I had a delightful time helping the Form 4 (last year of secondary school, before the A-levels) students with questions from their „Mock“ National Exam in Mathematics, which will soon decide about whether they can go on to the A-levels. One of these questions surprised me with the amount of creative thinking it involved. That is, I am wondering if there is a standard way to solve this that I overlooked. So here it is, any inputs are welcome (train your brain!):

In a geometric progression, the sum of the second and third term is 6, and the sum of the third and fourth term is –12. Find the first term and common ratio of the progression.

I will post my solution after some comments come in, or I get bored waiting

Ziemlich genau zwei Wochen nach meinem ersten aufwühlenden Schultag fühlt es sich schon ein bisschen an, als wäre ich immer hier gewesen. Dabei strömt immer noch eine konstante Flut von Eindrücken auf mich ein, selbst (vielleicht gerade) hier im unglaublich ruhigen Dorfleben.

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• David Pogue is pessimistic about Skype’s future http://j.mp/lM6VMY How do iChat and FaceTime work again? And didn’t Google have something? #
• Paper-size (and –thin) computers are becoming reality http://j.mp/ivzDav #
• Thema Immigration und Islam: Mir waren wichtige Details des „Anwerbeabkommens“ von 1961 nicht klar http://j.mp/lbUb01 krass! #
• Heiße Diskussion um einen ZEIT Leserartikel zum Islam http://j.mp/jnabEp Die (meistempfohlenen) Kommentare stimmen mich großteils bedenklich #
• #travelinsight 46: A teacher colleague had Malaria over the week-end. Malaria! Over the week-end! Still worries me a little… #
• #travelinsight 45: Learning an all-new language makes you think about what you need language for. What would your first 200 words cover? #
• #travelinsight 44: Why oh why do women here prefer odd-looking wigs over their beautiful natural hair? #
• Danke, Europäischer Gerichtshof! Klagerecht für Umweltverbände in Deutschland http://j.mp/l6PDXx „Bürgergesellschaft“ wir kommen #
• #travelinsight 43: Two breakfasts, two lunches and dinner is a little much. Of course, Hobbits would disagree. And so, initially, did I … #
• Hah! The longest German word in official usage http://j.mp/m2Ww0N 63 letters! (that’s as exactly as much as this tweet before the brackets!) #
• Do political decisions originate with „the people“ or elites? I discover the field of comparative political economy http://j.mp/jpAxxU #
• s in Germany, is pronounced [z] if it forms the syllable onset (e.g. Sohn [zoːn]), otherwise [s] (e.g. Bus [bʊs]) http://j.mp/mtyHXf Aha! #
• Ich liebe meine Sprache: Guttenbergs Fälschungen „werkprägendes Arbeitsmuster“ http://j.mp/kLaPJD Fazit der Kommission: bewusste Täuschung #
• Next door to me in Uganda, a proposed law threatens gays with death penalty. Protest: http://j.mp/iRqs5w it seems to have worked once before #
• High-tech orthodoxy or: the woman who was never there http://j.mp/k0QDgk it would be very funny if it wasn’t real #Krugman #
• How to lie with numbers: The cost of closing the fiscal gap now or later http://j.mp/m7imL0 #Krugman #Constructivism #
• Surprising and very informed argument against the notion that feminism took away the housewife’s good status of the 50s http://j.mp/iTjSgc #
• Joseph Stiglitz about past and future of US distribution of wealth and its political implications http://j.mp/mr3OsU Scary. #
• An einer tiefen Beschreibung der Personaldebatten in der FDP kann man lernen, wie Parteien im Inneren funktionieren http://j.mp/mCm6QL #

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I fear this is the longest title in the history of my blog, which in a way suits its topic well. I just finished the biggest book I have ever read, actually a collection of books under the title „The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“, by Douglas Adams. It comprises the original Guide and the other four books in the trilogy.

I bought it in Palo Alto before my real traveling started, and it has lasted me well into the second quarter of this year, of course as frequent visitors of my blog know with another big and some small readings in between.

Once again, my generally high esteem of artists‘ late work was reinforced — while the original book is funny, the later books are far better. I laughed my hardest reading the second last one, „So Long and Thanks for All the Fish“, and the last one, „Mostly Harmless“, apart from still being very funny, I found most insightful. That despite how I just read on Wikipedia the author himself describing this book as „bleak“, and saying he had a very bad year when he wrote it. I suppose that tells us something about the relationship between art and happiness…

Anyway, here are just some examples of important topics of life made understandable with the help of absurdity, Science-Fiction at its best.

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Happy Belated 300th Birthday, David Hume! And thanks to Crooked Timber for a pointer to both this anniversary date and his neglected influence on social sciences. I’ll re-quote two parts of a re-quote from there (happy internet copy-paste days). They do a very good job at explaining what happens in the Arab world and our own homes.

The first one deals with power of the masses, and why they so often don’t use it:

[…]

Thanks to Matze, I finally ended up reading an article which I’m sure I had opened before but couldn’t remember anything from, I suppose it was a victim to one of my old laptop’s many out-of-battery shutdowns. It’s „Golden Oldies (Wonkish)“ by Paul Krugman, who I usually enjoy reading but find slightly too absorbed in contemporary economic policies. Not so this time, where he deals a blow to contemporary Economic Science that in most part applies to other social sciences as well, especially Psychology.

[…]

Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has an accessible article in Vanity Fair talking about rising inequality (of income, wealth, all sorts of things associated with these like education and health, and lastly, opportunity) in the US. He then comes to a brutal description of the association of wealth and power, one of the cornerstones of my „NeuerPlan“ (NewPlan) criticism of capitalist society. Which happens both on a personal level and on that abstract level of „corporations“, that is, businesses:

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• Daten-zentrierter Journalismus http://j.mp/jtd7lx sehr spannend und wichtig, aber: Daten mach halt noch keine Geschichte. #Narration #
• Gipfeltreffen mit Zivilgesellschaft schön und gut http://j.mp/kvu1JZ Hatten wir nicht schon mal nen Atomkonsens? #
• If supermarkets were like public schools http://j.mp/jXhKqB an analogy who’s obvious message I don’t share, but still find interesting #
• Comparing teaching and military can be surprisingly insightful. And McKinsey can do good work http://j.mp/lnWIsw #NYTimes #Op-Ed #
• Oh dear, major computer overdose today. But I’m happy my travel blog is up to date, and my brain has gotten it’s fix of science and politics #
• Why we don’t hear much from physicists against nuclear energy & why we should turn to physicians for the critical science http://j.mp/iHIpp9 #
• It seems the Osama thing makes more talk about torture necessary http://j.mp/jVJSMW Glad we can dismiss it practically a well as morally #
• beautiful little metaphor on publication bias in science http://j.mp/msSDGf #
• Osama capture myths debunked, including the question of torture-elicited information http://j.mp/mwqp9C #
• How anti-Obama „birtherism“ is rooted in old segregation sentiments and former slave states http://j.mp/jfBqQl Very thorough, and sad! #
• Market Design — what economists can do when they stop arguing everything will be alright if you leave things alone http://j.mp/ilRxU5 Good! #
• #travelinsight 42: It does seem like many of the brightest minds in Africa choose to work with and for development projects. Good or bad? #
• More amazing science from our guts — there are 3 distinct types of bacteria ecosystems one can have, like blood types http://j.mp/iJSY05 #
• Patient or consumer — health care reform example of how market theory (and language) shapes the world http://j.mp/laH95w #
• #travelinsight 41: Better to have an explanation of Vernier Calipers in your notebook or use your ruler and express the result in cm and m? #
• What stinks about the reports of Quaddafi’s son and grandchildren being killed by NATO, and his ceasefire offer http://j.mp/lCPPib #
• #travelinsight 40: Seeing a petrified chicken in crowded bus reinforces my veganism. After emphasizing with the livelihood aspect in theory. #
• #travelinsight 39: Moving market failure: get ripped off even knowing the right price. Supply and demand can be very local. Ad hoc oligopoly #
• #travelinsight 38: You can fit 10 people and a big backpack in a car. And the police gives you a friendly wave. #
• Interessante, stellenweise lange Rezension eines neuen Buches über Religiosität in den USA. Fremdes, spannendes Amerika! http://j.mp/l6e51X #

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A fascinating article which I found through the Valuscience Blog of my friends at Magic in Stanford is titled „Is Chernobyl a Wild Kingdom or a Radioactive Den of Decay?“. The authors, Timothy Mousseau, a US-based evolutionary biologist, and Anders Møller, a Danish biologist, basically debunk the myth that already after a relatively (for standards of nuclear waste and pollution) short period of time, the „Chernobyl Exclusion Zone“ has become almost a national park’s worth of happy wildlife. The article is very long and narrative in tone, though, so here are some remarkable findings of my skimming.

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Hatte heute schon meinen ersten Tag als Physiklehrer in Form 1 und 3 (entsprechend Klasse 8 und 11) der Sekundarschule in Kagondo nahe Bukoba, wo auch Justus mit Familie wohnt. Und bin so bewegt, dass ich gleich was dazu schreiben muss.

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