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Week Notes 2

Reading #

• I continue to enjoy reading War and Peace.

  • I’m starting to get to scenes that I remember really enjoying ten years ago. In particular, Book II Chapter 16-17 around Tushin, the bootless artillery-ist. Also, I love this bit at the end of Chapter 15 where French and Russian soldier are bickering across the battle line, before the action begins (quoting from Gutenberg):

  “Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacré nom…!” cried he angrily.

  “The devil skin your Emperor.”

  And Dólokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian and shouldering his musket walked away.

  “Let us go, Iván Lukích,” he said to the captain.

  “Ah, that’s the way to talk French,” said the picket soldiers. “Now, Sídorov, you have a try!”

  Sídorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless sounds very fast: “Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaská,” he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.

  “Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!” came peals of such healthy and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be to unload the muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as quickly as possible.

  But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon confronted one another as before.

• I actually finished The Five Worlds series of graphic novels.

  • What do I mean by actually finished? Well, I had got to the last twenty or so pages (of +1000) and it was clear that the good guys would win, the bad guys would lose, and it would all end “happily ever after”. Oh my goodness! The ending is so much more epic than I actually had imagined.

  ROT13 Spoiler: V unq vzntvarq gung gurl jrer tbvat gb srrq Fgna Zbba gb gur frn zbff. Gurl’q yvtug gur ynfg ornpba, naq cbc uvz va gb gur bprna fbzrubj. V gbgnyyl qvqa’g rkcrpg Bban Yrr gb orpbzr Fha Qbznav, npxabjyrqtr gur varivgnovyvgl bs fhssrevat, naq znxr gur Zvzvp va gb n gval funqbj. Vg nyy sryg nznmvatyl cebsbhaq.

• Last week, I grabbed a copy of Sharing Nature with Children from the library. It’s an old quirky book packed full of cool ideas. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that the author is still active and has a global movement: Sharing Nature.

Writing #

• Currently writing up the heart group stuff.

  • There is a magical moment when you go from “Ack! This is stupid, why am I doing this?” to “This is amazing! I can’t believe that I am the person who gets to write this!” That moment happened for me when I made a beautiful one-page translation chart from string figure calculus to Jayne-Rivers-Haddon nomenclature. A PDF is here: brokhos-calculus.pdf.

• I submitted a pitch to The Canadian Friend.

  • The editor liked it, but I haven’t written anything for this one yet.

• Wrote a brief response about anti-racist pedagogy for my Pedagogical Reading Group.

• Lots of letters to penpals. I collected up everyone’s addresses in a little Fields Notes booklet.

Moving #

• I haven’t been walking as much as I would like. One Tuesday and Wednesday, I only walked from The Village to campus.
• On Thusday, I did half of the walk in to work and saw deer remains.

Playing #

• The walk across the street to school is usually about five minutes long. With the recent dumping of snow, it has turned in to an epic 30~40 minute snow mountain climbing adventure.
• On a quite afternoon at the office, I got some 5b juggling in.
• My co-author recommends that we play with some Inuit figures.

Links #

• Kicks Condor has an awesome piece about hypertexting as a superset containing blogging and wiki-ing.
• Music: Adam Borsage has some wonderfully weird music on his YouTube.
• Music: Cinematic Orchestra x Bonobo continues to delight.

Published: Feb 21, 2025 @ 10:38.
Last Modified: May 26, 2025 @ 17:15.

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