Meandering Monday: volume 2

One of the things you here most from kids struggling with higher level math is "are you really going to have to use this in the real world?"  You know, I never heard an answer to that growing up.  In my previous job I found myself using things like geometry, algebra, trigonometry all the time to figure things like prices, profit and construction specs.  

Now I am back in school, a little wiser of the world and I realize that even the mundane of functions, logarithms, polynomials, radicals, etc, etc, play a role in everyday life.  There was a time in our country when school was not completely taught in a classroom.  Kids learned math by taking their crops and livestock to the market with their parents learned to add, subtract, multiply and divide through monetary transactions.  Now we teach in schools with 20 to 30 kid classrooms and it has forced us to teach to a common denominator.  We have reduced math to a series of definitions that must be memorized and regurgitated.

Even as I sit in this college level class, filled with a lot of engineering and pre-med students, we skip the practical applications of what we are doing.  Each chapter in the book has a section included that teaches real world practices of the math we are learning.  To this point, our professor has skipped all of this.  How easy would it be to say, this is the equation you use to keep a building from falling down (or something along those lines).  


Now, is this a solution to all of kids frustrations with Math?  No.  But if you can peak a few more kids interest in the field of Math, (which opens up the world of science) maybe we can stop the downward spiral of our kids math and science scores when compared to the rest of the world.

Wordless Wednesday

Sound-off Sunday: episode 2

Sound-off Sunday is a concept that I came up during an abnormally loud car ride.  The shear volume of the car would have probably cause a normal person to lose their mind, but I realize that it is just part of the soundtrack of our lives.  Each Sunday I will share with you an audio recording that will allow you a window into our chaos.

This is a recording from the car ride leaving church on Sunday.  The phrase that is being uttered is "Hey big daddy! Want a house call?"  You are probably asking yourself, where in the world would our kids have been exposed to a saying like that.  For that, I have to take you back to my college days.

My wife Julie was a psychology major in a speech communication major body.  She attempted to reverse the paradigm of men hooting and hollering from a construction site or car window in the direction of an attractive woman.  She did this by using the phrase, "Hey big daddy! Want a house call?" yelled from a car window she would study the effect it would have on an unsuspecting male coed.  Or at least that is what she told me ... I believe she just thinks that she is hilarious when she does it, providing her hours of good entertainment.

Fast forward about ten years.  I am a college student again.  We live close enough to the school that I attend that, as long as the weather cooperates, I ride my bike to class.  One such day about a week ago, I left for class and was trudging up the hill leading from our house to the community exit, when I heard a surprising but familiar chant of "Hey big daddy! Want a house call?" from somewhere over my right shoulder.

It was funny, well timed and took me back to a time when life was just beginning ... but it has also produced this:

Wordless Wednesday

click on image for a larger view

Twin Tuesday part 1

Grammy and Pop-pop are in for a visit for a few days.  Today we went to Sports Authority and A.C. Moore to pick up a few things (yes I had to go to the craft store).  After leaving Sports Authority, Grammy walked Zoe, Zane and Zadie to A.C. Moore while Zach and I went back in to Sports Authority to scour the store for the sunglasses Zane apparently sat down somewhere inside.  We didn't find them.

The story that I want to tell was relayed to me by Grammy and occurred on their sojourn from Sports Authority over to the craft store (I have taken the liberty of putting the story into my own words).

While we were walking, we saw a bug that looked a lot like a dragon fly, resting on the sidewalk.  Zane was hunched down looking at the bug, saying hi, and really examining it.  Zoe walked up, took a quick look at the bug and proceeded to step on it, killing it in cold blood.  Zane paused, thought about the senseless killing that unfolded in front of him and responded by telling the bug "that's alright, you be okay".  Zoe in her sweetest most delicate tone, soothed her grieving brother by chanting "no, he's dead, he's dead" and continues her trek toward the craft store.

Meandering Monday: volume 1

Meandering Monday is a revival of my first blog attempt ramblingsofacommonman.blogspot.com where I write about current events, everyday occurrences, random thoughts, etc.


I don't know what to say about the spill in the Gulf.  A horrible, horrible catastrophe that we will feel the impact of for a long time.

But I do know that a lot of people are going to use this as a springboard to diminish our use of fossil fuels (crude oil).  When we think of uses for crude oil, the primary use that comes to mind is gasoline used for cars.  But its uses also include Lubricants (oils and greases), propane, wax (like the ones used in frozen food packages), sulfur, tar, asphalt, plastics, polymers, solvents, chemicals, etc, etc, etc.  What I am trying to say is, you may be drive a Chevy Volt, but the car body is made of oil, the road you are driving on is made of oil (asphalt), the oil for the engine is made of, well, oil, the stop light you wait at is made of oil (plastic), the cell phone you are texting on while driving is made from oil,  the drive-thru speaker you speak into is made from oil, and on and on and on.

Before we look to demonize an entire industry for an accident (an accident of an unprecedented magnitude, but yet still an accident) think about what it could mean for our own lives.  I know I didn't like it when gas was $4.30 a gallon.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg.  The products that we have become so accustomed to, that have become staples in everyday life (cell phones, laptops, cars, trains, planes, food packaging, cleaning supplies, the keyboard I am typing on now) would not be possible without that gooey mess that is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Do companies need to better regulate themselves?  Absolutely! Should we explore ways to limit our dependence on oil?  Yes!  Should we jump to make wholesale changes to an industry that impacts our lives more than we could probably fathom?  I do not think so.

Sound-off Sunday: episode 1

Sound-off Sunday is a concept that I came up during an abnormally loud car ride.  The shear volume of the car would have probably cause a normal person to lose their mind, but I realize that it is just part of the soundtrack of our lives.  Each Sunday I will share with you an audio recording that will allow you a window into our chaos.

This recording was from a short car trip to Target.  The picture does not match the audio (just one that I liked), but it does feature the two main players in the audio recording (Zach and Zane)