Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings
Tax the Rich

 

Website Wednesday

 

Yesterday, I waited over 1 1/2 hours for the boy at Kumon since they do not let you go until they see that you have mastered a concept and he has hit the wall with re-grouping mixed numbers in subtraction problems. He told me that they only touched on regrouping at the very end of 5th grade in school during the time everyone was getting excused to practice for the last big assembly program. But it obviously has to be mastered by 6th grade because his  6th grade summer math packet has a lot of regrouping problems. Re-grouping is writing numbers a different way, for those of you who, like me, had forgotten this math concept. In a mixed number subtraction problem when the upstairs numerator is smaller than the downstairs numerator after you give both fractions a common denominator, you would borrow 1 from the upstairs whole number and rewrite it as a fraction. In the problem 3 3/5 - 1 4/5 you would rewrite 3 3/5 as 2 + 5/5 + 3/5. Then you would have the problem 2 8/5 - 1 4/5 which you can subtract easily.

 

Anyway, he's in the classroom working away and I have the iPad and I'm reading from my Great Book app - for a very long time. If you have an iPad, I strongly recommend you download the Great Books app (Books HD). It costs $2.99 and I think I mentioned that some users grouse about having to pay for public domain books. Since I really like their format and the ability to increase font size, that doesn't bother me. The latest upgrade adds a lot of public domain 20th century books, (I rewarded? punished? myself by starting Joyce's Ulysses yesterday.), and maybe some 21st century books also since I saw Obama's inaugural speech. Plus, this update has added audio books. I am psyched!

 

All this leads me to my website pick of public domain books today:

 

http://manybooks.net/ 

 

which has an easy to remember title: Many Books. You can take a look at the About page but this is pretty much a WYSIWYG site though occasional updates can be found on Twitter. They feature Books of the Week on the main page and clicking the left side bar will get you into genres which interest you.

I like their format. You get the essentials on the book (knowing it's an English translation is a real plus for me), an excerpt, usually some user viewers and then a right bar asking you so choose how you want to download your selection. What could be simpler?

 

Talking about English translations, click Languages for more language options. Or click on New Titles for up-to-date additions. Also, a nice feature is the clickable link to LibriVox if the book is available in audio form.

So I guess I really have two picks this week: iPad Books HD (Click on App Store, categories, then Books HD) and PC great books at Many Books. Both are great (sorry for the overused word) choices. Enjoy.

Final Note: The iPad does have a free app of great books but you're talking 60 books for free and 23,000+ books for $2.99. You may not have noticed in my blogs but I can be a cheap bastard; however, even I would spring the $2.99 for Books HD.