Oh look, I'm kind of famous

This has been a little while ago now, but I'm just realizing that I never wrote about my interview with fellow blogger extraordinaire guitargirl. There isn't much of a purpose to it besides being fun and pointing out that I have a new blog, but you may learn something or other about me.

A brief excerpt for your browsing pleasure:

Would you choose to get the want do for because some can’t any for when the people does haven’t?
Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

Tell Me Why I'm Wrong: A Geometric "Proof"

This little geometric riddle is something that I have thought about way too much, and it's driving me crazy. I know this is incorrect but I can't figure out why:

The diagonal of a square is twice the length of its sides.

Crazy, right? We all know it's not true. The Pythagorean Theorem states that for a triangle with sides a, b, and hypotenuse c,

a² + b² = c²

 which means that for triangles formed by a diagonally bisected square with sides of length n,

n² + n² = c²

where c is the length of the diagonal. Simple algebra gives us

c = √2n

That's what we all learned in geometry, right? The length of the diagonal of a square is √2 times the length of its sides. Physical reality backs up this fact. Grab a ruler and see for yourself. Now then, why does the following "proof" make sense?

Assuming a square with sides of length a, the distance between opposite corners of the square traveling along the border of the square is 2a.

By dividing both sides into two equal segments and alternating directions, we create a new path of the same distance 2a.

2(a/2) + 2(a/2) = a + a = 2a

By continually dividing each side into n equal segments of length a/n and rearranging them in this manner, we create a path that is arbitrarily close to the diagonal without changing the total length of the path:

n(a/n) + n(a/n) = a + a = 2a

As the number of segments n approaches infinity, the total length remains unchanged.

lim_{(n → ∞)} 2an/n = lim_{(n → ∞)} 2a = 2a

Thus the length of the diagonal is 2a or twice the length of a side.

Please, someone tell me why I'm wrong.

Book Review: Everyday Greatness

A couple of years ago I started reviewing books for Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers (now the awkwardly named BookSneeze), the grassroots marketing arm of the Christian publishing giant. The program sends free copies of their new books to bloggers in exchange for an honest review published to both a personal website and a retail product page. I posted a few reviews to my previous blog before going off to grad school and denouncing all non-required reading, leaving me a with a couple of books that never got read and reviewed. More than a year and a half later, I'm finally catching up.

Everyday Greatness: Inspiration for the Meaningful Life
by Stephen R. Covey and David K. Hatch

My rating: 2/5. Meh.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book, which seemed to promise inspiration to achieve greatness in everyday life. In reality, it is basically a compilation of short stories and quotations from Reader's Digest grouped into topical chapters. The book makes no central thesis or theme, but presents several categories of thought, each further divided into three principles for better living. Each principle includes a few short stories followed by some reflective questions, and a set of inspirational quotations from such various sources as celebrities, journalists, politicians, and ancient proverbs.

The content is nothing special really. It is full of happy endings and anecdotes with no real morals or lessons beyond the individual stories. Many of the quotations are so vague or lacking in context that it would be hard to analyze them, much less disagree with them.  I found it most disappointing that this book on living a "meaningful life" would carry no explicitly Christian meaning-rather, it is the sort of bland, feel-good philosophy that you would expect from a generic, secular self-help book. There are references to God and quotes from spiritual leaders, but the book as a whole seems to be devoid of any ultimate meaning. Everyday greatness, it seems, is just an everyday sort of thing.

The book is perfectly adequate for what it is- a coffee table artifact for those days when you may need an uplifting word and don't really care where it comes from as long as it is positive. But it is really nothing more than that. I can't say I would recommend this book for anyone seriously hoping to improving their life in any tangible way. If you're looking for greatness, pick up a Bible instead.

What Then Shall We Blog

It seems I'm off to a bad start. Two posts in the first week and then... 4 months? Ouch.
I haven't forgotten about the blog. I've been meaning to post since December, I just couldn't decide what to post. The longer it went, the more I felt I had to write to make up for it. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. And it's not that I don't have anything to write about, but I've been trying to make up my mind exactly what this blog is to be about. A bit of professional reflection and journaling, some personal stories, maybe some spiritual or political writing. Possibly some technical discussion. Minimal link-sharing and anecdotes. Ok, that's all well and good, as long as I'm actually posting something.
There are a few topics that I want to carry over from my old blog and wrap up, so that at least is somewhere to start. I'll be continuing my Civilization series, for one. Until then, if you want to know what I'm up to, I've added the About page with links to all of my other online activities.
And by the way: if you're looking for any of my older posts, I have published the blog back to the original Blogspot address. The domain name has since been reclaimed.