My Virtual Reading Room

“He's teaching her arithmetic,
He said it was his mission,
He kissed her once, he kissed her twice, and said,
"Now that's addition."
And as he added smack by smack
In silent satisfaction,
She sweetly gave the kisses back and said,
"Now that's subtraction."

Then he kissed her, and she kissed him,
Without an explanation,
And both together smiled and said,
"That's multiplication."
Then Dad appeared upon the scene and
Made a quick decision.
He kicked that kid three blocks away
And said, "That's long division!”

― Dan Clark, Chicken Soup for the College Soul: Inspiring and Humorous Stories About College

A Mathematician's Love Proposal

You integrate my differential
And dislocate my focus.
My pulse goes up like exponential
Whenever you cross my locus.

Without you, the world is null and void:
So won't you be my cardioid?

Fun 10-second video for Pi Day

Старенький профессор математики встречает бывшего студента.

-Скажите мне, дорогой, я всех своих учеников спрашиваю: пригодились ли вам математические познания в жизни?

-Конечно, пригодились. Вот у меня недавно кепка бухнулась в лужу, так я согнул проволоку в форме интеграла и достал. Спасибо вам, профессор!

An elderly math professor runs into a former student.

"Tell me, my dear, I ask all my students this: have you found mathematical knowledge useful, in your everyday life?"

"Of course I have. Recently, my cap fell into a puddle, so I bent a piece of wire into the shape of an integral and fished it out. Thank you, Professor!"

(From Boris Akunin's "Intellectual Jokes" collection)

Just in case you were short of reading material this Sunday ;))
~~~

Religious commentary:

Children of Nachson, from My Jewish Learning, about the meaning of faith ("Leap, and the net will appear")


The Jewish spriritual path to character development, also from My Jewish Learning

(“If not for the yetzer hara,” teaches one Midrash , “no one would build a house, take a spouse, or beget children.” )

["yetzer hara" is "the evil inclination", i.e., the non-spiritual side of human nature]


Flowers and art:

Mimosa flower is a symbol for International Women's Day, from The Exotic Flowers blog

17 Flowers that look like something else

An extensive online collection of libraries and museums' coloring books

What happens if you accidentally knock over a Ming vase in a museum? from "Today I found out"


Language, literature, and general:


Iza Duffus Hardy, a forgotten author who mixed with the pre-Raphaelites, from Art UK

Do kids really learn languages faster than adults? from "Today I found out"

I ain't 'woke'. I am human, from J.V. Manning

Why is wine almost always drunk in wine glasses instead of regular glasses, from "Today I found out"

("For a lot of people, a nice glass of wine is used to enhance enjoyment of things like the four F’s that make life worth living- friends, family, food, and… one other thing…")...I would think there are a few more things that ought to be on that list...and as to the role of the "one more thing"...it often results in non-enjoyable consequences...:P


Math, science, and medicine


Mathematicians solve a long standing "42" problem using a planetary supercomputer, from Science Alert. ("The answer to life, universe, and everything" :P)

GERD: What's Not Helpful and Other Practice Pearls, from Medscape

("Watto: For those keeping score at home, you can continue to drink coffee and eat tomatoes, pizza, chocolate, and spicy foods—all the things that people like.

Brigham: Wasn't there something about smoking and alcohol too?

Williams: Right. Please go ahead and continue to smoke and drink." :P)

Giant bacteria-infecting viruses have features previously only seen in living cells, from Science Alert



(Many thanks to sallymn, minoanmiss, and lindahoyland for some of the links in this list)

Жили-были два брата:
Треугольник с квадратом.
Старший – квадратный,
Добродушный, приятный.
Малодушный – треугольный,
Вечно не довольный.

Once upon a time, two brothers lived together:
A triangle and a square.
The older one was square-shaped,
Kind-hearted and amicable.
The younger one was triangular,
Always complaining.

( Read more... )

(thanks to wirral_bagpuss for the pic :))

The Delights of Mathematics
by
Robert Fuller Murray
It seems a hundred years or more
Since I, with note-book, ink and pen,
In cap and gown, first trod the floor
Which I have often trod since then;
Yet well do I remember when
With fifty other fond fanatics,
I sought delights beyond my ken,
The deep delights of Mathematics.( I knew that two and two made four, / I felt that five times two were ten... )

(from the Edwardian Society FB group)
~~

A three-year-old's report on Thanksgiving: "I didn't like the turkey, but I liked the bread he ate."

(Art Linkletter)

Thanksgiving menu: roast turkey, candied yams, and pickled relatives.

(Arnold H. Glasgow)

Some neighbors of my grandparents' gave them a pumpkin pie as a holiday gift. As lovely as the gesture was, it was clear from the first bite that the pie tasted bad. It was so inedible that my grandmother had to throw it away.

Ever gracious and tactful, she still felt obliged to send the neighbors a note. It read: "Thank you very much for the pumpkin pie. Something like that doesn't last very long in our hourse."

(Krista Rose)

The checkout clerk at the supermarket was unusually cheerful even though it was near closing time. "You must have picked up a ton of groceries today," a customer said to the checker.
"How can you stay so pleasant?"

"We can all count our blessings," the clerk replied. "The hardest part of this job is the turkeys and the watermelons. I just thank God that Thanksgiving doesn't come in July."

(L. Proctor)

(all of the above from Reader's Digest: Laughter: The Best Medicine: Holidays)
~~

(from ScienceAlert, who got it from FeelingGood Tees)

The equal sign, "=", was invented in 1557 by Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing "is equal to" in his equations. He chose the two lines because "no two things can be more equal."

(from TodayIFoundOut.com)

Truman Henry Safford (1836 – 1901) was an American calculating prodigy. In later life he was an observatory director.

At an early age he attracted public attention by his remarkable calculation powers. At the age of nine, a local priest asked him to multiply 365,365,365,365,365,365 by itself. In less than a minute, Truman gave the correct answer of 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225 with no paper.

At around this age he also developed a new rule for calculating the moon's risings and settings, taking one-quarter of the time of the existing method.

Daguerreotype of Truman Henry Safford

(from Victorian History FB pg)
~~

A real-life Prof. Moriarty, if you will...but he didn't go into crime...;))

Quackwatch has posted the complete texts of two volumes of Nostrums and Quackery: Articles on the Nostrum Evil, Quackery and Allied Matters Affecting the Public Health; Reprinted, With or Without Modifications, from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Volume I was published in 1912. Volume II was published in 1921. The books, which total more than 1,500 pages, are no longer copyrighted.

Scientists have discovered a new state of matter, called the Jahn-Teller metals

Lack of education may be as deadly as smoking, study suggests

Teen alerts Bostom Museum of Science to error in decades-old math exhibit

His wife left him with nothing but an empty apartment and the dog, but what he did is amazing, take a look at the artwork!

That's why they're the best snacks.

From ASAP Science, who got it from [ScienceDump]

(Pi day! March 14, 2015--9:26:53 will be a great celebration moment!

3.141592653)

"if you ever get cold, just stand in the corner for a bit. They're usually around 90 degrees."

~~

(via ASAPScience and IFLScience FB pages, respectively)

~~
( Four more science-related pics :) )

(This one is especially funny if you understand Russian...poor Lobachevsky, though! ;))