The Remarkable Fools Letter

The Remarkable Fools Letter

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The Remarkable Fools Letter
The Remarkable Fools Letter
on math, ADHD and lawnmowers

on math, ADHD and lawnmowers

how many blades of grass can you count?

Jim Dalling's avatar
Jim Dalling
Jan 31, 2025
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The Remarkable Fools Letter
The Remarkable Fools Letter
on math, ADHD and lawnmowers
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So.

I’ve been getting a bit of push back lately.

It seems some people don’t understand how one would go from clown to therapist to handyman.

I’ve been told that I’m making a bit of a leap.

Not really.

Fixing things and figuring anything and everything out in pursuit of perpetual learning has sort of been how I’ve survived all these years.

I glibly tell people that it’s adhd.

Then?

I hear the term polymath.

I like the idea of being a polymath a lot more than thinking that I have adhd. The world just isn’t suited towards polymaths these days.

I had to go deeper to find out why. In order to do so, I began with the beginning of math, or at least the origin of the word.

In the first origin, it’s an abbreviation of the word ‘mathematics’.

That’s about as good as telling me that you’ll know it’s twelve o’clock when it’s noontime.

The second origin story was very cool.

math (n.2)

"a mowing, what is gathered from mowing," Old English mæð "mowing, cutting of grass," from Proto-Germanic *mediz (source also…

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