What I do with my Life (Fall 08)

It's no good knowing crème brûlée exists if you don't know what it tastes like.

In my class about the works of James Joyce, we learn that Ulysses was banned in America for a long time, but now it's judged the best book of all time. We read and analyze hard passages:

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the contramagnificandjewbangtatiality. Illstarred heresiarch! In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hindparts. (Ulysses, 32)

And easy passages:

He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of fless: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower. (Ulysses, 71)

In my Medieval Literature class we started with important Latin works in translation, did a brief stint in Old English, and are working our way through seminal Middle English texts, modernized and not. Some of them are boring:

The road was stone-paved, the path led
the men together. Their mail coats shone
hard, hand-linked, bright rings of iron
rang out on their gear, when right to the hall
they went trooping in their terrible armor.
Sea-weary, they set their broad shields,
wondrously-hard boards, against the building's wall;
they sat on a bench--their byrnies rang ou,
their soldiers' war-gear; their spears stood,
the gear of the seamen all together,
a gray forest of ash. That iron troop
was worthy of its weapons. (Beowulf, trans. Liuzza 63)

And some parts are interesting:

Lo! Here the duchess dere - today was sho taken -
Deep dolven and dede, diked in moldes.
He had murthered this mild by mid-day were rungen,
Withouten mercy on molde, I not what it ment;
He has forced her and filed and sho is fey leved;
He slew her unslely and slit her to the navel. (Alliterative Morte Arthure, line 974-9)

In my Elementary Differential Equations, we take math a step further by not solving just for variables, but for equations. Some of our problems are abstract:

Solve the equation:
dy/dx = e^(x+y)/(y-1)

Others have easy applications to the physical world:

A 3-kg mass is attached to a spring with stiffness k = 48 N/m. The mass is displaced 1/2 m to the left of the equilibrium point and given a velocity of 2 m/sec to the right. The damping force is negligible. Find the equation of motion of the mass along with the amplitude, period, and frequency. How long after release does the mass pass through the equilitbrium position?

In Numbers and Polynomials, we prove a lot of basic truths about numbers. Some problems are crucial:

(Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic) Every natural number greater than 1 has exactly one prime factorization.

Some problems aren't as important:

If a divides b and b is not equal to 0, then the absolute value of a is less than or equal to the absolute value of b.

That's everything. I've taken up swimming this year, as I've mentioned, and I'm involved with RUF. Academically, though, you've just had a taste of my semester. Diff EQ, Proofs, and Medieval Lit: MWF; Joyce: TR.