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Miscellany
Apr. 14th, 2007 12:35 pm1. After a promising start, spring has turned gray and gloomy. It hasn't been as bad here as it has further north, but the last couple of weeks have been chilly and wet. I'm mildly regretting getting my hair and beard cut so early this year.
2. I've been losing ground on the anti-procrastination front. I think it's enough to mention that I put my tax forms in the mail this morning...
3. There were some interesting doings yesterday in the department. I'm on the Graduate Committee, and we've begun discussing a possible new program. Currently, we offer three options at the graduate level: Pure Math, Applied Math, and Statistics/Operations Research. Lately, though, we've been getting inquiries from local schoolteachers who'd like to boost their stock by getting Masters degrees, and we're considering establishing a fourth option tailored to their needs. It would include a few courses offered by the School of Education, but would mostly focus on reasonably advanced math classes that they might find useful. I suggested the possibility of offering a reading course on advanced Euclidean geometry, with an eye towards creating a regular class if it attracts enough interest. My cohorts on the committee were a bit skeptical, but I explained that the field underwent a renaissance back in the nineteenth century, and there's a good deal of new material. The brunt of designing the course will fall to me, of course. The trickiest part will be coming up with a textbook; the best books on modern Euclidean geometry, by Altshiller-Court and Johnson, are both out of print. Still, I have a couple of ideas. :rubs hands:
4. I've been reading The Portable Oscar Wilde lately. I have to admit that I'd read next to nothing of his work before. (I read "The Selfish Giant" as a child, and of course I was familiar with some of his witticisms, sans context.) So far, I've finished "The Critic as Artist", "The Picture of Dorian Gray", "Salome", and "The Importance of Being Earnest". It's odd; if I didn't know better, after reading those four I'd have assumed they were by four different authors. One is a Socratic dialogue, complete with silly stooge; another presents the appearance of a moral tale; the next is bloody and somewhat stylized; the last, reminiscent of Wodehouse. (Yes, I'm aware of chronology. In my personal universe, though, old P. G. is prior to Wilde.)
5. I've finally gotten hold of "Rubber Soul", as well as a Righteous Brothers collection and Johnny Cash's "At Folsom Prison" album. I haven't had a chance to put them on the computer yet.
2. I've been losing ground on the anti-procrastination front. I think it's enough to mention that I put my tax forms in the mail this morning...
3. There were some interesting doings yesterday in the department. I'm on the Graduate Committee, and we've begun discussing a possible new program. Currently, we offer three options at the graduate level: Pure Math, Applied Math, and Statistics/Operations Research. Lately, though, we've been getting inquiries from local schoolteachers who'd like to boost their stock by getting Masters degrees, and we're considering establishing a fourth option tailored to their needs. It would include a few courses offered by the School of Education, but would mostly focus on reasonably advanced math classes that they might find useful. I suggested the possibility of offering a reading course on advanced Euclidean geometry, with an eye towards creating a regular class if it attracts enough interest. My cohorts on the committee were a bit skeptical, but I explained that the field underwent a renaissance back in the nineteenth century, and there's a good deal of new material. The brunt of designing the course will fall to me, of course. The trickiest part will be coming up with a textbook; the best books on modern Euclidean geometry, by Altshiller-Court and Johnson, are both out of print. Still, I have a couple of ideas. :rubs hands:
4. I've been reading The Portable Oscar Wilde lately. I have to admit that I'd read next to nothing of his work before. (I read "The Selfish Giant" as a child, and of course I was familiar with some of his witticisms, sans context.) So far, I've finished "The Critic as Artist", "The Picture of Dorian Gray", "Salome", and "The Importance of Being Earnest". It's odd; if I didn't know better, after reading those four I'd have assumed they were by four different authors. One is a Socratic dialogue, complete with silly stooge; another presents the appearance of a moral tale; the next is bloody and somewhat stylized; the last, reminiscent of Wodehouse. (Yes, I'm aware of chronology. In my personal universe, though, old P. G. is prior to Wilde.)
5. I've finally gotten hold of "Rubber Soul", as well as a Righteous Brothers collection and Johnny Cash's "At Folsom Prison" album. I haven't had a chance to put them on the computer yet.
