I like the thinking in the School of Arts and Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Every few weeks in Spring and Autumn, one of the faculty share their perspectives on topics ranging from human history and the knowable universe, to fractions and fly-fishing – and they are only allocated one minute for the lecture.

Should be compulsory everywhere.

We’ll feature some of these lectures in ‘What I Learnt Today’.

Today – Dennis DeTurck, a mathematician and the Professor for Excellence in Teaching, says “Down with Fractions!”

What I Learnt On 16th September in other years

16th September 2013 Alex in Wonderland – Shakespeare and Company

There are times when it feels like we may be living in Australia Zoo. 

On Sunday a koala climber up a tree to watch the boys play backyard footy. 

Yesterday loud squawking alerted us to a pair of magpies swooping a huge goanna, to drive it away from their nest. They were successful, and the goanna retreated to a refuge under the fig tree. 

And soon after that, Murray the wonder dog started barking madly. A snake had come to visit, and was by the front door. 

Calmy, it slithered through the garage and off to some bushes on the boundary of our house. It was thin, about a metre long, with a greenish sides and a brown back. 

And today, two more snakes of the same species were sunning themselves in the driveway. 

Identifying snakes is notoriously diffcult. Herpetologists often have to count the number of dorsal scales to be sure of the species (really!).That’s more initmate than I want to get to a snake. 

What I Learnt On 15th September in other years

15th September 2013 Men are from Mars, Women are from…somewhere different

The only good red dot is a dead one.

Tilt to Live is currently a ‘preferred game; in our house.

In this asteroid-like iPad game, you steer your small space ship by tilting the iPad. Touching one of the swarm of red dots casues instant death, butyou can pick up and use orbs to destroy them and craete a clear path.

I thought 3 million was a good score – but Brendan has four.

Back to the battlefield.

What I Learnt On 14th September in other years

14th September 2013 Thou Shalt Not Add Oil to Pasta Water…the 10 Commandments of Italian Cooking

The Gold Coast’s favourite daughter Sam Stosur had a well-deserved tournament win today and is now the US Open Champion.

We have been reminded many times that the last Australian to achieve victory at Flushing Meadows was Margaret Court.

How much do you know about Margaret Court? Not as much as her record would warrant, I suggest.

Margaret Smith (b 1942) is (another) Albury girl made good. 

Like Stosur, she began playing tennis when she was 8. Fortuitously, her family lived across the road from the Albury Tennis Club. She is a natural left hander made to play with her right hand, like many cricket and tennis champions. She won her first of eleven Australian championships at the age of 17.

After Wimbledon in 1966, she retired from tennis to marry Barry Court (nominal determinism?).  She was younger than Stosur is now. She returned to tennis in 1968, at the start of ‘the Open Era’ of professional tennis, and played on and off during and between pregnancies until she finally retired in 1977, when she found out that she was pregnant with her fourth child.

Her record is second to none, and many rate her as the greatest tennis player of all time.

She is only one of three players to have ever held the ‘boxed set’ of Grand Slam Titles –  being champion of Singles, Doubles and Mixed Doubles in all four grand slams at the same time – and she achieved this twice!

In all she won 62 Grand Slam tournament titles, including a record 24 singles titles. (Aust Open 11, French Open 5, Wimbledon 3, US Open 5)

She won 92% of her 1176 games.

In 1973, the year Margaret Court last won the US Open, she also won the French and Australian Opens, and was a semi-finalist at Wimbledon. This success earned her a new world record in prize money for that year – an unheard of $200,000.

Today, Sam took home a cool $1.8 million. Not a bad day at the office.

When we were young, school holidays were endless. There were lots and lots of hours to spend playing board games. When necessary, we’d make new games ourselves.

(When we were thirteen we invented a cricket board game using cards and dice. We looked up Kerry Packer’s address in the white pages and sent a copy to him. He was kind enough to write back. World Series Cricket introduced their own cricket card board game the following year. Our’s was better)

I’ll bet you’ve got a set of Monopoly, Cluedo, Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble somewhere around your house. And I’ll bet that some of the pieces are missing. And I’ll bet that you haven’t played them for a long time. They each take so long to play. Who can con their family into playing Monopoly for 4 hours?

How can you use these games again, and make them fun? The ‘Board Game Remix Kit’ is the answer.

The Board Game Remix contains a number of new rules (‘tweals’) for each of these games. It also includes some fantastic ‘mash-ups’ that combine them in different combinations to create quite different games.

As they say in the introduction.

Boardgames! They’re pretty great – except when they’re not. 

When it’s Christmas Day and you find yourself playing Cluedo with a very clever seven-year-old, a slightly dim twelve-year-old, a drunken uncle, and three missing cards. 

When it’s the fourth day of a beachside holiday and it’s raining, and the pub down the road has Scrabble (which is great) but your friend knows a hundred and seven two-letter words by heart (which isn’t). 

When your household edition of Trivial Pursuit dates from the year you were born, which means (a) the board is in three pieces, and (b) an awful lot of the questions are about Gilligan’s Island, which you’ve never seen.

Maybe you even bought a more recent copy, only to find older family members grumbling at the focus on new-fangled celebrities like Britney Spears and ‘N Sync.

If this sounds familiar, the Boardgame Remix Kit is for you. It’s a set of new games that you can play using the board and pieces from Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo and Trivial Pursuit. Some of the new games are silly; some of them are tactical; some of them ask you to think fiercely, some of them ask you to make stuff up, some of them just ask you to sit around and chat.

The Board Game Remix is available as an eBook.

It is also available as an iPhone app.

A free sample containing some chapters to give you the idea is also available.

It is a great way to wile away some of those rainy days in your summer beach house.

What I Learnt On 11th September in other years

11th September 2014 Thank You for Waiting – People of Little or No Consequence May Board Now | Paper Aeroplane by Simon Armitage

Here are 25 things you might like to drop into your conversation to demonstrate your superior knowledge of all things related to the Rugby World Cup.

1. It starts today, with New Zealand to play Tonga, at 8.30pm NZ time. (Stop Press – NZ 41 Tonga 10)

2. The final is not till Sun October 23rd – that’s six weeks during which too much Rugby is just not enough.

3. New Zealand time is 2 hours ahead of Australian Time.

Kick off for each game varies – the earliest being 1pm (11am here in NSW) and the latest is the final on Oct 23rd at 9pm (7pm here).

4. The seven games that were scheduled to be played in Christchurch have had to be moved because of the earthquake on Feb 22nd. AMI Stadium (formally known as Jade Stadium, and officially called Lancaster Park) had an $80 million refurbishment for the RWC, with the new ‘Deans Stand’ only opened in January 2010. This stand will not be able to be used – in fact recent reports suggest that the Stadium is so damaged that it may never be able to be used again.

The Deans family were the first settlers in Christchurch, and have been part of Rugby in Canterbury for more than a century. Of course, Robbie Deans, a former All Black, is now the coach of Australia.

5. All 48 games will be shown live on Foxtel 3, which for Austar subscribers is included in the optional $18 per month Sports package.

Channel Nine have free-to-air rights, but are only showing some of the games. Even some of the Australian games are only shown on delay, including Australia vs Ireland.

A guide to the  TV coverage is available here.

6. Australia have 4 games in their Pool, Pool C (EST times)

• vs Italy Sun 11/9 1.30pm
• vs Ireland Sat 17/9 6.30pm
• vs USA Fri 23/9 6.30pm
• vs Russia Sat 1/10 12.30pm

7. All going to plan, the Wallabies will play (EST times)

• a Quarterfinal on Sat 1st October at 4pm,
• a Semi-final on Sat Oct 15th at 7pm,
• and then in the final on Sun 23rd October at 7pm

8. Teams that made the quarterfinals last year were automatically included in this RWC finals series. The other teams had to qualify. You may be surprised at some to the countries represented – including Russia, Namibia, Japan, Georgia, Romania and New Zealand. It is Russia’s first World Cup appearance.

9. Samoa have a difficult path to the quarterfinals, as they are in Pool D, the ‘pool of death’. Only two out of Samoa, Fiji, Wales, South Africa (and Namibia) will reach the quarter finals. 

10. The other important pool tussle is in Pool B, where only two out of England, Scotland and Argentina will procede to the quarter finals.

11. The first Rugby World Cup was held in Australia and New Zealand in 1987. The concept was initially opposed by the ‘Home Nations’, (England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland), who eventually attended, somewhat reluctantly. The Springboks were still under a boycott at the time. 16 nations played it what was a fairly informal event – matches in Sydney were played at Concord Stadium and crowds were fairly small.

12. Australia lost the Semi-Final of the 1987 World Cup to France (30-24) , when Serge Blanco scored in the final moments. It was sad. I was there.

13. Australia lost the 2003 World Cup Final 20-17, when Johnny Wilkinson kicked a field goal in th 20th minute of extra time, with 26 seconds left on the clock. It was sad. I was there.