Books for teaching math

I love math, and it makes me ill every time I think about how badly it's taught in public schools.

I looked into the subject of good math books extensively, for use in home high-schooling my kids. Here are the best ones I found:

[[MORE]]Elementary Algebra, by Jacobs
Geometry: Seeing, Doing, Understanding, by Jacobs
Mathematics, A Human Endeavor, by Jacobs

Jacobs has a great knack for explaining math.

I've known several people who "hated" math, until they learned it the right way. One of them loved it so much afterwords that she went on to get her degree in math and to teach it at the college level.

Telescopes

I love astronomy and astrophotography.  If I had the right equipment, asteroid hunting is right up my alley.

If you can afford it, the Questar is a very nice, compact scope:
http://www.company7.com/questar/index.html

Televue also makes some very nice refractors that are less expensive than Questar:
http://www.company7.com/televue/index.html

[[MORE]]Unless you're planning to do serious astrophotography, you probably don't need much more than about 4 inches of aperture. You will be limited by atmospheric seeing, so a bigger scope doesn't buy you much.

Don't skimp on the mount or the eyepieces. A good mount can cost almost as much as the scope.

Benefits of intermittent fasting for me

When I cut grains and refined carbs from my diet, my near-constant hunger went away within about a week, after I adapted to being in mild ketosis. I get hungry now only many hours after I wake in the morning. With a lite lunch, I get hungry again about 8 hours later for dinner, and generally feel no need for between-meal snacking. The net result is intermittent fasting that lasts about 15 or 16 hour per day.

[[MORE]]I also find, though, that a meal moderately high in complex carbs, including certain vegetables, can throw a wrench into things for a day or so. I get more hungry those days, and I also see my blood glucose go up.

It's interesting to me that one of the recommendations for diabetics from experts like Dr Richard Bernstein is to keep blood glucose within a range of about 10 points, 24 hrs a day. Yet non-diabetics often have huge swings, ranging from perhaps 80 to 140 or more over the course of a day. Due to the pro-aging effects of insulin, I am increasingly convinced that non-diabetics would also benefit from keeping their blood glucose under equally tight control.

Paleo oils and MCTs

When choosing a good oil, ones that are rich in medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) offer some interesting advantages.  They can directly flow into cells and be used as fuel, without the requirement for carnitine. Also, since MCTs are a saturated fat, they don't oxidize easily, which makes them suitable for cooking and long-term storage.  MCTs also don't get stored as body fat. If you consume more than your body needs, they are just excreted. Coconut oil, for example, is 50% MCTs. Butter has about 5%.

[[MORE]]So, if you have a choice of oils, the MCT-rich ones have some benefits. Flax oil and fish oil, on the other hand, in spite of being rich in Omega-3's don't keep as long, and aren't well-suited to cooking, because they oxidize easily.

Property confiscation and recovery in California

Before leaving California a few years ago, my wife and I moved into a rental home for a while so we could more easily sell our house. After the house sold, we of course sent a mail forwarding request to the post office. Some time later, my insurance company sent me a $500+ refund of some kind to our old address. Here's what happened after that:

1. The post office failed to forward the letter, and instead returned it to the sender.


2. Rather than spending the two minutes it would take to find us (we kept the same phone number), the insurance company instead sent the money to the California state office for unclaimed property.


3. The state deposited the money into the general fund. They never sent me a letter or otherwise made any attempt to contact me.


4. Almost two years after the fact, I accidentally discovered that the state is holding "unclaimed" property in my name (I think "stolen" would be a better word...).


5. I sent the state all of the requested information -- ID, proof of address, etc.


6. A few days ago, I received a letter from them saying that their office has received so many claims lately (300,000+ in the last year), that it will take at least six months before they can even look at mine. If the claim involved securities (which mine doesn't), they said it would take 8 or 9 months, since the securities will have been sold when they were first received and computing the resulting pay-out takes some extra effort. If all provided information isn't exactly as required, they will request the additional info only after they've reviewed the initial claim in 6+ months.

[[MORE]]When they do pay, they don't include any interest -- so the state gets a nearly 3 year "loan" from me without my consent and without compensation.

A similar thing happened maybe 10 years ago. My kids both had savings accounts at a local savings and loan. The kids weren't into the accounts that much, so they sat idle most of the time -- in theory collecting interest. Well, after about 2 yrs of no activity, the state considers the accounts abandoned, and requires the bank to send them the funds. We never received any notice. It wasn't until a couple of years after that, when we decided to check the balance in the accounts, that we discovered that they had been "closed".

If you or members of your family currently live in CA, or ever lived there, I highly recommend taking a quick look on the unclaimed property page to see if they have stolen anything of yours too. I found they also had property of my now-deceased grandparents, among others (reclamation of which is basically impossible):

http://scoweb.sco.ca.gov/UCP/

Naomi Wolf: The End of America

Interesting video by Naomi Wolf, on the "End of America."



[[MORE]]She mentions 10 steps on the path to the "end":

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy


2. Create a gulag


3. Develop a thug caste


4. Set up an internal surveillance system


5. Harass citizens' groups


6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release


7. Target key individuals


8. Control the press


9. Dissent equals treason


10. Suspend the rule of law

Unemployment during the Great Depression

Unemployment during the Great Depression:

1929 -- 3.2%
1930 -- 8.7%
1931 -- 15.9%
1932 -- 23.6%
1933 -- 24.9% peak
1934 -- 21.7%
1935 -- 20.1%
1936 -- 16.9%
1937 -- 14.3%
1938 -- 19.0%
1939 -- 17.2%

[[MORE]]On an apples-to-apples basis, we're at about 19% now according to SGS, with no sign of a slow-down in the unemployment rate, much less a reversal. So we're already worse than 1931.

Based on the current rate of change, I'm guessing U-6 might peak at or above 20% -- that's 24% on the Great Depression scale above and around 13% on the more widely-reported U-3.