So, What Are You Reading?

I've been carless for about a decade and I'm tired of riding the bus.

 

recent purchases from the local thrift shop:

Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks. 85 cents
Mike Huckabee, Do the Right Thing. 85 cents
Richard P. Martin, Myths of the Ancient Greeks. 42 cents

 

I've been carless for 18 years and I'm tired of the bus, too. That's partly about the bus itself, but more about bus-people. Here, it's the refuge of the truly horrible - the incontinents, the unwashed, drug addicts etc.

But since I turned 65, the bus costs me a measly $215 a year! For that sum, I average (with transfers) around four bus-rides a day. (Six today!) I have enough money to buy a car, but I have no good place to put it and insurance would cost the earth! In this part of Canada, if you have no car and hence no insurance coverage for any significant period, your premium can go to silly levels when you sign on again - nothing to do with risk or previous record.

The last annual car insurance premium I paid was about $430, in 1998. Today, I gather a normal charge would be maybe $1100 or $1200. But since I've been carless, I'd have to pay $4,000 to $5,000 - likely for several years. I don't mind the cost of a car, but I'm not buying another one for my insurance agent!

So -- I take the bus and hate it. I also walk -- and that does me some good. Or at least, it seems to.

J.

 

But I've been careful to keep my driver's license current, just in case. In Ontario, all that takes is paying a renewal fee every five years. I don't want to have to read manuals or take tests... I once let the license expire and went through all that, a long time ago (1978). Never again!

J.

 

Read Mike Huckabee's Do the Right Thing.

 

From the thrift Shop, again. 90 cents.

Terence Conran's Garden DIY. 75 projects and designs for the garden I haven't had since I sold my house, but will have again one of these days.

J.

 

Read Black Elk's Black Elk Speaks.

 

Infinity In Your Pocket - Mike Flynn Up-market thrift-shop find, a whole $2.00.

Over 3,000 math and science facts & formulae. Full of good stuff. Learned new things about Fibonacci, fractals and algebra over one coffee. Learned things I didn't know about calculus, too - because I knew absolutely nothing to start with. A real find. Well done!

J.

 

Canadian Criminology - John Winterdyk (Been looking for a book on this for a while.)
Harrowsmith Perennial Garden - Patrick Lima.

90 cents each. Just drifting, shiftless through the Thrift Shop, once again. (Maybe there's a country song in that line somewhere.)

J.

 

Read Richard P. Martin's Myths of the Ancient Greeks.

 

Thrift shop had a sale today - 77 cents each. Bought these five:

Journey Through Scotland - Ross Finlay
Roman Britain. Life in an Imperial Province - Keith Branigan
The Age of Chivalry - National Geographic Society
Roma - A Novel of Ancient Rome - Steven Saylor
The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice - Ronni Gordon PhD and David Stillman PhD

They had a 10 books for $5 deal but these 5 were the ones I wanted, so...

J.

 

Johann: Infinity In Your Pocket - Mike Flynn Up-market thrift-shop find, a whole $2.00. Over 3,000 math and science facts & formulae. Full of good stuff. Learned new things about Fibonacci, fractals and algebra over one coffee. Learned things I didn't know about calculus, too - because I knew absolutely nothing to start with. A real find. Well done!

John: How about a couple of examples.

I remember Miss Mazziotta in 10th grade introducing Munschausen numbers. A number equal to the sum of each of its digits raised to the power of that digit. 3435 = 3 cubed + 4 to the 4th + 3 cubed + 5 to the 5th. I think. Presumably there are others. We were probably asked to find them. I have no idea.

 

One thing I knew, before looking at the book, was that sunflowers always have a given number of spirals in both directions. Before Mike Flynn told me, I didn't know they were always Fibonacci numbers. I knew the Fibonacci series had to do with rabbit offspring, but I wasn't even sure of the basic method of compiling the series - but I am now. I also read a few other examples of Fibonacci number occurrence in nature.

And Fractals - I'm familiar with most kinds because I enjoy seeing them on my computer. Over one coffee, I was able to absorb some historical info about Benoit Mandelbrot and his discoveries. Mandelbrots and Newtons have long been my favourite types. And I read heavily-simplified principles of the Lorenz attractors. I've often seen them but I had no idea of what kind of equations produced them. I have some idea now - they're derived from the equations of Edward Lorenz that describe atmospheric convection.

Calculus - I just had time to learn a bit about the kind of problems it can be used to solve - e.g. rates of change, the area under a curve (and why we might want to know it) plus some historical details of the "Newton-Leibniz wars."

The only things I learned in a few minutes about algebra were (a) its inventor, Mohammed Ibn-Musa Al-Khwarizmi (from whose name we get the word algorithm) and the meaning of the Arabic word al-jabr - replacement. (replacement of a quantity with a letter etc.) The kind of stuff they neglected to tell me in school - stuff I would have liked to know.

If someone back then had told me a reason I should learn to factor trinomials - i.e. what I could do with it - I would likely have learned it successfully. I was a very poor math student in high school - but had much less difficulty as an adult. In college (in my 40s and 50s) I managed to get A's in three sequenced semesters of business / financial math. I wonder - would I have done as well if calculus had been on the menu? Maybe some day, we'll know.

BTW - I looked it up and those are, as I suspected, Munchausen or Münchhausen numbers. I thought they might have something to do with the fabled Baron of the same name - and they do. Says the Wiki: "Because each digit is "raised up" by itself, this evokes the story of Baron Munchausen raising himself up by his own ponytail..."

Funny thing - you mention Miss Mazziotta in 10th grade, but the Wiki says the term was coined by a Dutch software engineer in 2009. My money's definitely on Miss Mazziotta! Here's the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_number

J.

 

Went back to the book sale and got two more today for 77 cents each:

Jazz Country - Nat Hentoff. A novel written in the 60s by a famous jazz critic, historian and novelist - still with us (and still writing) at 91. It's about a young white guy, 18 or so, trying to make it in the jazz world and the problems faced by professional jazz musicians, as African-Americans and as musicians. I always give fiction away when I finish the book. My place would look like Channel 37 Hoarders if I didn't!

Simple Fountains for Indoors and Outdoors - Dorcas Adkins Another book for the next garden I get.

J.

 

Trumped -The American Revolution

 

Finished "Jazz Country" this morning. A novel that sounds as good as my old jazz records.

J.

 

Why? Well, years ago, I read another math book that said bidirectional spirals in these ratios store the absolute highest possible number of seeds in the given flower area. No other storage scheme can match them.
Wow! Mother Nature! Who knew? :smile:

J.

 

The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace by HW Brands. Dr. Brands was my doctoral professor when I took my one and only doctoral class in history at A&M. I loved him. Three hour class and no one wanted to get up for fear they might miss something. Two things about him. He was able to take each year ( without notes) and give highlights...from 1877 onward. Also, class was like a History Channel episode. He was/is that good. He is at the University of Texas now.

 

Catch from the thrift shop: Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation Speaks.

Catch from the antiques mall: Anne Colver's Mr. Ljncoln's Wife.

 

I have this on my books to be read table.