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Slashdot has an article titled The Real Mother of All Bombs, 46 Years Ago; inevitably, the discussion turned to Cold War politics. I found this comment to be particularly interesting:

The pen is mightier than the sword: Often propaganda will work better than overt force. Shackle a man’s hands and he will try to break free, shackle his mind and he will never consider it.

This is the reason I consider false or sensationalist news more dangerous to the wellbeing of society than terrorism.

Discuss, if you’d like. Plus, in this fellow’s signature, he clarifies a spot of grammatical minutiae: i.e. is “that is,” while e.g. is “for example.” So, i.e. is never “for example.” Most educational comment I’ve read in a while — A+++ would read again!

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Welcome to the October Picture Vacuum. We’ve come up a bit short this month, but I’ll hop back on that horse. Photography will resume!

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Quite decorative.

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Here’s an excerpt from “Stuff You Didn’t Know,” which (among other things) explains why English (though lacking grammatical gender), is still unbelievably difficult for non-native speakers:

The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”

Whoah. Perhaps Sagert could enlighten us with regard to other difficulties he sees from non-native speakers.

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“I do not have to build a perfect wall today. I just have to lay a perfect brick. Just lay one brick, dude.”

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My sister Katy is closing in on oral exams, which are an important milestone on her way to math Ph.D. stardom! With the goal of encouraging her, I’ve excerpted sentences from a recent Computerworld article about celebrities with math majors:

• “Art Garfunkel has a master’s in math from Columbia University.”
• “John Astin (the original Addams Family patriarch) studied math, not theater, at Johns Hopkins University, though he’s currently a professor in the latter department.”

But wait, there’s more!

• “Danica McKellar (Winnie, The Wonder Years)… is currently a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at UCLA; McKellar started UCLA as a film major but clicked with calculus and has since co-authored both a statistical mechanics paper that led to getting her name on a theorem (the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem) and a new book for middle schoolers, Math Doesn’t Suck.”

And of course, who could forget Tom Lehrer, who entered Harvard at 15. Here’s a good quote from him: “I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky. In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize!”

So that’s it, Katy. I hope you’ve enjoyed this break from studying; remember, you can do it!

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