Math equations as a form of beauty? This is probably a strange concept to most people.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in math, but I can appreciate many aspects of it and I must agree with the mathmaticians on this one: Euler's identity possesses unparalelled mathematical beauty.

What exactly does it mean? A simplified explanation is that it helps explain the nature of circles (in particular the Unit Circle, a concept in trigonometry) but it is much more than that. Euler's Identity involves the five fundamental constants in math: e (the base of the natural log which is fundamental to calculus), pi (the ratio between a circle's diameter and circumfrence), i (the square root of negative one and fundamental to the concept of complex/"imaginary" numbers), one, and zero. It also involves the three basic operations of arithmetic: addition (think of subtraction as adding a negative number), multiplication (division is multiplying by a fraction), and exponentiation (aka. "raising to a power", to take the nth root of something just raise it to the power of a fraction). Finally, the equation is so amazingly simple because it's short and ultimately equals zero!
But what does this mean to you if you're not a math person? Well you can always tell an unpleasant person that they have as much intelligence as Euler's Identity, or you can say "you're intelligence is equal to one plus 'e' to the power of 'i' times pi!"
See, math is useful for regular people!

There are different types of numbers. You've probably heard terms like integers or rational/irrational numbers and likely received an explanation for them back in algebra class. If your memory of math class is a little more expansive, you might recall learning about complex or imaginary numbers, which deal with i (the square root of negative one). If you've taken calculus, you might have received an elementary introduction to transcendental numbers and the concepts of infinity and infinitesimals. Basically you learned that we live in a crazy complex world and mathematicians have spent years (or decades or centuries) developing concepts so as to make mathematics a model that describes the world we live in. 

By the way, it is possible to end a sentence in a preposition and be grammatically correct according to the first three or four credible (looking) websites that come up on a Google search.

Anyway, there are other types of numbers that exist beyond what I have just described. Some are ones you are likely familiar with (prime numbers, odd/even numbers, etc.) but then there are others that are way to complicated for someone like me to understand including but not limited to: hyper-complex, hyper-real, ordinal, transfinite, and surreal numbers. As if the aforementioned numbers seemed useless enough, these numbers go beyond any practical application that I could find, and their primary reason for existence seems to be to serve as placeholders that allow the operation of contemporary number theory.
Take surreal numbers; normally if you want to know something you go to Wikipedia and sure enough there was an article on surreal numbers:

There was also this helpful graphic:

Deciding that none of this was very helpful, I found an article about surreal numbers on Princeton University's website. Surely there is a better (or at least different) explanation from one of the leading institutions in education. Alas, the article is nothing more than a link to the Wikipedia article!
So forget everything you learned about Wikipedia being unreliable or unprofessional; Princeton uses it.
Actually I'm sure that the article was written by a Princeton professor who is probably one of only a handful of people in the world to understand them.
A man named John Horton Conway is responsible for "inventing" surreal numbers and a man named Donanld Knuth wrote a mathematical novella in which he attempted to explain them to normal people.
He failed.
Just kidding, it's actually kind of interesting, but since I have almost no background in number theory I don't fully understand the axioms. I think surreal numbers are basically numbers which are comprised of sets which are really numbers within numbers and span from the infinitesimally small to infinity and beyond (no seriously they go "beyond" infinity). Yeah I don't understand it either because apparently the mathematical concepts of "numbers", "sets", and "infinity" are not actually as simple as I learned them due to the way they are operationally defined by the surreal number rules.
Surreal numbers can apparently be applied to something as everyday as chess. The tree of surreal numbers picture above looks kind of like the tree of analysis described by chess grandmaster Alexander Kotov in his book Think Like a Grandmaster. Kotov taught that all possible moves should be considered with all possible responses considered along with possible counter-responses and future moves. This is kind of what a computer does when it analyzes potential moves in chess, only it uses an algorithm. Apparently, there is some connection to chess game theory and surreal numbers.

So why am I taking a concept like numbers and making them even more complicated than they need to be? Mainly because when I learn that something is more complicated than the way I was actually taught (like how p=mv in Newtonian kinematics doesn't quite apply at high speeds or how the Appendix to Orwell's 1984 puts a whole new spin on analyzing the book's message) I get excited. And I hope to help others walk away from their computers having learned something.

"What I learned on the Internet today is..."
"BLANKITY...BLANKITY...BLANK!"


Thanks Nickelodeon for indirectly allowing fair and non-copyright infringing use via legal loopholes!

What is the longest novel ever written? Ask any high school student and they* will likely tell you that it is whatever book they are currently reading in their English class. Understandably, those six-hundred page novels can seem to go on forever, but there are certainly longer works out there.
Page number is considered the defining measure of book length, but of course it is variable due to changes in font type and size, line spacing, and punctuation. A more accurate measure is word length (the only issue is for translated works, especially ones written in non-Latin alphabet but for consistency let's use the English version of a work). So now that we have a standard for length, what constitutes a novel? Many authors have written insanely long novels that were unable to merit a publishing contract and so either remain unpublished or were self-published (A man named Henry Darger wrote a 15,000 page novel but never got it published; it was discovered posthumously in the 1970s). These, however, are hard to count since the lack of a publishing contract detracts from their legitimacy. So technically we are now looking at the longest novel ever published (by a legitimate publishing house) which is easier to measure.

One of the most notoriously long novels is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. At nearly 600,000 words, most paperback editions of the book run at about 1,200 pages. Considered by many to be one of the greatest novels ever written due to its massive scope and analytical consideration of human nature, reading this novel is considered to be a rite of passage for any lover of classical literature. However, it is not the longest novel ever published.

A powerful work of philosophy that also carries a bold political statement is the lengthy Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The most common paperback editions put this book at just over 1,000 pages due to small font but the novel is about 650,000 words long. Like many books that manage to work their way into political discussion, the book is widely debated but read by few people; though not quite excusable this is at least understandable. 

Although it does not belong on this list, I thought I'd include the length of the King James translation of the Bible. Despite being the most published book in the world, many people don't know how long the Bible is because most English editions are double-columned and printed on very thin paper.  The combined total of the Old and New Testaments is estimated to be about 775,000 words long. If it were published in the same format as a standard novel, it would probably be about 1,750 pages long.

The book that is most commonly agreed upon as being the longest novel ever published that was originally written in English is Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. Published in 1748, this epistolary novel is the tragic story of a young English lady whose family becomes wealthy and attempts to become part of the aristocracy. The novel is about 1,600 pages long but is also printed in a small font; it is estimated to be 985,000 words long.

Although there are other very long novels that I have not mentioned (like Sironia Texas, Zettels Traum, Poor Fellow My Country, and Miss Macintosh My Darling) this list must come to an end before it surpasses these books in length. There is one book recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as being the longest novel, though it is not published in a single volume. The book is...
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.
An autobiographical book about memory that is largely written stream-of-consciousness, it is published in seven volumes and over 4,000 pages; the novel was written in French and its word count (both French and English) lands around 1,200,000.
But the thing that makes the book particularly special is that it also uses the phrase "intolerable tedium".
Taken from vol. 1 Swann's Way somewhere in the first half of the book:
"Unlike so many people, who, either from lack of energy or else from a resigned sense of the obligation laid upon them by their social grandeur to remain moored like houseboats to a certain point on the bank of the stream of life, abstain from the pleasures which are offered to them above and below that point, that degree in life in which they will remain fixed until the day of their death, and are content, in the end, to describe as pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre distractions, that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there with them; Swann would endeavor not to find charm and beauty in the women with whom he must pass time, but to pass his time among women whom he had already found to
be beautiful and charming. And these were, as often as not, women  whose beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively, and without reason, were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women painted or sculptured by his favorite masters. Depth of character, or a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses, which would, however, immediately melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy human flesh."

*Technically, "they" indicates plural so in this case, I should have written "students"; instead I have used "they" to indicate a gender-neutral singular person. This is commonly used in every day speech because the English language lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun. The only correct thing to do is write "he or she". I have decided to respect proper grammar by writing it here but assert my authority as an individual in favor of efficiency by ignoring it anyway.

I'm going into my 10th month with Intolerable Tedium, and I am happy to announce that I have finally organized all past blog posts into categories (look below the archives section on the right-hand part of the screen). Now you can easily find all your favorite posts, or if you're new, you can see the kinds of things I blog about.

Comedy- These are posts made specifically with the intent of sounding humorous. Note that the section is not titled "good comedy" so don't set your expectations too high.
Cool Stories- Anything that I feel like is a cool story. This is kind of a miscellaneous category.
Learn Something- Posts that educate you about anything and everything.
Personal Thoughts- With emphasis on "personal" these are not attempting to assert any kind of facts, they are glimpses into the dark cavern that is my tortured noggin (Harry Potter Puppet Pals anyone?) these also include autobiographical posts.
Updates- Throughout the months I've made posts (like this one) that contain updates about Intolerable Tedium; they have been stored here.

Note that some posts fall under multiple categories and thus can be found in multiple categories.