Search where?

This Portfolio (cathartes02)

All of Writing.Com

◄ November ► 2022
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
Archive				RSS

Offsite Blogs

· Waltz Travel Blog

Create New Item

Read & Review

Community

Browse By Type

Browse By Genre

Writing Resources

Wednesday, Apr. 24, 2024

6:01pm EDT

Members: 1,114

Guests: 1,894

Total Online: 3,008

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:

Aiva Raine

about 2 hours ago
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

about 23 hours ago
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

a day ago
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

a day ago
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

a day ago
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

a day ago
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

a day ago
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?

Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT

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

I have never been to New York, but it seems that my assessment years ago that Berlin, Germany and New York have some similarities. Both cities are known for being inhabited by rude people. And both places, as I now found out, are dog obsessed. And they have high rents.
Berliners though, have a habit of letting their dogs run off leash. Maybe New York is a little better than Berlin in that regard.

1 Like

Robert Waltz

Apr 21, 2024 at 1:48pm
In response to "Revisited: "Hack This""

Wordsmitty ✍️, far be it from me to speculate on the motivations of space aliens, but why in Xenu's name would they do such a thing to the universe?

1 Like

Wordsmitty ✍️

Apr 21, 2024 at 1:39pm
In response to "Revisited: "Hack This""

I thought humans got bigger brains because extraterrestrials affected our evolution, and we eat processed chicken and eggs.

1 Like

November 1, 2022 at 12:02am

#1040090

Snip

I don't know why I keep finding Outside articles. But this one, at least, isn't directly about the (shudder) outside.

Speaking of which, I'll be venturing (ugh) outside (sort of) for the next few days. It's been a while since I did a road trip, and now that I have a car I can do one. Remember a couple of months ago, when I linked an Gastro Obscura article about non-grape wines? No? Well, here it is: "Keep Wining"

. There, I noted that one of the featured wineries is in New Jersey, which isn't that far away from me, considering that I have, several times, driven all the way across the country and back.

I described it as "might be a good overnight trip," but then I found out that it's actually half an hour away from Atlantic City (hookers and blackjack), and that there are other wineries in the area, as well as breweries. So I'm going until Friday. Blog posts may happen at hours unusual for me, but they will happen (barring catastrophe, of course).

That's got nothing to do with today's article.

I Got a Vasectomy Because of Climate Change
Getting one was, by far, the most powerful personal action I could take for our planet

I'd like to say that my decision to remain childfree was primarily motivated by concern for the ecosystem. I'd like to, but I can't. Oh, sure, it factored into it—I almost never make decisions based on just one thing, and absolutely never with something of that magnitude. But mostly, it was the other way around: I couldn't ethically justify bringing a child into a declining civilization.

The article itself is from the Before Time, almost three years ago.

I’ve always struggled to combine the idea of personal responsibility with the overwhelming need for human society to address the threat posed by climate change.

That's because it's our problem, but it's not our individual responsibility.

Since at least the 1970s, the massive energy corporations responsible for the vast majority of our carbon emissions have known about, and done nothing to mitigate, the harm they cause. Because they own politicians worldwide, there doesn’t appear to be any will to take government-level action. But I’m supposed to turn off a light? What possible impact could that ever have? And why is all this on my shoulders and not theirs?

Which is what I've been saying.

Bad example, though. Turning off a light has a direct impact on you: you pay a lower power bill. A better example might be, oh, I don't know, not taking road trips that waste gas just so you can try exotic New Jersey wines.

Incidentally, several years ago, I replaced all the lightbulbs in my house (except for oven and refrigerator) with low-consumption LEDs. Again, I'd like to say this is because I'm concerned with the environment, and that was certainly a part of it. Another part was spending less on electricity. But mostly it's because I'm too lazy to replace lightbulbs, and these LEDs are supposed to last 20 years.

When I got engaged, my fiancée, Virginia, and I started planning for the future. It wasn’t just my dog Wiley and me against the world anymore. All of a sudden, I started thinking ten to 20 or more years ahead.

Huh. I didn't need to get engaged to plan for the future.

Children are an obvious thing to plan. With a sudden focus on responsible decision-making, it no longer made sense to leave hypothetical future offspring up to chance. When should we have them? What did our careers look like on that timeline? Who’d be responsible for staying home and raising them? Couldn’t we just have one of the dogs do that?

To be fair, they'd do a better job than a lot of humans.

Is this a world we want to bring kids into? Is this a world it’s responsible to bring kids into?

No.

Of course, that's my opinion. Others have different opinions. That's okay. I would no more want everyone to decide to have all the offspring they can than I would want everyone to suddenly decide to stop breeding.

It looks like the pace of climate change is speeding ahead of science’s ability to understand or forecast it.

Lately I've been seeing more hopeful articles about climate change forecasts. By "more hopeful," I mean "we're still boned, but not as much as our worst fears." I suppose that's something, but it's still going to suck.

I can't help but think that the impetus behind such articles is to keep people from spiraling into despair. Despair isn't good for the economy. Gotta keep the economy going.

The future might be worse than any of us currently fear.

Again, older article. But even the "optimistic" predictions are pretty bad.

Then Virginia and I started talking about something we could do—for ourselves and to make a meaningful impact on the bigger problem. We could just forego the whole kid thing altogether.

Such a decision would certainly do more than, say, using only reusable bags, or foregoing plastic straws.

The image of personal climate change action doesn’t really match the reality. If I gave up my 15 mpg pickup truck—basically the mascot for climate inaction—and rode my bicycle everywhere, I’d save the planet 2.4 tons of carbon emissions a year. That’d be a massive sacrifice, but it’s nowhere near the carbon emissions I’ll save by skipping becoming a daddy, which comes in at around 58 tons annually, per kid. Any other action we could take, even all the actions we could ever possibly add up together, pale in comparison.

One can quibble about the math, but a) do you really need that pickup truck and b) the basic idea is sound: if your carbon footprint ends with you, you've done a lot.

That’s because there are simply too many humans on this planet.

Arguable. I mean, I happen to agree, but every time I say so, someone chimes in with "so why don't you kill yourself?" as if that's equivalent to not reproducing. There's some basic disconnect there in peoples' brains that I just don't understand and it may be that I never will. Urging someone to kill themselves is otherwise frowned upon, unless it's in that context. Makes no sense to me.

So, we’re not having kids. I found a colleague’s brother here in Bozeman who performs vasectomies and made an appointment. I was afraid of getting my scrotum operated on, but the procedure ended up being quicker and less invasive than most dental appointments.

It is true that, like most men, I can count the number of people I want holding a scalpel near... there... on the fingers of one foot. But, as with my eye surgery last year, sometimes you just gotta overcome your fears.

Once the anesthetic wore off, it felt like someone had kicked me in the balls pretty good, a feeling that dissipated over the next seven days. I took a Valium before the surgery and a few handfuls of ibuprofen afterward but otherwise didn’t need painkillers or even an ice pack.

Dude. Frozen peas. Come on. Also, it's not nearly as bad as getting kicked in the nuggets, unless you get it done by your sister's friend's cousin's coworker's uncle in some back alley.

The worst part was taking a week off from the gym; I’d been making good progress.

Where's my tiny violin? I left it around here somewhere.

Anyway, it's certain that a lot of people had, or will have, a visceral hatred of this article. The suicide comment above makes me sure of it. I want to emphasize again that I'm not judging people who do have kids. It's a choice that should be neither mandatory nor forbidden. Nor should we cave to social pressure either way.

There are, as I said, other reasons to get the procedure done. It could be argued that, well, why would someone without kids even care about the environment at all? Oh, I don't know, maybe we have a broader view of humanity than just our own immediate family?

4 Like • Comment • View 3 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/11-1-2022

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 0.65 seconds at 6:01pm on Apr 24, 2024 via server web1.