2019: Gleaning a Year of Goodies

Posted by Kelsey Payne on

For 2020, I’ve decided to start a new personal tradition. As I look back on the past year, I realize that I covered an unusually large amount of ground (although the truth is that I’m not certain whether it’s actually unusual or simply that I’m noticing it for the first time). I decided I would share the works and wonderful things that happened in 2019, as well as offer some recommendations for your own intellectual and creative investigations for the new year.

The first thing I tried with full commitment to last year is a vision board. I’m already noticing how attached I am to seeing it everyday from the viewpoint of my corner office desk, constantly reminded of my goals and interests in hopes of staying on track. I can now say that (1) it’s extremely fun to make (I can’t wait to finish my 2020 version), and (2) while I haven’t accomplished even half of what’s on it, it’s very satisfying to note how much further along I’ve come regarding some of the subjects I included in it. I would post a picture here, but I have to say that it feels a bit too sacred a thing to me to do so without it seeming something of a violation of my privacy. Nonetheless, I can’t recommend this activity highly enough, for this or any other year.

Some delightful new updates on my end include becoming a professional tutor on more than one front. This past August saw the start to my math tutoring work at the Community College of Denver (CCD), and I’m happy to also be joining the staff over at the Red Rocks Community College (RRCC). While private tutoring lessons continue to be far more lucrative, I find working with other tutors coming from different backgrounds is unusually inspiring and well worth the time invested. It also puts me on campuses where I tend to most come alive, a reward in itself. In addition to my own private services, then, this promises to be a joyful and fruitful venture.

On that note, MathSamurai has now become an official business trade name, and it behooves me to finally get on to upgrading its website and offering services to a wider net of students and fellow instructors. The goal this year will be to develop tools and resources for both parties to deepen their comprehension and confidence in subjects from algebra through calculus. I’m also planning the finishing touches on its test prep resources, namely for the ACT, SAT, ASVAB, and the Praxis II (which is specifically for prospective math instructors). There’s a lot of work ahead, so don’t hesitate to shoot me some morale and any further suggestions you have to these ends.

Okay, that’s all I’ll share for now on professional points. Now on to the more personally fulfilling stuff, the books and movies that influenced me and kept me going this year through the ups and downs of our transition back to Colorado, as well as some crazy business in and out of different educational settings and teaching commitments.

It would be silly and a waste of time to list every book or movie that affected me over the course of a year, so I’ve naturally only included in the media listed below those that seemed worthwhile to share. One or two will probably also have their own blog articles someday, so I’ll do my best to keep my comments on any of them short and sweet if I write any at all.

The links for most everything are a mix of Amazon affiliate links (to help me afford the time to write in general in addition to compiling references like this one), Netflix links (for some of the movies and series, which are intermittently available), and YouTube video links (which always risk being taken down at any point by the channel that uploaded it). At least a couple of the movies and series are likely to be found on Netflix, though you may find them unavailable at the point in time that you read this post.

If you come to find any of these links are broken, I would be grateful if you would let me know in the comments or by shooting me a message through my contact page.

  • Books

    It’s pretty entertaining to look through one’s library borrowing or Amazon purchase history and realize the number of recent influences that can be traced back to what you read over the course of a year. Among these here, the ones I would most highly recommend to someone obviously depend on what level of interest and comprehension they already have in the subject. I’ll try to be clear of which are which as I go.

    • Philosophy

      For history buffs interested in perusing an introduction to philosophy I strongly suggest reading Sophie’s World (Gaaarder), The Cave and the Light (Herman), Examined Lives (Miller), and When Einstein Walked with Gödel (Holt). More practice-oriented folks may prefer How to Be A Stoic (Massimo) or Skeptical Philosophy (Popkin). More experienced readers may be interested in exploring the world of speculative realism through Harman’s Introduction, or dive head-first into object-oriented philosophy through The Quadruple Object (Harman) or Hyperobjects (Morton).

A (thick) young adult’s novel I reread this year to teach as an introduction to philosophy to a small class of young homeschoolers. Quirky and strikingly intriguing to read as the plot successfully draws one into grappling with the history of philosophy it covers.

While Herman may be biased toward Aristotle (I still wasn’t able to tell by the end), his poetic and thorough retelling of history (despite its lesser emphasis and even complete omission of certain thinkers I would consider important) makes for a great introduction to the discipline’s amazing history. The framing of that history through a primarily bimodal lens as competing reiterations of Plato and Aristotle spins a tale that, however lacking at times in veracity, can easily generate a fervor and deeper intrigue for the subject.

Don’t be fooled by the title: you will want to be well-versed in a number of lines of formal thought as well as both analytic and continental schools before throwing yourself into this “introduction” to one of a small number of modern-day movements in metaphysics*, recommitted to the existence of objects outside our perceiving or contemplating them.

(*Yes, I mean real metaphysics. This branch of philosophy is far from dead, and I’ll be darned if it gets its title stolen by a Barnes & Noble bookshelf-full of half-baked pseudosciences and New Age eye candy. This might sound extreme of me but it seems to me more important now than ever before to be vigilant of the downsides of New Age thinking. Several of those I admire most appear to feel the same way, so at least I’m not alone in this.)

Author of Nature Without Ecology Timothy Morton adds to the discussion on object oriented ontology through this book, adding a new category of object to fold in his introduction of “hyperobjects.” Reading some of Harman’s work facilitates greater understanding of this one as Morton himself was inspired by it. (Here are a couple of interviews and talks by him.)

This short yet profound treatise on stands to become one of the most significant reads of my life. Specifically, in espousing an ontology of objects through the distinction of two categories, sensual objects and real objects, The Quadruple Object consolidates and to some extent summarizes Harman’s long-standing work in utilizing phenomenology and addressing occasionalism to buttress against the dilapidated, anti-realist trend towards correlationism (as coined by Meillasoux in After Finitude). I personally also like to think that it serves to reawaken a sense of awe and wonder about the world as it is around us, in its myriad and even unknowable forms — and even (God-forbid!) the world as it is without us.

This series of short essays by Jim Holt kept me absolutely captivated the whole way through. His writing style is concise and clear, and his thinking captivating. While I even found myself disagreeing with more than one his opinions in  on the matters presented — which range from physics and number theory to ethics and computer science — his presentation conveys a command of the material across such disparate (yet clearly interrelated) disciplines seems to me a rarity. I’m honestly tempted to read it cover to cover again this coming year.

Whether you’re a computer scientist, a mathematician, or none of the above, this book has some great “mindware” updates for how you live in and think about the world around you. I’m revisiting this one often.

This is a great one for both introductory and review purposes. Topics are written in concise and to-the-point sections that is perfect for those for whom textbooks are anathema.

Honestly, Mario Livio is simply a fantastic writer of history of mathematics. He has a dedication to rigorous fact-checking and critical thinking in his work and backs up his findings of the figures (both people and numbers) he presents. I’m currently also enjoying his book on the golden ratio, or phi.

Taimin̦a’s book is a wonderfully concrete and visually stimulating way to be introduced to some of the more interesting and at times obscure parts of higher mathematics. I was worried at first that it would be a naive attempt to engage non-math enthusiasts through knitting and was pleasurably mistaken. I’m looking forward to picking it up again.

I actually saw the docuseries for this before finally reading the book last year. If you’ve only seen the series, I can promise you’re getting less than half of the full story. The edition I read included a terrific if highly controversial appendix on the dispute regarding the origin of Japanese lineage.

This was actually my second reading of this book, between which I also saw the docuseries a couple of years back. I will undoubtedly pick it up again. Neil Shubin has a knack for clear storytelling and relating to his readers. Not all of his jokes are funny, but the unfolding of his discovery of the tiktaalik fossil and what significance it bears on our own evolution is hard to overrate.

This is a lovely way to introduce (and be introduced) to incredible facts and unusual perspectives in the realm of scientific inquiry that often contradict the mainstream ideas purported in conventional middle and high school textbooks.

With beautiful illustrations, Banfi’s book is a simple if detailed read into the megafauna of early and late prehistory. My small son and I both love perusing its pages and descriptions of animals that would almost seem to belong to fantasy, and are therefore all the more intriguing to imagine inhabiting the real world.

I was happily surprised to learn more about the growing movement my wife and I have (in our own fashion) chosen for our child. As opposed to a single set of maxims or a unified movement, Kerry McDonald outlines an expansive myriad of different models and philosophies that uphold the principle of “learning without schooling.”

I may just as well as the writer end up getting hateful comments for this one, but in the face of both a disenchanted following of Nonviolent Communication (which has taken empathy too far) and an “ultra-left” progressive culture (that hasn’t taken the correct definition of empathy far enough), this was an extremely refreshing read for me. Rational compassion has a lot going for it in ways I won’t go into here, but while I disagree with Bloom on a few of his points, I would definitely include this book among those that take a more responsible stance to the way we talk about empathy and compassion in today’s society.

I have to thank Grant Harman for this one. I don’t indulge in fiction often, but when I do, I commit to only those that are damn good. The story of Cthulhu, as promised, sent chills up my spine. This genre as a predecessor to horror fiction today at once recounts the likes of Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle.

* This music is notably my own father‘s. This past year was one of deep reflection for me on his passing more than 15 years ago. Given the complications around his ddwill and rights to the music, my hope is that my family and I will be able to regain inheritance of his intellectual property in the foreseeable future. In any case, I include it here for others to listen to and judge for themselves.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed any number of the tidbits shared above. Along with these, I share with everyone my gratitude and joy for the coming decade. There’s much more coming, and I can’t wait to see what each new year brings for deeper introspection and reflection on the wonders of this world. Feel free to post your own lists and suggestions in the comments!

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