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juldeaThe story begins some 5,000 years ago with the Sumerians, those lively people who settled in Mesopotamia. When you read, on one of their clay tablets, this exchange between father and son: "Where did you go?" "Nowhere." "Then why are you late?", you realize that 5,000 years are like an evening gone.
If you want to travel briefly back in time (wet clay, a wooden stylus and a pervasive smell of sheep might help)...
...just as you know where to put the decimal point when you remember that a half gallon of milk costs one fifty-five, and your travel agent calls with a bargain flight to Toronto for one fifty-five.
I once casually asked a Greek friend in Paris how many of his countrymen lived there. He shrugged. "Who knows? But I'll quickly find out." He leapt from our cafe table and ran to the nearest wall, where he began to drill with his finger. "What are you doing?" I asked, utterly perplexed. "I don't know," he said, "but Greeks are curious, and soon every Greek in Paris will be here, asking questions and giving advice."
...irony, where you mean only some of what you say but don't say most of what you mean.
In my neck of the woods, where we tried to outdo each other as kids with bazillions and kazillions, it always came down to who could squeeze one last zero on to the page - like the barmen of Dublin who always manage to fit yet one more drop of Guinness into a brimming pint...
As a mathematician I know said recently, "Large numbers are actually very large."
A seven-year-old of my acquaintance claimed that the last number of all was 23,000. "What about 23,000 and one?" she was asked. After a pause: "Well, I was close."
I like this book.
If you want to travel briefly back in time (wet clay, a wooden stylus and a pervasive smell of sheep might help)...
...just as you know where to put the decimal point when you remember that a half gallon of milk costs one fifty-five, and your travel agent calls with a bargain flight to Toronto for one fifty-five.
I once casually asked a Greek friend in Paris how many of his countrymen lived there. He shrugged. "Who knows? But I'll quickly find out." He leapt from our cafe table and ran to the nearest wall, where he began to drill with his finger. "What are you doing?" I asked, utterly perplexed. "I don't know," he said, "but Greeks are curious, and soon every Greek in Paris will be here, asking questions and giving advice."
...irony, where you mean only some of what you say but don't say most of what you mean.
In my neck of the woods, where we tried to outdo each other as kids with bazillions and kazillions, it always came down to who could squeeze one last zero on to the page - like the barmen of Dublin who always manage to fit yet one more drop of Guinness into a brimming pint...
As a mathematician I know said recently, "Large numbers are actually very large."
A seven-year-old of my acquaintance claimed that the last number of all was 23,000. "What about 23,000 and one?" she was asked. After a pause: "Well, I was close."
I like this book.