The Reading Room

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Bookworm

2:35 AM

Q: What is going on with Edmée's marriage settlement?

In Colette's Chéri, I do not understand what is going on with the marriage settlement. The eponymous hero reports to his lover, Léa, that his fianceé's mother, Marie-Laure, had wanted Chéri and her daughter to maintain separate bank accounts. This enraged his own mother: "Le régime dotal! ...

verbose

3:30 AM

@Mithical You've been away from your shelf a while. Meanwhile, I'm done with Chéri and The Last of Chéri and am on to The Passenger. The Manto short stories and PL continue alongside.

I guess you could call them fellow-Passengers

2 hours later…

Mithical

5:10 AM

@verbose It's been a busy few days, but. here's a peek.

verbose

5:23 AM

@Mithical Nice! I'll read Moby-Dick, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Ivanhoe with you if you like

Mithical

Unfortunately, my reading pace has been set back a bit while I try to brush up on my math skills enough to take exams so that I can actually apply to a university.

verbose

This room is crawling with mathematicians! I'm sure they will help you if needed. Peter, Jonas, Randolph ... I'm probably leaving out a few.

Good luck!

Mithical

I took the GED tests at age 16, so that was when I effectively finished high school. But that was five years ago, and now I have to re-learn some stuff so that I can take a SAT or similar.

verbose

Mithical

@verbose Yeah, I think the stuff I'm doing is not quite at the level they're doing ;)

verbose

5:35 AM

Are you hoping to study in the US, then?

Mithical

No, but it's an international program.

verbose

Mithical

And it's studying communications and English Lit, so a perfect math score probably isn't necessary.

On that note, I believe it is the seventh anniversary of my originally becoming a mod on Lit.SE.

Somehow.

verbose

@Mithical Congratulations!

1 hour later…

Bookworm

7:09 AM

Q: Quote identification by Weierstraß

At one of the few occasions a mathematician expresses himself outside his technical works, I've read, maybe in a short autobiographical or a note on pedagogy specifically, someday a quote by Karl Weierstraß. There he was arguing that school education at his time puts to much emphasis on studies o...

identification-request quote-source german-language greek-language cultural-context

6 hours later…

b_jonas

1:05 PM

@verbose Do you mean it's time to make a mathematics chatroom associated with Lit SE on SE chat?

Tsundoku

1:24 PM

Who on Lit SE is not either a mathematician or relearning mathematics?

6 hours later…

verbose

7:25 PM

@Bookworm settling into the HNQ

2 hours later…

CDR

9:11 PM

Question: What's this whole HNQ thing? I know it stands for 'Hot Network Questions,' but what's with all the commentary?

verbose

@CDR It's a tradition to keep track here of all the LitSE questions that make it on to the HNQ list. Since it would be boring to simply say "This went HNQ", folks make a comment that wittily identifies the question. So by saying "elevated into the HNQ" (question about an elevator) or "settling into the HNQ" (question about marriage settlement), that narrows down the question so we don't have to scroll up to see which question it was.

I don't know why the tradition of keeping track here arose, nor who first began making the gnomic comments, but I think both those prolly were started by @Randal'Thor. @Tsundoku used to mention the HNQ questions too. Owing to time zone differences, I'm often around when a question goes HNQ while they're asleep. Plus, for a bit, Tsundoku wasn't around and Randolph was pretty busy, so I began noting HNQs as well. I fell into the habit like an accidental nun.

Rand al'Thor

9:48 PM

Bwahaha, accidental nun.

@verbose I think Mr Rees might be a qualified mathematician too, unless I'm getting him mixed up with Mr McCaughan a.k.a. "the other Gareth".

CDR

10:18 PM

@verbose - oh. That has always baffled me. ty for explaining

Unrelatedly, when I log into my old account (someday), I'll accept your edited response to that "Selvi"/_Guide_ question. It covered all the stuff I was curious about, and was also very interesting to read, as most of your answers do and are.

verbose

10:50 PM

@Randal'Thor Oh! I thought "our" Gareth was an MBA or a beeswax consulting type. Though I guess that doesn't preclude his being mathemagically trained.

@CDR You're welcome!

@CDR Thanks! No rush, I still have to revise further. I need to add the paradox that Marco is interested in ancient Indian heritage too but doesn't want Rosie to dance, and some evidence for the claim that nationalists wanted to claim the classical arts as part of India's precolonial glory.

CDR

11:11 PM

@verbose - not sure if this is a super reliable source, but this article by Nilimma Devi, founder of the Sutradhar Institute Dance and Related Art, might be a decent reference. See the beginnings of the sections "The Freedom Movement and Dance" and "The Outlook on Dance." No rush on your end, either, of course.

verbose

11:24 PM

@CDR Thank you! I have a copy of Janaki Bakhle's Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition, but the dance article will be useful as well.

verbose

11:57 PM

@CDR Do you have bibliographic info for that article? What periodical did it appear in, and when?

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