So I mentioned in a previous post or two that due to a class I'm currently taking, my reading time would be reduced, but at the same time, that I would be looking for ways to apply what I learn to the world of books and/or publishing.
Obviously, it's no surprise that I love words and reading, etc.
What does surprise people is my fascination with Math. Don't be mislead by that sentence, I'm not saying I'm good at Math, just that I'm fascinated by it. There are even particular hard science fiction books that I've enjoyed because they involve characters interaction with Math (tangent: I did not like Arthur C. Clarke's final novel "The Last Theorem". I thought despite the co-authorship with Frederick Pohl, the novel was poorly written, poorly plotted, and poorly executed. It may have started out as a good idea, but it quickly turned south.) And eventually some of my future posts will involve science fiction novels with math-based themes or plot lines.
But Math, like English, is a language, and it's characters represent abstracts and ideas, just like English, and through the language we can better understand the world around us.
The one lesson we've covered a lot in my Statistical Analysis (Nanodegree) class is standard deviations, how to calculate it, and what it ultimately means.
Basically, if you have data, you can pick a piece of particular datum and calculate where it lies in relation to all the other data in the population you took it from. In other words, you can calculate how many standard deviations this one particular piece of data is from the mean/average.
I could go much more into the details and how that is discussed, but I suspect many of my regular Cheesy Readers aren't ready for me to suddenly change the regular topics of this blog so quickly.
Maybe as I go, more and more will become fascinated by my path, but maybe others only want to see my final conclusions. Time will tell.
Until Next Time...
Deviantly Yours,
Michael
I recently finished "The Ox Bow Incident" by Walter Van Tilburg Clark and thought I'd post some of the more interesting quotes from the book. Keep in mind, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the quotes I've posted below, but I find them worthy of thought and discussion.
"Law is more than the words that put it on the books; law is more than any decisions that may be made from it; law is more than the particular code of it stated at any one time or in any one place or nation; more than any man, lawyer or judge, sheriff or jailer, who may represent it. True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has evolved with mankind. None of man's temples, none of his religions, none of his weapons, his tools, his arts, his sciences, nothing else he has grown to, is so great a thing as his justice, his sense of justice. The true law is something in itself, it is the spirit of the moral nature of man; it is an existence apart, like God, and as worthy of worship as God. If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?"
"...night is like a room; it makes the little things in your head too important. A man's not clearheaded at night."
"All any of us really want any more is power. We'd buck the pack if we dared. We don't, so we use it; we trick it to help us in our own little killings. We've mastered the horses and cattle. Now we want to master each other, make cattle of men. Kill them to feed ourselves. The smaller the pack the more we get."
"We're doing it because we're in the pack, and because we're afraid not to be in the pack. We don't dare show our pack weakness; we don't dare resist the pack."
So if you'd like to comment or discuss anything you've read above, or would just like to talk about the book in general, please feel free to comment below.
Until Next Time...
Incidentally Yours,
Michael
