Bøger af Jerome Malitz

Thomas Crapper (1837 to 1910) is credited (falsely) with the now not-so-modern, modern-day toilet, often called 'the crapper' in his honor. We pay homage to his achievement about twenty minutes each day - that's one hundred and twenty hours a year, or one full year out of a seventy-three-year life, not including the time spent using trees, chamber pots, and outhouses. Not wanting to let a year of life pass idly down the drain, most people take to reading when perched on the throne. Usually they turn to something short and pithy; something more humorous than serious; something that won't overload the head. This collection of short stories, essays, anecdotes, and diatribes is intended to serve as a commode companion to water-closet literati. The pieces are largely autobiographical and satirical - themselves a product of commode contemplations. Most are of a length suitable for a single sitting, but there are longer and shorter pieces to help cope with those unavoidable exigencies that bedevil us all from time to time. We suggest that some of these pieces be read aloud, but please remember to keep the door closed.

Back on the can again. I'm a clockwork brown, so I can engage in dilettantish pursuits with some regularity. It's true that we once had a president who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. But LBJ, our thirty-sixth president, held many conferences while he was on the commode, doing two kinds of business at the same time. He even engaged notables such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and McGeorge Bundy, while on the throne. Other presidents have proven to be even less inhibited, able to make a commode out of any room from which they could tweet. As with the previous book, Commode Contemplations, the lighter pieces can and should be read aloud. However, other pieces here are darker.

We were born gullible, raised gullible, and educated to be gullible. But as adults, when it comes to decision making in critical contexts - personal, national, or global - gullibility poses a dire threat. Nothing can be decided rationally when gullibility rules the mind - not health care issues, financial strategies, education planning, or anything else that really matters. In today's world, the gullers have our eyes and ears twenty-four seven. But who are they? Where do they lurk? What are their methods? We get some answers to these questions, and then propose ways to defend ourselves. If gullibility is the illness, you might hope that education is the cure. But public education as we know it today does nothing to discourage gullibility, and a great deal to support it. A new approach is needed - an approach that exploits the natural symbiosis that exists among science, math, computer science, and the arts - an approach that encourages creativity and critical reasoning while making subjects more engaging and exciting. It's not a plan that can be implemented quickly or on the cheap. But even small steps should temper the rampant gullibility that plagues our society.

This book is intended as an undergraduate senior level or beginning graduate level text for mathematical logic. There are virtually no prere- quisites, although a familiarity with notions encountered in a beginning course in abstract algebra such as groups, rings, and fields will be useful in providing some motivation for the topics in Part III. An attempt has been made to develop the beginning of each part slowly and then to gradually quicken the pace and the complexity of the material. Each part ends with a brief introduction to selected topics of current interest. The text is divided into three parts: one dealing with set theory, another with computable function theory, and the last with model theory. Part III relies heavily on the notation, concepts and results discussed in Part I and to some extent on Part II. Parts I and II are independent of each other, and each provides enough material for a one semester course. The exercises cover a wide range of difficulty with an emphasis on more routine problems in the earlier sections of each part in order to familiarize the reader with the new notions and methods. The more difficult exercises are accompanied by hints. In some cases significant theorems are devel- oped step by step with hints in the problems. Such theorems are not used later in the sequence.

A complete guide to designing, constructing, and maintaining eye-catching interior landscapes.