Professor Norbert Blum of University of Bonn has published a paper seeking to show P != NP: A Solution of the P versus NP Problem
I have no ability to critique the paper, though I did skim through parts of it. Complexity theory has progressed tremendously since I studied it as an undergraduate in the early 1980's.
But here are a few links, for those who are interested:
Wow.
Have you already watched the Vice News Tonight mini-documentary on the events in Charlottesville?
It's really powerful, really disturbing, really hard to watch. I don't know a lot about Vice News Tonight, but apparently it's an independent journalism effort receiving funding (and air time) from HBO. This is the first and only Vice News Tonight documentary I've ever watched.
I was really moved by the Vice News Tonight reportage, and by the work of correspondent Elle Reeve, about whom I knew nothing before seeing that report. She did some very fine reporting, I think.
I'm paying particular attention to this issue all of a sudden because my daughter now (since 1 month ago) lives in Richmond, Virginia, just one mile from Monument Avenue, the probable next locus of confrontation.
I haven't ever visited Richmond, but hope to do so one day, now that my daughter lives there.
In the meantime, I'm paying a lot more attention to events in Virginia that I did before.
As are we all.
Over more than three decades, Tony Hillerman wrote a series of absolutely wonderful detective novels set on the Navajo Indian Reservation and featuring detectives Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee.
Recently, I learned that, after Hillerman's death, his daughter, Anne Hillerman, has begun publishing her own novels featuring Leaphorn, Chee, and the other major characters developed by her father, such as Officer Bernadette Manuelito.
So far, she has published three books, the first of which is Spider Woman's Daughter.
If you loved Tony Hillerman's books, I think you will find Anne Hillerman's books lovely, as well. Not only is she a fine writer, she brings an obvious love of her father's choices of setting, of character(s), and of the Navajo people and their culture.
I'm looking forward to reading the other books that she has written, and I hope she continues writing many more.
I was starting to get interested in Fallout 4, which seems like a fairly interesting game.
But, I just got Windows 10 Creators Update installed.
Which, you might think, would be a good thing!
Unfortunately, it seems to have been the kiss of death for Fallout 4.
This is not the first bad experience I've had with the Fallout games. Fallout New Vegas was totally unplayable on my machine, as well.
When will I learn?
Start by reading the memo itself.
You may find it hard to read. I confess I skimmed a few parts, but I carefully read the "Suggestions" section at the end.
Then, here are some links you can chase.
Lots to think about here.
I've been trying to put my finger on why Iain Pears's Arcadia is such an engrossing and entertaining book.
For one thing, it's a book that you can enjoy in many different ways:
Uhm, that's a lot of pretty wonderful books to compare Arcadia to.
Yet I don't feel it's unfair to put Arcadia in the midst of such a discussion; Pears is a superb writer and pulls off these various technical exploits with flair and ease.
But I'd like to suggest that Arcadia's main interest lies in a slightly different direction, something suggested less by the above comparisons but more by Yuvah Noah Harari's Sapiens.
Harari, as you will recall if you've read Sapiens, advances the premise that what makes Homo Sapiens unique is that we are creatures who can envision, imagine, and communicate about things that don't (yet?) exist. That is: Sapiens can invent fiction; Sapiens can tell stories.
I think Pears is fascinated by that most basic of questions that faces writers of fiction: can a story actually change the world?
Early on, we are introduced to our protagonist, Henry Lytten, who has had a number of careers in the past, but now entertains himself by working on his book, a passion he's had since his youth, when he used to read "tales of knights and fair maidens, of gods and goddesses, of quests and adventures."
Regularly, he meets with his friends in the pub; they are all storytellers, and they discuss their efforts. This week, it is Lytten's turn:
"Very well, gentlemen, if you could put your drinks down and pay attention, then I will explain.""An entire sociology of the fantastic." Oh, my, that is a gorgeous turn of phrase."About time."
"In brief..."
"Surely not?"
"In brief, I am creating the world."
He stopped and looked around. The others seemed unimpressed. "No goblins?" one asked hopefully.
Lytten sniffed. "No goblins," he said. "This is serious. I want to construct a society that works. With beliefs, laws, superstitions, customs. With an economy and politics. An entire sociology of the fantastic."
But: creating the world? Constructing a society? How does this actually work, in practice?
Later, Pears tries to explain this in more detail.
I spent many years reading -- really reading, I mean, in libraries at a wooden desk, or curled up on a settee with a little light, holding the book in my hands, turning the pages, glass of brandy, warm fire, all of that. Anyway, I was reading La Cousine Bette by Balzac (which I also recommend) and was struck by how convincing were both the characters and the situations he described. I wondered whether Balzac had taken them from personal observation and simply amended real people and circumstance to serve his purpose.Then it dawned on me in a moment of such excitement I can remember it perfectly well to this day. Of course he had done that; he had transferred reality into his imagination. But -- and this was my great insight -- he must, at the same time, have transferred his imagination into reality. Clearly, in an infinite universe every possibility must exist, including Balzac's. Imagining Cousin Bette called her into being, although only potentially. The universe is merely a quantity of information; imagining a fictional character does not add to that quantity -- it cannot do so by definition -- but does reorganize it slightly. The Bette-ish universe has no material existence, but the initial idea in Balzac's brandy-soaked brain then spreads outwards: not only to those who read his books, but also, by implication, backwards and forwards. Imagining Cousin Bette also creates, in potential, her ancestors and descendants, friends, enemies, acquaintances, her thoughts and actions and those of everybody else in her universe.
This is as marvelous and compelling a vision of the power of the imagination as I could ever want.
Of course, Pears knows that it isn't, certainly, as simple as that.
Not many people, I suppose, have even the remotest chance of seeing their literary creation in the flesh. Henry is convinced that Shakespeare knew his Rosalind personally in some guise, but that is quite rare. I am sure Dickens would have jumped at the chance of some time in the pub with Mr. Pickwick. No doubt Jane Austen would have got on like a house on fire with Mr. Darcy, and what about Bram Stoker spending an evening chatting away to Count Dracula over a cup of cocoa.
Things move on, and there is some folderol about time travel, and the multiple universes hypothesis, and other notions of that sort, but really, Pears is after something simpler.
Something more fundamentally human.
Something more fundamentally powerful.
Something more fundamentally literary:
"Nothing could happen, because there was no cause of anything happening. Similarly, without effects, there could be no causes. That was to ensure it could have no past or future.""She got it wrong?"
"No. That girl messed it up, and you don't seem to have helped just now either."
"Rosie? How?"
"She walked into it. You say hello, they say hello back, which they otherwise would not have done. Cause and effect, you see. Anyone who says hello must be real. They must have parents, grandparents, all the way back. That girl started this frozen experiment moving and developing, and that is causing it to join up to the past and future. When I arrived, the effects had already spread back that far. it is now clear the shock waves have spread very much further."
You say hello, they say hello back; anyone who says hello must be real.
What a beautiful sentiment.
What a marvelous illustration of the magnificence and wonder and joy of communication, of imagination, and of storytelling.
Arcadia is a book you can enjoy on many levels.
I certainly did.
I hope you can find a few minutes to read this wonderful article by Aditya Shetty: More Than a Brand Name and a Tech Stack: What I Learned During My Engineering Internship at Salesforce.
Aditya sat at the next desk to mine during his summer at Salesforce, and I really enjoyed getting to know him during a brief summer that went by very fast.
He's already a very good software engineer; I think he will be a great one, assuming that's what he decides to do.
