GLEANINGS
the meaning of this word…
facts and ideas, that are gathered or collected from various sources rather than acquired as a whole.
to collect information from numerous sources, often with difficulty, and the expense of time and energy
These essays deal with people and topics that interest me. You could read the excerpt and then you can listen to me reading them, if you are interested.
Remembering Nashery
here is an excerpt from this essay
For those of us who rejoice in the pleasure of witty words and welcome every opportunity to smile at a turn of phrase, August 19th, 2002 is special as it marks the birth centenary of one of the great comic versifiers of the last century – Ogden Nash. Ogden Nash, who was born in Rye, New York celebrated life in elegant and comprehensible verse that dealt with all kinds of situations. His work, in the poet Archibald Macleish’s view, ‘ altered the sensibility of his time.’Nash was born into a distinguished family – one of his ancestors having lent his name to Nashville, Tennessee – and completed his schooling at St. George’s School in Rhode Island. He moved on to Harvard University in 1924, but left after a year – claiming that this was ‘his own idea, and not the dean’s and he has affidavits to prove it’. He then returned to St. George’s School as an instructor, and spent a year there, where he ‘lost’, as he put it, his ‘entire nervous system carving lamb for a table of fourteen year-olds’. The pull of the Big Apple was too much to resist, and he came to New York, hoping to make his fortune selling bonds.
der Herr Warum, “Mr. Why?”
here is an excerpt from this essay
Why did “Mr.Why” do that? Why did he sit on the chair and starve himself to death in that Princeton hospital in the afternoon of 14 January 1978? No one will ever really know, but it was such a strange end to an astounding mind! “der Herr Warum” was Kurt Goedel’s nickname, given to him in his boyhood by his family, on account of his extraordinary inquisitiveness.
April 28, 2006 marks the birth centenary of Kurt Goedel , thought by many to be the greatest logician since Aristotle. Born and brought up in Brünn, Gödel was the younger of two sons. Like any other child, he always wanted to know the ‘why’ of things. His father, Rudolf, was the owner of a textile factory, and his mother Marianne Handschuh, also came from a family with a background in textiles. But Kurt moved far away from such a mundane calling. He was to unravel the warp and weft of the strange and complex tapestry that we call Mathematics in a manner that challenged and astonished the best minds of the last century.