Triumvirate of Dictators

There's this country called Libya that's been in the news lately and, apparently, it's been ruled for a long time by trio of really bad dictators - who knew?

I really resent it when the pundits just assume you already know stuff (like there are really three guys in charge - maybe they are brothers?):

This conspiracy on the part of the press is as bad as the one several years ago when China moved their capital city from Peking to Beijing!  Why can't they just tell us these things?

"Khadafi"

"Gadaffi

"Qaddafi"

Lightweight Ninjas

Last week I gave a simple quiz to one of my classes on momentum.  Here is a problem quoted directly from the quiz:

2.    If a .55 kg ninja throwing star embeds itself in a stationary 3 kg block, what will be the speed of the block + star after the collision?  The star slams into the block at 5 m/s.

And here are the questions that followed:
"Don't we need to know the mass of the star?" ("It's given!" I respond)
"Why do you give us the mass of the ninja - we don't need that, do we?" ("That's a very small ninja!" I reply)
"This question is very poorly written." (*sigh*)

In the end, about half the class was confused by the question and the other half (including me) was mystified by their confusion until I realized the confused half never encounter the word 'ninja' as a adjective...

For the record, this is the first result when image googling 'ninja throwing star':


For fun, I googled ".55 kg ninja" and I did get this result:

Hmm... next year I will add a picture of the throwing star.  For the sticklers out there, I made the star very heavy so I could count points off when some students inevitably neglect the mass of the star when calculating the final momentum.  (experience & ease of grading trumps realism every time!)

Inappropriate Linear "Fits"

Next week I turn 41.  Bald spot, grey hair, trimming my eyebrows - these I am okay with.  But the persistent weight gain and my inability to lose the weight simply by thinking about it really bothers me.  In a nerdy attempt to gain a handle on this, I turn to analytics.

Many non scientists love to apply a linear fit to nonlinear data.  In this spirit, I have graphed my weight as a function of age and determined the best fit line.  As you can see, I will probably weigh 440 lbs when I am 85 years old.  Also of note is that I was born weighing 20 lbs and that I am gaining about 4.5 lbs per year.

The red line represent the 6 actual data points (drawn from memory and last weekend's weigh-in as well as the logical zero point of 1969).

Travolta, Cruise, and Ford

Long ago, I tried to convince people I was a nerdy teacher version of John Travolta:

Then I was told (by people who haven't met many white people) that I look like Tom Cruise, so I started to run with that (using his picture as mine on various teacher sites):

And, as of last week (thanks MK and CF), I have graduated to the ranks of Harrison Ford:

(Note the super-hip reference to a previous blog post!)

Finally, I have made it to the big leagues!

Indiana Jones, he diggin' up bones

I have my flaws, teachin' Newton's Laws

He has cool whip; into equations I dip

In front of others, I use white board marker

His cool hat, makes him taller, darker

But similarities between us can fill pages -

Dressed up in our Earth-tones and beiges