I've been terrible about keeping up the blog, I really have, and I apologize deeply. Life has been happening, in sundry forms, keeping me occupied with home renovation and new all-engrossing interests (as is my wont). I will truly
try to do better.
For now, let me just wax lyrical about
Neverness, a marvelously mathematical sci-fi novel. It's just lovely. Witness:
I plunged into the cold ocean of pure mathematics, into the realm of order and meaning underlying the chaos of everyday space...
Well, finding the order and meaning underlying the chaos of everyday space has been practically
my life's work, and I've carried on a love affair (rather slumbering-ashish the past two decades,
but still) with mathematics since I was a tot. And the book is filled, really filled, with passages like
I was deep in dreamtime when I realized I did not understand the type of decision tree branching all about me. I was close to my proof--I needed only to show that the Lavi set was embedded in an invariant space. But I could not show this, and I did not know why. It should have been a simple thing to do. ... There would be no proof, I knew. There would be no mapping to a point-exit in real space. I would not fall out around any star, near or distant. I was not merely lost in a hideous decision tree, I had stumbled--or been propelled--into an infinite tree.
Little slice of heaven, right there on my nightstand.
We've wanted a biggish plant for the living room for six months, and were both completely sold on this lovable bit of flora right out of a Dr. Seuss story. I could hug it, I love it so much (but I won't, so as not to crush and maim).
