The New Yorker recently ran a feature on how a couple of mathematicians helped The Met photograph a part of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. That same week, they ran from their extensive archives a 1992 profile of the same mathematicians, brothers David and Gregory Chudnovsky. The Chudnovskys were then engaged in calculating as many digits of pi as they could using a homemade supercomputer housed in their Manhattan apartment. There’s some speculation that director Darren Aronfsky based his 1998 film, Pi, on the Chudnovskys and after reading the above article, there’s little doubt that’s exactly what he did:
They wonder whether the digits contain a hidden rule, an as yet unseen architecture, close to the mind of God. A subtle and fantastic order may appear in the digits of pi way out there somewhere; no one knows. No one has ever proved, for example, that pi does not turn into nothing but nines and zeros, spattered to infinity in some peculiar arrangement. If we were to explore the digits of pi far enough, they might resolve into a breathtaking numerical pattern, as knotty as “The Book of Kells,” and it might mean something. It might be a small but interesting message from God, hidden in the crypt of the circle, awaiting notice by a mathematician.
The Chudnovsky article also reminds me of Contact by Carl Sagan in which pi is prominently featured as well.
According to Wolfram Research’s Mathworld, the current world record for the calculation of digits in pi is 1241100000000 digits, held by Japanese computer scientists Kanada, Ushio and Kuroda. Kanada is named in the article as the Chudnovskys main competitor at the time.
(Oh, and as for patterns hidden in pi, we’ve already found one. It’s called the circle. Just because humans discovered circles first and pi later shouldn’t mean that the latter is derived from the former.)
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art NOW THEN online exhibit. “What did professional comic artists draw like when they were 12 years old”?
Among the featured designs at the National Design Triennial was the Demeter Fragrance Library. The company, run by Christophers Brosius and Gable, puts out perfumes, lotions, soaps, candles, and body gels with scents like Creme Brulee, Wet Garden, Funeral Home, Dirt, and Sugar Cookie. According to this article in Happi, the New Zealand fragrance was developed for the Lord of the Rings movie and Demeter’s odd scents might have other uses:
Tomato, for example, was found to be an odor absorber. Some of the edible fragrances are said to help curb cravings. And though the company has yet to perform psychological tests, researchers said the Dirt fragrance made Alzheimer patients more lucid.
Perhaps I should tag along with Meg the next time she goes to Sephora. (Never thought I’d find myself saying that…)
With the cold weather officially here in NYC, there’s few better ways to spend a weekend afternoon than to sample one of the city’s many museums. Yesterday, Meg and I went to see the Design Triennial (catalog) at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. The curators did a nice job in highlighting good, solid, creative work, avoiding the temptation to include pieces that might have been highly creative but have yet to prove themselves useful in the world (this was a design *review* after all).
The Triennial runs until January 25, 2004; I recommend checking it out should you find yourself in NYC between now and then.
When I was in Washington D.C. a few years ago, I was all jazzed up to visit the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Imagine my disappointment when I learned the Cooper Hewitt was in NYC, not in DC.
I finally got the chance to check it out today, and I was again disappointed. They didn’t have their permanent collection on display, only an exhibit on global hotels which wasn’t all that impressive. Maybe I missed something….
Socials & More