This one's for you, Willie.

[fflo]

MR1784555 (2001k:11041)
Baica, Malvina(1-WIW)
Baica's Euclidean solution of Fermat's last theorem (FLT). (English summary)
Ital. J. Pure Appl. Math. No. 7 (2000), 151--156.
11D41

Spike Milligan wrote of a certain poet that he tortured the English language, yet had still not managed to get it to reveal its meaning. Trying to fathom the paper under review is similarly frustrating. The reviewer has read through the paper several times, and on each occasion has become more and more confused. There seems to be a plaintive argument that Baica's general Euclidean algorithm can be used to prove Fermat's last theorem, but since all the primary references are to previous papers of the author, and no coherent mathematical details are provided, this reader at least remains totally unconvinced.

Reviewed by Andrew Bremner

Comments

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

BWAH! Damning a paper with a Spike Milligan quote? Bliss.

I wish more than anything that I still worked at MR... *sigh*

Someone else is wishing for world peace and such, yes?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

It's a bit more in the realm of reality that you might work here again, v. that peace thing one gives up on hoping for at some age younger'n how old I am. At least I like to think it is. :]

But I just let myself digress to read much of the original article scan of

MR2255566
Montero, Barbara
Physicalism in an infinitely decomposable world.
Erkenntnis 64 (2006), no. 2, 177--191.

---which gets into philosophizing about how small stuff can get and whether there's any difference between mental processes and any other processes. I like this part:

``What would make for an ontologically significant difference between lower-level phenomena and mental phenomena? Of course, there are many differences between higher-level properties and lower-level ones, but here we are looking for a difference that makes a difference to the debate over physicalism. As I see it, the central point of contention between physicalists and antiphysicalists is whether human beings, and perhaps also other animals, have, in some way, a special place in the world. One way we would seem to be special is if mental phenomena were part of the original brew that was set in motion, as one creation story goes, in the big bang. This would seem to give us a place of prominence since it would hint at a world created with us in mind, that is, it would suggest, as another creation story goes, that when God created the world, she also created minds. Another way we would seem to have a privileged position would be if minds were added later on as a special addition to the universe.''

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

Heh- squeezes a lot of information into one paragraph, don't it?

I do like the female pronoun for God. I did that in a bunch of the meeting minutes at the Eastern Agency on Aging (not for God, but just in general: "If any of our clients decides she is unhappy...") and I think it really irritated a lot of the macho old guys on the Board. Which was a tiny pleasure for me.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ha! I bet.

This weekend dreampower (that's CKS from BibServ) was saying she used to deliberately throw the wrong-gendered pronoun into conversation, back when she lived in Arkansas, just to watch people squirm. Did it if somebody was being super-gendery, I believe she said. Seems like a fun game. Just refer to the (I'm thinking) macho guy as "she", quite casually---"You know, what she said reminds me of a time..." -- !

The author of the paper cited above later says something, after saying that physicists of course are gonna think physics is the nature of everything, about how if the world is made up of numbers then God could turn out to be a mathematician. That ol' "God's like me!" imperative/fantasy.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

Hee! That reminds me of the one Arrested Development where the gay secretary keeps referring to his homophobic boss (Henry Winkler) by saying, "She's not in," and then holding up a tape recorder and threatening to sue when Henry gets upset.

I miss Arrested Development only slightly less than I miss MR, incidentally.

Ah, the ol' "God's like me!" fantasy, indeed. Well, lucky you! (I recognize that, on one level, everyone who believes in God sort of has to believe that, because it's difficult to conceive of a being that your frame of reference can't conceive of... But still, is it that hard to add an asterisk with the phrase "I might be wrong" to your idea of what God might be?)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

is it that hard to add an asterisk with the phrase "I might be wrong" to your idea of what God might be?

It does seem to be, for so many of the Godly! [cf. hopelessness about world peace above]

p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I need to go back to the discs of Arrested Development. I think I saw the first season, perhaps before any more was out. Though I guess there wasn't all that much more, was there.

Re: p.s.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

Ooh- you've missed a lot of great stuff! (A season and a half of additional great stuff, that is.) I think there were, like, 53 episodes total, and I think there was maybe one I didn't laugh at. It's definitely worth your time. Probably twice, if you consider the Charlize Theron story arc in season three, which is doubly funny the second time around.