There is no genius without a mixture of madness (Seneca) Or more precise: genius and madness are brothers and sisters. Simon Singh writes a very interesting short essay on John Nash's achievements in game theory in the New Statesman. Apparently the rules for the auctions for the telephone frequencies which raised about 50 billion euro in Germany alone can be derived from Nash's equations. The article ends with a scene from the opening page of Sylvia Nasar's biography A Beautiful Mind which served as the basis for the Oscar awarded movie: a friend visits Nash in the hospital and asks him how he could believe that aliens were recruiting him to save the world and Nash replies: "Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously" (via arts & letters daily). P.S. The comments are back but I am still seriously thinking of moving. I have reserved the Antville name ignorant already. For the time being that address is just used as a clipboard for thoughts and links.