https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/oct/17/benoit-mandelbrot-obituary

Extract

At the start of his groundbreaking work, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, he asks: “Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.” The approach that he pioneered helps us to describe nature as we actually see it, and so expand our way of thinking.

The world we live in is not naturally smooth-edged and regularly shaped like the familiar cones, circles, spheres and straight lines of Euclid’s geometry: it is rough-edged, wrinkled, crinkled and irregular. “Fractals” was the name he applied to irregular mathematical shapes similar to those in nature, with structures that are self-similar over many scales, the same pattern being repeated over and over. Fractal geometry offers a systematic way of approaching phenomena that look more elaborate the more they are magnified, and the images it generates are themselves a source of great fascination.

Mandelbrot first visualised the set on 1 March 1980 at IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Centre at Yorktown Heights, upstate New York. However, the seeds of this discovery were sown in Paris in 1925, when the mathematicians Gaston Julia, a student of Henri Poincaré, and Pierre Fatou published a paper exploring the world of complex numbers – combinations of the usual real numbers, 1, -1 and so on, with imaginary numbers such as the square root of -1, which Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had labelled “that amphibian between being and not being”. The results of their endeavours eventually became known as Julia sets, though Julia himself never saw them represented graphically.

It was Mandelbrot’s uncle Szolem who initially directed him to the work of Julia and Fatou on what are termed self-similarity and iterated functions. In my documentary The Colours of Infinity, shown on Channel 4 in 1995, Mandelbrot told me how he set about developing his approach: ‘”For me the first step with any difficult mathematical problem was to programme it, and see what it looked like. We started programming Julia sets of all kinds. It was extraordinarily great fun! And in particular, at one point, we became interested in the Julia set of the simplest possible transformation: Z goes to Z squared plus C [where C is a constant number. So Z times Z plus C, and then the outcome of that becomes a new Z while C stays the same, to give new Z times new Z plus C, and so on]. I made many pictures of it. The first ones were very rough. But the very rough pictures were not the answer. Each rough picture asked a question. So I made another picture, another picture. And after a few weeks we had this very strong, overwhelming impression that this was a kind of big bear we had encountered.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/redound-2019-10-07?pronunciation&lang=en_us&dir=r&file=redoun01&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=wotd&utm_content=pron

News from the UK:Hospitals expand

I don’t want to live without you any more
I am sad  and  lonely  for your arms
Can’t you tell me where to find  the way back home

Even if I lay down on this floor
I’d still be breathing, which has little charm
I don’t want to live without you any more

If you  can’t come back  here then  let me  know
I’ll  keep the baby living  and unharmed
Can’t you tell me how  to get back home?

Fairy liquid’s green and full of foam
My child has got no father  and no balm
We don’t want to live without you any more

When you went  you left me with  your comb
The baby’s hair is  growing curly  ,tell the Times
Can’t  they show me, find  the way back home?

There may be reason without any rhymes
My eyes are getting bigger than my mind
I don't want to " live " here  any more
Tell me, find me, bring  our baby  home

I wonder what  rhymes with mosquito
They bit me by the pond, I repeat,oh!
They  live near the lake
Yet the water is fake
I reckon they arw Latins,discreet, oh.

I was awake  all  last night ,those bites  itch
I got some wet ice from the fridge
I stood on my hands
As elastic  has strands
A cartwheel is too large for a midge,

The flesh is most sweet on the male
Do not try to kill flying nails
Keep under cover
Don’t strangle your brother
He is either dead or he  looks very frail

No point in committing a  crime
When  you have forgotten your name
Get famous and rich
Then make your pitch
Think  well before we get blamed

I’ve got just one letter
written in your hand
One short letter
I understand,
One is as infinity
compared to having naught.
I’ll keep this letter
In the museum of my heart.
’ve only got  one photograph
and that is  very old
but to me this photograph
is more valuable than gold
Time has thundered by.
Is it now too late?
But may there be a second chance?
Let’s not  accept  love’s fate.
No matter how we falter,
No matter how we fail
Can we still forgive ourselves,
and rewrite this  sad tale.
One more letter,
One more   heartfelt smile,
That will be sufficient
To rebirth a love grown frail.
For once this love was stronger
Once this love was true;
So now we are wondering
If we may create our love anew

I was born at midnight   just before the Nazis hanged Bonhoeffer
Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Before  people knew about the Holocaust
It’s a bit like that now
No, don’t listen to the News, it will only upset you
And whoever is suffering, you can’t help them
Go and read your novel
Make a cake
See if Marks and Spencer still sell woollen jumpers
Invite someone to dinner.
I suppose I’m among  the youngest of the  people born while Hitler was still in his Bunker
And no-one believed the rumours about Auschwitz
Anyway, was it our concern?
No doubt the day I arrived, a lot of Jewish babies died
So it  makes us know that God is not what we thought
That God was a Jew
That he died too, with the suffering ,weak and lonely
What’s God now?
Did we believe only because we thought  he would help us?
Chance is a fine thing
Especially to God

Seeing the News makes me  growl  round the British
That BJ went to Oxford  means he must  have harassed an Exam paper or ten
As for Eton, it’s too twee for  the Word
Are we  lunatics yet or is the future still fiction?
Did I mean friction?
I am curved round the Clock
How can a maniac rue  the state its idiots?
They say rhymes heal our wounds.Unless we are dead
I can hardly believe my husband dying triggered off Brexit.Is it causation or correlation?
I saw the wheels revolve  but   there was no trigger.Then I felt the bull hit me.Picasso.
I wonder if acupuncture would help the Governed  get sensible
I am glad I am descended from Immigrants.I am not Wringlish at all
Does Denmark have the Right tot Return?
I know my head is Viking but my bones are Celtic.Explain that!
My flesh is Aryan which I am ashamed to tell  you here.Because I am big.
It’s good to see my sister’s crew.Even her daughter is 6 ft high when moving.I feel small then
My sister is very kind to her kin.That is me!

I find your photos floating  in the air.
They land without  permissiom where they please
On the kitchen work top,down armchairs

A visitor may  find at least a pair
They arrive as if you long to tease
I find your photos floating  in the air.

My lost or hidden feelings  still  seem bare
I cannot take it in, he is deceased
By the kitchen work top stands his chair.

I must have dropped a folder over here
From  my mind I cannot find release
 I find his photos floating  in the air.

I write a poem about him on a pier
My sister tidies as her husband  cleans
From the kitchen work  to my chair

I am psychic, I see things  not here
I saw his death arriving   by a wheeze
I find his photos floating  in the air.

Father, husband, sister how death starved
All the people closest I’m deprived
I find your photos floating  everywhere
I feel both joy and sorrow  with deep care

Ian McEwan

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quiddity

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/03/sister-murdered-girl-nina-alice-gross-brexit-police

Extract

“We are talking about a very small number of people who have committed violent and sexual offences,” Gross says. “If we leave the EU without a deal people will be put at risk. We need some sort of guarantee that we will continue to be part of the system we’re part of at the moment. We need a proactive rather than a reactive system.”

The databases the UK currently has access to include ECRIS – the European Criminal Record Information System – and Europol allows UK police and immigration officials access to information about violent killers and sex offenders, and vice versa. If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, access will end. But amid discussion of food shortages and medical hold-ups, the security implications of that fact have been lower on the agenda.

Gross fears that women and girls will be disproportionately affected if the monitoring system for this small but highly dangerous group of offenders is abandoned.

She and her family are at pains to emphasise that they support freedom of movement and are profoundly dismayed that Alice’s case has been exploited for what they view as xenophobic purposes.

Was it Southwold pier from where you smiled
Maybe it was  Deal with sunny sky
I see some coloured houses by the beach
Too small for recognition or to reach
Maybe it’s the weakness of my eye
You looked so happy ,how can you have died?
We took your Dad to Whitby,he was weak
Did you long to go back to the North?
The faces of the Clevelands,your recourse
The edge  of  sea and land, how waves run in
Pulling on our heartstrings,honey,hin.

https://www.marcchagall.net/the-falling-angel.jsp

Beginning:

Marc Chagall returned to Europe in 1946, arriving in Paris. In 1947, he finished The Falling Angel (1923-1947), which had been in the works for almost 25 years. Begun only a short time after Chagall’s emigration from the Soviet Union, it is, in a way, a unified artistic statement for these years, expanded and built upon as Chagall’s art developed. It combines Biblical and Torah lore with the modern world and with Chagall’s personal symbolism in a juxtaposition of images that attempt to summarize the many experiences the artist had over the course of his work on the painting.

When he began it in 1922, with memories of the Russian revolution still fresh, the picture was to have included only the figures of the Jew and the angel and was meant as a representation of the Old Testament vindication of the presence of Evil in the world. Yet, in the years up to the painting’s completion in 1947 the artist increasingly incorporated motifs reminiscent of his little Russian world, in the end even adding the Christian images of the Madonna and of Christ on the Cross. His Jewish vision, his personal life-story, and motifs of Christian redemption are incorporated into a programmatic statement that sums up Chagall’s entire oeuvre. The images have been added one to another; in their totality, and in the diversity of their associations, they represent Chagall’s unceasing endeavour to locate one single, truthful, universally valid visual formula. Its very history, its long journey halfway round the world, the whole generation required for its completion make this picture typical of twentieth century art, of the displacement and jeopardy that beset a work in its newly autonomous condition.

Doctor my husband wants me to move
What are you imagining now?
He was in my dreams.He says he has bought me a new house
Can ghosts buy houses?
I didn’t like to tell him he  is dead.
Anyway, it’s in Ealing
But you won’t know anybody there
Do you think we should obey the dead?
I can’t imagine  it happens much
Except for  Jesus.
Do you think your husband might be resurrected
No, but we did buy a gramophone in Ealing once
I can’t interpret this at all.
Gosh,  how stupid you are,doctor.
That is not polite
Mathematicians care about Truth not politeness
Are they mutually exclusive?
I suppose there is an overlap.But if you are rude people will not listen to your lectures on  logic,maths and statistics
I take your point
Is it on the Real Line?
That sounds like Gd.
 Numbers  have a mystical side, heavily disguided by  teaching very  long division and   nasty fractions to little children
You mean it’s deliberate?
Either that or I am paranoid or both
Do two minuses make a plus?
Try it with two credit cards!
I have a feeling I might get into debt twice over
Mystery it certainly is
And so say all of us

This photo is one I took of my screen while Joan of Arc was being sung

The language ofthe British living in Lancashire was portrayed to us at   secondary school as an inferior version of the King’s Englsh.That our ancestor’s had lived in an Eden where we  all spoke that way but as with our morals so with our language.Both were degenerate.
One effect was to make us feel a separation from our working class families.; then to lack confidence.We’d learned Jesus was killed for our sins when we were 7 or 8  years old  now we     learned our language was bad even sinful like eating icecream in the  street and playing  doctors and  nurses in the park,
But the way we spoke was because many of us were Viking in origin.We spoke more like Norwegians or Danes.The music of the voice is  there.
Is it common in other countries to  act like this? It is very impolite in my  view
I went on strike and became mute for a .Nobody  noticed.

Copyright E.Limbrey 2019

I wish that I could ride a bike again