Nicholas Size, a researcher at the technology firm Yahoo, has calculated the two-quadrillionth (that’s the 2,000,000,000,000,000th) digit of pi. When expressed in binary it is, wait for it….0.
Adding knowledge
Number lines, number bonds, Carroll Diagrams, the grid method and chunking are all common terms in the teaching of mathematics, or arithmetic as some would say, these days and there are many of the previous generations who are completely baffled by the new methods and techniques. Here is an interesting article on the subject…Why parents can’t do maths today…
Depp raking it in
Last year, actor Johnny Depp was in 10th place on the Forbes annual list of top earning actors with a measly salary of £18m. This year he is Numero Uno, after earning £50m for portraying the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton’s 3-D version of Alice in Wonderland. Depp also landed a big upfront payday, estimated at more than £15m, for …
Oktoberfest 2010
The 2010 Oktoberfest, the 200th anniversary of this famous beer festival, starts on September 18th at the Theresienwiese in Munich and continues until October 4th.
Well-trodden path
First Calzaghe, now Hatton. Former world boxing champion Ricky Hatton is reported to be ‘distraught and devastated’ after newspaper allegations of cocaine use. However, Hatton’s spokesperson, Max Clifford, apparently said the boxer had been urged by family and friends to go into rehab, adding: He does recognise that he’s in a bad way mentally and been in a bad place …
New fee when visiting the USA
The European Commission has expressed its regret at the announcement by the U.S. authorities that, as from now, all visitors to the United States from EU countries who do not require a visa will be charged a fee of €14 (about €11). This applies to all EU member states except Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus.
Interneticide
The popular web-based RSS reader and news aggregator Bloglines will discontinue service on Friday, October 1st 2010, its operators essentially saying that social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have killed it.
Response
Twitter contains a lot of famous people, of course, but it also has a lot of imitations. As a pastor withdraws his threat to burn the Koran over plans for an Islamic centre near Ground Zero, an (oviously) fake tweet from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad read:
Made to last
There are many documented cases of ‘fast food’ looking as fresh after six months or a year as it did when it was first produced. There are McDonald’s Happy Meals still looking great after 137 days, burgers still around after 12 years, all giving rise to questions about preservatives and chemicals. There is even a Museum of food-that-refuses-go-bad….The secret to …
Leave it to the nose
Are you one of those people who pour the milk down the drain on the expiration date? Expiration dates on food products can, of course, protect consumer health, but the dates are often more about quality than safety, and if not properly understood, they can also encourage consumers to discard food that is perfectly safe to eat…Food expiration dates: What …