Friday, December 24, 2010

Guns and Knives


Okay, the no weapons policies of schools and such are a good idea, but it can be taken a bit too far.  We have not been given plastic knives in the cafeteria since elementary school.  How are you going to hurt someone with a plastic butter knife?  You can barely hurt someone with a regular butter knife, and only if they let you saw at them for a while.  You run up to try to stab someone: “Die!” *snap* “Dang it!”
Some schools have even outlawed a gun-shaped hand motion.  You know, where you clasp your hands together, pointer fingers out and thumb up? Yeah, that.  What are you going to do, load your fingers?
I have heard tell of a girl who had to walk or get a ride to softball practice a couple miles away because the bus driver wouldn’t let her take her bat on the bus.  I guess that’s halfway reasonable, but what about suspending a Boy Scout for bringing his trusty Spork to school? Or a man in college who kept his grandfather's penknife in his car?  How did the school authorities find out about that one?
I will kill you with my plastic knife and gun hands!  “Bang!” *snap* “Darn it!”

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Corn Sugar

Word is out that manufacturers are changing the name High Fructose Corn Syrup to simply Corn Sugar.  I read this in a kids’ newspaper called News for You.  The people lobbying to change the name say that “’Whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can’t tell the difference.’”  And the article itself says that there’s “little scientific proof” for the statement that HFCS is more harmful than regular sugar.  I beg to differ!  There’s plenty of proof.  I’ve heard it.  Sure, there’s no evidence that a teaspoon of HFCS is worse than a teaspoon of table sugar (sucrose), but HFCS is everywhere.  It can only be metabolized by one organ, the liver.  Sucrose can be metabolized by any organ.  A teaspoon can be metabolized.  But it takes less to overload the liver than all the organs of the body combined.  And when something can’t be metabolized, it turns into fat.  Which is unhealthy.
            Back on the topic of renaming it – HFCS and corn sugar are the same thing.  Renaming it doesn’t make it any better.  The companies just do this so that they can keep using it.  Like when prunes were changed to dried plums.  That’s what prunes are.  It doesn’t change anything except reaction.  Corporations don’t care about people’s health unless their consumers care about people’s health. 
Here’s a thought.  If it’s in a newspaper that corn sugar is the same as HFCS, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of consumers not knowing?

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The Longest Calculator Message Ever

I WILL NOW TRY
TO WRITE THE
LONGEST CALCU-
LATOR MESSAGE
EVER.  THIS IS
PROBABLY – NO,
MOST LIKELY – A
FEAT THAT HAS
BEEN ATTEMPTED
BEFORE.  BUT THE
PREVIOUS LONGEST
HAVE MORE THAN
LIKELY BEEN NO
MORE THAN NON-
SENSE.  THIS ONE
IS SAYING SOME-
THING.  THE MES-
SAGE IS CLEAR.
OR MAYBE IT ISNT
.  PERHAPS YOU,
THE MESSSAGE REA-
DER, NEED SOME
CLARIFICATION.
NO MATTER.  I
WOULD HAVE SAID
IT ANYWAY.  THE
MESSAGE IS THAT
A TEXTS LENGTH
HAS NOTHING TO
DO WITH ITS REL-
EVANCE.  WHY DID
I NOT JUST SAY
THAT IN THE FIRS
T PLACE, YOU
ASK?  BECAUSE
THIS IS MEANT TO
BE LONG.  THIS
IS MEANT TO BE
THE LONGEST
CALCULATOR MES-
SAGE EVER!  SO
I HAVE COMPILED
LETTERS INTO
WORDS, AND WORDS
INTO SENTENCES.
AND I HAVE ALSO
COMPILED THESE
SENTENCES INTO
A MESSAGE THAT
CAN ONLY BE READ
BY PRESSING THE
DOWN ARROW MANY,
MANY, MANY, MANY
TIMES.  THIS IS
A POINTLESS TIME
WASTER STARTED
AFTER A MATH
TEST.
I HAVE WRITTEN
THINGS LONGER.
BUT THEY HAVE
BEEN IN VARIAT,
NOT NORMAL TYPE.
THIS MESSAGE IS
LENGTHY, BUT
“SAYS” NOTHING.
THERE IS NOTHING
OF IMPORTANCE
HERE.
I AM STARTING TO
SKIP AROUND, TO
CREATE NEW PARA-
GRAPHS TO MATCH
MY THOUGHTS.  I
AN STILL ON TOP-
IC, HOWEVER, UN-
LIKE MOST MES-
SAGES THAT HAVE
MADE IT TO THIS
LENGTH.
THIS MESSAGE IS
VERY LONG.  THERE
IS NOT MUCH MORE
I CAN SAY ON THE
TOPIC.  SO I
WILL END THIS
MESSAGE NOW, AND
LEAVE IT HERE,
ON THIS CALCULA-
TOR, UNTIL IT
HAS BEEN READ BY
OTHERS.

            END

P.S. “until it has been read by others” seems to translate to “until we need to use it.”  I’m bummed that I had to clear my message, but it had to be eventually.
P.P.S. Yes, I did type this all out on my graphing calculator.  To preserve the format, each line is only sixteen characters long and it is in all caps with only the punctuation my calculator can use.  This has come from a calculator to graph paper to a Word document to here.  I have written it out completely 3 times.
P.P.P.S. "In variat" means like this:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXX              XXXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXX                  XXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Each letter is perfectly visible, as my screen is 8 characters high.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

           There was a sign in my 6th grade math classroom that said "You learn..." and then a list of different ways to learn and how much you get out of each.  I liked that poster.  I don't remember much of it, but I remember two stats off that poster:  you learn more by seeing than hearing, and you learn 81% of what you teach to others.
           I find this really intriguing.  Most teachers teach visually, and some hands-on, which is even better -- but when does any teacher have us teach to each other?  
           However, I've seen the poster.  Whenever I study something, I "teach" Mom from my notes.  Usually she already knows the material, but that just means that we teach each other.  Maybe I should teach her math.  Except I don't need much help remembering math stuff.
           So next time you learn something, teach it to someone else.  You'll learn it even better, and they'll learn it too.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

What?

I have heard from multiple sources that 100 people choke to death every year... on ballpoint pens.  How the h*** do you choke on a ballpoint pen?  Do they get taken apart and the individual parts swallowed?  Some of the parts are pretty small.  But then, if they were small parts, swallowing them wouldn't make you choke anyway.  Maybe it's people chewing on the end of the pen, thinking about what to write next.  But how would the pen get from your teeth all the way into your throat?  If their hand slips, I guess.  Or it somehow hits something.  I can just imagine someone committing "murder by pen" in which the pen is shoved down the throat.  But 100 people?  Every year?  Some of that has to be stupid and accidental.  Again, how the h*** does this happen?  How do you choke on a ballpoint pen?

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Goals? What goals?

Today we were supposed to write down our goals in Advisory.  My goals?  Well, I'm not going to tell you.  Why? I've heard that telling people your goals often makes you less likely to complete them.  Ironic, considering that from the time we're small children, we are encouraged to tell people our goals: what we want to be/do when we grow up, etc.  Of course, people's goals change from that point of time.  When I was little, I wanted to be a paleontologist/ballerina/race car driver.  Now, of course, I have something a little more realistic in mind.
I think the goal thing we did was stupid, anyway.  We had to write 4 goals, and relate them in pairs by role (student, sibling, member of church, etc.).  I could only think of two anyway.  The paper also said to write down some long-term and some short-term; like goals for the year versus 2- or 3-month time span.  Well, guess what, person who typed the paper?  One year is short-term for me.  I don't even have a 3-month goal.  My normal short-term is "by the time I've finished high school."  Long-term is "as an adult."  I don't know about other kids, who actually do sports and stuff, but I got nothing.  Well, almost nothing.  My shortest-term goal involves the bass guitar.  Anything else is prereq to the long-term.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Bulk Bears

Albertsons has a series of shelves near the produce/cheese/lunchmeat area that is specifically for bulk foods.  I see all sorts of dried fruits, and grains, and leafy things.  All of which are either dark or tannish, right?  But as I'm looking through the shelves, not really identifying most of the items, I see a splash of bright color.  Multiple bright colors, actually.  I look back, and I see a bag of gummi bears.  Among fruit and grain and healthy leafy things.  I see no other sweet, candy-like, preservative-laden things on the shelf - so why gummi bears?  And who buys gummi bears in bulk?  People with more than one kid, I guess.  Kids that like gummi bears.

This reminded me - somewhere in the world, there is a chandelier made out of gummi bears.  Really, it's pretty clever.  It gets soft in the summer, but doesn't melt, it's brightly colored, and bugs don't like it.  I guess bugs like natural food.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Jif Jazz

There was peanut butter in the lost and found today.  In jazz band here, anything in the lost and found is fair game.  A few years ago, someone bought a PlayStation 3 game and put it, brand new, into that lost & found as a prank.  And today, there was a jar of peanut butter in there.  Unopened.  It must have been there all summer, because it's only the second day of school and the jar smelled terrible.  The peanut butter must have gone bad, and it can't have gone bad in one day.  I can't imagine how someone could get a jar of Jif into the classroom without someone noticing.  It was likely a prank, like the PS3 game.  Why else would someone have peanut butter in jazz band?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

New and Improved

New and improved.  Every time you go to a grocery store, it’s somewhere.  But is it new? Or is it improved?  They can’t really go together, can they?  New implies never before seen.  But improved means there must have been a version before that.  The phrase “new and improved” creates a paradox.  And if it’s improved, what was wrong with the old version?  Anyway, what’s new isn’t always improved.  There are so many examples of this, but the most obvious to me is a washcloth.  When you have an old washcloth, it’s soft from being used so many times.  But if it’s new, and only been used perhaps once, then it’s rough and scratchy.  You probably won’t want to use it until it’s soft, unless it’s the only one you have.  This creates a second paradox.  It involves getting what you want in short-term versus getting what you want in the long-term.  But I digress.  “What’s new isn’t always improved” is illustrated in the TV show Ben 10, in the episode titled “Ben Four Good Buddy."  When highway robbers steal the Rustbucket, they add tons of gizmos to do their dirty work.  But on the inside, the RV still has quirks that help Ben defeat the robbers from inside - literally!  I won't spoil it, but it involves the fridge and the ice maker.
How easily can you pull up a sapling? What about an old tree?  With trees, when someone refers to one as old, he/she is saying that it's very big and strong.  How does that fit with the view of "new and improved"?
What else have you seen that is better old than new?  Or something new that hasn't improved?
So if you see “New and Improved!” somewhere, question:  Which one is really it?