Long Tall Texan

I searched back through and didn't see a YouTube cache from Lyle Lovett, so I'm putting one together.

I hope you find something to enjoy on this lovely no-school morning.

For two of you...

I have these two works friends who seem to have some sort of affection for Nutella. I thought I'd share this Christmas idea with them in case they happen to wander through these parts.

School's Out for ever! School's been closed for the holidays!

• Yodeling cat - I know it's a Wal-Mart commercial, but it's friggin' creepy.
• Muppet Hats of the Day - so cute
• Frog Juice - exactly what it sounds like...
• Kids these days - Yeah, it's cute and hilarious, but who the heck films their kids frequently enough to get this kind of stuff...and is this an example of healthy parenting?

• Science Getaways - A week at a ranch with biologists, botanists, astronomers there to teach you about the world. Sounds kinda cool...and expensive.
• Wisc-Whitewater 13-MtUnion 10 - The tie is broken...for now, anyway.
• Fight Club soap - It's available for realzies now.
• The disadvantages of summer babies - Thanks to Lakes for the link.

• "Jump in the Line" - because it's fun
• GI Joe: Retaliation trailer - Stupidly entertaining and tempting
• 2011 sets records for wet/dry extremes in US - Cincinnati gets a mention and goes at least 5" above the old record. Cheviot is wettest in Ohio history.

• Stop motion short of the day - Great visuals...no storyline...can I get a storyline?
• 50 Best Players not in the Hall of Fame - #5 is a crime.
• It's a good life - another occasional webcomic to check out, especially if you understand both sides of this one. (reference if you need it)

• Very important interview of the day - An interview with Marcel the Shell with Shoes On that' marvelously well done
• The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet in the Comments Section - Thanks to Calen for this one. Why is the topic called Dogs with Wigs?
• "House of the Rising Sun" computer remix - Outstanding...

• Early bird special - SNL writers reenact Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" video...and I had no idea that Sarah Schneider was writing for SNL now.
• "Bright Lights" by Gary Clark Jr - Thanks, again to Lakes for the great tune.

The last 80's playlist for a while

And this clears out the 80s backlog...with the last alphabetically of Lonnie's 80's playlists: Women.

Happy birthday, old fella

Tim Conway turns 78 today. Tale a minute to point and laugh, would ya?

Things I've learned

I put this to writing a week or so ago, and it sums up a lot of what I know about the world:

Rules can be bent if you want to bend them.

If you don’t want to bend them, it’s nice to have rules to fall back on.

We all take advantage of and get screwed by that.

It's far from a chipper thought and all, but it's something that I've seen happen over and over again. Teachers and administrators give students second and third chances, but if they don't want to give those second and third chances - because the student's a jerk, because the teacher's in a bad mood, because the student didn't ask the right way - then it's awfully easy to just point at a the rules and say 'tough luck, kid.'

It doesn't matter whether you're a teacher, a student, a building administrator, a politician, a father, a mother, a police officer, a boss, or an underling. There are times when the rules work for you - because you understand the rules better or because you're in a position to make the rules - and there will surely be a time when you'll come out wishing the rules weren't there.

People are doing the best job they can.

There are a hundred reasons why they might be doing a crappy job, but they're doing the best that they can. They might be dumb. They might be ignorant of how to do a better job. They might have things going on at home or with their mistress. They might have your wishes running about fourteenth on their list of priorities, but they're doing the best they can within those limits.

Don't complain that they're lazy. Don't complain that they're stupid. Don't tell them to just work harder. At best you'll get a momentary improvement but rarely anything valuable in the long term.

You get more bees with honey than with vinegar.

There are hundreds of reasons why we could go through the golden rule in any one of its variations, but I find much of the important things about behavior boil down to this - be nice to people. It's not always easy to do. It's not always something that sees quick results. But it's the better path if you can manage to take it.

Fried Cereal!

Clearly, this need to be made.

I'm totally making this over the break.



Thank you, Charles Phoenix.

Einstein on the Beach

I'm a fan of Philip Glass.

The Girl is not. She, in fact, hates his compositions. They drive her nuts.

This means that getting her to road trip to Ann Arbor in late January to see Einstein on the Beach as hosted by the University of Michigan. They're apparently getting three preview performances before the production heads to Montpelier, France for it's new premier.

Update: The Girl agreed to go. Tickets have been purchased. A hotel room has been reserved. Holy crap, I'm gonna see Einstein on the Beach in person. How frickin' cool is that?

Check out some old footage of and about the opera...

Hail to the cream and crimson

Great story about Indiana's victory over UK over at ESPN.

Congrats to the Hoosiers for an awesome victory and what is hopefully a first reappearance on the national stage.

from Chicago Tribune

from Indy Star

from ESPN

both from Vigilant Sports

Today's sports bits

Indiana 73-72 over the #1 ranked Kentucky Wildcats! Much happiness...

Kansas 78-67 over the #2 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes! Not much either way...

Wyoming 3 22-11 over the Sharonville Eagles! Minor sadness but lots of room for improvement, at least. We've clearly only got up to go from here.

The Bearcats and Muskies did what they could to get just about their whole teams suspended.

Mt Union 28-21 over Wesley, UW Whitewater 20-0 over St Thomas to get the same two teams to the Stagg Bowl (DIII championship game) for the seventh straight year. Three wins each so far.

Ryan Bruan, current National League MVP tests positive for performance enhancing drugs.

And Robert Griffin III rightfully wins the Heisman tonight.

Let's go Eagles!

That would be the Sharonville Eagles, the rec bball team whose first game is this afternoon at 1. Wish 'em luck, folks.

• Another Oops?: Rick Perry Misstates Number of Supreme Court Judges - Really? Really?!?!
• Rick Perry's Unpopular Opinions - some funny, some not so
• Animated Short of the Day - Hot dog vs ho dog vendor...who ya got?

• Infographic of the Day - Top ten cereals based on %sugar by mass...holy crap...I would like to see some citation or data, however.
• Guns N' Roses - Hall of Famers? One great album...one good album...one okay album...two crap sandwich albums...really? Next up, the Fugees?
• Everyone Has a Present for Batman in his Holiday Batcave - What, no Black Mercy?
• Worst AIDS Joke Ever of the Day - Warning: Needless slow-cap replay after the joke

• Online High School Attracting Elite Names - Stanford High School? Intriguing
• Ewan McGregor & Eva Green get naked for the end of the world - Looks like an interesting trailer
• Mythbusters cannon ball accident caused by 'unforseen bounce' - It's kinda impressive that they haven't had an accident like this until now.
• The Most Hated Buzzword - 1,6,9,12(!),17,19 - Yup, that's where I work.
• By My Desk - Cheryl Adams, here I come
• PSA of the Day - I could get on this campaign. Community's holiday episode is outstanding.

• Awesome Geeky Cooking Hacks -I like the N2(l) ice cream in particular.
• Click to donate to Toys for Tots - and win fabulous prizes - Send a bunch of holiday greetings, folks...do a little good.
• SMBC - This week things got a little serious. (click for the large version...it's well worth it...outstanding...seriously...)

Bill Dee Williams endorses...

The most soulful 80s...

"The Chemist to His Love"

I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me–
Our mutual flame is like th’ affinity
That doth exist between two simple bodies:
I am Potassium to thine Oxygen.
‘Tis little that the holy marriage vow
Shall shortly make us one. That unity
Is, after all, but metaphysical.
Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid,
A living acid; thou an alkali
Endow’d with human sense, that, brought together,
We both might coalesce into one salt,
One homogeneous crystal. Oh, that thou
Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen;
We would unite to form olefiant gas,
Or common coal, or naphtha–would to heaven
That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime!
And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret.
I’d be content to be Sulphuric Acid,
So that thou might be Soda. In that case
We should be Glauber’s Salt. Wert thou Magnesia
Instead we’d form the salt that’s named from Epsom.
Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aqua-fortis,
Our happy union should that compound form,
Nitrate of Potash–otherwise Saltpetre.
And thus our several natures sweetly blent,
We’d live and love together, until death
Should decompose the fleshly tertium quid,
Leaving our souls to all eternity
Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Briggs
And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we
Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs?
– “A Rochester druggist,” quoted in The Medical Age, Oct. 11, 1886

Source - Futility Closet

2 H2O2 (aq) --> 2 H2O (l) + O2 (g) + energy

That's all it is...



(skip to7:10 for the decomposition, though the rest is fun, too)...

Another thing I need

So, I this, a year in which I've been required to take on an extra class and all my classes are a little larger due to budget cuts, a year in which I've taken back the PHS website, I've taken on another thing. I'm the coach of the Sharonville Rec Center Girls High School basketball team.

See, three of the team members are I my tenth bell class and asked me if I would be interested in coaching them. I'm always on the look out for ways I can make some sort of connection with my students outside of the classroom - going to holiday concerts, cheering at sports events, whatever. And they said it would only be an hour of time a week.

Hah...

We're four days out from the first game, and the team is ready.

What they're ready for, I'm not sure just yet, but they're ready for something.

Sharonville Rec BBall Schedule - winter 11/12

You know, in case you wanted to come out and support the team...or scout some of the talent for a division II university to make sure the outstanding rec league players don't slip through your fingers and get recruited by some other division II university.

Where have I seen this before?

I love TinEye.

It's a reverse image look-up, such a simple thing, but one that I'm thinking can be exceptionally useful.


Upload your image or enter a web link, and TinEye searches the web to find where else that image is used.

Nothing fancy...nothing drastic...nothing phenomenal...just basically awesome.

The Black Keys

New album - El Camino - out this Tuesday...check one of the new songs here...

It feels like Thanksgiving around here...

• Very Mary Kate has returned. Celebrate as appropriate.
• Percentage Points - I feel like this a whole lot.
• Deleted scenes hall of fame - Grantland's staff's choices are pretty choice
• Community gets anime - It'll be sad if/when this show gets cancelled. Ready for your schpanken?
• A Bridge, a Speedboat, and a Frisbee - Can we just stop this stupid trick shot crap now, please? Please?

• Shopping Prank - I appreciate that they kept this clean.
• A Frosty Reception for Coco-Cola's White Christmas Cans - People are apparently dumb.
• Drive in cartoon form - A minute to tell Drive.
• 'Mitt vs Mitt': Democrats target Romney in new attack ad - Does make ya wonder,doesn't it?

• "Is it too late for shopping?" - It just might be, yeah.
• The Geography of Stuck - go Ohio!
• Animated comic covers - Iron Man creeps me out.
• Oscar predictions - I've seen almost none of these movies. Sad year, eh?

• New York dodges a potential storm surge mega-disaster - Wunderblog continues to do marvelous weather coverage. Check also The City That Plans to be Flooded.
• OOTS Family Car Sticker - I'm kinda tempted.
• Occasional Comics - He just might be overreacting.
• Ten skits that prove The Muppet Show was for adults more than kids - It was an outstandng show...outstanding.
• 
  

The sappy 80's

You could make some excellent maple syrup from this week's collection of sappy songs from the 80s.

Try not to cry too much...

Update: Twin Creek Preserve

Turns out that the newest park in Sharonville isn't much to look at just yet. I mentioned the ribbon cutting of Twin Creek Preserve last week, but when Calen and I wandered to said Twin Creek Preserve on Thanksgiving Wednesday, we didn't find much to explore.

At this point Twin Creek Preserve is pretty much a muddy field of sticks.


That's I-275 in the background. The foreground green is the corner of one of the two youth soccer fields that are largely finished.

Spread between the soccer fields are a trio of plastic coyotes (with 'real' fur tails) designed to keep, I'm assuming, geese off of the fields.

If you want to check out some more, I've taken the liberty of copying the photo albums from the Mill Creek Watershed's photo page on the Preserve.

Aerial Photos of Twin Creek Preserve

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Volunteer Plantings at Twin Creek Preserve

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

You can also check out some pre-construction images...

Pre-Construction of Twin Creek Preserve streams

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

And here are the directions in case you want to check the place out yourself.

There's been some more media coverage of the Preserve, as well...

• Mill Creek dump now a park
• Dirt flies as Mill Creek project gets flowing
• Park project to restore Mill Creek route (video)

Here's the full plan for the eventual Preserve...

I'm really looking forward to seeing (and maybe canoeing) the place when spring rolls around and once the plantings start to mature.