Dimensionasaurus

Listening to Electric Guitar Phase by Steve Reich - Played by Dominic Frasca

After my mention of higher spacial dimensions, Marcus du Sautoy's book on symmetry has taken this to extremes and started talking about objects that exist in hundreds of thousands of dimensions and have quintillions of symmetries. I just cannot begin to imagine how a mind even contemplates the programs needed to run to create mathematical models of such objects. It amazes me that the human mind is able to memorise phone numbers let alone these sort of things. Praise is du(e) to du Sautoy for making his book about this so easy and compelling. It's real beauty however, is the direct link between the ancient mathematicians of Greece and the Islamic world, through the Renaissance solvers of cubic equations, the French revolutionary Mathematicians to du Sautoy himself, reach a peak with the planet-sized brain of his mentor John Conway, a man who seems able to 'see' in these dimensions as far as I can tell. Rudy Rucker has been informed.

On a completely different subject, Martin Amis has written a juicy article on Iran for the Guardian. No punch-pulling here I'm afraid but there is obvious recognition that the situation is far more complex than anything solvable with force. I'm not sure it actually makes me like Martin Amis any more but it maintains his position as one of the greatest living British Writers.