What did Godel Prove?

It's hard being a logician sometimes. You tell people that you work in logic and philosophy of mathematics, and they immediately assume that you either have nothing comprehensible or nothing interesting to say to them. Sometimes both. There's definitely a view of the world that there are Mathy People and The Rest of Us, and all this math stuff can be shied away from like mad. But that rant doesn't actually have anything to do with the book that I'm talking about.

Kurt Godel, in the 1930's, proved two of the most important results for logic and the philosophy of mathematics, (the nice thing about a relatively young discipline is that you can pick out these milestones more easily), which were the Incompleteness Theorems for arithmetic. Arithmetic, if it is consistent, cannot prove its own consistency. And furthermore, there isn't any systematic way of laying out axioms for arithmetic so that you could prove everything. These are just rough statements, admittedly, but it's hard to make them precise if you don't know much about logic. And that's probably why these theorems get so abused. (They really do.)

So when I get students in my intro logic class wondering what's up with this Godel guy I mentioned (I show them pictures of famous logicians and mathematicians sometimes), I went back to this book called Godel's Proof, by Ernest Nagel and James Newman, which I'd once read when I was trying to understand the proof for the first time. It strikes me as a really solid introduction to the proof for readers without much technical background. You have to be willing to read some logical notation, naturally, but they give a lot of intuition behind things, and suppress enough of the picky details (and the proof itself has many) to let the big ideas come through. And for anyone who really wants more details, they put a lot of extras in the footnotes.

And there you go. I teach logic for a living, so I want to review the occasional logic book. Math and logic, unlike most other academic disciplines, seem to be things that people will happily profess to hating. (How often do you hear someone say, "I hate math. I failed Math 11." without any sense that they might actually want to be good at math. Ok, now how often do you hear someone say, "I hate reading. I failed English 11." without remorse at their lack of ability to read? See my point?)

Math is interesting and makes science work, and logic is what makes you make sense when you say things. So read about this stuff too.

Oooooooooooh, I'm so Scaaaaaared!

Scaredy Squirrel, by Melanie Watt, insists that everyone wash their hands with antibacterial soap before reading his book. Ever met a rodent with OCD? Read right on! Scaredy squirrel never leaves his nut tree because he is a furry little control freak who just can't deal with the possibility of meeting up with any of the several things that terrify him out in the big wide world. These things include, but are not limited to, tarantulas, poison ivy, green martians, germs, sharks, and killer bees.

Good point, Scaredy Squirrel.

But one day, Scaredy Squirrel's comfy routine gets wrecked by an event that not even his carefully stocked emergency kit can save him from! A killer (ahem) bee approaches, and as he flails around wildly, he falls (?) from his tree to his death. OK, he glides from his tree to a bush where he scares himself so much he plays dead for 2 hours, then climbs back up. Scaredy Squirrel ends the book by making some big changes to his safe little life. (ok, not so big...read this book dammit, and find out!)

Cutest book ever. Written for neurotic adults who want to feel better about themselves and preternaturally tightassed preschoolers. And Audrey, do you remember a certain jumping-off-roof incident that occurred somewhere south of the border when we were 14, due to a killer, enormous, deadly, coming-right-at-me bumblebee? hmmmm. I wonder why i loved this book so much...

Note to readers; this is a picturebook. I will review anything I want to in this blog. You too should read more kid's lit.

Best Ferry Reading Ever

I feel vaguely guilty doing this book review, since it's kind of like stealing the words that Maryn was just about to guess when we were playing Taboo. She lent me this book that she'd been talking about, called Simple Pleasures, by Madeleine Thien, so I'd have something to read on the ferry ride back from Vancouver, and it was definitely the best thing I've read in quite a while.

These stories are amazing and incredibly touching. Admittedly, part of what made it hit so close to home for me was that several of the main characters were women and girls with Chinese ancestry, raised in Canada, and Vancouver, no less. So that made things all that much more personal for me. But the impact, I think, goes way beyond that, and I don't think that you need to have a particular cultural or ethnic background to appreciate them. A word of warning, though: they may make you want to cry on public transit, so be warned where you read them. My steely exterior got me through, though. See if yours does.

Warning: graphic content

This is heroine number two signing in. Yes, when Audrey and I get together, we cook up the most amazing (often illegal) plans. Yesterday I read Neil Gaiman's Sandman: The Doll's House while floating around on an air mattress on Buntzen lake. And yes, being a librarian gives me absolute freedom to do with books all the things I forbid you to do. This includes, but is not limited to, activities such as reading in the bath, reading while eating sloppy joes and fizzy pop, reading while lounging around on floatation devices, and reading while seriously impaired.

Anyhow, back to the book. Love the story, hate the art. Need more detail? I thought this book was a tease. Gorgeously horrifying photo art on the cover and front pages, creepily blurred and superimposed introductory text, followed by...crap. Art that I would expect from a failed out DC comics hack with a mild brain injury. Even Gaiman's consistently excellent storytelling can't save this graphic novel from crapdom. I only read it cuz i was trapped on a floaty thing; normally i bail out immediately from such a yawnorama.

But don't be deterred; Sandman comics in general are good. Find out more about this generally superior series at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(DC_Comics/Vertigo). Just don't bother with this particular edition. Instead, check out Kabuki, David Mack's hauntingly slow paced graphic novel at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki_%28comic%29. Enjoy!

Introduction.

The idea for this blog came out on a sunny afternoon in Victoria, BC, when the heroines of your story realised that the magic box over on the desk, which was connected to the Internet, could save them the trouble of scrawling book recommendations on scraps of paper found at the bottom of their purse. Everyone knows that those scraps of paper are never to be found until the ink has become more or less illegible, and the person who owns the bag can't even remember who wrote the note in the first place.

So instead, what their little brains full of post-graduate education mustered up was the idea of starting a group blog, where they could just post about the more notable books they read. They're very smart, you see.

And for the record:
Maryn thinks Audrey should try out Gillian Cross and Robin Hobb.
Audrey thinks Maryn should try out Kelly Link and Haruki Murakami.