!Christina's December questions
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agk's diary 
11 December 2025 @ 17:58 UTC
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written on GPD MicroPC
as daughter pretends to nap and yams bake
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I love to answer Christina's monthly questions, and
read your answers. Visit her hole:

 gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/christyotwisty

1. Anything from 100 years ago I want revived today?

   - The United States Army was smaller than
      Portugal's army.
   - 37% of people in my country lived and worked
      on farms, mostly small family farms (though
      the farm depression and heavy mechanization
      started after the war). 
   - No synthetic plastic had been mass-produced,
      only bakelite was invented.
   - Trains, streetcars, and trolleybuses transport-
      ed more people than did automobiles.
   - People had proper parties.

2. Best book I've read so far this year

   - Caleb Gattegno (1974) The common sense of
      teaching mathematics.
   - David Bessis (2022, 2024). Mathematica: A
      secret world of intuition and curiosity.
   - Zoltan Dienes (1971). The elements of math-
      ematics.

   Teaching preschool math club under the influence
   of these three (and some I read in previous
   years) is a blast.

3. My favorite musical discovery this year?

   No discoveries, but when I pass night meds on
   the detox unit I've been revisiting albums I 
   haven't listened to for 25+ years, because the
   radio's too subdued to keep me alert. Some I re-
   discovered I like. Pretty Hate Machine by Nine
   Inch Nails is what I spun the most.

4. Share up to 5 favorite "foreign" expressions.

   - A Hungarian enjoys himself while weeping.
   - All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the
      golden tree of life springs ever green.
      --Mephistopholes, in Goethe's Faust
   - If we lived in a normal country, it wouldn't
      happen. --Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian,
      Armenian friends said this to me in the '90s
      as my country looted theirs

5. Who from the past would I like to heed my advice?

   I can't entertain this question. Past shouldn't
   be meddled with, future shouldn't be known.