Stephen Wolfram’s podcast features a 90-minute lecture that he delivered at the 2019 Wolfram Summer School (MP3), recapitulating the history of mathematics from prehistory to the present day.
This is a fascinating lecture, and it also epitomizes Wolfram in that it is a magnificent feat that would have benefited immensely from editorial reflection. Wolfram announces that’s he’s giving the lecture off the top of his head, and as far as that goes, it’s incredibly impressive. And yet…it makes you wonder, if he had actually prepared a detailed crib or even written the speech out, how much more fluid would it have been? Would the transitions be smoother? Would he spend less time fumbling for names or dates, or backtracking?
It’s basically a spoken-word illustration of the problems with his incredible (and incredibly difficult) book A New Kind of Science which was literally too large to read without a special stand, and which was both brilliant and rambling and unstructured, and would have benefited immensely from a hard edit.
(Thanks, Swede!)
Amsterdam’s Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (AKA “The Ritman Library) houses more ths 25,000 occult texts, covering “Hermetics, Rosicrucians, Theosophy, alchemy, mysticism, Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Anthroposophy, Catharism, Freemasonry, Manichaeism, Judaica, the Grail, Esotericism, and comparative religion.”
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The queue area at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland features a row of changing portraits wherein paintings everyday scenes are revealed as sinister and haunted (originally the effect was done with crossfading slide-projectors; now it’s done with an amazing, crisp electroluminiscent effect).
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This is my last day at my desk until Labor Day: tomorrow, we’re driving to Burning Man to get our annual dirtrave fix! If you’re heading to the playa, here’s three places and times you can find me:
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Your home is your castle, but that doesn’t mean it has to be cold and stony. The summer is almost over, and that means the Labor Day sales are nigh. Here are 10 essential home accessories you never knew you needed, and you can take 15% off the final price (including any stated discounts). Just […]
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Need to expand your IT know-how? It doesn’t happen overnight – but there are courses out there that can get you there quickly. Big businesses need the security, storage, and flexibility that cloud computing can provide, and they need competent IT professionals that know their way around those systems. Here are three online training packages […]
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PC gamers, choose your weapons. We’ve sniffed out summer discounts on a truckload of gear from Azio, a company that gets high marks from users for style as well as performance. Here are a few of our favorites from their diverse line of keyboards and mice. Azio Vision KB505U Backlight Keyboard When you’re on a […]