with incarnations of the god Apollo, so they bring in an un, unusual young man named Ambrose Jerusalem. Ambrose is finishing up his doctorate in computer science just across the Bay in, in Berkeley, but he's unusual in that he was home schooled by his father, a classical archeologist. Areally intense guy who would even taste the dirt and artifacts to make sure that they were authentic.
really intense guy who would even taste the dirt and artifacts to make sure that they were authentic. Ambrose is exactly what the NSA needs because he straddles these two worlds; the worlds of computer science and antiquity.To give you a sense of what Ambrose is like, I'm gonna read another passage. This is a passage in which Ambrose has been approached by the NSA, and he's remembering the things
The trees turned forth cold, luxuriant greenery touched here and there with hints of autumn. Ambrose ’s photojournalist’s vest—his favorite piece of clothing, with the pockets of the many treasures—was just warm enough. The bleak weather seemed to embalm the isolatedhouses in a way that brought a cozy pleasure to him. There could be no vain scrambling to find one’s destiny, here. It lay not more than five feet from the fireplace, as
will face the Furca Pythagorica many times in your life, Ambrose . I’ve led you down a different branch of the fork than nearly anyone else will follow.' Ambrose looked at the road behind them which lay straight as far as the eye could see.He held up two fingers as though in a sign of victory.
So in this passage there's a conversation taking place between Ambrose and Rochelle his supervisor at the NSA. "Ambrose prepared another list of books and they again sent out to the library. In the meantime he read about the history of Huron and the City of Syracuse extracting what he could from the reference books on hand. Rochelle searched the Web to learn some rudiments.
beauty to the world and reviving classical ideals. Ambrose as you can imagine with his background, has a yearning for these things. So he has to grapple with what's real and what's not. And whether he may be working for the NSAto try to hunt down and destroy a group that may be older and wiser than we are and could bring a certain order and moral force to the world.
But oftentimes our own emotions, for example, get in the way. As Ambrose Bierce one said, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. And it happens a lot these days.
So these number theorists found themselves whisked away from their ivory towers into the fortress of the NSA. Now Ambrose realizes that as computing gravitates toward the center of our universe and cryptography spreads, the whole Pythagorean idea of prowess in number theory, of secrecy and so forth, doesn't seem so far off base any longer. Pythagoras said famously that the universe is number and he meant it in a mystical way. Well cryptology directly links the knowledge of numbers with
So this is "The Devil's Financial Dictionary," and it was inspired very directly by "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce. And thank you, Google Books, if we have anybody from Google Books in the room.
And the other thing is it occurred to me as I was thinking about recapturing some of the spirit of Ambrose Bierce that maybe if you can make people laugh, you can help them learn. And I think one of the real pitfalls of traditional financial advice is it's so somber and deadly serious, and sort
Governments and large institutions like to put parameters on it so everyone will feel comfortable with not having to think for themselves." This is from Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary." "'A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly.'" "Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known.
Alright. Brendan: Yeah. Mike: It's all good, bro. Ira: This is Lauren Ambrose who plays his girlfriend.
most particularly with its references to the Lost Land of Carcosa, originally to be found in Robert W Chambers book, the King in Yellow, and in the works of Ambrose Bierce. However, from a historical perspective, this golden age of television might come
Ambrose is exactly what the NSA needs because he straddles these two worlds; the worlds of computer science and antiquity.To give you a sense of what Ambrose is like, I'm gonna read another passage. This is a passage in which Ambrose has been approached by the NSA, and he's remembering the things that his father told him when he was a child; the things about Pythagoras in particular.
and kept calling my partner Michelle and saying, have you made it to chapter whatever yet? For example, the Ambrose character, Bill Pullman's character, he's much different in our show than he is in the book.
Yes, I know you know that already. Well, the Pythagoreans thought of numbers a little like we might think of gods. Pythagoras himself was a bit of a loon.' 'How?' Ambrose asked in surprise. 'Well, one story goes like this: He was walking down the street in Kroton—in southern Italy—one day, when he saw a man kicking a dog. Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered anyone in the ancient Greek world. But Pythagoras was different.
It’s not impossible that he was a vegetarian, though.' Father and son fell silent. An old pickup truck with a wood-railed cargo space drove by, forcing Ambrose and his father to the edge of the road. Damp, colored leaves glistened on the forest floor like the shiny coat of an exotic, broad-backed creature. Ambrose mused, 'I wonder whether I’d remember if I’d been a horse in another life.' 'Do you?' Dr. Jerusalem asked. 'What would you remember?'
It's a tiny, tiny clue, but it turns out to be critical. So in this passage there's a conversation taking place between Ambrose and Rochelle his supervisor at the NSA. "Ambrose prepared another list of books and they again sent out to the library. In the meantime he read about the history of Huron and the City of Syracuse extracting what he
spelled Syracus by the Greeks?' 'No. I've looked it up in Little and Scott. There were several variance on the name in Greek, the Ionian Syracusi,' Ambrose said. He continued, 'And also the Doric and others. I'm pretty sure that Syracus is the modern German spelling, but I just can't see any reason for writing Syracus in English.'
return to our table now you cannot hold a human heart without questioning how it ever became known as the center of emotion or as the 16th century french surgeon Ambrose puree once granley described it the chief mansion of the soul the organ of the vital faculty the
houses in a way that brought a cozy pleasure to him. There could be no vain scrambling to find one’s destiny, here. It lay not more than five feet from the fireplace, as in ancient years. His father frequently set Ambrose ruminating on civilizations tens of centuries old, on the frenetically unfolding, spreading, and splintering empires of the Mediterranean. Several times together they had visited archaeological sites. Now, as then Ambrose ran his mind over the traces of antiquity. The jewelweed and blank yellow
forelock. The animal awkwardly tilted its head up and down, as if unsure how to nod approval and enjoy the scratching at the same time. Dr. Jerusalem encouraged Ambrose to pat the horse’s head. Ambrose said, 'It's an intelligent horse.' 'Yes she is. A beautiful mare,' his father replied stroking her head. 'There's soul in those eyes.' 'Maybe there's a person trapped in the horse like in the story I read by Apuleius. He was turned into an ass though. That's like a donkey.'
Now where does the mathematical view of the Pythagoreans come together with modern cryptology? In other words, why is Ambrose at the right intersection of ideas? The NSA believes that the cult of Pythagoreans has used its mathematical prowess to break a cryptographic algorithm known as RSA; many of you are probably familiar with it. Named
But you won't get the massive drop off and therefore the failure of the initiative. OK, great. Stuart Ambrose asks, "Of all the change drivers that lie ahead for us-- climate change, machine learning, political instability, et cetera--
I'm sure it is. So, why didn't Kvothe ever make a concerted effort to show that Ambrose sent him into the stacks with a candle? Question from Andrew in the audience.
I think that it came to mean something that was far more radical and hard to swallow or you could, frankly, go back to Ambrose Bierce and "The Devil's Dictionary," which is one of my favorite.
collected too many friends at home as it was, and I doubt his wife appreciated it—although Theano herself was also a formidable philosopher. I’m sure the dog kicker was stunned, and left his dog alone for at least a few days.' 'How cruel!' said Ambrose . 'Pythagoras should have taken the dog home with him. Is that why he didn't eat animals?' 'You mean why he was vegetarian?' 'Yes.' 'That may be a myth. But almost everything about Pythagoras is a myth, Ambrose . All we know with anything approaching certainty is
hoped, eventually—they claimed in certain cases, as Pythagoras did—to recall events from former lives.' Again they walked for a long time in silence. The sun set and the sky began to glow. Ambrose tried forcing on himself a consciousness of the texture of his clothing. He attuned himself to the places where it touched, brushed, or lay lightly on his skin. He felt his stomach rumble. As he turned his attention upward to the orange evening sky, he felt a ghostly attraction to the place—or rather, its tutelary
The Pythagoreans called it the Furca Pythagorica, the Pythagorean Fork. They represented it by the letter upsilon. Upsilon resembles our capital letter Y, right? It’s forked. You will face the Furca Pythagorica many times in your life, Ambrose . I’ve led you down a different branch of the fork than nearly anyone else will follow.' Ambrose looked at the road behind them which lay straight as far as the eye could see.
Some of his early followers forgot what they learned. Plato, Augustine, More, Jefferson—they all owed a debt to Pythagoras. They remembered some of the important teachings. But too many have forgotten.' Dr. Jerusalem stopped and put his hand on Ambrose ’s shoulder. 'I sometimes lose sight of how young you are. But this is one of the burdens I'll have to place on your shoulders. We’ll make sure that you don’t forget entirely. You’ll be rooted in other times and places. It 's the only way to understand
As the story gathers pace, messages like the one that Secretary Abel came across multiplied. Other powerful people start to be menaced. So how do Ambrose and the NSA sleuth out the identities of the Pythagoreans? They use a number of techniques: there's classical scholarship; there's gumshoe sleuthing; and computer forensics also come into play.
These, these are the questions at the heart of 'Tetraktys'. So I hope that after hearing me speak today, you'll accept my invitation to join Ambrose on his, on his journey and explore the mystery. Thank you very much.
and kept calling my partner Michelle and saying, have you made it to chapter whatever yet? I think me and my producers and our creator, Derek Simonds, who's an incredible writer and developer, he really saw that that Ambrose character
worked for the cotton mills. And this is when the first immigrants started coming in. These were Irish, mostly Irish, Scottish, and English immigrants. And then the town was about 20 percent--I mean, 17 to 20 percent immigrants, as the mills grew. And the owner of the mills was Ambrose Lawrence . He's the guy who built the brick mills, and replaced the old cotton mills and they got into more hosiery. They did socks for the Civil War and things like that, and the long underwear, things like that. And he is an interesting character
So the Pythagoreans are the villains in our story, if they really are villains, which isn't at all clear. Now of course the National Security Agency isn't accustomed to dealing with incarnations of the god Apollo, so they bring in an un, unusual young man named Ambrose Jerusalem. Ambrose is finishing up his doctorate in computer science just across the Bay in, in Berkeley, but he's unusual in that he was home schooled by his father, a classical archeologist. A
in ancient years. His father frequently set Ambrose ruminating on civilizations tens of centuries old, on the frenetically unfolding, spreading, and splintering empires of the Mediterranean. Several times together they had visited archaeological sites. Now, as then Ambrose ran his mind over the traces of antiquity. The jewelweed and blank yellow and copper leaves scattered on the forest floor, the broken stone walls and raw timber of old buildings evoked, if they did not resemble, the altars and groves of ancient Greece or
the ends of which stretched between white plastic cylinders on wooden posts. 'Not electrified,' he said. A dappled gray horse came over to them, and Dr. Jerusalem stroked it under the forelock. The animal awkwardly tilted its head up and down, as if unsure how to nod approval and enjoy the scratching at the same time. Dr. Jerusalem encouraged Ambrose to pat the horse’s head. Ambrose said, 'It's an intelligent horse.' 'Yes she is. A beautiful mare,' his father replied stroking her head. 'There's soul in
Dr. Jerusalem laughed, 'Yes, so maybe this is some Russian empress who according to the great wheels of cosmic justice was reincarnated as a mare.' He chuckled at his private joke. 'Reminds me of Xenophanes' story about Pythagoras and the dog. Have I ever told it to you?' 'I don't think so,' Ambrose said seriously. 'Pythagoras was the ancient philosopher who coined the word "philosophy." He also invented—or at least popularized—the Pythagorean Theorem.
left his dog alone for at least a few days.' 'How cruel!' said Ambrose . 'Pythagoras should have taken the dog home with him. Is that why he didn't eat animals?' 'You mean why he was vegetarian?' 'Yes.' 'That may be a myth. But almost everything about Pythagoras is a myth, Ambrose . All we know with anything approaching certainty is that he was some kind of genius—and that he abstained from eating beans and ox hearts.
'I don't know. Maybe my pasture. And people petting me. And how hay tastes.' 'I've raised a confirmed Pythagorean then. Do you know the Pythagoreans tried more or less just that?' 'What do you mean?' 'They used to perform exercises to improve their memories. Every evening, Ambrose , they would try to recall all of the events that had occurred over the course of the day. Imagine it. They’d try to recollect finer and finer details: faces, clothing, what they ate, whom they saw. A word that a friend deftly pulled out of a hat in a conversation on philosophic
something important. But he had no way to protest. 'So do you think the feelings are lies? Are they bad?' 'No, not bad, Ambrose . Quite the opposite. They're too important to be badly handled. The successors to the Pythagoreans went wrong. They tried to reduce them to a superstitious system, to explain these poetic and highly individual experiences in terms of a simplistic
course it's the substance of life. Without that depth of perception, we’re Cyclopes, one-eyed monsters. But today we replace our human memories with computer memories, with exomemories and exominds. That spells the death of nostalgia, the loosening of the deep cord with which an ancient ruin or this spot of countryside resonates in you, Ambrose . Recall that "memory" in Greek was the mother of the muses.' 'I know.' 'The world is placing less and less value on such things. Fewer and fewer people with memory these days. Memory has been shunted
Recall that "memory" in Greek was the mother of the muses.' 'I know.' 'The world is placing less and less value on such things. Fewer and fewer people with memory these days. Memory has been shunted off to a nursing home. The muses will follow soon. I have you learn poetry by heart to nourish your spirit and your mind—to glue it to your soul, Ambrose . That’s just one reason I’m educating you yourself. Do you understand?' 'I think so.' 'Do you know the famous poem by Frost about the two paths that "diverged in a yellow wood"?
He held up two fingers as though in a sign of victory. 'What happened to them?' he asked. 'To the Pythagoreans? They chose the wrong branch?' 'The Pythagoreans were the original utopians, Ambrose . Bringers of the gods’ fire to Earth, if you will. The first aristocrats in the true sense of the word. I don’t mean lazy snobs from privileged families with a ‘de’ or ‘von’ in their names. Just the opposite.
burdens I'll have to place on your shoulders. We’ll make sure that you don’t forget entirely. You’ll be rooted in other times and places. It 's the only way to understand your own. You’ll be one of the last with the gift of a classically educated mind, Ambrose . The barbarians are again sweeping over the land, and it’s time to retreat to Hibernia—to bide our time across the sea. Perhaps the aristoi will come again. But perhaps you’ll
So let me read a last bit from the book. This, this bit needs a little bit of explanation. The messages left by the Pythagoreans like the one left for Secretary Abel have been essentially flawless, but Ambrose and the NSA noticed a typo in one of them. In one message the word "Syracuse," like the name of the town in upstate New York, which is also the name of an, a city in the ancient world, Greek city, is misspelled. Somehow
could from the reference books on hand. Rochelle searched the Web to learn some rudiments. 'Look here. I found a portrait,' she announced, swiveling her monitor to show Ambrose photographs of the two sides of a silver coin on auction. The reverse depicted a galloping cavalryman carrying a sphere. The obverse showed a beardless man in profile with a prominent round chin and a small ear; his curly mass of hair bound in a slender band tied from behind.
'He looks young for a king.' 'That's thanks to Alexander the Great. He started the vogue in boyish looks for conquerors.' 'Apart from that,' Rochelle said, 'every Website has the same historical snippet on Huron. Nothing more than you told me. Any luck on your end?' 'No. Not yet.' 'Really, Ambrose . Are we chasing our tails? Can one letter really mean all that much anyway? Syracuse, Syracus. Is it really such a big deal? Couldn't it just be a spelling error or a typo?' 'It could be a typo. In that case it may not mean much, but every other piece of writing
I'm pretty sure that Syracus is the modern German spelling, but I just can't see any reason for writing Syracus in English.' 'I see. So to put it in your terms, the word Syracus is a mutation of some kind.' 'Well, yes,' Ambrose replied. 'I suppose you could say that.' 'But that makes it distinctive, you see?'"