First, once again, thanks to RJ Lipton for another update on Deolalikar's P ≠ NP proof, in which Neil Immerman expresses major concerns (2 major, fatal?, flaws):
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/fatal-flaws-in-deolalikars-proof/
This will be well beyond the comprehension of most of us... which simply makes it all the more fascinating that there are those who do grasp the reasoning communicated!
On to other things... Just a few miscellaneous quotes to ponder for today, as food for thought!:
"[Alain] Connes thinks that expert mathematicians are endowed with a clairvoyance, a flair, a special instinct comparable to the musician's fine-tuned ear or to the wine taster's experienced palate that enables them to directly perceive mathematical objects: 'The evolution of our perception of mathematical reality causes a new sense to develop, which gives us access to a reality that is neither visual, nor auditory, but something else altogether'." --- from "The Number Sense" by Stanislas Dehaene
"The sciences have developed in an order the reverse of what might have been expected. What was most remote from ourselves was first brought under the domain of law, and then, gradually, what was nearer: first the heavens, next the earth, then animal and vegetable life, then the human body, and last of all (as yet very imperfectly) the human mind." --- Bertrand Russell
"Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings." --- Alfred North Whitehead
"It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class." --- Author Unknown
"All generalizations are false, including this one." --- Mark Twain
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