Time Keeps On Passing

It is with some sadness that I wanted to note the passing of author Madeleine L'Engle. I saw the news a few days ago and wanted to write a little bit about the influence that her books had on me.

I don't remember exactly when it was that I read A Wrinkle in Time, but I was still in grade school at the time. I was captivated by the story of the Murry family and their travels through space and time. I eagerly read the next two books in the series before I lost track of the Murrys and O'Keefes. Now, my interest in reading more of her works has been sparked.

I especially enjoyed how she blended the elements of science, magic and religion in her books. Her quote that these three are are facets or reflections of a single deeper reality is pretty much my own belief. I can see that many aspects of my own spiritual and intellectual journey thus far are reflective of the same conviction.

Here is an article talking about L'Engle's relationship with Christianity.

Helping A Friend

Hey, check out my friend Doug's blog, either here or in the link list. He recently went into business for himself as an instrument maker. His blog documents the process of hand-crafting fine musical instruments from scratch.

El niño que vivió

Time for a new entry, now that the weekend is here. I'm happy to report that my order from Amazon arrived a couple of days ago. Since then, I've been reading thru the first chapter of "Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal". I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I can pick up without having to refer to the dictionary -- I would estimate about 40% comprehension. Of course, it helps that the story is familiar to me.

I have also been working with Madrigal some more. I did a quick tally of roughly how many words I have in my passive recognition vocabulary based on Madrigal's word groups and transformation rules. I came up with about 1265 words. Not all of them are high frequency, but a lot of them are, so it's good to be able to recognize them.

In other news, I think that I have my classes prioritized this semester. The one that is going to take the most work by far is the Real Analysis, but it will probably also be the most rewarding. The Combinatorics class comes in a distant second for difficulty and a close second for interest. As for the Stats class, so far it hasn't really been difficult at all. I am looking forward to learning more about the specific linear models and how to program them in R. I still want to get certified with SAS; I just need to figure out when I will have enough time to do it.