from geometry to shrug

Just had an insightful little chat with my soon to be 16 year old son about the application of geometry to a real process. I suggested that he look at the hillside and develop the locations for placement of a right angle waterfall/water wheel. The slope of the angle of the hillside would vary depending on where you placed the points, but he argued that it would be the same. It really is a matter of setting the lengths of the verticle and horizontal shafts. What really matters is the size of the plunge pool to contain the falling water and the amount of batteries in the bank that you are charging. Not that the water resources department or land use boards would permit such a contraption. But it's a good application of basic geometry with future insight building for trigonometry and calculus. I learned math by playing with numbers.

Speaking of which - that seems to be what economists do. STR sent me to this article which has some presto chango fancy graphics that get my ooh wow's all hot and bothered, written by a hedge fund manager. Is that the horticulturist kitty. The college tuition growth (realizing that all of education is a government funded racquet) makes me nervous - said 16 year old to be needs a real education, but ... so do most of the people that have one - college is not a practical alternative except to run in the rapidly failing rat race. Maybe i should become a prudent squirrel (also from STR).

Which brings me to the Atlas Shrugged report - page 390 turned, as the game is in the keep the railroad going game. The personality of Dagny the judge and jury of morality and Hank, who plays by their rules with his system is driving the flow of events - which tonight includes Jim Taggart's wedding to Cheryl Brooks, five and dime girl. The rapid change of events in the current economy suggest that Rand was in on the psychological development of modern amerika - although not to the extent of the science fiction writers like Asimov, Orwell or Heinlein who had the latitude of creating a new space rather than projecting the current one.