God Created the Integers

Every math enthusiast should take a look at this big Stephen Hawking volume: God Created the Integers.

No, Hawking didn't write all 1000+ pages. He collected some classic texts of great mathematicians, preceded with a short bio and sprinkled commentary throughout. Amazon reviewers say the Lucasian professor made some mistakes. Yes, I wish Hawking will correct them all too.

It is awesome to read Euclid, Archimedes, Newton and other great mathematicians in their own (translated) words. They don't write like mathematicians today write, such as "I will say...." I do not understand much of the writings, of course.

The lives of the mathematicians are interesting to read about too. Some suffer horrible circumstances in life. It is also interesting to read about the feuds of some of them. Gosh, Newton and Hooke don't get along! He also attacked the heck out of Liebniz on calculus. Besides being a great physicist, I think Hawking is an awesome writer too.

However, I do have some complains about the book. Some footnotes and commentaries are in some ultra small fonts that requires magnifying glasses. It is ok to split this work into multiple volumes. To distinguish text from comments how about a complete different font, or boxes, or other means of typography?

Now about the title, "God Created the Integers" is a short form of the quote "God created the integers all else was the work of man".

Now I am no distinguished mathematician (not even a decent student) but I beg to differ. Integers themselves are also the work of man. Zero and the negative numbers are invented (and are significant milestone of mathematics).

I would say it is more appropriate to say "God Created the Natural Numbers".

Glad you're back, Atlantis

The final voyage of the Space Shuttle came back safely. Details here. Hooray!

The 30 years of Space Shuttle flights span glorious pages of human achievement history. Yes, we still mourn the loss of the Challenger and Columbia.

Now United States needs to ask Russians for a ride to space to do something on the Space Station. I am not so sure if we still need to patch the Hubble.

Welcome home, Atlantis.

Where did your tax money go?

You can generate yourself a Federal Taxpayer Receipt here.

Look at that breakdown of your tax dollar:



26.3% goes to National Defense!
7.4% on debt interests
4.8% for education

What if you do not agree on this breakdown? Hit the feedback button? Write your congressman? Or run for congress yourself?

Complain to the Mug Shots in the Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is no doubt an important part of Chicago history. But who is buying the expensive paper copies now? I am afraid not that many. I hope they remain afloat with the ads on their web edition.

Ok, click on news articles, your attention will probably be redirected to the criminal suspects' faces on the Mug Shots section. Some are quite fearsome looking followed by horrible crime description underneath: robbery, weapons, sex abuse of boys. Horrible! But when you click on the horrible criminals you don't get the detail of that particular criminal but you get to the first criminal (ok, suspect) out of hundreds.

I wanted to see the news article, but not the criminals (but I got shown the horrible faces of the criminals)
Now, when I want to see the detail of the criminal, I get to see another criminal but not the one I clicked on.

This Mug Shot stuff should be on its standalone page. Shield the readers from these fearsome people please.

Yikes, there are so many criminals out there doing horrible things!

Debt Ceiling

The hottest talk of the day is the debt ceiling. I am reading all about it here. There is a limit of so much money that United States can borrow... Oh, and the debt ceiling was raised many times in the past to keep the government running... so why not lift it again?

Ok, if we keep lifting it, it is then meaningless. Why even have such (arbitrary) limit?

Come on, you can't keep borrowing. Imagine you don't make enough money and you keep using your credit card.

The unpopular remedies to this are simple: cut stuff or increase tax. Just like how you do your personal finance: stop buying things or make more money.

Here is what I propose: do BOTH, at least temporarily. Get the deficit down first! Yes, it will be unpopular but do it now is better than do it later.

If that limit is useless, take it out entirely.

Mark Zuckerberg's Law of Sharing

Exponential equation (and logarithms) are useful!

See, Mark Zuckerberg talked about it.


Does Mark Zuckerberg have to show the graph of 2^x?

According to this article, he demonstrates logarithm by using 2^50 as an example of folding paper 50 times.

Ok, trying to inform people with logarithms (that high school students should know about)? Do you know that folding something 12 times is the WORLD RECORD. Read it here.

Some people mock Zuckerberg is no Steve Jobs. Well, no doubt, facebook is a big success. Most likely, however, nobody ever cares about YOUR presentation nor care your wardrobe.

Ok, I think 2^x is over simplification of sharing. If you send me uninteresting things? I won't share. Exponential growths stops at me.

Trying Go

"Go" is a strange name for the 4000+ year old ancient board game. It is actually short for igo, the Japanese name of this black-and-white-surround board game. Countless generations of intellectuals play this game of simple rules but of incredible depth.
I think everyone should at least look at this game to see why so many people are hooked.

Now, where do you find someone to play with? No one has time for you.

But the computer will gladly play with you. Today's phone apps are even more convenient. I recommend this Android game:
Go Free. Excellent UI, excellent game play.

The real game of 19x19 is long, who has time and patience for that? Amateurs should start at 9x9 to get a taste of this.

Gosh, simple rules, but I get defeated hard. Gotta watch your back as you try to capture your opponent's pieces (by surrounding).

I will never be truly good at any classic board games, because it takes an incredible mind to do well.

But hey, these are games. Have fun.