tcpip: (Default)
Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath ([personal profile] tcpip) wrote2003-06-02 11:25 am

It's a maths conference! It's rock 'n' roll!

Over the past few months I've been co-writing a paper for the International Conference for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The paper is a combination of number theory (especially complex numbers,
percolation, criticality, fractal dimensions) and critical-functional social theory (the AGIL shema, uneven development, crises, system/lifworld distinction). It's all about the mathematical modelling of societies, their evolution and when they collapse due to internal contradictions and so forth. It uses (at least from my end) material from Talcott Parsons, Jeffrey Alexander and Jurgen Habermas.

I have just been told that a full-colour A0 poster has been made to advertise the paper. Previously I had been under the evident error that such posters are usually used for advertising recent tours by popular (or subcultural) musicians.

Oh well. As Pythagoras pointed out, even music consists of numbers. Tres rock-n-roll.

[identity profile] angel80.livejournal.com 2003-06-02 09:31 pm (UTC)(link)
On a totally different subject, I found some 3 Amigos Cafe Timor in my local supermarket. It's organic and more expensive that my usual stuff, but I bought it anyway. It is produced by Cafe East Timor Corporation about which I can find no further information. Do you by chance know who owns/operates it?

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2003-06-02 11:23 pm (UTC)(link)

Hmmm... I thought 3Amigo's was a coop. Oh well. Apart from that I don't know much about it. I haven't seen it the shops for a while, which these days seem to dominated by the very professional Delta brand or by the 'out of a tin shed' Kapa'as brand.

I prefer the latter ;-)

[identity profile] angel80.livejournal.com 2003-06-03 08:51 am (UTC)(link)
Must have shifted to the export market. I received a bit of paper with it that says that Cafe East Timor Corporation was established during the INTERFET period. I have a plastic packet brought back by a friend a couple of years ago - Kopi Bobok - the whole thing written in Bahasa Indonesia. She bought it in the market and it was charred rather than roasted! This one is roasted and packaged in Oz. If the World Bank report that I read is to be believed, most Timorese coffee is now processed in Indonesia where the wages are lower (I posted something about this last year).