Comments on: Non-Minimal Weekend

By: ms. smith

ms. smith — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 08:42:16 +0000

do you eat raw eggs?

By: Clifford

Clifford — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:43:52 +0000

Wouldn’t a raw egg be more minimal than that? Or am I missing the point?

-cvj

By: ms. smith

ms. smith — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:15:33 +0000

oh and i had a question for everybody-

what do you think is the most minimal thing you do?

the thing i thought of is: eat a hardboiled egg.

By: ms. smith

ms. smith — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:09:00 +0000

could be-my figure was from kids registered w/ LAUSD(county) and it was over 110-but that was 2 years ago……

sheesh.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 07:52:03 +0000

I think I heard the other day it was 207 languages in LA county.

-cvj

By: ms. smith

ms. smith — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 07:21:52 +0000

are you kidding?
do i have to choose a culture?

i like both.
i take cues from our own evolution-
our eyes like the complex patterns of nature-they actually find it restful.
more restful than a blank wall.

and yet who doesn’t marvel at the sight of a big full moon-glowing with its spherical simplicity.

same w/ music-none of the minimalist concert was truly minimal-it was actually very symphonic-

choose a cultural expression?
did you know that there’s more than 100 languages spoken here?
in the desert (one of the more minimal environments?!)
anyway, thats why i love this city.
its one of the most eclectic in the world.

encourages our imaginations to run wild-
or to be content, looking at our big blue sky.

no need to choose-

By: Plato

Plato — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 19:30:39 +0000

Both spherical and hyperbolic geometries are examples of curved geometries, unlike Euclidean geometry, which is flat. In spherical geometry, the curvature is positive, in hyperbolic geometry, it is negative-Helen Joyce

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:36:31 +0000

Would you rather live in the simplicity/linearity of the Arts and Crafts Movement or in the complexity/nonlinearity of the Victorian Era? Questioned more generally, would you rather exist in a culture which thrives on expressions of Minimalism or thrives on expressions of Maximalism?

By: ms. smith

ms. smith — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 08:10:33 +0000

this quote may be applied to music, color, and physicists (apparently)(and thank goodness!)

“By giving up a preference for harmony,
we accept dissonance to be as desirable as consonance”

Interaction of Color, josef albers

it was a fantastic concert clifford-i truly felt priviliged to be there-thank you again-yes-i am a minimalist-to me its about getting to the essence of the thing-and sometimes its a feeling-relative to its surroundings-

to me-the victorians were about opulence and science, in that they were collectors of anything and everything of the natural world. the huntington gardens and many plants and trees growing here in LA were collected from around the world, at the turn of that last century. rooms were filled with cabinets of bird skulls etc., and rooms themselves were built of sea shells…..the arts and crafts movement was more a philosophical and (supposedly) socially conscious one-but could be just as heavy w/ the ornamentation.

the ornamentation and yes, the shapes, help describe architectural styles-during the same period- adolf loos wrote an essay called “ornament and crime”
for him- “the modern ornamentalist” was “either a cultural laggard or a pathological case”

art nouveau anyone?

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:53:47 +0000

Once hyperbolic geometry started to take hold in culture, curved/nonlinear expressions in Victorian architecture increases towards greater degrees of acceleration. Consequently, as a counter-cultural response to this increased acceleration in curvature within Victorian designs, the Arts and Crafts Movement began producing more simple styles encompassing straight lines/linear expressions.

By: Plato

Plato — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 02:45:43 +0000

Hyperbolic Geometry, does not fit that time scale alone?

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:38:01 +0000

Plato, art/culture rarely follow the literal lines/laws of math/science. Consequently, I am implying that Victorian architecture is figuratively linked with the revolutionary movement of non-Euclidean geometry. Along sociological lines, art/culture prosaically captures the overall emotions rising from this newly discovered field of geometry. Therefore, I will loosely argue that highly curved expressions within Victorian architecture are cultural symbols of non-Euclidean geometry. What makes you believe that the average Victorian architect/Victorian consumer of architecture could fully grasp the space dynamics of non-Euclidean geometry? Furthermore, the “time component” of non-Euclidean geometry was not conceived until the tailend of the Victorian Era. Nevertheless, Victorian architects/consumers of Victorian architecture could only sense the shear power of this revolutionary branch of geometry. In effect, by designing structures/by living in structures with highly curved expressions allowed Victorian society to feel connected with this highly elusive discovery in math. Perhaps – from a historical/cultural perspective – there is no connection between math and architecture?

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:39:06 +0000

Trieste? Did not Dennis Sciama end his career in Trieste? Sciama is given much credit for launching the Golden Era of blackhole physics. Frequently, one will hear pioneers of blackhole physics give honorable mentioning to Sciama. Unlike many PhD advisers of the times, Sciama allowed his postdocs – such as Stephen Hawking, Martin Riess and Brandon Carter – the freedom to explore the blackhole landscape. Sciama – a most distinquished man of physics – resided in Trieste – a most beautiful setting on Earth.

By: Plato

Plato — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 04:15:03 +0000

Or is this observation purely based on a historial fluke that the rise of non-Euclidean geometry parallels the rise of the Victorian era? Not really. Our values becomes entrenched in what the microscopic views are in relation to the cosmological valuation produced in abstractual thinking? The historical perspective gained, was in conjuntion with the developing insight from Euclid's fifth postulate to Gauss's UV dynamcal triangulations, Riemann's encapsulation used further by Einstein? Intellectually, you deal with different kind of space now. One that is dynamical. I assume now, you are now using non-euclidean perspective? So, "quantum gravity" and we have the artistic renditon of historical perspective (dynamical triangulation) moving perception to see in different ways? This is just one example, strings is another. Non? Amazing is it not? The bulk space is still of value now. You just had to know how it got that way.

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 22:18:48 +0000

Are there any C.V. bloggers interested in returning to the thread of Minimalism in this post? Even if I fail to gain any willing participants, I will proceed to revitalize this thread. I find it intriguing that the arts and crafts movement was lead by a radical faction of craftmen who desired to diverge from the extreme ornamentations of Victorian architecture. This wave of rebel workers preferred to create designs with straight (Euclidean) line as opposed to curved ( non-Euclidean) lines. Is this a noteworthy expression of nineteenth century arts converging with – followed by – diverging from nineteenth century mathematics? Or is this observation purely based on a historial fluke that the rise of non-Euclidean geometry parallels the rise of the Victorian era?

By: Clifford

Clifford — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:33:46 +0000

Cynthia, erc….. maybe the horse is dead now. The point is that Cynthia already realised that he/she was in error in reading my remark as saying that strings were not mainsteam. I was talking about subfields within the topic of strings (whether strings be mainstream or not), and I clearly explained my meaning in later comments.

Let’s move on, shall we?

Plenty of physics and other fun stuff to discuss!

Cheers,

-cvj

By: erc

erc — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:04:05 +0000

It is entirely likely that Susskind did discuss both strings and the HP together – indeed it would be surprising if he had mentioned the latter and not the former, as the holographic principle is most convincingly manifested in string theory (via the AdS/CFT correspondence).

However, my point that this lecture is not a good way of demonstrating the “mainstream-ness” of string theory still stands, for the reasons I already gave.

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:00:01 +0000

Erc, I am simply regurgitating the content of Susskind’s talk. In the content of his talk, Susskind linked BH complementarity with the holographic principle involving STRINGS. Perhaps I wrongly mis-characterized the finer details of his talk. Perhaps Susskind simply suggested the notion of speculatively injecting STRINGS into the mix containing BH complementarity and the holographic principle? However – without a doubt – Susskind articulated a three-prong merger between BH complementarity, the holographic principle and STRINGS.

By: I, Robot

I, Robot — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:12:56 +0000

More random thoughts

Gary Horowitz relays the outside label of a can of a soup as the conformal surface, while the soup, the spacetime fabric?

Thank you Gary Horowitz

“D-branes provide the fundamental quantum microstates of a black hole that underlie black hole thermodynamics”

Holography encodes the information in a region of space onto a surface one dimension lower. It sees to be the property of gravity, as is shown by the fact that the area of th event horizon measures the number of internal states of a blackhole, holography would be a one-to-one correspondance between states in our four dimensional world and states in higher dimensions. From a positivist viewpoint, one cannot distinquish which discription is more fundamental.

Pg 198, The Universe in Nutshell, by Stephen Hawking

By: erc

erc — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:49:12 +0000

Erc, if you want to view Susskind’s talk, please access it from comment#7.
I do not wish to watch it (right now), I merely asked when it was.

If I understood you (and I apologise if I have not), in comment no. 4 you discussed this talk in refutation of what you thought was a claim by Clifford that ST is not mainstream. I was curious as to why you would cite this talk as evidence for this as the topic discussed therein was investigated most intensely some years ago. Hence my question about when.

Whether “mixing BH complementarity with the holographic principle is mainstream” is not the topic of the conversation, I thought. We were discussing whether or not string theory is mainstream. I was pointing out that neither the HP or BHC exist solely in the context of string theory, and so their popularity is actually peripheral to the issue at hand.

However, I question your conjecture that BH information will always be beyond our detection.
I did not say this. A consequence of BHC and the resolution of the information loss paradox offered by Susskind is that one must accept that much of the information we say is “hidden” by the black hole horizon is simply not there. This rests on his stated belief that a theory “should not predict anything that is in principle unobservable”.