Bush

I typpically don't read the opinion page of newspapers. I find that the people who write to the paper have shallow opinions of issues they don't have the intelligence to understand the complexity of. I was recently shown an opinion I found funny. Well if not funny then cute.
The president of Venezuela recently called or compared GW Bush to a donkey. A man wrote in complaining that this comparison was unfair. He explained that in his experience he has found donkeys to be intelligent animals.

Insane Americans and Shakespeare

I listened to the commentary track of The Merchant of Venice recently. It was very interesting. Of most interest was the comments on what had to be edited out for the American television release. Now this movie has a few prostitutes in it that show their breasts. These are understandably (to a point) removed. The director even went to the trouble of shooting all scenes of nudity separate for TV with cloths. This was not good enough. Here is a list of things that did not make the American T.V. cut.
Two Kisses had to be removed from the film. These were not even erotic kisses, just little pecks on the lips. You say that's not enough to get the scene cut. It is if it is between two men. Now in the original play s all kisses were between men. Look how far we have come.
They are cutting out the scene of Shylock buying raw meat. God forbid someone shows meat on T.V. Oh and FYI, the scene of the lamb being butchered is fake. No animals were hurt in the filming of this movie.
There is a scene where two servants present their master with a basket of doves heads. A very traditional gift of the time. It's cut.
Oh and the last is the best. They were able to film a few of the scenes in Venice in some sixteenth century villas. One scene was shot in a room with all the walls covered with art masterpieces. The director estimated that there was 100 million dollars of sixteenth century art covering walls for this scene. This all has to be “paint boxed” out so none of it is seen. Why you ask. Well the Sixteenth century artists forgot to draw cloths on one or two of the subjects. Now I don't know how many art museums you have gone to but many of this worlds masterpieces, tend to have scantily clad subject. Should we not look at them because of this. Oh I know, A small child could be watching Shakespeare and be forever scarred at seeing the art in the background of this scene. I didn't notice these paintings until I watched the film with the commentary track on. These paintings are nothing compared to the dialog. Shakespeare plays are filled with crude sexual jokes. The only reason they are safe from the American censors is because the Americans are to stupid to get the jokes.

selected syllables

To become offended for hearing a syllable. It doesn't harm you, you should live and let live. What makes one syllable bad and anouther ok? It's meaning? If someone was yelling "intercourse", I doubt people would be that offended. Everyone take a fucking chill pill.

Square roots

So there was this CS major math minor I new in college who could extract square roots of any number in his haed. Well , as long as the number wasn't too big. People always just assumed well, some people are just gifted in math. That is true but extracting square roots in your head is really easy. As long as you can add subract multiply and divide, so pretty much fourth or fifth grade math, you can extract square roots in your head.

Here is how you do it.

Lets try to extract the square root of 79.

Make a guess.

You guess a close square you know.

Here your best guess would be 9. ( you should know 9 squared is 81, a number close to ours.)

Remember the number 9.

Our number, 79, minus 81 equals -2

Twice our guess equals 18

9 plus negative two eightteenths is the square root of 79.

Really

OK to clean up the answer.

9 equals 162 over 18. So now you can subtract 2/18ths. So that is 160/18.

two goes easily into both. ( maybe something else does also but keep it simple, you aredoing this in your head.)

That is 80/9ths

Nine times 8 is 72. So now we have 8 and 8/9ths.

This is the answer I would give. Converting into decimal takes time and reduces accuracy.

But as a comparison 8 and 8/9th s equals 8.888888888888 ect.

By calculator the square root of 79 is 8.8881944173.

Pretty close huh.


A little advise. The larger the number the more accurate the result so for numbers under ten mulitply the number by 100 and divide the result by ten.

A little predictable...

This is the funniest movie review I have seen in a while. It states that the movie Ten Things I Hate about You is "a little predictable" . I am just guessing that is because it is a modern adaptation of Shakespears The Taming of the Shrew. How in the world do you do make Shakespear "unpredictable". It's been the same for the last 400 years. Well here's the link.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147800/

QOTD

"I am the head of state," Saddam . "You used to be a head of state. You are a defendant now," Abdel-Rahman ,The judge in his trial.


I am not one to support the Amis actions in Iraq but I liked that exchange that took place in court today.

A better blog than this one.

Just thought I would put up a link to a weblog I found.

http://muhammadandme.blogspot.com/

I think this really captures many peoples opinions about the muslim caricature protests.

Fastnacht

Ok, Americans are a pretty gluttonous people, so I can't believe they haven't come up with something I ate last night. A Bailey's Berliner. Alcohol and doughnuts! Wow! Two of the worlds most gluttonous consumables. Together. It was heaven. I wonder if they would fly in America. Well anyways if you are wondering how to get Bailey's Irish cream in to doughtnuts it is simple. Make a creme filling, like one for an eclare, and fill your pastry with it.

Fastnacht was great last night even though I had to go home early. It was-5 and snowing hard. Great Guggenmusig, great food, but no boobs. (see above weather report)