To what extent does Hogwarts have any kind of civic (or even social) educational goal? We all know the Sorting Hat's story, four great wizards found a school for magical education, but have disagreements over what virtues suit a young wizard for training. Salazar Slytherin gets angry, leaves. The remaining wizards, rather than let the differences ( Read more... )

Suffice it to say I think this piece at The Awl by Maria Bustillos is almost completely rubbish, and that -- after several readings -- I have come to suspect her main complaint isn't so much with the material (Rowling didn't title the last book Harry Potter and the Proletarian Class Struggle) as it is something buried in the volley of personal ( Read more... )

An experiment in which I try to explain some fairly elaborate mathematics (eventually, we're starting out small) to a lay audience. Maybe this'll work, maybe not. This post still under construction but I'm anxious for feedback on how to better explain things at any stage.

Part I: Sets

We're starting with sets because you can, pretty much, define all ( Read more... )

Where I've Been:

( Read more... )

I've been reading through various merits briefs for the gay marriage case currently before the District Court for Northern California and, of course, following the trial by liveblog. Does anyone else get the impression that Ted Olson is pressing extraordinarily hard to get sexual orientation recognized as a suspect classification? From what I can ( Read more... )

My project for the month. The general idea is to draft some simple rules for how you can place building blocks next to one another within a predefined n x n x n cube and, following those rules generate interesting three dimensional patterns. I'm not really sure where I'm going with it yet, but I have two ideas that might work out. I've put together ( Read more... )

I noticed that my old journal had been sort of been consumed as a workspace for my beta-reading. So here is a new one for a new year. This will, probably, fill up with my own random thoughts and writing (majority of which will be set to private). Old journal will continue on as a beta-workspace.

CAST LIST:

Elder Sister: A College freshman, decent at math but not the sort to use it unless she must.
Mother: Not so good at math, not the least bit interested in it.
Younger Sister: Like her mother.
Father: Physicist
Trold: Son, math major

Elder Sister: Hey, let's play Farkle!
Younger Sister, Mother: Yeah!
Trold: Huh?
Father: What's Farkle ( Read more... )