Spiritual Shapes

"The Salad Days" - I've not heard that before. Does it mean "In the early days"? And is the origin of it rooted in a three course meal where sometimes the starting dish is a salad?

I suspect McNealy was pushed out, the share price of SUNW has been tanked for aeons. Still, he did realise that "the computer is the network" or something like that, before most others. The importance of the internet now to computing in general is tremendous. He is still staying on as Chairman for a while, but this typically doesn't last long - he will be involved in the same way as Lou Gerstner was in IBM between March 2002 (when he stepped down as CEO but stayed on as Chairman) until Decemeber 2002 (when he retired from IBM).

The picture of the ship sailing towards the storm is superb, if only I had the skill to write some words, in persepective, along the top of the ship I would have a lot of fun with it. Still, I have sent it to folks with messages like, "See this is what is in store for system ^%!^%!" unless we get our act together etc :-)

Black Holes as a power source. Oh yes indeed. I read a book by Arthur C. Clarke in 1976 called "Imperial Earth". In Imperial Earth Clarke invents the "Asymptotic Drive" which kept a charged quantum black hole in the drive chamber using magnetic fields. Gas pumped into the chamber is sucked into the black hole which in turn emits photons which excite the remaining gas. The gas molecules fly out the drive outlet making a very efficient reaction drive. Since then the idea had been made obsolete due to Hawking's work on black hole evaporation, the hole would have evaporated :-( But I'm not so sure, maybe there is a way to keep it stable?

The book was also interesting as it introduced pentominoes to me (I think that Clarke called them polyominoes). They are based upon the twelve possible combinations of five equal squares. Therefore the total area of all the pentominos together is sixty squares. It follows that these sixty squares might possibly be arranged in the shape of a rectangle. Experimentation proves this to be the case. It is possible to make four types of rectangle: 6 x 10, 5 x 12, 4 x 15 and 3 x 20 out of the pentominos.

There are three examples of a 6 x 10 solution shown above.

There are 2,399 such 6x10 solutions. There are only two 3x20 solutions, and once you get one of the 3x20 solutions then you immediately see the other. I remember cutting cardboard up into the 12 pentominoe shapes to try it, finding the 3x20 solutions is insanely difficult. I'm going to give it to my daughter at some point (in about five years).

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, said that this problem was very important as it tested something called "visio recall", the ability to see again what one saw once. This ability is very important apparently, because it is the key to spiritual development. Therefore it is the one which the Devil takes out first :-)

Question: What are your 1,2,3 all time top books? (The Bible notwithstanding!)