Difficult things.

I know quite a lot of people who state proudly that they are no good at Maths. I even used to work with a mathematician who told us she could not do mental arithmetic; her speciality was statistics! I have yet to meet someone who declares with the same pride that they are rubbish at reading, although I do know a fair number who make a point of saying that never read. I wonder how they get on in life! I have also met a surprisingly large number who seem to feel no shame about not being able to spell. An even more surprisingly large number of these are people I have met who work in education. Basic abilities, all of them. You never hear anyone broadcasting to the world that they are unable to dress themselves!! Odd! 

 I also know mathematicians who talk about the sheer joy of working out a difficult equation. I once watched a class of A Level Maths students happily solving equations just for fun. I can relate to that; I have always felt the same way about translating a difficult bit of prose from one language to another. It must be our inner crossword solving geek! 

What got me onto this was an article I found about a mathematician who has discovered new shapes and patterns related to maths and geometry. The language used is almost poetry in itself, full of references to golden squares and golden rectangles. Wonderful! 

Many people think of arts and maths/science as opposing fields. Indeed in my old girls' grammar school our sixth form tutor groups were split into those two camps. And the idea that someone might want to study A levels in Maths AND Modern Languages or Maths AND Music was considered really strange. This is no longer the case, thank heavens, as the connection between the pattern recognition of all those subjects is now accepted. 

Anyway, Art and Maths. I have always loved geometrical patterns. They are very pleasing but I have to confess to thinking in terms of straight lines rather than curves. The curves and spiral patterns that Mathematician Harriss has come up with are like old Celtic symbols. Here's a link to the article.  Bits of beauty everywhere! 

Another area of artistic delight is cooking. I am a firm believer that food should be a thing of beauty, appealing to the eye as well as to the taste buds. Today I managed to come across two things regarding food. First of all, Jay Raynor, a food writer whose recipes I borrow on a fairly regular basis, has been saying that messy is good and expressed his belief that often stuff that looks quite horrible can taste fabulous. OK, I won't argue with that. However, as a rule I like my culinary delights to look good as well. And then Jack Monroe, who became famous for her blog about managing to feed her little family on about a fiver a week, wrote about crisp sandwiches. I ask you! Crisp sandwiches? Chip butties are bad enough but crisp sandwiches? That truly takes the biscuit! Anyway here's a link to that article as well.

And my final oddity for today has been about educational publishers warning authors of educational books off mentioning certain topics in case they offend students in other countries. Apparently there is even an acronym for topics to be avoided? It is PARSNIP: Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, Isms (communism for example) and Pork. 

Naturally enough there has been widespread criticism of the very idea. But the best is the story of an atlas that had to be pulped. Why? Because the decision was taken to omit Israel from the map. It was a decision that reflected "local preferences", the inclusion of Israel being "unacceptable" to the publishers Gulf customers. Yes, a country just disappeared! Somehow it smacks of Orwell's 1984 with its Newspeak that controlled expressions that could be used. History books and old newspaper articles were rewritten by the Ministry of Truth so that they always showed the government in a favourable light and followed the party line. 

The modern world is fast becoming a weird and alien place. Thank goodness for the beauty of mathematics.