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80s Nostalgy post #1

Saturday, July 21st, 2007

My brother has recently posted a nostalgical post about 80s music from our time in the United States. This, together with news about Bush’s attempt to shut down PBS remined me of the educational TV shows I enjoyed while in the US in the 80s, and especially Square One, a crazy show with math concepts (including quite advanced math) presented to children in an attractive form.

You can search YouTube for examples, but here are a few great clips, some of them still pop in to my memory even today:

  • Angle dance (… have some geometric fun)
  • Tesslations (ריצופים)
  • Apple rap “I think I see the problem/ I know what you mean…)
  • Graph of Love “Just glance at this graph my friend/ Romance shows an upward trend/ I’m singing the praises of/ a thing called the graph of love.”
  • Ghost of a Chance
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We are the finalists!

Friday, July 20th, 2007

My finalist medalToday I participated in the Israeli English Open Debating Championship at IDC in Herzliya. In a British Parliamentary Style debate four teams of two debaters represent two opposing opinions. The adjudicators then rank the teams according to how convincing they were and based on some rules.

In today’s tournament, me and my partner Mark broke to the finals, which means we were one on the four top ranked teams out of 20. We won two of the three preliminary rounds, and came third in the other round. We were the highest-ranked team of the three Technion teams.

The final was between us, two teams from IDC, and a legendary team of two very experienced debaters. The motion for the final was “This house believes in immediate withdrawal from Iraq”. We were first opposition. We did not win. However, all finalists got a medal, and so did I.

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BISFAI day 1 – Jet lagged

Monday, June 25th, 2007

Brain Research CenterThe Bar-Ilan Symposium on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence was last Wednesday – Friday at Bar Ilan University. I arrived at Bar Ilan right after my visa interview. As I noticed I arrived on time only for the lunch break, I decided to go and grab some lunch and meet with an online friend of mine who studies Biology at BIU.

After this very short but fun meeting, I made way to the main conference venue – the new Brain Research Center at BIU. The afternoon sessions were about Planning and Modeling, which are not my field of research. Moreover, I had trouble staying awake due to the early wake-up hours. So, I spent most of the time outside socializing with other people in the field. Many of them I have never met in Israel before, even though they were all Israelis.

I had a paper in the conference, which was presented by co-author — Avivit. I missed the presentation, but I heard from others that it went well.

After the conference day ended, I took a bus to Azrieli Center in order to meet with my brother and his wife and play video games. I arrived one hour early and looked for something to do, but all I could find were stores who sell clothes or food. So, I sat down on a bench and continued correcting Avivit’s paper.

When they finally arrived, we played many video games at the center and finally returned to their home in Hertzeliya to go to sleep for the second day of the conference.

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Posted in Academia, Gaming | 4 Comments »

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