There's Surreal Numbers by Donald Knuth. Given where you posted your question, you've probably read some of his other work, so you should know his style. Honestly, the love story in SN feels a bit bolted on, but he does give an eminently readable approach to Conway's version of number theory. There's a LOT of work left to the reader, but it sounds like you'd be good with that.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics, but that was 18 years ago...

I'm trying not to get into the politics of anything here, but my son (4 years old) eats noticeably more than I do. And I eat a lot; I run marathons for fun, and I'm not one of those slight people who's all leg. My son would consider both of those meals combined to be an appetizer.

I don't know about the kid in the article, but my son, he'd go back and ask if there were anymore of those nuggets floating around, oh, and can I have ketchup on them? You only brought a gallon? But I waaaaaaant it...

OK, so the electoral college is largely a product of the 3/5ths compromise on slavery. Should it have been removed when slavery was made unconstitutional? Should inter-racial marriage have been legalized then? How about restitution to former slaves? Was "separate but equal" constitutional?

Well, let's see, we could take the model of Switzerland, where everyone and their dog has a gun, and ammo is sold at cost, but to buy ammo you either have to (buy & use it at a range) or (register the sale with the government). Could we legally require that in the US? Could we require a national registry of every gun owned in the country? Can we restrict children from owning guns? How about criminals? Felons? Violent felons? How about people who've threatened the president?

Are you really saying that this is sufficiently clear in the original text? Because half the time I can't even figure out what an individual FF would have said, much less what the lot of them would have agreed to, much less whether I agree with them.

I think that I'm starting from the premise that you can't permanently fix the underlying problem. Between honest evolution of the industry, and not-entirely-honest people looking for loopholes I think that any remedy applied now would be too vague, too broad, too confining, or some combination of the above. Hell, Ma Bell was legally broken up. That's about as underlying as I can imagine, and it didn't stay fixed once there was money to be made.

And FWIW, my friends who are doctors have been talking about how there's a movement afoot to sometimes treat just the symptoms, not the disease.

I can understand Congress being hesitant to write real, structural laws governing an industry that didn't exist 20 years ago, is still changing rapidly, and that they don't understand (Senator Stevens may be below average, but I'd actually bet that he's just the one who was caught on tape). While they're trying to figure it out (which might well take 30 years), I'd like someone/thing to curtail obvious abuses. In our current environment, I don't see who could do that except congress.

Hmm, taking the disease metaphor _way_ too far, we could posit that the immune system of the free market will work this out in the long run. But since that might be 30 years (hell, 40), while that's happening, we should simply manage the symptoms. NN is thus ibuprofen... Hmm, I wonder what the tongue depressor would be in this situation...