Creative on Patrick Stevens

A Free Market

Sun, 07 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The story of Martin’s search for a kaki fruit.

Parables, chapter 1, verses 1-10

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

One day, a group of investors came to Bezos in the Temple and begged of him, “You are known throughout the land for your wisdom. Please tell us: what lessons did you learn early in life, which we have not yet learnt?”

Bezos replied thus.

“When I was but a child, when I had not yet seen seven summers, I discovered that my teacher had a bountiful store of chocolates hidden in the stationery cupboard. Being of an enterprising frame of mind, I proceeded to eat one of them every day for a week.” For he was mindful of the need to preserve the source of good things.

Rage, rage against the poet’s hardest sell

Sun, 16 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I feel that I can write a sonnet well.
While sonnets are an easy thing to spout,
It’s really hard to write a villanelle.

By rhyming, any story I can tell:
in couplets, rhyme and rhythm evens out.
I feel that I can write a sonnet well.

But alternately-structured verse is hell.
The poet struggles, juggles words about:
It’s really hard to write a villanelle.

Enthusiasm’s difficult to quell.
An acolyte of Shakespeare, I’m devout:
I feel that I can write a sonnet well.

The Creation

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time, before this bountiful age of Matter and Light, there was only the Fell. A single being, surrounded by Chaos, content to remain alone forever (for it did not know what a “friend” was). It had not the power to shape the Chaos; neither had it the inclination, for it needed nothing and had no desires. For seething unchanging aeons, it persisted.

Then Chaos bore new fruit. A single electron, a point source of charge. The electric field thereby induced resonated throughout all of Chaos, propagating yet further, every second by the same amount; and so the Fell recognised distance. The Fell experienced curiosity then: for an electromagnetic field was entirely a novel sensation to it. The place it inhabited was changed, from isotropic to merely spherically symmetric: now the Fell identified direction. It began to move towards the point charge, first slowly, and then faster, until its velocity approached that of the electric field itself. All this was for to discover the nature of the descendant of Chaos.

The Ravenous

Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
I required a snack to feed me. Reaching in the kitchen drawer -
With the scissors, cut the wrapping, I revealed a jar of tapen-
Ade of olives. Gently snapping, snapping off the lid, I saw:
Lines of mouldy olive scored the tapenade. The lid I saw
Speckled with each mocking spore.

How the pangs of hunger rumbled while I cursed the jar I’d fumbled;
Indistinct, I faintly mumbled, “May this torture last no more!”
Suddenly I saw the bread bin; eagerly towards it edging,
Bravely to my stomach pledging, pledging food would be in store.
Opening that sacred vessel, only crumbs were left in store.
Savagely the bag I tore.

Plot Armour

Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Wherein I dabble in parodic fiction. The title refers to the TV Tropes page on Plot Armour, but don’t follow that link unless you first resolve not to click on any links on that page. TV Tropes is the hardest extant website from which to escape.

Jim, third-in-command of the Watchers, ducked behind the Warlord’s force-field, desperately trying to catch his breath in the face of an inexorable onslaught. His attackers, the hundred-strong members of the Hourglass Collective, had never been defeated in pitched battle. As testament to their ability, two thousand of the finest troops the Watchers had to offer stood motionless around him, suspended in time; even now, even with five of the most experienced Watchers still fighting, the Hourglass forces were calmly and efficiently slitting the throats of the frozen soldiers. Skilled in cultivating terror, they were working in from afar, and it looked to Jim as though he would have to endure another half-hour of helplessness before they got to him at last. Jim and the Warlord had only survived this far by virtue of an accidental and uncontrollable burst of power from the Founder of the Watchers, released at a fortuitous moment to counter the time-suspension channelled by the Hourglass. That had given the Warlord time to protect five people, before the Founder had collapsed.

Slightly silly Sylow pseudo-sonnets

Sat, 31 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This is a collection of poems which together prove the Sylow theorems.

Notes on pronunciation

Pronounce \( \vert P \vert \) as “mod P”, \(a/b\) or \(\dfrac{a}{b}\) as “a on b”, and \(=\) as “equals”.
\(a^b\) for positive integer \(b\) is pronounced “a to the b”.
\(g^{-1}\) is pronounced “gee inverse”.
“Sylow” is pronounced “see-lov”, for the purposes of these poems.
\(p\) and \(P\) and \(n_p\) are different entities, so they’re allowed to rhyme.

Monorhymic Motivation ¹

Suppose we have a finite group called \(G\).
This group has size \(m\) times a power of \(p\).
We choose \(m\) to have coprimality:
the power of \(p\)’s the biggest we can see.
Then One: a subgroup of that size do we
assert exists. And Two: such subgroups be
all conjugate. And \(m\)’s nought mod \(n_p\),
while \(n_p = 1 \pmod{p}\); that’s Three.