one's center

A few years ago I felt I was "centered". The "center" is an alluring concept in any world as elliptical as one's life. Or Europe. The center of Europe is the village of Krahule near Kremnica in central Slovakia.

A few days ago, we celebrated the Martin Luther King's day. Reflecting on his legacy, the consensus seems to be that of all the messages he represented, the one that got seriously lost was of non-violence. Sigh.

Some algorithmicist jokes:

How many algorithmicists does it take to screw in a lightblub?
O(1).

What does an algorithmicist photographer ask the subjects to
scream before taking the picture?
Big O.

start at the beginning

It is good to start at the beginning. There is a nearly 4000 year old (oldest known?) fable of Gilgamesh, found inscribed in tablets unearthed in the nineteenth century. It is a beautiful epic of friendship, heroism and self-discovery set in a narrative that has been repeated many, many times in the four millennium of story-telling that has followed it. The recent version by Stephen Mitchell has good reviews, but there are many other versions. Among other things the fable has a veiled description of the Noah's Ark and explains why snakes shed their skin. It is marvelous. In an insightful moment in Star Trek Next Generation (Season 5, Episode 2, Aired Sept 1991, Stardate 45047), Picard recalls the tale of Gilgamesh and narrates it to Darmok. The Old meets The Future. Rest of this blog will be somewhere in-between.