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I really enjoy my Latin classmates, they all are fine students, committed to the cause of studying something strictly for its beauty, its import, and its bond that it makes us feel to yesteryear.

As an advice to anyone in languages let me recommend that you always be bold: come in, try to do that horrendous Dutch guttural ‘g,’ fully nasalize your French vowels, etc. When you’re unafraid to err, you open up the possibility that you will actually learn.

I say this as preface because one of my peers made an error which induced a laughter such as I have never seen before in a language class. We all err often in our translations, so I mean to say that while it’s common, acceptable, etc. to err, rarely does it have this comedic value. The fellow himself seems to have gotten a good laugh out of it as well and appears to be an excellent Latin scholar in the making so I’m going to assume sharing the laughter will be a wish he is behind.

In Book 3 of the Metamorphoses Ovid relates the tale of Echo and Narcissus. You may recall that Echo is a nymph who can only repeat endings; Narcissus is (fatally) beautiful. Echo, having seen this boy (he’s 16 in the story), burns to be taken by him.

To clarify the scene for the class we had two students enacting the actions and relating the dialog while a “director” in the class read forth the action. À mettons le scène Narcissus has lost his friends, is alone in a dark wood, and begins to get the idea that he is being followed.

Narcissus’ first question is:

“ecquis adest?”

“equis” means “who” and adest means “to be present”, it’s opposite is “absent.” So, Narcissus basically says “who’s there?.”

So the “director” in the class said:

“The strong boy had been separated from the line of his friends and said…[cue to actor to relate the dialog of “equis adest” translated from Latin to English]”

Thespians speak of having “commitment” to the scene, boldy letting go of fear and acting with ones full voice, body, spirit. This fellow portraying Narcissus would have made Stanislavsky applaud with his commitment.

[Boldly]: “A HORSE IS HERE?!”

Our actor, on stage, nervous, and reading quickly had confused the word for “horse” (equus) with “who” (ecquis). I suppose the notion of Mr. Ed lurking in the Arcadian woods behind this most-beautiful of humans popped in our minds and the giggles started.

“Well hello, Narcissus, how bout them fatal flaws?”

After of few minutes of doubled-over laughter we recovered enough to continue, but it was a great moment showing the humanity and joy that a cameraderie centered about learning can yield.

Randy Nelson of Pixar University is filmed at Edutopia talking about hiring the best, and most creative, people possible. It’s a 10-minute video that won’t take much time to watch, but which has some great insights.

Here’s the link: http://www.edutopia.org/randy-nelson-school-to-career-video

Here were my rough notes:

1. Failure avoidance (in test pilots) was not the quality [NASA] wanted, failure recovery is the mark of the person they desired in this innovative field [i.e. walking on the moon].
2. “Remember the proof of a portfolio versus the promise of a resume.” For those of you in-between jobs right now, I think this is an important one. Especially college grads coming out with little work experience. A light last semester where you get some work done and uploaded on github may seal some deals.
3. We need people who are broad: interest_ed_ not interest_ing_. Do they amplify me. They want to know what you want to know. Lauren is immensely good in this capacity. Awesome, in fact.
4. Communication: Can you communicate between fields? If technicians know enough about art to pre-translate, they can have a much greater force-impact. Working with them re-kindles that thing that interested you a long time ago. What joy!
5. Collaboration is not “I could do each of the roles, given sufficient time” — collaboration means “amplification.” Bringing separate depths and great breadth with multi-level inter-communication is what makes collaboration not mere helping do all the bits of bolting-on tha assembly line requires.

What? You don’t know what “223 872245489” means?

Guess what, I didn’t know what this meant either:

The alphabetical phone number must have been a marvel back in the day when Ma Bell leased you a phone, but in the age of cell phones where price and button real-estate is at a premium, I found myself baffled as to how to call. Why? My phone doesn’t put the alphabet on the buttons; nor does the screen simulation have them.

Why would you not make the image hot-clickable to a real number? Or under the FAQ list the phone number as something besides the alphabetical number? I understand on the front you want to keep a consistent “hey we’re easy to call” thing going on — but somewhere, give me the freakin’ digits already. I suspect this is one of those arguments that a design person had to suffer, and lose, to some marketing guy:

DESIGNER: “But it’s not usable. How will people call us if they need to”
MARKETING APPARATCHIK: “They will dial 800-2REVIEW”
D: “Right, but say they need the number”
MA: “They will dial 800-2REVIEW”
D: “Yes but you see there’s no numbers there, you might not be able to dial it on a phone”
MA: “Sure you can, just dial 800-2REVIEW”
D: “But can’t we put the digits there somewhere”
MA: “Why would they need that, they can dial 800-2REVIEW”
D: “Sometimes the people, they like to see the numbers, you know: people with visual impairment, for example, or say their phone doesn’t have the letters on it”
MA: : “Why would a phone not have letters on it”
D: “Dunno, I hear some people use cell phones”
MA: : “Well, we’re not going to let their defective phones ruin our consistent marketing image”
D: “But…”

By the way, here’s what 223 872245489 translates to:

As it may have stuck the regular reader, I have been up to my nose in closing out my summer school class, Trigonometry.

Walking into the final I had only three of my exam scores and the information about my in-class work.

Test 1: 92 Test 2: 29 Test 3: 90 Daily work: 15 points.

And yes, you’re reading that right, Test 2, saw me make a 29. You’ll note that I had been away on business two weeks ( Boston and SJ ) during that time thus leaving very little time to uh, well, do anything but fly home and take the test with what I happened to know based on on-the-plane readings.

I took test 4 three days before the final and thus my teacher hadn’t had time to grade it before I took the final. This meant that there were 300 points in play. Further, your lowest test score could be replaced by one half of the final’s points. Thus I knew the status of 200 points out of 500 available walking into the final. Thus I could have quite literally failed..

Or…

MATH-1316 004 Trigonometry A 3.00

Thanks be to Alberto Gonzales.

I take my final in Trigonometry this afternoon.

I’ve got a rendezvous with Blue Moon Wheat Ale and disc II of Ergo Proxy around 1900 this evening.

At Enoteca Vespaio this weekend one of the other guests had mentioned the mysterious fricative consonant unique to Czech: ř. I had been thinking about this sound and the statement “Language X has difficult sound Y” ( particularly the hard “g” in Dutch ) and how one acquires the ability to reproduce that sound in the intervening days and decided that I would like to hear that sound in person.

Fortunately, one of my peers in my C++ class is Czech and I knew I could go to the source. After class I leaned across the table and I asked said lady, “Say, I heard that in Czech you have a consonant that no other..”

“…ř.”

”[to Lauren] That’s it, she said it!”

“…ř?( with that amazing Eastern European look that implies they are concerned but not surprised you just sprouted a third eye )”

In any case, we chatted some more about life sans vowels ( including her running off an intelligible sentence about snails in the mist that had no vowels ) and she invited us to join her friends and husband for dinner at the Baby Acapulco near the Gateway center. We did and had a very fun time.

But now check this out

During my blog-redesign hiatus I ran into a friend I made at UT in the Dutch program and who I’d lost track of since my departure from Austin. Over at her place with her awesome roommates we listened to Björk’s Homogenic, watched the terrible programming of Dutch SBS6, had parties, did jenever shots, and patronized the nearby HENDO snack-stand. So imagine my surprise when I walked into the Regal Theatres lobby and saw her standing there! We swapped contact details and went our separate ways.

So here I was, talking with my Czech classmate and her husband when I mention that I’d lived in Holland and that some of my friends in that program had later gone to Prague to teach English. As it turned out, they knew one another and had met in Praha. I looked over at Lauren and she had the look of unmitigated surprise on her face.

The world, my friends, is small. So be nice to each other.

Who knew Austin was my karmic hub?

Day Four: It’s a good day.

The reason day 4 is a good day is because you’re out of “how rich is this language and how many other key concepts must I learn to be functionally literate” phase. You see, you’ve covered the dead basics on the first day. Day two is a real challenge because you’re learning the bits of the language that are advanced and that you will need to know to really be able to work “out of the middle section of the book”: the part where it moves from introductiory to non-trivial.

Day three is the hardest, as I’ve detailed in great detail previously.

But day four is where the new and core material starts giving way to specialized topics: how to handle mail, how to build a test, how to provide web services. All of these build on the hard work you did on the first 2.5 days so you no longer get that feeling of “Oh hell, am I slipping too far behind?”.

Everyone in class seems to be a bit more spirited. The hardest part of our personal / night projects have been dealt with and everyone has that sense of “hey, you know, I might be able to do this on my own.” It’ the beginning of a very hopeful swing that continues into day 5.

Day 5 is the final bit of the “topics” specialized areas ( but not, not core language ), you learn to maximize particular aspects and you’re going home in just a few hours. It’s great to be at the Ranch, and you learn a lot, but just like all journeys it’s so good to go back home.

Once home you’ll reflect on the great experience you had and you’ll shake off the experience and re-integrate yourself into reality. But it’s so much fun, you can’t wait to get back to that mindset again.

Today was beautiful, but still cold. During our travels today we visited Callaway Gardens’ butterfly preserve. After walking through 40-degree weather it was quite a change of pace to enter the balmy 80-degree chamber in which the beautiful leipidopterans inhabit.

I’m still amazed by the versatility of the teacher, Charles B. Quinn. I mean, being able to take 30000.times{‘question after’} without snapping (verbally or mentally ) is really an excellent demonstration of guru-dom. I can only aspire to know some thing as well as the C. knows Rails, or as well as Aaron knows Cocoa (my previous BNR class).

Really I need a few days away from Rails, but I know that within the next week I’m going to start scratching in my notebook, imagining how I can turn BNR education into applications that amuse, entertain, and possibly do Something Great.

The Leauge sent in an email to see if I had fallen off the edge of the world. Although it appears irony has fallen upon The League, for as I type this, his web site has, in fact, fallen off the edge of the world: Blogger appears to be down.

I have not left the gravitational field of this big, blue, glob. There’s a bunch of interesting work stuff going on ( more later ), my mom was in town and I started classes at Austin Community College.

I’m taking two classes: Intermediate Algebra and C++.

First, this is the kind of mathematics I learned in high school ( or should have learned better ). I eventually matriculated to the university and there went as far as 2 semesters of business calculus: integration, derivation, the whole shebang. But, after ten ( and I am astounded to type that ) years away from calculus, I’ve forgotten so much. So, here I am, back at square one, learning the basics again. It’s easy to forget a lot because, to answer those kids in high school who asked “when am I going to use this in the real world” the answer, I’m afraid to say, is rarely. So much, that, you’re right, you might be wasting your time. Sorry.

In any case, this time through I’m finding it much easier to learn and encode this information. I’ve thought about why, but I think that my brain must have been conditioned for understanding symbolic and abstract systems through years of programming and a bit of symbolic logic. As is suggested by the action of Snow Crash, I think that the brain arrives with just a tiny bit of software pre-installed. The first several routines (“primary routines”) decide whether or not you will be more or less receptive to new (“secondary”) routines.

The primary routines must be incredibly fundamental. Do you use symbolic language, pictorgrams, pictographs? Using pictographs may disincline a learner from picking up a certain set of secondary routines ( I don’t believe anything is un-learnable, although research shows that past the age of 7 there’s no chance for language acquisition if it hasn’t already happened, sorry Tarzan).

So this secondary routine, algebra, just didn’t stick for me. But I think that I’ve been running secondary programs of an abstracting and variant nature now for so many years that receiving new routines which share similar pathways as other abstracting secondary routines’ function has made it easier to integrate the data.

Or, maybe because my teacher is exceedingly competent. Gustavo Cepparo is one of the best lecturers I’ve had at any school I’ve ever attended. He does not advocate “niceness” he educates giving you an education (although he is very personable). He sees himself as your worthy adversary, trying your skills and, in so doing, giving you an education. Damn straight.

I was discussing this “inclination for symbolic systems” with Lauren who, in her own life, is also undertaking an effort to put some ‘new secondary routine momentum’ into her gray matter. She’s learning computer science and programming. Oddly, when she programs she feels the same structure and scalpel that she came to know doing her literature work: themes, repetition, motifs, it’s all there.

But then we came to a question: Why is it, if you want to go into programming, pedestrian ( or parental ) wisdom holds: “Are you good at math.”

This, parents, friends, teachers, I want to warn you away from asking. The question is not “are you good at math” but do you like symbolic systems, creating them, imagining them, adhering and bending them? That’s the question.

Good programmers are kids who memorize the armor charts to Dungeons and Dragons. Good programmers like to corollate data on baseball cards, they like to organize baseball cards. I’ve seen kids read chess books, or play Magic or play Yu-Gi-Oh, know the Dewy Decimal system, it’s all the same thing: breathing life into internal rules processing machines in your brain, and then using physical ( versus digital ) objects as the inputs to your automata.

So why do kids get asked “but are you good at math”.

Math is a convenient, albeit misleading, question, it’s a forced symbolic system that kids are forced to learn. To this extent, it can be used as a good measure of “will you be a good programmer”. Further, and a child has no way of knowing this, this lazy question implies that “liking math” and “liking the pedagogical approach used by the school board and as practiced by your teacher” are the same. They are wholly different and a child has no way of knowing this.

I disliked most of my math teachers, and the pedagogy was slow, pedantic, too slow to build connections, to sketch an architecture, to paint a direction. Math class, for me, was about exercises and who in their right mind gives a flip about that? I knew math was important, but there was no direction or structure for that statement beyond the obscure “but you’ll need it in college”.

Here’s how I now propose that math should be explained.

• There are many difficult problems in the world ( how to get a satellite in a crater on the moon), how long to incubate a new medicine, etc.
• The language for expressing these ideas is mathematics. Just as anyone would look at this figure ( draw a capital ‘A’ ) without knowing the alphabet would suppose it’s a picture of a bird or an interesting shape, you must come to learn the basic letters and words of mathematics
• For the next several years, you will be learning basic ideas and words in mathematics, this study is called arithmetic.
• (later) You have learned arithmetic, but most questions in life do not hinge upon known quantities. Like we said in point 1, how do we do something that we don’t know, how do we model and predict? The branch of mathematics which deals with discovering unknown players in systems is called algebra
• (later) You have learned algebra. Algebra helps discover nouns in systems (what plus 4 equals 11), but the world is a constant state of flux, as noted by Newton. A mathematical language for discussing flux and rates of change was invented by him and Leibniz, that is called the calculus.

I don’t know much more about math than that, but with that framework I could have seen that learning that 3/4 * 4/3 = 1 was something important in the sense that it was as fundamental as learning the crucial verbs to express want or need or identity.

And that, balance, unknown, systems for discovery of unknown, systems for modeling the unknown is incredibly interesting. Had mathematics pedagogy been about systems of symbolic manipulation to discern the unknown versus timed tests and a litany of rules and obscure little “tricks”: loose islands of thought, I feel I would have grasped the beauty of math earlier.

And ultimately this brings me back to the most sublime poem ever written “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Algerbra, comes from the original Arabic book in which its tenets were first set: Science of the Reunion and the Opposition.

Isn’t that a beautiful phrasing for what algebra allows us to do? This is truth and this is beauty.

And hoary old double-entry accounting, it is a science of reuniting the not with the present, the received with the owed. That is truth, and that, to my good accountant friends, is beauty too. I can see why those who ply this craft love it.

And programming, it is the balancing of the abstract concepts against the abstract concepts. In this vacuum, you create, and you create function, and then you create beauty. And that’s why we love it.

And assuredly, if you choose to plumb the deepest depths of that digital reality, you will do a lot of math, but don’t scare off a child from playing in our world of pure abstraction because they mistakenly associate it with the pitiful educational quality in this country or rote, staid, pedagogy.

**I’m posting this, but I feel it’s incomplete, I think I need to read it some more and refine it, so, this content may update. **

This morning I finished:

It was a very good introduction to British history.

Here’s one of the more interesting things I learned, Queen Elizabeth had beautiful handwriting:

Post-hip Chick a teacher in SJ apparently had to teach this poetic gem by Robert Frost to her 8th graders:

I stepped on the toe/ Of an unemployed hoe. It rose in offense/ And struck me a blow…

Wow, where to start?