That makes perfect sense.

I've tried watching Numb3rs. I got a little too eyerolly at the magical mystical mathematics, though. I really wanted to like that show.

yeah, I'm sure that it's like watching lawyer shows for me. I can't stand most of them. I like Boston Legal because I watch it for the characters and I pretend that they aren't in court.

Oh, blarg. How totally frustrating, Sean.

I am in awe of Tep's Dad of Steel.

bonny, kid-whisking sounds like a good and loving act, probably better than food or flowers would have been even if they wanted those things.

Trudy, here's all the Salon letter you will ever need, covering all the possible Salon letters bases, so now you never need to go back (unless you want to read the Glenn Greenwald letters, which are usually pretty intelligent):

What about the poor divorced men? What about the suffering of the Duke University students? Why doesn't Salon's blog about women's issues talk more about men's rights? What about those Zionists? What about the right wing medialopolocracy? Why are you all such nuts? Why are you all so painfully bourgeois and mainstream? You breeders make me sick, and anyhow now your kid's life is ruined since you went and mentioned in a parenting column that you actually ARE A PARENT, OMG the withering glare of the endless publicity will kill him. Anyhow, you'll all be sorry when I leave your feminocratic shores to move to Uzbekistan and find a REAL woman who can appreciate a REAL man, not like you American harpies!

In conclusion, wah wah wah!

Did I miss anything?

Hey Sean, if you are around can you pop on IM for a minute, I want to talk schedule with you regarding torturing rich people with Xmas music.

Can you slip, Bow Down, Bow Down, Before the Power of Santa into the mix?

Teppy's dad is amazing.

Hil: With two-digit subtraction, at least, I subtract the ones first, then the tens, so 52 - 37 = 52 - 7 - 30 = 45 - 30 = 15 . But for adding, I do tens first, so 15 + 37 = 15 + 30 + 7 = 45 + 7 = 52. Reverse operations and order, baby!

For multiplication, it depends a lot on the numbers. For division of anything that isn't obvious, I think I actually do the long division algorithm in my head. It's the most sensible of the algorithms anyway, despite being the ones that gives kids the most trouble.

Personally, I also love teaching the FOIL method of two-digit multiplication: 52 * 37 = (50 + 2)(30 + 7) and FOIL it: 1500 + 350 + 60 + 14 = 1924. I do this right before attacking FOIL for polynomials.

Unfortunately I have nothing to do with the mix, I'm just the project manager for getting the system installed and running.

Believe me, there have already been discussions of wanting to be able to really torture the poor, rich souls along Rodeo drive. And acknowledgements that such torture is not achievable.

They will merely have to suffer by being forced to listen to Christmas music.

Christmas music

...And a beer.

in a tree.