Unraveled Wednesday

Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday, with more teeth on the Hitchhiker due to car, emergency room, and parking lot knitting, a finished hat, and a win at yarn chicken. 

It may not be obvious but there are about ten more teeth on the Hitchhiker than there were last week. I knit in the car during John's procedure on Monday, in the emergency room on Monday night when he started bleeding and we couldn't get it stopped, and then I spent more time car knitting in the parking lot at a follow-up procedure on Tuesday. We were home for about an hour and a half and guess what? It started bleeding again, so back we went. Things seem to be okay now, so while it wasn't much fun for either one of us, I did get plenty of knitting time.

I had enough knitting time that I finished the hat and got to wear it on Tuesday. I also won at yarn chicken with only about a foot left over.

I read a wonderful book this week, Mathematics for Human Flourishing. I know the word mathematics in the title tends to turn people off, but if you see this book at the library and are at all interested, I would encourage you to take a look at it. Francis Su is an enthusiastic, empathetic, and emphatic math professor at Harvey Mudd College. Mathematics for Human Flourishing is based on his speech of the same name, given at the Joint Math Meetings in January of 2017. While he was speaking to mathematicians then, this book is written for a general audience. In it, he talks about five basic human desires that are met through the pursuit of math — play, beauty, truth, justice, and love. This is a novel idea to us, but the ancient Greeks had a concept called eudaimonia, a life composed of all the highest goods. Su points out that math can help build and develop exploration, meaning, play, beauty, truth, confidence in struggle, justice, community, and love.  If you are a human who wants to flourish and also help others to do the same, do yourself a favor and read this book.

This book is not about how great mathematics is, though it is, indeed, a glorious endeavor. Nor does it focus on what math can do, though it undeniably can do many things. Rather, this is a book that grounds mathematics in what it means to be a human being and to live a more fully human life.

What are you making and reading this week?