https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hundreds-of-deli...

"There are no spoons here." Correct in a situation where there could be zero, one or more spoons.

"What if there were no stars in the sky?"

However, in the 21st century, this book really can no longer be recommended for its original teaching purpose. As a textbook it is outdated (a term I hate, but it is true). It is now an historical curiosity - although one which I am pleased to own, and the exercises in the book are still worth a look.

Calculus teaching has progressed considerably since 1908. The construction of the real number system in Hardy's book, using the Dedekind Cut method is overly complicated - the use of the of Least Upper Bound is much simpler and clearer. Hardy defines the concept of integral solely as the anti-derivative; there is no discussion of Riemann sums, or Darboux sums, etc. I am sure I would not want to take Hardy's approach today.

I think we are better off recommending books are more modern.

I will start by recommending "Calculus" by Michael Spivak.

The other poorly documented feature is the objected-programming framework which was belatedly added after Tcl fell out of the mainstream of programming languages and so languishes unused.

The biggest problem of all is that that there is no online forum for Tcl users now that Google has dropped Groups. Usenet comp.lang.tcl was the main discussion forum and it is now gone.

This is incorrect: the British monarchy is not ceremonial. Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand were self-governing dominions of the British Empire, with their own parliaments, and each nation still has a governor-general who is nominally approved by the monarch but who is actually selected by the government of each nation from time to time. Hong Kong was a Crown Colony, a.k.a. Overseas Territory, and had a governor who was selected by the British government in London and approved by the monarch. Governors-general and governors are quite different things. Governors-general are the representatives of the monarch and exercise the monarch's reserve powers according to the constitution of the nation. The Hong Kong governor was a colonial governor and had much more power over administration than the governor-general of a dominion.

>They had a full democracy after 1997. That was self determination.

This is incorrect: The creation of a democratically elected administration in Hong Kong was fiercely opposed by the People's Republic of China from 1949 onwards, even threatening violence to prevent it. The last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, created a parliament, the Legislative Council, which was partially elected by universal suffrage. The Legislative Council was declared illegitimate by the PRC and was immediately and permanently shut down after the PRC takeover of Hong Kong. The government of Hong Kong since the handover consists entirely of people selected and appointed by Beijing who are all, or mostly all, members of the Chinese Communist Party.

> the London-Singapore flight suffered a sudden drop as a meal service was under way.

Meal service is probably the single most vulnerable moment to encounter turbulence. How many of the safety-first-at-all-times brigade could dine while tightly strapped to their seat? And no matter how tightly strapped in you are, you could not avoid being splashed by scalding coffee, as some passengers on the in the report were.

Also, the flight time from London to Singapore is 13 hours and 15 minutes (non-stop). How many of you would stay tightly strapped in at all times for that long?

Personally, I rather like these these; they have a certain retro-appeal, in particular old Springer mathematics publications. We are so spoilt with LaTex.

1. Mathematics is a lot more abstract than it used to be.

2. Mathematics is a lot more specialised than it used to be.

3. Non-mathematical content is inaccessible to those who don't read English.

4. Space in academic journals is too precious to waste on inessential content.

5. The style is part of a universal mathematical culture so you should fit in.

6. There are many alternative places to publish nontechnical academic writing.

Computers have still not successfully replaced newspapers. Computers have still not successfully replaced teachers. Computers have still not changed the way government works.

Computer technology has undoubtedly had enormous effects on many aspects of society but it has failed to produce benefits that many early technology idealists and entrepreneurs predicted, and it has made some things a lot worse.

We have lost the quality journalism that was nurtured by the old broadsheet newspapers because they no longer have the necessary money nor inclination to do it.

Education systems are in decline everywhere. Teacher quality has declined. The best teachers find jobs outside the education systems. Student performance has declined despite vast investments in technology for education. Student attention spans have declined and mental health problems have greatly increased along with increased exposure to technology.

Governments at least have benefited from technology in that has enabled mass surveillance and control of their citizens. But other areas of government administration for public benefit, such as health administration and education have not improved. Yet governments have wasted vast amounts of taxpayer money in failed technology projects. Wider citizen participation in democracy? Not so much.

What Cliff Stoll seems to have underestimated is people's willingness to put up with cheaper, lower-quality technological alternatives to quality newspapers, good teachers and public administration.