Thursday, January 18, 2007

Pythagoreans shall not touch beans

I finally finished reading The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, an account of his quest to become the smartest person in the world, all the while keeping his tongue in his cheek. It's funny and educational. For instance:

Vinaigrette: A vinaigrette--which was used to battle body odor in the 18th century--was a small gold container with a sponge soaked in vinegar and lavender.

The word "Quaker" was originally an insult, coined to make fun of the members of the Society of Friends for trembling at the word of God.


"Aposiopesis" is the deliberate failure to complete a sentence. As in "Why, I oughta..."

A "gnomon" is a square constructed out of dots or pebbles, and was meant to represent certain numbers. The number 16, for instance, looked like this:






It's a square. You'd get a similar square if you used the number 25.

The Pythagoreans (a kind of fringe cult established by Pythagoras) used the gnomon to figure out the concept of square root. The square root of 16 is the four dots at the bottom of the square. The root of the square: the square root. Kind of one of those terms you take for granted.

There's lots of cool information that he culled from reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica that almost makes me want to read it myself, but not quite. Still, seeing as he's also a famous editor and writer, I was heartened by the fact that--without getting out my own red pen and deliberately rooting through every page for dangling participles and tense disagreement--I effortlessly found a typo on page 212. Yay.

2 comments:

Mike said...

I think by osmosis you are now the second smartest person in the world. Congrats.

carey said...

Mike, I think you'd enjoy this book...the guy's a geek but likeable. You know?