Math Is Fun Forum

I am not sure if Ricky is referral to an a actual, personal sitution, but if my joke was tasteless and hurt anyone, I definitely apologe.

My estimation is that it cost about a quarter of a million dollars to save my life two+ years ago, and I am very grateful. I guess it was stoopid to post a joke implying that some people's lives are not worth very much. Every life is priceless, and the value of a life has nothing to do with money.

It looks like All_Is_Number has got it, and presented the solution in a way which even I can understand. George, Y is right about simplifying the amount by making it a constant. When I was trying to figure this out, I kept over-complicating the problem.

Funny that I thought George's signature was the solution! Reminds me of a real-life "who's on first?" mix-up which I was involved in recently. I had asked for the password of a protected site which I have the right to visit, and was told that the password is secret. I replied: "I understand that the password is secret, but what is it? You guessed, they had neglected to put quotes around "secret," so I thought they were telling me that the password is secret, but they actually meant to tell me that the password is, "secret."

I appreciate the friendly ambiance on this site. No one would even think of implying that I am stupid for not realizing that the equation is George's signature on mathisfun. It seems that people who are interested in the discussions are welcome no matter what their level of understanding.

I am guessing that most of the people on this forum are young, hence the question is about the worst punishment your parents ever used. I am 61 years old, so I am thinking more about the most stoopid punishments (we progressive typ parents call them "consequences") that I ever tried.

Not believing in hitting a child makes it challenging, so you have to try to think of other ways to coerce them...um, I mean - to convince them to cooperate.

When my son was very little, we had a ritual of reading bedtime stories, which really meant a lot to him, and which we both enjoyed. For awhile, my wife and I discovered that threatening to withhold the bedtime story was a powerful threat, which usually got results. However, for a threat to be credible, inevitably there comes a time when you actually have to carry it out. The times when I actually withheld the bedtime story, my son was devastated emotionally. It was terrible to hear him cry, and it was an emotional loss for both of us to destroy this special time when we normally connected. The bedtime ritual is an important way that a parent gives love and assurance to the child, and helps the child to feel safe at night. It was a bad mistake to have used this as a punishment.

Fortunately, my wife realized that it was a mistake. She said that the bedtime story should be held sacred, and never again used as a punishment...um, er, I mean "consequence."

Now that my son is 15 and asserting his autonomy, it has been years since he would have wanted me to read him a bedtime story. The last time I read him a story was when he was 13, I had just gotten out of the hospital with a life-threatening illness, I was weak and just getting back on my feet, and I said I wanted to read him a story (I must have seemed pretty pathetic). To humor the old man, he actually sat in the living room with me, and -- somewhat impatiently -- allowed me to read him a story.

Before I had kids, I was very critical of parents, particularly my own, and I did not have a clue as to the dilemnas and challenges a parent faces. I am not trying to justify taking away the calculus book: It es clearly a stoopid punishment to interfere with something positive that your child is passionate about. What I am saying is that we cannot necessarily assume that each of us would never make terrible mistake when we have the responsibility of being a parent. Sometimes a child will test you be doing something anti-social or otherwise unacceptible, just to put you on the spot as to how you will cope with it. When (and if) you become a parent, will you succeed in figuring out how to handle "impossible" situations?

I am really glad that Mikau shared this experience, and opened up an important discussion.

What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 40?

I have found that a major source of procrastination for me is a feeling that I have so much to do that it is overwhelming, and the one, little thing which I am thinking of doing now will be insignificant and make not real impact. Of course, I realize that this reasoning is self-defeating. Understanding the mental dynamic does not necessarily make it go away, but it does help to give me some motivation to ignore the mental knots and just get started.