YTSEJAM Digest 7053 Today's Topics: 1) Re: ytsejam book club by Mike Shetzer 2) Re: WDADU Re-Re-release by Mike Shetzer 3) RE: ytsejam book club by email_address_removed 4) RE: ytsejam book club by "Todd O. Klindt" 5) Re: ytsejam book club by Rick Audet 6) Re: ytsejam book club by Steve Chew 7) RE: ytsejam book club by "Niall Connaughton" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 21:46:43 -0500 From: Mike Shetzer To: ytsejam@torchsong.com Subject: Re: ytsejam book club Message-ID: <000701c4e63e$23bcc0b0$9b00a8c0@mizz> Interesting stuff. Never heard of them... That you? Singing about math? :) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rick Audet" To: "Multiple recipients of list" Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 9:28 PM Subject: RE: ytsejam book club > > Speaking of Fermat's Last Theorem: > > http://electricrain.com/spine/kineto_-_theorem.mp3 > > > On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Niall Connaughton wrote: > > > The French mathematician (Fermat) said that he could prove that there are no > > solutions for x^n + y^n = z^n, for non-zero x,y,z and I think n > 2. (where > > ^n means to the power of n). > > > > Fermat was a hobbyist mathematician who seemed to have a knack for it, but > > was never interested in the problem past the point at which he had worked > > out how the solution would go in his head (I guess he didn't respect the > > problem in the morning :P). So he would solve any number of interesting > > problems by writing the gist of the solution in the margins of text books. > > When he came to the above problem, he wrote in the margin something like "I > > have a deviously simple solution, but it is too big to fit in this margin." > > > > So three hundred years later, mathematicians finally solved it :P There were > > many breakthroughs in number theory on the way to solve the problem, even > > from those who failed in the end goal. I think the british mathematician who > > finally solved it did all his work only towards Fermat's Last Theorem, but > > his end result ended up as something like 7 different papers of new > > approaches to number theory. > > > > Niall > ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 23:09:19 -0500 From: Mike Shetzer To: ytsejam@torchsong.com Subject: Re: WDADU Re-Re-release Message-ID: <001101c4e649$adeba840$9b00a8c0@mizz> > PS I'm pretty positive I've read several times that SyX *is* re-recording > their debut album. Looks like you could hold your breath after all! :-p w00t! Where was this read? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:10:50 -0500 From: email_address_removed To: ytsejam@torchsong.com Subject: RE: ytsejam book club Message-ID: <> It was better when Umberto Eco wrote it. :) -Brenn ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:04:04 -0600 From: "Todd O. Klindt" To: Subject: RE: ytsejam book club Message-ID: I much preferred Angels and Demons to the Da Vinci Code. I knew what they were going in and I enjoyed them for what they were. tk -----Original Message----- From: ytsejam@torchsong.com [mailto:ytsejam@torchsong.com] On Behalf Of email_address_removed Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 7:06 AM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: RE: ytsejam book club <> It was better when Umberto Eco wrote it. :) -Brenn ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:58:55 -0800 (PST) From: Rick Audet To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: ytsejam book club Message-ID: That's me, playing guitar about math. Somebody else is singing. http://www.kineto.net for more info. On Sun, 19 Dec 2004, Mike Shetzer wrote: > Interesting stuff. Never heard of them... > That you? Singing about math? :) > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Rick Audet" > To: "Multiple recipients of list" > Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 9:28 PM > Subject: RE: ytsejam book club > > > > > > Speaking of Fermat's Last Theorem: > > > > http://electricrain.com/spine/kineto_-_theorem.mp3 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 14:51:41 -0500 From: Steve Chew To: ytsejam@torchsong.com Subject: Re: ytsejam book club Message-ID: >[...] >books by Simon Singh. >His latest one is called "Big Bang" [...] > >His other two books are "The Code Book", which is about the history of >cryptography, and his best IMO, and "Fermat's Last Theorem", which is about >the hundreds of years it took mathematicians to solve a simple riddle (it >was solved in the mid 1990s) a French mathematician said was trivial. > Cool. Thanks for the recommendations -- those sound interesting. Along the same lines of popular science, I recommend: "E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation" by David Bodanis -- This book delves into the history of the E=mc^2 equation, what important experiments/ideas preceded it and a bit of what came after. There were many of fascinating people involved and the book is very readable. You'll also have a good, basic understanding of what the equation means once you're done. "Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human" by Matt Ridley -- This book explores the false dichotomy between the ideas of how our characteristics are formed either by nature or nurture. Ridley goes into a lot of depth to show that it's often our environment which triggers actions from our genes. Genes determine many aspects of our brain (for example) but they also take in cues from the environment while doing so. Ridley demonstrates his case via numerous experiments that he cites. Very interesting stuff. "In Code" by Sarah Flannery -- This is a semi-autobiographical book about a 16 year old girl, Sarah Flannery, who develops a cryptographic algorithm which at first glance appears to have the strength of the widely used crypto (an amazing feat for a 16 year old). But, the book is about much more than that since it also teaches the basics about cryptography, how it works, etc. It's a very engaging book, written in a fun style, and also provides some good first lessons in crypto (I work in the computer security field and I still found it interesting). One of my favorite parts is where Sarah poses a riddle about locks on boxes which basically explains public key cryptography. I can go into it if people want. "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" by Dava Sobel -- This book is about John Harrison, a brilliant man who developed a clock in the early 1700s that would work on a moving ship (they were using things like hour glasses at the time) and be accurate to within seconds over the course of weeks. This enabled the ships to be able to tell much more accurately where they were. It was an amazing technological feat which took years of painstaking work, akin to the tenacity of Edison and his lightbulb. The book was also developed into a TV show which you can buy on DVD which was also excellent. > >Oh, and if I see one more person reading The Da Vinci code, I'm going to >scream. > Don't like fun adventures, eh? Steve ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 08:23:13 +1100 From: "Niall Connaughton" To: Subject: RE: ytsejam book club Message-ID: I bought it because it sounded interesting and it had been constantly talked about, promoted, etc as something extraordinarily different. The first half of the book was fairly interesting, but it quickly degraded into stock standard pulp. The last hundred pages seemed like it was directly borrowed from some university course's "fill in the blanks" thriller writing tool :P All up, it was an ok book, but now there's like a thousand spin off books from a thousand different authors - "The truth behind the Da Vinci Code", and "No no, the real truth behind the Da Vinci Code"... even DVDs! Niall > -----Original Message----- > From: ytsejam@torchsong.com [mailto:ytsejam@torchsong.com]On Behalf Of > Steve Chew > Sent: Tuesday, 21 December 2004 6:27 AM > To: Multiple recipients of list > Subject: Re: ytsejam book club > > > > >Oh, and if I see one more person reading The Da Vinci code, I'm going to > >scream. > > > Don't like fun adventures, eh? > > Steve ------------------------------ End of YTSEJAM Digest 7053 ************************** === Contributions to ytsejam: ytsejam@torchsong.com === === Send requests to: ytsejam-request@torchsong.com === === More information at: http://www.dreamt.org/local/ytsejam.php === === Brought by the ghost of ytsejam@arastar.coms past === === Reach the owner of this list at: ytsejam-owner@torchsong.com ===