The boy who loved math [Book review]

Cory Doctorow has a review in Boing Boing of a book that he’s read thrice already to his five year old daughter. The book is about mathematician Paulo Erdos, written by Deborah Heiligman, & illustrated by LeUyen Pham.

….with lively, fun illustrations of a young Erdős learning about negative numbers, becoming obsessed with prime numbers and leading his high-school chums on a mathematical tour of Budapest. They also go to great lengths to capture the upside and downside of Erdős’s legendary eccentricity — his inability to fend for himself and his helplessness when it came to everyday tasks like cooking and doing laundry; his amazing generosity and brilliance and empathy in his working and personal life.

The octogenarian widow behind the DOMA case [article]

In a historic judgement, the US Supreme Court dismissed the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, thereby allowing same-sex couples in the US to be legally married. The reason it came to this? 84 year old Edith Windsor was ordered to pay a $363,000 estate tax when her partner of 40 years, Thea Spyer passed away, because the State did not recognise their marriage as legal. On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the US upheld their marriage.

Edith Wharton on Marriage [Short note]

I’m sticking to short notes for today – quotes or tweets or such stuff.. like this one..

I begin to see what marriage is for. It’s to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them: children, duties, visits, bores, relations, the things that protect married people from each other. -Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937)

Read an exceprt from Eleven Rings: a book by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty

Read an excerpt from a book on leadership, management or spirit, from an NBA coach, Zen Master Phil Jackson. He’s the guy who  famously told Michael Jordan: “Players who win scoring championships never play on teams that win championships.” Jordan got the message, learned to pass and won both NBA rings and scoring championships.

Mickey mouse in Vietnam: Anti-war propaganda [Video]

During WWII,  Disney put its creative force behind the US, persuading citizens to pay their taxes and support the war. However, during the Vietnam war. Disney’s most iconic character, Mickey Mouse, did appear in an animated underground  film created by two critics of the war, Lee Savage and the celebrated graphic designer Milton Glaser, demonstrating that protest can take many forms. Watch this.