Did you know…

… that a Canadian toonie (a 2-dollar coin) actually has two pictures of the Queen?
One — the side-view (see here), and the other — the group photo with princes William and Harry (see here).

=)

Canadian Roosters Keep Their Heritage!

Here’s an interesting story.

There is a place somewhere in the northern part of southern Ontario (and no, it is not called “mid Ontario” or something similar), where a Tim Hortons (the most popular cafe franchise in Canada) borders an animal farm. Every morning, same time, a rooster walks into the Tim Hortons. They feed him donuts and he leaves back home to the farm. Even more, he only likes particular kinds of donuts.

Just what you would expect from a Canadian rooster! :D

Source: my brother told me this story after he saw it on TV or somewhere else, I’m not too sure. If someone could point to the original story, that could be great!

“Americans versus Canadians” or “How I am so happy and proud to be Canadian!”

The turn to answer the long lastingly annoying question of “who is better: Canadians or Americans?” has fell upon my fiancee and myself today. Little did we know, the answer was right in front of us.

Now, as it is customary to say, “viewer discretion is advised”, because the text contains intricate subject matter. Rated as SN (Somewhat Nationalistic). Before I make any further remarks, I would like to say that I certainly do not generalise the following image of an American person to the entirety of masses, for I happen to know plenty of people, who carry an American passport of their own, who at the same time happen to be extremely intelligent, interesting, educated and all in all very nice people and who deserve my deepest respect.

In our trip to the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory (which you can read about here), which is located here
I shall direct your attention that it is located very well on the Canadian side — this fact will come in handy in the discussion below.

My Favourite Math Video!

What does it take to compute 1/3 + 1/2 – 2/3?

I don’t know about you, but for me it first took about 3 to 4 minutes of thinking, then another minute of thinking about how stupid I am, then it took calling out the Run window to type “calc” in order to call out the calculator, then ridiculously typing in all those fractions and realising that the answer I get is a weird long number and that I cannot figure out what it is as a simple fraction, and then finally pulling out my normal calculator from the bag and punching in those fractions to get a good answer as a fraction. This was followed by another half a minute to a minute of thinking that there might be something wrong with me… =\ hmmm…

I am so greatful that neither mathematics nor physics are really about numbers. They just pretend that they are. :)

Update: The answer is 1/6, by the way, for those who encounter similar difficulties. :)

4 + 1 = infinity !?

While naively expecting to obtain 5 as a result of my calculation, I have, on the contrary, obtained an infinity. At the first proof-read, I wasn’t able to find what the mistake was, and so it had gotten me thinking: can 5 really equal infinity?

Well, the answer, perhaps surprisingly, is a definite yes! Indeed, just think about it: what if you only know how to count to 4?

That didn’t help me with the solution, by the way, so I agreed to follow the grey, uninteresting and boring convension: 5 \not = \infty… But just imagine how much brighter our lives would be, if that was true! Would it not?