The search for beauty

The most beautiful woman, man, science breakthrough, literature, and so on usually merits a prize:
Miss America, Mr. Universe, the Nobel prize, the Pulitzer prize.

The men and women are easy, just ask People Magazine: J Lo, Angelina, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise. Science breakthrough? That's pretty easy too: Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the discovery of DNA would be high on anyone's list. Most beautiful poem? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

What do musicians say when asked for the most beautiful piece of music ever written? My informal survey says Schubert's Cello Quintet in C gets the prize.

And how about Google candidates when asked for the most beautiful math equation ever derived? e to the i pi equals minus 1 comes to mind. Just think: you put together an imaginary number and two transcendental numbers and get minus 1 as the result. This is at least as cool as Pythagoras. Just beautiful.

Uniformly different

Uniformity is antithetical to American culture. But uniforms, whose purpose is to minimize individual differences to maximize cohesion of a group, are ubiquitous.

Tom Cruise puts on a Nazi uniform for a new movie. President Musharraf will take his off only after his election. And fans pay hundreds of dollars to wear the uniforms of their favorite teams and sports stars.

The military seems to likes uniforms - and uniformity. But until the House of Representatives bill is signed into law, Blackwater will not be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice or US law.

In probability theory, a uniform distribution describes a set where all values are equally probable. For example, tossing a coin has two equi-probable events, a die six.

Up to now Blackwater has been able to operate outside the law of Iraq and the US, but the chances are pretty good it won’t be able to evade the laws of probability.