good at describing the behaviour of the Universe? Livio quotes one of the best short answers I’ve seen:
Human logic was forced on us by the physical world and is therefore consistent with it. Mathematics derives from logic. That is why mathematics is consistent with the physical world. (ch. 9, “Is God a mathematician?”, pg. 252)
It’s not hard to recommend a book that quotes everyone from Johannes Kepler and William Blake to Lewis Carroll, Christopher Marlowe and Jef Raskin, “the creator of the Macintosh computer”, whose answer is given above. Recreational mathematicians should also find lots of ideas for further investigation, from fractal strings to the fascinating number patterns governed by Benford’s law. It isn’t just human beings who look after number one: as a leading figure, 1 turns up much more often in data from the real world, and in mathematical constructs like the Fibonacci sequence, than intuition would lead you to expect. If you’d like to learn more about that and about many other aspects of mathematics, hunt down a copy of this book.
Elsewhere other-posted:
• Roses Are Golden – φ and floral homicide
666 is the Number of the Beast described in the Book of Revelation:
13:18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
But 666 is not just diabolic: it’s narcissistic too. That is, it mirrors itself using arithmetic, like this:
666^47 =
5,049,969,684,420,796,753,173,148,798,405,
564,772,941,516,295,265,408,188,117,632,
668,936,540,446,616,033,068,653,028,889,
892,718,859,670,297,563,286,219,594,665,
904,733,945,856 → 5 + 0 + 4 + 9 + 9 + 6 + 9 + 6 + 8 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 0 + 7 + 9 + 6 + 7 + 5 + 3 + 1 + 7 + 3 + 1 + 4 + 8 + 7 + 9 + 8 + 4 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 6 + 4 + 7 + 7 + 2 + 9 + 4 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 6 + 2 + 9 + 5 + 2 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 0 + 8 + 1 + 8 + 8 + 1 + 1 + 7 + 6 + 3 + 2 + 6 + 6 + 8 + 9 + 3 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 0 + 4 + 4 + 6 + 6 + 1 + 6 + 0 + 3 + 3 + 0 + 6 + 8 + 6 + 5 + 3 + 0 + 2 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 9 + 8 + 9 + 2 + 7 + 1 + 8 + 8 + 5 + 9 + 6 + 7 + 0 + 2 + 9 + 7 + 5 + 6 + 3 + 2 + 8 + 6 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 5 + 9 + 4 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 9 + 0 + 4 + 7 + 3 + 3 + 9 + 4 + 5 + 8 + 5 + 6 = 666
666^51 =
993,540,757,591,385,940,334,263,511,341,
295,980,723,858,637,469,431,008,997,120,
691,313,460,713,282,967,582,530,234,558,
214,918,480,960,748,972,838,900,637,634,
215,694,097,683,599,029,436,416 → 9 + 9 + 3 + 5 + 4 + 0 + 7 + 5 + 7 + 5 + 9 + 1 + 3 + 8 + 5 + 9 + 4 + 0 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 2 + 6 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 9 + 5 + 9 + 8 + 0 + 7 + 2 + 3 + 8 + 5 + 8 + 6 + 3 + 7 + 4 + 6 + 9 + 4 + 3 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 8 + 9 + 9 + 7 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 6 + 9 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 0 + 7 + 1 + 3 + 2 + 8 + 2 + 9 + 6 + 7 + 5 + 8 + 2 + 5 + 3 + 0 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 8 + 2 + 1 + 4 + 9 + 1 + 8 + 4 + 8 + 0 + 9 + 6 + 0 + 7 + 4 + 8 + 9 + 7 + 2 + 8 + 3 + 8 + 9 + 0 + 0 + 6 + 3 + 7 + 6 + 3 + 4 + 2 + 1 + 5 + 6 + 9 + 4 + 0 + 9 + 7 + 6 + 8 + 3 + 5 + 9 + 9 + 0 + 2 + 9 + 4 + 3 + 6 + 4 + 1 + 6 = 666
But those are tiny numbers compared to 6^(6^6). That means 6^46,656 and equals roughly 2·6591… x 10^36,305. It’s 36,306 digits long and its full digit-sum is 162,828. However, 666 lies concealed in those digits too. To see how, consider the function Σ(x1,xn), which returns the sum of digits 1 to n of x. For example, π = 3·14159265…, so Σ(π1,π4) = 3 + 1 + 4 + 1 = 9. The first 150 digits of 6^(6^6) are these:
26591197721532267796824894043879185949053422002699
24300660432789497073559873882909121342292906175583
03244068282650672342560163577559027938964261261109
… (150 digits)
If x = 6^(6^6), then Σ(x1,x146) = 666, Σ(x2,x148) = 666, and Σ(x2,x149) = 666.
There’s nothing special about these patterns: infinitely many numbers are narcissistic in similar ways. However, 666 has a special cultural significance, so people pay it more attention and look for patterns related to it more carefully. Who cares, for example, that 667 = digit-sum(667^48) = digit-sum(667^54) = digit-sum(667^58)? Fans of recreational maths will, but not very much. The Number of the Beast is much more fun, narcissistically and otherwise:
666 = digit-sum(6^194)
666 = digit-sum(6^197)
666 = digit-sum(111^73)
666 = digit-sum(111^80)
666 = digit-sum(222^63)
666 = digit-sum(222^66)
666 = digit-sum(333^58)
666 = digit-sum(444^53)
666 = digit-sum(777^49)
666 = digit-sum(999^49)
Previously pre-posted (please peruse):
• More Narcissisum
• Digital Disfunction
• The Hill to Power
• Narcissarithmetic #1
• Narcissarithmetic #2
• Black Mother Nirvana — from the potency of Purushmedh to the blast-beat barrage of Bodhisattva
• Groaning and Grieving — the ashen passion of Slough of Despond
• Pummelling Putridity — probing the purulence and putrefaction of Paraphistomiasis
Elsewhere other-posted:
• More Musings on Music
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 