Tax on Textbooks?

Have you ever thought about this? In many countries you have to pay sales tax. Well, that’s fine. But why do I have to pay sales tax for textbooks? In (some states of?) the US and in Germany, for example, it is 7%. In Austria it is 10%. Wouldn’t it be a great opportunity for a state/country to subsidize education? I guess, many of my American readers wouldn’t like that (“Socialism!”). Still, I like the idea. Actually, the longer I think about the current taxes on textbooks the more twisted it seems to be to me. Could something better happen to a state than people buying (and reading!) educating books? Hmmm, maybe a well educated voting public is not that convienient for our politicians. I wonder if textbooks were ever treated special in terms of taxes in history. Maybe the Romans or the Greek? Who knows…

There is a group at facebook “Tax Free Textbooks for Indiana’s College Students” and here is another report: “students used a mountain of heat-and-eat ramen noodles to illustrate” the savings. However, I haven’t read that they were successful with their activities.

Oh, and read here (The Columbia Missourian’s Higher Education Blog).

What have you done last night?

Oh, I’ve read a footnote by David Foster Wallace.

What’s the best way of communicating complex ideas?

Hey, I love books. I guess, many people do, but books are really my passion. I do also read novels but mostly I like to read biographies of scientists and popular science books. Hence, I would say that reading a book is the best way to learn something about great ideas and great people instead of getting adicted to today’s superficiality of 30 minute TV-documentaries and wikipedia articles with less than 2000 words. Yet, I asked myself today: Is the book, this old concept, still the best way of communicating complex ideas? Sometimes reading a big book can be so exhausting. Is there no better way? What about lectures? Or what about a wise person that explains the idea to you? Probably that is better than a book. But not just because it is interactive but rather because it is personal. What do you think?

Kac Ring Model and “Paradox of Time”

I definitely like thoughts that are simple to explain but that raise elementary questions. Thus, I always have this great feeling of true joy once I get to know a new idea of this kind. My most recent discovery is the Kac ring model. Amazingly, a google search will get you mostly very specific scientific papers.

A quick introduction: This model was introduced by Mark Kac (a Polish mathematician). It is a very simple model to illustrate parts of Ludwig Boltzmann‘s work in statistical mechanics. You can find a description in “Probability and related topics in physical sciences” by Mark Kac on p. 99ff. The most interesting about it is, that the second law of thermodynamics raises some questions (not exactly of the intelligent design kind). The most intriguing is the reversability paradox (or arrow of time paradox). Imaging, you start from a rather ordered state (e.g., some unequal distribution of natural gas). The problem is (or actually it is questionably whether it actually is a problem) that according to thermodynamics the entropy will increase in both directions of time — forward and backward. The increase for the backward case is the problem here. Imaging a drop of milk in your coffee. If you wait some time (forward), it will diffuse and you end up with a great (well, maybe cold) white coffee. If you would travel back in time, the exact same thing would happen according to thermodynamics. Well, should the drop have flown back into the milk jug? Is thermodynamics incomplete or wrong? Using Kac’s model this can be investigated with a very simple model (much simpler than a cup of coffee…).

Well, I’m not getting into details here. This was just to challenge you. If you are interested you might want to have a look into this thesis or Ilya Prigogine‘s work. Have fun!