Notes

Short content: a microblog of status updates or short notes
Dr. Mike Miller announced in class last night that in the coming Winter quarter at UCLA Extension he’ll be offering a course on elliptic curves. 

The text for the class will be Rational Points on Elliptic Curves (Springer, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics) by Joseph H. Silverman and John T. Tate. He expects to follow and rely more on it versus handing out his own specific lecture notes.

He mentioned that while it would suggest a more geometric flavor, which it will certainly have, the class will carry an interesting algebraic component which those not familiar with the topic may not expect.

To register, look for the listing sometime in the coming month or so when the Winter catalog is released.

I’m in a book club (comprised of academics, historians, educators, inveterate note takers, and lifelong learners) that has chosen its next two books:

Our first Zoom session covering Section 1 of Parrot is Saturday, October 21 at 8:00 am (Pacific). Email Dan Allosso (his email is in the last 15 seconds of one of the previous announcements) to get the details for joining or ping me directly with an email address.

We’re pretty laid back, especially for Saturday mornings, so grab your favorite beverage and join us to chat about the direction of the long arc of history. If you’re joining late, feel free to stop by and join in knowing that you can catch up as we continue along for the coming months. 

Jacky, I know you were working through Debt not so long ago, and this may be your sort of crowd. If you’re free on Saturday mornings, it’d be great to see you and have you join us.

🗃️ I just did a quick calculation and I’ve purchased 2 large card index cabinets, and 5 small indexes (which includes some small desktop trays and a 2 drawer wooden index) for a total of $636.52. It gives me about 65 linear feet of index card space which should hold approximately 108,000 index cards. In physical storage cost (just for the cabinet, not for the square footage), it comes out to spending about 6/10 of a cent per card. 

Buying cards in bulk groups of a 1,000 for the going rate of about 2 cents each, I’m looking at a lifetime index card bill of around $1,700 to fill it all up.

If I look at a 30 year time span, I’m all in for about $2,500 (I’m adding a bit for pens/pencils/ink) versus an annual subscription to Roam Research (currently $165/year) or for Evernote (currently $170/year) both of which would put me at about $5,000 (presuming either is around in 30 years.) 

I really ought to be set for a while, but I do have my eye on one or two other stunning pieces….

The good news is that I’ve traded my expensive notebook/journal habit for a somewhat less expensive card index habit. Now I can spend the difference on more books and fountain pens. 😁

I’m in a book club (comprised of academics, historians, inveterate note takers, commonplacers, zettelkasten users, and lifelong learners) that is just starting the 1972 (or later) revised edition of Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren’s How to Read a Book. Our first Zoom session covering chapters 1-5 is Saturday, September 9th at 8:00 am (Pacific). Email Dan with the details at the original listing to get the details for joining or DM me directly.

We’re pretty laid back, especially for Saturday mornings, so grab your favorite beverage and join us to talk about reading and intellectual history. If you’re joining late, feel free to stop by and join in knowing that you can catch up as we continue along for the coming month or so.

Twitter is being rebranded as X. So, if one “tweets” on Twitter, will one then be “eX-iting” posts on X?
I think it’s a perfect time to eXit the entire platform.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/23/23804629/twitters-rebrand-to-x-may-actually-be-happening-soon

A five panel cartoon diagram. Panel one is labeled "Data" with the subhead "Reading" with a variety of black and white random circles. Panel two is labeled "Information" with the subhead "Excerpting/Synopsis" with a subset of dots which are colored green and purple. Panel three is labeled "Knowledge" with a subhead of "Linking" where the prior set of dots are now linked together by a variety of edges to create a network-like graph. Panel four is labeled "Insight" with the subhead "Serendipity" with a copy of the prior network, but two distant interlinked dots are highlighted in yellow. The final panel is labeled "Wisdom" with the subhead "Writing" and the prior graph image from panel four has a highlighted path from one insight dot to the other.

Hugh McLeod’s original cartoon of Information vs Knowledge which was later extended by David Somerville is actually a very solid representation of much of what many sensemaking workflows look like including the process of making and maintaining a Zettelkasten for writing. It could also be an active representation of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

h/t Nick Santalucia

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Ticknor and Fields, 1854, p. 41)

This quote from Walden becomes even more fascinating when one realizes that the Thoreau family business was manufacturing pencils at John Thoreau & Co., one of the first major pencil companies in the United States. Thoreau’s father was the titular John and Henry David worked in the factory and improved upon the hardness of their graphite.

One might also then say that the man who manufactured pencils naturally should become a writer!

This quote also bears some interesting resemblance to quotes about tools which shape us by Winston Churchill and John M. Culkin. see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw

I finished watching Wondrium’s spectacular The Banjo: Music, History, and Heritage over the weekend. While looking up future tour dates for Rhiannon Giddens, I notice she’s just won a Pulitzer and will be directing the Ojai Music Festival in June! Now massaging my vacation travel… 🪕🎶
Acquired a copy of the Library of America’s Octavia Butler volume containing Kindred, Fledgling, and her Collected stories.

While I hope to read chunks of it over the summer in Butler’s childhood neighborhood of Pasadena, I got it to read Bloodchild for the Octavia Butler Sci Fi Book Club on 6/24/2023 at 3:00 PM at Octavia’s Bookshelf which is co-hosting with the La Pintoresca Branch Library and the Huntington Library.