Background on Names

Backround on the some of the names I have used for my workstations:
Seldon
Was (is, will be, ..) the psychohistorian of the Galatic Empire of Isaac Asimov. Seldon's development of the precise mathematics of psychohistory allowed him to see that tens of thousands of years of anarchy in the aftermath of the crumbling Galactic Empire could be avoided only through careful manipulation of society and established the Foundation to accomplish this.
Affine
af.fine \a-'fin, *-\ adj [L affinis, adj.] : of, relating to, or being a transformation that transforms straight lines into straight lines and parallel lines into parallel lines but may alter distance between points and angles between lines {~ geometry} (See for example BL0113560-930820-28TM)
Phaedrus
Phaedrus was a 5th century BC Greek philosopher, whose spirit haunted Persig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Phaedrus represented one of two opposing world views: those who try to understand their world by decomposing it into constituent parts as opposed to those for who such knowledge of structure destroys the beauty (and mystery) of the whole. This analytical approach vs mysticism is reflected in those who maintain their own motorbikes because their love the engineering vs those who refuse to learn how they work because knowing interferes with the gestalt appreciation. I am a decompositionalist and so identify with Phaedrus. (There was also a 1st century AD Roman fabulist by the name of Phaedrus.)
Arrakis
The desert planet (also called "Dune") in the novel Dune by science fiction writer, Frank Herbert, home of the Atreides family, the Fremen people and the awesome sandworms -- creatures so huge that one might swallow a hundred men in a gulp -- and their master, the Dune Messiah, Muad'dib.


terry@JanAndTerry.net (Terry L Anderson)