Episode 6: Return of the Journal

alright, here goes at posting again, cuz i was doing good for a while....
first though, more books to cover:

• Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler (531 pages) So far, this is probably the most emotional of Clive Cussler's books that I've read, but since that's in the ending, I'll not touch that. As far as comparison with the rest of his books go, this was the one that was perhaps the most impressive mix of things ever, throwing transportation, oil conspiracies, Vikings, and the Nautilus all together. I don't know how he does it, but he does. The eerie part is that it does have a feature on oil price conspiracies and the like, which sounds frighteningly like it could be going on right now, even though it is a 5 year old book. Still though, its an awesome read, which is really exactly what I'd expect from Clive Cussler.
  
• Sacred Number : The Secret Qualities of Quantities by Miranda Lundy (46 pages) Having read this, and quickly, I'm not entirely sure of the point of this book. It really is just a collection of things that are different numbers....6 sides on snowflake, 8 legs on a spider, etc. There's very little talk of any real meaning of it, and it sounds as a mix of just listing numbers, and making things up to make it seem like there is a meaning where there isn't. If it was a longer read, I'd be annoyed.
  
• The Math Instinct: Why You're a mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs) by Keith Devlin (264 pages) This is probably one of the most interesting non-fiction books I've read in a long while. Part of being a nerd requires me to know a bit of where math shows up in nature, but I still learned so much from this book. It started off with looking at animals that have learned how to do various mathematics, such as how dogs can do a calculus operation, and how ants use very precise deductive reckoning to know where they are. Then there are cases where nature takes advantage of math, like how animals get stripes or spots and numbers in plants. Finally, and the part taht was most interesting, to me, was looking at how we as people have developed math, and how people learn math, both on their own, and in school, and comparing the two. Of course, this is probably of more interest to me given I tutor, but it was still so very interesting. I recommend this to anyone, even if you're not a nerd. Perhaps especially if you're not. It changes how you'd think about math.

Been cleaning my room of late, and when I'm done it might finally be the push I need to get things done that I wnat to. My biggest goal, meaning it probably won't happen, is to go through all my star wars stuff, catagorise it all, and create a part of my site dedicated to all that, with pics of everything. It'll certainly be easier that way, but I'm not sure if i've got the energy to do so. At least my room will be clean, though. Should be just a couple more days. And i'm finding all sorts of cool things in the process that have been missing. So thats good too.