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 Mein Gödel! I can walk! (20 Dec 2005 at 10:58)
Here is an amusing anecdote about Kurt Gödel—perhaps the greatest logician to ever live—at his citizenship hearing that I had never heard before. For maximum amusement, remember that Gödel was an extremely bizarre Austrian fellow who was morbidly afraid of refrigerator gases and being assassinated by other mathematicians [pic]. Think, say, Dr. Strangelove. Those of us wishing to be remembered as insane geniuses would do well to achieve like one tenth of what he did.
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t		 Don (acs-24-154-50-225.zoominternet.net) – 12.20.05 11:10:49
Alexander Hamilton tried to tell the founders that we needed to write the Consitution in a typesafe language, but everyone forgot about that until Red Ninja X's buffer overflow filibuster turned our Congress into a spam zombie.
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t		 Tom 7 (gs82.sp.cs.cmu.edu) – 12.20.05 13:57:04
Nobody likes a cranky formalist, Don.
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t		 Anonymous (pcp01935919pcs.hamden01.ct.comcast.net) – 12.20.05 16:59:33
So, Einstein became a U.S. Citizen?
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t		 Tom 7 (gs82.sp.cs.cmu.edu) – 12.20.05 17:07:53
Yup, like many German jews did. USA #1!!
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t		 Kirima (132.178.186.195.cust.bluewin.ch) – 12.20.05 20:49:29

Gödel, Escher, Bach... ;-)
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t		 Tom 7 (h-72-244-69-3.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 12.20.05 23:11:08
The one and only!
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t		 Kirima (191.114.78.83.cust.bluewin.ch) – 12.21.05 05:02:25

I was thinking of a book by Douglas R. Hofstadter, called "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" (1979) - haven't you heard about it yet? It's worth to at least take a look at it!
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t		 Tom 7 (h-72-244-69-3.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 12.21.05 10:09:32
Sure, I know about it. I never read it since, by the time I got to college and my friends told me about it, I pretty much knew all the stuff in there. But I was just confirming that this is in fact the same Gödel.
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t		 FARINA00 (host226-98.pool8536.interbusiness.it) – 12.21.05 10:10:42
Heh, I knew that story. Apparently, the Bush lineage knew that too.
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t		 Kirima (18.123.79.83.cust.bluewin.ch) – 12.21.05 19:21:45

How can you know what's in a book without reading it?
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t		 Stephen (ip68-0-119-54.tu.ok.cox.net) – 12.22.05 00:03:27
Funny anecdote, but they didn't finish the story. What was the loophole?
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t		 Tom 7 (h-72-244-69-3.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 12.22.05 00:16:47
Kirima: My friends also told me what's in it. =)

Stephen: Perhaps it is better that some things go to the grave with Gödel. ;)
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t		 Arthur (ctwboo101.ctw.utwente.nl) – 12.22.05 04:01:46
I had that book once. I think it's the sole reason for Gödel being known to a somewhat wider public. I didn't get any of the mathematical stuff in there (but hey, I got F-grades for math). The stuff about Zen and Bach's fugas where cool.
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t		 Kirima (245.240.186.195.cust.bluewin.ch) – 12.22.05 21:47:13

My studies at our Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale did NOT at all help to get any of the maths stuff, too - I just couldn't understand, didn't get it.

But I love the book anyway.

We should write a book called:

"Gödel, Murphy, Bush"

;)



(If this is NOT funny at all, please, let me know!)

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t		 Tom 7 (pcp01935919pcs.hamden01.ct.comcast.net) – 12.22.05 23:26:02
I'm not sure even being in the same title with Gödel would make up for being in the same title with Bush. ;)
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