26 Sept 2001 Now a time for more "mundane" things -- but important to me. Right now I'm in the conception stage for a project that Stu has named PAMSathome (for Physical and Mathematical Science at home); a while back, Stu and I were generating ideas for starting businesses with low overhead, and, more importantly, low starting costs. I'm not much of a business person -- I'm more of a "content provider" type of person (not to say that these are mutually exclusive things). You see, I've been thinking back on my own life. Some have said I'm very gifted, but, truth be told, lots of other people gave me these gifts. I just took full advantage of them. I grew up in a house full of books, with parents who loved me and let me do what I wanted (intellectually). I had a mother who stayed home, a secure base and a sure thing to look forward to for me, my sisters, and my Dad; Ma had more common sense than anybody I knew, refusing to get involved in children's wars (which is more than I can say of the =other= neighborhood parents) -- Ma was always knocking me for having no common sense of my own. It didn't really bug me then - I got cut up, burnt, and lost things, but eventually I learned what to do. Ma is a crafty lady, knitting before I was born, doing macrame while I was little (dammit, I wish we hadn't lost the lion and the giraffe. All we have now is that Santa hanging); she sewed dresses for my sisters and I (there was one set of dresses that had little fruits in the fabric that we tried to wear forever. As I was the oldest, I got only the one dress to wear - Carey got to wear three, eventually.) Ma cross-stitched. Ma took me to this ceramics place when we lived in Savannah, and was my Girl Scout leader for several years. Though I didn't really latch on to handiwork as a child, boy has it come home to stay with me now. I must be in the middle of 2 cross-stitch projects, 2 knitting projects, and who knows how many crochet projects (I can think of 3 off the top of my head). Ma sewed things for our school craft fairs, and started a sewing circle called "Stitch 'n' Bitch". Oh, yes, as many of you know, part of my Ma's common sense extends to sex. She taught me all the practical things I needed to know with regards to sex -- more people should consider this, esp. since their parents are likely to have had more experience in the field. Then there was Dad -- the mighty ogre (well, on a Saturday afternoon, when Ma sent you to wake him up. None of us wanted to do this.) Dad was a spur to my intellectual development when I was growing up. He gave me my first programming books after I had been watching him for weeks on his new IBM PC (and he also got me my own computer -- a Commodore VIC-20 -- with which I was less than impressed. I kept tripping over the power cord, and because saving to the =cassette tape= was so annoying, there were programs I had to type in 4 times before I got the damned thing saved.) He made up strange bedtime stories for us, especially around Christmas (I don't remember much about them except for the name of the main elf -- Squeebo). I remember coming to him in the 5th grade with some word problem I didn't understand, and he ended up teaching me about how to solve linear equations. He gave me a book in 9th grade from which I taught myself some calculus. If I came across him, watching the Late Late Movie, eating his bowl of peanut butter and jelly (and stubbing out his cigarettes in it -- I'd like to blame my disgusting food predelictions on my father), he would fill my mind with bizarre ideas about underwater farming, space exploration, modern physics, and philosophy. His favorite album was the soundtrack to Rocky II, his preferred clothing inside was old Fruit-of-the-Loom tshirts and underwear, and his was wont to sing "If Ever I Would Leave You" at the drop of the hat. So you can see where my private habits come from. He gave me =Godel, Escher, Bach= when he found it too theoretical, but figured I would love it at the advanced age of 12 (well, he was right). He got me hooked on =Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy=, got me started on Isaac Asimov, =Dune=, and Heinlein. He also liked spy thrillers and Stephen King, but that didn't really rub off. Since =IT= scared the shit out of me when I was 15 (and I slept with Ma for a week after that - or at least, the dogs), I've sworn off Stephen King. So that's the family situation in my background -- rather conducive to intellectual development. Even had my public schooling been shitty, I would've done well. Most libraries had =some= Martin Gardner books around, and then I always had =Godel, Escher, Bach= to learn from. However, my public schoolinf =hadn't= been shitty. Since 2nd grade, I had the benefit of "gifted" classes, which were mainly a way of changing the time we would've been bored having gotten all our work done with messing around. In elementary school, in these classes, I got to learn how to play chess, do logic puzzles, make animated films, dissect frogs, build cardboard bridges, write stories, learn the steps of critical thinking (which I promptly forgot until recently), read cool books. In middle school, there were now gifted subject classes, in math, science, social studies, and english. When we moved to Maryland, the timing was perfect for me to do two things: get in Dr. Collins' special weekend math classes, which had us doing Algebra I&II and Geometry over 7th and 8th grades, and get in the John's Hopkins CTY program (and I got a little scholarship for the program, because I had scored over 700 on the math portion of the SAT). Dr. Collins' class allowed me to zoom ahead with math, so that later on, I had the ability of taking Calculus in 10th grade, and just going wild in 11th & 12th -- fractals, number theory, math modeling, Calc 3. But I'm getting ahead of myself. At CTY, during 2 different summers, I got to take classes in computer science and problem-solving. You see, because of the accelerated math program at home, Ma & Dad forbade me to take math classes in the summer. So what happens? In the CTY computer science course, in addition to learning about such things as finite automata, regular expressions, and tree parsing, I learned standard math stuff like propositional logic and induction. In the problem-solving class (which I had to convince them it wasn't a =real= math class), I learned basic abstract algebra, game theory, and some probability. 9th & 10th grade were fallow in the sphere of classes, but I got to do math competitions, which I found fun, mainly for the social aspect, though the intellectual challenge wasn't bad either. Then we moved to North Carolina. This is where I entered my educational pinnacle: the North Carolina School of Science and Math. I'm not going to go into all the details here, let me just say look at my entry for August 31, 2001. I mention so much more of my education there. So let's say I'm a very educated person, in math, at the very least. So what? you might wonder. If you've come here alot, you probably know me personally, and have been the recipient of countless spontaneous lectures on one of the many topics I keep in my mental filing cabinet. Even if you don't know me personally, you've been the recipient of countless lectures here, esp. on Infinity NOT being a number. The "So what?" is that I think more people should be able to have some of the experience I did. Obviously, my circumstances are special to me, but I think that being able to see some of the beautiful things in abstract thinking shouldn't be restricted to those of us who have had the good fortune to have the right parents and the right schools. Thus, this idea of PAMSathome -- a way of bringing interesting math and science to people, whether they are homeschoolers who have progressed past the knowledge of their own parents, gifted or just plain bored students who want something other than the lifeless algebra served up to kids across the country, or adults who feel like they are missing out on a huge chunk of life by not being able to understand or enjoy the sciences. I'm starting with free content (but of course) -- I'm thinking of putting a few of my fun Perl scripts up that do mathematically interesting things, polishing up some of my math and science lectures here and elsewhere, and starting a Q&A column. I've got to admit, my first several things will be mostly math, because that's what I know best. I'm thinking of doing a brain teaser or something per week, kind of like the Car Guys Challenge (or the NPR Sunday puzzle - oh yeah, I should check it out today before time is up). My next stage will be materials to sell -- booklets (or should I say "monographs"? that sounds classier) on individual topics, with exercises and answers. I hope to do correspondence courses one day, but that will take more time to develop. If I =really= get rolling, I'm thinking of selling my services in the area whereever I'm living, to homeschooling groups, to do science labs and the like. Perhaps, if I can think of a good logo or motto, I will sell t-shirts. I'm thinking of using a Sierpinski Triangle, or some modification thereof. I've already thought of what my first booklet will be on -- Math & Music. In taking guitar over these past several years, Chris Ullrich (my teacher, also a luthier (guitar maker)) has asked me to show him lots of different math things -- how to do certain geometrical constructions, how pitch is effected by the bridge placement, how to count out odd rythyms. I've also looked somewhat at scales and other things. Anyway, it's a thought. I would like to leave you with a quote from a biography on St. Dominic, who lived from 1170 - 1221, by Bede Jarrett, O.P. : "He really learnt nothing, except that he learnt how to learn everything." That's ideal education, in my book.