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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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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. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| This article from Mental Floss comes to us from 2020. I doubt there have been any further notable events in the subject's history since then. Despite the advanced age of the article, I only ran across it in the last week or so, during which time I completely forgot why I felt the article was important enough to feature here. Or maybe I saved it just to add further random chaos to the world, which is sometimes why I do things. During the Seven Years War of the mid-1700s, a French army pharmacist named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was captured by Prussian soldiers. Ah, yes, back when there was Russia and P-Russia. As a prisoner of war, he was forced to live on rations of potatoes. Oh no. Clearly, this was before the Geneva Convention. In mid-18th century France, this would practically qualify as cruel and unusual punishment: potatoes were thought of as feed for livestock, and they were believed to cause leprosy in humans. This is coming from people whose national cuisine consists of ground-up pig asshole, snails, and frog legs. The fear was so widespread that the French passed a law against them in 1748. Pomme de Terre Prohibition! But as Parmentier discovered in prison, potatoes weren’t deadly. In fact, they were pretty tasty. See, this is what I don't get, though I could probably look it up from a better source: raw potatoes are disgusting. And why would they take the time and resources to cook the things for prison chow? The story of mashed potatoes takes 10,000 years and traverses the mountains of Peru and the Irish countryside; it features cameos from Thomas Jefferson and a food scientist who helped invent a ubiquitous snack food. Hm. Maybe it was the Jefferson reference that made me save the link. Potatoes aren’t native to Ireland—or anywhere in Europe, for that matter. Count on Mental Floss for helpful and vaguely racist information. These early potatoes were very different from the potatoes we know today. Yeah, for instance, they didn't come in a sleeve from McDonald's. They were also slightly poisonous. They're nightshades, like tomatoes, which Europeans also thought were poisonous. To combat this toxicity, wild relatives of the llama would lick clay before eating them. The toxins in the potatoes would stick to the clay particles, allowing the animals to consume them safely. People in the Andes noticed this and started dunking their potatoes in a mixture of clay and water—not the most appetizing gravy, perhaps, but an ingenious solution to their potato problem. Oh... no, it was this bit. Yeah. That seems awfully specific, and a brief search didn't turn up any corroboration. Truth, or legend? I know I've often wondered about poisonous foods that got eaten anyway because the humans around them figured out how to neutralize the poisons. Pretty sure I've mentioned some of them in here before. How did they figure it out? Some by watching animals, I'm sure. Others? No clue. But during times of hardship, when easier food sources may not be available, I can totally see humans figuring this stuff out, because we're clever and hungry. By the time Spanish explorers brought the first potatoes to Europe from South America in the 16th century, they had been bred into a fully edible plant. That sentence glosses over quite a bit of savagery on the Spanish side. So that's potatoes, and the article says quite a bit more about them. But it's supposed to be specifically about mashed potatoes. In her 18th-century recipe book The Art of Cookery, English author Hannah Glasse instructed readers to boil potatoes, peel them, put them into a saucepan, and mash them well with milk, butter, and a little salt. Whether she innovated the mashing part or someone else had figured it out, that seems to be when the true origin of the mashed potato begins. In the United States, Mary Randolph published a recipe for mashed potatoes in her book, The Virginia Housewife, that called for half an ounce of butter and a tablespoon of milk for a pound of potatoes. She was related by marriage to Jefferson. Was that the only connection? But no country embraced the potato like Ireland. And yet, they didn't invent vodka. I'm skipping over a bit, here. In the 1950s, researchers at what is today called the Eastern Regional Research Center, a United States Department of Agriculture facility outside of Philadelphia, developed a new method for dehydrating potatoes that led to potato flakes that could be quickly rehydrated at home. Soon after, modern instant mashed potatoes were born. This is going to send crowds after me with tiki torches and pitchforks, but I like instant mashed potatoes. Well, there's more at the article, including another really oblique reference to Jefferson. And if you search, you can probably find more information on YouTuber. |
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