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Not for the faint of art. |
Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. |
#roosterapparatus There are things I've wondered about since I first encountered them, and that curiosity was so powerful that I researched it. This was harder in the old days, before the internet made such research simultaneously easier and less reliable. One of the things I wondered about pre-internet was why it is that a rooster crows, but a crow never roosters. But I didn't care enough to look it up. What I did try to find out, at some point, was why one could use either 'cock' or 'rooster' for the male poultry specimen. As it turned out, the latter word was apparently a US invention, attempting to avoid one of the more salacious meaning of 'cock.' Typical US. If the euphemism origin is true, it would be one of those relatively rare occasions when a euphemism doesn't eventually take on the same connotations as the word it replaced. That is truly weird, as that particular body part is of such paramount importance to the world that almost any word, and several gestures, can, depending on context, refer to it. One thing I have never attempted to find out, despite having lived on a farm, is how chickens reproduce. At least, apart from the obvious and clichéd chicken / egg cycle. I just didn't care, partly because we didn't have chickens and partly because I just didn't care. But you pick up things here and there, so I know more about the process than I really wanted to. All of which is to say that roosters don't really have an apparatus as we would identify it. As per the Exclaimer! up there, the tag in the title, apparently a smushing of rooster and apparatus, is banned on a certain social media platform, but it doesn't seem to be because of its reference to the nonexistent cock cock. No, a brief search revealed that the words refer to a business that sells artisanal glass products which may or may not be pressed into service for smoking the devil's cabbage. Whether the association with the natural substance which is still illegal in most places is the reason for the ban, or maybe they're just a shady company using legitimacy as a kind of smoke screen, or perhaps something else entirely, the name really is a good one. Not because of chickens or cocks, but because, as my Google search revealed, there aren't many other uses for the particular combination of "rooster" and "apparatus." Memorable and unique; good company name, though I'd have never guessed the product from the tag name. I guess maybe I was expecting it to refer to weather vanes, the clichéd depiction of which almost always involves a rooster. But no. Not dongs or schlongs, but bongs. |