Book Review
FlatterLand
Like Flatland, only more so by Ian Stewart
2001 Hardcover $25.00
Perseus Publishing, Cambridge Mass
It would be exceedingly difficult to dislike this book. It has a stylistc brilliance that makes somewhat easy going of what is one of the most abstract parts of modern mathematics, the Geometry of what could be an infinate number of dimensions. I must emphasis the "somewhat" in the last sentance because of the truely mind boggling complexities of the ideas involved. The readers mind, although well and truely boggled, is always pleasantly boggled and this is no mean feat in a work like this.
Flatland is a novel published in 1884 by Edward Abbott. It is the story A. Square who resides in a two dimensional world and through the machinations of a Sphere is taken on a tour of three dimensions and the wonders therein. Within the twenty two years between it's publication and Einstein's publication of the special theory of Relativity in 1906 the wonders therein were made somewhat passe' by the amazing amount of work and consequent discoverys in dimensional geometries by Einstein and Minkowski, etal. Flatterland is the long needed update to Flatland. The heroine of the present work is Victoria Line (in Flatterland males are Squares and Females are Lines, with the males bearing the names of the great squares of London such as Grosvenor Square and the females bearing the names of Subway lines as Victoria Line.). She finds the dusty diary of her great great Grandfather A. Square and after deciphering a hidden code finds out how to communicate with three dimensional space and beyond. A Denizen of this strange new world called the Space Hopper takes her on an extended tour. Along the way she meets, among many others, two parallel Lions also meeting and my personal favorite Moobius theone sided Cow. She takes a plunge through a Black Hole and survives quite nicely.
I cannot praise to highly the combination of stylistic elegance and scientific knowledge. Very few Authors could make such an extremely confusing and abstract field of study as accessible as this. This is truely a service to the intellectual advancement of the non specialist general public.
FlatterLand on Amazon
FlatLand on Amazon (only $.90)
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Ibert Anderny's
Weekly View
News of the Weird
If you haven't found this website yet that might be admissible as partial proof that you're not a total loon. Unfortunately that can't be said for yours truly.
Which weird news site am I referring to? Why News of the Weird of course. Here's a brief intro:
"News of the Weird (founded 1988) is the longest-running, most widely-read
bizarre-but-all-true news feature in the United States--indeed, the gold standard
of weird-news reporting. The center of the News of the Weird constellation is the
weekly column that appears in more than 250 daily and weekly newspapers and
websites around the world."
Here's a couple samples from "Weird Central":
Church of England's Newspaper Gets Down
A piece in the current issue of the 138-yr-old official weekly, on problems today’s
nuns sometimes face, reports London’s Sister Helen Loder giving as good as she
gets to a young fellow who yells at her on the street. He yells “[Newting] nun”
[Ed.: The Church of England used the actual term, which Weird Central, being
respectful of our tender readers, euphemizes]; she shouts back, “One or the
other, but I can’t be both!” [Daily Telegraph, 7-22-01]
Well, Of Course! How Could This Not Have Happened?
Palm Beach County Election Supervisor Theresa LePore (creator of last year's
butterfly ballot) said Monday she wants heads to roll for this sick prank: No, a dog
can't vote in Palm Beach even if her office did issue one an official voter card.
The poodle Cocoa Fernandez got a card in the mail; his owner, a Reform Party
member, denies any role. [Tampa Tribune-AP, 7-24-01]
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Santa's Toy Review
"Why when I was a kid we didn't have these new fangled contraptions all we had to play with was a stick."
Sound familiar? Well, now you can bring back a little of that nostalgic joy for any adult pining away for the
delight of playing with a stick.
Sticks are after all the greatest of all inventions. Don't take my word for it. Just ask Mr. Stick N. Shoe the
proprietor of Little Devices. There it is rumored you can find all
manor of sticks, stones, lumps, wonders and stuff.
"I can say, without prejudice, that sticks are the greatest"
-- Mr. Stick N. Shoe.
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