A mathematical defence

Having grown up in a rural Afrikaner community Prof Sauer once told me the following story:

In those days out on the platteland there were very few schools, usually consisting of one small shed one young “juffrou” and a class ranging from six years old even up to eighteen everybody together.

During an English lesson the young juffrou gazed through the window and asked “Class, what is wrong with my sentence? There is six cows outside grazing by the fence?” Breaking the silence Jannie, eighteen, stretched and peered out the window. “Miss! I know what the problem is!” “There is five cows! The other cow are a bull!”

During doctoral research I had to see him very regularly and at a stage I was feeling quite depressed about all of this and I often phoned to cancel. The last, one morning I was again in a state of massive depression and called again timidly to excuse myself. He instructed me to go buy a roll of Super C's at the Cafè and he'd see me in half an hour.

And Mike, arriving home after an angling ordeal at the dam, exhausted and sunburnt knocked at the door. Opening, his wife exclaimed very upset, “Are you red from the sun?!”, “No darling! it's Mike! of the earth!”

Once, invigilating an exam of eager undergraduate students, I quoted Oscar Wilde, “In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.” At once the young man's hand shot up: “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

From the Rubaiyat,

“If I myself upon a looser Creed
Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,
Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:
That One for Two I never did mis-read.”

And One and One makes Two indeed! &&

By the way the PDF is an essay I wrote in February '09 in response to an enquiry by VDM publishing house on the possibility of publishing my doctoral thesis. I have not been able as yet to follow up further with Saleem Chotoye due to domestic circumstances and ill-health.

Love the Flux!