You Had to Be There
As has happened too often in the past couple months, I recently found myself having to return a library book unread. Some of the key factors in arriving at this unfortunate state include the uncertainty as to when any particular reserved book will show up, whether said book is in such demand that it cannot be renewed, and what else I have in the way of distractions.
Speaking to the one factor there that is less than random, this is certainly one of those seasons of distraction. June is a busy month on our social calendar, perhaps second only to December. Lots of birthdays and anniversaries, just for starters. And there is also a distinct intensity when it comes to getting the vegetables going.
But let's get back to that book: "Is God a Mathematician?" My impression was that the book was an ode to the elegance of mathematical principles and a presentation in lay terms of the intrinsic fascination of various mathematical aspects of our universe.
I confess I am a fan of mathematics, with a love hangover from some success and delight in the topic in school and a good deal of frustration at how rare that experience seems to be these days. Exhibit A for my fandom is that I recently worked at tracking down a copy of a book that I found inspiring in one of my HS courses (Courant and Robbins: "What is Mathematics"). I now find the book has subtitles like "Incommensurable Segments, Irrational Numbers, and the Concept of Limit" and "Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean Geometry." It is not a number I have any intention of reading cover-to-cover. Anyway, whether it is the teaching of the subject, degraded quality of the textbooks, or something else, it is disturbing to me that enthusiasm for such a critical subject seems to be in such decline.
When I realized I was going to have to forego actually reading "Is God," I made a point of sampling the book. That just made relinquishing it worse of course. But in the process I encountered the word "antinomy," denoting something like conflict or paradox, i.e., two seemingly valid yet opposed principles. I'm not sure I had encountered that word before. It was distinctive for me as an anagram for the element antimony (#51?). In the meantime, I was reading a book entitled "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," an entertaining semi-fictional improvisation on the lives of Kurt Godel and Alan Turing. Almost disturbingly, that same "new" word came up, less than 24 hours after first encounter. An intriguing word, if not necessarily useful in everyday exchanges (!).
I had just acquired a resource book on the subject of anagrams, 800 pages or so in length, and decided, bemused by this new word and anagram to give the resource a road-test. The way it works is that you alphabetize the letters and then consult the correct word-length chapter. Eight letters. AIMNNOTY, right?
Mind you, this was my first actual usage of the $2 anagram book I had dumped on book pile the previous day. I opened to the 8-letter section and proceeded to the "AIMNN" section only to find that my helpful bookseller had inserted a bookmark at that exact page.
If only it meant something! Like, say, I just won a single-payer health-care plan for the country.
Speaking to the one factor there that is less than random, this is certainly one of those seasons of distraction. June is a busy month on our social calendar, perhaps second only to December. Lots of birthdays and anniversaries, just for starters. And there is also a distinct intensity when it comes to getting the vegetables going.
But let's get back to that book: "Is God a Mathematician?" My impression was that the book was an ode to the elegance of mathematical principles and a presentation in lay terms of the intrinsic fascination of various mathematical aspects of our universe.
I confess I am a fan of mathematics, with a love hangover from some success and delight in the topic in school and a good deal of frustration at how rare that experience seems to be these days. Exhibit A for my fandom is that I recently worked at tracking down a copy of a book that I found inspiring in one of my HS courses (Courant and Robbins: "What is Mathematics"). I now find the book has subtitles like "Incommensurable Segments, Irrational Numbers, and the Concept of Limit" and "Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean Geometry." It is not a number I have any intention of reading cover-to-cover. Anyway, whether it is the teaching of the subject, degraded quality of the textbooks, or something else, it is disturbing to me that enthusiasm for such a critical subject seems to be in such decline.
When I realized I was going to have to forego actually reading "Is God," I made a point of sampling the book. That just made relinquishing it worse of course. But in the process I encountered the word "antinomy," denoting something like conflict or paradox, i.e., two seemingly valid yet opposed principles. I'm not sure I had encountered that word before. It was distinctive for me as an anagram for the element antimony (#51?). In the meantime, I was reading a book entitled "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," an entertaining semi-fictional improvisation on the lives of Kurt Godel and Alan Turing. Almost disturbingly, that same "new" word came up, less than 24 hours after first encounter. An intriguing word, if not necessarily useful in everyday exchanges (!).
I had just acquired a resource book on the subject of anagrams, 800 pages or so in length, and decided, bemused by this new word and anagram to give the resource a road-test. The way it works is that you alphabetize the letters and then consult the correct word-length chapter. Eight letters. AIMNNOTY, right?
Mind you, this was my first actual usage of the $2 anagram book I had dumped on book pile the previous day. I opened to the 8-letter section and proceeded to the "AIMNN" section only to find that my helpful bookseller had inserted a bookmark at that exact page.
If only it meant something! Like, say, I just won a single-payer health-care plan for the country.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:07 PM
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