3 ms·
Something about this feels like a comedy of manners about a recent fad for some section of mathematics instead of, say, learning Hungarian, blazing like smallpo
by at_a_remove 3y ago
Something about this feels like a comedy of manners about a recent fad for some section of mathematics instead of, say, learning Hungarian, blazing like smallpox through a set of the gentry ... combined with a touch of the Lovecraftian horror of revelation of subjects too large for a brain only recently post-simian, more tuned to hurling rocks than visualization of the perambulations of higher-order Platonics through a more understandable, lesser membrane. One might imagine the Thirteenth Duke of Wybourne, having commissioned from an artisan a fine set of Hinton cubes and, upon their reception, ensconced them in some parlour corner bit of cabinetry, only for a succession of his niece's acquaintances to fall victim to some palsy, seizure, or neurasthenic disorder purely because her companions were typically relegated to a particular chair near the offending objects of uncanny intellectual curiosity. Why do all of her friends fare so poorly?
- hnthrowaway0328 3y agoI have to say I don't understand much of your reply except for the Lovecraftian part, but I found it particularly geeky.
- tomcam 3y agoWith a touch of Lord Dunsany
- icambron 3y agoI think I followed the whole thing, and quite enjoyed it. But not very HN.
- at_a_remove 3y agoHunh. And here I would have thought that Hinton cubes were quite topical. I wasn't entirely unserious about the fad, either. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions was made in 1884 and for a while, speculation and attempts at visualization of higher dimensions were popular. Hinton coined "tesseract" in 1888, and by 1904 his book The Fourth Dimension introduced his cubes. In one of Martin Gardner's books I had found a letter discussing a potential downsides of such studies, that some began to inescapably visualize the exercise progression which went along with Hinton's cubes, much to the dismay of a few afflicted. The Thirteenth Duke of Wybourne, however, is from The Fast Show; I do a passable impression.
- globalnode 3y agothat was fantastic, very enjoyable
- Duanemclemore 3y agoOne of my favorite HN comments of all time. I feel like this all happened just out of frame in a flashback sequence in The Invisibles.
- gradschoolfail 3y agoMore from the 13th Duke of Wybourne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCf1FMmHHWY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCf1FMmHHWY