Mmm... graph paper...

I don't remember having problems either, but then again, my elementary-school self viewed any such crutches as a sign of weakness and needing to be culled from the herd. I was not a particularly nice child.

I should also point out that when Games publishes those puzzles where the numbers in a multiplication problem have been replaced by letters, they don't include no steenkin' placeholders.

I should also point out that when Games publishes those puzzles where the numbers in a multiplication problem have been replaced by letters, they don't include no steenkin' placeholders.

Of course not. In a puzzle, it would give away too much.

It may be something akin to Tom Lehrer's line about "If you're under thirty-five or went to a private school, you say '7 from three is six,' but if you're over thirty-five and went to a public school, you say '8 from 4 is six.'"

Whuzzah? I don't understand what that means. It it a base-8/base-10 thing?

Oopsie.

Greenpeace to pay fine for damaging coral reef

MANILA, Philippines - Greenpeace said Tuesday it will pay nearly $7,000 in damages after the environmental group's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior II, hit a coral reef at a world heritage site in the southern Philippines.

The accident Monday was "very regrettable," Greenpeace said in a joint statement with the Tubbataha National Marine Park, but it laid some of the blame on maritime charts showing its ship was 1.5 miles from the reef.

Whuzzah? I don't understand what that means. It it a base-8/base-10 thing?

It was about carrying the one in "New Math," and I don't actually understand the second part, either, but then I was under thirty-five and had gone to a private school when I first heard the song.

Um, Raq, don't know if you're around right now, but what is the Doha Round?

Jesse, can you snag an underwire from a sucky bra and make Frankenbra?

Just keep it away from electrical outlets.

I had something, but...it's gone now. It may have involved cats. And bitching about dry skin.

Lehrer:

Some of you who have small children may have perhaps been put in the embarrassing position of being unable to do your child's arithmetic homework because of the current revolution in mathematics teaching known as the New Math. So as a public service here tonight I thought I would offer a brief lesson in the New Math. Tonight we're going to cover subtraction. This is the first room I've worked for a while that didn't have a blackboard so we will have to make due with more primitive visual aids, as they say in the "ed biz." Consider the following subtraction problem, which I will put up here: 342 - 173. Now remember how we used to do that. three from two is nine; carry the one, and if you're under 35 or went to a private school you say seven from three is six, but if you're over 35 and went to a public school you say eight from four is six; carry the one so we have 169, but in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing rather than to get the right answer. Here's how they do it now.

more here:

[link]

Wikipedia answers better than I could on what the Doha Round is: [link]

The US hasn't done any of the things we agreed to, as we've been preoccupied with Iraq, Katrina, Plame, some other stuff, and we're being taken to task for it now.

It's not sexy, but it's far more globally important than bird flu, and more beneficial than 7.1 billion for bird flu. (Although, we spend something like a billion dollars every two months on Iraq).