Owen Mackenzie, protagonist of John Updike's latest novel "Villages", is trying to make conversation with one of the few woman in his class (its MIT in the 50's )
""" He went on, in a voice that sounded whiny in his own ears, "I didn't expect all this rather creepy mathematical logic, Frege and Russel and Godel's paradoxes -- all this propositional calculus, my God, what a tempest in a hypothetical teapot! I thought we were going to learn how to program digital computers. """ Kirby's fault indirectly I am reading this. The son of his friend who joined us when Kirby was in NY is a literature major, and mentioned liking Updike. I was selling math. On a gander, I tried to make a connection - googling, to discover that Updike's latest novel is about a geek of his generation. And that Updike's father taught math. Thought it a fun way to get some history of geekdom under my belt, and indeed it is. BTW, he gets (as in marries) the girl. Art _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
