Diskurswelt.de

A mathematician and a professor of computer science sit down to write a book about Bertrand Russel, a British philosopher, mathematician and logician, and his quest for certainty in mathematics.
Boooooring! you think (unless you study Computer Science). Far from it!

Recently I read a New York Times review on Logicomix – An Epic Search for Truth. The said book by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou is in fact a graphic novel, i.e. a comic!
I was hooked. A moment later I had already hit the buy button on amazon’s marketplace to import it from the UK. Yesterday it finally arrived:

I almost read it in one go and really had to force myself to stop reading late last night in order to be able to get some sleep. First thing I did this morning was to continue.

The book is colored, well-drawn and has a very clever narrative structure that involves several layers. The authors depict themselves struggling to write the book and discussing its contents. They talk about Bertrand Russel’s talk on The Role of Logic in Human Affairs in which he tells the audience the story of his life and the influence of various illustrious characters, such as Karl Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gottlob Frege (my personal favorite).
I do not want to talk too much about it, otherwise I would spoil the fun. Just let me tell you: it is a fascinating piece of art and both money and time is well-spent. Now go and see for yourself!

Today, Guinness celebrates its 250th anniversary. 8750 more years to go. Read more in the Irish Times.

If you’re familiar with Linux, you probably know the ls command. It lists the content of a directory when executed. Sometimes, when in a hurry, you might mistype it and end up with sl.

A programmer named Toyoda Masashi created a program called sl – an easter egg. If you install it and execute „sl“ by accident, a funny ASCII art animation will be displayed in your terminal. Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »

Some of you might have noticed – either I told you or you guessed it from my post frequency – that I have been working quite a bit during the last weeks. Today, the fruits of this work finally went online: we relaunched 5PRIME.com, my employer’s corporate website. Apart from the new design and improved usability, we have added, e.g., a new product line, some pages about application areas and an extended literature search.

Kudos to Marian, who created a little surprise that you might want to check out, and his buddy Kristian, for a nudge into the right direction when the two of us did not see the wood for the trees.

Just navigate to the homepage (you have to select your country first) and enjoy the video!

Das Oberlandesgericht Rheinland-Pfalz stellte neulich fest, dass Wein nicht mit dem Begriff bekömmlich beworben werden darf (mehr hier), da dies gesundheitsbezogen ist und gegen die Health Claims Verordnung verstößt.

Ich frage mich nun, ob das auch das Ende für die Garantierte Bekömmlichkeitsreife der Bamberger Brauerei Fässla bedeutet. Schade wär’s ja schon.