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Pi
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
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Epiphanies.
I've often puzzled over the irreducible nature of Pi.
Then I had that little flash, light-went-on in my head, Pi - by it's nature describing the relation of the circumference to the diameter, is an irrational number that somewhere within it contains all other numbers. All possibilities, all realities are compassed within Pi, hence it must be irreducible, it is infinite and unbounded.
And it's corollary, the symbol of infinity, an 8 on it's side - ∞ - is simply a circle warped into 3 dimensions. As writing must by it's nature reduce something to 2 dimensions we have the explanation.
The simple things. Math would have been a lot easier had we just gotten to the point.
Athanasius Kircher's map of the interior of the earth
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
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Not much help to the prospector, but an amazing work of art.
The Family Jamboree
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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10 years, give or take, since the last one.
Saskatchewan, 4 days driving, 2 day visit, no time to visit Moose Jaw.
Exploring Regina, the Palliser Limestone buildings, old buildings, character buildings, the downtown, spread out, perpetually under construction, the outskirts, train warehouses, the shortened prairie trees that offer no shade, the vast, sweeping, unending prairie, the shorebirds on alkali flats, had I more time ten thousand places I should return to and explore, photograph, but the days, they're spent with relatives, catching up, the Family dynamics.
I must return, to take pictures, explore further, while on the surface there's nothing there there are an abundance of old buildings, churches, short creeks and hollows, places to screen for arrowheads, artifacts, but this trip, not wasted, spent on people, but in the future I can see a summer spent just going town to town, covering every back road with a pan and screen, taking pictures. Something to work towards.
A big, big sky.
The Journals of Lewis & Clark
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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Reading the Lewis & Clark Journals - living vicariously the Spirit of Adventure, the Charge by Jefferson, instructions, furnishing them with all manners of assistance, letters of credit against the US Government, in every way preparing for the success of the expedition. The purpose, of course, to have them report upon the newly acquired territories of the United States, and introduce the natives to their new government.
I was disappointed they didn't bring along a prospector.
Anyways, random thoughts inspired by the first volume:
The territory was unknown to them, but visited by a great many others, including Native Americans & French Fur Traders.
The reporting from outposts ever further from 'civilization' as they gradually leave behind the familiar and enter into the unknown.
The abundance of natural fruit (plums, cherries, etc), game (wolves, ferocious grizzly bears, bison herds in the tens of thousands), descriptions of now extinct (Carolina) parakeets, other species.
The idea of "Frontiers" - always personal, somebody, somewhere, some intelligence has always been before. "New" is always "New to Us".
That they travel with a vaccine against Smallpox - a lesser version of the pox that will build their immunity. "Vaccines" have been around for 1000's of years, so take that Anti-Vaxxers!!!
Noting that in their medicine chest almost every cure involves lead or mercury, the greater toxicity of which would hopefully suspend the ailment before killing the patient.
The descriptions of fossils weathering out - a "petrified fish skeleton some 45 feet long", that they are perpetually finding themselves much annoyed by ticks, mosquitos, blowflies, gnats, midges, and the countless biting flies of the prairies, of buffalo jumps, of all the wonders they passed upon the way - and then - the descriptions of what is now Montana - recognizing the landscapes - now largely tamed - Milk River, Great Falls, etc, and marvel at how we've brought under the plow so much, yet it hasn't in the least added to it's fertility. Following along the journals - looking forward to descriptions of the Black Hills and Yellowstone (but they will, I imagine, be covered in Volume 2 - the return home), the descriptions of the tribes and people they meet (not always kind, or through the appropriate cultural lens), the descriptions of their dress, habit, customs (for example, how they marvelled at Captain Lewis's Black Slave York, and the natives would all offer him up their wives for a time, in hopes of a more permanent souvenir of his visit), the realization (again) that we are so little ourselves and so much the culture within we are raised, the nods to Levi-Bruhl's "Primitive Mentality" - the ceremony to make a shield, by which the shield acquires a magical ability to repel all bullets and arrows, the mourning ceremonies - cutting of the hair, the severing of digits from the hand - symbols of immense antiquity and long out of mind. The more "Lascivious" portions described in Latin, ...
I could go on. It's travel through time and place to a world physically adjacent and yet very different. I followed along the journals with a map giving the dates they arrived at each location: https://www.nps.gov/lecl/planyourvisit/maps.htm
And if you can't find a hardcopy you can read the original's here: https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/journals/contents
My version is somewhat edited for clarity (2 volumes, 1000 pages), the originals are somewhat longer. No great prose, merely the thrill of discovery.
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