A =/= ~A. Ever.

Recently, Swicky took (not for credit) her father's Symbolic Logic course. She did really well - in the top of her class, actually, which was probably uncomfortable for students more than a decade older than she. Ah, well. Still, the concepts have somewhat infected the rest of her life. We were discussing my current status as "zombie," which the kids just love.

Me, NOT getting ready to eat someone's brains. Really

Well, I protested that I was not a zombie, and Swicky said I was merely undead. Of course, I said - that's pretty much the opposite of dead. Ah, she replied, but I was dead AND undead. No, I answered - I couldn't be A and not A. She countered that she and Coconut could make A and not A if they tried hard enough. I told her that would make the universe collapse, like dividing by zero. Her response was that dividing by zero would not make the universe collapse, it would just create errors, and she was more than happy to show me using the calculator app on her phone. I declined.

I'm not sure why making A and not A is allowable in her imagination, but collapsing the universe by dividing by zero is logically impossible.  Maybe I need to take Michael's class to figure that out.

Links!

• The Liger: You know, I've been thinking about getting a cat...
• And The Mouse: This mouse is cute as a button.
• The ever awesome Neil Gaiman’s Advice to Aspiring Writers: Do you want to write? Really? Then do this.
• Speaking of writers I love - Mary Shelley's letters have been discovered in an Essex archive. They'll be published before too long. 
• Behind the Mask: The Plague Doctor: When the kiddos are older, and I'm sure I won't give them nightmares, I am so doing this for Halloween. Cool as it looks, the history is even cooler.
• RIVALS - Steampunk Designer Toys: Aren't they cute?? I really wish I had an extra $60 sitting around to get one of each, painted. I hope this Kickstarter succeeds - it's so cool. 
• Los Angeles Library to Offer High School Diplomas: Neat! If this works, it would be another avenue for libraries to act as community centers. I think it's a good idea.
• The Truth about Spiders: Very informative.
• The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reader: Also very informative, if very, very sad. 
• Poverty in Today’s America: Warning: Ninja Onions. The most striking sentence, for me, was this: "The National Low Income Housing Coalition found that there's not a single community in America where someone making minimum wage can afford to pay fair market rent for housing." That's 3.6 million workers, making at or below minimum wages, who can't afford rent on their own, according to Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. (More current results should be up 8:30 a.m. Eastern tomorrow, apparently.)