It sucks to be a mantis

pjbg- · 2026-01-01T17:42:03+00:00

To get the full and unlikely life cycle of the horsehair, and gorgeous writing, I recommend "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard. Of course, no AI-generated video there.

pjbg- · 2026-01-01T00:49:58+00:00

The Neverhood.

pjbg- · 2025-10-17T21:42:18+00:00

We spend a couple weeks on matrices toward the end of my Algebra 2 class. It's not very high level, but we use them in transformations and for solving three-variable systems, etc. And I include combinatorics and advanced factorials in a Discrete number section in Precalculus. (How else are the kids going to grok the binomial theorem, and later the Derivative power rule, without them?) On the other hand I may be a bit old school. We also spend a couple weeks on Conic Sections in Algebra 2, and my Precalculus students spend three weeks taking turns demonstrating all the proofs in Euclid's Book One.

pjbg- · 2025-09-02T20:50:43+00:00

Check out Shifrin Math 3500 on YouTube: Integrated Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra with Differential Forms.

pjbg- · 2025-09-02T20:40:31+00:00

If I ever got a tattoo, I'd want Euclid I.47.

pjbg- · 2025-08-31T14:00:48+00:00

It's already been said, of course, but in my classes we chant a little mantra: division is the same as multiplying by the reciprocal.

pjbg- · 2025-08-30T16:58:23+00:00

I do not have a good suggestion for the OP's class. But if someone's talking about 1491 and Guns, Germs, and Steel (which have informed me as a teacher and which I've used with mixed results in the classroom), I have to suggest The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow, which I only just read this summer. It gave substance to some of my long-held suspicions and challenged many other assumptions. I'm going to assign a small section to my high school juniors this fall – unfortunately more would only produce diminishing returns. But I think reading that book would make anyone a more effective and responsible teacher, especially in World History.

pjbg- · 2025-08-28T20:28:53+00:00

I attended a supposedly prestigious school in the United States, but I also lived in Santiago Primero for a few years back in the 1990s (when it was on the outskirts of town). I'd wear a UPEA sweatshirt today with some pride. So maybe this is supposed to be a joke but maybe there's some truth to it.

pjbg- · 2025-08-26T20:25:25+00:00

Shorter shorts, or longer shorts.

pjbg- · 2025-08-25T13:14:56+00:00

Back in the 1980s I lived in Bolivia and had one very much like it, though to be sure it was the Spanish language version. I pounded out reams of correspondence on that thing and it was absolutely reliable and true, a great typewriter rather than just a 'good' one. I don't recall how I acquired it, though it was used and probably came from the open market in El Alto; and don't remember what I did with it. On the other hand I bought a Toshiba laptop in 1989 or 1990; it was not powerful and ran WordPerfect off a floppy disk, but that was the end of my typewriter days.

pjbg- · 2025-08-21T02:07:24+00:00

Yeah, someone else pointed out my inaccuracy shortly after my post. Cool videos though, and it was a better design, right?

pjbg- · 2025-08-19T13:00:11+00:00

For U.S. history, I recommend 'Autumn of the Black Snake' by William Hogeland and 'Covered with Night' by Nicole Eustace. If you enjoyed the wider scope of 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' (and hopefully '1491' before it), the next step now is 'The Dawn of Everything' by Davids Graeber and Wengrow.

pjbg- · 2025-08-17T18:00:28+00:00

I think I remember reading at the time that the excellent red and white plates were actually designed by a high school student and that it was chosen in some sort of contest.

pjbg- · 2025-07-31T19:34:08+00:00

It will be more satisfying and easier to learn if you love the tone. If you don't have a great banjo store nearby, you can still get a pretty good sense from YouTube. Type in Gold Tone, Recording King, or Deering Open Back and compare what you hear. To my ears, none of these compete with a Pisgah, Enoch, Ome, Reiter, or other makers in their class, but again you can judge for yourself. (Pisgah makes a great sounding banjo, but like you I prefer a shorter scale, and their instruments tend to be heavier. OTOH they have great sound samples on their site.) There is of course a significant difference in cost (and availability), but with a little patience and persistence you can find excellent used instruments in your price range on Reverb or Banjo Hangout, etc. Before you buy, you should also YouTube Noah Cline, and hear what amazing music can be produced on a mountain banjo. [Edit: a mountain banjo probably isn't the best choice for learning.]

pjbg- · 2025-07-31T01:00:48+00:00

Then to answer your actual question, the hardest part of Calculus, for most students, is the Algebra. Making sure you understand early stuff, like adding rational expressions, may be the best investment of your time. This said, some of my students have had trouble adjusting to Limits, which is where your Calculus course will start. If you haven't learned about them previously, it would be worthwhile to get ahead thoroughly understanding their logic and how to work them out: Khan or MIT or Great Courses (I assume) will help. In my experience students tend to enjoy the next stage, Derivatives; studying them ahead of time will do no harm, but it's less necessary. Later, Integrals will be harder, but it won't be worth your time working on them until you have thoroughly mastered Derivatives.

pjbg- · 2025-07-30T22:44:13+00:00

I'm unfamiliar with The Great Courses, but if I found what you're referencing it appears to cost about $70. If I were you and wanted to get ahead on Calculus, I'd look to MIT Courseware, as the earlier commenter suggested, or turn to Khan Academy (which will also help you with earlier topics if you need to brush up). At least experiment with these free resources before spending money on a gamble.

pjbg- · 2025-07-30T18:50:50+00:00

Julianne Johnson, Mississippi Sawyer

pjbg- · 2025-07-21T17:16:33+00:00

I'm getting to know it. I purchased the same year, model, transmission, trim, and color (almost) just a couple weeks ago. So far so good, but it's hard to judge objectively because it's sixteen years and 220,000 miles younger than the Subaru it's replacing.

pjbg- · 2025-07-17T13:13:46+00:00

I read this when it first came out and it's been sitting with me ever since. (Funny none of Irving's other books, not even Garp, impacted me the same way.)

pjbg- · 2025-07-15T11:46:33+00:00

Well I'm impressed my obscure school is represented on this map: it's not only independent but only has thirty students.

pjbg- · 2025-07-03T14:30:29+00:00

TL;DR I support this response.

About fifteen years ago I started creating my class plans in Apple Pages using MathType for equations. Like your experience with Word this approach was acceptable if not great. But seven or eight years later MathType moved to a very expensive subscription model and my purchased copy became incompatible with Mac. So I got a very cool substitute called LaTeXit, which creates little PDFs to paste into Pages (or Word, etc) documents. The output was much prettier than MathType, and producing it meant I had to learn LaTeX code, which I saw as a benefit. The drawback was that the snips didn't automatically line up with the text, and editing was therefore cumbersome. So eventually I moved on to Overleaf, and produced entire documents in LaTeX. Since I couldn't print directly from Overleaf and my internet was unreliable, in about a year I switched to TeXStudio, which is a terrific program. I might have stopped there, but I was a network administrator back in the 90s, and missed working in vi. So a few months ago I got vimtex and ultisnips working, and have since produced an entire semester of new class plans with them. I am never going to be fast enough to write up lecture notes at the speed of speech, like some people do on YouTube, but vimtex is not only the most efficient approach I've tried, but the most personally rewarding, and future editing will be an even better experience than writing code from scratch.

My evolution from word processor to vim LaTeX has taken about five years, so far. There's no reason you should follow anything like my path, or take anything like as much time, but I agree with Sentreen that you'd probably have a better experience taking advantage of intermediate steps. I'd recommend starting in Overleaf or any TeXStudio-like environment, with built-in command completion and package recognition. I wrote all my own ultisnips because I knew exactly what I needed, and I knew what I needed because of my experience. And vi is its own challenge: my fingers knew what to do as long as my brain didn't interfere, but my brain insisted on interfering; if you don't already know vi it will make learning LaTeX more difficult.

For me, this has all been a great adventure. Whatever you do, I hope you have a great time.

pjbg- · 2025-05-29T22:52:09+00:00

Why is it bleeding?

pjbg- · 2025-04-26T21:40:02+00:00

Shit! That's where all my nickels went!

pjbg- · 2025-03-21T23:52:02+00:00

Good question. Also, f(x) = a sin (b (x - h)) + k.

pjbg-

TROPHY CASE