Math is kind of an easy subject to be able to to see how these different cultures though about things very differently than we did. There's zero. There's the idea that unit fractions are the only possibility. Negative numbers. Irrational numbers. My personal favorite, infinity. Each one really requires a paradigm shift. It's hard to think about, that they didn't just not use zero, they never conceived of the possibility of something like zero.

Yeah, really interesting.

I think that the problem with imaginary and real numbers is that those words mean very different things to the English majors among us. For me if you use the word imaginary, it has the same level of "realness" as my daydreams or "playing pretend"-- it seems that you have to have a belief (or at least a suspension of disbelief) that the "imaginary" are "real".

As if imaginary numbers are Narnia and Santa Claus and real numbers are England and our parents, and while I believe that Narnia and Santa Claus exist, I don't believe that they actually exist in the physical world, just that those ideas have something special about them that describes a human truth. And I feel like, with imaginary numbers being something you can work with to get actual electricity, I am being told that Santa Claus is an actual man who lives on the North Pole. And my brain just sort of explodiates.

I don't remember very well. I think you can use them to introduce a new dimension to a calculation. I believe one example is introducing phase into the math of AC electrical circuits.

For someone who is a very visual learner, this kind of stuff makes me want to cry. Do. Not. Understand.

History of math is way cool, though.

I think that the problem with imaginary and real numbers is that those words mean very different things to the English majors among us.

Yeah, it's unfortunate naming. You gotta think of neutral names like star-bellied numbers and plain-bellied numbers.

Some people, I'm not saying who, are bigoted against numbers that aren't in the real set.

Woot! Down with letter-appropriating imaginary "numbers"!

::runs screaming from the math talk::

I'm a big fan of quantum mechanics, so imaginary numbers don't present much of a problem. The thing I love about quantum mechanics is the ability to perfectly predict experiments and not have a clue what the fuck is actually going on.

And it's been well-known for some time that MJ was not the bio father of his first two kids, and probably not of the third, for that matter.

It is? I was wondering, but I didn't think I knew that official.

I think its commonly assumed. In the few pictures of MJ's kids they appear to be very light-skinned -- but a lot of mixed race people are very light skinned. I don't know that he ever had a press release about it.

The thing I love about quantum mechanics is the ability to perfectly predict experiments and not have a clue what the fuck is actually going on.

I hear the biggest haters of quantum mechanics are the cat census takers.

This is way off topic-- but

My city's bus website has this feature called "Next Bus" where you put in the time and your stop, and it tells you the next five buses coming to that stop.

Until last week, when it started giving you the PREVIOUS five buses. The buses you HAVE ALREADY MISSED.

So to get the next bus, I have to change the time incrementally until I get some buses that are after the current time. I just had to do "next bus" for 6:10 in order to see that a bus is coming at 5:44.

I actually emailed them to let them know, but I got no response and it is driving me nuts!

Maybe they are using imaginary numbers?