Search where?

This Portfolio (cathartes02)

All of Writing.Com

◄ January ► 2021
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31
Archive				RSS

Offsite Blogs

· Waltz Travel Blog

Create New Item

Read & Review

Community

Browse By Type

Browse By Genre

Writing Resources

Friday, Apr. 26, 2024

8:17pm EDT

Members: 940

Guests: 5,204

Total Online: 6,144

Complex Numbers

by Robert Waltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #1196512

Not for the faint of art.

Complex Numbers

A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.

The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.

Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.

Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.

http://www.ddewey.net/mandelbrot/

Signature for Honorable Mentions in 2018 Quill Awards

A signature for exclusive use of winners at the 2019 Quill Awards

Signature for those who have won a Quill Award at the 2020 Quill Awards

Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

Kåre Enga in Udon Thani

a day ago
In response to "Going to the Dogs"

I have ants in Thailand. Will I miss them in Montana? No.

Would it be nice to have a cat and a dog, here or there? Yes, but I have struggles keeping my neglected plants alive.

Not every situation is suitable for everything or everybody.

Kåre Enga in Udon Thani

a day ago
In response to "Tipped Out"

I don't tip. In my travels I rarely find tipping the norm.

I also don't haggle.

When you add the tip... the true cost of America becomes evident. But what would I know? I travel while others who have double my income can't pay rent.

Kåre Enga in Udon Thani

a day ago
In response to "Reality Cubed"

My dreams may be different from your dreams but if we share them with others then some form of the dream may live on. Regardless, if we don't eat we die. "Joy gives us wings." "Reality bites."

Aiva Raine

Apr 24, 2024 at 4:26pm
In response to "Tipped Out"

Agreed. I'll tip and well, for actual waitstaff at restaurants. I'll tip appropriately for bell-staff who assists with luggage at hotels, the more luggage, the bigger the tip. I'll give a tip to the valet as well. Beyond that- I don't tip. Certainly no tip for the fast food workers, coffee baristas, grocery store clerks, etc.

It annoys me to no end that we're being asked to tip for all kinds of jobs where they are being paid an hourly wage. I've worked as a waitress when I was young and my daughter currently does. In those jobs- she absolutely depends upon proper tipping to make a decent wage. And I hate the fact that she is dependent upon tips to do so.

It leaves women especially at the mercy of arsh**() on whether she wants to accept hostile, negative, sexist, harassing, demeaning, and negative behavior from her customers in order to make a living. It condones people treating their waitstaff like shite in order to get paid. While there is much improvement from the 30 years ago when I was working as a waitress in the skimpy outfits we were forced to wear- it's still an issue at non-chain, independent owned restaurants and diners.

Women are left to the mercies of jerk customers and their only recourse is the manager who they have to hope supports their waitstaff rather than the jerk customer. Tipping should be eliminated. All employees should be paid a livable wage and waitstaff especially should not be dependent upon tolerating crappy to obscene behavior from customers in order to make a living.

But, until that happens- I always tip at least 20% and often times more. Very rarely have I tipped lower and the service in those situations was abysmal and they still got 10%.

1 Like

GeminiGem of House Lannister

Apr 23, 2024 at 6:51pm
In response to "Going to the Dogs"

I don't understand the intersection, either. I lived in a much smaller city and found that having dogs was a hassle (although it didn't stop me), what with the complainey neighbors, the extra licensing, etc. I live in a rural location now and it works great. I can't wrap my head around living in NYC with or without a dog, although I like the idea of a place that issues a canine and supplies upon moving there. Can that please be a thing?

1 Like

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

Apr 23, 2024 at 3:31pm
In response to "Going to the Dogs"

I love my little dog...but I live in a biggish house with a fenced backyard.

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

Apr 23, 2024 at 3:14pm
In response to "That's Cole"

I knew and ate Kohlrabi before I ever heard of kale. Kohlrabi is so much better in every way.

That last quoted sentence is hilarious. I am glad that I wasn't bred to be a Brussels Sprout.

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

Apr 23, 2024 at 3:11pm
In response to "Cash Stash"

The discussion of money is an interesting one. Remember the recent collapse of a few banks? I think it was about a year or so ago?
Yes, deposits were FDIC insured up to $250,000 per depositor. But some people and companies had more money in that bank than the FDIC was insuring.
I never followed up on what happened to those people. I don't run in circles of people who own that much cash.

My accounting professor took half a period to explain to us what happened and how the bank went from Silicone Valley darling to dead so fast.

He also told us that the value we give money is not backed by anything except our hope and faith that our economy will keep going.

We didn't discuss whether the value of money needed a lower income class of people.

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

Apr 23, 2024 at 3:04pm
In response to "Revisited: "Hack This""

In my last psychology class, we discussed the evolution of the brain. It is now settled science that we evolved to have not only larger, but also vastly more powerful brains than most other animals because we learned how to cook (process) our food.
Although we are only about 1/4 to 1/3 of a normal gorilla, we eat half of the calories in a day. Not only that, we prepare the food in a way that we get to use more of the calories that we ingest.
The result is that our brain takes up more space in our noggin than a gorilla brain takes up in his noggin. Not only that, each of our brain cells is smaller, so we can fit exponentially more of those into our head.

Now, using all that goodness ...

1 Like

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

Apr 23, 2024 at 2:58pm
In response to "Hope for Hops"

Wait! Why are beer and coffee affected by climate change? That wasn't supposed to happen. All we had to do was have a boat by the side of the house for when the sea levels rise and beg our property insurance to cover fire damage. How are we supposed to remember all of that if we don't get coffee to wake us up in the morning so that we can think and beer at night to dull our sense of doom?

January 29, 2021 at 12:10am

#1003143

Funny

PROMPT January 29th

Write about something funny! Share a joke, recount a humorous story, or tell your readers about a funny experience you had.

Oh man... I don't know if I can do this.

The funny thing about being funny is it's really, really hard to be funny on demand.

Like, I could be telling jokes for hours, and then someone will turn to me and go, "Hey Waltz, say something funny." And the best I can come up with is to say, "Something funny." And that's if I think of it. It's like every cell in my brain runs off to the "I really like beer" cortex and settles down for a cold one.

What's worse is I'm scheduled to do next week's Comedy newsletter, and I haven't thought of a single thing to say. My first Comedy newsletter was 14 years ago this month, though I didn't become a regular editor of it until two months later, in March 2007. Since that fateful March, I've managed to do an editorial every four weeks (give or take, what with scheduling changes along the way), usually finding something to say at the very last minute.

This is why I procrastinate: It works.

Not that they were all great, mind you. Some of them were crappier than a porta-potty at a laxative festival.

In the ancient times B.I. (Before Internet), I had a memory for jokes. Someone would tell me a joke once, and I'd remember it and be able to deliver it at any point thereafter, usually with a few riffs. But at least I rarely fucked up the punch line. Now, though? No point remembering things if I can just look them up on the internet.

Twenty years or so ago, someone scientifically determined the World's Funniest Joke.

It's at the link, but I'll reproduce it here for those of you who don't want to open a link:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says, "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence; then a gun shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, "OK, now what?"

Now, this joke certainly has aspects that make it funny. The important part is the difference between what is meant by "First, let's make sure he's dead" and what the hunter understands. Misunderstanding is an important part of comedy. From there, you have to set it up so the person doing the calling is expected to have a gun; hence "hunters." It wouldn't work with just "two guys are taking a walk in the woods."

One version of this joke that I saw specifies, for some reason, that the hunters are from New Jersey, which makes me believe that the joke was originally a New York thing. I'd tell it about West Virginians, myself.

The second important part of the joke is that someone dies. Yes, this is part of comedy. Most jokes require someone to be hurt. As Mel Brooks once pointed out when asked the difference between comedy and tragedy, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Jokes help us come to terms with our own mortality and frailty.

I could do without the passive voice, though. "...a gun shot is heard." I imagine that if one were telling this joke the old-fashioned way, in person, one would go "There's a silence, then BANG."

Now, for a while there, this particular "funniest joke" contest was looking like it was going to have a different winner. Here's that one:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are going camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up: "Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce."

Watson: "I see millions of stars and even if a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life."

Holmes: "Watson, you idiot, somebody's stolen our tent!"

You'll note that no one dies in this one. But the joke hinges on a different kind of misfortune. The other comedic element is Watson waxing philosophical when he should have been more practical, a reminder to all of us that sometimes we need to focus on what's around us instead of having our heads in the clouds all the time. That combined with the absurdity of someone being able to steal the tent in the first place makes this, objectively, quite humorous.

Nevertheless, I didn't laugh at either of these jokes. Why? Well, partly because you can't build something up by saying, "Okay, I'm about to tell you the funniest joke ever." This sets expectations way too high, and whoever you're telling it to is primed to think of reasons why it's not, after all, the funniest joke ever. Probably if someone just told me one of those jokes at a party (remember parties?) without the buildup, and if I'd never heard / read them, I might have chuckled (genuinely, not just out of politeness).

I'll leave you with one more joke. I don't know if it was ever in the running for this scientific study of comedy, but I've known it for quite a long time, since about ten years B.I. As with many jokes, I don't know the origin of it, and I'm not going to look it up but tell it from memory:

A scientist was developing a serum to vastly extend the lifespan of marine mammals. The primary ingredient in the formula was extract of mynah bird, which was a bit hard to come by, and one day, in the middle of testing this on his pet dolphin, he ran out of extract. So he went to the pet store to pick up a fresh batch of birds.

While he was gone, though, there was a problem at the local zoo, and some of the big cats escaped and started roaming the city. One of them curled up on this scientist's front doorstep and went to sleep.

So here comes our scientist back from the store with a bag full of mynah birds, when he notices the King of the Beasts blocking his door. "Oh, no," he thinks, "What am I going to do? I have to get inside; I'm at a critical stage in my experiments. There's no other way into the house. How am I going to get past this guy without waking him up and likely getting eaten?" He thinks about it for a few minutes and decides on a stealth approach. So he tiptoes up to the house, real quiet-like, and edges his way toward the front door.

He's managed to put one foot over the animal when a dozen cops come out of nowhere, point their guns at him, and go:

"Freeze, mister! You're under arrest...

...for transporting mynahs across sedate lions for immortal porpoises!"

I'll be here all week.

5 Like • Comment • View 10 comments

© Copyright 2024 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Robert Waltz has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.

Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/profile/blog/cathartes02/day/1-29-2021

Site Links:

Resources:

Need help?

Please post questions in
our support forum.

Places of Interest: Unique Wedding Invitations for unique wedding needs. Color Copiers found here.
Baby Names can be hard to pick. Hands-free hygenic toilet seats covers. Dramatic Music rocks.
Vampires are people too. Write Poetry here. Try this Stock Market quiz.
Teaching is a noble job. Get info on Tax Refunds.

All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way.
All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.

Generated in 0.64 seconds at 8:17pm on Apr 26, 2024 via server web2.