dr. seuss
sastyk | March 5, 2012I wrote this for Dr, Seuss's 105th birthday, and thought it was worth posting (a bit belatedly) for his 108th.
I once read an incredibly entertaining literary critical analysis of _The Cat in the Hat_ which began from the premise that all the action in TCITH is an attempt to fill up the overwhelming absence of the mother from the scene. She has "gone out for the day" leaving her children untended, something she clearly is in the habit of doing, since there's a sequel with the same issue embedded. The glimpses we get of "mother's new gown" and her empty bedstead stand in implicit reference…
rallain | March 2, 2010Note: The following is a repost from some time ago. Today is the officially day to celebrate Dr. Seuss, so here is my Seuss-related post. Enjoy.
In the second Cat in the Hat book (I think it is the second one), the Cat reveals that he has more smaller cats under his hat. They are labeled A - Z with Z being so small you can't even see. Question: What is the sequence of sizes for successive cats? How big would Cat Z be?
Here is the first picture that Cat reveals Cat A. It is not trivial to measure their relative sizes because they are in different positions. I drew two circles, one…
rallain | September 8, 2008My kids like books. Especially when they are going to bed. I let my daughter pick a book and she picked "Clam-I-am. All About the BEACH" by Trish Rabe. It is nice, it rhymes. The pictures are pretty. Then I get to this page:
So, the ocean is blue because of the sky? How do you get green oceans? How about brown (I live in Louisiana, trust me - the gulf of Mexico can be brown)? What about when you are underwater, everything looks blue. The best answer to why the ocean is blue is that that is what color does…