Yesterday: A Miscellany

1. My Inner Minstrel amused himself, much of yesterday, by trying to sing "Harper Valley PTA" to the tune of "Ode to Billie Joe". This is... disturbingly do-able.

2. The department has decided to begin putting out a twice-yearly electronic newsletter, and I've been appointed to the committee. (V and W are the others.) We met yesterday to kick around ideas for content and structure, and came up with a fair number. Should be an interesting task. We (probably) need to have it mostly together by early April, to give the higher-ups time to review and (one hopes) approve it.

3. One of the e-books I've been reading on the bus is Raymond F. Jones' The Year When Stardust Fell (1958); it belongs in the same general category as Stirling's Emberverse series, but it's very much a product of the '50s in plotting and style - no wannabe Numenoreans here! I finished it this week; not a bad example of the cozy catastrophe genre, but nothing special. (Huh - for some reason I thought he was D. F. Jones, who wrote the Colossus trilogy; they were rough contemporaries, but not the same person. This Jones is probably best known for This Island Earth (1952), which was made into a film in 1955.)

4. I also had a chat, yesterday, with my Mass Mutual agent. I pointed out some concerns I had with the distribution of funds in my account, with which she agreed, and we worked out a more satisfactory setup. She also suggested I put some of the extra (post-mortgage) funds I have into a Roth IRA. I know nothing about this, but she'll be sending me some information soon - basics and options.

:sigh: It's only the fourth week of the semester, and I'm kind of tired already. We're up to the Greeks in one of my math history classes and to Desargues in the other; in the differential geometry class, we just wrapped up the basics of curve theory, up to the Isoperimetric Inequality, and will start on surface theory on Tuesday. In late February, I have to take a one-day trip to Bloomington for an articulation conference. ("Articulation" refers to the coordination of courses and course content between different schools and colleges in Illinois, to make transferring credits, for example, as straightforward as possible.) The day after that is the annual math contest, so that weekend is pretty much locked down.

I keep wanting to just lie down and get another few hours of sleep....

Food Fight

I am growing increasingly annoyed with Shop'n'Save. I will continue to shop there for most things; the advantage they have in convenience over the other nearby groceries is huge. But they won't get all of my business.

I mentioned the coffee debacle a while back. They have, it turns out, continued to offer two kinds of whole beans, both by Java Delight: French Roast and House Blend. Needless to say, this limitation isn't to my taste. A few days ago, I put in an order with Goshen Coffee, an online distributor with a considerably greater selection. I bought a pound each of their Ethiopian and Sumatran blends; they also have a number of special blends, which I haven't looked over yet. (I bought two bags; when I finish one, I will order another. That way, I will still have the other bag while I'm waiting for the new one.) If Goshen's offerings prove satisfactory, they will have my custom from now on.

Meanwhile, the cheese situation is worsening. (I'm speaking only of the cheeses sold in sliced form, as opposed to bricks, wedges, rounds, and shreds.) Asiago disappeared from their shelves some time ago. This morning, Lorraine and Vermont Cheddar were missing as well. That may be temporary; Colby reappeared today after being absent last time. On the other hand, the racks were full, the extra slots being filled with pepper cheeses (which I have no interest in) and thin-sliced meats. I no longer trust them. There's a deli up the road a ways, and I've been meaning to check them out for a while; the time has come.

(I'm also less than pleased with the packaging of some of the cheeses. Many of the softer cheeses, when packaged in slices, need to have the slices separated by sheets of waxed paper. Swiss, Muenster, and provolone are especially in such need. But it really doesn't do much good if the sheets are too small; the slices simply tear along the edges of the paper, leaving ugly and hard-to-dislodge clumps where the paper wasn't. The last packet of Muenster I bought was just... I want to say "awful", but it's not a question of taste; it was just incredibly unpleasant trying to get a decent slice loose, every time I tried to make a sandwich. I'm hoping, without too much hope, that the deli will handle things better.)

Shop'n'Save is convenient, and I know and like a lot of the cashiers, but there are limits to my patience.

Galileo, a Square? No, a Cube!

When I teach history of math, there are a number of set pieces that anchor the series of lectures: Galileo, Descartes, Newton, the 19th-century mathematical revolution.... Galileo is one of my favorites. He did so many things that I have to focus in on just a few: his observations of Venus (off which I hang a long discussion of the history of models of the Solar System), his work on ballistic motion (with his debunking of Aristotle, his experiments with inclined planes, and his discovery of orbital free fall), his study of the cycloid and other proto-calculus work, and his discovery and elucidation of the square-cube law.

Sometimes I forget, and leave something out. Last year, I somehow forgot the square-cube law, and this year I almost did it again; but I caught it in time. This year's students are a good bunch - they keep asking good questions and demanding clarifications. We had a fine discussion of the square-cube law, talking about giants, Spider-Man, houseflies and water-striders, Robert Wadlow, and - of all things - cancerous tumors, and the broader topic of dimensional analysis.

I'm pleased with this class. We're about ready to dive into Descartes, and the radical changes he brought to mathematics and its methodology. I'm looking forward to seeing how they'll react.

Crumbled Earth, Dry Wind, Dying Fire

Maurice White has died.

Earth Wind and Fire... It was more the sound of them than any specific song (although I rate "After the Love Is Gone", "Fantasy", and "Devotion" pretty highly) - smooth, soft, and utterly lovely.

How many of the greats have we lost already this year?