CITY OF GOD (E.L. DOCTOROW) AND THE ETERNITY OF NUMBERS

I was moved to have philosophical thoughts. Why was the scale of numbers on the Nazi radio recognizable to me, a Jewish boy? Because numbers were immutable. Their order was fixe, universally true. Even Nazis had to comply with them. Well, if numbers were the same for everyone everywhere in the univerese, didn´t that mean they had to have been installed in our brains by God? And if so, why- except to each everyone the nature of truth. It was true, for example, that two plus two of anything was four. No matter what you applied them to, numbers, being fixes and eternally what they were and nothing else, epitomized truth

Illustration Marzala Surface Pattern Design

We don´t like to fall behind current events in this blog. E.L. Doctorow died last 21st July; may this entry serves as a humble tribute and a literary recommendation. In fact, I find the author´s point very convincing. That is the attraction exerted by the study of mathematics on many prone minds and, paradoxically, also the basis for the rejection, repulsion or even fear that it causes in other people 

FORTUNATA AND JACINTA( BENITO PÉREZ GALDÓS) AND THE TEACHING OF SCIENCES

At the beginning of this book, Barbarita, who will be Jacinta´s mother in law, takes part in the education of her Juanito very seriously and she helps him with his homework each day. Nowadays, she would have attended at the meeting with the tutor of Juanito at the beginning of the term and who knows if she would have belonged to the AMPA. She also helped him with Latin. I admit that I don´t understand the thing about the Retiro lion which appears in this text.It´s also remarkable that the first appararition of Fortunata in this novel is eating a raw egg, as Rocky Balboa in his breakfasts.

She also trained his memory, absolving it of useless hodgepodge, and she used to make him  understand elementary arithmetic with the aid of garbanzos or beans—she wasn't very comfortable with those abstractions any other way.To explain natural history, the teacher often resorted to the lion in the Retiro Park. It was only chemistry that left them motionless. They would gaze at each other blankly and she would end up by getting him to memorize the formulae, having observed that only pharmacists understand these things, and that anyway it all boils down to whether you add more or less water ...  

MOBY DICK (HERMAN MELVILLE) AND THE PREGNANCY OF THE WHALES

The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation which may propably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a time; though in some few known intances giving birth to an Esau and a Jacob:- a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious parts in a nurisng whale are cut by the hunter´s lance, the mother´s pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolor the sea for rods. The milk is veru sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries

As a mammal I do not feel at all identified with the whales, I refuse to believe that we are the same kind of animal. It seems that in reality  the pregnancy of the whales lasts a bit longer than nin months. The author finds it strange the appearance of two breasts in the whale, but  his explanation is even stranger to me. With 'Moby Dick' you can learn a lot of things about whales, no doubt. I had to lokk up in Google who Esau and Jacob were

(Reading this entry  is not advisable for women in the final stages of pregnancy who are not comfortable with the changes in their bodies)