Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Just because there's a correlation between two data sets doesn't automatically mean there is causation between the two. Take, for example, the various examples of spurious correlations at the blog Spurious Correlations. The site will even generate new correlations at your request.

correlation = -0.933

correlation = 0.992

 correlation = 0.993

These aren't from Spurious Connections, but they're relevant, too.

From Dinosaur Comics

From Glen Gilchrist

PS: In retrospect, maybe the title should be cum hoc ergo propter hoc rather that post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Back home again, in Cincinnati

I finally hunted this down after having heard it a few times in the past couple of years during the Reds' seventh-inning stretch. Connie Smith, everyone...



More Cincinnati songs after the jump...

"Son, this will keep the bad guys away..."

• The 2014 Idaho GOP Governors Primary Debate Will Make Your Faith in Politicians Plummet - Nope, but it is hilariously entertaining. May I recommend 4:41...8:26...19:40...and so much more...I'll be voting Harley Brown this spring!

Better Baking Through Science

Last quarter, one of my students turned in an extra credit assignment in which she had made chocolate chip cookies and done a little research to explain the chemistry that went on while the cookies baked.

She brought in the cookies for the class, and they certainly weren't bad. They weren't the best I'd ever had, but they were cookies I didn't have to make myself. I'm not one to look a gift cookie in the mouth.

The best part of the project, though, was the two resources to which she pointed me. The first is a video from Ted-ED that explains a lot of the science involved as dough turns into cookie.



The second is from SeriousEats and goes through variable by variable, eventually finding what they say is the best recipe around. The author explores the macroscopic results that all twenty-one change make and the science involved.

I need to do some baking because their final results - with a little sprinkle of salt on top - look outstanding.

I wish I could link you to the Cooks Illustrated recipe, because it's got some interesting takes (browned butter, one whole egg + one yolk, extra brown sugar). Sadly, though, it's behind a paywall. If you're willing to pay, Cooks Illustrated is a fun site from tip to tail.

Reflections about teaching: from Katie

Taking a break from the questions I had listed and answering something posed by Katie on my first post...

Is there a defining lesson that your students have taught you throughout your career that other careers may not get the opportunity to experience?

I think the lesson that I've learned that I don't know every other career gets to learn is that I had a wonderful childhood, and I owe my parents a phenomenal round of thanks for what they did for me.

I deal with a whole lot of wonderful young people day in and day out. I also work with a fair number of students for whom school isn't the first priority, and I understand that many of them aren't too worried about the chemistry that I'm teaching because they're worrying about what they're going to eat that night, about how they're going to write the lab report while working six hours after a full school day, how they're going to help out with the bills at home, which side of the family they're going to hang with this week, and a hundred other challenges that I didn't have to deal with when I was growing up.

I can't imagine that my friends in the labs at P&G or painting houses get to learn that nearly as well.

QuizMeUp

I've been playing QuizUp for a few weeks now, having downloaded the app on the eve of our trip to Chicago via MegaBus. Since then I've thrown myself whole-heartedly into the QuizUp frenzy.

I'm on as Lonnie Dusch (the alias that phschemguy uses when I'm in meatspace), and I'm rocking the chemistry category, having made (as of Sunday evening) it to level 45 and needing only five more categories to top out the titles there with Private Ion. Though I really like the idea of level 50 on Periodic Table getting me nicknamed as Mendeleev's kin. Or the choice of Splitter of Atoms if I get to level 40 in the Scientists category.

Currently I'm rocking the Flux Capacitor title having earned that achievement most recently. I think I'll stick with the science-themed nicknames as I'm kind of using it as a way to interact with my students (some of them anyway). Admittedly, I'm an achievements-chaser. Currently I'm working on UN Assembly (play matches against players from 100 countries - I'm at 61 and counting), The Big Kahuna Burger (reach level 15 in Snacks and Quentin Tarantino - I'm at 6 in Snacks and 5 in Quentin Tarantino so far), and David (as I am currently challenging some 60+ level folks in the Tennis category before I've even made it past level 1 myself.) So far I'm proudest of the Ramtastic achievement of fifty consecutive victories, mostly in the Chemistry category.

My favorite categories at this point are Chemistry (level 45), grammar (17), Batman (the comics - 16), and Name the Element (16).

My next steps for this summer will be to contribute some questions, partially to get the Sphinx achievement and partially to help make the game better. At this point I pretty much know all the chemistry questions and answers by heart, barely having to read each question to know the answer instantly.

Anybody wanna challenge me?

Finally...

I don't have the patience to wait too long, so i broke with loyalty and got the Simpsons minifigure series from Wal-Mart this past weekend.

This is my best performance yet, having gotten all sixteen by purchasing just seventeen figures (anybody need/want a Lisa Simpson?) and only taking about fifty minutes (in-store time between the two visits) to find them all.

It turns out they were surprisingly easy to figure out. The Ralph Wiggum vs Milhouse Van Houten (sp?) distinction was tough, but the rest were actually really easy to distinguish. Lots of new accessories this time around. Loads of fund, too.

More details here, and my feel guide here.

My Pivot Questionnaire

From wowzone.com, the Pivot Questionnaire - aka the ten questions at the end of every Inside the Actors Studio episode...

1. What is your favorite word?
   - Eli's
2. What is your least favorite word?
   - moist
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?
   - material science camps
4. What turns you off?
   - smoking
5. What is your favorite curse word?
   - f**kstick
6. What sound or noise do you love?
   - high school basketball games - all of the noises involved
7. What sound or noise do you hate?
   - a Sodastream machine honking when the bottle is full...then honking two more times...
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
   - short order cook at Waffle House
9. What profession would you not like to do?
   - small-business owner
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
    - "You were wrong, but it's okay."

Catching up...

I've been out of town the past couple of weekends, so I've been behind on writing posts for the blog. Let's see if we can get that fixed with today's links going up on time.

• "Sheezus": Lily Allen has invented paranoid blogger pop - Interesting song...not my favorite from her.
• The sing-along anthem of the summer: Tiesto's "Wasted" - It's a little early to say it's the anthem of the summer, but I like it.

• Columbine-style school massacre narrowly averted - Stuff like this scares the crap out of me. 
• Here's some video of an entire street collapsing in Baltimore - Watch 'til the end.

• NdGT "Don't worry, Earth will survive climate change - we won't." - He's absolutely right.

Some would go one cycle, and some would go seventy-five cycles

• Here are the characters of Frozen performing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" - because...
• Famous landmarks zoomed out - I can't vouch for the truth of any of these.
• Refraction dramatically illustrated - kinda cool

• The United States is an oligarchy - This is what worries me about politics in the US.
• World's largest gold crystal -  Single crystals, very cool...
• 15 Incredibly Fun Examples of Celebrity Paradoxes on TV - I feel like I've pointed this out before. Here's my favorite...

• I hate when that happens - I've juggled torches before, but thankfully this never happened to me.
• The pun also rises. - I love puns. 
• Card control by Ricky Jay - marvelous close-up slight of hand 

• The usual suspects - I really love that fourth pic.
• 10 commandments of typography - Typography choices are important to some of us.
• This summer we hope to see more of this drone flying through fireworks -  Yes, please...a lot more

• Harrison twins make Kentucky title favorite - Next year's Wildcats could be awesome and huge.
• Confirmed: Justice League movie coming after Batman v Superman -Make. A. Wonder. Woman. Movie.
• Ask Chris #193: Let's Pitch a Wonder Woman Movie - Yes, make this one. 
• Chef trailer - looks entertaining enough...engaging cast...

• Where it began: Shoeless Joe - 25 years since Field of Dreams premiered. It's a national treasure.
• Community's series of Social Network-parody posters - C'mon, two more seasons
• Simple but mind-blowing helium balloon experiment - I am amazed. Love this guy...

• The best books of the 21st century (infographic) - I've read eleven of 'em. I'm surprised it's that many.
• 20 things you might not know about Kill Bill vol 1 & 2 - Love the first. Like the second. 
• Houdini Honey Badger - This one gives a crap and is determined. 

• For only $400, frost your beer glasses without a freezer - Needs more CFCs
• The tiny creek that connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans - How cool is that? 
• This pool rocks - Never been through a big quake...never want to be through one.

 

Post by Brandon Ramirez Urzua.

• Batman turns 75: Insiders Share Sensational Stories - Neat stuff
• The sherpas of Everest - Money = death

Reflections about teaching #3

#3 How do you make chemistry exciting to people that may not find it exciting?

Chemistry can be very boring, a series of disconnected facts stacked up, listed down and ready to be memorized to then be immediately forgotten. I'm certainly not in favor of turning chemistry into that kind of a class, though I'm thinking some of my less successful students might say chemistry is still far too much like that.

The chemistry that matters to most students - to most people, really - is the chemistry that explains their world, that connects to something they already knew or had seen. The student interested in fireworks might have an easier time understanding that the colors are produced by electrons gaining energy to move to higher energy levels then losing that energy as they return to ground state because they've seen the results of those transitions. The student who bakes might understand decomposition reactions better if he or she knows it's a decomposition reaction that powers some baking powders.

The secret to making chemistry exciting - or even understandable - is making the chemistry relateable. An atom, an energy level, an orbital, yttrium, double replacement reactions - none of them exist unless they connect to something in the student's life. Or, if they do exist, they'll exist as abstract ideas that will stick about as well as water to a superhydrophobic surface.

So, don't say 'catalysts speed up chemical reactions'...show a catalyst speeding up a reaction. Explain - or show - a catalytic convertor.

Connect to students...show applications...and blow something the heck up.

That's what makes chemistry exciting.

Chicago reviews: Edzo's & David Burke's Primehouse

Two places from this past weekend's visit to Chicago merit reviews: Edzo's (burgers) and David Burke's Primehouse (steaks).

First, though, a quick recap of what we did...with precious few photos.

• Friday
  • Megabus departure from Music Hall at 8am - easy trip, front seats upstairs
  • Arrived in Chicago ~1:30pm, slightly but not significantly late
  • Walked ~15 min to Hotel Blake - got upgrade to corner room when I mentioned our anniversary, great view of Willis Tower
  • late lunch at Xoco (marvelous, as always)
  • walked around Millennium Park (under construction using geofoam, fascinating)
  • dinner at Sofi (pasta, helping The Girl stay meatless on Good Friday)

Sofi's dining room (not my pic) - we sat in the center there against the wall

 

 

The view from our hotel room at night

C'mon get happy!

C'mon get happy! from PHSChemGuy on 8tracks Radio.

Today's artists might, at some point, have had a reason to hide what they have in common. Thankfully, that commonality - their non-heterosexuality - is far more accepted today than it might've been back in the day.

Welcome back to the Windy City, ChemGuy

• Childish Gambino wants to leave his record label over a music video - It's , but I kinda like it.
• Los Angeles: Empathy not required - Might as well pass the time somehow
• UniWatch: Helmet of the future? - I love all the helmet, anti-concussion research being done.

• The latest trailer for Child of Light is a true work of art - I'm not a video game guy, but that looks really purty.
• Bill Nye surprised by Creation Museum debate - It was a big deal for lots of folks.
• PeterPumpkinEater69 - Great, Peter Griffin has an instagram account.
• Back soon - I don't mind filling out tax forms, but I'd rather not do it. Turns out it's a possibility for all of us, but we choose not to go down that route.
• Iraq insurgents use water as a weapon after seizing dam - fascinating
• Corrupted coloring book pages - I dig 'em.
• Welcome to Night Vale - Does anybody out there listen to this podcast?
• 25 Moments - I really like this aspect of X-Men: Days of Future Past marketing.
• Popularity of musical genres - Folk and Latin surprise me. No Latin around Miami?

Reflections about teaching #2

#2 What is the hardest/easiest part of teaching?

The hardest part for me - and for a lot of teachers, I think - is the paperwork: grading papers, tracking data, filling out referrals, calling home, writing SLOs, sending feedback for IEPs, and every other form that's given to us by our central office or mandated by the state.

Keeping up with the paperwork is endless, daunting, worse with every passing year, and it makes for lots of long, long evenings and weeks when I spend the entire time trying to catch up. Every quiz, every lab report, every test has to be graded and returned quickly because there is invariably another assignment coming just a couple of days later that has to be graded, as well. It's daunting and never-ending.

The easiest is the joy of interacting with my students. The things that happen within the classroom, that I can't possibly predict - those are the easiest and most enjoyable parts of teaching for me. When I say 'get into groups and draw these reactions' or 'explain these reaction types to each other' and give my students a chance to talk to each other, to show me what they know, and to give a little of their personality - that's easy and enjoyable and fun.

Summer break isn't bad, either.

Awesome chemistry posters

Simon Page put together some posters for the 2011 'International Year of Chemistry'. Three of the prints are for sale on his online store, but they're prohibitively expensive (£55).

The rest of his posters are pretty gorgeous, too, with nice colors and geometric designs.

The other awesome chemistry posters I want to mention today are from Compound Interest and are way more informative than Page's. They aren't quite as pretty, but they're ones I would certainly post on the walls of my new classroom next year.

I want lots of them, and they're at least way cheaper ($12.81 per poster) though not quite as large (23" x 16").

Anybody wanna get me some gifts?

Update: A gag that never gets old

Live Ryan Adams

It's been a long while since we've gotten any new Ryan Adams music, and it looks like it might be a fair while longer until we get any more. So let's look back at what we do have and enjoy some of his great concerts from YouTube...

Update: Lego Simpsons - for sale now

The first images of the Lego Simpsons in the wild have been captured.

Finally, Kentucky showing some confidence...

• Watch what Marvel does when Don Cheadle tries to leak plot of upcoming Avengers film - chuckle...  
• How to escape from zip ties - Hope not to need this knowledge...
• Remarkable, award-winning animation - That's definitely deserving of awards. (It's after the jump. Go ahead, click through. You know you're curious.)

Reflections about teaching: #7 (adjusted)

From Smamy's comment on my original post...

7) What attribute is most important for teachers to have? (knowledge, patience, style of teaching, desire to be with kids, etc). I think I know what your answer might be, but that is based on a conversation from college....that took place from about 10pm to 3am one evening/morning. Good times.

Man, that is not a conversation that I remember. Admittedly, college was a great time for deep conversations, for trying to solve the world's problems (usually sober for me, not always that way for everybody) by talking through them, for thinking forward to how different the world would be if only we had better control of it, for bucking the system verbally in hopes of bucking the systems for real at a later date.

Back to the question at hand...

What's the most important attribute for a teacher to have?

I would like to say that it's a deep thematic knowledge of the teacher's subject because that might be my best attribute as a teacher, but subject knowledge isn't remotely the most important attribute.

There are so many attributes that are necessary to be a great teacher...

• empathy - the ability to understand and relate and put yourself into the shoes of your students' situations, struggles, and needs
• flexibility - willingness to let the best laid plans go when teachable moments appear and also to be able to take the entirely, thoroughly unexpected changes in stride and still manage to deliver quality instruction
• consistency - When students know what to expect, that there is no doubt - which doesn't always mean strictness, by the way - in what is expected of them, they can more easily succeed.
• clarity - This one's close to consistency in that the goals of giving instruction - both teaching instruction and simple in-class, do-what-I-say instruction - is to make sure you are understood. Students can be at their best when they aren't struggling to understand what's being said to them.
• vision - Some people are part-to-whole folks. They can plan individual days and somehow put them together into a unit, a plan, a cohesive whole. I'm not like that. I need to see the big picture - where are we going - so that I can plan down day by day and hopefully get us there.

As to which of those I would chose, I think I'll go with empathy. Everything else can come from that. If a teacher can understand what his or her students need, what their challenges are and what needs to be done to overcome them - not to be soft, not to be sympathetic because students (read: people) don't need things given to them, don't need to simply be pointed at the easiest path and set upon it - then that teacher can lead toward success.

I'm curious, Smamy, what answer did I give back from 515 Jennison a couple of decades ago?

A moderately expensive joke

In what I'm guessing is a reference to a joke in Portal, water bottles with the following warning are being sold: "WARNING: May cause diaphoresis, micturition, and acute tissue hydration."

See, it's funny.

Sadly the bottles being sold by the Portal folks look kind of lame and have a giant Portal logo on one side...

 ...and it doesn't expressly say that it has that warning on the backside. Other sites, however, do show photos of the backside of the bottle...

At $9.99 plus S&H, that's not a bad price for a decent little gag, but I really don't like the Portal logo.

For a scant $31.05, however, I can get the same warning on a bottle of my chosen color thanks to Zazzle and can change the bottle size for an extra buck - or change the text color and other stuff, too.

Is a red bottle without the logo worth paying the extra $20 for?

I'm thinking that it might be.

The Adventures of Business Cat

There aren't a whole lot of strips of Adventures of Business Cat posted yet, but the ten or so strips that have been posted are thoroughly entertaining.

I'm not going to talk about Cedric, so if that's why you're here...

• Movie Spider-Man and Baby Spider-Man Dance in Evian Water Ad - both supremely cute and a little creepy
• Lint - It's a tumblr of sarcastic comments about magazine ads from the '60s, '50s, and '40s. How can that not be entertaining?
• Does teaching kids to get 'gritty' help them to get ahead? - I do know that many of my students aren't terrifically gritty.

Reflections about teaching: #1

(note for Smamy - I already had question #1 typed up and haven't had a chance to answer your questions yet. They'll start coming next week. I promise.)

#1 - What do you think your greatest asset is as a teacher?

This one's a little tough because I wasn't raised to toot my own horn but rather to even downplay any compliments given to me. I do think I'm a pretty good teacher - not perfect, certainly, not all the way down the long tail of the bell curve but at least a bit to the high side of average.

When I was first assigned to student teach with Pru Phillips at Crawfordsville High School (Go Athenians!), Pru sat me down and gave me an assignment. I was to list all of the important topics in chemistry - the big topics, chapter-level topics - and put them in an order that made sense to me.I took a few days to come up with a good list of topics and another day to figure out what order made sense to me. Pru looked at my list, asked a few questions about why this topic came before that one, how those topics were connected to each other. She then pulled out the order of chapters in her curriculum. With only a couple of minor reversals, my list and her list were identical. I think that helped convince Pru that I at least knew my material, something I would like to think her husband and one of my chemistry professors, Dr David Phillips, had also told her.

I am a chemistry major, having taken ten courses in chemistry at Wabash after two years of chemistry in high school, and I think I understand the subject very well. There are certainly details that I don't know quite as well as I might, but I understand how the topics fit together, why certain ones must be taught before certain other ones, how specific ideas must be learned so that others can be understood better later. I know which examples problems to pick so that they show the current topic but so that they also lead into the next topic.

There are probably things more important to a teacher, but in a subject like chemistry - where the knowledge can exist as a whole bunch of entirely disparate facts, I think it's important that the leader in the classroom is able to see where the ship is heading. 

Update: AV Club Undercover - 2013

I know I've posted about the A.V. Club's Undercover series before, but for the life of me I can't find that post.

In case this is new...

The Onion's A.V. Club invited twenty-five bands into their offices over the course of each summer and presents each band with a list of twenty-five songs to cover. The catch is that once a song is covered, it's out of the rotation and can't be chosen again.

It tends to produce some interesting covers, not all of which work well.

From the 2013 batch, I'll take - as the best - these four...

Happy April Fools

Two things...

One, don't pull April Fools pranks...

Two, some April Fools pranks have been entertaining...

That is all...

Dorky connections...

I happened upon an NPR article testing out the internet video showing how to open a bottle of wine with a shoe and a wall.

Here's the original video...



...and the NPR attempted recreation...



Wait, I know what you're thinking. That guy with the curly hair, the guy right here are 0:56...

 

Isn't that the same guy who made the "Biologist's Saint Patrick's Day Song"?

Well, the credits to the NPR video list the folks featured in the video, including Adam Cole...

...and a quick search of cadamole (the poster and singer of the aforementioned St Pat's song) offers up this fourth hit stating that cadamole is Adam M. Cole - but weirdly this fifth hit that says definitively in 2010 that cadamole, a bio major from Stanford, does not work at NPR.

I'm thinking things have changed since 2010.

...oh, and I'm just assuming that you guys had the same questions I did when watching that NPR video. If you didn't, then nevermind...

Beverly Goldberg had always been the puppet master...

• Hi - ...right back atcha... 
• Beware the Staten Island clown -  creepy but possibly hoaxy
• Honeybees are NOT native to North America - Wait, what? Seriously?!?!?
• Wu-Tang Clan will sell only a single copy of their new album - That's one way to go.

• Justice League International - I miss the JL(I), and I love Kevin McGuire.
• Modern Twilight Zone - About 50% terrifying 
• These subtitles are everything - ...everything!
• Elizabeth Olson on set of Avengers: Age of Ultron - I'm digging the outfit, and she looks older than I expected.
• Graph TV - Data telling you how good every episode of every television show was and what their general trend line was, too. 
• New X-Men movie looks great - I'd watch that.
• UNICEF Tap project - cheap way to help the world a bit
• #RuinAChildrensBook is the funniest hashtag of the day - If You Give a Mouse a Roofie
• Dinner Time! Enjoy your giant isopods -  I'm not eating those.

Reflections about teaching

Last week one of my former students interviewed me for a college project. The assignment required her to interview someone in the her chosen profession. The former student is heading to be a secondary science teacher, so she contacted me. I'm honored, by the way, and I'm always happy to offer some advice or perspective or something to someone thinking of heading into the teaching profession.

Over the course of the next while, I'm going to answer each of these questions her on my blog. Many of the answers, I would imagine, will have a kernel of the same answer that I gave my former student, but - especially in case she's tuning in around here - I want to warn that they'll not all be exactly the answer I gave her. If' I'm intentionally changing my answer, I'll say why.

Are there any questions from this list that seem particularly of interest to any of you? If so, I'll start with those. Or, are there any different questions about teaching you'd like me to answer? If not, I'll probably work through as I feel.

1. What do you think your greatest asset is as a teacher?
2. What is the hardest/easiest part of teaching?
3. How do you make chemistry exciting to people that may not find it exciting?
4. How does teaching affect your view of the world?
5. What do you wish someone would have told you before you started teaching?
6. How do you incorporate diversity or moral education in a science/math classroom?
7. What attribute is most important for teachers to have? (knowledge, patience, style of teaching, desire to be with kids, etc)
8. How do you feel about state testing?
9. If you would do it all over, would you still be a teacher?
10. Most rewarding part of your job?
11. How do you deal with administration?
12. How do you deal with teaching at a school like Princeton where kids come from completely different backgrounds and will learn in different ways?
13. Are you a part of the union? does it help you?
14. How does teaching affect your political views/values?
15. Any classes you wish you would have taken?
16. Do you have your masters? would you recommend that I get it? Right away?
17. How do you feel education has changed over the years you've been teaching?
18. How does teaching affect home life?
19. ...social life?
20. Do you feel appropriately paid for the job you do?

Oh, and the image up top is from an Ann Taylor post on what to wear to a teaching interview. I searched for 'teaching interview', and that's the best thing I got.

Update umpteenth: Lego Simpsons...my guesses the official images

The first official images of the Lego collectible minifig series of The Simpsons have been revealed. So, how're Calen and I going to feel for these figures?

• Granpa Simpson - 2x2 square, bendy legs, not Marge's hair...his head feels like a traffic cone with a crown at the top - very distinct
• Chief Wiggum - bullhorn, short night stick
• Nelson Muntz - baseball bat, short legs
• Apu - coffee cup (could be confused with Flanders's mug & Mr Burns's fish bowl), nothing else
• Ned Flanders - toolbox, mug
• Mr Burns - plutonium rod, fish bowl
• Scratchy - axe
• Krusty - pie, very distinct head with tufts of hair coming off sides
• Ralph Wiggum - 2x2 tile, short legs (could be very easily confused with Milhouse), no big nose?
• Homer - 1x2 tile, round donut tile
• Itchy - club, distinct head shape with mouse ears
• Marge - hair and head as one, hugely obvious
• Maggie - teddy bear, baby body
• Bart - skateboard
• Lisa - saxaphone
• Milhouse - 2x2 tile, short legs (could be very easily confused with Ralph), big nose

I'll be looking for Whitefang's figure review and the eventual feel guides that will appear online to get some better hints as to what the various accessories feel like through the bags, because I'm not looking forward to screwing up at an extra $1 per figure this time.

I taught her everything she knows...

...about stoichiometry.

Kelsey Mitchell, Princeton's career scoring leader, Ohio's Ms. Basketball and the Gatorade Player of the Year in Ohio.

And a heck of a chemistry student for me last year.

New Nickel Creek album - listen on NPR

NPR's First Listen series has a full-album preview of Nickel Creek's first album in eight years, A Dotted Line.

If you've any interest in their music - a full-out, genre-blending combination of bluegrass, jazz, alternative, classical, and just about anything else that Thiel and the Watkinses felt like putting in there - this is an absolute must. The musicians are brilliant, and the music - tunes and instrumentals - are outstanding. Early reviews are excellent, too.

Heds must roll

I'm a huge fan of punny headlines whether they're on the signs outside Tire Discounters, the marquees in front of churches, or atop the newspaper page.

The tumblr Heds Will Roll posts not-quite-used headlines that are universally outstanding puns.

Hey, look, a panda!

• Video of Benedict Cumberbatch stalking U2 - What a big, giant dork!
• City of Pawnee official website - I appreciate that there's quasi-real connections between the television world and the quasi-real world.
• Are Shooter's sandwiches really worth a damn?! - Short answer: not really 

Why not Dracula Dinosaur?

I read somewhere once that one of the ways to garner great blog traffic is to keep the blog's focus tight so that people know what to expect each time they visit. Keep the focus tight and publish new content like crazy. Some slice of the public will eventually find you and your content fascinating.

Dinosaur Dracula has, as far as I can tell, a laser-like focus on pop culture crap with particular thematic foci on Christmas- and Halloween-themed goods (decorations, toys, food, movies) and general toy collections from the late 1980's.

Take a look, in particular at his posts on...

• Old comic book ads
• The return of Mountain Dew Pitch Black (imported from Malaysia) - He has a weird thing for odd soft drinks.
• Monster Cereals (BooBerry, Count Chocula, etc) - and his bagged collection of same
• The toys in Adam Goldberg's bedroom (and response from Adam, himself) - my entry into Dinosaur Dracula
• The best 99-cent store ever
• McDonald's Holiday Pies - I've had them. They're awful.
• Drinks that should not be in his refrigerator - Including a 16-yr old bottle of Orbitz that was past its sell-by date when he bought it.
• Reviews of Candy Corn Oreos - which screams that I have different tastes than this guy. Those are the only type of Oreo cookies I've ever bought that I didn't finish. I threw away like 2/3 of the pack.
  
• And the pinnacle...the post that screams "This is a collector with a problem!"...Toys he owned on 5/27/98 - That's a lot of crap, man.

WFUV's in-studio concerts

I'm amazed at how many YouTube channels are local radio stations who are able to bring some pretty outstanding musicians into their studios for a quick concert.

This week's example is WFUV in New York and their YouTube channel.

They've brought in The Magnetic Fields (of maybe just Stephen Meritt)...

I'm hoping to go to a basketball game tonight.

• Fighting Fire with Fire -  Science, man, curing cancer
• Weatherheads - I love following along with AKC's artwork.
• Another fun GE thing - Iron Man circa 1960

These are a few of my favorite tracks

My Favorite Songs from PHSChemGuy on 8tracks Radio.

Today's 8Tracks playlist is my favorite songs, chosen in a bit of a roundabout fashion.

I took the default 25 Most Played playlist from iTunes, expanded it to 75 songs, sorted by album, and uploaded the most played song from each album.

I'm a bit surprised by some of the songs ("Cecelia", really?), but most of them are songs I think of as being pretty outstanding.

Comment of the Day

On my post regarding Ukraine and Crimea, the following comment was posted...

INCLUSIVE SALVATION

Who are those who are included in salvation? All men who believe and obey what the apostle Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost are saved. It does not make any difference what denominational name is written on the church building where you worship, if you obey the gospel preached by Peter, then, you are saved, you are a member of the Lord's church, you are part of the church of Christ, you a member of the body of Christ, you are a Christian.

What did Peter preach?
1. Peter preached that Jesus was a miracle worker. (Acts 2:22)
2. Peter preached that Jesus was resurrected from the dead by God the Father.(Acts 2:24-35)
3. Peter preached that Jesus was both Lord and Christ.(Acts 2:36)
When the three thousand believe Peter, they asked "What shall we do?"(Acts 2:37)
4. Peter told them to repent and be baptized in order to have their sins forgiven.(Acts 2:38)

This is the same message Jesus preached. (Mark 16:16 "He who believes and is baptized will be saved....)

THE TERMS FOR PARDON ARE: Faith-John 3:16, Repentance-Acts 2:38, Confession-Romans 10:9-10, Baptism (immersion in water) 1 Peter 3:21

All who meet the terms for pardon are saved regardless of the denominational name on the church building.
YOU ARE INVITED TO FOLLOW MY BLOG.

It included a blog address and the poster's name, neither of which I'm going to mention here because I'm not sure this is a man who needs more traffic.

And I do think he might have missed the point of the original post which was pretty much to say, "hey, here's some info about Ukraine that I didn't know until quite recently."

Update (the fourth): Lego Simpsons...my guesses

The list of Lego Simpsons collectible minifigs has been released by Amazon UK.

Let's see how I did from my revised guesses.

First, my guesses after revision upon seeing the Evergreen Terrace house set...ones I got right in green, wrong in red...

• Homer - alternate
• Bart - alternate
• Lisa - alternate
• Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
• Montgomery Burns 
• Moe Syzslak - In retrospect, alcohol is certainly something that Lego is going to shy away from.
• Milhouse Van Houten
• Krusty the Clown
• Barney Grumble - Same reason as Moe, I assume
• Grandpa Simpson
• Waylon Smithers - I'm very surprised that we're getting a Burns without a Smithers.
• Chief Wiggum
• Ralph Wiggum
• Principal Skinner - All of the school adults were left out. I didn't see that coming.
• Nelson Muntz
• Groundskeeper Willie - All of the school adults were left out. I didn't see that coming.

...and the quasi-official announcement...ones I got right in green, wrong in red...

1. Homer
2. Marge - I didn't think we'd get a second Marge...
3. Bart
4. Lisa
5. Maggie Simpson - ...or Maggie...
6. Grampa
7. Ned Flanders - ...or Ned...
8. Ralph Wiggum
9. Nelson Muntz
10. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
11. Chief Wiggum
12. Krusty the Clown
13. Itchy - Really?
14. Scratchy - Really?
15. Mr. Burns
16. Milhouse

So, 11 correct out of 16 possibilities. The Marge, Maggie, and Ned misses I don't feel too bad about. I didn't think we would get second versions of them, but Lego is apparently okay with that. I should've know about Moe and Barney being too alcoholic for Lego's target demographic. I'm shocked at the absence of Itchy and Scratchy and the absence of Smithers.

The Toys N Bricks post where I got this news, by the way, was accompanied by an image that appears to just be the Simpsons figures from the Evergreen Terrace set. The only two 'officially released' images are these (from Lego Minifigures tumblr)...

The Life of Alfred

Thanks to Neatorama we have a glimpse into the life and mind of one Alfred Pennyworth.

Helping to clear a few things up

The Ukraine story has me absolutely befuddled. There is clearly a lot of history between among Russia, the Soviet Union, Crimea, and Ukraine, a lot of history about which I don't have even the remotest bit of knowledge. I had to ask a fellow teacher on Thursday to confirm my memories that there was at some point a Crimean War.

Leave it to John Green to clear up some of my confusion...



...and to NPR to help clear up some of the rest.

• Behind Ukraine's Political Strife: One Big Utility Bill
• Ukraine's Economy Was In Trouble Before Its Crisis With Russia
• Crisis With Russia Propels Ukrainian Nationalism

I am, as always, thankful for NPR's in-depth coverage of news stories.

It'll sort of come horizontally a bit.

• on Good Water - Do people really believe this is how things work?
• Modern Twilight Zone - I'm tempted to join Twitter just to follow this feed.
• 10 hardest drinking characters in TV history - Those are some pretty spectacular shows.
• What kind of ice melt should you buy? - I like the analysis. I'll be looking for urea next year.

"Not Our Fault" from Bob's Burgers

I am so geeked for the premiere of Cosmos this Sunday. Yeah, I love Bob's Burgers and all, but I don't think I've ever watched it anywhere but on Hulu anyway.

Update: Why this year was a failure

In regards to my recent post about wanting to see the aurora borealis, and it turns out that the lights were visible in Aberdeen where I spent a year a couple of decades ago.

I hate Scotland for having the lights now instead of then.