Furiousmind

This post is just to tell you about a petition that is trying to achieve recognition and protection of animals. They need 10 million signatures, but, unfortunately, they are far from that goal.

The description, extracted from the site, is:

Help us achieve global recognition that animals matter, that they can feel pain and can suffer and that we have a responsibility to put an end to cruelty around the world. We seek 10 million signatures to let the governments of the world know we are serious about achieving a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare at the United Nations.

If you care about animals, please go to their website and sign the petition. Besides that, you can help them spreading the word.

This last weekend (1st to 3rd December) we had the visit of our friends Zé and Alexandra. It was nice to see them again and, although the weather was a bit cold, we were very lucky, since there was no rain! Anyway, the purposes of this post are manifold: we wish to record their visit to Nottingham, to write a little about what we have done and to show to our friends and family that have not been here yet the place where we are.

So, let’s start with the places where we have been (ordered chronologically).

Beeston

Beeston is the town where we live (3 miles from the city centre). In the Saturday morning, we basically walked from our house, through the High Road (the one in the picture), to the bus station. We got into the wrong bus (sorry guys!) and we went in the opposite direction; we spent something like 30 or 40 minutes in the returning bus :( But, of course, this was planned: we wanted to show them Chilwell! ;)

University Park and the squirrels

From Beeston we went to the University Park. We got in through Highfields Park and we had two very specific goals: the first, less important, was to show them the Trent Building and the main campus; the second, and most important, was to feed the squirrels :)

To be accurate, we wanted to feed all the other animals as well (pigeons, ducks, geese and other kinds of birds that are usually interested :-) ). Squirrels are very friendly and they come to your hand to get the food! Zé took some nice pictures, as you can deduce from the squirrel photo.

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Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding is a 19-minute short-film about teaching at University. It is the winner of “Det gyldne Snit” 2006 and if you are interested about teaching (or learning) in an University environment, we highly recommend it!

The film presents, in a very effective and funny way, how teaching and learning are being done in universities. It basically compares different types of teachers and students in several different situations.
But the best thing about the movie is that it is constructive. It presents more effective ways (or theories) to teach and learn in an university environment.

Maybe it’s because we have started recently teaching (and sometimes we get depressed with students behaviour), but there were two quotes that we think are worth noting here:

Transmission is not the way humans learn

and

“Learning takes place through the active behavior of the student; it is what he does that he learns, not what the teacher does. (Ralph W. Tyler, 1949)” .

Hence, the lesson is that learning is an activity that requires initiative and action! That’s what we tell to our (mathematics) students: they will only learn if they practice.

(We thank Claus Brabrand for the comments and the corrections.)

Director: Mel Stuart
Stars: Gene Wilder, Peter Ostrum, Jack Albertson
Year: 1971

IMDB Link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0067992/

The other day we have seen the 1971 version of Roald Dahl’s children story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We have enjoyed Tim Burton’s version (2005) and we were a bit excited to compare both films.

The first thing we noticed about the older film is that there are differences in some important aspects:

• there is no mention to Wonka’s father (the dentist) nor to Wonka’s childhood;
• the Oompa Loopas songs don’t mention the children names;
• there is a scene where Charlie and his grandpa taste some funny drink — it seems that the 1971 Charlie is less innocent and angelical than the 2005 one;
• the announcement to Charlie that he won the factory is very different. In fact, it is a bit scary :)
• after Wonka telling Charlie that the prize is the factory, Charlie asks if he can take his family with him. Wonka replies that he can take his whole family. If you’ve watched the 2005 film, you’ll remember that when Charlie makes this question, Wonka says no. And then Charlie replies that he wouldn’t change his family by all the chocolate in the world. A nice message :-)
• we would say that the Depp’s Wonka is eccentric and lunatic, whilst Wilder’s Wonka is lunatic and scary.

We never read the book, so we are now very curious about the real story (it’s always nice to see if the film follows the real story or not). Maybe in the future we can update this post with additional information related with the book.

We have tried this vegetarian recipe some days ago. It is not difficult to make it and it also tastes very well. We really enjoyed this meal so we decided to share the recipe with you. Enjoy it! :)

Ingredients (Serves 2)

• 1 large aubergine
• 150g red lentils
• 50g butter
• small red pepper, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 50g breadcrumbs
• 50g Cheddar cheese, grated
• salt and white pepper

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Recently, we have watched Sideways, Melinda and Melinda, The Stepford Wives and The Notebook. Although this post presents our opinions about these films, its main goal is just to register some information about them. If you intend to visit this blog regularly, you will see that we will do this frequently. The reason is very simple: sometimes we just forget important details about the films we see and we want to use the blog to help us remember.

(Click the following link to read our opinions)

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Hello stranger! Welcome to the brand new blog from João Ferreira and Alexandra Mendes (who are we?).

So, what can you expect from this blog? Nothing much, really. We will use it mainly as a tool for registering thoughts, ideas, experiences or other things that may occur. We expect to post about topics like cinema, society, technology, programming, travelling and personal stuff.
You are more than welcome to visit this place and leave your comments.
And be warned: some contents will be highly boring.

Thanks and see you soon!

Furiousmind is the personal blog from João Ferreira and Alexandra Mendes. Just like many others, it is mainly made by useless information.

The authors are PhD students at the University of Nottingham. For more information, visit their homepages (check the Links list).

Many thanks to Paulo Abrantes who kindly hosts this blog in his server.