Saturday, December 10, 2011 Lethbridge

5:10 am

The temperature is -4° C, with a high predicted of +7° C. From the Environment Canada website: Today A mix of sun and cloud. Clearing early this afternoon. Wind southwest 30 km/h becoming west 50 gusting to 80 this morning. High 7. Tonight Clear. Increasing cloudiness overnight. Wind west 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming light near midnight. Low minus 7. Normals Max: 0°C Min: -12°

5:20 am Literature

I reread another hundred or so pages yesterday. Much of this was just about moving the story line along, which it did rather well. But there were a few sentences worth capturing.

• "I'm here, but I'm not here. I'm in two places at once. It goes against Einstein's theorem, but what the hell. Call it the Zen of the killer." [p. 38]
  • Call it the Zen of the writer, call it the Zen of the reader.
• "But his promise had not sunk deep roots into his brain. One rainfall was all it took to wash them out." [p. 40]
  • Nice.
• "I do like math. I've always liked it, and I still like it." [p. 45]
  • Me too! I don't see sentences like this very often.
• "Sequences were a personal favorite of mine in high school math. ... To me, they're like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. I never get tired of them. There's always something new to discover." [p. 45]
  • I also liked studying sequences in calculus courses at university. But the connection to Bach is new ground for me. Music is not my strong suit. I have just spent a few minutes reading more about this in Wikipedia and listening to excerpts in the iTunes library. And I have learned about Angela Hewitt. This is one of the real joys of the Web - the access to information when you want it, plus learning more than you imagined when you began.
• "Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That's all it takes. You don't have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math." [p. 46]
  • Much of this rings true to me, although I have never seen math compared to water before. Not many would agree with the last sentence, but I do.
• "When I'm writing a story, I use words to transform the surrounding scene into something more natural for me. In other words, I reconstruct it. That way, I can confirm without a doubt that this person known as 'me' exists in the world. This is a totally different process from steeping myself in the world of math." [p. 46]
  • Writing and mathematics are two different ways of describing something. Mathematics is about pattern and beauty. Language is about complexity and nuance. With the advent of fractals, mathematics has ventured into chaos and complexity, but nuance is still beyond its grasp. Much like the difference between biology and physics. Life is much more complex than rolling balls down a board. Math has proven useful for physics. It is just beginning to expand its ideas so it might become useful to biology. Symmetry and structure are at the heart of the new math. And symmetry and structure are at the heart of biology. We have just begun ......
• "The feel of the words he chose would change depending on whether he was writing them on paper in pencil or typing them on the keyboard. It was imperative to do both." [p. 69]
  • I like this, particularly the idea of doing both rather than picking one over the other.
• "When he reread the text in a few days, he would find more things that needed fixing. But this was fine for now. His powers of concentration had just about reached their limit. He needed a cooling-off period." [p. 69]
  • I find 2 hours is about my limit for a particular activity.
• "There is no one in this world who can't be replaced. A person might have enormous knowledge or ability, but a successor can almost always be found." [p. 80]
  • I agree. Anyone can be hit by a bus. But this is not to say that some people will be missed.
• "... five men and five women in their late sixties and early seventies. They carried backpacks and wore hats ... Tengo wondered if he could possibly reach that age with such a sense of enjoyment. Then he shook his head. No way." [p. 99]
  • Yes way.
• "Sitting in a cubicle, she opened her notebook and , ballpoint pen in hand, started scanning one article after another." [p. 102]
  • The trick is to carry a notebook of some kind, and a pen of some kind, with one at all times. I am not good at this, and have often regretted it.
• "Where mathematics was a magnificent imaginary building, the world of story as represented by Dickens was like a deep, magical forest for Tengo. When mathematics stretched infinitely upwards toward the heavens, the forest spread out beneath his gaze in silence, its dark sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In the forest there were no maps, no numbered doorways." [p. 177]
  • I like the comparison.
• "After much deep thought he [Tengo] reached a conclusion. No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of a story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative." [p. 178]
  • I think this is Murakami talking to himself through Tengo. Suggesting a solution is soft. Telling someone something is hard. I prefer soft tissue.

A perfect beginning to the morning. Now for a second cup.

4:00 PM Model Trains

I am making good progress on the assembly of the Tall Steel Viaduct. The complete kit consists of five 30 foot plate girder spans supported by two tower assemblies. I have two kits so the entire process needs to be repeated.

I have completed building the 5 girder spans (this is the part of the viaduct that supports the actual track). Each span consists of 2 plate girders (the solid side pieces), 3 girder X pieces, and 2 lateral braces.

The next step is to build the 2 tower assemblies.

While I am waiting for the glue to set on the various steps I run a few trains over the existing layout.