Bridges 2016 midterm report

OK, so I made it to Jyväskylä. I’ve met here some really interesting people, artists, mathematicians of all sorts, teachers, philosophers… Not all of them think about themselves in these terms, but I’ll do my own evaluations. Getting the Phoenix here ahead of me was a bit tricky. Unfortunately it had been set up on Monday evening, in… Continue reading Bridges 2016 midterm report

New version of an old joke

Statistician S, engineer E and mathematician M were going to bet in a horce race, each of them in a jolly good mood. S: I’ve figured it out. Usually the odds reflect the probability of winning fairly well, but my analysis shows that this time there’s a slight disparity. My scheme has a 95 % probablity to bring me… Continue reading New version of an old joke

Phoenix

  Mosaic on plywood, 50 cm x 80 cm (20” x 32”), portrait. Introduction Essentially, this piece of art has the humble goal of to capturing the mystery of mathematics itself. In that respect it may need some explanation. I find the phoenix itself to be a powerful symbol of mathematics. The mythical firebird periodically sets… Continue reading Phoenix

Swapping a software RAID1 disk on Desktop Linux

A brief history of mine: System OpenSuSe 13.2 with KDE (not that it matters) Operating system & boot partition on /dev/sdc 2 TB disks /dev/sda and /dev/sdb in Software RAID1 (mirrored, not striped) configuration. Two partitions on the RAID disks, one being /home the other unmounted Symptoms All desktop programs became frequently unresponsive (lagged) for… Continue reading Swapping a software RAID1 disk on Desktop Linux

Society, moral and law

In laws lawmakers tell what they think is right and wrong. Laws don’t tell that to the legislators. They shouldn’t tell that to us either – we should have integrity of our own. The trouble with drawing equal marks between law and moral is that laws are written to reflect the moral of the legislators.… Continue reading Society, moral and law