What I'm Doing

It's late at night so naturally I'm on amazon raging at the quality of children's geometry books.

There's really nothing that can quite ruin an evening like reading a book that SHOULD be teaching kids the beauty and wonder of math and instead find that you're rueing the state of the publishing industry.

For what it's worth: Kyoodoz Geometry Solutions COULD have been a fantastic book. It would be nice if it actually had proofs and took the time to explain the formulae but if you were a child just looking for a book to cram formulae into your head or you wanted geometry for practical situations and didn't care much about the proofs (and indeed, that was my purpose for checking it out from the library) it COULD be fantastic.

I say could because it appears to have had no editing what so ever save for basic spell checking. So instead of being a great book that could help a child move along in math, it's just annoying. There's a key of terms at the start but the font choice is appalling and the difference between a line segment and a line of infinite length is approximately 1/100th of a point. (Point being the printing point in this case, though it may as well be 1/100th the width of a point if you get my point.) I about went blind trying to see it.

Similarly, terms are used that were never introduced and are never _ever_ explains. WHO CARES what 'O' stands for in geometry? I'm sure it's not important!

And, as if to make it worse, the book also has a 'comic'. You remember those kind of not funny comics you'd find in school texts with weak puns and things like that? It's those. It really has nothing to do with what you're studying and in fact, I'd argue that the puns only confuse the terms, making the book worse for a student. But what I really take issue with is the poor flow of the comics. Word bubbles in the upper left responding to word bubbles in the lower right. It doesn't follow a logical flow for any language that I can think of.

So... All in all... If you're just looking for a book to refresh on a couple of formulae and there's scant little on the library shelf, it's great. If you were actually someone not familiar with math and thinking this would help you in school, you'd probably just end up hating math more. Very sad. :(



In other news:

The jig we built for the saw is working well. We used it for a bit today and I am happy to report I still have all my digits.

After a lot of debate, we've finally started work on the stairs. The bottom 4 are out and new ones are cut to go in. Demolition is going quite nicely and the build also looks like it will be smooth sailing. The main slowdown is hauling off the dirt and broken concrete. We literally have no place to put it. There's no room for a dumpster or even a good pile (unless we obliterate our vegetable garden) The neighbor up the hill wanted concrete fill and dirt but that means that we're putting all the concrete in one bucket and all the dirt in another, then hauling those all the way up the hill and dumping them there. Mind you, it's good exercise but it really slows our progress. I wish there were enough space to just really gut out the old stairs and put in the new because the actual work is pretty easy compared with the hauling.

Return of Darth Nazareth

A couple years ago, for fun and masochism, I made myself re-read the entire bible cover to cover.

In a nutshell: It's dull and really poorly edited (much like the geometry book I just reviewed)

One of the things that stuck out at the time was the part where I suddenly said, "DUDE! Jesus is a Sith Lord!"

See, there's this bit where Jesus decides he wants some figs but there are no figs on the fig tree so Jesus says, "If thou shalt not serve me, thou shalt WITHER AND DIE!" and then he casts out his hand and lightning flies from his fingers and the fig tree is smote.

Wicked cool visuals and sure, but still, pretty dick move. I like fig trees.


Flash forward to earlier this week. KTEH had a lovely HD program on Buddha, following the life of Siddhartha Gautama. Really a good program. I definitely recommend it. Anyhow... After the bowl of rice, he sits beneath the Bodhi tree and that is where he awakens and becomes the Buddha.

The Bodhi tree, of course is Ficus religiosa, a fig tree, and the fig tree fed the buddha during those first days.

In that context, the whole Darth Nazareth thing is even more interesting. The buddha awakens and finds peace and connects with the entire universe beneath the fig tree and the tree feeds him. Jesus on the other hand is not awakened. He is not the Buddha, and when he demands enlightenment and isn't given it, he kills the symbol of enlightenment.

When I read this story, it kind of stuck out as being a bit odd. Why is it in the new testament at all? "Look everybody! Our savior acts like an asshole to a tree! WoooOOOOooooo!!!!!! METAL!!!"

But in the context of the story of Buddha, I think it makes more sense. It's an allegory trying to say that Christianity is somehow better than Buddhism. Jesus doesn't NEED enlightenment! He's the motherfucking son of God! *ZAP*

Or maybe it's a joke. "If you meet the Buddha on the road... Kill him."

Still. Very sad. I've been investigating buddhism more seriously and... It seems like a comfortable place for an atheist. I'm still finding it interesting how closely Buddhism matches my internal whatever. I'm still hesitant to say that what I have constitutes enlightenment. It's very very hard to check this due to this filter known as ego but... Most everything the Buddha says is stuff that I find familiar. Roads I already tread in my mind. At every turn, I find I've mirrored the path of Gautama and gone the same way. Very interesting.

I am not fully awake. I can be for moments. I can even summon it if I take the time to properly focus and do it but... Really, what I've found isn't of value to anyone but me. The answer to everything is the question. Enlightenment doesn't give any mystical powers beyond the ability to enjoy hauling buckets of dirt up a hill. And there's really nothing I can say that hasn't already been said so... Generally there's not a lot of value in talking about it.

Anyhow, speaking of being awake, it's 3AM. Goodnight.