In a nutshell, Gaffney found that he had inadvertently used many similar aspects of a puzzle that had been released earlier in the year, and thus traces several reasons why this may have been the case. One interesting twist to the story is what happens when Gaffney asks a third crossword creator to write a similarly themed puzzle. Do you think that this third puzzle turned out to have similar entries to the first two? Read to find out!

(Photo by jessie.whittle)

It appears that Poe did very well with the challenge.

Also, fans of Poe’s writing will know about the short story The Gold Bug, and how this story of a treasure hunt relies on the solving of a cryptogram. Poe’s works are in the public domain, so it’s possible to read this story online through Google Books here, or to download the story (amongst others) from Project Gutenberg here.

I actually laughed out loud the first time I saw this. And then I thought about pirates in recent news history. And then I thought about Pirates of the Caribbean. And then I realized that in my brain there was a giant chasm between these two impressions.

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

The site has some amazing content, including a complete audio copy of “The Problems of Philosophy” (as well as a few other Russell titles). So for those of you who prefer to listen to audio books, there are some great philosophy, logic, and mathematics related books are available. Here are links for a few:

• The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell
• Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott Abbott
• The Apology of Socrates, by Plato
• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, by Charles Darwin

(Photo by Phil Moore)

In 2007 BBC Four released a documentary named Dangerous Knowledge, which is summarized on the official page as follows:

In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing – whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.

Sounds uplifting, huh? Well, David Malone, the British filmmaker, does a really great job tracing how mathematical ideas tie together the four individuals through history. While some of the films claims are a bit…over the top and dramatic,  overall the content is solid and quite informative. There’s a lot of information given not only about mathematics, but about how these four individuals dealt with various difficult aspects of their personal lives. These videos may still be up on YouTube, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for them being there for long given the copy protection issues involved. Having said that, I won’t even attempt to embed one of the videos here. But you CAN watch a clip directly from the BBC 4 official page by clicking here. If provided with the opportunity, you should take advantage of checking it out the program in its entirety.

• Gauss never needs the axiom of choice, and
• Gauss didn’t discover the normal distribution, nature conformed to his will.

I thought I would give it a go as well. So here are 20 original Gauss facts coined by me this evening in a state of tiredness. Please keep in mind that if you understand at least 3 of these, you’re every bit as much of a geek as I am. Fair warning.

• Gauss can trisect an angle with a straightedge and compass.
• Gauss can get to the other side of a Möbius strip.
• “Uncountably Infinite” was a phrase coined to explain the intelligence of Gauss.
• There are no Fermat Primes greater than 65,537 because Gauss saw that Fermat was on to something, and well…he put an end to that.
• For Gauss, arithmetic is consistent AND complete.
• It only takes Gauss 4 minutes to sing “Aleph-Null Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.
• When Gauss tells you that he’s lying, he’s telling the truth.
• Gauss once played himself in a zero-sum game and won $50.
• For Gauss, point nine repeating equals whatever he wants it to equal.
• Gauss did not prove theorems, he simply stared at them until they yielded their solutions.
• Occam’s Razor – The principle stating that the explanation of any phenomenon is equal to the explanation that came out of Gauss’ mouth.
• Gauss drinks his beer from a Klein bottle.
• For Gauss, there are no indefinite integrals.
• Gauss once started falling asleep in his complex analysis class. The result…singularities.
• Imaginary numbers are simply those that Gauss has not deemed worthy of existence.
• The shortest distance between two points is Gauss.
• Once, while playing chess, Gauss solved the Knights Problem in six moves.
• Gauss is neither a Frequentist nor a Bayesian. For Gauss, the probability is always 1.
• Fermat once made Gauss angry. The result…Fermat’s Last Theorem.
• In Gauss’ mind, there is no such branch of mathematics as “Number Theory”. This is because he knows it as “Number Facts”.

Have any more? Leave one in the comments!

UPDATE: Thanks to ll for finding attribution for this image. It comes from GraphJam, and the pie chart is here. The author is Jamie Schimley. I’m looking forward to browsing through more hilarity at this link.

ORIGINAL: Thanks to AdArena.net for this one. You should check them out. They’ve got some great stuff posted. I’m not sure where this picture originates, but it certainly made me laugh out loud. If anyone has further attribution on this photo, let me know. It’s truly hilarious.

more cat pictures

Another caption given for this picture in the comments is “Delta Kitteh knows the difference”. Hehehe.

Flatland: The Movie is an animated film inspired by Edwin A. Abbott’s classic novel, Flatland. Set in a world of only two dimensions inhabited by sentient geometrical shapes, the story follows Arthur Square and his ever-curious granddaughter Hex. When a mysterious visitor arrives from Spaceland, Arthur and Hex must come to terms with the truth of the third dimension, risking dire consequences from the evil Circles that have ruled Flatland for a thousand years.

Well, it sounds like there has definitely been some license given to modify the orginal plot of the novel. But I have to say that the plot modifications were immediately forgiven once I found out that Martin Sheen was going to do the voice of A. Square. Who can argue with that? Also, Tony Hale, of the late TV show Arrested Development, will be playing the King of Pointland. At any rate, as the website explains, “The movie will be part of an educational DVD, which will include the original text from Abbott’s book.” Also, it looks like it will be coming out in spring 2007, which isn’t too far away! If you’re dying to get a copy you can sign up on the website for priority access to the DVD. While you’re anxiously awaiting its release, I suggest reading Abbott’s original work. It’s a really quick read and is imaginative and original.

I don’t want to spoil anything with this post, but I will say that Nikola Tesla plays an important role in the story. When I got home I immediately turned to Tesla’s Wikipedia entry where I learned that three pieces of information played up in the movie were at least partially true:

1. There was some bad blood between Edison and Tesla, not least of which because Edison seems to have screwed Tesla out of a large chunk of change for some brilliant work he did for Edison.

2. Tesla did move his base of operations for a time to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he did some work on “wireless telegraphy”.

3. Especially later in life Tesla held some fantastic theories regarding subjects such as UFOs and the like. It seems to be the case that some of these beliefs came out of an untreated psychiatric disorder (probably OCD).

Interesting. Feel free to read more about Tesla at the link above. And I’d highly recommend seeing the movie. It’s one of the best I’ve seen this year.

Also, here’s a post from Boing Boing describing some mystery explosions that seem to be occurring around the world. More Halloween goodness!