Posts by Rob Stowell
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Fair point, B Jones. And you'll be missed here, Yellow Peril- spinner of threads that will not die.
I 'spect this will be another- we've hardly engaged the question yet, let alone diverted it totally to get your opinions about Chinese mathematics! -
I'm a little wary of infinity. A mathematician friend (actually he's now an actuary) insists that infinity plus one is one more than infinity. I reckon they're the same number.
But if there are infinite universes, wouldn't it be enough if one in 100, or a thousand, or one in a trillion- has stars to make stars infinite as well?
Back on this planet- and we only have the one- amusing to think I could get into a British university. I hope my maths averse 15 yr-old would have a shot. What are we losing when we abondon a tool like this? -
I don't know what numeric system the Chinese have now. But I seem to remember learning in history that they used base 60. (!?)And that this meant only the educated classes could use big numbers....
-
Happy birthday MM! I think singstar is cool too.... perhaps in conjunction with singing-lessons?!
I feel better about spinning BS after reading other people's stories. I mean "glockenspiel"!? It's inspired. But as a kid who consistently mispronounced words I'd read but never heard- and suffering some embarrassment for this- I wonder how his classmates reacted when he said "ninety-eight, glockenspiel, one hundred."
Maybe some level of suspicion WRT parental/adult/other people's stories is a good think to inculcate. I've been talking to the twins a bit about lying, tricking and being mistakenly wrong... I generally haven't propped up stories like father xmas much after the doubting starts. Some oblique propping. But there's interesting stuff on teaching schoolkids philosophy. Thinking"Mum, if the Easter bunny is really just your parents, then maybe Santa Claus isn't true, and it's really just your parents."
is way more impressive than uncritical belief.
How does this impact on "the magic of childhood"? I dunno, but whatever it is, it's not over as soon as you doubt Santa. Maybe not til you start sneaking out the window to go to parties... -
And there's something ghostly about that lost little red x.... a fallen-on-its-side cross.
-
Spooky- merc has lost his gravatar at 666!
-
Yeah, it's curious and touching and lovely and sometimes quite scary. I snuck in and replaced a missing first tooth with cash the other day... and the 6-year-old burst into tears and cried "who took my tooth!" until she saw the money and little floating flower in the glass of water. Now she really does think it was the tooth fairy, and how do I tell her!
But sometimes I like to kid around with them, and you can just completely make stuff up, and their little faces kind've crunch up with effort- and then they believe it. Really believe it. Like marshmallows are the easter bunny's poos. Or the moon wasn't always there, until this giant got lonely one night- whatever. Sometimes I can't understand how intelligent grown-ups can believe in stuff like god and heaven, and then I think of the little faces in Sunday school.... -
Imagine a trumpet, a 12 gun salute and Taylor or Oram hitting a sixth six over the bowlers head to tie the score with two balls to go.... It'd be hard to maintain a reverential silence.
-
Or... anyone find any live video feeds? I am craving cricket, and a lot of clicking and even some mild (and mean/free) subscribing has brought zilch in the way of live net feeds.
I know cricinfo had live feeds of the womens' world cup! -
Behaviourism has its insights... the stuff about intermittant positive reinforcement producing a behaviour that's very hard to extinguish (I'm mangling the terms for sure) just so simply sums up gambling- and can help explain a lot of other risk-taking behaviours.