Too much life for blogging, since July. Freud is supposed to have said that all that really matters is Love and Work. If that be so, then I live as one should, because all I do is love, and work. Term began on the 20th, and I enjoy the contact with bright, hopeful youngsters again.
In the tail end of the Summer, I read through some engaging stuff: (the English and Irish text of) a parallel-text anthology of Irish poetry with Czech translations (ISBN 80-86055-80-9), a collection of essays about Ireland, by a German journalist (Ralph Sotscheck, Saint Patrick in der Bingohalle, Irische Einblicke, ISBN 3-85452-718-7), Collected Stories by V.S. Pritchett (ISBN 0-7011-2305-2), a collection by Isaac Bashevis Singer (A Crown of Feathers and other stories, ISBN 0-224-00986-9),
a translation of The Analects of Confucius (ISBN 978-1853-26462-7), a biography of the poet Attila Josef, by Thomas Kabdebo (ISBN 1-89792202-7), a couple of rather dated books on cosmology:
G.J. Whitrow, the Structure and Evolution of the Universe, Hutchinson, 1959; and G.C. McVittie, Fact and Theory in Cosmology, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961, and I reread a translation of J.L. Borges collection Ficciones, Grove Press 1962 and Feynman's sparkling and provocative memoir, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Pritchett and Singer are just brilliant, but I can't imagine what I saw in Borges.
Now I'm just reading Maths, apart from occasional dips into the Tale of Genji. It looks as though this novel will take me a long, long time.
I'm teaching introductory mathematical computing, with Maple, and basic real analysis.
I'm currently investigating the distribution of cubic residues to composite moduli, with an application in view to Diophantine approximation. I like number theory, but have a lot to learn.
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Phil Hickey's Blog
I went to school with Phil Hickey, who blogs at:
http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/
I still won't advise people to stop taking the pills, but I won't encourage them to continue, either. Not my job, or competence. Patients should be able to trust their doctors.
http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/
What he has to say is very interesting, and rather shocking. It appears that there is no scientific evidence of specific chemical imbalance in most people suffering from depression, and so no scientific basis for the treatment of depression by antidepressive drugs. The same applies to other disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He cites specific sources for this finding. I had no idea. I've encountered many depressed students in my time, almost all on medicine, and never dreamed of suggesting they come off the medicine. In fact, I assumed that if they did so, they would be at increased risk of suicide, which is, along with road traffic accidents, one of the two main causes of death among our students. And everything I'd heard before this, including comments by professionals, was to the effect that "the drugs work", and in fact that "there has been no progress in psychiatry apart from the development of useful drugs."
I still won't advise people to stop taking the pills, but I won't encourage them to continue, either. Not my job, or competence. Patients should be able to trust their doctors.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
You Tube
The recorded music business is finished. And, I need never again be stuck for a word, a phrase, or a bar of any song. Everything is there.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Back Home
Much peregrination since the start of May: Scotland, to hike up Ben Nevis; Madison, WI, to work on the biholomorphic group; conference in Edwardsville, IL; day in Chicago, mostly at the Art Institute; Helsinki; holiday in the Ebro delta; Valencia; Connemara, to hike the Maamturk mountains. Entertained visitors in between. Met many old friends, and perhaps some new. Now looking forward to some stability.
Recently read, or reread:
J.M. Castellano Gil and F.J. Macias Martin. History of the Canary Islands.
84-7926-114-5. English a bit broken. Interesting (and sad) story of the conquest. Some data on references in antiquity (Homer?, Hesiod, Pindar, Herodotus, Diodorus of Sicily, Strabo, Plutarch, Sallust, Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder. Also some folklore, including a story about Brendan the Navigator. Short chapters on links with America, the literature, and art.
S. Vere Benson. The Observer's Book of Birds. Ferederick Warne. Rev. ed. 1960. My old bird book, a very useful field guide.
Eric Dempsey and Michael Casey. Finding Birds in Ireland. The Complete Guide. 978-07171-3916-3. About places where birds may be found. It is very hard to use it to locate info about the location of a particular species, as the index is unhelpful in this regard. Has many maps, and has a glossary of Irish names for most species.
Colm O Lochlainn. Irish Street Ballads. Three Candles. Dublin. 1939. This and More Irish Street Ballads, 1965, are indispensible.
Henry James. The Wings of the Dove. Slow build-up to a classic disaster. After the first few hundred pages, I couldn't put it down, and stayed up far too late in Helsinki to finish it. Great book.
Tom Brown's School Days, by An Old Boy. Rev. ed. 1889, repr. 1890. (f.p. 1857). Not at all what I expected, and much more interesting. I expected something like a propotype of Frank Richards' books, but this is a far more sober affair, much concerned with moral matters, such as the duty to study honestly. In relation to the famous fight with Flashman, the author has a disquisition about the place of fighting in a boy's life. I was struck by: "After all, what would life be, without fighting?"
Ray Monk. Wittgenstein. The Duty of Genius. Vintage. 1991. 0-09-988370-8. Very good read, but every time I begin to think I understand W's point of view, he does something that proves me wrong. In the end, I am torn between the desire to read it again from the start (and spend serious time studying W's work) and the rather attractive idea that I should take W's advice to his various friends, and give up philosophy altogether to do something useful.
Recently read, or reread:
J.M. Castellano Gil and F.J. Macias Martin. History of the Canary Islands.
84-7926-114-5. English a bit broken. Interesting (and sad) story of the conquest. Some data on references in antiquity (Homer?, Hesiod, Pindar, Herodotus, Diodorus of Sicily, Strabo, Plutarch, Sallust, Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder. Also some folklore, including a story about Brendan the Navigator. Short chapters on links with America, the literature, and art.
S. Vere Benson. The Observer's Book of Birds. Ferederick Warne. Rev. ed. 1960. My old bird book, a very useful field guide.
Eric Dempsey and Michael Casey. Finding Birds in Ireland. The Complete Guide. 978-07171-3916-3. About places where birds may be found. It is very hard to use it to locate info about the location of a particular species, as the index is unhelpful in this regard. Has many maps, and has a glossary of Irish names for most species.
Colm O Lochlainn. Irish Street Ballads. Three Candles. Dublin. 1939. This and More Irish Street Ballads, 1965, are indispensible.
Henry James. The Wings of the Dove. Slow build-up to a classic disaster. After the first few hundred pages, I couldn't put it down, and stayed up far too late in Helsinki to finish it. Great book.
Tom Brown's School Days, by An Old Boy. Rev. ed. 1889, repr. 1890. (f.p. 1857). Not at all what I expected, and much more interesting. I expected something like a propotype of Frank Richards' books, but this is a far more sober affair, much concerned with moral matters, such as the duty to study honestly. In relation to the famous fight with Flashman, the author has a disquisition about the place of fighting in a boy's life. I was struck by: "After all, what would life be, without fighting?"
Ray Monk. Wittgenstein. The Duty of Genius. Vintage. 1991. 0-09-988370-8. Very good read, but every time I begin to think I understand W's point of view, he does something that proves me wrong. In the end, I am torn between the desire to read it again from the start (and spend serious time studying W's work) and the rather attractive idea that I should take W's advice to his various friends, and give up philosophy altogether to do something useful.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
E.E. Cummings
Selected Poems 1923-1958. Faber and Faber. ISBN 987-0-571-08986-4
(Selected by the poet)
I'd neglected this man, hitherto, for no better reason than my aversion to gimmickry: he uses idiosyncratic punctuation (frequently none) and rarely uses a capital letter. Then, a few weeks ago we watched a movie in which the always watchable Cameron Diaz played an almost illiterate girl, who slowly read one of EEC's love poems to a blind patient, and I was amazed by its beauty. Now I'm a convert.
Some are political, some humorous, some erotic, a few religious, but most are about love, and life, and light. In form, quite a few are sonnets, the style strongly reminiscent of Shakespeare. For instance:
So much, so beautiful -- read it!
(Selected by the poet)
I'd neglected this man, hitherto, for no better reason than my aversion to gimmickry: he uses idiosyncratic punctuation (frequently none) and rarely uses a capital letter. Then, a few weeks ago we watched a movie in which the always watchable Cameron Diaz played an almost illiterate girl, who slowly read one of EEC's love poems to a blind patient, and I was amazed by its beauty. Now I'm a convert.
Some are political, some humorous, some erotic, a few religious, but most are about love, and life, and light. In form, quite a few are sonnets, the style strongly reminiscent of Shakespeare. For instance:
true lovers in each happening of their heartsBut he uses all sorts of standard metrical and rhyming structures, with just an occasional innovation, in which the layout on the page suggests the intended phrasing, and pauses. Such as this:
live longer than all which and every who;
despite what fear denies,what hope asserts,
what falsest both disprove by proving true
....
...His word-order sometimes recalls Horace:
so world is a leaf so tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now
anyone lived in a pretty how town(-- the use of parentheses is a characteristic. Sometimes, there is just one short sentence outside the parenteses, and a whole world inside.)
(with up so floating many bells down)
So much, so beautiful -- read it!
Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield
Goethe thought this "one of the best novels ever written", although most discriminating critics (and even the author, in his 'Advertisement') point to the faults of its fantastically-improbable plot, in which coincidence is heaped upon coincidence. It has enjoyed enduring popularity, and this is clearly due to the great charm of its style, its wealth of aphorisms, and the singular character of the hero: upright, trusting, innocent of guile, vain about his writing, faithful and courageous. I loved it.
Life is full of coincidences. Last week my friend MN used the valediction:
Life is full of coincidences. Last week my friend MN used the valediction:
Ná díol do chearc lá fliuch!This was new to me, but soon after I ran across a reference to the same proverb in Goldsmith's novel. When the vicar becomes anxious that his son Moses has been away so long at the fair, where he went to sell a horse, the vicar's wife says that he need not worry..."Depend on it, he knows what he is about. I'll warrant we'll never see him sell his sell a hen on a rainy day." Sadly, her confidence is misplaced, and Moses returns, having exchanged the price of the horse for some rubbish.
(Never sell your hen on a wet day!)
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