Eminent Domain Stuff
New London Update (2/24/06)
Bad NLDC!
Coverage of the Rally at New London's City Hall (w/ pics)
Monday, June 14, 2004
Da Vinci Code: Crap?
I ran into an article today taking yet another shot at Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. This one is written by Keith Devlin, a mathematician at Stanford. He points out that Brown's many and sundry claims about the importance of the Golden Ratio in art work, architecture, music, poetry, etc., etc are at best misleading and at worst deliberate lies (according to my interpretation of his article, any way). Here's a bit of what he has to say:
First of all, whether or not the ancient Greeks felt that the Golden Ratio was the most perfect proportion for a rectangle, many modern humans do not. Numerous tests have failed to show up any one rectangle that most observers prefer, and preferences are easily influenced by other factors. As to the Parthenon, all it takes is more than a cursory glance at all the photos on the Web that purport to show the Golden Ratio in the structure, to see that they do nothing of the kind. (Look carefully at where and how the superimposed rectangle - usually red or yellow - is drawn and ask yourself: why put it exactly there and why make the lines so thick?)
Read the rest if you think Brown's either on to something or full of it. At the very least it's an interesting topic and one that more people should explore before swallowing fiction hook line and sinker.
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