A Mathematician who Changed my Life

Or at least had a profound influence on my life. This post doesn’t have much to do with writing, but I ran into a comic that serves as an excellent illustration of Gödel’s Proof. This proof also revolutionized mathematics, but that’s another story, which I’ll tell a little of next.

Kurt Gödel was a German mathematician who escaped Germany in time to miss being there for the second world war. He moved to Princeton and he and Albert Einstein were best of friends. A famous British mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, and philosopher Bertrand Russell had an ambition at the time to write a book that unified all of mathematics, beginning to end. The title was Principia Mathematica. The multi-volume book is extremely dense reading and I don’t recommend it. It’s not finished either. Kurt Gödel proved that they couldn’t do it. When the Brits learned of it, (long story short), after trying to figure a way around the Proof, they gave up.

Fortunately for me and non-mathematicians everywhere, Gödel’s proof, although is is not light reading, it can be understood if you’re willing to stop and think, and sometimes re-read parts. I recommend that you give it a read in you’re into this sort of thing.

It was back in my college days. (Paul Fosmark, you might remember me mentioning this in one of our U of M campus evangelistic street meetings.) I was asking a lot of questions about the meaning of life, what is true, and so on, as people that age are wont, and I ran into an article about this piece of mathematics (later I found the book, but I loaned it so someone, and it, shall we say, went into the ministry) and, as I mentioned in the first line of this post, it had a profound effect on me.

What he proved, among several other things, was that no logical system can be complete. You can always ask questions within a system that the system can’t answer.

Another way of putting this is that all systems contain statements that are true within the system but you can’t prove that they are true. A corollary of this was that you could generate contradictory statements and still be following the rules of the system.

(Still with me?) Gödel showed that a logical system gets into trouble when it makes self-referential statements. Statements that refer to themselves. And that’s what this comic contains an example of.

Two outcomes of this proof (of many): You will never have 100% bug-free software, and the problem of free will versus God’s sovereignty will never be solved by any living theologian. Whitehead and Russell did figure a way around the proof, but it’s not very practical for us here on earth. You can get around the incompleteness if the system is infinite. Think about that!

I’ll do my best to make the next post lighter reading.

PS—Here’s a simpler example. Is it breaking news or not?

Mutts - 04/19/2017

The Most Broken Rule in English

—or so I’m told. In fact, I read somewhere that we have more words with -ei- than with -ie! I wouldn’t even have mentioned this poor rule except I ran into a cartoon about it:

So why the part about ‘except after c’? Certain Latin words begin with c followed by a vowel, and they ended up in English with an e immediately after the c. Hence conceive, perceive, receive, and so on.

Some other exceptions to this rule: eight, reign, neighbor, weigh, weight, freight, feign, neigh, vein, deign, veil, beige, sheik, sleigh, feint, and lots more. At least these are all pronounced -ay. Hmm…

Notice that a lot of the words have a -gh? Maybe we could make a rule about -ei- that refers to -gh. —Nah, that would create even more problems, right?

You can also get an -ei- when a syllable intervenes, such as deionize and absenteeism.

To save you having to look it up, here’s a link to a list with more than a thousand of them. Not all the words are common, but you might enjoy looking over the list. Once anyweigh. Oops.

Tricky Plurals

Today’s lesson is tricky. Maybe even boring! The problem is with the difference between “each,” “every,” and “all.” These words can appear when you refer to a group of things, including things in a list. This tempts you to use a plural verb, especially if you mention the group itself. But “each” refers to the items one at a time, and though “every” refers to them as individual parts of the whole group, they are both singulars, so they get singular verbs.

If you want a plural verb with a group, use “all” or “some.” (If it’s not a group, “all” can be singular: All of the cake is eaten!)

So:

Each of the computers is shut down. (Not Each of the computers are shut down.)
Every one of the computers is shut down. (Not …are shut down)
All of the computers are shut down.

Let’s try a trickier one:

Opening the file, reading the file, and deleting the file—each is a separate module.
Each of opening the file, reading the file, and deleting the file is a separate module.
Every one of opening the file, reading the file, and deleting the file is a separate module.
All of opening the file, reading the file, and deleting the file are separate modules.

Just remember, “each” and “every” are singulars, and “all” is a plural when you refer to a group.

A Surplus of Hyphens

lately I’ve been seeing a lot of three-word phrases unnecessarily hyphenated. Here’s an example:

Once it’s all said and done, you’ll have peace-of-mind knowing the contents on your computer are protected.

Sorry, those hyphens aren’t necessary. A couple more: inch-by-inch, time-of-day, up-to-date, over-and-over. These would all make fine compound adjectives, but don’t hyphenate them unless they are adjectives! For those hyphens to be correct, the writer of that sentence would need something like:

Once it’s all said and done, you’ll have a peace-of-mind situation knowing the contents on your computer are protected.

Those other examples might be inch-by-inch examination, time-of-day readout, up-to-date message, over-and-over excuses. An exercise: when you see one of these, supply your own noun the adjective phrase to modify. But when they’re by themselves, don’t hyphenate them.

Keep your Thoughts Together

English is a relatively uninflected language, so word order is important. In declarative sentences, for example, we put the subject first most of the time, and the verb after it. It can get tricky when we insert modifiers. The rule is to put modifiers as close to what they modify as possible. Here’s an example of breaking this rule:

After President George W. Bush announced a plan to return to the Moon and move on to Mars in 2004, NASA began to consider how best to carry out that vision. ​

We moved to Mars in 2004? What is this, science fiction? I suppose the likelihood that most readers would know that we’re not on Mars yet would make them think a bit to figure out what did happen that year. But as a writer you want the information to flow into your readers’ brains effortlessly. So put that date where it goes, at the beginning:

In 2004, after President George W. Bush announced a plan to return to the Moon and move on to Mars, NASA began to consider how best to carry out that vision.

Now the readers can tell exactly what the writer means without having to interrupt themselves to figure out what’s going on.

Compose and Comprise

I’ve been posting things that people get wrong a lot lately, and here’s another one, that someone (the folks at This Day in History) almost got right! They seem to know the way most people get this wrong, and they avoid that: NEVER use “is comprised of”! That’s a pretentiousism. (You may say “is composed of” when appropriate. See the last rule below.)

The winning teams from those regions comprise the Final Four, who meet in that year’s host city to decide the championship.

But they still got it backwards. Here are the rules:

Use comprise when you start with the whole thing and then mention its parts. It means “is made up of.”

Use compose when you start with the parts (winning teams) and then say what they make (The Final Four). You may use “is composed of” if you have a need to put the whole thing first and the parts second and you don’t want to use comprise. So, “The ‘Final Four’ is composed of the winning teams from each region” is correct.

 

Eager or Anxious

Here’s a pair of words that a lot of people get wrong. First, the comic (he gets it wrong).

Both anxious and eager refer to anticipating something in the future, but they are different in an important way:

Eager means looking forward to something with pleasure

Anxious means looking forward to something with fear.

I’m eager for you all to get this right, but I’m a little anxious that not everyone will.

 

Moving To New Jersey

Moving From Brooklyn To New Jersey Ain’t  No Joke!

kearny-new-jersey-road-mapSo I wanted get this out there before I forget. I have done a lot of standup routines in and around Brooklyn over the years and have made some amazing friends. A close friend of mine recently made a move from Williamsburg to Kearny New Jersey where she will continue doing standup on the weekends while attending nursing school during the week.

She hired a moving company to transport her furniture and belongings so we didn’t have to drive a U-Haul truck for 45 minutes through the Newark-New Jersey City Turnpike. Traveling from Brooklyn to New Jersey  is stressful in itself, doing it in a moving truck is a nightmare!

We left a day early and took an alternate route north to hang out in Manhattan for the day. The comedy was non stop on that drive, we laughed and joked our way through the city, honking and flipping off every one that deserved a bird!

We stopped at the Gotham Comedy Club for one last standup routine before heading on over to Kearny. We laughed our tails off all night, it was such a great show!

gotham comedy club ny

The next morning we woke up early and continued our venture east, we had to get there before Bluebell Relocation got there with her furniture. We still had to unlock the doors of her new place and get it ready for the move in. When we got there the guys had arrived early and already started unloading the moving truck. They helped us get everything situated and even helped me fix the drawer I broke on her work desk.

It was a fun move, one I will remember for years to come. It felt like a scene from Thelma & Louise! We were two comedy bandits out on the open roads, we felt free, we had a laugh, and we got her moved into her new place safely.

I’ll miss that girl in Brooklyn, but now I have an excuse to visit Kearny! Moving is a serious business, and that move was No Joke ;^}

Learn the Best Way To Sell Gas and Petroleum Leases to Make Additional Income

It appears that everybody knows someone who is experiencing financial issue or is experiencing a . Many are have taken the barter- trade course of Craigslist to supply the extras for others and their family decided to rent rooms or sell things of property.

A lot of people decide to sell gas and oil leases as a simple method to create additional income from land they invested in. As the weight of mineral production or oil extraction and investigation prices are set upon the business rather than the individual working interests are good for the property owner. People may determine to sell oil and gas leases in exchange for a percentage of the profits of the property which investigation businesses have agreed to put money into to gas and oil exploration companies.

If you’ve seen a single pump jack and ever driven down a highway, common in places like West Texas, then you definitely have seen a land owner who has let his property to an oil company. Because of the high level of geological diversity across America there is an excellent opportunity that wherever property is owned by you, oil and gas leases can be sold by you to interests that are working – efficiently producing sales with little to no initial investment.

With an increasing requirement for energy generation many land owners, particularly in the Southern United States, pick to sell gas and oil leases. The typical royalty is about 1/8th of the generation – meaning that about $125,000 per $1,000,000 per working interest is created for petroleum and gas royalty. This can be rather the substantial gain for little-to-no upfront investment. Usually the investigation/extraction business shoulders the logistical burden of processing the website, which might necessitate expertise and specialized equipment which is usually not possessed by the landowner that is typical.

It may be in your interest to talk to a mineral or petroleum and gas investigation service in your area if you possess property. Run and you may want to contact your own survey that is geological. A lot of people are not even conscious of the makeup of their property and for little-to-no price you could find yourself sitting upon a gold mine. 89 Energy is the top source to assess your petroleum and gas lease to optimize your strength withdrawal.