Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

The portion of Janet Scudder's book - Modeling My Life (1925) - is written in such an interesting, conversational style, it seems sad that it's no longer in print. (Not to mention difficult to find.)

So if the SyFy channel came up with a book called Monster Movies We Have Made, with plot details, where it was shot, goofy production stories, budget, and photos of the monster - I would probably buy it. But then I have a book (co)written by Roger Corman, so I suppose this isn't a shock. Heh.

"I made it difficult," Newton told a friend, "to avoid being bated by little smatterers in mathematics."

"Make yourself comfortable and have with your tasting a meringue, a dish of trifle or any of the frothy confections they called in Elizabethan times 'empty dishes.'"

"...that fascinating monk, forger and historian, Ademar of Chabannes" - note to self, research this guy

"... zero was the villain again, since it could be turned into a 6 or a 9 by the unscrupulous, who could also slip in a digit or two before it. So in Florence the City Council passed an ordinance in 1299 making it illegal to use numbers when entering amounts of money in account books: sums had to be written out in words." - as we still do when we write checks.

"Dividing was difficult on the (counting) board - so difficult in fact that one way of doing it was called 'iron division' (divisio ferrea), because it was 'so extraordinarily difficult that its harness surpassed that of iron.'

Mayans: "The Long Count held out the promise that time wouldn't stop for an immense span indeed. A system of dating we find on some of their monuments acted like the service coupons that come with your new car: if there is a voucher for a 50,000 mile checkup you feel confident that your car will be coming to maturity then. If there is none at 150,000 miles, a shiver runs through you."

Mayans: "... every five years... their king spectacularly mutilated himself that his blood might keep the thirsty gods at their task. As a pair of scholars put it, blood was the mortar of ancient Maya life."

"The Mayan symbol for zero was a tattooed man in a necklace with his head thrown back. Or at least this was one of their astonishing array of zero-symbols."

"... but infinity isn't a number (it isn't even a stupid number, as children think who mistranslate the Latin Infinitus est numerus stultorum: infinite is the number of fools.)" - I do love aside remarks to the reader like this.

In Bhaskara's Lilavati ('Charming Girl') : " 'Beautiful and dear delightful girl, whose eyes are like a faun's! If you are skilled in multiplication, tell me, what is 135 times 12?' They don't write math books like that any more."

"Mathematics always follows where elegance leads." - elegance here having something to do with economy of words in the explanation.

I've been reading several math-related books - and then someone shared this today, seemed on topic: Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land. (I'm bummed none of my teachers showed this in class. But we did see The Dot and The Line.)

Willard van Orman Quine: "... the story is told of Quine that when a pianist playing Mozart apologized for striking a wrong note, Quine assured him that he had just played something else perfectly."

"...a striking image, in a celebrated book from around 620, the Vasavadatta of Subandhu. In it he says that the stars dot the sky like zeroes because of the 'nullity of metempsychosis,' the Creator reckoning the sum total on the ink-blue sky with a bit of the moon for chalk."

On the Sumerians: "When you read, on one of their clay tablets, this exchange between father and son:
'Where did you go?'
'Nowhere.'
'Then why are you late?',
you realize that 5,000 years are like an evening gone."

"But we, who are more than magpies, feather our nests with bits of time. "

Signs that I'm probably too worried about having a book with me at all times: 1) the current read Oscar Slater book, which doesn't fit in my purse 2) the ebook which does fit in my purse and has more than one book I'm reading atm, and 3) the emergency book on my kindle app on my phone. This doesn't count the three paper books that belong to the parents but that I think I can manage to read in the time I'm here.

I knew I was going to use the spoiler tag to hide parts of the review of this book - now I seem to have a more difficult problem in that the solution/theory of the Real Killer is kind of confusing. The author is slowly presenting his case, but right now I'm seeing more suspects than just the one he's settled on. And the inter-relationships of all the involved folk are tangled.

"Slater was of course fighting against a formidable combination of indifference and deep prejudice. In 1909, when was with the Kaiser's Germany appeared inevitable and imminent, people as a whole were not too inclined to care much about the fate of a German who also happened to be Jewish. In the Europe which had yet to experience the 'Final Solution,' anti-semitism was a very real factor in every-day life."

"If Slater had been tried in England, he could have turned to the recently created Court of Criminal Appeal. However, that body did not yet exist in England. All that Slater could do was ask the government for mercy." - I think that should read that it doesn't exist in Scotland yet.

Must now confess that on same page this question neatly sums things up: "Why were the Glasgow Police unable to learn from the maid, Catherine Schmaltz, where Slater and Antoine had gone, whereas the London Police subsequently managed to extract this information from her with apparently little trouble?"

Author is being annoyingly coy: "Was (police officer) Ord incompetent? Was he absent minded or forgetful? Was he simply a bit dull? Or is there a far more sinister explanation for his behavior? This line of thought will be pursued in due course." - argh, tell me now!!!

It's overwhelming how bad the witness testimony at this trial was, and how little evidence of guilt there was - and yet Slater was convicted.

Getting ready for a trip and the ereader is ready as always - but now dithering over my Backup Paper Book. It has to be something I can finish in a week or so and leave behind for the parents. Which means I can't like it too much in case it doesn't return to me. Never as easy a choice as you'd think.

The 1903 children's book The Wonderful Electric Elephant by Frances T. Montgomery isn't in GR - but check this link to see the images. Traveling in a mechanical elephant? I'm in. If I ever bump into a copy.