Callistonian.net

What would you do if you had old textbooks you wished to get rid of, and someone told you, “I’m sorry, but you can’t sell any of those books” ?

On the backs of their textbooks, some particularly avaricious universities have started printing, “This book may not be sold.” If the books were originally sold at heavily discounted prices, if they were copied illegally, if they were printed off the Internet … then maybe this policy would make a bit of sense. But they weren’t, so it doesn’t make any sense.

University students can easily spend hundreds of dollars on textbooks each semester. Used books save trees and help keep prices down. Used books are good, right?

What annoys me the most about this is that legally “this book may not be sold” is weightless nonsense.  Publishers may print whatever they wish on the backs of their books. “The pages in this book may not be folded over.” “You may not write in this book.” “You may only open this book after 5PM on Wednesdays.”

But statements like that are not enforceable.  If I buy a book, I may write my name in it. If a publisher dislikes that, oh well - it sucks for her. :P Instead of printing unenforceable rubbish, publishers should save their ink!

It’s just terrible that universities go along with such nonsense. Aren’t they getting enough money out of their students already? Do they really need to cut crooked deals with publishers?

You make your students buy this overpriced version of this particular book, and we’ll give you $3 for every one we sell. *wink wink*  But remember, the deal is off if you even think about letting them resell their books. We won’t be undermined.

If you’re interested, here’s a proper article on “custom” textbooks.

On my last entry, I got such wonderful comments. Thank you! :) I didn’t realize that half of them were there until yesterday - I’m sorry - they got stuck in moderation.

How do you procrastinate? What do you do when bored? I, apparently, write down paradoxes.

Why is it so girly? Am I a girly girl? Perhaps—anyway, some tend to associate math with boys. I’m not a boy. I wanted to make that clear in case anyone decided to lift this image from my blog… ♥

Click on the picture for a larger version.

Poetic forms like imabic trimeter are barely comprehensible to me. In school, whenever I was interrogated about a poem’s meter, my thoughts were, “Uh? I don’t really know; I hate this.” Luckily, some mathematical things, like the cubed roots of certain numbers, are much easier to figure out. Trust me!

Let’s say you have a number like 157464. It’s cubed root is 54 (157464 is 54 x 54 x 54, which is also know as 54^3). How long does it take to figure out that 157464’s cubed root is 54? Less time than it takes to figure out if a line of poetry is in imabic trimeter or pentameter or what have you. How much cleverer does a girl who can take the cubed root of 157464 in 5 seconds look than the girl who can tell you about a poem’s meter in 5 seconds? Way cleverer, you know.

Honestly, if the number being cubed is two-digits, it can be easily discovered without a calculator. But first you must know a few things.

1. The numbers 1-9 cubed (knowing this is sort of necessary)
   • 1 cubed is 1
   • 2 cubed is 8
   • 3 cubed is 27
   • 4 cubed is 64
   • 5 cubed is 125
   • 6 cubed is 216
   • 7 cubed is 343
   • 8 cubed is 512
   • 9 cubed is 729
2. The last digit of the cube of those numbers (the bold numbers)¹

That’s it. Now, this is how it works—Let’s say you have a number like, oh, 300763. First, ignore its last three digits. Mentally, 300763 should become 300. 300 is greater than 216 (6 cubed) but less than 343 (7 cubed), so the cubed root of 300763 is going to be 60-something. Second, think of 300763’s last number. It’s 3, which is the same number as the last digit of 7 cubed (343), so the cubed root of 300763 is 67.

Another one—21952.

1. 21952 (drop the last 3 digits)
2. 21 is greater than 2 cubed (8) but less than 3 cubed (27), so its cubed root must be 20-something.
3. 21952 ends in a 2. 8 cubed also ends in a 2. Thus, 21952’s cubed root must be 28.

That’s all there is to it. Now it’s time to shock your friends, parents, older siblings, lovers, and enemies. Tell them to grab a calculator and start cubing 2-digit numbers. Watch their mouths hang open in utter amazement as you tell them the numbers they’ve cubed. :D lulz.

Back story: One of the teachers was doing this at work today… I half-learned the trick from him.

¹ The last digits of 1-9 cubed are easiest to remember if they (1-9) are pictured on a line. The numbers on the end 1 & 9 are themselves. The next few numbers (2, 3, 8, 7) are 10 minus themselves, while the ones in the middle (4, 5, 6) are also themselves.
² There’s more on the subject here.

Sometimes I find old things, and I laugh, thinking, “What was I thinking? What is this?!? But oh the memories…”

Years ago, I drew (I use the term loosely) some pictures documenting real life events. I thought of making a series of these, but never did. Nonetheless, here is one sans explanation and straight from my archives for your enjoyment.

Well, here’s something of an explanation:
I’m the green figure.
Girls = ______chicken (chickin?)
Boys = ______bob

(more…)

Everyone, surely, has quirkly little things that they love. As for me, I love history. I find the subject to be this fabulous, wonderful, and unbelievably useful thing. I was always a fan but I used to think that history was easy and that I could teach myself all that there was to know by simply reading.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Regardless, my adoration of history is excessive. For example, I talk about Alexander Hamilton all of the time (i.e. way too bloody much). For reasons that need not be discussed here my friends even know his birthday. In my defense, even though, I say a lot of random historical things - they’re never really annoying and even in the case of Hamilton, I do not ramble. My statements are quick, flighty, and amusing (sometimes acerbic).

Nevertheless, everything historical does not interest me. And I was terribly frightened that I would be forced to devote far too many hours of my life to researching and writing a hell-ish essay of fifty pages euphemistically referred to as my senior essay.

A long time ago, I decided that writing about Korea would be nice. Korea is this cool country in eastern Asia. It produces wonderful movies and dramas; it gets really excited about the World Cup; its history is widely neglected in America (what do you know about Korea? =P); and half of it is kind of crazy.

Great! There’s lots there or so I thought.

But… then I realized that I can’t read classical chinese and so all pre-2oth century history is off-limits. And then, I went to the library and talked to a specialist. The one potentially useful thing that she showed me was an online archive of newspapers from long ago. Awesome~ but, with a catch: the newspapers were in Japanese. So then, I pictured myself (it was terribly, really) bent over a desk at zero o’clock in the morning, attempting to decode (yes, decode) practically ancient Japanese newspapers in hopes of getting something out of them so that I could write a fifty-page long essay on something
that I wasn’t even interested in… what fun.

However, as of to-day, this little historian thinks that she finally has a topic for her senior essay. The following sentence is probably going to be one of the most anti-climactic ever but you certainly can handle it. Anyway, I came to the realization that I could combine several things that I like to write about (feel free to cringe as I list each one (haha): politics, human rights (no cringing), Korea, women, history, historiography, and law) into one topic: comfort women (20th century slaves). Hurrah!