Random Playlist Song: Cambridge Singers - Donkey Carol
***
I was asking someone what she liked to see on this blog - I aim to please and cater to my audience, after all - and her response was:
"I like your travelogues. And your daily 'random links' type stuff is interesting."
Interestingly, those are precisely the things some people dislike. Oh well. I shall endeavour to write on a good mix of topics.
***
Comment a friend made some time back (on joining an elitist group):
"yes, i believe we'd know all about elitist societies
you were gep too right"
Hahaha.
***
Jiekai on Why those China girls worry me:
"Sadly her opinion isn't very far off from that off the average Singaporean woman. How in the world did the ST allow such unvarnished prejudice onto its pages?... A controlled press makes for more responsible reporting? *cough*"
Indeed. So much for responsible reporting.
***
Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism
"Despite its pretensions to cool-headed rationality, modern atheism originated in the irrational, psychological needs of a few thinkers. Paul Vitz subjects the apostles of atheism to the same psychological analysis with which they attempted to debunk religious belief. The psychological source of their militant atheism, he shows, was the absence of a good father. Starting with Freud's "projection theory" of religion—that belief in God is merely a product of man's desire for security—Professor Vitz argues that psychoanalysis actually provides a more satisfying explanation for atheism. Disappointment in one's earthly father, frequently leads to a rejection of God. A biographical survey of influential atheists of the past four centuries shows that this "defective father hypothesis" provides a consistent explanation of "intense atheism." A survey of the leading intellectual defenders of Christianity over the same period confirms the hypothesis. The book concludes with an intriguing comparison of male and female atheists and a consideration of other psychological factors that can contribute to atheism."
Hahahahaha
***
A mother passing by her daughter's bedroom was astonished to see the bed was nicely made and everything was picked up.
Then she saw an envelope propped up prominently on the center of the bed. It was addressed, "Mom." With the worst premonition, she opened the envelope and read the letter with trembling hands:
Dear Mom,
It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing to you. I had to elope with my new boyfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Dad and you. I've been finding real passion with John and he is so nice-even with all his piercings, tattoos, beard, and his motorcycle clothes. But it's not only the passion mom, I'm pregnant and John said that we will be very happy. He already owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter.
He wants to have many more children with me and that's now one of my dreams too.
John taught me that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone and we'll be growing it for us and trading it with his friends for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want.
In the meantime, we'll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so John can get better; he sure deserves it!!
Don't worry Mom, I'm 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Some day I'm sure we'll be back to visit so you can get to know your grandchildren.
Your daughter,
Judith
PS: Mom, none of the above is true. I'm over at the neighbor's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than my report card that's in my desk center drawer. I love you! Call when it is safe for me to come home.
***
Illuminating extract from a book I found on my sister's bookshelf:
"It is well-known medically that some paralyses are 'hysterical' in origin, that is they have a mental rather than physical cause, usually as a result of some severe emotional stress. Disfiguring skin conditions, blindness, apparent inability to heal or speak, and all manner of seeming mental disorders, can also be induced by hysteria, and while to the patient such ailments seem all too real, and may last for many years, they can sometimes be cured by a reversing or neutralizing of the original, debilitating emotional problem. Although treatment with drugs is of course the most usual way of doing this today, other nonetheless well-recognized approaches are via psychotherapy or hypnosis, the 'cure' as effected by the latter often being dramatically sudden.
It has to be acknowledged that even to this day no-one really knows what hypnosis is, whatever individual hypnotists themselves may claim they know. In essence hypnosis appears to be a belief system shared between two individuals, one, the subject, who abandons himself, in terms of his waking consciousness, to the other, the hypnotist, who by taking charge of the patient's unconscious mind may be able to free elements that the patient's consciousness has previously repressed or held back. So-called 'hysterical' individuals often seem to make particularly good hypnotic subjects and consistently the effects of hypnosis upon these can be in direct proportion to the degree of awe in which they hold the hypnotist. While scientists mostly remain reticent about stating anything too positive about hypnosis because of its continuing mysteries and uncertainties, few would deny that it can and does produce some remarkable phenomena, including spectacular 'cures'.
For instance, the now veteran British hypnotist Peter Casson has on his files the case of a woman who, for fifteen years after a major car accident, had been quite unable to close her hand or to grip with it. Several operations had failed to improve her condition, but on the strength of just one hypnosis session with peter Casson she found that she could once again close her hand and use it normally....
An even better attestation of hypnosis's medical potential is a British doctor's highly dramatic use of it as a last resort for a particularly disfiguring skin condition that was well documented, with accompanying photographs, in the British Medical Journal of 23 August 1952. The patient was a sixteen-year-old boy who two years earlier had been admitted to East Grinstead's Royal Victoria Hospital suffering from ichthyosis, a most unsightly condition that from ever since he had been born had covered his body with a black, horny, reptilian layer that was as uncomfortable and evil-smelling as it was disfiguring. Although two attempts at plastic surgery had been made, in both the reptilian layer had quickly replaced the skin that had been freshly grafted, so that even Sir Archibald McIndoe, the most eminent plastic surgeon of the day, pronounced further conventional treatment useless.
By chance, however, the boy's plight came to the notice of a young physician with an interest in hypnosis, Dr A.A.Mason, today a psycho-analyst in Beverly Hills, California. Mason asked if he might at least try hypnosis, and on 10 February 1951, having induced a hypnotic state, he suggested to the youth that his left arm's reptilian layer would disappear. There ensued an extraordinary transformation. Within five days the horny covering was soft, pink and normal for the first time in the boy's life. During the next few weeks hypnotic suggestion was given for the clearance of the reptilian layer on the right arm and then for specific remaining areas of his body, each time with between 50 per cent and 95 per cent success. although the cure was slower than it might have been in the case of, say, a hysterical blindness or paralysis (almost certainly because of the very nature of the disease), it is little short of incredible that it should have happened at all. And a fascinating feature is the fact that, because of ichthyosis's rarity, Dr Mason did not even realize at the time that he was dealing with such a congenital, structural illness. As he has frankly admitted, had he realized he would most likely not have tried hypnosis, because he would have thought it unsuitable for anything so deep-seated. But because he believed he could do it, he succeeded. Accordingly, it is the most striking, possible attestation of what mere words, given the hypnotic state, can do."
***
In response to this question:
For every prime number p there is a number n such that
p = 4*n + 1
or
p = 4*n + 3
Apparently Euler has proven that
For every prime number p for which there is a number n such that
p = 4*n + 1
there are two numbers x and y such that
p = x^2 + y^2
I'd like to see the proof for this proposition.
Someone gave this answer: I have coded this program which demonstrates that for every prime number satisfying p=4*n+1 has a valid pair of x and y such that p=x^2+y^2
#include
#include
#include
#include
void main(void)
{
unsigned int p,n,c,sroot,x,y;
char at_least_one_factor=0;
float p_xx;
for(n=0;n<=16250;n++)
{
p=4*n+1;
sroot=sqrt(p);
at_least_one_factor=0;
for(c=3;c<=sroot;c+=2)
{
if((p % c)==0)
{
at_least_one_factor=1;
break;
}
}
if(at_least_one_factor==0)
{
cout << "n=" << n << setw(8) << "p=" << p;
for(x=1;x<=sroot;x++)
{
p_xx=sqrt(p-x*x);
if((unsigned int)p_xx==p_xx)
{
y=p_xx;
cout << " x=" << setw(3) << x
<< " y=" << setw(3) << y << '\n';
break;
}
}
}
}
cout << "\nEnd.";
getch();
}
Hehehe.
Someone else's response:
It reminds me of the prolbem where a mathmatician, a physicist and a programmer are all asked to prove that all odd numbers are prime.
The mathmatician says, "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5, is prime, 7 is prime, by induction all odds are prime."
The Physicist says that is incorrect and resorts to experimentation He tests 1 and finds it is prime, then finds that 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is...an error in measument..11 is prime, so all odd numbers are prime."
The programmer says that is incorrect and writes a program to prove it. he runs the program and it prints out
"1 is prime"
"1 is prime"
"1 is prime"
"1 is prime"
"1 is prime"
"1 is prime"
"1 is prime"
....
