time?

So, after some years (11 or so, since sometime 1999) I kind of gave up. Bought a watch. Can no longer completely escape from time and its changes. Well well, if it gets too much I'll just ignore it again for some time.

"Mina tankar är det sista som ni tar."

_not_ jumping

As I was walking home tonight, sometime around midnight, after a small photo session, I passed over a bridge above E4. As I did, I stopped, taking some photos of the nightly summer sky. Northern summer nights almost without darkness :D



Anyway, a grey car drives up next to me and stops, the driver opens the window on the passenger side, starting a conversation with me:

"Hey. How are you? Are you ok?" he said.
"Yep, I am just taking some photos." I replied, holding my camera up so that he could see it too.
"Oh, I thought you were doing something else, thought you were planning to jump. The daughter of a co-worker of mine jumped from this bridge couple of years ago, killing herself. Are you sure you are ok?"
"Yep, finishing and going home now." I said, and then he drove off in the other direction again.

Now when I think of it, I have to admit that it's not often you see people crawling on bridges taking photos of the summer sky, especially not around midnight. Suppose that the camera was not visible from inside of that car on some distance either...bah. Guess this guy was just one of these who cares about people in general. It just felt a bit strange, that's it.

would you care for a...duck?

From the annual duck race. In short, you grab a bunch of ducks, put them in a large net, then release them and watch them race...

For me, this is a damn odd city name:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch



Wales, where else? :)

What is wrong when...

...my students being 14-15 don't know if 1/3 is bigger or smaller than 1/7? Or when they say that 3.4749 has a higher value than 54.1 just because the first number has a higher number of digits involved? Or when they grab a calculator and really need it in order to determine that 5x20=100?


These were some of the things I asked myself back some years ago when I faced this problem for the first time - while I tried to teach. Now, some years later I can still ask myself the same questions. The individuals have changed but the situation is still pretty much the same. Something really is wrong, even if some people try to get away from realising this. As long as they decide to close their eyes for this then the situation will stay the same.


I am usually trying to do something about this. Each time I teach I try to get away from ending up in the situation of "ok, open the books and start doing the exercises there without really understanding why you do it".
I am also not happy with my students using calculators during the time they do their exercises unless the exercises require the use of them.
The calculator is a really nice tool if you use it in an appropriate way. If you use it the wrong way you more or less end up in the situation above, when people can not say that 5x20=100...and I can tell you that a lot of the young people in the world has already reached this state in which they can no longer use their own brain to figure things out.


So why did I start thinking about this again? It is simple - I ran into two 14 year old girls the other day (I had these two in a geometry class some weeks ago...). Now they were really trying to figure out what they would have to pay if they bought this bag they were looking, currently having a 10% discount. So imagine the two of them standing there with a cell phone each, trying to solve this "if I take away 10% of the original price, how much do I still have to pay?" by simply using the calculator that comes with the phone!

It really made me think again and ask myself
"what is wrong with this world if this has to happen?"

In Sweden it is legal to...

...sell sexual services, but not legal to buy or even try to buy them.

How do these two worlds meet? *just asking*

family names

Tricky business, this with family names.

my mother - Nilsson

my father - Näslund

my sister - Angermann

my brother - Söderberg

me myself - Forsman

...asking myself - how did this happen? Start to believe that we are collecting names. This has some cons sometimes:

• phone calls can be interesting - people never find numbers and they get confused by all the names;
• your snail mail is for sure lost every now and then since you can not put that many names on the mailbox;
• children in this position have a living hell in elementary school when forms are to be filled in and signed by one or both parents - names never match;
• all registers have multiple entries for your phone number, i.e. if someone uses the register to call doing some marketing related then you get one call for each entry...
• Try making a reservation for a "family event" - I can remember one of the times when "we" tried to have a "family dinner" at some place. Of course arriving in different cars from different locations, having some "additional" family members (girlfriends/boyfriends/husbands/wives/children) with us as well. We are kind of a distributed family. FUN. Four of us arrive and enter the place, the guy working there asks us if there is a reservation and if so in what name. This was followed by four of us looking at each others asking "who made the reservation? I did not this time". It all ended with us telling the guy "it is kind of a bigger group, around 25 or so". Have to admit that all of us laughed at this comment;
• ...

...and some pros:

• phone calls again - if you don't want to be found this with multiple entries can be good since people get confused and give up thinking that there has to be a mistake;
  
• snail mail - you tend to not get some post, some annoying things tend to disappear;
• you get the pleasure of seeing a surprised face when you try to explain these things to other people;
• people don't "associate" to your parents/brothers/sisters when they see/hear your name, i.e. you are not compared with them all the time;
• ...