Kaos von Linné...

...is a nice but a bit odd exhibition. It is simply about chaos, order and their relation in our daily life. In addition to this it reflects a lot of the ideas that Carl von Linné had and introduced within the botanic world. If you have a chance to go and see this one, do so. Took this picture of the exhibition poster.

Campaign - "Cultures on my street"

I was randomly visiting some pages today and through one of them I found out about the campaign called "Cultures on my street" actually being a photo competition open to all EU residents. You can find the link to its page here.

I might even participate.

Will you?

Lindt Excellence Chili :)

The combination of chocolate and chili is kind of a nice. I haven't really thought about it before - maybe since I usually don't like chocolate that much :)

...but today we got some of this from Lindt and it was surprisingly nice.

Jenny Lexander & Håkan Ludwigson

These two have some really nice stuff in their portfolios. Adorable. What else can I say?

Jenny Lexander - Born in 1976, Sweden - http://www.lexander.se
Håkan Ludwigson - Born in 1948, Sweden - http://www.ludwigson.net

gnocchi

Surprise! I (who do not like cooking that much at all) did some potato based gnocchi today, from scratch. The one person who saw this happen said that I have to write this down...

Allow me call this experiment a bit interesting, the recipe I used was a bit odd (must however be some "Swedish version of gnocchi" since the ones I made in Italy with the Italians were not exactly like this) but was working after all - the instructions on how to actually cook them was a completely different thing:

• Follow the instructions that comes with the recipe -> you get some really odd gnocchi that don't look or taste like gnocchi;
• Follow your "instinct" -> gnocchi will be ok.

Maybe I need to take some kind of cooking class or something that makes me enjoy cooking more, I usually find it extremely boring!

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*

korn : life : misc

got flashbacks from old times today when I heard a song from Korn

life
is sometimes like a tale
but
only if we allow it

we are going to make it this time