Saturday, February 19, 2005

Not what you'd expect ..

I received wind of this from the blog community LJ: Mathematics, and likely you'll see the same message plastered all over the place in days to come. But let me plaster it here.

Bob Dylan gives his opinion, as I've read here @ this music website, nme.com.

BOB DYLAN has launched a withering attack on contemporary rock bands in the programme notes for his latest American tour.

"I know there are groups at the top of the charts that are hailed as the saviours of rock'n'roll and all that, but they are amateurs. They don't know where the music comes from," he wrote, adding, “I wouldn't even think about playing music if I was born in these times... I'd probably turn to something like mathematics. That would interest me. Architecture would interest me. Something like that."


Not the first thing I'd expect from Bob Dylan, and likely it's just a point which he's making on whim. But it is nice to hear: he apparently realizes that mathematics is more than plain computations and calculus, which many of us encounter in the modern world of convenience and indulgence.

(Mind you, I make this inference because he likens maths possibly to architecture, but warn me if I read too much into this quote!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's too easy to blame the world of convenience and indulgence, especially since no one is likely to come to its defense. "Ask not what the world should know about mathematics; ask what mathematics should know about the world."

Speaking of mathematics and music - yesterday I went to Finn Brothers' show, where they sang
Everybody wants the same thing:
To see another birthday,
Look at all the pretty numbers
Scattered on the calendar.
Unfortunately, they forgot to define pretty numbers, but I found a definition here. The only pretty numbers on my calendar are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 18, 24, 30. And I've already seen them all. :-/

Anonymous said...

Actually, 10 is not a pretty number - my bad. More interestingly, these are all pretty numbers.