BARONI: A TRIP (SERGIO CHEJFEC) AND MIRAGE

Still at that hour, or again, the temperature seemed to make things tremble. Those situations of intense heat, which make you rehearse descriptions with vague outlines, refractions of light, objects in slow motion, etc. And yet I was impressed by the opposite, the speed; as if temperature proceeded to disintegrate in terror, and reality itself, in its multiple joints, was struck by fear and wanted to escape this situation immediately.

As soon as you went out to the garden, neither having taken the first step nor having already felt the impact of the heat, you noticed the unease, nature at once watery and squelched.

You knew that underneath that calmness lay a latent combustion encompassing all the elements, revealed by isolated and spontaneous reactions.

This is something that literature can do with physical phenomena: illuminate them with images and so make them better understood. We physics teachers always try to do this. Everybody has seen this optical illusion on the horizon of the road on a very sunny day. You yourself melt by mimesis upon seeing, that´s why we call it a mirage

Once you understand and feel the phenomenon, by virtue of the text above, it almost matters less to know that it´s caused by the different densities of...

CALL FOR THE DEAD (JOHN LE CARRÉ) AND ROUCHÉ-FRÖBENIUS THEOREM

"Loose ends everywhere. No police work. Nothing checked. Like algebra."

"What's algebra got to do with it?"

"You've got to prove what can be proved, first. Find the constants. Did she really go to the theatre? Was she alone? Did the neighbours hear her come back? If so, what time? Was Fennan really late Tuesdays? Did his Missus go to the theatre regular every fortnight like she said?"

It´s great that detectives use mathematics methods in their work. You can’t rush an investigation. The first thing you have to find out is whether a solution even exists. Or, in mathematicians’ terms, whether the system of equations is compatible with the data. Because, what´s the point in trying to solve something that has no solution?