self-image: giant bloodshot eye of (lambda (x) (x x))

[eub]

Meme: what's your favorite image from Google image search on just your first name?


Tough competition, but -- ooh, lambda calculus, shiny!

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Neck and neck: I hope no parent, even at the MIT Media Lab, would do this.




Runners up:

Me in a plush banana suit. Or is that me with an escort in a plush banana suit?

Me as a schoolgirl elephant.

Fail to entertain me at your peril.

Comments

[eub.livejournal.com]

Ooh ooh, looking at it again, it's cooler than I thought: it's not the giant bloodshot eye of (lambda (x) (x x)), it's the giant bloodshot eye of (lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)).

Pause for breath and explication. (λ x . x x) is the function that when you give it something, it gives you that something applied as a function to itself as an argument. In (λ x . x x) (λ x . x x), the "something" is the second (λ x . x x) (the first (λ x . x x) is what it's being passed into), so the result is, ta-da, (λ x . x x) (λ x . x x). It's a Quine program.

The "(lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))" on the eye is written in a circle, for extra cool points, even if the operational semantics of writing it in a circle is not entirely clear. Also, there is an eye in the eye. This is obligatory.

I wish I could work in a pun on the I combinator here (I is λ x . x, the identity), but λx.x can't quite.

[ssaiscps.livejournal.com]

In the circle, it looks like a term with two places a beta reduction can be made. I wonder if any work has been done on circular lambda terms.