The Hooverville Hexagon: The Scientific Method

 

 

Colonel H Teaches Mengenlehre

by DG

 

Colonel H belonged to an old Prussian family.  I mean old. He remembered the family story about his great-grandfather playing Russian roulette in old Berlin. The family tended to be lucky, thank goodness. They 'had pig', as the Germans say.

 

He taught me another Prussian saying: when you had to visit the privy you asked Wo sind die Pferde? Apparently a polite custom on the old Prussian Hof was for the male visitors to help water the horses' ankles, which were sore from knocking against the plough chain. Urine was said to have healing properties.

 

Colonel H's family had produced professional soldiers for 500 years. They were proud of this, on the whole. But as a young man, the Colonel (who wasn't a colonel then, simply an Abiturient with a dream) had a different ambition. One which he shared with his father. There was trepidation on his part and incredulity on the paternal side.

 

'But we have always been soldiers.'

 

(Not always in the best causes.) 'Yes, but I would like to try something different.' Pregnant pause. 'I would like to be a teacher.'

 

You could have heard a monocle drop. Nobody in 500 years had ever presumed to want to be a teacher. Teaching was for ladies. His father, a kindly man, thought.

 

'It's all a matter of ability. Listen: you have to do your Wehrpflicht (obligatory service), anyway. If you aren't a success at it, we'll see about this teaching idea.'

 

Alas, he was good at it. As my Irish-language instructor used to say about my freckles, 'Das ist die Erbmasse.' Genes won out over ambition. Now Colonel H had a very responsible job in the Bundeswehr of the early 1980s, although one his revolver-wielding ancestor would not have understood: he worked in EDV, or Elektronische Datenverarbeitung. The wave of the future. He still wished he could have been a teacher: he loved the give-and-take of imparting and acquiring knowledge.

 

His other great regret in life was that he and his wife were childless. Her career involved squiring foreign tourists around – she was good at languages and great with people. She particularly liked Americans, she said: they were never late for their next appointment with the tour bus, no matter how interesting the landscape. Sehr pünktlich.

 

I told her husband that I hated to spoil the illusion, but those Americans were merely terrified. If the bus left without them they'd be stranded in a foreign country without a hope of communicating. (Fewer people spoke English before the internet.)

 

When they weren't saving democracy and lost tourists, Colonel H and his lady made their garden a magnet for the neighbourhood kids whose parents were busy working. The kids liked them so much that one of them asked Colonel H to be his 'parent' at an upcoming school conference. Would he…? It was a dream come true – although not for the maths teacher.

 

Who made the mistake of complaining that it was hard to teach 'modern maths' – especially Mengenlehre, or set theory.

 

'Not a bit of it!' retorted the Colonel (a trained mathematician and computer specialist). 'You're teaching it wrong!'

 

'I suppose you could do better?' There has to have been an arched eyebrow to go along with that retort. Not to mention a raised index finger, often referred to as 'the German victory sign.'

 

Like his Russian roulette-playing forebear, Colonel H could not resist a challenge. 'Name the day!' he demanded.

 

'Do you know what I did?' he asked me at this point in the story. I shook my head.

 

He was bursting to explain his teaching method. 'I went down to the stream. I collected lots of round stones: big ones, small ones, flat ones, ones with holes… I dried them off. I also bought some different colours of tempera paint. I spread this out on the worktables and told the children to decorate away. They painted whatever they liked on their stones. We let them dry.

 

'I explained the basics of sets. I demonstrated Venn diagrams. We practised a few. Then the stones were dry.

 

'We arranged the stones in groups: flat, spherical, blue, red, etc. Ones that belonged to more than one category. We made overlapping circles around them with yarn…'

 

He beamed. 'Those clever children mastered set theory in one afternoon!'

 

Take that, ancestors. Somehow I felt that Frederick the Great – that great Prussian general and monarch, who also composed for flute – was looking down and nodding, gut so.

 

Puzzle of the Day

by Mrs Hoggett

 

Anybody recognise this mushroom? Berry for scale. It's located in western Pennsylvania. I think it looks like a very iffy kind of snack cake from my childhood called a Snowball. Snowballs were made of spherical pieces of cake covered in marshmallow crème and shredded coconut. They came in white or pink. If they're still around, I do not recommend them. Also: do not eat wild mushrooms in Pennsylvania. Some of these fungi have been known to fool expert mycologists.

 

Comment Section

 

Tavaron writes: Paige's butterfly seems to be a Speckled Wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria). In German it's called 'Waldbrettspiel' and I wonder how that game works... does it involve dice?

 

The Editor is imagining something out of Alice in Wonderland at this point, and being chased around a forest by a giant silver shoe…

 

Paigetheoracle replied: Yes, that's what it is! My less than excellent wildlife mind wanted to call it a marbled fritillary but 'wood' kept popping into my head (not my wooden head).

 

We love listening in on these high-level scientific discussions.

 

Video of the Day

by Galaxy Babe

 

During the eclipse, Galaxy Babe observed the unusual shadows cast by the leaves. Not only is this of scientific interest, but it is also a beautiful pattern.

 

Catch you on the flip side, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor