I’ve taught maths in inner London comprehensives and they are full of kids having a rough time who will undoubtedly succeed in the rest of their life. I remember looking at the members of the maths club and thinking “you’ve just got to make it through these few years and then you’ll be all right”.
…often women aren’t allowed to be characters in history, they have to be stereotypes. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths; she wasn’t that much of a looker. But when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we are offered a fantasy version of their lives.
And this video for Tom Lehrer’s New Math reminded me of M8’s maths homework the other day.
In the short term, China gets all the attention; the maths favours India. And I am a mathematician.
I was a lazy arse. I got a 2:2 and I was /grateful/ for it. I only spent three weeks working, and it would be a pretty poor university if I’d got anything better with the effort I’d put in. Getting up very late, getting drunk a lot – I’d love to say I just didn’t have the hours to do history, but what I didn’t have was the ability to focus on it.
David Mitchell on why he only got a 2:2 at university. Replace “history” with “maths” and that’s me, pretty much word for word.
Over 100 years ago, a scientist worked out cake-cutting methodology, using the power of mathematics to stop them from drying out.
Admittedly, it’s a problem no longer affecting anyone where Tupperware containers are available, but hey. (And...
This is a doctor’s prayer. Originally composed by the Rambam. Presented in a simple papercut over a printed watercolor back. The design echoes the shapes and colors of medieval Morocco, where he lived and worked as a physician-philosopher. -
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#papercutsbyoren #doctorsprayer #papercutting #paperart #birkatharofeh
This is lovely.
As an added bonus: after reading Judaism: A Very Short Introduction, I now understand who “the Rambam” is – Maimonides, one of many rabbis to be known by an acronym.
Widespread and large debt loads are one of the most important ways in which my generation differs from those that immediately preceded it. The need to service debts – chiefly student loan debt, but also credit card debt in many cases – shapes every decision people make in their early adulthood. People who might otherwise want to sacrifice some income in order to pursue their goals are forced into corporate careers in order to pay off their debts. This has direct implications for the left: more than once, older comrades have noted to me that it has become much more difficult to live in the kind of bohemian poverty that sustained an earlier generation of young radicals and activists.
Rubin was urged to write a Gypsy-curse scene explaining the loop, which Ramis wisely never shot. The mystery has only fortified the film’s magic. Its chances of longevity were helped too by a purge on period references. Rubin urged Ramis, with whom he shares a writing credit, to expunge any nods to the 1990s: ‘You’ve gotta take all this out,’ he said, 'because this movie is really going to go on for years and years.’
How Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis (RIP) ensured that Groundhog Day became a stone-cold classic for the ages.
![Hypnotic gif.
/via ultrazapping:
“ Meta by Lukasz Karluk [aka julapy]
”](https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyqoepEXVq1qav3uso1_500.gif)
