MDMD(0): Sigmated Ampersand

[jporter]

The derivation of the word *ampersand* seems to be, literally: the symbol,
"&", itself, stands for "and". That is, a word, defining a symbol, which
stands for a word.

Circular, reflexive, and perhaps annular comment on what lies between a
symbol and what is symbolized.

But the glorious symbol chosen for the cover seems to harken back to the
Latin Epsilon of Et, the first letter of the latin *and*. It is a huge
Gothickal Epsilon with a voraciously extending tongue, threatening to lick,
to taste, and more than just taste, anything it can, frog-like, flick into
its digestive apparatus.

And to what other uses have Epsilons, of the capital variety, been put?
Well, (funny you should ask) mathematically speaking, to signify the
process of summation  of all the sector'd subintervals of an area under a
curve- as the number of subintervals increases toward infinity (or, the
limit of the expanse of each subinterval approaches zero), i.e.,
integration.

Early on, the process of taking limits became internalized and
automatically assumed, emphasis being placed on the summing of the infinite
subintervals. Then, the symbol for the Limit, and the sum of the limits, E,
were subsumed into the elegant and elongated Sigma of Leibnitz. The symbols
for the whole process becoming sigmated.

But, as this cover design might, in my imagination, imply, we may have not
yet reached that point in the tale, and so we are left with a glorious
tongued ampersand, of the Epsilon variety- hungry and reaching, ever
yearning for more- its appetite whetted by the promise of the unspoiled and
unsector'd, with no end in sight.  And, and, and, and....what is final sum
of such appetite?

Is it strange that the ampersand faces left to right, and so by convention,
seems to extend that tongue Eastward?

jody