Short Subjects

The Gospel of Wealth
by Andrew Carnegie

It is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipient.

It is well to remember that it requires the exercise of not less ability than that which acquired the wealth to use it so as to be really beneficial to the community.

By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life.

It were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown in to the sea than so spent as to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy.

The really valuable men of the race never [require assistance].

In alms-giving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue.

"The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

That's a lot of quotes. But it was written in 1889 by Andrew Carnegie, who died in 1919. So, I think I am safe in using them. Besides, I don't need quotes to summarize the essay:

• Live Frugally
• Spend the Remainder of your wealth on Humanity

See? Simple.


And from there, I will leave you with my standard stream-of-conciousness (and, oh, so insightful) running remarks:

• It's very circular.
• It is what it is and that's the way that it is.
• And don't be bemoaning the way that it is.
• If gifting money to one's children is bad, how can it possibly be of benefit to oneself?
• He does not, of course, look at the institutions which make great wealth possible.
• He gives libraries.
• He takes lives.
• I like libraries to be sure.
• But I wonder if the average person would not prefer the cash value.
• It's a deep subject.
• Perhaps, a full fledged rant will develop.
• And yes, this is a longer response than I expected for this type of short.
• The Duty of Wealth
• Live Modestly
• Create Works with the Rest
• Why not both?
• No action is better than bad action.
• He does come at this subject from the point of view of a master rather than that of a slave.
• He is an elitist.
• Though, that's not surprising.
• More and more, I am becoming convinced that to be a successful capitalist one must be willing to steal from their fellow man and engage in lopsided, one-sided deals.
• Actions which are all the easier if one does not consider their fellow man an equal.
• The Laws of Accumulation
• The Laws of Distribution
• These are man-made laws, hardly set in stone.
• If the rich did, indeed, live modestly, I doubt they would have such a bad name.
• But yachts, mansions, luxury sports cars, and thousand dollar bottles of wine tell a different story.

In the end, though, this was one of those good reads: well worth the time.

Topology
The Rubber Sheet Geometry
Exploring Mathematics on Your Own

• In the answer set, I thought one of the questions was ambiguous.
• But then, maybe it is my understanding that is ambiguous.
• I do not like to be presented with the impossible problem.
• Nor do I wish to build up The Laws of Mathematics myself.
• I want all ideas presented. And if support is needed, provided.
• Beyond the level of toy problems.
• V - A + R = 2
• V: Vertices
• A: Arcs
• R: Regions
• The hardest part was in figuring out what was meant by each.
• Especially that part about counting any outside region as a region.
• Moebius Strip
• A one sided strip.
• Klein Bottle
• A one sided bottle.
• The polyhedral dice set.
• Straight out of Dungeons & Dragons.
• A Chefalo Knot is a False Knot.
• I would have flunked the test at the end.
• But the book, actually, got easier as I went along.
• The front pages being loaded with the hard theoretical stuff.
• The last chapter, nothing but fun and games.
  • Time to freshen up on my brain teaser problems.

Pokemon
Trading Card Game
Evolutions
Collector's Album

Killing Fantasy Trading Card Games One Expansion Pack At A Time

Charmander -> Charmeleon -> Charizard -> Mega Charizard

• Comes with pre-cut corner slots for insertion of your own cards.
• Nice.
• If a bit presumptuous.
• I mean, if you really cared, you'd get a better album...
  • Or at least, I would.
• Ten times the power!
• The foray was more interesting than I would have expected...
• The hidden nuances of the Pokemon World.

A Unix* Primer

• I have no idea what the star stands for.
• It could mean anything.
• Special Shell Characters
• # ignore last character.
• @ ignore everything up to this point.
• The book is more of an ED (as in the editor) primer than anything else.
• Everything between a[ret] and .[ret]
is put in a buffer.
• This is Stone Age stuff.
• In fact, ED ain't that good of an editor.
• It explains the need for Emacs, oh, so well.
• Puts the whole thing into context.
• ED Special Characters
• . is the current line.
• $ is the last line.
• Care for some ED Commands?
• w means write.
• r means read.
• a means append.
• Before LATEX there was nroff & troff.
• I got no idea what the 'roff' part stands for.
• How about some common Shell Commands?
• ls means list.
• rm means rename.
• mv means move.
• cp means copy.
• All are in reference to files.
• I have now advanced to the intermediate level.
• More Shell Commands!
• pwd is short for print working directory.
• mkdir is short for make directory.
• rmdir is short for remove directory.
• br means break.
• While stty sets up the tele-type machine...
  • er, customizes the console, that is.
• The book is very much about ED & nroff.
• Oddly, I've always had a problem with pipes.
• a | b | c
• a -> b -> c
• But here's where it get's tricky.
  • I think in composition.
  • So, that's c(b(a()))
    • The exact opposite!
  • But whether Unix utilizes Point Free Notation or not...
    • Well, it's been so long, I could not say.

Pooh's Little Instruction Book

• Copyright © 1995 by the Trustees of the Pooh Properties
• They are not doing a good job.
• A is for Eeyore.
• Some of the quotes are charming.
• So, remind me why we are not reading the original work?
• And some entries are little more than plot points.
• And are not nearly as charming.
• Not nearly.
• Being ill, I can safely say that this is a good sick-person book.
• About all I can muster.
• A complete cash-out.
• As one might expect to find in a hospital gift shop.
• As in a good book for the weak-minded.
• Halfway through the hundred odd one-liners, I'm calling it a wrap.
• Rabbit would be proud.

Literature Games

• A Teacher-Aid Book
• Not as cerebrally stimulating as I would have imagined.
• Being for the elementary school teacher crowd, as it was.

Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin

I spent ten minutes with the book, which was, perhaps, twenty less than I had expected. To me it is just a book... and not much more. Having come across a free copy, I had thought to read a chapter, but I shall not do, even, that: this having more to do with my being unable to locate a key chapter, as much as anything else. It is very much a He Said, She Said (conversation filled novel). Whereas, I very much want an explanation for it all. But I doubt there shall ever be one.

Don't take it too personally, Mr Martin. Today, I am quite literally going through the books that I thought I might one day read (or read parts of). But realize that, now, I will not. The stack having grown far too large, if nothing else.

How To Take Over Teh Wurld

A LOLCAT Guide 2 Winning

{At this remove, I can no longer remember if 'Teh' is my misspelling or theirs.}

• A meme cat sequel.
• Yeah, I like cats.
• Pleasant emptiness.
• Almost funny.
• Almost witty.
• Almost always.
• A few chuckles.
• Cats!
• Fur & Fangs!
• Fangs & Fur!
• So cute!
• Ouch!
• Cats like boxes.
• And freshly laundered garments.
• Some of these are good.
• Let's save the rest for later.
• Credits.
• The cool thing to do.

UNIX® System V

User's Reference Manual
1986 AT&T

• For the AT&T 3B2 Computer.
• One will need a Full-Duplex ASCII terminal.
• awk finds words.
• It's all history, at this point.
• But it's interesting to see where we have been.
• A dictionary of forgotten words...
• And seldom used Command Line options.
• sed replaces words?
• I don't know.
• I don't care.
• I use find/replace.
• More importantly, I finally realize it's no longer important to know what these Command Line utilities do.
• Their day having come and gone, for me, at least.
• PowerShell is my shell.
• Actually, I almost never use the shell.
• starter is sort of like help help.
• It's the intro tutorial.
• The superblock is the index of blocks, list of inodes, and the heart of the file system.
• It's where the file system meta-data is stored.
• As I take it, an inode is the meta-data for a single file.
• > means newfile out.
• >> means append to existing...
  • If it exists.
• > new_file.txt
• >> append_to_existing_file.txt
• tabs is way too complicated.
• tar stands for tape archiver.
• tee sends a pipe in two directions.
• So, one can print to screen.
• And pass through.
• In uu*, the uu part stands for Unix to Unix.
• uux seems like a remote command execution utility.
• It's just a guess.
• who tells one who is currently on the system.

The Unix System

SR Bourne
© Bell Telephone Laboratories Incorporated

I got through the 3^rd Chapter, but stopped before the 4^th. I do believe my computer reading heyday is over. Also, just in case you don't recognize the author's name, he's the one who wrote the BASH Shell (a.k.a. the Bourne Again Shell).

• Binary versus Text Files.
• The following programs hold little interest for me:
• mail
  • This computer.
• write
  • Another computer.
• tar is recursive.
• I'll skip the information on ed and vi.
• I know it's worthless...
  • To me.
• Working backwards, lazily tearing out appendixes.
• I don't need this.
• And, yes.
  • No one will be reading this book after me.
• I've already ripped out 100+ pages.
• It's getting thinner...
  • And thinner.
• SH sends requests as a Simple Grammar.
• I think that is what it is called.
• The Rules for a Simple Grammar can be oddly soothing to read.