Homeschooling Infographic

A lot of complicated information, but its quite a rewarding read. (Click to enlarge)

9 Jokes Walk into a Blog...

 Here are some jokes to lighten your day. If you don't understand them, then shame on you. Just kidding.The ninth one is more fun to tell to other people because it actually has answers. I'll post the explanations to all of these jokes in a few days if anyone comments and asks for them.

1. This sentense contains exactly three erors.
2. Did you hear about the man that's afraid of negative numbers? He'll stop at nothing to avoid them. 
3. The bartender says, "We don't serve time travelers in here." A time traveler walks into a bar.
4. Did you hear about the suicidal homeopath? He took 1/50th of the recommended dose.
5. What do you get when you cross a joke and a rhetorical question?
6. A pun, a play-on-words, and a limerick walk into a bar. No joke.
7. Did you see that? A hyperbole totally just destroyed that house over there!
8. There are 1 0 kinds of people, those who understand binary, and those who don't.
9. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator? You open the door, put the giraffe in, and close the door. How do you put an elephant in a refrigerator? You open the door, take out the giraffe, put the elephant in and close the door. The king of animals, the lion, calls all the animals together for a meeting, but one animal doesn't show up. Which animal was it? The elephant, he is in the refrigerator. You need to get across a river that is known to infested with viscous, man-eating crocodiles. There is no boat or bridge. How do you get across alive? You swim. All the crocodiles are at the animal meeting.  
10. BONUS JOKE: This post has four errors.

Questions About Education

Here are some questions about our education system to get your brain churning!

1. Why does school have to be mandatory?
2. Does it even have to be mandatory? 
3. Why don't kids like school/want to learn?
4. Could students be trusted to educate themselves?
5. Why aren't we (children) as interested in the world around us as, say, the self-educated Michael Faraday?
6. Is it because of our society?
7. If so, is there a way to revert our society back to a state where children will want to learn; or is the problem's roots embedded in our technological comforts and way of life?
8. Do teachers make learning boring? I know from my personal experience I like learning things on my own rather than being forced to do something. For instance, the Curious Robot is something I like to do, not something I'm forced to do.
9. Why don't children find the amazing workings of the natural world very interesting?
10. Could they be taught to appreciate the world around them, or is it something embedded in their core personalities (or even DNA)?

I'll leave you to answer and ponder these questions, and maybe later I'll post my thoughts on the subject. 

The Shortest Poem and a Few Other Party Tricks

As the title of the posts suggests, I'll be sharing with you the shortest poem. Or at least debating about, evaluating, and trying to find the shortest poem. First, let's define "poetry" itself.

"po·et·ry

noun
 

the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts."

 

Or as Merriam Webster Dictionary puts it:

 

-

"po·et·ry

noun \ˈpō-ə-trē, -i-trē also ˈpȯ(-)i-trē\

: something that is very beautiful or graceful"

 

 

 One last definition from good old Wikipedia:

-

"Poetry ... is a form of literary art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language ... to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning. "

(Basically, literary art which creates more meaning than just the characters/letters/symbols it's composed of*.)

 

Something beautiful or graceful? Literary art that means something deeper? That sounds more interesting, so why don't we go with that... Here's our first contestant, a poem whose author is been lost in history, but who is suspected to be Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstien, or Strickland Gillilan. It is titled "On the Antiquity of Microbes" or more commonly: "Fleas". It reads as follows:

Fleas:

Adam

Had 'em 

The words "Adam" and the word (or maybe words) "Had 'em" don't "evoke" much meaning on their own, but put into a "literary work", the mean something much more humorous and thoughtful. So it's a poem, right? 

Muhammed Ali's:

 

Me. 

We.

 

 

Now here's one that's really interesting written by Aram Saroyan:

 

 lighght

 

It's not just "light", it seems to be a composite of two "light"s amalgamated together. Another interesting fact is that - depending on your pronunciation - four out of seven letters in this word are silent. Deeper meaning? Yes. Graceful? Yes. Poem? Maybe. 

 

There is also a poem writing by "jwcurry". It is a simple lower case "i", but the dot is instead replaced by the author's thumb print.  

And my favorite also by Aram Saroyan:

Some speculate that this is perhaps a peek into the "primordial" forming of our alphabet. The "m" and the "n" just haven't quite split. It also seems to mean "I'm", the forming of conscience. Here's some more like this that I made. 

Anyway, I'll leave it up to you to decide what the shortest poem really is. 

I also highly recommend Vsauce's "What is the Shortest Poem?", an excellent watch. 

*Yes, yes. Shoot me now, Grammar Nazis. I did end the sentence with a preposition.

Brain Teaser Answers!

1. Leave one switch one for a few minutes until the corresponding bulb in the attic gets hot. Then flip it off, flip another one on and go upstairs. Then you have an off-bulb, an on-bulb, and a warm-bulb.

2. The Petri dish will be full at 12:44.


3. Alright, this one's really complicated, but here go's:  The wisest one must have thought like this:
I see all hands up and 2 red dots, so I can have either a blue or a red dot. If I had a blue one, the other 2 guys would see all hands up and one red and one blue dot. So they would have to think that if the second one of them (the other with red dot) sees the same blue dot, then he must see a red dot on the first one with red dot. However, they were both silent (and they are wise), so I have a red dot on my forehead.

Here is another way to explain it:
All three of us (A, B, and C (me)) see everyone's hand up, which means that everyone can see at least one red dot on someone's head. If C has a blue dot on his head then both A and B see three hands up, one red dot (the only way they can raise their hands), and one blue dot (on C's, my, head). Therefore, A and B would both think this way: if the other guys' hands are up, and I see one blue dot and one red dot, then the guy with the red dot must raise his hand because he sees a red dot somewhere, and that can only mean that he sees it on my head, which would mean that I have a red dot on my head. But neither A nor B say anything, which means that they cannot be so sure, as they would be if they saw a blue dot on my head. If they do not see a blue dot on my head, then they see a red dot. So I have a red dot on my forehead.

 4. (Here's another answer you'll have to focus on for a while) The important thing in this riddle is that all masters had equal chances to win. If one of them had been given a black hat and the other white hats, the one with black hat would immediately have known his color (unlike the others). So 1 black and 2 white hats is not a fair distribution.
If there had been one white and two black hats distributed, then the two with black hats would have had advantage. They would have been able to see one black and one white hat and supposing they had been given white hat, then the one with black hat must at once react as in the previous situation. However, if he had remained silent, then the guys with black hats would have known that they wear black hats, whereas the one with white hat would have been forced to eternal thinking with no clear answer. So neither this is a fair situation.
That's why the only way of giving each master an equal chance is to distribute hats of one color - so 3 black hats.

Brain Teasers

Here's some brain teasers for you guys! I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't solve any of them and had to look at the answers. Hopefully my readers will have better luck!

1. There are three switches downstairs. Each corresponds to one of the three light bulbs in the attic. You can turn the switches on and off and leave them in any position.
How would you identify which switch corresponds to which light bulb, if you are only allowed one trip upstairs?

2. A Petri dish hosts a healthy colony of bacteria. Once a minute every bacterium divides into two. The colony was founded by a single cell at noon. At exactly 12:43 (43 minutes later) the Petri dish was half full.
At what time will the dish be full?

 Here's some harder ones:

3.  Three Masters of Logic wanted to find out who was the wisest amongst them. So they turned to their Grand Master, asking to resolve their dispute.
"Easy," the old sage said. "I will blindfold you and paint either red, or blue dot on each man's forehead. When I take your blindfolds off, if you see at least one red dot, raise your hand. The one, who guesses the color of the dot on his forehead first, wins."
And so it was said, and so it was done. The Grand Master blindfolded the three contestants and painted red dots on every one. When he took their blindfolds off, all three men raised their hands as the rules required, and sat in silence pondering. Finally, one of them said: "I have a red dot on my forehead."
How did he guess?

4. After losing the "Spot on the Forehead" contest, the two defeated Puzzle Masters complained that the winner had made a slight pause before raising his hand, thus derailing their deductive reasoning train of thought. And so the Grand Master vowed to set up a truly fair test to reveal the best logician amongst them.
He showed the three men 5 hats - two white and three black. Then he turned off the lights in the room and put a hat on each Puzzle Master's head. After that the old sage hid the remaining two hats, but before he could turn the lights on, one of the Masters, as chance would have it, the winner of the previous contest, announced the color of his hat. And he was right once again.
What color was his hat? What could have been his reasoning?

Answers will be posted later. Until then, may these riddles drive you crazy.