Whoops, temporary brain eatage

[yakalskovich]

I reviewed a book for pay today, and got pulled in for a bit. Do we need another re-telling of Romeo and Juliet, with magic, in a gothy steampunk circus atmosphere? Well, perhaps we don't, just as we don't need fish and cabbage soup with Mediterranean elements and a dash of Tandoori spice, but it seems just as unexpectedly delicious. I'm getting the entire book on paper, too, in addition to the payment...

Anyway, the lady who wrote the book (on LJ as wakingeyes) has designed a tarot deck as well, and she had an idea. Well, apart from the black-and-white steampunk circus aesthetics I was practically expecting, she assigns animals to the suits -- cats for wands, rabbits for cups, ravens for swords and dogs for pentacles. Her Fool is Alice, about to follow the White Rabbit down the hole. I quite like the whole concept -- pity it's not fully published in print.

Don't know what to make of it or do with it yet, but it all seems intriguing.

Comments

[yakalskovich]

No, it's not that unusual. Or perhaps it is. But then, numbers for me are dots on a meandering line. One to ten go straight up, eleven to twenty then go to the right, 21 goes a step down and further to the right, from 30 onward everything goes straight up. It's easy for me to remember numbers (phone numbers, prices, the like) because I know where the number was; it does not help at all when trying to do maths, which I therefore rarely attempt if I can help it.

Colour-sorted bookshelves exist, too -- see here.

[paceisthetrick]

That is The.Best description of numbers I have ever heard. Math used to be meaningless to me until I discovered the joy of the word problem. Suddenly things made sense and I no longer failed every test!

I have never understood people who can memorize equations...

Here's a funny story about a Russian who contradicts the paradigm: my professor, Igor Vaysman, was on leave and I needed something I was certain he had. His best friend let me into his office to find it but we couldn't produce the coveted article. I emailed him, confessing what we had done, and he said (and I quote from memory): "It is in a unmarked leather binding -- blue, green or maroon."


I looked at Michael and said, yeah that really narrows it down.

ALL of the tomes in his office were in unmarked leather binding -- blue, green, or maroon.

[yakalskovich]

Then he told you the precise truth, so what is the problem?

**evil grin**

I always sucked at maths. Hard. Then one day, immediately before the holidays, the teacher gave us a logical riddle: A monk walks up from a monastery in the valley to a hermitage on a mountain, meandering and collecting herbs and taking breaks and so on. He left after morning prayers, and arrives at the hermitage in time for the evening prayer. He then stays the night, and leaves the next morning to go back down by the same path, collecting more herbs and praying by the wayside and so on, and arrives at the monastery in time for the evening prayer. Question: at any time during the second day when he went down, would he have been at precisely the same place at precisely the same time as the day before?

The maths geek in my class just stared like dead carp. I thought a bit, and then gave an answer, with a very simple reason as to why I was right. Now it was the maths teacher's turn to stare like a dead carp.

[paceisthetrick]

LOL

The best professors I ever had were the ones who could make really boring topics fascinating precisely as your teacher did. If I am doing an income tax return, I want the guy to be a wild Zappa fan who names his adopted daughter Moon Unit and has bequeathed a future stream of income to her that will cover her costs to the annual Lollapalooza fests. :D

Honestly, there is no reason for math or science to be boring.

BTW, what do you know of paleontology? My new character is a paleontologist and I need some research for him. :(

Of course, the only thing I am doing with him right now is composing love letters to his novelist-wannabe in Suffolk, but being able to drop the occassional ref to whatever it is that he is doing in Alaska would be a plus. :D

[paceisthetrick]

OT: Owl and her twin sister, Pig (Pigwidgeon -- she's a witch!) are thundering across the upstairs floor and sound like stampeding wildebeest. I had to phone the neighbors to assure them it was kittens playing and not a 10 earthquake in NW Austin.

[yakalskovich]

Alaska. Mammoths. I think that's where they survived longest, with traces of the last mammoths on some island only ten thousand years ago, or was it 10,000 BC?

[paceisthetrick]

I don't see him as the dinosaur type. I see him as more a "earth was once almost completelty covered by water" or ancient ecosystems personality.

I mean, of course he has to teach dinosaurs to make ends meet, but he'd be out of place in Jurassic Park.

[yakalskovich]

Mammoth <> dinosaur

Say sorry.-

[paceisthetrick]

My point is that I hate authors who give you this amazing, intense personality and then say, "Oh, he's a lecturer in Paleontology."

And I'm trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together but it doesn't work. :(