Complex Numbers (Book)

Blog Calendar

◄ August ► 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

About This Author

Contact Me

Come closer.

Complex Numbers

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:

Write_Mikey_Write!

about 2 hours ago
In response to "Global Domination"

A little girl wearing a Hello Kitty shirt in Middle-of-Nowhere, Siberia will certainly make you wonder how it got there. My grandson has a souvenir t-shirt with a Terex 33-19 "Titan" on it. When it was built in 1973, the Titan was the largest, highest payload capacity truck ever built, a title it held for 25 years. The thing is, the truck on that t-shirt is on display in Sparwood, BC, Canada - over 1000 miles from here, and his mom got the shirt at a local thrift store. Makes me wonder.

Oh, yeah - I thought 'Schrödinger's Hello Kitty' was funny, too.

1 Like

Adherennium Plotting something

about 4 hours ago
In response to "Global Domination"

For whatever warped reason, 'Schrödinger's Hello Kitty' has tickled my funny bone.

3 Like

Brandiwyn🎶

Nov 12, 2024 at 10:50am
In response to "Blond Man's Bluff"

That's interesting about the two spellings of blonde. I always thought blonde referred to the person and blond referred to the hair. But I never bothered to look it up, So you've catered to my lazy today.

3 Like

Kåre เลียม Enga

Nov 9, 2024 at 1:02pm
In response to "It Was a Dark and Starry Night"

Ah... but why did he see those swirls when many of us don't? A totally different discussion... out of thin air... which is a frozen fog today when I gaze out the window.

Humans have great skills of observation; some of us extraordinary skills. Is The Scream depictive or evocative? 😱

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 9, 2024 at 11:04am
In response to "It Was a Dark and Starry Night"

Frankly, I'm more surprised to see reasonably good reporting from CNN. I'd given up on their ability to rein in their tendency toward loaded speech.

2 Like

JayNaNoOhNo

Nov 8, 2024 at 12:00pm
In response to "Bungalow Bash"

For the love of God, what did I just read? That is by far the worst use case of a bungalow I've ever seen, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of front porches—and the size of bungalows.

Was this his point? Nope, I know what his point was. For a guy so worried about presentation, he certainly undercut his own arguement.

1 Like

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 8, 2024 at 9:47am
In response to "Bungalow Bash"

"People don't change their minds on the internet. They usually do that in books, battlefields, or not at all.

Yeah, that's a little bleak."

Bleak and also inaccurate.

1 Like

Kåre เลียม Enga

Nov 7, 2024 at 10:19pm
In response to "Past and Future Intents"

I must live in the present. In the past I daydreamed a lot... probably to escape the bruises of reality; however, I need to be more aware crossing streets or even how I get out of bed (no rapid movements without thinking of consequences).

I can envision a future more peaceful than the present because this time-and-place isn't the only "present" that's ever existed, and I do try to see the larger view (emphasis on 'try').

1 Like

Lilli 🧿 ☕

Nov 7, 2024 at 10:58am
In response to "Past and Future Intents"

If the aforementioned exercises don't help; there's still liquor.

3 Like

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 6, 2024 at 10:22am
In response to "Lo!"

Not gonna lie I need the holiday season chatter.

August 25, 2021 at 12:04am

#1016079

In the Original Klingon

The other day, I promised to create Klingon Bloodwine based on me and my friend's formulation. (Mostly hers.) A bit of background first.

Obviously we didn't invent the concept of Klingon Bloodwine, all glory to the screenwriters of Star Trek.

If you look online, you'll find other recipes. We didn't look for them first, wanting to create something from scratch.

The thought process was a little like this: It should be based on actual wine, specifically red wine. But being Klingon, there needs to be an element of suffering involved, so you have to use hot peppers, the hottest you can stand. More on this later. It also needs to be stronger than Terran wine, something that a Klingon could chug and a human could choke down while pretending to be Klingon. Hence, fortification with a distilled spirit. At the same time, it can't taste entirely like ass, because that would defeat the purpose; if it tastes like a Denebian mudworm's droppings, you're not going to want to drink it again.

Also, we're going by a line from Worf in a later episode of DS9: "I like my bloodwine young and sweet." Double entendres aside, that's the basis for the sweet aspect of this recipe.

Because it's a mixed drink, do not use fancy wine, but do use a standard red, like a merlot or a cab sauv. Maybe even a shiraz. Some sort of rich but dry red. For this, I bought a box of Merlot cardbordeaux, the only time I have ever purchased one for use. Um, yeah, cardbordeaux is my word for boxed wine. I'm not saying it's terrible; I'm saying it's cheap and it's not exactly Château Picard. If you use terrible wine, again, you won't want to drink more.

So. On to the ingredients.

3 slices serrano pepper*
8-10 blueberries (yes, blueberries; trust us on this one)
1 1/2 oz vodka
3/4 oz simple syrup
3/4 oz lemon juice
4 oz red wine

Muddle pepper slices with blueberries. Add vodka, syrup, and lemon juice. Top with wine. Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Qa'pla!

*tastes vary when it comes to hot pepper, obviously. If you don't have much tolerance for it, use less, or use jalapenos. If you love hot peppers, try it with habaneros. If you have Klingon blood, use ghost pepper. It might take some experimentation (even Klingons have scientists) to get the right balance; the idea is to give it a kick but not to cause a warp plasma leak in your mouth.

Modification: I still have lemon simple syrup; I just used a shot of that instead of the syrup/lemon mixture.

I think I'll have another one after I post this.

Appropriately for a Klingon-themed drink, today's semirandom article is about curses.

Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses
Medieval scribes protected their work by threatening death, or worse.

Given the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words.

And words are powerful indeed. Almost as powerful as Klingon bloodwine.

At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures.

Now I wish there were similar curses for bicycle thieves. Scum.

They did not hesitate to use the worst punishments they knew—excommunication from the church and horrible, painful death.

I mean, I know that was kind of a big deal in Europe at the time, but it would be hard to excommunicate me from atheism. Still, while I've accepted the concept of death, I'd rather not have it be horrible and/or painful.

“These curses were the only things that protected the books,” says Marc Drogin, author of Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses. “Luckily, it was in a time where people believed in them. If you ripped out a page, you were going to die in agony. You didn’t want to take the chance.”

One of the movie/TV tropes that used to annoy the fuck out of me was when a character needed a phone number, so they'd go to a place called a "phone booth" and look in a thing called a "phone book." Once they found the number, did they write it on their hand or something? No, they ripped out the entire damn page, thus rendering the phone book less useful if someone needed one of the other hundred or so numbers on that page.

Obviously, that's not a thing anymore, but it bugged me almost as much as when someone would hang up the phone and you heard a dial tone. That never happened in my experience; you just get silence.

But still, phone books were printed and easily replaceable. Not so with medieval manuscripts.

Anyway, the article goes on to describe examples of such curses, and while they're not quite as creative as modern ones like "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits," they were obviously devastating at the time.

Curses, of course, are only curiosities unless you believe in them in the first place. But the interesting thing is that they existed for this particular purpose, and lots of people back then did believe in them.

Of course, lots of people couldn't read back then, so it was probably lost on a good portion of the population. Why steal a book if you can't read? Well, because you can then turn around and sell it, of course. Hope it's worth burning in brimstone.

4 Like • Comment • View 5 comments

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