Polar Bear Christmas

Can somebody please explain to me what polar bears have to do with Christmas. I totally get that in parts of the northern hemisphere the celebration of Christ's birth happens to fall in the season of winter. So it is natural to associate wintry things with Christmas. E.g. snow, robins and holly with red berries. (Of course the holly is there all year round, but the berries only come out in winter)

What I don't get is polar bears. They don't migrate south into New York state in winter, or anywhere else. So why do we see so many pictures of them cheesing it up for X-mas?

If you want to put this lovable creature in your garden this Christmas then you are a deranged maniac. But the good news is you can totally buy it from Walmart. (Out of stock at time of writing.) Not only that, but America's friendliest supermarket has generously discounted it from $54.00 to $53.93. That is a hugemongous 0.13% saving, after all, this is the season of good will.

Additive Number Theory is Hard

.. for example nobody has published a (correct) proof of the Goldbach conjecture that claims every even number is the sum of two primes. Maybe this isn't actually additive number theory as it concerns the addition of prime numbers, and prime numbers are the building blocks of multiplicative number theory.

But let me tell you a couple of interesting results I found recently on the internet.

Question:
Suppose I want to add some numbers and get a specified total. How many ways are there to do this?

Let's see how many ways there are to add up to 4. You have 1+1+1+1, 1+1+2, 1+3, 2+2 and 4. That makes five ways to add up to 4. Amazing. It makes sense to restrict ourselves to using positive integers, and to ignore the order of the summands. Adding up numbers like this to get a total of n is called a partition of n. So we get to say there are 5 partitions of 4.

Let's define a function!

p(n) = The number of partitions of n.

Simple aye? Here are the first few values. Notice how it grows rather quickly.

n	p(n)
1	1
2	2
3	3
4	5
5	7
6	11
7	15
8	22
9	30
10	42
11	56
12	77
13	101
14	135
15	176
16	231
17	297
17	297
18	385
19	490
20	627

This is the partition function and encodes the answer to the above question. Of course it is still hard to evaluate p(n) for a given n, so we are no closer to answering the above question. But you have to feel that by learning about this function, we are making progress.

If you restrict in some way the numbers you can use to get to your specified total, (e.g. primes or squares) then you can do some interesting maths...

Every positive whole number can be written as the sum of four squares. (The four squares theorem)

Now we know a few technical words I can share the interesting result I found.

If n = 5k+4 then p(n) is divisible by 5.
If n = 7k+5 then p(n) is divisible by 7.
If n = 11k+6 then p(n) is divisible by 11.

It seems crazy to me that the divisibility of the number of partitions of n should be related to n like this. Check them for yourself using the table I helpfully provided. The sequence of numbers in the right hand column is one that naturally turns up all over the place and people love to spot patterns in apparent randomness. I strongly suspect that the ancient Greeks or whoever had seen that these results hold for all the values they could check, but were unable to prove them in general.

These results are attributed to Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician whose genius was so unlike anything before or since that you can't help but regard him as a bit mad. His works are dense with the most complicated formulas and I am always bewildered at how he discovered them.

Rhubarb: Part 2

It seems customary these days to begin my post by explaining why it is so long since the last post. However I can't imagine anybody is eagerly waiting for an update on Coughing Fit. The explanation is simple; I have been putting more of my spare time into other things recently. Like watching all the cookery shows on TV at the moment.

Today I finally got to do some gardening. Which is a relief, because I was on the verge of missing my opportunity to get lots of tasks done before winter really prevents gardening. This morning was one of those rare occasions when the weather and my family responsibilities simultaneously allowed me to get in the garden. I seized the moment and made sure I got everything done I needed.

There are still lots of leaves left on the trees, but I got most of the ones on the ground. If I don't get a chance to collect leaves again this year I don't think it will be too bad. But more importantly I moved project rhubarb along a bit. Having cleared a suitable space last time, today I continued to prepare the ground. I mixed loads of home made compost into the clay and rocks. I also removed a few rocks. The soil gets a little better everytime I go out there. As instructed in my rhubarb book, I stuck a whole load of compost into some deep holes and marked the spots ready for spring.

Not only that, but today was one of those very rare occasions when I do some gardening that isn't just weeding and tidying - I planted some things. I had three peonies to plant - can't wait to find out what they look like when they grow. They were just weird bits of twigs when I opened the bag. I hope I put them in the right way up. After that I started the knee-destroying job of planting enough bulbs to keep the Dutch economy going a little longer.Well, perhaps not that many. There were 65. The idea is that you randomly toss them over the site and then plant them wherever they fall. The first part of that is much more fun than the second.

At first glance this may appear very similar to my previous photo of the site. However now it actually contains three peonies, which are virtually invisibly at this stage. And a stick indicating where to plant rhubarb.

After al that work I was tired and dirty and reckoned I deserved a little rest. So I treated myself to a luxury lunch of Heinz smoky BBQ beans on toast. Which was pretty good. Perhaps the second best BBQ type beans I have ever had. The best was at a BBQ earlier this year: some people who I didn't know did them properly, cooking bacon and onions and things. They were nice.

Beans on toast: A meal fit for a king

Something to look forward to

Not just lots of rhubarb crumble. I have made a couple of discoveries this week, which might possibly brighten my life a bit over the coming months.

Since getting back from america, I have had a renewed enthusiasm for playing the piano. And I have changed the way I play in two ways, both motivated by my desire to amaze people with my fingers (and emotional swaying) should I ever get chance to play the piano to my friends. I plan to play music people will like (aka popular music) and, I plan to play it at any opportunity. This means learning some pop songs, and also, learning them so well that I can play them with no sheet music or aide-memoires whilst drunk.

This is not an easy task, and I have never been very good at memorising music. But with enough effort it might be possible. The hard part is remembering which songs I can remember. I think I am allowed to make a note of that in my phone. But I still have to learn some pop songs. I have been spending some time in the evenings in the last couple of weeks watching videos explaining how to play particular songs.  The frustrating thing is that it is often 18 hours or so later before I can actually play the piano. It is quite a memory challenge to watch a video tutorial and then try to play the piece so much later. I have so far failed to get anything more than the main hook for a few songs.

But then I made a real discovery. A professional pianist who "gives" away sheet music of the pop-songs she plays. (Turns out that gives means you are required to make a donation, but whatever.) So I am totally going to get a few and see if I can learn them. Also, watching all her videos made me realise that I don't object to keyboards (and digital pianos) as much as I used to.

Vika Yermolyeva getting a good sway on.

In a completely unrelated turn of events I started listening to my first ever podcast today. Not entirely sure when I am going to get to listen to it, but now I can get clued up on the weekends NFL fixtures before they happen. It features my favourite ever sports-pundit (it's not a long list): Mike Carlson.

Win a trip to Krispy-Kreme (cash value £10). Be the first to correctly comment with what Mike and I have in common. I will give you a clue, it isn't our taste in shirts. 

Another upcoming treat to look forward to is the new season of Masterchef: The Professionals. Featuring beard enthusiast Michel Roux Jnr and his dim-witted sidekick Greg Wallace, it is actually quite entertaining. It also has Monica Galetti in it, who glares at the contestants until they start crying. Masterchef random quote generator says:

There's no place in Masterchef for pink food. There's no place in the world for pink food.

Another poll about food

Am now back from a recent trip stateside. Which, in part, is responsible for the lack of blogging in recent weeks. I got to do both those things that Americans love to do: work hand and impose democracy on a far away country. Only kidding, the two things I am thinking of that Americans love to do are eat far too much and watch TV. I got to eat lots and lots, and I also watched a small amount of TV. Sometimes I even got to combine the two by watching TV whilst eating. Not only that, but on at least one occasion when I wasn't eating, I was watching the food network in my room.

Which reminded my of Rachel Ray.

Rachel Ray. Like really, what are you going to keep in those pockets?

Who is actually some sort of celebrity chef, who totally has a TV show and writes cookbooks and things. I like this acticle about her, particularly the sentence, "Objects derive meaning from their context".

Food shows are vaguely educational right? Although perhaps for TV purposes they get classed as entertainment. But the the thing that grinds my gears about Ray (or Rachel Ray as people like to call her) is that she can't decide how to pronounce endive. Every single time she mentions the vegetable she says "en-dive or on-deev" and makes a failed little joke out of it. I strongly feel she is supposed to be the authority on this recipe she is presenting, but she seems to be admitting her own ignorance. Just pick one and stick to it woman, people will follow you. And if someone writes it to complain about your pronunciation, then you can sit back and smile, smug in the knowledge that they are a tool, and you are far better looking and wealthier than the people that watch your show.

We all know sex and food make a great combination. And I think we should have a poll on the topic. Another celebrity chef who who likes to combine the two is Nigella.

I was about to try and write some words to express my thoughts on the her, but instead I will unashamedly quote from this blog.

When she leaned over to stir the batter for a chocolate cheesecake I swear I could see the cameraman waging a Herculean internal war to remain professional and not fill the screen with her magnificent breasts, and as my own febrile lust reached the boiling point Nigella pulled her wooden spoon from the creamy, russet mixture, trailing a thick bolus of sweetness to her slowly-parting lips and orgasmically sighed “Mmmmmm…” with unbridled sensuality, later punctuated with an equally erotic and drawn-out “Yuuuuuuum.”

I remember seeing a photo of Ainsley wearing nothing but a bunch of grapes. The internet seems incapable of finding this photo for me again, and so I am unable to share it with you. It will just have to remain a happy memory. It is also the sole reason why I think he deserves a spot in the poll.

Giada de Laurentiis is another american who, like Ray, clearly got a job on TV for her culinary knowledge and skills. Sophie Dahl on the other hand is some sort of ex-model who likes food. The rest are just in the poll to make up numbers.

What's on TV

Filling the hole left by Thomasina Miers is a new cookery show on Channel 5. The "Real Food Family Cook Off" features well known foodies Matt Dawson, Lisa Faulkner and Anton du Beke. (Fair enough it does have Ainsley Harriot).

Celebrity slapper Matt Dawson MBE had a successful rugby career but has spent the subsequent years faffing around trying to keep his face on TV. He tried dancing and cooking, and now he is trying hosting a food show. If A Question of Sport was Shooting Stars, then Matt Dawson would be Jack Dee.

Anton du Beke is quoted as saying that he can turn anybody into a great dancer. He was also in another cooking show, "Step up to the Plate" with Lloyd Grossman.

Lisa Faulkner used to be a model or some shit. They say don't trust skinny chefs, I guess that might extend to commentary on cookery shows by skeletor.

However, this latest competition based show pales into insignificance next to Monday's "gripping" final of Antiques Master. Unfortunately, I was rooting for the lady specializing in antique tiles, who didn't make it to the final.

Celebrity lesbian Sandi Toksvig was an obvious choice to host  Antiques Master

A Note on the Nature of the Universe

Made a discovery this week and I feel it is my duty to share it with the world in the hope that others don't make the same mistake I did.

I had just finished cleaning up after dinner and made a cup of tea, and I knew that a little later on that evening we would be having plum crumble and custard. I figured I would do some preparation and start the custard, then I could sit down for an hour and all I had to do later was press "start" on the microwave. So I mixed the custard powder and sugar and milk and left it in the microwave. Then I could settle down with my tea and not move for a while.

Later I put the second part of my plan into action and turned the microwave on. However things didn't work out quite like I had planned. For it seems that in the hour I was sat watching TV the custard has settled. So when I first checked to see how it was getting on, it was all runny at the top, and proper solid and messed up at the bottom. Perhaps the best thing to do in this situation would have been to scrap it and start again. But I was so looking forward to not having to bend over to get the ingredients out of the cupboard, that I just made the best of what I had. It tasted alright, but it wasn't the lovely velvety custard I was expecting.

Keep this in mind though... The plan might have worked if I had stirred it just before starting to cook it.