Magic: Real or just an Illusion

Today the Orlando Magic pulled off two block buster deals. They traded Rashard Lewis to the Washington Wizzards, and received Gilbert Arenas. They also traded Marcin Gortat, Vince Carter, and Mickael Pietrus along with a future draft pick and cash consideration to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Richardson, and Earl Clark.

From the perspective of an Orlando Magic fan, I have no doubt behind the GM Otis Smith motivations (Although I would have preferred Smith bring in Carmelo or at least traded away Jason Williams. I will never forgive him for letting Rando humiliate him last year) . We all watched Orlando crash and burn last year against the Celtics. Orlando had the home court advantage and yet lost the first two games. They lacked consistency and could not score. By letting Perkins go one on one with Howard, the Orlando offense could not create shots. Nelson got into the paint some, but Lewis and Carter struggled to find their game with out the double teams on Howard.

Orlando had a very talented team before the trade (what team with Dwight Howard wouldn't be?), but they were never going to be as good as the Celtics or Lakers. With Miami rising they might not have even made the conference championship. But did the trade really give them the necessary bump?

With the trade Orlando gained a scorer in Richardson, a past all-star with something to prove in Arenas, and a play maker in Turkoglu. They also shed Carter and Lewis who both had trouble creating their own shot and both were having worse seasons this year compared to last. Turkoglu helped take the Magic to the finals in 2008 and Richardson helped lead his team on an improbable playoff run last season. The players brought in average 11.3 more points per game and improve the talent of the Magic starting five.

My gut tells me that the move will work to some degree. Arenas, eager to shed his image as a borderline criminal, will play with new found energy. Turkoglu, who has been unable to find his rhythm with different clubs will settle into his old roll with the Magic, and Richardson will provide the true scorer the Magic lacked. I cannot wait to see an all Florida Playoff series.

Quarter in Review

As you probably know this last August I moved up to Columbus Ohio. I left behind the best of friends, the familiarity of Rice, and the comfort of having your parents only 2 hours away (I don't know how they have time to do their jobs and be as good to me as they are). The move meant change and more change than the landscape or the climate. Although I do think of Jack London's "To Build a Fire" every morning when I walk to school.

The past few months I started cooking for my self and teaching first year calculus. Each had their share of ups and downs.

About mid October I had tired of the few meals I knew how to cook and frozen Pizzas. I wanted something new and different. So I set out to make cheese quesadillas. Being completely inexperienced in pan frying tortillas, I called my mother for guidance, but even she could not prevent the mess that followed. To cut it short, cheese + oil + tortilla + inexperienced cook= big mess. If any one out there has a good tip for getting burnt oil off my pans I would really appreciate it. They are still dirty.

Winning the award for biggest teaching goof of the quarter came in the fifth week of classes. Often when teaching math, the teacher takes the liberty of shortening words or phrases to save time. Continuous becomes cont and measurable becomes mble. "Without Loss of Generality" becomes WLOG and "The Following Are Equal" becomes TFAE. These short cuts liberate the students from burdensome words that hinder the flow of ideas, but sometimes they create the wrong idea. As was the case when I tried to shorten "Want To Find." Fortunately no one took offense.

The quarter of teaching held also brought many successes, and perhaps the best of which came in the form of terrific students. I had quite a few, but the best by far was a first year girl in my 4:30 class. She made my classes so enjoyable. What I would not give to have 10 students like her. Every class she came presented me with 2-3 difficult problems that she wanted to know the answer to. I'm thinking of doing a second post to just present to you all the neat problems she asked me. Among the best she posed was "why does the derivative of arcsec(x) change when you used a different definition of arcsec(x) (An explanation here)?" For a first year to ask such a question blew my mind. I thank her so much for being my student.

Thank you to Beth for helping me out with my question about snow. I feel better prepared already.

Misting snow

The weather turned here in Columbus last night. I woke to find that it had snowed in the night (only my 3rd ever sighting of snow) and it continued to snow all day. However, it never precipitated very hard, which begs the question what is the definition of snow? And if what I was seeing was not snow, then what word should I use to refer to a light sprinkling of snow? For varying intensities of rain you can have a drizzle, a flood, a down pour, a shower, a thunderstorm, a deluge or a sprinkle, and all describe a very different kind of rain. In Texas it never snowed enough to necessitate more than one word for snow. If there are words for varying degrees of snow I would be glad to hear. Until then I think I'll just say it misted snow today.