Slashdot Mirror
Escher and Elliptic Curves
melquiades writes "Mathematician Hendrik Lenstra was struck by the blank spot in M. C. Escher's Print Gallery . Why is the spot blank there, he wondered, and what should go in it? Although Escher, who had only a high-school mathematics background, drew the picture by brilliant and methodical intuition, the mathematical machinery underlying the image turned out to be elliptic curves (which come up in factorization, cryptography, and the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem). Lenstra and his colleagues were able to generate several breathtaking possible completions for the missing space. Read the story at the ever-registration-required NYT."
PLEASE! How anal can you get? it's art. sure the curves can be explained. What shape can't? Oh, look, that building's in the shape of a box. should we mathematically describe it? NO! Why not? Because it doesn't matter ! I'm an electrical engineer, and thus somewhat anal, but i'm not so bad that i have to go out and look for things to be anal about.
Okay - you want to be a doctor, you have to work for a health authority, you need a degree.
You want to be an architect, wow - guess what - you need a degree. Lawyers too? No shit sherlock!
All these are professions which are exclusive and involve working wither for a boss or for the Man. These do not constitute doing something for yourself, creating something new, bringing a fresh view to the world. These involve TAKING A JOB. I dont think the original poster was talking about simply getting a job - he was talking about doing something special.
If you think being a architect or doctor is something special, I'd have to disagree - there are plenty more of THEM out there - who gives a fuck if you turn into another?