Mysteries in Maths!

Snell’s law describes how light rays bend when they pass from air into water, as they do when the sun shines into a swimming pool. Light moves more slowly in water, much like the hiker in the snow, and it bends accordingly to minimise its travel time. Similarly, light bends when it travels from air into glass or plastic, as when it refracts through your eyeglass lenses. The eerie point is that light behaves as if it were considering all possible paths and then taking the best one. Nature — cue the theme from The Twilight Zone — somehow knows calculus.

STEVEN STROGATZ

One of many anecdotes I picked up from Steven Strogatz's recent book 'The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Mathematics, from One to Infinity'. It is a "pop-maths" book designed to re-introduce the subject to people who have long forgotten it! Well worth the read!

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I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she ...

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Trusting God, By Jerry Bridges (A Review)

Trust is the bedrock of human relations. It is a necessity in a world of finite creatures. We do not know everything and we are powerless over many of the events that occur in our lives. We depend on others to make life work. We cannot afford not to trust. Trust deepens us as individuals by bringing us into mutually satisfying relationships. It enables us to know, love and learn from each other. The tragedy of life is that the one person who we can truly depend on and deserves all our trust, is also the person we struggle to put our trust in. When it comes to trusting God, we are all bankrupt. This poverty is most acute when we go through pain and adversity. Jerry Bridges’ Trusting God aims to help us take a fresh look at God. To help restore our confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of God. This issue is important because though many of us claim to trust God, our thoughts and actions speak otherwise. In our private moments we often ask: how can we trust a God who is supposedly ...

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Repeaters

Repeaters is directed by rising Canadian director Carl Bessai. It tells the story of three drug addicts - Kyle, Sonia and Mike - who have become friends in the drug rehab. As part of the rehabilitation process they are granted their first day out in the community to "make amends" with loved ones, only to experience failure. Kyle has a young sister who refuses to talk to him. Sonia fails to reconcile with her father lying on the death bed in hospital. Mike is rebuffed by his father in jail. Next morning they wake up to find the day is repeating itself. Everything happening exactly as it was the previous day. And this cycle continues going forward. The film is essentially an exploration of how the three respond to their predicament. On the first two repeats, after satisfying themselves that the repeats are genuine, they indulge in carefree experiences! Their new immortality or externally inconsequential existence becomes a license to take drugs, rob people and...

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