Quick Math Course (Math Hacks, Cochrane 2018)

Rich Cochrane. Math Hacks (2018) 100 math concepts and theorems present in two-page spreads showing an overview (explanation in math terms, often some history), a shortcut (some details to clarify ), and a hack (brief summary, sometimes with a pointer to related math). Nicely done graphics, good history, well done examples, and a few annoying typos.
Recommended. ***

Language: A close examination (The State of the Language, 1980)

 Leonard Michaels & Christopher Ricks. The State of the Language (1980) In what sense can one talk about a language as an entity that exists? What does “exist” mean? A rock exists. It’s a passive existence. Wind and weather slowly eat at its substance until it ceases to exist. An animal exists, but the processes that keep it alive also wear it out, and these plus the ravages of wind and weather eat at its substance until it too ceases to exist.
     But language? Language is something people do. It’s not passive like a rock. It’s not active like an animal. Language exists while it’s spoken. We observe as well as understand it, and those observations, sorted and classified, compared and contrasted, create a concept. Since concepts must correspond to entities, language must be an entity. That’s the logic of “concept” and “entity.” And so a language exists, and we speak about as if it changes passively like a rock or actively like an animal. A pretty delusion, but it serves to help us discuss how people’s speech habits have changed over time. Thus the “State of the Language”,  a collection of such discussions.
     Most of the essays are by academics, the rest by practitioners. The academics too often write to test or develop some theory. The practitioners enjoy recording their observations. A few indulge in satire, some catalogue and analyse so earnestly that they slip into self-satire. But all take talk about language seriously. Class, trades and professions, psychology and philosophy, the desire for novelty, the literary traditions, these and many other influences on the development and uses of language all get a look-in. All focus on how people speak and write English. All assume, mostly tacitly, that people are what they speak, no matter what they profess to say.
     In the 40-odd years since this book was published, English has become established as the world's lingua franca. Speakers of other languages have adopted and adapted English words. Native English speakers risk misunderstanding when they use their idioms and allusions. Psycholinguistics has come into its own as the study of how language both expresses and shapes experience. The phrase “human language” is now necessary because ethologists have discovered  complexities of animal communication that resemble some features of human language. The link between self-awareness and language is established, but not understood. The creation of large-language-model pattern generators (misdescribed as artificially intelligent) have prompted rethinking of what human language and intelligence are.
     “In the beginning was the word”. So begins the Gospel of John. Whatever else these essays teach us, they show that language not only makes us human, but creates the experience that we call reality.
     A collection worth keeping. ***

Canadian National Treasures (Callwood, 1994)

June Callwood. National Treasures (1994). Vision TV received its licence in 1987, and began broadcasting from its very modest studio a few months later. In 1991, June Callwood discussed an interview show with them. Her guests would be National Treasures, or at any rate people that she thought should be recognised as such. Most of her guests were drawn from her circle of friends and media acquaintances (she was a journalist and social activist). The show was a success, and helped Vision TV grow its audience. It’s now a money-making property owned by ZoomerMedia, with a more secular and marketing approach than the religious and multi-cultural service that its founders had promoted.
     This book consists of edited transcripts of nine of these interviews. They’re interesting as documents of a certain time and sociopolitical ambience that has passed. They trigger nostalgia for what looks like a simpler time, which it wasn’t. The cultural landscape simply felt smaller back then. But the transition to the larger and less easily encompassed  Canada of today was already underway.
     Callwood is a pleasant conversationalist, which makes for easy reading, but I don’t get the sense of personal or other revelations that I’ve had from Eleanor Wachtel (Writers and Company) or Mary Hines (Tapestry) interviews. However, the interview with William Hutt did change my perception of him. The others confirmed or expanded what I already knew (or thought I knew) about them. Recommended for anyone who wants to know more about the 1990s in Canada. All the interviewees have relevance today. ***

How Money Began... (Whitehead and Baskerville, Money, 1975)

 

     Geoffrey Whitehead & Patricia Baskerville. Money (1975). Subtitled How Money Began and How it Works, which is a nice summary of the book’s intentions. Apparently aimed at the curious middle-schooler, it succeeds. At the time it was written, very little was known about the origins of money, and despite a few lucky finds since then, we still don’t know much. By the time Middle Eastern city states codified law, money was already in use, and the laws designed to promote fair and honest trading were brutal. It seems that the propensity for cheating is somewhat stronger in us than for fair and honest dealing.
     Within its modest aims, the book is a success. I learned a few new details about coinage and paper money. The book is strongest dealing in physical money, and weakest in its explanations of how money works, skimming over the psychology (as economic theories generally do). The authors make a distinction between wealth and money early on, but don’t mention that the money-is-wealth superstition was a factor in the inflation caused by Spain’s importation of huge amounts of gold and silver in the 15/1600s. The Spanish did not grasp that these "precious" metals were only as valuable as what they could buy, which was less and less as the supply of silver and gold increased.
     The authors mention the usual concepts of money as a medium of trade and store of value, and talk about money as measuring prices. The printing is excellent. Recommended if you can find a copy. This one will be donated to the library’s book sale. **½