Little book of lecture notes on Geometric Measure Theory

Logic Press has just published Maria Roginskaya's lecture notes.  The book is called Advanced Basics of Geometric Measure Theory, and is available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/maria-roginskaya/advanced-basics-of-geometric-measure-theory/paperback/product-22307272.html

Topics covered include the Banach-Tarski paradox, cardinals and ordinals, equivalents of the Axiom of Choice, measure and integral, Hausdorff measures, and a remarkable recent result of Korner's on the Hausdorff dimension of sets of sums.

It will take until November or so before the ISBN registration propagates to the whole system, so if you were thinking of ordering it for your institution, or through a bookseller, you should wait until then. It is available right now direct from the printer, Lulu.com, at half price.

Cyclo-lecteur's blog:

We met Jean-Pierre Brèthes when we sat down on the same bench to watch the Chaban-Delmas bridge open for a cruise ship leaving Bordeaux. He blogs at
http://cyclo-lecteur.blogspot.fr/
and is worth reading.

Monkey-puzzle Nut

This is a Monkey-puzzle nut, from our garden. It was plucked before it was fully ripe. It is resting on a plate of diameter 16cm.  It was sticky, oozing a white fluid. We kept it for a month or so, and it dried, and then I hit it quite hard with a wooden mallet and it broke in two:

 Each spike on the fruit is the tip of a separate nut:

 I cut and peeled the shell off one and ate it. Tasted unripe, woody, in the way an unripe hazelnut does.   There are lots of other fruits on the tree. We'll wait for them to fall of their own accord.