Irony

I’d like to recommend the song An Ironic Filk by my friend Nat. It is to the tune of Ironic by Alanis Morissette, hilariously highlighting how the only ironic thing about the song is how Alanis completely misunderstood the meaning of irony!

Irony’s about incongruity,
Not annoyances, mistakes or real tragedy …

Full lyrics here and now there’s even an mp3!

Chaos

I finished the book “Chaos” by James Gleick today. It took me a while to get through it – such a heavy-going book, but i’m very glad i made it to the end. For about half the book i was thinking, “Well that’s very nice … but … so what?!” but i think i got it by the end. My opinion of the term ‘chaos’ has certainly changed significantly in that i now regard chaos as ordered and meaningful; quite different to randomness. I read an article on Madeline McCann that described the investigation procedure as ‘chaotic’ and for me it really meant something very different than it would have done a month ago; definitely not what the journalist intended to convey!

There is a nice little summary of the book here for anyone who would like to know what it’s about but doesn’t want to go into all the intricate details.

I warn you though, i’m a bit fanatical: i made a dragon curve today out of a piece of paper and an ignorant colleague called it a Mandelbrot! I was like: “A dragon curve has absolutely nothing to do with the Mandelbrot set! For a start, the Mandelbrot set uses complex numbers!!” So if you want to sound knowledgeable, be sure you know the basics!! ;)