The aging United States demographics means that there will be more older people collecting Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid than there are young people generating enough money for these programs. This financial gap will get larger and larger the more time we wait. Kotlokoff says we need to do something immediately otherwise the fiscal system is headed for a meltdown. He has his own ideas as to what we should do. But will the politicians listen is a different story.
The below video is a parody of Disney created by Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University. It explains the U.S. copyright laws and the types of work that it protects such as music, film, dance, etc. It says that ideas can not be copyrighted. Only the form in which that idea is express is copyrighted. It talks about the duration of copyright and when a work goes into public domain when copyright expires. And finally it explains the copyright fair use doctrine.
Here is a 4×4 KenKen game generator where you can play some KenKen games. If that is too easy, try the 6×6 KenKen below.
The Origins
The KenKen puzzle was introduced by Japanese math teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto in 2004. The KenKen puzzle comes in the form of a grid of squares commonly in the dimensions of 4 squares by 4 squares, 5 squares by 5 squares, 6 by 6, 7 by 7, and 8×8, and 9×9. The larger the grid, the more difficult the puzzle.
The Rules
In the grid, groups of squares form “cages” indicated by their bold outlines. In the upper-left of each cage, is a number with a mathematical operation. You have to put digits in the squares such that the mathematical operation of those digits results in that number. The digits can be in any order. But you can not have a repeat of a digit in any row or column of the larger grid.
And you can only use digits up to the size of the grid. For example, if your grid is a 5×5 grid, then you can only use the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to fill into the squares.
Puzzle-master Will Shortz of NPR radio will introduce us on the rules of KenKen puzzles and how to solve them.
The above video was showing a KenKen that only uses the add operation of the digits. However, general KenKen puzzles have add, minus, multiply, and divisor operators indicated next the results number within their cages. The below video shows how to work out these more difficult forms of the puzzles.
You can give the game a try by playing KenKen online here. There you will find the rules for the game as well.
The acclaimed movie Slumdog Millionaire depicts life in India as two orphan brothers (Jamal and Salim) grows up in the slum of Mumbai. Through a series of adventures in search for his love Latika, the protagonist Jamal ends up working at a call center and then ended up on the India’s version of the show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” — which he wins since he happens to know all the answers to through his previous adventures.
The other brother Salim was not so lucky as he got involved with gangsters — a by-product of the crime-ridden neighbor in which they grew up.
Slumdog Millionaire was winner of the 2009 Oscars for Best Picture, best Directing, best Music Song, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Cinematography, and Writing Adaptive Screenplay.
He has some middle eastern comedy acts in his skits, but they are all done in good taste. In fact, he wants to dispel some of the Middle Eastern stereo-types. He says, just once he wants to see an Middle Easterner on TV doing regular things (like baking a cookie)…
On NPR interview with Terry Gross, Maz talked about his acting career and how he was on the hit TV show “24″. Maz Jobrani attended University of California at Berkeley and even enrolled in the PhD program in UCLA. His mother had wanted him to become a doctor, lawyer — okay, or say car mechanic (instead of acting).
Maz is well-known enough to be on Wikipedia. More about Maz Jobrani and his tour schedule on his website.
Steven Purugganan of Massachusetts set some world records in Sport Stacking at the 2009 WSSA World Sport Stacking Championships. You can see videos of him breaking the world record at WorldSportStackingAssociation.org. This is a sport where you stack cup in various formation and you try to stack them as fast as you can. It requires fast and good hand-eye coordination.
Steven is 11 year old as of this writing. He has been doing it for some time, below is an older video of him being interviewed by a local radio station.
MS Paint is a paint program that comes with Windows operating system. MS Paint does not come close to having all the features of Photoshop; it has only the very basic painting tools. However, if you are a artist, you can make due with whatever tools you have. Below is a video of someone who painted a replica of the famous Mona Lisa artwork using only MS Paint in 2.5 hours.
You put digits from 1 to 9 in the empty squares. Each column and row should have one and only one unique digits. In addition, each of the nine smaller 9×9 grids should only contain one of each digit. In other words, no duplicate digits in any columns, rows, or marked inner 9×9 grids.
