Look around you at everything you know. The buildings and structures in our cities and towns that we are so familiar with all have foundations that thrust deep down into the Earth. The paths and roads upon which we drive and walk on are built upon 'solid ground'. All of which leads us onto thinking how permanent and constant we all generally believe the Earth below our feet to be.
English, along with many other languages, has many idioms that use the word "ground" as a definite and perhaps immutable base. The moral high ground, keeping ones feet on the ground, hit the ground running, launching a project from the ground, breaking new ground and have the ground cut from under them are perfect examples.
When the Earth shakes and the very ground you have relied upon all your life for a stable foundation becomes unstable and the city shakes all around you, it becomes something of a difficult concept to maintain belief. We all know about tectonic plates and so understanding the causes in a scientific way is no hardship.
What is shaken besides the Earth is our tether to a stable foot hold.
So many things seem to have fallen apart just lately and it seems at times that I walk through the broken dreams and ruined lives of so many people. Perhaps the girl in the mirror is fortunate in so many ways. Yet I, as any other can say that those coffee machines the world over hates me when I burn my tongue on the coffee or it tastes like plastic or it comes out of the dispenser half full. They don't really hate me of course but it's a human thing with a distorted perspective!
The background image for my 'Jazz in the ruins' picture was 'Akihabara' and taken from here.
I find that I am in a power saving mode. I am cutting all needless things and trying to save energy where I am able. I have unplugged items that I rarely use, such as the hi-fi and the DVD player. I do not use stand-by modes anymore. I try to be quicker in the shower to use less hot water and I am hanging up our laundry on the rails rather than use the dryer.
Save energy - setsuden! ( 節電 )
There are such things you can rely upon. Two plus two will always equal four. If you put two cakes on my table and I put two more cakes on my table we would never be surprised to count four cakes in total. Are the laws of arithmetic definite things?
Above, or perhaps below the philosophy of "what is reality", we can say that we are real (to some extent and living of course in the 'real world') and so is my table and so are the four cakes that sit upon it creating within us such mouth-watering desire of Pavlov proportions. Albert Einstein stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
I can show you the table and the cakes and we would both agree that we both and those things are real but how can I show you a number? I can write them down as a set of symbols on a paper but as much as we can hold each other or grab the table or eat the cake, we cannot hold a number.
If, one hundred million years ago, two dinosaurs were walking to the river to drink and they met two other dinosaurs there already drinking then there would be four drinking dinosaurs and saying it this way we can confidently say that this math is above and beyond human constructs as far as two plus two equaling four.
Oh yes, mathematics the science evolved from such things as our counting and measuring and taking account of things, of this there is no doubt but it is simply us recording what we saw. Two coins from him and two coins from her would give the recipient four coins.
Imagine then if on my empty table you placed two cakes and I placed two cakes and we counted and found there to be five cakes. We would both assume that we mis-counted or perhaps a cake was already on the table before we placed ours there. If then two friends join us to share the cakes and we find there are five people sitting at the table and then from this ground floor we all climb the stairs up two floors and find ourselves on floor three we are going to reluctantly admit that between yesterday and today, the laws of math have changed. It's a freaky thought that my two hands and your two hands would make one of us quite abnormal.
At the risk of a pun, I am glad that there is always something we can count on!
If we can't rely on the ground being solid all the time at least I hope we can rely on the numbers.
I saw this beauty in numbers on the net and thought I'd copy them here for you to share.
1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111
9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888
And finally, take a look at this symmetry:
1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111=12345678987654321
Pretty little patterns! Isn’t that how math should be?
I recall reading "after the quake", a collection of short stories by Murakami Harukisome some time ago and found the understanding of the deeper levels a little difficult until I read it again a little later.
There is a new book out, '2:46 Aftershocks', and is a collection of stories from real people in our recent quake. The total purchase price of this book goes to the Japanese Red Cross, a well worthy cause.
If you are interested then please think about buying this book or downloading this book for your Kindle.
If you have other preferred methods of reading it then you may download the kindle reader application for your favorite hardware here:
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