“In the 1995 Halloween episode of the award-winning animated sitcom The Simpsons, two-dimensional Homer Simpson accidentally jumps into the third dimension. During his journey in this strange world, geometric solids and mathematical formulas float through the air, including an innocent-looking equation: 178212 + 184112 = 192212. Most viewers surely ignored this bit of mathematical gobbledygook.”
Mozart’s juvenalia.
“A python was the first god worshipped by mankind, according to 70,000-year-old evidence found in a cave in Botswana’s Tosodilo hills.” (thanks, Tyler!)
Ok, yes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. But some covers demand your attention.
“Peer disagreement occurs when you and someone you regard as your epistemic peer come to opposing verdicts about some factual claim despite having just as good access to the evidence relevant for assessing the claim in question.”
UK bestsellers (and a grumpy take on them).
The OUP has some resolutions.
Christian sex cult comic books. Um, what?
” Pricing of books, we have decided, will absolutely be a hot topic in the near future.”
Literary cruises: highbrow or lowbrow?
“Fatherhood, for humorist Neal Pollack, didn’t hasten an end to his boozy nights out at crowded rock shows or mute his inner cynic or prompt a move away from the crime-ridden urban enclaves he called home. That’s because Pollack was determined – for reasons he still can’t quite articulate – to be a ‘cool’ dad, spending his son’s first few years in a unique sort of identity crisis, touring with his newly formed punk band, pot-smoking in Amsterdam and giving his toddler the pop culture chops that would make any Gen-Xer proud.”