Avenging the Hippos

Again. A lengthy hiatus.

I bought a new computer about three weeks ago and, believe me, you don't want to hear the long and uninteresting saga that has led to where I am now - on the verge of getting a refund and heading back to the computer store.

I found an interesting comment on my site a while back. You can check it out here. If it's legitimate, it's pretty funny. I guess the subject of my post (who prior to my post was a minor villian in Korea for posing as an English professor) is now posing as a lawyer. My suspicion, however, is that someone couldn't think of anything nice to say about my site - not that there's much of the kind to say - so he/she threatened to sue me. Typical for friends of mine, and appropriate karma, too, for posing as Portland's Washington Park Zoo and trying to pawn a hippo off on my unsuspecting uncle when I was fifteen. Come to think of it, perhaps the FBI left that comment - they're probably itching for revenge after that hippo stunt.

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Tangents...

Me and my damn ideas.

For my birthday last month, I received some gift certificates for a bookstore in Seoul and I decided that my proverbial horizons needed a good broadening. To that end, I went and bought the above-pictured book. Leisure reading, for those quiet moments before falling off to sleep, I guess. Let's just open the book at random:

"If, on two projectively related point ranges, the two points at infinity correspond to each other (as must be the case with congruent or similar ranges), the conic will be a parabola; the converse is also true."

But, of course.

What this means, in simple English, is: Dumbass, for everything you know you don't understand about mathematics, there's probably an infinite number of others that you haven't discovered yet. Go back to reading something around which you can wrap your simple mind, like Dennis the Menace comics. Dullard.

The cover of the book boasts an endorsement by no less than Albert Einstein, who calls the book a "lucid representation of the fundamental concepts of...mathematics." That's fine, but I imagine that Einstein's notion of "lucid" was different than most other people's.

In this lively little tome, I can look forward to chapters on Maxima and Minima (those two sisters you always wanted to get with in high school), the Isoperimetric Problem (and who hasn't wondered what to do about this?), and, oddly enough, knots. I'm really curious about how this book plans to help me on the latter. I mean, getting knots out of shoelaces can be a real trial, but perhaps there's an equation I've been neglecting.

I have every intention of getting through this book, though, come hell or high water (to quote a grandparent). See, if I read literary or philosophical works I just become rather more pissy and critical about the world. Math promises to be rather more escapist, if I might be permitted to use that word with "math." Besides, the other side of my brain needs a good workout.

Keep me in mind while y'all are reading your Maxim, SI, or Danielle Steele.

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