Images of Pipelines
Hi hi hi, we're all so busy, let's cut to the chase,
Weird notation: To a math teacher's ears this is absolutely disgusting, but real estate agents indicate how many half bathrooms a home has by just sticking another "5" after the decimal point. "2.55 bathrooms" means 2 full bathrooms, two half baths, "8.555" means 8 full, 3 halfs. I mean, really! Of course, after getting over their disgust, those same math teachers had all sorts of fun ideas for further abusing the decimal system.
All Ten is a new daily arithmetic puzzle from Beast Academy, it was too hard for my 3rd Graders but I'm hoping by the end of the year it will no longer be.
I remain a heavy booster of Deltamath for homework and in-class practice, as long as you don't overdo it. For $145 they'll now give you access to an infinite worksheet maker, and though pricey it's an incredibly smooth product.
New issue of The American Bystander, America's best living humor magazine, dropped and it's got a snazzy 1970s theme! I have a couple of things in it, including some captions beside photos pulled from the Documerica collection. The photo at the top of this message is one I used. Should we do a caption contest?
Speaking of funny stories, I thought "History Report" was Simon Rich at his best, his most thoughtful, his funniest.
I have another short humorous thing published in Points in Case this week. It has many swears, fair warning: "Buddy, You Went and Messed With the Right Guy."
"The translation metaphor and its associated images of pipelines and invention factories provide one, we believe, with an impoverished way of thinking about the relation of research and practice." A research article from some very thoughtful researchers. Here is a PDF.
This interview with Noel Paul Stookey -- "Paul" of Peter, Paul, and Mary -- focuses on his memories of Bob Dylan and paints a fascinating picture of the folk scene. I did not, for instance, know that Shel Silverstein was actually performing with all these folkies. I'm still incredibly fond of Peter, Paul, and Mary's arrangements, especially their sturdy cover of Don't Think Twice It's Alright.
Yom Kippur is next week. In 1954, The Goldbergs -- the first television sitcom, by most reckonings -- invented the Very Special Episode with a Yom Kippur story, watch it here. If you're impatient to see the scene at shul, skip to the final 5 minutes.
Books: John Swartzwelder, "one of the most revered comedy writers" according to The New Yorker writes books, and now I read them. The one I picked up is "How I Conquered Your Planet." It's a novel composed entirely of jokes, many of them brilliant, and if it doesn't entirely work as a novel...does that sound like it would work? Still, much fun. And now I'm falling deeper into Robert Caro's "The Power Broker." In a chapter he sketches a mini-bio of Al Smith, who rose from abject poverty to governor of New York, going farther in American politics than any Irish-Catholic politician had gone yet.
Let's talk again soon,
Michael