Fun With Mathematics (Meyer)

Fun With Mathematics, Jerome S. Meyer (1952)

[IMAGE COMING]

Two “fun” things about this Fun with Mathematics book I rescued from my old school library are that it was checked out only twice - due dates in 1966 & 1975 - and that despite it being read, some pages were bound together. Bound, as in, they weren’t properly cut. I had to use scissors to separate some pages. (Someone, at some distant point in the past, attempted to tear them, but stopped.)

This actually was a "fun" book to read. It covered some of the fun things in mathematics, and it kept the conversation at about a high school level, even when it explored higher topics.

It started by talking about really big numbers and really small ones, and getting close approximations of numbers that aren't quite there.

How big the Romans multiply and divide using their numbers? Likely on an abacus, not in a column format. I don't know how true the explanation that a V for 5 is because your hand forms a V when you have all five fingers raised. Or that if you have one hand up and one pointed down below it, it will look like an X for all ten fingers.

Another thing that wasn't meant to be amusing, but was still interesting, was the explanation of log tables and how they were created. They were basically made to be accurate to three decimals places using approximations and the rules for logs and exponents. No one back in the old days could work all these values out. Ironically, we can work out a lot more 70 years later. (Hell, we could have done it even 30 or 40 years later!)

The fun stuff also covered Magic Squares (like seems to be a standard thing), but this went further to makes ones that only included 0, 1, 6, 8 and 9, so that we they were rotated 180 degrees, they were still magic squares. (One such square is pictured on the cover.) There were also some equations that could be reflected or rotated because of these numbers.

The odder things were the chapter on a "nomograph", which looked like a circular slide rule, and a chapter on making a slide rule out of regular rulers. (I used to have one a long time ago before I had any clue what to do with one.)

I skimmed over the "interesting problems", mostly because they seemed like the kind that I knew how to do, but I needed time to just sit there and work them out. I figured out how to make 20 out of just two 3s, so I'm good.

If We Had Known (McPhail, ed)

If We Had Known, Mike McPhail, ed (2017)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

First book of the year. (Okay, so I started it last year.) And look at the cool cover!

If We Had Known is a collection of cautionary tales of the future: what we might find out there, and what may happen to us right here. My fear going in was that it would be a collection of depressing stories, like those episodes of The Twilight Zone where that final twist just kills you. Thankfully, that isn't the case. They aren't all cheery, either, to be sure, but humanity doesn't get wiped out over and over from mistakes made because we didn't know.

The book starts off with an essay on having a necessary enemy, which turns into a fictional account before it's over, that goes through the space race and the Cold War, and pondering should we lie about an alien invasion coming, if only to get us off the planet? The greatest threat to humanity may be never leaving our planet's surface.

It's the next two stories that really get the book rolling: "The Steady Drone of Silence" by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, and "The Last Man on Earth" by Jody Lynn Nye. The former is a military sci-fi rescue/recovery mission to uncover what went wrong, where we learn that science and the military may have different end goals for any discovery or new technology. If the latter, the cumulative effect of genetic manipulation over generations may eventually reach an evolutionary dead end. (Those shouldn't be spoilers -- they're really starting points.)

Note: Danielle Ackley-McPhail is the Publisher of eSpec Books, which published this anthology, and also the spouse of the editor. Neither of those facts were the reason her story is included. Jody Lynn Nye is listed elsewhere in this blog for co-writing The Death of Sleep.

Most of the stories deal with encounters with alien races or cultures when either we go out there, or they come to us (or our colonies).

The final entry, "The Third Heaven" by Robert Greenberger, was more of a character piece than a story, but I enjoyed it, and thought it ended the book well. It was mostly a conversation between the ship's AI and a religious scientist. During the long boring months in space transit, the main character starts questioning her religious beliefs and looks to the AI for guidance. It doesn't speak down or mock in any way, which I appreciated.

There is a follow-up book, with a similar looking cover, that I have to purchase before the month is out.

2019: The Year in Review

For a year without a Challenge checklist, I had a pretty eclectic year. Granted, I didn't read as much as I would have liked, and I lost a lot of my reading time this past summer due to ... reasons. Also, at least two crossword puzzle books factored in, as I needed a diversion every now and then.

There were over three dozen posts last year, almost all of them about completed books. Only two about books that I gave the old college try before abandoning them for not being good, enjoyable, or even well-written.

There were fiction books and nonfiction, sci-fi and foreign translations, graphic novels and self-help, math book and game books, long and short.

In the graphic novel category: I discovered the series Amulet at my last school, before discovering that each issue was published about a year or more apart -- and that the final issue had not been published yet. Indeed, at the time, it probably hadn't been written yet, as #8 was not that old. There were summer comic books, most of which were disjointed collections of monthly titles, which shared a theme, but not a coherent story line because too many parts were left out. (And different included titles had different side plots.)

The odd thing was that I made no entry for One Piece and haven't since 2017 when I listed the first 27 books. I know I'm somewhere in the 30s, possibly low 40s, so I need to find out which was the last book I read, so I can catch up and make another entry. Honestly, I don't remember if I read any last year. I would have had to have put them on hold at the library. (Note: that's actually not a bad way to check on it.)

I will plug Amazon only because I tend to use their images, but because of their annual "World Book Day" where I get to download a bunch of free translations, and then proceed to read one or two of them. This year, I read another Japanese book, Go (even though I should have gone to another part of the world), and a Dutch book, An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew. The amazing thing about the Dutch book was that it took place, for the most part, in the United States, in New York and Pennsylvania. Allene Tew was born in New York at the fringes of high society, rose up and eventually married actually royalty in Europe. She died in Holland, and the author worked backward from there -- no spoilers, as the story starts with her final days, far from the place where she was born. Had I had more time to go walking this year, I thought about a tour of places she'd lived (or were mentioned in the book) -- the Manhattan ones, at least. Fascinating book, and there were some copies of original society pages included.

In the fantasy category: last year's eSpec Books sale gave me a collection of Precinct books, by Keith R. A. DeCandido (I recently found out it's "de Candid o"), except for Mermaid Precinct, which I selected after winning a flash fiction contest. (Those are gone now.) I liken it to a fantasy Barney Miller with its cast of characters that originated in roleplaying games, but are three-dimensional.

Nonfiction, other than the translation, included essay books ("Writing Science Fiction", and "Breakfast on Mars" which is NOT science fiction) and self-help. Humble and Kind was a gift book with the lyrics to the Tim McGraw song (which he didn't write) along with a short essay introduction (which he did). Speak Thai was just a quickie free ebook, which I read as a curiosity -- it didn't achieve its goal. I don't need to break up with my phone -- in fact, I need to get a better phone -- but reducing screen time wouldn't be a bad idea. And, of course, there were two math books.

Finding a challenge for 2020 may be difficult. Many are boring, or just have dumb things added. I think I did okay last year. Plus, I have a whole lot TBR.

2100: What Does the Future of Healthcare Look Like?

2100: What Does the Future of Healthcare Look Like?, (no editor information available) (2019?)

Update to entry pending

Normally, I start off these entries saying like "not a review, just some notes to help me remember what I read". In this case, I'm not sure I wish to remember. I'm deliberately leaving out names, so anything negative I have to say won't get associated with them in any web searches. Also, the book contains no copyright information other than the authors retain the rights to their own stories which have not been published elsewhere. I'm assuming this book is from 2019, but there is no way to know.

Update: I just discovered that all of these stories are available to be read online from the foundation that hosted the contest. I guess a link would be helpful.

I was recently at a book reading/book launch party for an anthology that I wanted to participate in. (Maybe I'll write about this some day.) There was a raffle, and I won two books. This was one of them. I figured that it was a skinny collections of short fiction (flash fiction, really) and I could squeeze it in by the end of the year.

It didn't look too promising, to be honest, as it turned out to be a compilation of stories that were the winners of a competition about health care in the future. I didn't recognize any of the names of the authors, and glancing through the full-page bios padding the end of the book didn't help any.

A few stories in, and I couldn't help but wonder if the stories were chosen because of the messages they contained, and not because they were written particularly well. (They are not.) If this was the best of the competition, then there was just about literally no competition.

The theme of the book is "What will healthcare look like in the year 2100"? But it reads like, imagine the worse problems of today (again "imagine" if you want), and multiply them -- not exponentiate them 80 years into the future. But leave everything as it is -- or again, as you imagine it is -- today.

The lead-off story began in the recovery room after a baby had been delivered and taken to the nursery, and we find that the mother is married to another woman and that 90 years from now, this is still a problem with both sets of parents. Okay, let's get to the health care now. The entire plot revolves around an AI doctor's assistant and a bed-ridden doctor (who just gave birth) telling the other a bunch of things that the other already knows. Then there's a sudden complication out of nowhere, and we hear how healthcare still sucks 80 years from now. About the only thing interesting in the story is that the baby, Ava, tests positive for the Sickle Cell gene, which the black mother knew she carried, but was unaware that the Hispanic mother also carried.

Stop and think about that for a second. The baby inherited a gene from both mothers. Okay, now this is science fiction. That is your starting point -- THAT IS YOUR STORY. How did they edit those genes together? How did they overlook this? How can they fix the baby?

Nope. Instead we get that black mothers are still (in 2100) three times as likely to die in childbirth, even though they are not a minority any more. (And you know something? There's a better story in that sentence than the one we got.) But I'm not going to critique the story I didn't get. This one, however, is terrible.

Follow this with a story that takes place in a climate change dystopia with a main character who is one of the lucky ones, one of the survivors, and who owns firewood made from the last of the redwoods. (The goal is to replant them.) He's also 100 years old, lived through the Health Care Riots, and cured many horrible illnesses, which, once again, insurance companies never pay for.

This is another story which is two characters drinking brandy and talking to each, explaining the previous century. Worse -- do not read if you are tired -- the author switching between first and last names of the two characters so often that a couple of times I forgot which was which. They both sounded the same, after all.

...more to come ... or maybe not ...

A Dozen "Dozen" Game Books

A Dozen Dozen Game Books, Philip J. Reed (2019)

Entry pending

I spent a lot of time reading gaming material in the latter part of the year. Altogether, those pages could comprise a book the size of many others I'd read this past year. And they were better written than some of the things I subjected myself to (particularly things I didn't bother to list on the blog).

The title of this post doesn't mean that I read 144 books. It means that I read many of the books in the A Dozen Adjective Nouns series by Philip J. Reed (@philipjreed on Twitter). There will eventually be more than a dozen of these, and many are already available for preview by the backers of two separate Kickstarter campaigns. (And I'm one of them.)

Here are some of the coming PDF files:

On top of this, there was an additional Kickstarter for Delayed Blast Gamemaster #2, which had issues #1 as an add-on. These were each 48 pages of well-thought-out source material.

I thought all of this merited an entry before the end of the year. The question, in my mind, is how to count them. Definitely as one. Maybe even two -- one for Delayed, and one for the Dozens.

Below is a list of the supplements I've read already read, mostly presented here so I'll know what to put next year:

Delayed Blast Gamester, issue 1 (48 pages) Delayed Blast Gamester, issue 2 (48 pages) The Book of Unusual Potions (64 pages) A Dozen Ancient Dragons (14 pages) A Dozen Arcane Spell Components A Dozen Sinister Rumors A Dozen Dreadful Rumors more to come ...

Classics Illustrated: Romeo & Juliet (Shakespeare)

Classics Illustrated: Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare (Author), (Illustrator)

[image pending]

I don't know where I got this graphic novel from -- probably from the library. It's been in the basement for a while. I didn't read illustrated classics as a kid because they seemed to dense. I picked up a few when I started teaching (they were in the class library), but those seemed very thin. If you didn't already know the story, you might not know what was going on. Then again, if you did know the story, you'd see how much was left out.

So... Romeo & Juliet. I've watched the Franco Zeffirelli film from 1968 with Olivia Hussey and ... other people that I could google. And I've seen the modernized version with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, which kept the dialogue but modernized everything else. I prefer the former. There are also a billion adaptations -- skip those.

What I didn't know about this comic -- even though it's on the front cover in the lower corner, and explained on the back -- is that this was a "Quick Text" version, which leaves a bit out. There is a "Classic Text" version, which I may or may not have liked (even if that's want I might have wanted), and a Plain Text version of the same comic (which I probably would have enjoyed the most).

The downside of this is that most of the Shakespearean language is discarded, and when it is included, it sticks out oddly.

Another problem of the Quick Text is the artwork. The art was created and framed to allow for large word balloons. Without them, there are many tall panels with people's heads and shoulders at the bottom of the frame and a lot of empty space above them. It looks weird, and you wonder what the artists (and the editors) were thinking.

As for the story, you know it. Not much to say, except that the review of the material helped when I covered a drama class and they had to do a reading of the sword fight between Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo. At least I knew enough what was going on (and who was who) to explain to the students.

TL/DR: go for the Plain Text or the Classic Text. Skip the Quick Text. Or just read the play.

Mathematical Recreations (Kraitchik)

Mathematical Recreations , Richard H. Minear (Author), Maurice Kraitchik (1944)

[Image pending == its just a green cover with a geometric pattern]

I have too many old math books in my basement. Years ago, I made a practice of attempting to read one math book each summer, and to see how far I got before I gave up. Reasons for giving up: the math moved beyond me, or the notation became tiresome to figure out.

There are times when I might prefer a sentence to a nifty equation. Consider the difference between four or five lines of programming, and a single line of "clever code" that can accomplish the entire thing. Or even a paragraph explaining just what is going on.

Sometimes I feel I'm not the audience for these books, which is usually a 1940s grad student or above, or a 21st-century math professor (and above).

This book has been in my possession for at least a decade, and was taken from a pile of discards in the William E. Grady Technical-Vocational High School teacher center, which was formerly the Math Dept office. The book had been removed from circulation from the school library years earlier.

The title Recreations caught my attention, because I thought it might be more fun and games and puzzles. Not exactly, but still interesting. The problem with math puzzles is that once you work one out, they lose a little of the magic. And repetition of similar problems start to feel like homework. On the other extreme, problems that are impossible to figure out (or just behind your capability) are too frustrating.

That said, there was some interesting "stuff" in the books, including an old sheet of paper containing a list of scholastic websites on one side (they're probably all dead links by this point), and calculations on the back, mostly related to Pythagorean Theorem. I had several posts about those over a decade ago.

When I picked up this book at the beginning of the month, I thought I could possible knock off a chapter every day or two, and then write about it on my math blog. Rather than link all the individual posts, here is the link to the "Books" tag.

https://mrburkemath.blogspot.com/search/label/books
All the posts relating to this book are in December 2019. There will possibly be a wrap-up post in 2020, but I don't have time to think about it and write it now. Other projects are coming up with deadlines.

This book will probably be left on a table at the next Heliosphere science fiction convention in NY in April. Hopefully, there will be another math book there to join it. I hope to tackle another one (also with a page of notes as a bookmark) after I finish a couple other things.

Flash Fiction Library: A Touch of Darkness (McLachlan)

Flash Fiction Library, Volume 1: A Touch of Darkness, Keith McLachlan (2016)

[NO IMAGE WILL BE INCLUDED]

Okay, so I've been dabbling in a bunch of stuff over the past month or two, starting a couple of paper books, and even carrying them around, as well as starting (or resuming) a couple of crossword and cryptic crossword books that I need to work on or toss out. (And if you know me, I can't just toss things out.) And there is so much gaming material in PDF format that I'm currently plowing through.

At some point, either through FreeEbooks on reddit, or perhaps a mailing list, I found four volumes of flash fiction, which are usually good if you want a quick read, maybe with lunch or something.

This wasn't it.

I'm including this as an entry on my blog, because I tried. I even completed the first story when I should have given up after the second paragraph, and then again by the second page.

Self-publishing is fraught with peril, and if one cannot afford an editor, then one should at least run it past a couple of friends. Preferably one who is an English major. I wasn't, but even I could see what was wrong with this book.

And if you gotten to the point of creating four (short) volumes of stories, you should probably go back and correct the initial ones. Also, learn basic rules of writing, including the rule that says that you need to know the rules before you can break them.

This book on Amazon had only one review, which was a five-star rating and a summary that wasn't even true. I left a two-star review, with the second star being because I was overly nice, and I wasn't finishing this book.

Dr. Seuss Goes to War (Minear)

Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, Richard H. Minear (Author), Dr. Seuss (Illustrator), Art Spiegelman (Foreword)

I'm a math teacher but I work as a substitute. One day late last month, I had a coverage in a history class, and as I sat at the teacher's desk as glanced back at his bookcase, one title jumped out at me: Dr. Seuss Goes to War.

I had known that Theodor Geisel (aka, Dr. Seuss) had done war cartoons, but I don't think I've ever seen more than a sample or two. And suddenly here they all were! (Not all of them, actually, which I didn't know until I read the text.)

I couldn't let the opportunity pass, so I took the book back to the teachers' room during my prep period, and by the end of the day, I had read all of the comics. However, I had little time to read the commentary. The good news is that the book was available as an ebook from the public library. The bad news is that this book sucks as an ebook.

Part of the problem with reading just the comics is that there are references to historical people who I hadn't a clue about. I knew (from all things role-playing materials) the Charles Limbaugh became involved in politics after flying across the ocean, but some of the other names meant nothing to me. One was a world leader while others were editorial and opinion writers. Seuss had a problem with the New York Daily News along with some other publications as well.

One of the problems with the ebook is that the comics are grouped by topic, not chronologically. And the text is heavily annotated -- there are links to each of the comics, which is great, but jumping back to the text is a pain in the backside. This is one time where it would be better to have a finger holding one page while you flip to the other. Maybe there are easier ways to do this in Kindle, but that's beyond my current knowledge of its functionality.

Another surprise reading through the book: a Horton-like elephant appears in several comics, with tusks in two of them, even though he's supposed to be an Indian elephant. At first, I thought this was a prototype, but somewhere the text (or possibly, I "googled" it) I discovered that Horton Hatches the Egg was published in 1940, which was before Seuss went to work for P.M., and created these comics. I never read Yertle the Turtle, either as a kid, or to my kids or nieces or nephews, but the proto-Yertle appears in these pages.

A fascinating read, but if you can, go for the paperback.

Post-script: When I searched for the book image and author information, I found out that the paperback was published September 2001. An odd time to be going to war, don't you think?

The Joy of Cookies: Cookie Monster's Guide to Life (C. Monster)

The Joy of Cookies: Cookie Monster's Guide to Life, Cookie Monster, Julie Kraut (Ghostwriter) (2018)

Of course, a monster would have a ghost writer!

You probably already know what you're getting when you pick up a book written by a Sesame Street Muppet. If not, the teeth marks and the missing bite in the corner should clue you in.

The book is similar to other inspirational books, with a quote or passage on each page or two. In this case, familiar adages, proverbs, nursery rhymes and even song lyrics appear, except rewritten in Monster-speak -- e.g., using "Me" instead of "I" -- and centering the quote around Cookies. But that is generally just the beginning. If Cookie Monster were to say "Ask not for who Cookie tolls, it tolls for me", it would be followed by whatever actions or thoughts might occur to a monster after saying something like that. And there might be an illustration.

There are Word of Wisdom, like Keep Calm and Eat a Cookie, and three recipes, complete with monster-speak directions. The first recipe is simple enough for young hands to try. The last is several pages long.

I'd glad I held onto this book. This was a "rescue book" -- one that was in a pile to be donated, where quite a few of them became books to be recycled. (The garage leaked a little.) I knew I would enjoy it, and I did.

It also reminded me to follow Cookie Monster on Twitter.

Corrected tags: Science vs SF

At some point, it seems that I forgot that I had an "SF" tag and started using "Science" and "Fiction" as two separate tags. The Science tag was meant for books with actual science in them (usually nonfiction). I've corrected that.

I hope.

If anyone spots an errant tag, please feel free to leave a polite message.

How to Break Up With Your Phone (Price)

How to Break Up With Your Phone , Catherine Price (2019)

This was among a bunch of books slated to be removed from my house. The title intrigued me, so I took it out of the recycle pile. As a result, I only read this in school, not at home, because someone might've been upset that I'm rescuing what is supposed to be trashed. But I digress...

My phone is the least of my problems. Until a few years ago, I still had a cheap flip phone because it was costing me about $7 per month, and because I still have a legacy house phone that isn't going away any time soon.

However, it could be said that I have a problem with my iPad and any working PC with Internet at work (or at home). I'll sit down to do one thing, and I'll find myself checking out the same handful of sites over and over again, and not getting done the things I'd planned on doing. That sure kills writing projects (and sometimes comics), and is one of the reasons I no longer post weekly TV/movie/whatever reviews on another blog I maintain.

Oddly, I've gotten better about the number of sites I visit because typing on the ipad is a pain, and I use the ipad more than the pc.

Anyway, I thought the book's focus might be transferable, and in some ways it was. If nothing else, it's stuff to watch out for as I upgrade to my next phone and start using my features and functions.

The downside is that the book is really a Read-a-Day book where you are supposed to reevaluate your relationship with your device over the course of 30 days. I did not do this. I have no need to. So I just read through.

If you are addicted to your phone, there are likely good tips in here. If you are annoyed when people are on their phones when you're hanging out, you may want to give them a copy of this. If they are annoyed with you for the same reason, you should read it.