>> ^oritteropo:

Does he touch on what led to the gathering arms and subsequent storming of the Bastille? I read a book on the forbidden literature of pre-revolutionary France, and one of the opinions on the Revolution passed on by the author was that at the decision to storm the Bastille, the terror was already a foregone conclusion.
>> ^Ornthoron:
I just finished this book about the French Revolution. [...] lays out the important events during the 12 year period between the fall of the Bastille and [...]



I expressed myself a bit unclear: The book starts of course with some background and overview of the general condition of french society before 1789. The first big event described is not the fall of the Bastille, but the Day Of The Tennis Court Oath at Versaille, one month earlier. What struck me as I read the book was how it was not really a people's revolution, but a conflict between the bourgoise on one side and the nobility and clergy on the other.

Like so many other events during the revolution, the storming of the Bastille was not really one decision; it was merely a modest confrontation that escalated out of control due to miscommunication. As such it is a good metaphor for the revolution as a whole, which started out relatively moderate and in cooperation with the king, and subsequently was taken over by more and more radical voices culminating in the Days of Terror, after which there was a backlash to more conservative policies again. I wouldn't say The Terror was a foregone conclusion, but it did seem to me that the revolution took on some kind of life of its own and started on a slippery slide outside of any one person's imagination.

I just finished this book about the French Revolution. I felt the knowledge I had received from the Norwegian educational system was inadequate for such an important event in European history. I really liked the book; it is a fast read and lays out the important events during the 12 year period between the fall of the Bastille and the advent of Napoleon in a concise and entertaining manner. What is stunning about these events is how chaotic they really were, and how many similarities there are with other social changes in more modern history, violent or not.

Right now I'm reading two books in parallell:

Ian Cameron Esslemont's Stonewield
er, his 3rd novel in the Malazan universe he co-created with Steven Erikson. I have gotten hooked by this dark and gritty world through Erikson's books, which are unlike any other run-of-the-mill fantasy out there. Esslemont's books in the same universe have so far been under par in comparison, but his writing is getting better and better with each book.

Zur Sache, Chérie by Alain-Xavier Wurst. I'm reading this to learn German better. It's a very funny book written by a Frenchman living in Germany, about how bad German women (and men) are at flirting.

After this performance, the piano wrecked the piano player.

>> ^grinter:

Please, please, pleeeeeeaaase!!! digitize the master tapes, and release them in a format that allows us to play with the entire mix on our home computers!!!! pLEEEEEASe!


If Steely Dan did that I would not exit my apartment for weeks.

*dead

"These rarely seen examples of spontaneous play hint at the complexity of interspecies relationships in the wild."

Indeed.

*blocked in Germany

Thanks a lot for the promote and quality!

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
*quality

*isdupe

Let's make this *sticky for a while, to make certain nobody misses it.

*blocked

*isdupe

Thankfully beer is pretty cheap in Germany.

Since I live in Hamburg at the moment, that sounds like a brilliant idea. I'm in!

Good question, but I would phrase it a bit differently: Why is it needed?

It is needed because without it, mathematics would be incomplete. (It actually turns out later, thanks to Gödel, that mathematics in a sense is inherently incomplete, but let's not worry about that now.)

What I mean by that is that there are certain mathematical problems that require i to have a solution. The imaginary numbers come out naturally when you try to solve certain equations, just as for instance negative and rational numbers come out of equations.

If you start out with just the positive integers, which are the most intuitive numbers for us to contemplate, you run into a barrier if you try to solve the equation x + 2 = 0. To find a solution for x, you have to introduce negative numbers.

If you want to find a solution to the equation 3/x = 1, you need to expand your numbers to include rational numbers such as 1/3, which is the solution to this equation.

Further on, you get the irrational numbers by solving equations such as
x^2 = 2.

Finally, if you want to solve the equation x^2 = -1, you have to introduce i to your set of numbers. There is no other way to solve it.


We could try to go on in the same fashion, but it has been proven by mathematicians that these numbers are all you need to solve every mathematical problem you come across. As a physicist, I come across many equations that include complex numbers, especially in quantum mechanics. Other times you don't really need the complex numbers, but certain calculations become easier to solve if you use them. That's when they are practical, but they are also in a deeper sense a natural extension of the more well known real numbers.

>> ^schlub:

Interesting, I guess. But, how is this at all practical?