%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |    Not for the faint of art. |
|
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
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning Best Blog in the 2021 edition of [Link To Item #quills] !](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quill Award 2
[Click For More Info]
2022 Quill Award - Best Blog - [Link To Item #1196512] . Congratulations!!!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award_2-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in 30DBC Winner
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning the Jan. 2019 [Link To Item #30dbc] !!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-30DBC_Winner-2064535_14.gif) ![Merit Badge in Blogging
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
[Click For More Info]
I highly recommend your blog.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-Highly_Recommended.gif) ![Merit Badge in Opinion
[Click For More Info]
For diving into the prompts for Journalistic Intentions- thanks for joining the fun!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Opinion-1150.gif) ![Merit Badge in High Five
[Click For More Info]
For your inventive entries in [Link To Item #2213121] ! Thanks for the great read!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-High_Five.gif) ![Merit Badge in Enlightening
[Click For More Info]
For winning 3rd Place in [Link To Item #2213121] . Congratulations!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Enlightening.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quarks Bar
[Click For More Info]
For your awesome Klingon Bloodwine recipe from [Link to Book Entry #1016079] that deserves to be on the topmost shelf at Quark's.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quarks_Bar-2046190_12.gif)       |
| I can't resist a piece on Poe any more than my housemate's kitten, Edgar Allan Purr, can resist a dangling string. The cat's name was my idea, incidentally. I don't know much about this source, Crimereads, by the way. I just found this article while searching for something else, and, well, like I said, dangling string. Even though literature had, for centuries, brimmed with clever problem-solvers, from tricksters to reformed thieves to wise men to police prefects, Edgar Allan Poe’s detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” still awed the literary world when it appeared in 1841. Detective stories were, for Kid Me, kind of like crossword puzzles: fun to complete, but the secrets of their creation might as well have been quantum physics for all I understood them. I would read a science fiction or fantasy book and go, "Hey, I bet I could write like that." Not so with the detective genre. The police are stumped. But C. Auguste Dupin, a chevalier and rare book aficionado, solves the mystery at home after reading the details in the paper, becoming literature’s first bona fide detective character and starting a genre revolution. Astute readers will note that thus, science fiction predated detective fiction as a genre. As literary critic A. E. Murch writes, the detective story is one in which the “primary interest lies in the methodical discovery, by rational means, of the exact circumstances of a mysterious event or series of events.” Critic Peter Thoms elaborates on this, defining the detective story as “chronicling a search for explanation and solution,” adding, “such fiction typically unfolds as a kind of puzzle or game, a place of play and pleasure for both detective and reader.” Like I said. Crossword puzzle. The well-heeled Dupin is an armchair detective who solves puzzles because he can, using a process called “ratiocination,” in which he basically ‘thinks outside of the box.’ I've known several people who prided themselves on "thinking outside of the box." Without exception, all of these people were lousy at thinking in the first place, and just did free-association. This is quite a different procedure than "ratiocination." (And it’s a good thing he does, or no one will solve these crimes; the murderer of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” turns out to be an escaped orangutan. It might be safe to say no one else would conclude that.) Goddammit! SPOILERS! If Poe had not solidified the conventions that we recognize as marking the modern detective story, others likely would have done the same not long after. Okay, but this is true about pretty much any invention or discovery. If Einstein hadn't worked out relativity, someone else would have. If Nikola Tesla hadn't invented the alternating current method of electricity transmission, others would have. That in no way diminishes Poe's legacy. And no nineteenth-century detective lineage would be complete without Eugène-François Vidocq, a criminal-turned-criminologist who lived from 1775-1857 and who founded and ran France’s first national police, the Sûreté nationale, as well as France’s first private detection agency. His life inspired countless (swashbuckling) adaptations, including an American adaptation published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1828, entitled “Unpublished passages in the Life of Vidocq, the French Minister of Police,” which Poe very well might have read. Interestingly there’s a character in that story named “Dupin.” Ahem. "Good writers borrow. Great writers steal." -T.S. Eliot, and everyone who ever quoted him. Dupin’s ability to read extraordinary meaning into clues makes him rather the first semiotician, elucidating the relationship between signs, signifiers, and ‘signifieds’ more than a century before Ferdinand de Saussure published his work on the subject in 1966—particularly because Dupin finds his clues through linguistics rather than physical objects. Thus, Poe also invented postmodernism. Before modernism was even a thing. Years later, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, “Each [of Poe’s detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed… Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” He stole. Indeed, Doyle construed his detective Sherlock Holmes as an intellectual descendant of Holmes, having Watson (who also participates in a lineage offered by the Dupin stories, but of Dupin’s supportive narrator/chronicler and friend) cite Dupin upon first witnessing Holmes’s deductive genius. Clearly, that second Holmes should have been "Dupin." Everyone makes mistakes. Even fictional detectives, from time to time, when the plot requires it. As the article notes at the end, Holmes wouldn't have existed, at least not as we know the character, without Dupin. Neither would Batman. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
