The Mandelbear's Musings

Back in Junior High I was fascinated by the Civil War, in particular, and other aspects of history. I read a lot of biographies, too, though mostly of doctors and scientists rather than great leaders.

About half an hour ago I remembered the name of the High School history teacher who ruined the subject for me: Mrs. Ryan. History in her class became a matter of dates and events, of having the right number of references for your term paper, and the right number of footnotes per page, and every comma and colon in the right place in the bibliography. I hated it, and I hated her, and I still do.

From time to time I still read about the history of science and technology, and I still read biographies. But I'm no longer interested in the events and what people do in their lives. I'm interested in what and how they think -- their ideas, and how their minds work. If the events of the world become interesting at all, it's because of how they affect peoples' thinking, not the other way around. That's just a side-effect. I'm interested in mathematics, philosophies, systems of thought in general. It can be a fascinating thing, how those influence events out in the world, but it's not the important thing.

I suppose I have to thank Mrs. Ryan now, in a back-handed way, for helping to show me how unimportant dates and events are compared with what goes on in people's heads.

(0328) I think that what fascinated me most about the Civil War histories that I read was, not the politics or the specific events, but the descriptions of famous battles. The strategy and tactics of the war, not the politics.

Party at our house next Saturday. The usual potluck bash. Filking is highly probable.

We're going to be at Westercon in San Diego, July 1-4. We'll be spending an additional day or two in the area, since it's impossible to visit San Diego and not go to the Zoo.

I'm going to be in Portland for OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, from Tuesday, July 25 to Saturday, July 29. I'll try to arrive sometime in the early afternoon Tuesday, and leave Saturday afternoon or evening (I'd stay all day Saturday, but we have Lamplighters tickets for Sunday). The keynote is Tuesday evening and the last bit of programming ends just after noon on Friday. (Waves to cflute and randwolf.)

... and we'll be going to Worldcon August 23-27 in Los Angeles.

Interesting how things work out this year. The Younger Daughter is changing schools and school districts (long story -- I'll get to it in another post). In the San Jose district, she would have had summer school starting July 5th, and started high school the week before Worldcon. Now, she re-starts 8th grade (in a district that apparently gives a damn -- this is not a bad thing) the week after Labor Day. School will get out in the middle of July next year, which would normally destroy our travel plans for Westercon, but Westercon is in San Jose next year. Travel time about 10 minutes.