Saturday, March 27, 2010

Scramble

Blog post 56:

I don't have much to post today. But I like these last two pictures I made (made yesterday and the day before). So, I definitely had to post something today to show you them.

Agnosystic


This Fraying Of Palindromes



-------------------------------

Let's go over the result of my 3 most recent polls (which are now closed).

For favorite fundamental force of nature, gravity wins in a landslide, winning all 4 votes the poll received.
(I am not surprised by this result.)

For favorite 2-D shape, hexagon received the most votes, with 2, while rhombus, parallelogram, and octagon each received one vote.
(I am surprised that no one picked circle.)

For favorite 1-digit number, 3 and 8 tied for 1st place, with 2 votes each. 7 received 1 vote.
(I would have voted for 0 or 1 if I had voted.)

Look for my next poll, whenever and whatever that will be!

-----------------------------

Update: Regarding my confession over the expired cottage cheese (See my last post).

I went back to the 7-11 two days later, and I did indeed then tell the clerk/manager about the expired cottage cheese.
In the meantime, however, someone had bought one of the expired tubs.

Hope they didn't get sick!

----------------------------

Finally, a puzzle:
(I haven't had one of those in a while.)

Here is an unoriginal puzzle (stealing mostly from Soduku).
The puzzle itself is easy to solve, but it was enjoyable for me to invent and to prove that there is only one solution.


The 10 variables (m(0),m(1),m(2),...,m(9)) when their values are written out form a permutation of the integers (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9).
Each individual 1-digit integer equals exactly one m-variable. But which one?

What is the permutation?

As I said, there is only one solution, unless I made an error.


Here are the conditions:

A) m(0) + m(1) + m(9) = a composite.

B) m(6) = a prime.

C) 1 = m(p), for p = some prime.

D) m(2) + m(3) = m(4), and m(2) > m(3).

E) m(m(1)) = 4.

F) m(4) = a square integer.

G) There are exactly two (no more, no fewer) integers n such that m(n) = n.

H) If you take the solution to this puzzle, the values of (m(0)m(1)m(2)...m(9)), and write the values out from left to right, concatenating the digits to form one huge number (all in base-10, of course), then m(8) = the second smallest prime that divides this large number.

For you at home who don't know what a composite or a prime are, all you have to know for this puzzle is that the sequence of primes begins: 2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,...
And the sequence of composites begins: 4,6,8,9,10,12,14,15,16,18,...

Answer later posted in the comments section of this particular blog-post.

Thanks,
Leroy Quet

Monday, March 22, 2010

Mish Mash Mosh

Blog post # 55:

The Dissidents Of Dissonance say....

Careless are those cusps!

Beware.

---------------------

The first picture I made two days ago, the latter I made today.

I Saw The Oculus


Extrema Of Intermediacy


--------------------------

I am ashamed of myself.

I must make a confession.
The other day I went to 7-11 to buy some food. One of the things I was to pick up was cottage cheese. Well, when I took the cottage cheese tub out of the cooler, I noticed that it had expired *9* DAYS BEFORE! (The cottage cheese at this 7-11 usually has another month or so before it expires, at the time I buy it.) Then I noticed that the other 2 tubs of cottage cheese in the cooler also expired on the same day. So, what did I do about this? Well, first I put the tubs back in the cooler. Well, I WAS going to tell the clerk, whom I suspect was the manager, that the cottage cheese was expired. But there were a couple people behind me, and I didn't want to embarrass the manager -- and more importantly, I didn't want to embarrass ME. So I kept silent. Someone could have bought that cheese, ate it, and DIED, perhaps! And it is all my fault. Oh, why was I afraid to rock the boat? Would I have been one of those people turning up the juice in the Milgram experiments? Would I have turned in my Jewish friends if I lived in Germany during the Holocaust? I like to think that I am not that way at all. But we all like to think we are not that way. And, the truth is, the vast majority of people ARE willing to shock someone to death or turn in their Jewish friends if the authorities simply say to do so. Studies have proved this.

Shame!!!!!!!

---------------------------

[Politics Alert! Politics Alert!]

I am SO upset at the Democrats (whom I like to call the "Demon Rats") over lots of issues, but generally because they, as the Republicans too, have moved FAR to the right compared to where they used to be politically.

And, as I have said before, I am voting 3rd party for president in 2012. I am doing this even if the Republican nominee is really really bad -- even if he (or she, winky winky) promises to throw all men named Leroy in Gitmo to be tortured.*
No matter what, I'm voting 3rd party, or not voting at all. It's done.

*[This is no dumber than the suggested treatment, proposed by some potential Republican candidates and Fox commentators, of men named Mohammed.]

Okay.

So, the US House has just passed health care legislation.

The good news and the bad news:

The good news: All of the Republicans strongly opposed this health care legislation. (So, it MUST be a good thing, right?)

The bad news: Almost every American strongly opposed this legislation too.

As many Americans, I have mixed feelings about the legislation, most of it negative.

A plus: Insurance companies won't be able to drop people because of pre-existing conditions. (I think this provision has 6 months until taking effect, though.)

A minus, a big minus: The working poor, even if they can't afford it, will now be required to buy PRIVATE health insurance. (NO PUBLIC-OPTION FOR YOU!) If you don't buy it, you will face large fines. If you can't pay the fines, you will go to jail.

Many have predicted that insurance prices will only SKYROCKET UPWARDS even more as a result of this legislation.

Another BIG minus: This is the literal end of the Democratic party. Now the Republicans will be the ONLY viable party. They will win EVERY election in 2010 and beyond, for virtually forever.

That is a pretty big minus. (Remember, they LITERALLY want to throw all American dissidents in Guantanamo to be tortured! -- see last post.)

I view the inevitable mass-election of far-right wacko Republicans as pay-back against America for this country's infinite sins throughout US history.

Yes. Burn, America, burn.


(Anyone for smoothies!?...)

---------------

Leroy

Friday, March 19, 2010

Bitter Future

Blog post # 54:

Let me get some things dealt with.

(Made two days ago)
Wisps Of Introspection Wrung


(Made today)
A Telling Adjective Mumbled


---------------------------------

I was just thinking... Two centuries ago, say, not as many people got Alzheimer's because people didn't live long enough to get it, most of the time. The rates of cancer were probably lower too for the same reason. So, here's a 'fun' exercise: Try to imagine some of the diseases human beings will get in the far future that we don't get now, at least not commonly. What kind of diseases will people get when the average life-expectancy is, say, 150 years? My best guess, for example, is that really older people will often be running out of space in their brains for all their memories -- if Alzheimer's isn't that condition already. Interaction with extraterrestrials will expose humanity to lots of diseases too, I bet (as depicted on some episodes of Star Trek). Thoughts?

----------------------------------

[Politics alert! Politics alert!]


Yeah, the US media is "liberal";....

"Liberal" like a Fox (News)!

----------------------------------

[More politics.]

Senators Lieberman and McCain (they're "centrists", you know) have introduced in the Senate bill S.3081, the so-called "Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010". It already has a hand-full of co-sponsors so far.

You think that they only lock away FOREIGNERS indefinitely without trial, incommunicado, and then torture them, all on the president's say-so alone?

S.3081 would allow the president to lock up, without trial or charge, even NON-VIOLENT AMERICANS -- such as anti-war protesters on the left, or, on the right, Tea Party activists-- based solely on the president's whim.

You may like Obama (I don't. He's almost as bad as -- if not just as bad as, if not worse than -- Bush), but in the (near?) future, I predict someone even worse than Dick Cheney will be our president! Do you want this person to have this kind of power!?

The word "fascist" is over-used. But this is LITERALLY fascist. How is it not? This is authoritarianism run-amok. This is literally evil. This bill has been called the ABSOLUTE WORST threat to American democracy *EVER* so far!!! (And that is saying a lot, given the last decade in America.)

Yes, the government already has done this, lock up Americans without charge or trial then torture them. (Jose Padilla) But this bill would make it all okay in the legal sense, and would mean that even non-violent "unAmerican" American citizens could be locked up and treated like those in Gitmo have been.
This would institutionalize and fast-track the unconstitutional mass-imprisonment and mistreatment of Americans whose only crime is disagreeing with the government!

This bill is getting very little press, even in the liberal media, let alone in the mainstream media.

America is NOT free!!!!!

Spread the word!

-------------------------------

Leroy

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

So Confused

Blog post # 53:

One picture, made today:

Selfishness' Juxtaposition


I WAS going to post a poem I wrote today that complements this picture, but I remembered how I promised to post less poetry. So there!

--------------------------------

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock,
tick-tocked off!

This is the first post I have made since Daylight-Savings Time began, I think.

-
If it is later than it really is,
isn't it also earlier than it really is???...
-

So, I have decided to try to keep living by Standard Time, at least for a week, maybe longer. Why? Because, first, "stress is bad for you", as they always say. Second, and more importantly, Daylight Savings is an arbitrary and artificial construct -- an artifice -- a construct just a couple of years ago lengthened (starting earlier, ending later) by a REPUBLICAN-LED CONGRESS.

I'll be damned before I let a Republican-led Congress dictate major aspects of MY life!...

So, I do what we should all have done instead of setting our clocks ahead.
I keep my clock at the same time, and go to all my meetings an hour earlier.
Therefore, if something really doesn't depend on when I am there, I get there at the same time according to the rotation of the Earth. Only my time-dependent meetings are an hour earlier.

I'm a morning person, anyway. And before Daylight Savings (which, by the way, does NOT save any daylight, since we get an hour less in the morning), I was getting up too early and going to bed too early. No more.

And, by the way, what is this crap with starting Daylight Savings in the Winter? We have to now say "WINTER forward", instead of "Spring forward". And "Winter forward" makes no sense....

... Makes no sense, like Daylight Savings Time!

----------------------

Okay, so taxis have little to do with taxes. And taxidermy has little to do with taxis.

I'm SO confused!....

----------------------

Here is an odd not-as-funny-as-I-thought-it-was-originally scene for a movie that I thought about last night in a dream:

A father and daughter in a room -- both people alternative-style, the father once a punk-rocker, the daughter now punk or goth.

The daughter has intentionally torn up one of the father's paintings.
Father: "How dare you! Would you have done this to one of Picasso's paintings?"
Daughter, meekly, "no..."
Father: "Why not? I would've."

-----------------------

Leroy

Friday, March 12, 2010

It Is Because It Is, Because It Is, Because...

Blog post # 52.

Here are the pictures:
(Made yesterday and today.)

Then In Entropic Metaphors


Porous Longitudes


----------------------------

Since the poem I wrote today is somewhat related to the picture I made today (the latter above), then I will post the poem. (Sorry everybody. Shyster, I am posting a lot of poems lately. I'll try to cut down on that... after today.)


A Lateral Bead, A Fictitious Wire
----------------------------------

A lateral bead, it is propped against its
Longitudinal transcendences. And in its tapered hole,
A fictitious wire passes thoroughly; this line too
Becomes a loop, becomes a metaphorical gap
Through which the bead's one horn itself
Traverses. Yes, the wire also pinches into a
Thorn's spike, into a jut upon one very corner
Of reality. Again, however, in that bead, there is
A cutting hole; for, this hole eclipses the
Metallic cord that violates it. Yet, in
Such weird truthfulness (weaved as wire via
A bead, via a corner, via its own loop transited),
The wire is complicated and artificial. It is
Contiguous amongst its intentions. But the bead
Instead is quite obvious, is quite porous, if
Only once. The lateral bead is surely existential.
And it does not ache in its piercing. Although
It does indeed mourn for its abruptness,
For its coincidental thread apparently ceasing then
Rectifying such sentiments of quasi-synonymousness.

---------------------

Reminder: Be sure to vote in my polls, if you haven't already! Hardly anyone has voted so far!

---------------------

[Politics alert! Politics Alert!]

Did you all hear about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (I think, I am unsure on what # the appeals court was) voting to leave "One nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God we trust" on our money? What gets me is that the Court actually said that these phrases were NOT religious.
What!?

I would say that IF God exists, then God probably thinks that the Pledge and the money motto are indeed violations of Church and State separation, which is obvious to me at least, if not to the brain-dead appeals court.

Didn't God create -- again, if God exists mostly as He/She/It is often imagined -- the rule of logic that states that, if something completely and totally has property x, then that something has property x?
After all, the money motto ("In GOD We Trust") and the line from the Pledge ("One nation under GOD") are indeed promotions of religion. Why? Because they are promotions of religion. QED.

I have put together a partial list of things that America REALLY trusts in. Maybe we can change the money motto to "In ____ we trust." For instance: War, Money, Sex, Corporations, Idiocy, Reality TV. I bet you people can come up with other replacements for the word "God".

----------------------

God: The FICTION that causes FRICTION.

(Oh, yeah, I believe in the separation of Church and State, the separation of Church and State FROM ME!...)

----------------

Leroy

Monday, March 8, 2010

Antsy For Answers

Blog post # 51:

Let's cleanse our palate, shall we, of that last picture I posted to this blog.

Here are today's pictures. I made them yesterday and today.

Divergence Juxtaposed


Virtue Forgiven


-------------------------

Youz knows whats 'merica has!?

Free-dumb!

Yes, dumb is so cheap in 'merica, it is almost completely free.
And so, almost everyone here has it!

Spread the dumb around, peoples.
You asked for it!

--------------------------

And now a new segment:
Get To Know Your Blogger.

Well, peoples. (Still talking like that from the last segment.)
Let's interview Leroy himself.

Leroy, if you were one of the Spice Girls, which Spice Girl would you be?

Answer: Outer Spice, of course!

----------------------------

Today I am starting another segment too.

Email me or post a comment here with any math or science question you have, and I will try to answer it correctly here in the pages of this blog.

If you email me, my email address is:

q1qq2qqq3qqqq
(At)
yahoo
(Dot)
com


Take that, Marilyn Savant!

-----------------------------

Finally a poem. (Oh no!!)
I said to myself that as soon as I write a poem that is at all different from what I usually write, I will post it here.
(But you just posted a poem, Leroy! How dare you post another so soon!)

Notice how every other line is parenthetical.
(The parenthetical phrases as suppose to be at the end of each line. But since the margins in Blogger are so narrow, I have put some carriage-returns in, and made those phrases the even-numbered lines.)

Resolution
------------

Resolved underneath the bead,
(a droplet's scream)
There I was angry at my voice;
(an innocent knife)
There I scrawled such forgiveness
(calligraphy quieted)
For my own violent guilt.
(overcoming my triumph)
Then I sipped this depiction
(polygonal but geometric)
Of my wondrous humanness.
(conceit is artificial)
And I resolve now to transcend
(thus, I sleep)
These prayers of atrophy.
(never do we fade)
Yes, I resolve to revolve
(rotation is perfection)
Within the sad ellipsoid,
(it shames me)
Within these fears of impurity.
(imperfect is the night)
And we each succumb again
(to light's conformity)
To our waking meanderings.
(ever circumscribed)
Yes, we each impart upon ourselves
(and so, we thirst)
That asymmetric conjecture, yet.
(are we demanding?)
Are we asleep among our vindictiveness?
(yes)
Are we thus vindicated by our intuition?
(resolved)

-------------------------

Leroy

Saturday, March 6, 2010

So Sorry

Blog post # 50:

Well, lookie here. I just posted something to this blog only yesterday. Now again I post, twice in two days. Yaowzza.

---

Only one picture today. I just made this picture within the last hour.

Hideous Tangents


As soon as I uploaded it -- the very same second I did --, I realized where I stole the idea for this picture from.
And in addition to stealing from someone else's intellectual property, the picture (at least the yellow part) sort of unintentionally came out looking like the tubing in some kind of brass instrument. Sorry about that.

--------------------------

Okay, here is a shitty poem I wrote today. (I know it is shitty, even though I don't remember how it goes. ALL my poetry is shitty.) It kind of goes with today's picture.

Interlaced
------------

Interlaced between their braiding, these tangled tangents
Are but transcendental loops, somehow. They are but equal
To the emptiness that ceases within them. And they each
Encircle their knotted hideousness. They each enclose
Their folded fraying upon a weird arc thus punctured
By its selfishness. These molecules outstretched and
Careless, they are those curves made from twine.
They are as thread made from rope, are as wire made
From adverbs, are as idiocy made from my contemplation.
Yet this parable is inscribed with such artificiality,
With such contradiction edgewise and spurious.

I juxtapose those tangled tangents. Are they derived
From their haphazardness? Yes, the stringy
Strands sprout and then inflect, and then they
Abruptly curse their direction. And then they
Interlace with their coincidences, with all of
Their linear concentricities I have presupposed.

----------------------------


Yes, I guess that *I*, like Dick Cheney, am a sadist. Why would I say such a horrible thing about myself? Because I dared to expose you all to my crappy poem and crappy picture I made today. Shame on me. May I burn in Hell.

I just felt like I had to post something, anything. Sorry.

Leroy

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Sing It, Now

Blog post # 49:

Okay, people. Since I didn't post any pictures in my last blog-post, I will give you these two inadequate pictures I did yesterday and today.

My Sanity Confounding Me


Paradigm Of Rhombi


---

And since I haven't posted a poem (a word poem, anyway) in quite a while, here is an inadequate poem I wrote today. (It goes somewhat with the picture "Paradigm Of Rhombi".)

-

My Agnostic Dreams
-------------------

Aglow, the loops of this asymmetric lemniscates
Invoke all aesthetic atheism before me.

Afloat, the strands of that conjectured shape,
They remain slightly above a sphere unwinding.

And in the egg wrapped by its vagueness, the
Papered cloth protrudes and encloses both
Ambivalence and certainty. But I am resigned
To my agnostic dreams. Yes, I am reawaken
Within such rhombi, within my strange immortality.

Aglow, each zigzag of our topology
Is expressed as assumptions extrapolated
From our conforming interpolation. Yet we
Rewrite those visions and recite those
Grotesque paragraphs of this contemplation.
And we deny the impressions of skeptics; we
Deny the loops that are our solitude, that are
Our counterintuitively mental and sour stigmata.

------------------

And now, another number poem ! :...


0+1+0+1+0+2+1+3
3+4+1+0+3+4+2+4
6+8+7+6+8+7+8+6
9+11+10+12+12+9+6+3
+0

I usually don't put plusses between the numbers in my number poems, but I felt like doing so in this poem and in the number poem in my last blog post. The numbers don't follow any mathematical formula that I am aware of (but they DO follow some formula that I am unaware of, since all number sequences do).
These poems aren't about math, however, at least not in the strictest sense.
They are instead like the musical notes in a song or in a riff.
There are patterns, but they are more emotional than intellectual, although that can be said about a lot of mathematics too.

This short palindrome is apt here:

Music I sum.

--------------------------

I don't feel like writing anymore today, except, hey, read my old posts you may have missed, don't forget! And also don't forget that I have 3 new polls up!

Leroy

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Abrupt Inertia

Blog post # 48:

No pictures today. So very sorry.

I will appease you all, though, with this number poem:

1+2+1+2+3+1+2+2+1+1+2+3+4

Don't ask me what it equals. I only make the questions, man, not the answers.

--------------------------

I hear them listening....


I hear YOU listening.

The results of the latest poll are in.

Only 3 votes. (So very sad. Democracy is DOOMED, DOOMED, I say!)

Question: What should be the topic of my next poll?

One vote was for favorite 1-digit number.
One vote was for favorite 2-D shape.
And one vote was for favorite force of nature.

After I post this blog-post, I will delete the latest poll and then put up ALL three questions voted for.
I think I will give three weeks until those polls close, one week longer than usual, since there are 3 times as many polls, you know!

Let's review the new polls.

Poll # 1: What is your favorite 1-digit number?
(Obviously I couldn't have asked for you favorite number, period, because then there would have been an infinite number of buttons to choose from.)
The choices here are self-explanatory and obvious.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Poll # 2: What is your favorite 2-D shape?
I apologize if your favorite shape is not mentioned. (There are too many to mention.)
Circle
Ellipse
Triangle
Square
Rectangle
Rhombus
Parallelogram
... (By the way, is a Parallelogram where TWO people give a simultaneous singing telegram?)
Trapezoid
Pentagon
Hexagon
Heptagon
Octagon
Lemniscates
Cardioid


Poll # 3: What is your favorite force of nature?
I apologize, but I am going to limit this to the 4 known FUNDAMENTAL forces of nature. (And I don't mean Pat Robertson!)
I hope this is okay with the person who voted for this poll topic.

When I wrote this as a possible topic, I was thinking that Dark Energy (not to be confused with Black Power) was a force. But it is not. It is an energy. Silly me and my ignorance of physics.

So, here we go, the forces:
Gravity
Weak Nuclear Force
Strong Nuclear Force
Electromagnetism

Thanks for playing.

---------------------------

Cumin smells like human.

---------------------------

Given the shitty economy, many people are staying near home instead of traveling far away, taking so-called "stay-cations", as you may have heard.

Well, maybe this idea should be expanded to animated movie-making too, so as to save money.

Maybe there should be a clay-mation movie with one still shot, and that is all.

STAY-MATION!...

The clay characters would be seen just sitting around, nothing happening. Then, in the final second of the short movie, one of the character's arms falls off, as if by accident.

(I know I have seen this somewhere before.)

----------------------------

You all know by now that I am happily un-loved an un-loving.

As a matter of fact, if I ever end up marrying someone...
it will only be because I became a priest..

True.

I was thinking today that what I have, instead of a love-life,
is a HATE-life!

I hate so many things, it seems (things I have decided are literally evil). I guess I just have to relax and be at peace, man.
Peace, peace, peeeeeeeeacccce......

Ah, yes, where was I?

Yes, subject to inertia.

Thanks,
Leroy