Vleeptron Complaint Dept 2

mamagiggle said:

But which answer is right the 1st?
Here's how I'm entertianing my brain lately, I'm building a smallish cretan labyrinth in my front yard. Thinking about putting a bee hive in the center to act like a crazy hypothalmus for my nature robot. It's not a standard spiral inward though, you actually begin at the third circle, and weave in and our thusly 3-2-1-4-7-6-5-8(and in reverse) I wonder if there is any correlation between this progression and the functions and formations of the brain....
Actually math fascinates me because it is so ridiculously useful and precise, it makes my teeth crack though.

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The first answer, yes, the first answer, sorry, I thought maybe the 2nd you were making a joke ... my Windows calculator with its very generous display says the speed of light in a vacuum is

1,802,617,499,785.2541159627773801002
Furlongs per Fortnight

Put the beehive in the middle! Each cell in the honeycomb is a perfect hexagon, and here's why:

I guess you know the Fibonacci Series:

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 ...

Each New term is the sum of the two Previous terms.

Nature is totally LOUSY with the Fibonacci series. The foliation pattern of leaves ... and Fibonacci's first example (around 1200 AD) was the population growth over time if you put a girl bunny and a boy bunny on an island, and they start fucking like bunnies.

Did you say SPIRAL???

To remain bouyant as it grows larger, the chambered nautilus fills each old chamber with air and seals it off, year after year.

"The nautilus shell spiral is a logarithmic spiral similar to other spirals such as the Golden Mean or phi spiral, but with slightly different proportions. A close approximation of a Golden Mean spiral, based on the Fibonacci whole number sequence ..."

Nifty pictures of all sorts of spirals in nature here, including spiral galaxies. Our Melkweg Home Galaxy is believed to be a spiral galaxy, although how the hell we think we know that with any confidence, living on one little spherical rock in the middle of the galaxy, that beats the hell out of me. (Essentially, we're just guessing. It could be shaped like a Fiat.)

In "The Chambered Nautilus," Oliver Wendell Holmes concludes:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

One of Eugene O'Neil's last plays is called "More Stately Mansions."

I love the story of the Labyrinth of Minos on Crete, and the Minotaur. The Queen of Minos had fallen in love with a bull, but he wasn't interested, so she had a big pretty wooden cow built (Trojan horse, Minoan cow, whatever) and waited inside. Their child was the Minotaur, half bull, half man, and he lived in the center of the Labyrinth.

To get out of any maze, no matter how huge and convoluted, use Theseus' Algorithm. Put your Right Hand on the wall and start walking, and never take your hand off the wall. It won't get you out of the maze in the fastest possible way, but it does guarantee to get you out of the maze. It also works to get you from the Entrance to the Center of the Maze (where the Minotaur lives).

"Can I use my Left Hand instead?" Yes.

I've tested Theseus' Algorithm in the real big nifty maze architecture students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst built out of Cyclone fence. It's ugly and has lots of beer trash and used condoms in it, but it's a very challenging maze. You'd think being able to see through the maze walls would make it easier, but it doesn't, not one bit.

Okay so like what's the Labyrinth myth all about? Well, when King Minos built his Palace, this was like in 1600 BC, and the rest of Crete was not exactly filled with sophisticated world travelers. When a goatherd from the boondocks would be invited to stay at the Palace, he'd always get lost trying to find his way from his guest room to the throne room or the dining room or the bathhouse or the outhouse, and a guard or princess he encountered in the halls would have to get the goatherd un-lost. Back home in the boondocks he'd tell stories about the biggest most confusing goddam building he and the Missus had ever wandered around in, and it morphed into the Tale of the Labyrinth.