All Things Not Considered

Leonhard Euler

Sunday, April 15, is the 300th birthday of Leonhard Euler (pronounced "oiler"), one of the top three mathematicians to have ever lived, the other two being Friedrich Gauss and Isaac Newton.

Euler gave the world a new foundation in calculus, algebra, number theory, graph theory, geometry, and applied math. He defined modern trigonometry and co-invented the calculus of varations. He is universally regarded as the most prolific mathematician in history and the best algorist ever. He was supreme at discrete mathematics, he created the function notation f(x) along with the e for the base of natural logarithm. Amicable numbers had been known for two thousand years before Euler, and in all that time only 3 pairs were discovered. Euler found 59 more. He Co-discovered the Euler-Maclaurin formula that facilitates calculation of integrals, sums, and series. Euler also developed the first method to estimate the orbit of the moon and he settled a dispute involving 50 decimal places of a long convergent series. He accomplished both these mathematical feats while he was totally blind.

With so many theorems and discoveries attached to his name, Euler will always be remembered for this particular equation:

It is called Euler’s identity and recognized as the most beautiful and most remarkable formula in mathematics.

Euler was a deeply religious man who believed in ‘the divine inspiration of scripture" and never shied away from confronting and arguing with the ‘Freethinkers." There’s a famous story that recounts a brief encounter between Euler and the French philosopher Denis Diderot in St Petersburg academy. The object of the meeting was for both learned men to argue the existence of God. The story goes on to say that Euler barged into the room and said: "Sir, , hence God exists - Reply!" 

Diderot not knowing math and embarrassed by the sarcastic laughter around him, apologized and asked to leave Russia. A request that was promptly honored by the Empress Catherine the Great, who was supposedly present during this brief monologue. This story has been repeated so often that it has gained credibility in the process. But in reality it is and it remains an uncorroborated tale. Diderot was a great philosopher but he was also an accomplished mathematician.  It is very unlikely that he would have stood there without an equally witty retort back to Euler.

Universcale

Have you ever wondered how a proton, the most fundamental component of matter, compares in size to a neutron, or to an amino acid? Have you ever wondered how the solar system's size compares to the Orion Nebula's? Universcale is a cool website that uses the ‘meter’ as the measuring stick to compare different objects that range from the infinitesimally small to the stupendously large.  Universcale is a great educational tool that provides a perspective of things that conceptually are hard to imagine on a single scale.

A great learning experience.

Babel - A Review

Aside from the allegory to the Biblical story of "The Tower of Babel", this movie was an amalgam of subjects and issues and a collage of human drama framed around confusion, lack of understanding, and lack of communication. True to the Biblical parable, the common theme that wove the 3 stories together is one of human despair and tragedy emanating from cultural bias, miscommunication, and misconstrued perceptions. Inarritu, the movie director, adopted the same style of cinematography, story telling, and underlying premise as in his previous movies, ‘Amores Perros’ and ‘21 Grams.’ This leads me to believe that ‘Babel’ is in fact, the 3^rd installment of the trilogy.

It didn't seem like there was one actor you could label as principal in the movie. All of them were as important in the roles they respectively played. Moreover, I thought they all did an incredible job; although, in my opinion, Barraza (the Spanish nanny) was a tad better because of the way she handled the harrowing experience she was put thru and how she made every human emotion come out to life on the screen.

As a Moroccan, I didn't have a lot of objections to how they portrayed Morocco thru the movie. The village was chosen carefully and deliberately to accentuate the desolation and the poverty of a desert when compared to the desert of our cities and desolation of our cosmopolitan hearts. This is very much repeated with the artificial and plastic-like landscape of Tokyo and the dusty and windy village in Mexico. The Tazarine village is pretty much typical of many small villages in Morocco. They are dusty, infrastructure poor, but full of goodhearted, decent, and generous people.

I didn't object to the nakedness of the teenage Japanese girl, which I actually found to be more sad and heartrending than sexual. However, I thought the whole episode of voyeurism, masturbation, and incest was misguided and inappropriate. First, it sends an erroneous message to viewers who don’t know the people in that region of the world. Second, it has no place in the context of the movie theme or its direction.

There was however a scene at the end of the movie that depicts the real nature of the true Moroccan. It took place when Richard (Brad Pitt) handed some money to Anwar (Mohamed Akhzam - the guide) to thank him for standing by him and his wife and helping them thru their horrific ordeal. Anwar politely rejects the generous offer. The camera zooms in as his face fills the white screen. His facial expression conveys a sense of duty to lend a hand and an inappropriateness to take financial advantage of a dreadful incident. Regardless of what one might surmise from that particular scene, I thought it was one of redemption for anything I could have found objectionable with the movie.

3 out of 4 stars.