Happy Thanksgivukkah!

Here's a roundup of a few news stories that quoted me about "Thanksgivukkah."

• Wall Street Journal, Oct. 3, 2013
• Albany Times Union, Oct. 14, 2013
• Toronto Star, Nov. 1, 2013
• The Jewish Week, Nov. 19, 2013
• The Algemeiner, Nov. 26, 2013

It's also been picked up in assorted blogs.

I assume this will quiet down for a few years, until 2070, when the first night of Hanukkah falls out on Thanksgiving.

Anachronistic Subway Advertising

The other week I saw this stupid ad on the subway [click to embiggen]:

Aside from the fact that I'm not sure this is a map of Brooklyn:

And that, even if it is, it's a highway map and unlikely to be helpful to two hipsters who got lost walking around Brooklyn streets.

Ignoring all that, when is the last time you saw people walking around carrying a full-size, physical, paper map of where they are? I think most people just pull out their cellphones and use their favorite map 'app'.

I am reminded of this modern superhero, Guy With a Cellphone Man!

Loading Ready Run: The Hero We Deserve

Hello From Yesterday

My normal day to post is Tuesday.  For my brothers it is now Wednesday.  I say for my brothers because I have not lived on the East Coast for almost two months.  In fact I have moved.  I now live in sunny Southern California.

 A picture I took on the way.

I moved to CA for a job with the Navy.  So I now live and work on the West Coast where it is still Tuesday, so happy yesterday to all of you Tommorowers.

The local fauna of Walmarts are somewhat different out here.

I will leave you with a picture of the first things I baked since I moved.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was amazing, it seemed like there were no suburbs, just skyscrapers and jungle.

Definitely lots of business happening, this was at the LED lighting trade show.

3rd Grade Math Fail

A friend sent me this question from a 3rd grade math assignment:

I'm not even going to start on the stupidity of these sorts of 'plug and chug' assignments. This teacher is teaching something that goes beyond nonsense (just what is a "multiplication sentence" anyway?!?), and is just plain wrong! The phrase 'six times three' means the exact same thing as 'three times six'. Multiplication is (generally) commutative. Furthermore, the following should also be perfectly valid multiplication sentences deserving of full credit:

• 1*18
• 2*9
• (√18)*(√18)
• -18i*Exp[i*pi/2]

No wonder so many kids think they're "not good at math." They're being taught mindless drivel -- that doesn't even have the small benefit of being, at least, correct. And they've certainly never learned math.

New York, Massachubatds

Just following up on Eli's post, here you can see the sweatshirt in its natural habitat.

Geographically challenged

Jonathan/Yoni sent our children a new sweatshirt that he saw in his travels:

This may well be the funniest sweatshirt I've seen. In case you can't read the text, it says:

New York

Massachubatos

More Thanksgiving/Hanukkah Press Coverage

I was also quoted in Monday, October 14th's Albany Times Union about the Thanksgiving-Hanukkah coinciding calculations. The reporter got things mostly right, and I had much more of an extensive quote than in the Wall Street Journal.

The wonders of useful coins

Coins are useful in China. This is pretty amazing for me as an american, used to paying by credit card for everything possible, just because coins are so useless. In this blog post I'm going to rant a little about the reasons.

• Prices are prices. When you buy something for 2 Yuan, it costs to Yuan. When you buy something in the US for $2, it costs $2.13 or some other random amount that is impossible to calculate in your head and changes for different items and across states.
  This has two advantages
• Round number prices, stay at round numbers reducing the need to use tiny change all the time. The fact that the smallest currency is 0.1 Yuan means you don't has as many ridiculous prices like *.99 cents for every little thing. 
• You know the price ahead of time, so if you want to pay in coins, you can count them while you wait in line, not while people wait behind you.
• Their smallest coin is worth about twice as much as a US penny. This is even though Chinese currency is worth way less than US. It is equal to 1/10th of a Yuan, sort of like a dime.
• Coins have more buying power here. The truth is that this reason doesn't have as much of an impact as the previous two. Very few things can be bought for just 1 Yuan, but you can buy lots of stuff for 2-3 Yuan which is easily counted up to with 1.0, 0.5 and 0.1 value coins.

In case you aren't interested in my rant. Here are some more photos!