Learning

I took on calculus the other day, just 'cause there was bugger all on the telly!

Not so much different as differentiable...

What was so special about that day? I almost never watch TV. From a choice of Big Brother, makeovers, buying houses overseas(!), sport, soaps, "music" and all the other dreary cheap tat that TV companies churn out... I'd choose sitting down with a good book. And a cup of tea.

Of course, you're right, there's nearly always bugger all on telly. But for some reason I still always go through the motions - get home after a strenuous day at work and slump in front of the tv, channel hopping. Oh, what suprise. Nowt on.

Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of other stuff to be getting on with, and you don't (shouldn't) need a reason to learn, but blaming well spent time on the absence of decent programming makes me feel better in some small way. And in today's world you gotta grab what you can.

Absolutely.

You get more discerning with age; when I was a child I adored Star Trek (it was the only show of its type at that time) but when I watch it now, it sometimes makes me cringe.

A recent example of 'cheap' TV which utterly mystifies me is 'Deal or No Deal', which is described as a 'game'. Game? Opening boxes at random for nearly an hour and applauding yourself for being able to do it?

The world's gone mad. Mad, I tell you... 

Oh, mate, I know just what you mean. A game? Pffft. And now you can get board games and video games too. Why? So you can have all the fun of opening boxes in your own home? Jesus people, go and buy 22 Kinder eggs. At least you get something out of it that way.

The only way I'd watch 'Deal or No Deal' is if they started putting exciting items in a few of the boxes.

Paint bombs, cobras. That sort of thing. What better tv would there be than watching a member of the general public getting their hand caught in a bear trap and spraying blood all over Noel Edmond's tank top of the day? Worth the license fee alone.

Ah... Do you remember when one of Edmunds' silly stunts went wrong and a member of the public tragically was killed? It kept him off the airwaves for years.

There is an underlying theme to the show, though:

Greed.

My God, that was years ago! I vaguely remember it. Bungee jump or something, wasn't it? Not the Beeb's finest hour for sure.

Something like that.

Ah, calculus! I used to love doing that.

Until I was introduced to differential equations. Though I learnt enough to later get a smattering of the meaning of Maxwell's equations. Now there's mathematical beauty! 

Maxwell moulded a 'wave equation' out of what he'd worked out, put in the best values he had available for the necessary constants... and sat back (probably utterly dumbfounded) when the speed of his 'electro-magnetic waves' turned out to be the speed of light in a vacuum.

I still don't really understand what's actually waving... but billions of txt msgs can't be wrong!