Conference on Film and Philosophy. 16-18 July 2009. Alain Badiou is one of the keynote speakers. It is at the University of Dundee — very near Aberdeen.
burhanuddin_baki's blog
Alain Badiou on BBC News
BBC HARDtalk interview by Stephen Sackur. Broadcasted a few days ago, on 24 March 2009.
Lecture notes to three of Badiou's Logic & Set Theory maths courses
Paul Cohen on the Continuum Hypothesis and on Kurt Godel
Part 1
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qSSZqzfY9U
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-8KzD2U9J4
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaimHnhcp1Y
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnpMVsLw7T8
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U5vfICJmlE
BBC Documentary on Cantor and Godel, 'Dangerous Knowledge'
Documentary on four mathematicians. Two of them are Georg Cantor and Kurt Godel. Dramatizes their mathematics quite clearly, I think, and some of the mathematical proofs that Badiou and Hallward talk about. 90 minutes.
Introductory texts on Forcing
Introductory texts on Paul Cohen’s proof to the Undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis. These explain a bit on his idea of the ‘generic set’ and his method of ‘forcing’. I was told that some people did not get this by email, so I post the links here:
“What is Forcing?” (the least technical text I found):
http://www.ams.org/notices/200806/tx080600692p.pdf
“Forcing for Dummies”:
http://www-math.mit.edu/~tchow/mathstuff/forcingdum
“A Beginner’s Guide to Forcing”:
http://alum.mit.edu/www/tchow/forcing.pdf
“Cheerful Introduction to Forcing and the Continuum Hypothesis”:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~easwaran/papers/forcing.pdf
The P versus NP problem
I have been thinking about Dr Galloway’s Alternative Algorithms, particularly in relation to two of my obsessions in theoretical computer science: the P versus NP problem , and quantum computers. Here, I will try to improvise very quickly some ideas, simplifying or excluding some of the mathematical technicalities. Read more ...
How to Write a Book in Less than a Second
This was big news a few days ago, but I found this particular video just now: Philip M. Parker has patented a way to write any (non-fiction) book automatically using a computer. It works by data-mining database and internet searches.
Parker’s video below provides the basic details on how it was done.
(The information here might be related to the seminar discussions about doing things ‘algorithmically’ vs creatively.)
Greek vs German Philosophy
The famous Monty Python skit. Not as funny as ‘Norman’ Chomsky, but ROFL seeing Karl Marx stretching and warming up.
NB: Franz Beckenbauer is the legendary German footballer, coach and manager.
