Notes from our kitchen. Math problems. Putin in doubles down.

20220921

We built our house planning on a gas stove. It took the gas company two years to connect us, by which time Russia had annexed Crimea in the People's Republics and made people leery of gas heat.

The primitive electric stovetop we put in as an interim measure gave out this year. You can no longer easily buy resistance heat burners, besides which we had to fit a tight space between the two by fours holding the countertop. We bought an induction stovetop.

I had inquired repeatedly but never found out for sure how much you have to change when you get an induction stovetop. We discover that our enameled steel pots work fine. One saucepan does and one doesn't. Our aluminum Presto pressure cooker does not work at all.

We had three modern style frying pans. The kind that are nonstick for at least three months, and then go bad. There are many bad ones are already in the sandbox, feeding the cat, and given away. The three we were using were just sort of bad.

The need to buy iron or steel pushed me to do something I should have done long ago. Get cast-iron pans.  Чавунні.  They work differently. The food sticks for the first two weeks, after which they are broken in. Nothing sticks for the rest of their lifetime.  One Griswold frying pan lasted my entire childhood. Cast-iron frying pans are the kind that women hit their husbands over the head with in old cartoons. They weigh a ton. They have a good feel in your hand.

The induction stove has its own quirks. It heats up amazingly quickly. You can control the heat very precisely. Because the burners don't retain much heat you can leave the pot on the stove after you turn it off. It has separate timers for each burner, so you can turn on and forgot about it. On the other hand – isn't there always another hand? – you can easily bump the controls while you're moving pots around and turn the whole thing off. The heat selector is too delicate for my fat fingers. It gives quirky, computer style error messages. And, so I read, it emits a lot of electromagnetic radiation.

Today I ordered an adapter. If it works we can put our other saucepan and our pressure cooker back to work.

In other news, I read this article from bad cattitude which includes a math problem from level 6 ( the hardest ) of the 2012 version of the PISA test given to students worldwide. The article said that only 3% of the 15 and 16-year-olds who take the test get it right. This is the kind of thing 10-year-old Eddie is studying so I asked him. He didn't structure the problem right on first take, but once he did he solved it quickly.

We had just been working on a problem from his 6th grade math book that I consider equally challenging. This one has a real Ukrainian flavor:

Army fund contributions took 1.5% of total payroll in 2018. The "Patriot" company paid its director 12,000 Hryvnia per month and each of the three employees 9000. Besides that, every month the director directly contributed 800 and each of the three employees 600 to the fund. How much did the company contribute for the whole year of 2018?

Bad cattitude's point was that different countries have different averages.  Taiwan tops the list, with 18% of the students in category six. Several others in the list he includes have 0% in either category five or category six. These differences are not something that an international director of diversity can easily straighten out with remedial training. They seem to be baked in. And this is why Taiwan has a big semi conductor industry and other countries do well to export lithium, coconuts and mangoes.

Today is Oksana and my 12th anniversary. We did not make a big deal of it. I improvised generously on a salmon fettuccine recipe last night, substituting for just about everything except the salmon itself, and it went over pretty well. Tonight was a simple pizza.

I remember thinking at the 12 year mark in my 25 year marriage that it wasn't wonderful but we I could probably survive. I might have managed if the kids hadn't become so woke that they absolutely canceled me. Without them, and with no prospect of grandchildren, it was really a question of why bother? I'm glad that the spirit moved me to try again.

Oscar Wilde wrote: "Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."   He had nothing to say about third marriages.  If he did, it might be something on the order of "Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while."

Over dinner Oksana discussed the fact that Putin has finally been pushed to a general mobilization and that the news here is that the youth in Russian cities are up in arms. Our news, as you would expect, is hardly unbiased. Nevertheless I am sure that Putin had exercised restraint up until now out of prudence more than a sense of compassion.  YouTube star, Ukrainian war reporter Denys Davidov offers the opinion that it is simply more meat for the grinder. Given that they will not have time enough for adequate training, and that Russia’s modern arms and munitions have been pretty well depleted by now, He may be right. There will be interesting times ahead.

Eddie is doing a great job of writing his biology homework and pretty good work in math. He still allows himself to be quite frequently distracted. On the other hand, he is passionate about working with his bees, and quite stoic about getting stung more frequently than I would put up with. I had mixed feelings about his starting a rocketry course at a local university. It will distract him more from his studies, but on the other hand, there is a lot to be said for being occupied with things that interest you.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man has spent much of the last two days taking care of daughters. I've gone over the Latin and Ukrainian alphabets with Zoriana and done a couple of puzzles. Home from kindergarten with a cold, she is nevertheless wearing her roller-skates all over the house every day. Oksana had another great music lesson today. Only five students, and they were with her all the way. Life is good.

Graham