No Milk Today

Every now and then, I do try to practice playing my guitar.  I am just good enough to be bad.  I have learned that when I do practice, using a song or music that I actually enjoy works best.  No matter how badly I play it, in my mind, it still sounds like the song I enjoy.  Thus, I have fun practicing.

Recently, I was in the mood for classic 1960's Brittish Invasion Rock-n-Roll.  I found  "No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits on YouTube:

I used the tab music at tabs.ultimate-guitar.com.  About two weeks later, I ran into this version of No Milk Today by Joshua James & The Forest Rangers, which played in The Season 3 Opener of Sons of Anarchy:

Enjoy.

AP Report to the Nation

Have you seen the College Board's 9th Annual AP Report to the Nation?  The numbers are a bit white-washed and curated.  However, one can gleen some interesting trends.  For examaple, 29.2% of Maryland's high school graduates of 2012 scored a 3 or higher on an AP Exam while 8 States had 10% or less.  The USA average was 19.5%.  Although currently, the College Board is a not-for-profit corporation, its CEO earned over $1 million in 2009.  It is my beleif that, ultimately, this report is about increasing or maintaining the College Board's intake of money.  Still, given that the College Board's standardized exams do act as a gate for access to the best of USA society, being knowledgeable about the demographics of success on these exams is important.  Here's the demographic that I recall the most (click  to see a pop-up larger version):

Which Groups Have Higher Proportions of Unbanked Households?

PBS's Need To Know re-braodcast on Sunday April 21(perhaps original air date was a few days earlier) presented a program on Financial Literacy.  It highlighted a program in Missiissippi directed at educating kids (as young as 1st grade) and their parents about developing savings habits and the importance of having a bank account.  I got curious about the statistics.  The FDIC published results of a survey in 2011.  The information that follows comes from that survery, which you can find here: 2012 Underbanked Survery (or go to
http://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/2012_unbankedreport.pdf  ).

Click for a larger graph.

What if government got out of the marriage business?

Despite the lengthy and rarely intelligent debates about marriage, marriage equality, gay marriage, or whatever label the media decides to use, I have not found any articles discussing the removal of govenrment or civil law from marriage altogether.  However, I finally found one.  It actually discusses the issue intelligently.  The article does go in-depth into how this might come about, but it poses good points.  The article is posted on a blog called Big Think.  I am agnostic toward the blog in general and only wish to bring attention to the article I found there, by Peter Lawler, called "Should Government Get Out of the Marriage Business?"

Single Parent Statistics

I had a very interesting conversation with one of my PreCalculus students.  He had been working on a paper for another course that was investigating the achievement gap in education in America.  He asked me if I had any opinions or thoughts about it.  Of course, I did.  During the ensuing conversaiton, we spoke about the effect of the increasing number of children raised in single-parent homes.  I got curious and later looked up some statistics.

Magnetic Fields and Forces, step 2

This is the "class 2" on Magnetic Fields and Forces

• Here Derek Owen goes over EXACTLY what we did in the first class on Magentic Fields and Forces!!  Watch and solidify your learning!
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ6m_w0TS_A (9:40)
• Watch the famous Dr Lewin,  but only the first 7:27 !!!!  Here he introduces F = qv x B
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8D3ikuyaGo (0:00 - 7:27)

Migrating Thunderbird from Win XP to Windows 7

I had a Win XP crash due to a bad disk.  Since I would have to re-install XP on the new disk, I figured I might as well install a newer OS... WIndows 7 (and dual boot Opensuse Linux, but that's not relevant here).  Then I wanted to keep all my mailboxes in Thuderbird as they were.  I found the solution here:  http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1774485

Chaos; Head

Another anime as I search for something as good as Full Metal Alcheist.  Chaos; Head has plenty of promise: a blossiming love story, mystery, and a unique weapon (the DiSword). However, it's only 12 episodes long.  If you would like to watch this series, go to: Chaos; Head on YouTube.

Chrono Crusade

My favorite Anime of all time is probably Full Metal Alchemist.  Anime enthusiasts know there are two versions: FMA and FMA-Brotherhood.  Both are great, but Brotherhood had a complete story, following the original story line of the original author.  More on FMA later.  Today, I wanted to mention Chrono Crusade, the latest Anime I found in my search to find an anime that I enjoy as much as I enjoyed FMA.  You can find episode 1 (of 24) with English subtitles here: Chrono Crusade on YouTube.  Wikipedia has a great summary of everything you might want to know here: Chrono Crusade on Wikipedia.  My review to come later.

Can't afford college example. What should I do?

I searched ("googled") the pharse, "What should I do if I can't afford college, even with loans?"  Here's a great thread that does not give an answer but certainly raises some points to consider, especially one's attitude.  I found it at CollegeConfidential.com at the following URL: 

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1497004-looks-like-i-cant-afford-college-what-do-i-do.html

Learn about Magnetic Fields and Forces

Watch:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fs9wSF_GSQ (about 10 min)
  This is a wonderful video that introduces Magnetics.  Most of this stuff is normally taught in a Physical Science class.  When you  watch this video, don't forget to THINK!!!
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLyGfLCvuzQ (About 6 min)
  this guy is a little crazy, but he does a nice job of emphasizing that the concept of "Field" is man-made to help us understand how forces can act over a distance.

Co-ed Dormitories (in college)

The spark for this topic is about 10 days old.  I do not recall exactly how we got on this topic, but two students in my class took opposing views.  One thought it was crazy (not sane) to seriously consider co-ed dormitories.  The other took the what's wrong with that position.  I got curious as to what research might be available.  I only found an ariticle from a website called livescience.com.

The Efficient Frontier

This is an very informative set of videos.  No one video will answer all our questions, but this a good set of building blocks to help us understand the efficient frontier.

High Schoolers and Sexual Risk Behavior

Besides moral and/or religious grounds (not that one needs more rationale than morality/religion), can one tell a high school that sexual activity during high school has consequnces?  First, we need data to see the current landscape.  I found the following data from the CDC {Youth risk behavior surveillance—United States, 2011. MMWR 2012;61(SS-4).}  You can find it on the CDC website, but restated here for convenience:

Many young people engage in sexual risk behaviors that can result in unintended health outcomes. For example, among U.S. high school students surveyed in 2011¹

• 47.4% had ever had sexual intercourse
• 33.7% had had sexual intercourse during the previous 3 months, and, of these
  • 39.8% did not use a condom the last time they had sex
  • 76.7% did not use birth control pills or Depo-Provera to prevent pregnancy the last time they had sex
• 15.3% had had sex with four or more people during their life

Sexual risk behaviors place adolescents at risk for HIV infection, other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and unintended pregnancy:

• An estimated 8,300 young people aged 13–24 years in the 40 states reporting to CDC had HIV infection in 2009²
• Nearly half of the 19 million new STDs each year are among young people aged 15–24 years³
• More than 400,000 teen girls aged 15–19 years gave birth in 2009⁴

Only 6 Black girls in the entire U.S. in 2008 got 5's on Physics C

A few years ago, I scolded an advisee of mine for pulling out of a leadership position (house president).  Her reason was that she thought she had no chance of winning.  Only one other person ran---and got the position by default.  My advisee happened to be Black young woman.  I told her that because of the history of our country and some facets of its current state, persons from certain demographic groups do not have the luxury to give up leadership positions.  A few days ago, I saw a similar situation develop, but this time in an Honors Physics class.  Upon researching some statistics, I found an article on "Who Gets 5's on AP Physics Exam" in the blog http://isteve.blogspot.com by Steve Sailer.  (Disclaimer: I take no position on any view expressed by Sailer or his blog.)

L'Hopital's Rule

No explanation.  Just two video links that will teach you L'Hopital's Rule in Calculus AB/BC fashion and even give you some practice applying it.

Watching Anime "Live reactions"

A live reaction---at least the version of which I am writing---is a video of yourself "reacting" live and in real-time as you watch an anime.  Others can then play back your live reaction as they watch the anime, and it's is like having you in the room with them.  

Integration Practice

Again, nothing but a few video links.  This is for practice, not the initial teaching of the topic.

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday Video

Learning About Rational Functions, Class 1

Watch videos on intro to RATIONAL FUNCTIONS

• This is by a great math teacher, Mr. Tarrou:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkUnSomHZdg (14:29)
  Please follow along with your notebook!!  This takes less than 15 minutes!!! Do it!
• The next video is by a different author.  It illustrates certain mechanical skills necessary when working with rational functions:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMk4tKoby54 (11:29)
  This one is about simplifying rational expressions.  Actually, there is a very small error in this video.