!Christina's December questions
---
agk's diary
11 December 2025 @ 17:58 UTC
---
written on GPD MicroPC
as daughter pretends to nap and yams bake
---
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.
