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.

Read Opinion | Multiple Choice Flunks Out (Published 1988) by Jacques Barzun (New York Times)
Many things have been urged upon the beleaguered public schools: install computers, reduce class size, pay teachers better and respect them more and give them bodyguards, reform teacher training, restore the principal's authority, purge the bureaucracy and reduce paperwork, lengthen the school year, increase homework, stick to the basics, stop ''social promotion,'' kill social studies and bring back history, and (the latest plan) pay kids not to drop out or play truant.
For historians of and , here’s a nice little essay by Jacques Barzun from 1988 which he later published in a book under the title of “Reasons to De-Test the Schools“. The follow up is telling as well.

A year of Bullet Journaling on Index Cards inspired by the Memindex Method

I’m just wrapping up a year of maintaining my bullet journal practice using index cards instead of the more popular notebook form factor. It’s heavily inspired by the century+ old Memindex method.

AMA

Sample bullet journal using index cards featuring a daily card with schedule and to do list items sitting next to a card index and a Pilot Hi-Tec C Coleto multipen

Card index daily journal and planner with 4 x 6" index cards separated by divider tabs labeled from Aug through Jul of following year.

Green canvas Flatty Works canvas envelope-style case with a clear plastic front through which one can see a handful of 4 x 6" index card dividers and index cards.