Oct 30
Last night I went to a student party. I wound up sitting next to a Swiss Journalist. She seemed to claim that anything could be interesting. So I explained my idea that it might be possible to describe the optima of the female form using surface integrals. She was duly polite, but I suppose not everything can be made interesting to everybody. Perhaps someday I will get to do the research and write the paper.
I encountered another good freshman calculus problem. There is one knob on the shower here. An electric heater adds a fixed maximum amount of watts so after a point you begin to compromise between flow and temperature. And students always asked me why would I ever need calculus. If you were living in Guatemala and had to save one or two weeks’ pay to buy a heating element that you needed to size for your desired minimum flow and temperature of course.
Warm showers are good, but there is another nice thing about Guatemala- The average height. I have brothers that have frames that are 6’ 1” and 6’ 3” and shaped in a way that you could hang a lot of muscle from them. They choose to hang another tissue type, but that is another matter. I always felt cheated being 5’ 10”. Here, for a few weeks, except when I pass tourists from Scandinavia, I get to be the big tall guy.
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| I had to take the banano out of my pocket for this statue |
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| Richard de Ingletera |
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| Straight if not Tall |
Glad you're getting to use those math skills. I will be sure to mention this real life application of calculus to my students. Feeling tall eh? Some things are so relative, you'll always be the skinny guy in the family.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny, every now and then, when I eat a bunch of bad food, Murray feels compelled to warn me against getting fat. And then she grabs her own belly and feels ashamed.
ReplyDeleteOh my, what an interesting relationship. I'm not worried about you, too much. I think Mom is almost down to my weight, I suggested we race but she has yet to respond.
ReplyDelete