Let’s say you were part of the first manned mission to Mars. You eagerly land your spacecraft, step out and survey the rust-red landscape sprawled before you. After a few hours of hiking around you encounter a very peculiar sight: two rows of rocks, each a kilometer long, perfectly straight. However, it is not just [...]
Archive for April, 2009
12 Apr
Towards Hilbert’s 10th problem
I’m currently reading through Gregory Chaitin’s wonderful book Meta Math! The Quest for Omega (it totally sounds like a sci-fi novel). Perhaps I will post a review of it someday – but that requires finishing the book first, and I am barely through the second chapter.
The second chapter talks about the relation between Kurt Gödel’s [...]
6 Apr
Spring Time for Hit- I mean, Henry.
High: 81° F, slight breeze, nary a wisp in the sky; it was simply too nice to stay inside today. Totin’ me notebook and violin, I sought the beautiful serenity that spring in Southern California would bring me. It would be just me and my equations, Brazilian jazz too. It helps that it’s a Sunday, [...]
3 Apr
Metacognition
What determines one’s intellectual capability? The common perception seems to be that after a short while after one’s childhood, the fundamental capacity to learn, intuit, and create is fixed. This is reinforced by the numerous studies that claim that the intellect is largely a function of one’s genes. Consciously or not, people have resigned themselves to accepting their perceived limits of thought. “Oh, I could never do math. My brain doesn’t work that way,” you will hear. “Oh, I’m not the art type.”
Recent Comments