West of the Moon

Archive for April, 2008

math on the bias.

One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a series of articles for an upcoming encyclopedia of world history; I’m writing a set of short pieces for them about various aspects of science and technology in the ancient and early medieval periods. Two of my assigned articles deal with Indian mathematics [...]

Tags: bias, history of science, teaching

critical mass.

I have, officially, too many books-in-progress.  (Reading, not writing.)  I usually have two or three going at the same time–different ones for different moods, or different locations–but this has just gotten out of hand.
The current list of books I’m partway through reading, plus the reason why I haven’t finished them yet:

Africa: A Biography of a [...]

Tags: books, greg egan, mixed media

oh dear.

Things that do not inspire confidence, number one: All of the lights on my hallway are off. I don’t think it’s an electrical problem, since the lights in my office work. It does, however, create the vague impression that I’m working in some kind of horror movie set.
Things that do not inspire confidence, [...]

Tags: berkeley, technical difficulties

what we’re doing here.

This June, it will be ten years since I first started keeping an online journal.
I was going to say something like, “online journal, that’s what we called them before they were called weblogs,” but that’s not entirely true.  Online journals were always much more about personal narrative, telling stories about your life.  They’re by nature [...]

Tags: personal history, weblogs

africa reading challenge.

I’ve decided to join the Africa Reading Challenge, which I first learned about from Matt Cheney. It’s pretty straightforward: read six books this year that are either about Africa or by African authors. Ever since I first put together the unit on African science for my survey course on science in [...]

Tags: africa reading challenge, mixed media