Peter and I have been watching the Gordon Ramsay shows for years, and we enjoy them. They’re reality shows, so you know they’re edited for maximum drama. But I always wonder if everyone else’s food is really as bad as Gordon Ramsay thinks it is. Sure, sometimes it is obviously bad, like when a cake…
Month: April 2014
Trapped in MARTA
Atlanta, Georgia has an excellent public transportation system named MARTA. If I’m not renting a car, it’s my way of getting around town. So on my last trip to Atlanta, we took MARTA directly from the airport to the Ritz-Carlton at Ellis and Peachtree, where we were staying for Gathering for Gardner. When we got…
Elite Universities Don’t Understand Financial Hardship
Many elite universities seek out poor, but smart students, for the sake of diversity, and they go to some lengths to seek them out and reassure them that they, too, can go to, say, Stanford or Harvard, even if they don’t have the $60,000 a year it takes to go there. However, all I see to…
The Puzzler and the Magician
Kristine Hjulstand from Norway was one of the magicians performing on Saturday night at Gathering for Gardner 11. It was not only her first performance at Gathering for Gardner, but also her first in the US. She opened with a delightful performance piece set to classical music, pulling scarves of color out of painter’s palette…
The Portuguese Conspiracy
At Gathering for Gardner 11, a group of Portuguese mathematicians gathered together and announced themselves to be members of The Portuguese Conspiracy. I first got hip to this when Carlotta of the Portuguese Conspiracy finished her talk and pointed out a table which had been taken over by herself and her fellow countrymen. After that,…