Author: Amit Schreiber

(If you haven’t read part I you might like it too. Go ahead. I’m waiting.)

The book was a good start but I was looking for something more original. While my friend is a programmer, and a good one at that, she’s actually a mathematician at heart. So I started looking for a fitting gift to appeal to that part of her.

At first I thought I’ll be able to find a replica of the Curta calculator for a reasonable price. The Curta calculator has an interesting story that dates back to the concentration camps in WWII. You can see how amazing it is in this video:

Unfortunately, the Curta calculator is only available as a collector’s item and can be found on eBay starting at about 600$ (if you’re lucky.)

In the spirit of used stuff (like the book I got in part I. Told you to read it) I decided to try and look for an antique abacus. In the process I learned quite a lot about the history and evolution of abacuses, which is really interesting. The most “advanced” one, for example, is Lee Kai-Chen’s abacus, which allows you to do complicated operations like finding the square root of a number and more. Unfortunately, those are extremely rare and I couldn’t find any. What I did find was this amazing video on children using the abacus:

That last part about “mental calculation” really surprised me.

While looking for a nice-looking abacus on eBay I stumbled upon the perfect gift – a Klein bottle. A Klein bottle is a mathematical shape with interesting properties – it only has one side and zero volume (Here’s a Wikipedia link, in case you’re into this sort of stuff.) And the gift is perfect not just because it’s great for a math-oriented person like my friend. It’s perfect because of the experience I had getting it. Little did I know, when I purchased a medium sized Klein bottle from kleinbottle.com, that I will be getting the following response from the seller, Cliff Stoll:

Dear Amit,

Thank you very much for your Klein Bottle order! I’ve just snuggled the Medium Classical Klein Bottle into a 23x15x15 cm box with plenty of bubblewrap & padding, as well as the usual Acme literature, invoice, and agitprop.

While packing the Klein bottle, I took a few photos. You can see these pictures at
http://www.kleinbottle.com/gallery2/main.php/v/455SomePhotosForAmit

About half an hour ago, I bicycled to the Post Office and sent the box via Express Mail International. The box should arrive in a few days depending on the post and Israeli customs.

The postal tracking number is ECXXXXXXXXXUS. Within a day or two, this tracking number should show up on the US Postal website, http://www.usps.com/shipping/trackandconfirm.htm

So from across the Atlantic and around our three spatial dimensions, here’s my warm cheers to you … I’m sure you’ll like the Klein bottle!

– Cliff

And here are the pictures I got from Cliff:

The pictures were a stunning personal touch. I was so happy about getting this kind of customer service and wrote him back a thank you note with a link to the pictures from my latest trip.

It soon became obvious from our correspondence that Stoll is not your regular bottle maker so I looked him up. It turns out the bottle making was a secondary venture of a well known astronomer and mathematician. Here’s his Wikipedia entry, but even a Google search for Cliff Stoll brings up interesting results, including this TED talk:

To come full circle with this post it turns out Stoll is a fan of the Curta calculator. Here’s a video of him telling the story of the calculator and how its inception saved its creator:

About a month ago I realized a good friend’s birthday was coming up and I wanted to get her a meaningful gift. What I mean by “meaningful” is something that is more personal in nature and preferably utterly useless.

The gift has two parts – a book and a glass bottle. The book is obviously the useful part but it also carries a nice story with it: I was walking down the streets of Tel-Aviv when I spotted a copy of Jerry Seinfeld’s book, SeinLanguage, in a used book store. My friend is a big Seinfeld fan so I thought this would be a nice candidate for a gift – I bought it even though I didn’t know whether I would end up giving the book to her.

When I got home I opened the book, which was in very good condition. It turned out to be a first edition from September 1993. It’s not worth anything, I’m sure, but if you buy a used book it’s nice when it happens to be a first edition. Inside its pages I found a bookmark. Here are pictures of both the book and the bookmark:

As you may have noticed, the bookmark is little yellow and seems old. It doesn’t have a web address on it, either. I was curious whether the “neighborhood bookstore” still existed and quickly found the Brookline Booksmith website. The website’s design and the personal nature of its content made me think the owner (Paul) might find the whereabouts of the book and bookmark amusing so I sent him a message detailing the story along with the pictures.

Soon enough I got this reply from Paul:

Ha!
Awesome. Thanks Amit. I was going to include the picture of the bookmark in this week’s newsletter, but then I looked at all the discounts that we haven’t been able to afford to offer our customers for many years now. Ahhh, the days when we could let our bestsellers go for 30% off….thank you so much for sharing this. I’ll pass it around among the staff, and it will go in next week’s newsletter.
Thanks,
Paul

And indeed a week later a mention of this appeared on the weekly newsletter.

Today I witnessed a pretty big road accident moments after it happened. One car crashed into the rear side of another in an intersection. I got there right when the drivers came out of their cars, the offending car’s driver stunned, the offended car’s driver shouting in anger and later on crying for help as he noticed his backseat passenger was apparently out-of-conscience.

I was “first in line” to watch this horror. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go around the accident – to drive away meant I had to drive right through the place where everything was happening. But I couldn’t do anything to help them either – other drivers were already assisting and calling emergency services. Helplessness is one of the feelings I hate most, right up there with anger and being cheated. I usually try to avoid news and current events, partly because I have nothing to do about them anyway.

After about a minute or two it became obvious that I had to continue driving so I did. I drove very slowly between the cars and went on my way. Later on in that same drive on the way home I nearly reared into another car myself as the driver in front of me illegally tried to continue straight ahead from a left-only lane and had to stop immediately when he nearly crashed himself into someone who was legally turning left.

I drove to the closest coffee shop I could find and stopped to relax (and write this post.) I don’t think I was ever happier to get out of my death trap car.

I decided to stay at the hotel until I left for the festival. The reason was the failed scam attempt from yesterday – it made me feel unsafe in the streets of Istanbul. I got to the festival early (9 hours before The Prodigy got on stage) to see bands I would have probably never seen otherwise: Howling Bells were pretty good but not my kind of music. Jane’s Addiction were good and Dave Navarro (their guitarist) is really amazing. Nine Inch Nails – well, I think that when it was time for them to go on stage (before The Prodigy) I was already exhausted from the long wait so I couldn’t enjoy the music which was obviously very good.

The big surprise for me was Juliette Lewis. The music and lyrics are very good but the highlight of the show is her performance: she has so much energy on stage – I don’t know how she manages to sing and move like that at the same time. She pretty much makes love with the crowd (in action and words) up to the point where she takes her shirt off and is left with a bikini top.

After the long 9 hours wait The Prodigy finally came on stage. I completely forgot about my fatigue and the backaches I experienced earlier from standing so long. I had a front stage ticket so for the first time I was in the front 2-3 rows in a Prodigy show. Since the number of people in the front stage area was limited, there was enough room to go crazy.

So how was my fifth Prodigy show this year? Right now my voice is husky and I have a little limp in my right leg so you can tell I enjoyed myself a lot. I have to find another Prodigy show to go to. I have my sights set on Madrid in December.

I can barely keep my eyes open here at Ataturk airport in Istanbul. And I still have to work today. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some shuteye.