- I am deep into refactoring Washington cities and census-designated plcaes, which is why 911 changes are pending. It is an overcast day today. The cat is outside but will need to come in soon. This morning the dog (Kaleessi) freaked out when the garbage truck drove by, rumbling. She moved furniture to travel up the spiral staircase in fear. My brother is heading out within a week from Minnesota.
- How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number (quantamagazine.org)
The ancient Greeks wanted to believe that the universe could be described in its entirety using only whole numbers and the ratios between them — fractions, or what we now call rational numbers. But this aspiration was undermined when they considered a square with sides of length 1, only to find that the length of its diagonal couldn’t possibly be written as a fraction.
