>From what I can tell, one of the settings used to deal with division by 0 is the so-called Riemann sphere, which is where we take a space shuttle and use it to fly over and drop a cow on top of a biodome, and then have the cow indiscriminately fire laser beams at the grass inside and around the biodome. That's my intuitive understanding of it anyway.
also:
>Our cow isn't staring into infinity. It's looking down at infinity, observing infinity with detached understanding. If our cow were not so enlightened, and also had the facial muscles, it might betray the subtlest of smiles at infinity's infinity face, for infinity's turbid fractal whirlpools and vast lethargic swamps are but swathes of data like any other to this cow.
What may not be obvious without (or, actually, even with) reading the actual article is that that stuff about cows on biodomes actually is a (rather facetious) way of describing what the Riemann sphere is.
> You might be wondering why we don't just ask a biologist about these mysteries. The reason is because you're inside a car right now, I'm driving, we're lost, both of us are tourists, and I'm one of those people that would sooner burn hours of gasoline/diesel than ask for directions. You also suspect I might be some kind of criminal, so you're afraid of bringing up the issue. All around it's pretty awkward in here.
One of the coolest parts of the article is at the very end when he algorithmically constructs music with the sierpinski triangle. http://www.oftenpaper.net/img/sierzrp1.mp3
>From what I can tell, one of the settings used to deal with division by 0 is the so-called Riemann sphere, which is where we take a space shuttle and use it to fly over and drop a cow on top of a biodome, and then have the cow indiscriminately fire laser beams at the grass inside and around the biodome. That's my intuitive understanding of it anyway.
also:
>Our cow isn't staring into infinity. It's looking down at infinity, observing infinity with detached understanding. If our cow were not so enlightened, and also had the facial muscles, it might betray the subtlest of smiles at infinity's infinity face, for infinity's turbid fractal whirlpools and vast lethargic swamps are but swathes of data like any other to this cow.