Month: October 2012
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‘Ockey Night du Canada
When I was a child, ice hockey was the bane of my TV watching. It pre-empted everything, for hours. And I didn’t care for it. I knew nothing about it, which made me the worst sort of philistine. There were small parts of Hockey Night In Canada that I enjoyed. The opening theme music–who couldn’t…
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Make fifty pots
I don’t recall the exact reference for this story, so I’ll have to go by memory. A ceramics teacher did the following experiment, with two beginning classes. To the first class he said, “all you have to do to get an A in this class is make fifty pots.” To the second, he said, “all…
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Ethnic Roots: Refusal to add fractions
I’m a Hong Kong puppy, a little of this, a little of that from the Eurasian land mass. People often ask, are you half Chinese? How much English? And then there’s commenting on how I look racially, and all that. Do I have an English nose and Goan knees. I really can’t say. I’m under…
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The zeroth rule
I recently saw the documentary Still Bill, about the songwriter Bill Withers. He wrote Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone, Lean On Me, Lovely Day, and many others. He’s one of the greats, and still writes songs, very inspiring. One of the things so fun for me to see in the documentary is how moved…
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Math problem fun
Yep, I like math problems. But just like anyone, I feel frustrated and stupid when I don’t get them. The thing is, the harder the problem, the more satisfying it is to solve it. Here’s a pretty easy one I did recently (it had me stumped for a while though): Find three positive, distinct integers…