Two Dishes But To One Table

Peering Soldier

Really interesting Korea images from 2010 at Bag News Notes.

The readers of BNN noted, regarding Clinton: "Exhausted and bored. One of the toughest and most unrewarding jobs on the planet and it's all about school boy bullies." and regarding the two soldiers, one from each country: "How these two can be inches apart while military tensions are high like this is mind-blowing."

Music Top Ten

My year end music list is from my iPod: the most played artists from 2011:

Last FM keeps track of my iPod stats at http://www.last.fm/user/atom_box  If you are  on Last.FM too drop me a line and we can be friends. 

I Just Learned the Cook's Version of Playing With Blocks

Building lasagna.

Antediluvian food.

Food stratigraphy.

 

The Fantasticar is a Dodge

A close inspection of the hood reveals that Reed Richards is driving a Dodge in outer space in the second Fantastic Four movie.

One Year Later [at Church Avenue Chomp]

There's an essay worth reading over at Meredith's food-writing-as-proxy-for-writing-about-much-deeper-things blog. 

It's appropriately tagged as: anniversary of death, christmas, family, grief, sister, williams sonoma

Making a Choice Based on Reputation

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a nice article debunking the use of  college reputations.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_gladwell

 

Mass Transit

One interesting thing about field trips at a New York City School is that we don't get anywhere on a school bus.  Every trip I've ever gone on here has involved marching a big mass of tenth graders across the field and down to the subway. 

Here we are last week, on our way to enjoy a day of ice skating at Bryant Park on 42nd Street in Manhattan.  To get there we had to take two different rush hour trains, standing-room-only, including transferring at the very busy 6th Avenue stop on the L Train.

Want to Test Your Fingerprint Knowledge?

I really enjoyed teaching the fingerprint unit in Forensics Class recently.   

There were many hands on things we were able to do, including one that I had always wondered about, how to 'dust' for a hidden fingerprint around a smooth surface like a doorknob or cookie jar. [That one it turns out is super easy to do at home and anyone with a child and time to spend should show the child how to do that because it's very satisfying.  The only trick is you need a make up brush, borrowed from the lady of the house. Search on You Tube for any of their examples of how to do the dusting.]

(Thanks to Juan in my first period class for the fingerprint image at right, obtained by rubbing his finger with a pencil and then touching that to Scotch Tape.)

I invite you to try out below one of the questions I wrote for their exam.  I was worried whether I had worded it clear and unambiguously {always tough when addressing to a mixed group of teens} but there were zero issues with wording.  I will put the answers down in a post below this one. . .

 

Question #19.  

In each blank write  looks the SAME  or looks  DIFFERENT 

1. _____Your left thumb 1 day before you were born and your left thumb now.
2. _____Your left thumb, your mother’s left thumb
3. _____the print you leave on a door knob and the print that is on your finger
4. _____your left thumb and your right thumb
5. _____the left thumb of a twin and the left thumb of the other twin
6. _____the right thumb of Barack Obama when he was 2 years old and  the right thumb when he was 40 years old
7. _____Your left middle finger when you were a  20 week old fetus and when you were a 1 week old fetus [fetus is you before you were born]

 

Fingerprint Test Answers

(answers to Question 17 from above)

1. same
2. different
3. same
4. different (for some reason I caught a lot wrong on this one)
5. different
6. same
7. different (the fetus fingertips change from smooth to folded in the tenth week of pregnancy, caused by the basal layer of skin growing too fast and folding up relative to the skin layers above and below it)

Student's Concepts About "Smart" Students vs Hardworking Students

It's time for vacation homework.   My advanced chemistry class is going to have to do chemistry but they will also read and respond to Chapter 2 of Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers', titled 'The 10,000 Hour Rule'.   Hard work as a road to success is a great theme for a tenth grader and has been my theme in chemistry since  the first day of September this school year.

Gladwell points out that the Beatles hit America in 1964.  But they began playing in 1957!  And they went through a period as the house band in a Hamburg caberet where they worked (brace yourself) 8 hours of playing onstage (brace again) for 7 days a week.  For weeks at a time.

By the time the Beatles had their first burst of success they had played on stage an estimated 1200 times.