Don't Back Down

I'm helping Nathan with his homework last night, and he starts talking about regrouping. This is simple addition, folks. Two columns (occasionally three). Add one, if it's greater than 10, carry the tens digit to the next column. I didn't really think it was that hard.

Apparently the new theme is to arrange each item in "groups". If you've got ten of one group, you circle the group and add one larger group to the next column. Repeat as necessary. At the end, you just count the items that are left over in the column (in other words, the items that haven't been grouped and moved to the next).

The result is that no one ever needs to cound higher than ten. If you get ten, you circle and move those ten to the next column. If you get another ten, repeat. Finally you're left with some number less than ten, which you count as the result of the column.

As you move from one column to the next, the process is repeated. When you get ten, move it to the next column, and repeat until there's a number less than ten. Eventually you'll run out of numbers, and you've only ever had to count to ten.

Is this really necessary? I mean how hard is it to count a stack of numbers and carry the tens digit to the next column? Maybe even that is much more difficult than what they used to do, as I recall parents making fun of our new math when I was in school. I guess they used to do it in their heads. Which is cool.

When you get right down to it, I suppose the idea is to make the process as easy as possible by allowing even children who can only count to ten to count virtually any number, one group at a time. It's just going to take them a heck of a lot longer to figure it out.

For what it's worth, I taught Nathan how to count the column and carry the tens digit to the next column. He caught on to that right away. Then we had to figure out the regrouping thing, which really seemed to make him stumble. The problem with addressing the lowest common denominator is that that is exactly what you get at the end.

Today is the third day without school in Charlotte. The kids were about to explode.

Unfortunately, the yard is still covered with ice chunks - certainly useful for young boys to play with, but probably not a good choice of toys for a responsible dad, and well, I need all the points I can get on that measurement.

Read "Truth in Advertising" »

Well, we've seen once again how Charlotte can be shut down over a miniscule amount of bad weather. On Tuesday, Denise and I returned from Buffalo, New York. There was a bunch of snow on the ground, a snow fell throughout the weekend as we made our way to Toronto and back. Yet the roads were consistently in good shape and it didn't seem as if anyone was taking the day off because of the weather - including us!

Read "Sorta White Tuesday" »

Drive down nearly any road in the country and you'll see cigarette butts lining the gutters. But is this because there are more people who don't care and are dumping their butts out the window instead of in the ash tray? Perhaps. But perhaps it's also because there are so many people in so many cars in so much traffic with so many options for acquiring trash, that it's bound to have side effects.

The growth of the fast food industry has created a huge number of options for having more trash than we can handle. While our ancestors trudged through snow uphilll to school (in both directions), we have convenience on every corner. This introduces an amazing amount of trash into our lives. This is trash that simply wasn't there for previous generations. Sure, you might find a burger joint now and again, but there weren't 30,000 McDonald's, where each surely generates tons of disposables every day.

I won't say this absolves us of all responsibility - not by a long shot. It just means we need to work harder. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had joined the ranks of the unemployed. During those weeks, we've done a lot of eating in - and it's amazing when we consider the money we spend and the crap that builds up from that fairly simple occurence in most people's lives. If nothing else, we've learned that.

Last night, I scored a night on the town and chose to visit the discount theater, which I hadn't seen for quite a while. For a measly $2, I finally caught The Matrix Revolutions. I have to say that I was disappointed in this "climax" to the trilogy. It just didn't work for me.

I can see a number of possible endings, as the movie doesn't really explicitly tell you what happened. On that front, it's not an entirely bad thing. Naturally, the visuals from the movie were amazing, and that's not bad either. But I can also see a huge number of plot holes. Mostly I've seen these mentioned elsewhere (months ago!) so I won't go into them in a lot of detail here.

Read "The Matrix Trilogy" »

David Letterman apparently made a comment recently about Panthers fans - namely that there were no die-hard Panthers fans. Suddenly, the Charlotte area specifically, and likely the entire population of both Carolinas, is out to prove him wrong.

There was a pep rally in Charlotte yesterday, where thousands of people turned out to prove that David Letterman was wrong. Let's think about that for a moment, shall we?

Read "Die-Hard Fans" »

USAToday wrote recently about the escalating cost of food, and how food is the third largest expense, after housing and medical care. Does anyone notice an important component left out here? Taxes. I checked the last three years of my accounts, and taxes are far and away the highest expenditure that I have each month.

What's that, you say? Taxes aren't an expense? You bet they are. Just because you don't ever get that money doesn't mean you don't pay it. A frequent quote says that the greatest trick the devil pulled is convincing people he doesn't exist. Believe that or not, the greatest trick our government ever pulled was the invention of tax withholding.

Financial advisors often say that to save money you should take it out of your check before you even get the check - use direct deposit or other means to get it into savings before you have a chance to spend it. Tax withholding is the same - you never see the money, so you don't miss it - yet you don't get any benefit of seeing your savings grow.

Somehow the media of this country blatantly ignores taxes when it comes to expenses. According to my files, I spent nearly 40% of my income on taxes last year - federal and state income taxes, social security, medicare and sales taxes. Only 5% on housing. About 3% on medical care. Call it 1% on food. Yet they point out the rising costs of food. Does anyone else notice that something is wrong?

Rather than pointing out how the farmers are going to gouge us, how about letting the government take a few for the team. Instead of regulating how much this should fit in that, back the heck off of the taxes. At the very least, let's abolish the gravy train that is withholding. If people actually had to write a check each year to cover their taxes, do you think everyone would take it so lightly? I sure don't.

While I haven't spent a ton of time in cities with subways or other public transportation - and the public transportation here in Charlotte is limited - it seems that the term express is typically used to indicate a route that doesn't stop as often.

On the New York subway for instance, the express route will go directly from uptown to downtown - perhaps with only a stop or two around Time Square. Meanwhile, the local route stops at every platform along the way.

Read "Local or Express" »

This weekend, Denise and I went to Buffalo, Toronto and Niagara Falls. Naturally, I'm sure you're thinking we were absolutely nuts - and you're probably right. This isn't really the time of year to head North. But we purchased the tickets for just $100 round trip, and we were going to take it.

On Sunday, I surprised Denise with a trip to Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre to see Mamma Mia! For those who don't know, this musical is built around songs from Abba - yes, that Abba.

Read "Mamma Mia" »

Maybe the problem is the lack of pockets. Maybe the folks in the Seattle area don't have a local government as regulation-crazed as the one here in Charlotte. Or maybe they've finally served one too many lattes to people who come in out of the rain.

Read "Take the Keys with You" »

I've just finished updating the site to Movable Type v2.66. The primary difference in this version of Movable Type is that it offers more protection for comments.

Read "Movable Type v2.66" »