Self-Referencing

How great that the week the school online newspaper does a profile on me complete with a link to the blog, the blog is featuring a huge, slightly gross picture of my teeth (see below if you missed it!).
The profile is about the winery connection so here are some links to past posts and the winery site itself:

the winery: http://www.vinscorses.com/

http://riddicisms.blogspot.com/2010/04/simple-wisdom-beauty-of-work-and-tarrh.html

http://riddicisms.blogspot.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-in-corsica.html

http://riddicisms.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-friend-chuckles.html

family tree parallels: http://sites.google.com/site/rideoutphysics/gg

Before and After

Before

After

I decided the chip was not "adding character" to my smile after all:







These shots were taken by my excellent dentist, Dr. Gold. Pretty cool (and slightly gross), eh? 

Good dentists, doctors, and car mechanics are hard to find - what you want is a minimalist in a field crowded with interventionists... Thanks to Dad for teaching me to lump those professions together and to keep looking around until you find the right ones.  Although this work was cosmetic, anytime your dentist downgrades a "cavity" to a "let's keep an eye on it", you know you have a keeper! Now where is that car mechanic with the same minimalist attitude?

Art intersecting with Science

Read about this one in the Boston Globe this morning.  I love this kind of stuff!  A 2D wave generator that uses motion detectors (infrared) to respond the presence and movement of audience members.  Read more about the art installation here.


Waves from Daniel Palacios on Vimeo.

Modern Technology

A mere 10 years ago, I would have had the thought and then dismissed it as being too much work.  Today, in 30 minutes, Isabelle and I totally transformed her Make-a-Match Memory Game from colors, animals, and numbers into one that involved her relatives' faces.  Truth is, she was beating me all the time since she had all the placements memorized from playing the game so many times.  One Word Table with cropped digital pictures inserted and two resizing attempts later, we had personalized the game!

Imagine trying to find old hardcopy photos, then photocopying them down to the right size, cutting them all out one by one, and then hand positioning them in the right place!  Never would have happened!

Tikki Tikki Tembo

When Irene first talked to me about this, I admit to having a little trouble wrapping my white male head around the issue.  Finally, I came up with an analogy to help  Euro-descendents get it:

"Hey Everyone - How about this great children's book that can get you in touch with English culture by telling the story of why men wear skirts there today on account of their needing to make hats out of their pants once a long time ago!"

Now, that just wouldn't sit right, would it?
Here is a repost of Irene's original post on Grace Lin's blog:

http://www.gracelinblog.com/2012/04/rethinking-tikki-tikki-tembo.html

Who are these goofy kids?

Nah, not related to me at all...

The Super Olive Bowl

Irene told me this one when the Superbowl was gearing up (apparently that sports event is a "super" big deal - who knew?): Olives in Taiwan look different, their ends are pointy, and they're called "gan lan". Chinese people think they look just like footballs, so that's why footballs are called "gan lan chiu" in Chinese - "olive ball"! Football in Chinese is olive ball!

Super Bowl = Olive Bowl?

Conservation of Mass

In my new hobby of beer brewing, I would daresay I have had a string of successes.  Batch #7, though, not so much.  It turns out it is very important to mix the prebottling sugar around before bottling.  This is the sugar that will give the yeast a second round of fermenting in the bottle in order to give each bottle its own champagne-like carbonation.  Sloppily, I poured the sugar in and immediately bottled.  Turns out the first six bottles I opened were flat, like so:

I tried adding sugar to the bottles individually, but one week later they were only marginally improved - like so:

How about that lightning mcqueen cup in the background?

Now, just as I was wondering "Where did all the sugar go? I mean - it has to be in some of the bottles, right?" I open a series of bottle that are... over-carbonated:

Note the frothy beer still in the bottle as well!

Johnny Cash and the Science Team

A couple of months ago, I was chaperoning our high school science team to a meet in Lowell, MA. More recently, I spent a fair amount of time talking to our driver on a different bus ride about the other driver (for reasons that will soon become clear).  I'm going to go ahead and spoil the story by telling the best part first:  When I asked what the other driver's name was, my driver paused and said "Well, we don't know - we just call him Johnny - as in Johnny Cash on account of his being a professional Johnny Cash impersonator back in the day."

Intiguing, eh?  Who knew there was such a profession as a Johnny Cash impersonator?  The reason I asked was because of the Lowell trip incident: 

It was a dark, wet, trafficy night and I had in my charge nine (or was it eleven - who knows?) youths.  On the way back from Lowell,  the bus starts making funny noises.  At first it is a mild straining on the accelerations.  Then it is a major slowing on the uphills.  Then, eventually, in the middle lane, it is a complete engine failure.  The driver attempted to get into the breakdown lane, but a bus going uphill comes to a stop pretty fast after its motor dies and he only managed to straddle both the middle and slow lanes on I-495 during rush hour.  As cars start whipping around both sides of the bus (the fast lane on the left and the breakdown lane on the right), I start thinking "Hmmm, awkward time to be the responsible adult present" and "Hmmm, should I get the kids off the bus so they can stand on the side of the road - but, they might get killed crossing the breakdown lane with all those cars speeding around us."  Just as quick as these thoughts pop into my head, Johnny Cash gets the bus fired up again and we crawl up the hill safely.  We then spend almost 2 hours getting home at a top speed of about 35 MPH, but I am thankful to get all 9 (or was it 11?) kids safely back.

At the end of the ordeal, I ask the driver "Did you think the engine would start again" and he wisely replied "I was sure hoping so..."