Book of Days: asher553

New version of the practice project I've been working on, computing Exponent, Sine, and Cosine functions using the Taylor series. This version has revised (and I hope clearer) comments, and makes full use of the ternary operator (in fact, nested ternaries) to compactly generate the alternating positive and negative terms for Sine and Cosine.

https://onlinegdb.com/slx0FfG8V

In the beginning verses of the Bible, we see the Creator fashioning the world, and man in it, bringing forth first chaos, then order, then complexity.

One thing that stands out about this chapter, as has been noted often, is the role of Divine speech in the act of creation. The Word of G-d is the instrument that fashions order out of primal chaos. Dennis Prager (Genesis: God, Creation, and Destruction, pp. 1-3) lists a number of ways in which Genesis differs from all pre-Biblical creation stories: for example, the Creator is separate from nature, is not "born", and is completely de-sexualized.

Zvi Grumet (Genesis: From Creation to Covenant, pp.4 - 5) shows that the six days of Creation "are actually two cycles of three days each, with the second paralleling the first", and explains that "this sense of structure, pattern, order, and planning is intentional, and stands in stark contrast to many ancient Mesopotamian creation stories."

The order of Creation is logical, not chronological. Steinsaltz (The Steinsaltz Humash, p.10, note on v. 20) points out that the creatures created after the fourth day "would not grow and develop blindly, like vegetation, but would move and have some measure of will." I'll add that all of the creatures created after the fourth day (when the heavenly bodies were created as distinct light sources) have eyes - unlike plants, which can "see" only light and darkness.

Another thing I'd like to point out here is the role of number. Already, in just the fifth verse of the Bible, we've started counting: "... and it was evening, and it was morning, one day." And each following day is numbered in succession. People sometimes say that "the Bible is not a book of science" - well, maybe not, but there sure are a lot of numbers in it.

Here, in this very first occurrence of numbers in the Bible, what is being measured is time, and that with a specific purpose: to involve man in the process of the Creation. Although the commandment to observe the Sabbath is not made explicit until later, it is first mentioned at the end of the Creation story (at the beginning of Chapter 2).

In fact, even before the Sabbath, we're told that the luminaries were created "for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years." That is, man is expected to observe the regular processes of nature and study their patterns. He is to create a calendar. (And in fact, Jewish tradition understands this commandment to mean that the calendar must incorporate three elements: the solar cycle, the lunar cycle, and the week - that is, a purely numerical element which is not dependent on natural phenomena but is reckoned by the mind of man alone.)

The Creation story of Genesis is profoundly spiritual, affirming our place in the order of Creation. It is deeply moral, calling on us to act in accord with the will of the Supreme Being. And, too, it is supremely scientific in its worldview, inviting us to engage cognitively with the processes of the world around us.

Genesis comes to teach us, not a mere collection of disconnected "facts", but rather how to think about the universe: as a theatre of unfolding, orderly events that can be known and understood - at least in part - by the mind of man.

Whoa, two weeks since my last journal entry. It's been a little bit rough: we were having a very mild winter up until mid-February, and then BAM! Since Valentine's day it's been snow, and more snow, and more snow, with occasional rounds of freezing rain.

It's not like in Portland, where you get a couple of inches and wait for the city to scare up a sand truck or a snow plow, and your biggest danger is other drivers who don't know how to drive in the snow. Here, people own 4x4s and snowplows, and even then the smart ones stay indoors when the roads get bad. Both of my co-workers (the two women who work in the office downstairs) missed a couple of days of work, and then both got stuck when they did come in.

I live on the grounds (lucky me), so for me it isn't a matter of not being able to get to work, it's a matter of not being able to get away.

But I've been making the most of my downtime, and when I'm not busy shoveling snow for Mr. Boss or helping Mrs. Boss with the housework, I'm busy learning the basics of Windows and Android development in Visual Studio and Android Studio.

Yesterday evening I had a big moment of success when I got an application to run on my Android phone. (It was a matter of learning how to enable developer mode, so that the phone could be accessed through the USB connection.) There was something very satisfying about seeing my very simple app appear on the screen of the Samsung.

I'm already pretty comfortable with the elements of "programming", as in, if-statements, loops, strings, number types, and so on. Mainly I need to master the practical, nuts-and-bolts skills of using the IDE, building a well-designed UI, debugging, and deploying the app - and of course collaborating with other developers. My goal for the end of this year is to have gone from 'programming as a hobby' to 'development as a marketable job skill'.

We've got about another week of crappy weather ahead of us, according to the forecast. With luck, I may be able to get down to Scappoose, or (dare I hope) even Portland next Sunday. If not, at least by two weeks from now we should finally be done with this mess.

Genesis. 2:18 - 20. "... he did not find a helper corresponding to him." The subject of the sentence is Adam, as the Artscroll translation recognizes with the uncapitalized "he". G-d has already declared an intention to "make" a companion for Adam. The purpose of introducing the animals to Adam is to encourage the as yet undifferentiated Adam to create a shared language language so that he/she/they will be able to communicate. Adam is presumably looking for, and "not finding", a companion in the natural world, unaware that the Creator has already made other plans. The two differing intentions - Adam's and G-d's - are beautifully harmonized in v. 23, where (male) Adam gives a name to his new companion, "woman" [אשה], because she was taken from man [איש]. There's a tradition that if you take the names of man and woman [אשה|איש] and take away the name of G-d [י-ה], all you're left with is fire [שאֵ].

The Federalist. 39 - 40. In 39, Madison (as Publius) argues that the proposed Constitution represents "neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both." In 40, he defends the convention's decision to scrap, rather than revise, the Articles of Confederation.

The Road to Reality (Roger Penrose). Section 5.3. Exponential function expressed as power series; multi-valued logarithms in the complex plane. "There are many different solutions z for a given choice of w in the relation w = e^z." Introduction of the factor 2*pi*i in the exponent, and the derivation of Euler's formula.

Visual Complex Analysis (Tristan Needham). pp. 14 - 17. Derivation of sine and cosine from Euler's formula, and geometrical interpretations.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/the-brain-as-computer-bad-at-math-good-at-everything-else

'f course, the brain didn’t evolve to perform arithmetic. So it does that rather badly. But it excels at processing a continuous stream of information from our surroundings. And it acts on that information—sometimes far more rapidly than we’re aware of. No matter how much energy a conventional computer consumes, it will struggle with feats the brain finds easy, such as understanding language and running up a flight of stairs.

If we could create machines with the computational capabilities and energy efficiency of the brain, it would be a game changer. Robots would be able to move masterfully through the physical world and communicate with us in plain language. Large-scale systems could rapidly harvest large volumes of data from business, science, medicine, or government to detect novel patterns, discover causal relationships, or make predictions. Intelligent mobile applications like Siri or Cortana would rely less on the cloud. The same technology could also lead to low-power devices that can support our senses, deliver drugs, and emulate nerve signals to compensate for organ damage or paralysis. ...'