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).

In fact it never even occurred to me that someone would put zeroes there until this morning.

Huh, and I've never seen it done any other way than with zeroes as placeholders. The teachers always used zeroes.

The idea of zeroes as placeholders is so foreign to me that I don't even understand what you're all talking about.

I think I've always used zeroes too, unless I am totally misunderstanding what you all are talking about.

{{Aimee}} I'm so glad you were there, but I'm sorry for your loss.

Ok. Say you're taking 321 times 43. You multiply 321 by 3. Then you go down a line and multiply by the 40. You start your answer (with a 4) in line with the 6 of the previous partial product. Some of us put a 0 below the 3, to hold that place empty.

Assuming you weren't speaking in hyperbole.

I'd argue for including the zeroes as placeholders, to enforce the concept of decimal places and line things up right (especially when graph paper is not available.) When you get to be a big smart adult like me, ::preens:: you can skip the zeroes because you instinctively know they're there.