Math Analysis / Is apparently a breeze / With sweet marks like these!
Note on picture: part of the marksheet on the Matrix Portfolio 2010-2011 for 11th grade Math Analysis class.
Marks On The Matrix Project
Day: February 2, 2011
Roger Rosenblatt Outlines His 4 Reasons to Write
via pbs.org
Click on the link above to go to the video on PBS. Rosenblatt’s four most excellent reasons:
“We write to make suffering endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable and love possible. And I can elaborate on those things.
But the most important is love. That after all the suffering, all the injustice, all the evil that one sees in the world, if you can rise above it and make it beautiful, and thus lovable then that’s worth a life.”
Love In The Mail
It came out of nowhere. Well, it came in the mail yesterday. But it came unannounced and without notice. And when opened, it was brimming with love. Love from my parents who live in warmer climes several hundred miles away.
The box contained among other things, a number of egg cartons, which when opened, contained the most perfectly-made and absolutely divine rava ladoos– sweet balls made with cream-of-wheat, brown sugar, and dry-fruits (cashews and raisins).
Thank you, Mom and Dad, for loving me!
Two Green Subzis On A Snowy Day (And A Side Of Lamb Shanks!)
Well, the snow is pretty blinding if you continue to stare out the window, and since I’m not in the mood to make any snow-angels outside, I thought of doing the next best thing: being an angel in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s lame, but still, if it conjures up images of me flying around between stove and sink and refrigerator, well, you’ve come up with a half-decent picture, I’d say. And what would all that angelic activity produce? The most angelic dishes, of course. Fit for a heavenly feast. Here’s what:
- A Palak Saag made with spinach and tomatoes, and seasoned with red onions, garlic and dry red chillies.
- A Broccoli Subzi seasoned with cumin, red onions, garlic and coconut-chutney.
- A hearty batch of Lamb Shanks pressure-cooked for starters, and then seasoned in the skillet with fried onions and a secret masala.
I guess I’ll serve this up with fresh hot white Basmati rice and whole-wheat Rotis later tonight. Picture a bunch of devils feasting on all this glorious fare!
Toast, Eggs, et al on a Snowy Morning
So, what’s good for breakfast on a snowy morning? Well, anything at all! Anything you please!
I’ve been known to whip up an omelette just as fast as I can steam a batch of idlis or roll a few parathas, but on this snowy morning, the breakfast of choice was a simple one:
Two slices of multi-grain toast: one spread with peanut butter, the other with orange mamalade; two eggs not-so-scrambled; a glass of OJ.
It hit the spot, spot-on!
Simple Pleasures
Six months ago, these were some of life’s simplest pleasures that I was enjoying. The seasons couldn’t have been more different– it was the middle of summer just as it is the middle of winter right now…
Having already celebrated the beauty of winter just a few days ago here, I juxtapose and contrast it with the memories and beauty of another season: summer.
BTW, the storm last night was a huge disappointment– we got a mere six inches and the blizzard warning was downgraded to an unimpressive winter-storm watch.
The simple pleasures of summer captured on my then lowly phone are here:
Top 10 Storm Snowfall Totals For The Ann Arbor Area
I don’t know how much we’ll get tonight, but I doubt we’ll be breaking any records.
Posted: Feb 1, 2011 at 10:45 AM [Today]
An Ann Arbor resident shovels snow on William Street after a February 2008 snowstorm.
If the Ann Arbor area gets the 12-13 inches of snow the National Weather Service is predicting during tonight’s blizzard, it won’t be anywhere near the biggest snowfall in our history.
When was the most recent large snowfall? 2008.
When did we see the most snow? 1974.
And when did most of the largest snowfalls occur? January.
Here’s a list of the top 10 largest snowfalls in Ann Arbor, compiled by University of Michigan weather observer Dennis Kahlbaum, based on records going back to 1880:
- Dec. 1-2, 1974: 19.8 inches
- Jan. 26-27, 1967: 17 inches
- Jan. 3-4, 1999: 15.9 inches
- March 18-19, 1973 14.6 inches
- Jan 30-31 of 2002, 14.5 inches
- Jan. 25 -26, 1978: 13.6 inches
- Dec. 11-12, 2000: 13.1 inches
- Jan. 14-15, 1992: 12.5 inches
- Jan. 1- 2, 2008, 12.3 inches
- Dec. 18-19, 1929: 12 inches
Latest Stories in News
via annarbor.com
The Last Days of Hosni Mubarak
The Last Days of Hosni Mubarak
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke on Egyptian TV today and, as expected, announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection. But he will stick around through an ill-specified “transfer of power,” and may torture a few more people along the way.
Leaving aside the whole torturous police and censorship state aspects, it must’ve been bad enough for Egyptians just having to listen to this guy give speeches for the last 30 years. He opened his speech with a long, defensive rant about how radicals and secret forces were inflaming the crowd against him, the beloved leader who carried Egypt on his back and kept it safe all these years.
Then he grudgingly confirmed that he wouldn’t run for re-election, but claimed he never planned on doing that anyway. Oh really! Especially since it took a week of top level phone calls from world officials and millions of people in the street around the clock and burning buildings everywhere for him to say that. Also, the fact that he was intending to run, as documented by news articles and the fact that he’s an autocrat.
“I never wanted prestige or power,” he added, without breaking into laughter.
But until the September elections, at least, he plans on going everywhere and annoying everyone:
“I have spent enough time serving Egypt,” Mubarak told his people in a televised address Tuesday night, adding, “My first responsibility now is to restore the security of the homeland, to achieve a peaceful transition of power in an environment that will protect Egypt and Egyptians and which will allow for the responsibility to be given to whoever the people elect in the forthcoming elections.”
He also added that he would spend his last few months ordering his censorship authorities to lead a comprehensive “investigation” throughout the country into those radical and secret forces whom he believes are behind this all for private gain. In other words, he plans on leaving with his jails filled. This guy really knows how to address his specific audience of angry people protesting exactly those tactics, doesn’t he?
He will die in Egypt, he declared, without specifying how.
After the speech, CNN was happily reporting about what it termed the “roars” of the Cairo protesters, approving of this momentous occasion and their impending liberation. But after about 20 minutes, one of the CNN anchors noticed that maybe those sounds were the word “LEAVE!” being shouted with great vigor, instead. “It may be that they are not cheering,” the perplexed co-anchor realized.
So will this be good enough for the protesters? Absolutely not. (And it’s definitely not enough for many white Westerners typing on Twitter from thousands of miles away.) The protesters are demanding his immediate resignation and regime change, out of the (not hard to imagine) belief that he’ll find a way to put one of his cronies in the exact same autocratic role following September’s elections. But the concession today may be just enough to start a process of fizzling out the daily protests, assuming Mubarak minds his manners. Transferring power overnight after a decades-long authoritarian regime and expecting happy and free democracy the next day doesn’t have a long record of ever happening in history. But they’ll figure something out, we guess.
Watch Mubarak yourself below.
