Come off it, Mate ... you can't fool me. Surely you must be a "numbers man" yourself, what with all the endless hours you must spend with computer code!
Yes, time is just as you say. Gone (never to be visited again), in the mere blinking of an eye.
But I just wanted to give everyone a chance to savour the moment, as it were! But (as I know only too well), some people can't see the point in anything, never mind a particular "point in time"!
Yes, numbers are important. They are one of the few things that separate us from the animals!
The Fibonacci sequence, anyone (not what the series mentioned is, by the way)? Phi (or tau), the Golden Ratio? Primes* (... as recorded by Euclid in 300 BC ... just another point in time). There are many other nice examples. And I invite everyone to mention their favourite(s)!
Bernoulli, Euler, Leibniz, Newton et al. In their time (... yes, that word again) they must have appeared (to ordinary people) as Gods!
And, by the way, without the Cynics there would be no Democracy. That is, no-one to challenge the Baboons and hold them to account. Yes, let's hear it for the Enquiring Mind!
In my opinion, the original Cynics had an admirable outlook on life. And one that the wise man would do well to re-visit today, I reckon!
* "I've said it before, and I'll say it again ... there's always a Prime between n and 2n"!
By the way it was Leonhard Euler (1707-1783 ... and probably the most prolific mathematician who ever lived) who conceived the idea of denoting functions by letters of the alphabet, that is so well known today, especially as a basis for computer languages.
For example, if we use the letter f to denote a function, then the equation:-
y = f(x)
(read as "y equals f of x") indicates that y is a function of x, the quantity x being the "independent variable" of f, and y the "dependent variable" of f.
Functions can (and do) call functions, calling other functions ad infinitum (if you're lucky ... and within the constraints of the language you are using). What greater joy can there be than simplifying, refining, a function to its neatest (most terse) form? Eureka!
Meanwhile, most high-level computer programming languages allow functions to call themselves within the program code. This clever concept (conceived, like all such concepts, by Genius Guys) is known as recursion. Just imagine what Euler could have done, had he had a BBC Micro to hand!
Hi Geoff I am 105 years old and i can well remember the last time this happened, seems like yesterday! Anyway after my passing when i will be cryogenically preserved, i have expressed that i am reawakened before the next one, in a hundred years (2109) See you there!
Well, 12:34:56.7/8/9 came and went, but (as far as I am aware), nothing truly calamitous occurred on the cosmic scale.
Oh, well. Never mind. Disappointment is my middle name, after all (not to mention patience being my primary weapon).
Meanwhile, did the Earth move for you?
And, lastly, as I was mentioning famous mathematicians, how about one from more recent times (but sadly no longer with us), namely Paul Erdos?* Not a well known name, perhaps ... but a Genius Guy nevertheless. And, I would say, a true follower of the Cynical traditions.
* I can't give you the link, because of the non-standard (Hungarian) characters in the name. But, if you're interested, just go ahead with entering Paul Erdos in Google.
How would the likes of Leonhard Euler, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein et al have got on today, what with computers, the internet, and all the rest?
Would their output have been even more prolific, their work at ever greater layers of genius? Or would they have been distracted by all the chattering, the tweets, answering frivolous emails ... and surfing the net?
Answers, please, by close of play tomorrow (Monday). That is, if you haven't squandered yet another day attending to trivialities!
