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Occupy Your Mind

Posted by reverendgraham on 2011.1014.1228
Occupy Your Mind
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AOccupyMind.pdf

"The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the Kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things."

– Confucius, The Great Learning

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Happy Dozenal Pi Day

Posted by reverendgraham on 2011.0320.1141

It's Dozenal Pi Day. HAPPY DOZENAL PI DAY. Unfortunately, last week's events largely overshadowed decimal Pi Day in the popular press, so there was little opportunity to advance the dozenal alternative, but I do feel we made major inroads in certain cultural spheres this year. Indeed, our Facebook event had over 60 per gross more attendees than last year's event. So I'm optimistic that in 11b8 we'll be able to mount a compelling challenge to the decimalist-controlled media narrative.

I am heading out ot the official Dozenal Pi Day buffet. After which I shall contemplate the possible consumption of PIE. Though I might just drink wine instead. Either way, it's going to be a pretty amazing day.

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Dozenal Pi Day 11B7

Posted by reverendgraham on 2011.0127.1343

"Ten is doubtless a convenient number of fingers to have, though men have gotten along with less and a few people have been born with more. But as the purely arbitrary unit which determines the form of our numbers, it was a miserable choice." – F. Emerson Andrews

"Do not disturb my circles." – Archimedes

It's that time of year again—time to start thinking about DOZENAL PI DAY.

Overview

Dozenal Pi Day Regardless of its radical prejudices, Pi Day has become, in recent years, an annual cultural event of some magnitude, and the occasion for a certain nominal enthusiasm about "math" that people seem to find meaningful. At the very least, it seems to remind us of our own cleverness, which is something I have nothing against in principle.

Yet I am more convinced than ever that, unless we remain firmly mindful of what separates the arbitrary and symbolic in mathematics from the truly meaningful, Pi Day will ultimately remain a rather vacuous and misguided holiday. Thus, I once again propose the observation of DOZENAL PI DAY on 18; March (decimal 20th), to raise awareness of the superior dozenal radix, while also bringing attention to the underlying meaninglessness of our present decimal notation. MOAR »

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graphene magnetism

Posted by reverendgraham on 2010.0805.1943

I am going to take advantage of this amazing "forum" contraption to bring to Our Attention the latest news from the world of graphene, which I have already blogged about recently enough that it would seem distasteful to repeat myself already in that medium, yet which is, of course, of great interest both to myself and to the hexagonal community at large (but I repeat myself!) [EDIT: the forum as such no longer exists]:

Gigantic Pseudo-magnetic Fields Created
Graphene, the extraordinary form of carbon that consists of a single layer of carbon atoms, has produced another in a long list of experimental surprises. Researchers report the creation of pseudo-magnetic fields far stronger than the strongest magnetic fields ever sustained in a laboratory — just by putting the right kind of strain onto a patch of graphene. . . ."

Graphene bubbles mimic explosive magnetic field
"Electronics engineers would love to play with super-powerful magnetic fields – if only they weren't so likely to cause explosions. Now it turns out that graphene can mimic the useful effects of such a magnetic field, offering a new way to control the super-material's remarkable electronic properties. . . ."

I picked these two articles more or less at random, but there are plenty more on this subject in the hexagonal news.

I have more to say on the subject, but I think I will, in fact, save it for another Hexblog post at some point in the future (I am trying to build up a nice queue of subject matter in my mind, so I will always have something to rant about when the mood strikes me). I AM WONDERING THOUGH IF ANYONE HERE—among my faithful throngs of followers—HAS ANY THOUGHTS ON THE ADVENT OF GRAPHENE AND ITS MYRIAD IMPLICATIONS?

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Dozenal Pi Day 11B6

Posted by reverendgraham on 2010.0313.2037

The following is a short writeup I did for an event on Facebook celebrating Dozenal Pi Day on March 18, 11B6 (decimal March 20, 2010). As indicated in the text, it includes some borrowed material from the Wikipedia article on duodecimalism.

Dozenal Pi Day logo

I am not sure when exactly this "Pi Day" thing became so fashionable, but for me it has come to symbolize everything that is wrong and unwholesome about modern society's relationship with numbers. You see, of late I find myself more and more perturbed by the extent to which people seem to take the primacy of decimal notation for granted in conceptualizing and comparing numbers. In the case of pi, there is NOTHING particularly universal or ontologically significant in the sequence of digits 3.14159265... except that they represent a certain way of parsing the value of pi by successive fractions of ten. THIS IS MAY BE INTERESTING IF YOU ARE REALLY INTO THE NUMBER TEN FOR SOME REASON. Otherwise it—like the entire decimal radix system—is fairly useless. MOAR »

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