From wikipedia: 40 (forty) is the natural number following 39 and preceding 41. In English, forty is the only number whose constituent letters appear in alphabetical order.
Forty is an octagonal number, and as the sum of the first four pentagonal numbers, it is a pentagonal pyramidal number. Adding up some subsets of its divisors (e.g., 1, 4, 5, 10 and 20) gives 40, hence 40 is a semiperfect number.
Today also happens to be my fortieth birthday…
Historian Barbara Tuchman has written several fascinating books (many of which have been top sellers). One of her most interesting books is March of Folly (1984). In which she studies human stupidity in history.
Tuchman sets specific standards to what is to be defined as stupidity (or folly as she prefers to call it). To be understood as folly, acts have to be clearly contrary to the self-interest of the organization or group pursuing them; conducted over a period of time, not just in a single burst of irrational behavior; conducted by a number of individuals, not just one deranged maniac; and, importantly, there have to be people alive at the time who pointed out correctly why the act in question was folly (no 20/20 hindsight allowed).
Itâ??s easy to understand why this book is fascinating. We are often fed with success stories but I believe that we have more to learn from failures. Success can always be attributed to a number of vague and contradictory reasons but never really pinned down â?? success can be a result of dumb luck. Failure on the other hand can be studied.
But Tuchman has a specific type of folly in mind. My thought for today is more concerned with the stupid move the idiot idea. Not quite a total nutcase but more the act of sheer dumbness that is done unintentionally. OK so we have the Darwin Awards for those who manage to remove themselves from the gene pool and phenomenon like Jackass for pubescent humor â?? but who studies the fuck up?
What I am thinking about is the social Darwin awards. People who manage to remove themselves from a social group (friends, job, hobby) through an act of sheer dumbness.
If man is a social animal then how is it that we can be socially so inept? Sorry about this strange rant. If you are still reading this you must be wondering about my weekendâ?¦ It was very nice thanks!
One of the best things about taking the early morning train to Stockholm is seeing the sun slowly rise in nature. Even through the train window the experience of seeing the reddish light spread across the foggy fields is beautiful experience. The remainder of fog on the lakes and the lack of ice on the grass also promises that summer will soon be here. And right now I need the idea of summer.
This year, so far, has been a nightmare of teaching and personal upheaval. The teaching has remained a constant but now, at least, I have organised an apartment after a few months in the parental spare room. In addition to the teaching and moving there is the struggle to find, fund, organise and commence a post-doc research agenda for myself. This has gone well in the finding but less well in the organising, funding and commencing part. So I feel a tad worn out in this area.
But don’t get me wrong there is a lot of good stuff in my life to make it happy. It’s just that now in the early spring the concept, idea, myth of summer has reared its head and I picture myself relaxing in the warmth in some exotic location.
It is the same every early spring. The idea of summer comes as a powerful desire. It takes many forms but mainly it consists of variations on a theme. The main idea is that this summer will be spent relaxing in the sun, on a beach somewhere. Even though I know that every year I tend to need the summer to catch up on my work the idea of the relaxing summer is probably one of the most powerful myths in my life.
Don’t get me wrong summer is relaxing but it is never as carefree as in the myth of summertime.
In a mail from the careers office at my university they managed both to inform that S�PO (The security police official English name: The Swedish Security Service) were looking for trainees and that Amnesty International in Göteborg was looking for volunteers. Is is only me or is this a strange mix to have in one email? Maybe its just me.
This is the second full day at the meeting and it is actually hard to stay sharp during the meeting. It is soon six pm and my brain is grinding to a halt. My theory is that my body is suffering from a cheese sandwich deficiency. Since arriving the food has been exciting, exotic Indian food. But the problem with artificial stimulants such as these is that they do not provide a stable base for harsh academic work. Oh, the all day meeting is among the harshest of academic work. It vaguely resembles Vogon poetry*.
So I think this trip really proves the thesis that academic work requires cheese sandwiches.
This may be a controversial statement and some radical academics may claim that the results have been effected by the new experience of Mumbai, 30C heat, lack of sleep and residual jetlag, or the fact that my rss reader does not work here (proxy problems) so I have not read blogs for a week.
The fools! What do they know?
—
*If you donâ??t understand the reference try this
The idea of the center is a powerful one. It somehow denotes the middle, equilibrium, balance and this spills over into an idea of well-being. The classic search for centers is Jules Verne â??Journey to the Center of the Earthâ?? which somehow never really makes it into a good metaphor for soul-searching introspection.
In our local lives we have a middle-point. Actually we have several. We have a geographical center that somehow denotes the middle point of our everyday travels. Most of us would like such a point to be the place of our homes but the reality of real estate prices probably puts this point somewhere we may never have been â?? the tube or bus station in between home and work.
But there is rarely one center. We have shopping centers (sorry about the pun), entertainment centers, and centers related to many other activities (e.g. food). The mental images of our travels to and from our centers overlap the physical city. Centers are also important outside the personal context. Centers of culture, economics, shipping, religion and industry abound. But these are centers of the imaginary kind.
Geographic centers are common. One such center, which has been notoriously hard to pin down, is the center of Europe. First we have to start by attempting to define what Europe is. This is a historic, geographic, political and nationalistic quagmire (oh no, donâ??t go there). So we simplify, the center of the European Union (an entity which is not Europe).
On the 1 January 2007 the EU center shifted. This is because both Bulgaria and Rumania joined. More territory joins therefore the center shifts (about 200 kilometers east). According to the IGN he new center of the EU is the German town of Gelnhausen.
But the title is contested since there are plenty of places which seem to want the title. Here are a few: Bernotai, or PurnuÅ¡kÄ?s near Vilnius in Lithuania; a point on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia; the village of Krahule in central Slovakia; the town of Rakhiv, or the village of Dilove, in western Ukraine; Suchowola in north-eastern Poland; and ToruÅ? in the northern part of central Poland; Babruysk or Vitebsk in Belarus (Wikipedia).
Several of these sites have nice markers to celebrate the â??factâ?? and to point out the reason for the significance of the insignificant site.
To be able to arrive at the geographical center of Europe the IGN have taken into consideration the English and French colonies far, far away â?? proving once again that the center is equally a state of mind as a geographic fact.
Despite the fact that the center is an illusion we still tend to seek it out. The newly declared Gelnhausen center is in the middle of an empty field (Google Satelite image of 50°10�21�N, 9°9�0�E), identical to all the other fields around it.
Thatâ??s it isnâ??t it? We strive to find the center only to discover that it is no different from the periphery and yet we still value the center even when it is devoid of distinguishing characteristicsâ?¦
Small unimportant acts can have major effects. We may not see them when they small actions happen but then the results can explode in the future. Whether you choose to call it syncronicity or chaos theory it is mind-boggling when you think about it.
Or what about Theresa LePore? Remember her? She redesigned the Florida Ballot slips. These managed to confuse enough voters so that Bush won the election. Now after enough chaos in the Middle East to confuse anyone (and to cause no end of intended and unintended effects) they are about to hang Saddam.
Here is a great short movie called Spin (its on YouTube). I think its a nice illustration of the butterfly effect… It’s also a very cool short movie. Unfortunately I cannot embed it into the posting as this keeps breaking my blog.
Right, it’s too late now to avoid it and too close to ignore it. Christmas is here. This means that it’s time for the annual gathering of the family for communal grazing, socialising and extended computer-free time. It usually looks something like this:
Hippos by Andries license by CC
Wherever you are and however you celebrate – have a good Christmas…
Is it just me, or is most furniture really ugly? While spending time at a furniture store today (mostly to kill time) I was struck by the realization that most of the stuff in the store (not a small store) was really ugly. It was not only ugly it was expensive and ugly. Itâ??s the kind of furniture that seems to be in bad furniture advertisements (and stores) but never in peopleâ??s homes. This is obviously wrong since the stores seem to stock and sell the stuff.
Furniture is also a true sign of growing up. The first apartment is usually filled with furniture collected from everywhere from donations to cheap second hand stuff (some of which should have been thrown away long ago). Buying new furniture is a painful and expensive experience.
Therefore the first real sign of maturity or rather the real sign that a person is becoming a responsible adult is when he or she takes a large pile of hard earned cash and buys and expensive sofa â?? instead of a new stereo, car or holiday abroad.
The definitive sign of maturity (bordering on old age) is when one takes a large pile of hard earned cash and buys matching cutlery and platesâ?¦
This still does not explain why most furniture is so uglyâ?¦
My friend and colleague Jonas Ã?berg of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has just turned the pressure on. The Swedish section of the FSFE has recently launched an ad campaign encouraging people to join the Fellowship of the FSFE. The campaign included a bonus give away of a pin or a lanyard to all those who joined before 31 December.
Today Jonas wrote a blog post where he complained about poor visibility in traffic which places pedestrians and cyclists in danger when it is dark – which is almost always this time of year in Sweden. So in order to do something about this he has just announced that he will buy a reflex vest (out of his own pocket) for anyone in Sweden who joins the Fellowship before the winter solstice (22 December 2006).
All you have to do is join fsfe.org/join then email him your Fellowship user name and length (for the right vest size) and he will send you a reflex vest…
This is such a brilliant idea!
I want to be part of it too. So if you (only in Sweden since this is a Swedish campaign) order your Fellowship (not renew, but become a new member) before the 22 December and you email Jonas your length (for the vest) then I shall send you a copy of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” (please let us know if you want it in Swedish or English).