Had a good sleep-in this morning, as promised, til 11:15am. Yippee! It sure makes a difference, and it was just about 8 hours sleep, since I didn't get to bed until 3am last night. But even 8 hours counts as a sleep-in for me, and it restored my energy, along with a couple of cups of coffee that I leisurely sipped as I tried to conquer a few more pages of "Energy From The Vacuum". Because it is slow going, I figured I'd need a second book to go along with it. Sometimes I read books concurrently, especially if one is academic like a textbook. Obviously, I read books like this to try and learn something, but I also read for enjoyment because reading has been such a major part of my life, but the problem with books written by scientists is that most of 'em are "dry" as toast. Scientists and mathematicians use a lot of jargon, and if you aren't familiar with that jargon it reallly slllowwwws dowwnnn your reading process because you have to go back over sentences to make sure you are understanding what the writer is trying to say. You sometimes have to Google certain terms as well. The payoff is that you can learn something fascinating, but it's reading-as-work instead of enjoyment.
So I needed a second book to take a break with, and I chose "Regular Polytopes" by H.S.M. Coxeter, who was a Canadian mathematician and geometry wizard, born in 1907. He wrote "Regular Polytopes" in 1940. I have the third edition from 1973, and I bought it used from Amazon about three years ago because Dr. Farrell highly recommended it, in one of his own books, as essential for understanding higher dimensions. Like many math groupie/nerds, I have long wished I could visualize four dimensional time-space, and Dr. Joe suggested that this was the book to read if you wanted to get a mathematical concept of it, since it is beyond human comprehension to picture anything in one's mind other than three dimensional space. So I ordered the book, and......I tried to read it.
But then I put it aside for three years because.........I mean, holy smokes man. It wasn't the jargon this time, but the equations. Again, it's really just a matter of learning the language, but if I were going to do that I'd have done it in high school. Instead, I gave up on math after 8th grade geometry, because the teacher was boring as heck. I had been an advance placement algebra student just a year earlier, in 7th grade, and I loved that class. But one year later I lost interest, and now more than 40 years later I have regained it. And though the interest is easy enough to regain, the acumen is not, and so - I bought "Regular Polytopes" in 2015 and had to shelve it because I didn't then have the patience. And I really don't have it now, either, but - and here's the kicker - I figured I needed a second book to read, an easier book, to go along with the very hard "Energy From The Vacuum". I looked around, though, and I had nothing. No LBJ books or 9/11 books. I'd just finished the latest Stephen King, and I had no books forthcoming from The Libe. So I had to grab something on hand. And I figured that "Polytopes" would not only be the "easier" book to read, haha, but it would also allow me to kill two birds, because if I am gonna be in math and science mode, I might as well stay there until I finish everything that has been sitting around.
You are looking at 1100 pages total for both books, and if I am lucky I can do twenty per day (ten for each book), so we are looking at around September 1st for a completion date.
It's good to read something you don't fully understand, because if you read it - and obviously you will only wish to do so if you have an interest in the subject - you will come to understand it better.
I can liken it to reading music, which four years ago I had no ability to read, but because of choir I now have a fair understanding, if not a total recall of notes. I read music by following the form and pattern of the notes on the staff, and what happens is you come to learn it as a language, little by little.
Anyhow, with the addition of "Regular Polytopes", the daily reading will be twice as much of a slog, but we will come out of it with, at the very least, a reduced chance of Alzheimer's. :)
I went on a hike later in the afternoon, at 4:30pm, up the DeCampos Trail to the top of Mission Point. It is my third time up there since April, so it is becoming very "doable" and thus less headline worthy. It is still a heck of a hike, though, and today I was the only one on the top when I got up there. Coming down is when you recognize just how far and how steep you've come, because it's a lot easier and you are more able to take in the 2 1/4 mile distance. On the way up, you are dealing entirely with the elevation gain, and so you tune out and just get into "step step step" meditation mode, stopping occasionally to let your heart and lungs rest. It ain't Everest as I've said before; it's only one tenth the height and without sheer rock faces to scale, and no snow, ice or thin air. But for us locals who like to hike, it's a good one, and for me it's good to push myself. I also saw something really cool on my way down - two coyotes! Wow, it was awesome. As I was coming around the final switchback that curves around and down toward Neon Steet, where the trail begins, I saw a coyote come running down the back of a small hill. He had been up in the area of the fenced backyards of the houses on the hillside of Neon St. He was looking for food, and maybe something or someone had scared him off. When I saw him running, he was about 50 yards away, and further down below me. I got my camera out of it's pouch, and then I noticed motion on my left side. It was another coyote, who was waiting on the main trail for the first one! I didn't realize this right off the bat because I was hoping to get a photo. But these doggone coyotes never stand still, and once the running coyote got back to the trail, him and likely Mrs. Coyote hightailed it back into the bushes.
But man, it was awesome to see two coyotes for the first time, and in action to boot. ///
Finally this evening I watched a classic Judy Garland musical, "Summer Stock" (1950), also starring Gene Kelly as her singing and dancing partner and love interest. The story takes place on a farm. Judy is the proprietor, but the crops are failing, she is broke and her hired hands have quit. Unbeknownst to Judy, her actress sister (Gloria De Haven) comes to the rescue, bringing the entire cast and crew of her New York stage production to the family farm for rehearsals. Judy is dedicated to the her life and to her townspeople, and is upset. She wants nothing to with Showbiz People....until she meets Gene Kelly and observes just how much fun it is to Put On A Show. From there, as we say, the plot takes off, and if you are a Judy Garland fan, and who isn't, you owe it to yourself to see this movie, which is the last one she ever made for MGM. You can see she has gained a little weight by now, but it is a good thing because of her ups and downs with her overall health, and the episodes of drugs and depression she went through. Judy Garland did not have an easy life, which is why her talent is all that more amazing.
She gave everything she had to the screen, to her performance. In reading about her, later in her career she often had little energy to perform because of pills and exhaustion from relentless shooting schedules. But you'd never know it, watching her movies. Even though she was fragile, she gave it everything she had, and because of her incredible talent she created her immortality on screen.
Two Giant Thumbs Up for "Summer Stock", one of the very best Judy Garland movies you can see.
No comments:
Post a Comment