check(out my)mate

and here, poor fool
with all my lore
i stand no wiser
than before

thanks to smbc for quoting one of my favourite quotes of all time!

it reflects many things, but mainly, i think, it is a testimonial to how, after so many years of trying to understand the enigmatic subtleties of mathematics and science... we really aren't anywhere farther from the starting point than we claim to be. as doc emmet brown would have traded his tradeskills, one day we may end up saying, ourselves:

time-traveling is just too dangerous. better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe: women!

not that the latter is any easier to understand, mind you.

so why is it that we keep trying and trying... but we get nowhere? again, the smbc strip offers a cryptic answer: we keep running to remain the same.

what now? the red queen hypothesis states that we advance (in various ways) to keep the status quo the same, because our co-evolving environment does so as well. without the constant change we subject ourselves to, we would effectively be left behind and bite the dust. quoting more lewis carroll:

it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

or at least that's what the queen says. and for the biologist, running is the analogy for sex. or at least the imperative for sexual reproduction. yeap, figure that one out for yourselves! and for the time being, let me bask in the blaze of glorious victory, as i ponder the possibility of a red queen dethroning fermina.