April 24, 2013: Fishycle

There was once a man who owned a particularly large fish, one that was bigger than him.  He had a system of large containers filled with water grafted on top of the fish's gills, along with pumps to keep the water moving, so that the fish could breathe without needing to stay in a tank.  He also had wheels, handles, and bicycle pedals added on to the creature.  In the end, he had a large mobile fish that he could use for his personal transport from work to home.

Soon, however, the fish grew tired of being used as a wheeled mount.  On a Thursday that very week, the fish knocked it's owner off of it's back and repeatedly ran him over.  The man was sent to the hospital with severe injuries, and the fish escaped scot-free.

April 19, 2013: Opporteeuuneahteee

Opportunity describes a chance to do something important.  Truly great opportunities are known to be exceedingly rare, and to be able to recognize and act on one is one of the wisest things a person can do.  They appear to everyone, but they are more often than not left unrecognized.

Opportunity invariably came to all major figures in history.  Had not a fortunate opportunity shown itself to, say, George Washington or Thomas Edison, we would be without our government or reliable ways to control electricity.  Opportunities can also come more mild to most, providing a short increase in providence for those who happen across them.

April 18, 2013: Shocking!

Lightning is a natural phenomenon attributed to strong storms, and is always accompanied by it's sound counterpart, thunder.  It is the result of titanic electrical charges building up inside certain clouds, with the only place it can ground itself to usually being the ground.  Lightning is extremely lethal, being known to take more lives per year than tornadoes.

Lightning bolts are known to be hotter than the surface of the sun, a testament to their intensity.  In large sandy areas, such as deserts, lightning is able to instantly solidify the sand it strikes into glass.  Should we be able to harness lightning for personal use, 'twould be a great boon indeed.

April 12, 2013: WONDERFUL BUTTER CANDY

Caramel is the result of cooking down sugar, which becomes a smooth, thick liquidous substance that makes for an excellent candy.  Pictured above is the old man from one of the old Werther's Original commercials, the brand name being that of a type of hard caramel candies, and a good example of what can be done with caramel.  The title of this entry is from a line from the same commercial.  Caramel even works wonders on apples.

The creation of caramel is a process known as caramelization, achieved by heating sugars to 340 degrees Farenheit (170 degrees Celsius), which melts the sugars down into their sticky confectionary form.  Adding water to the mix creates caramel sauce, a thinner variety useful for toppings.  Milk caramel is similar, created by heating sugars and milk together to only 120 degrees Celsius, which causes the milk to caramelize, but not the sugars.

April 11, 2013: Caught in a Snare

The snare drum is a principal member of the percussion family.  It is used in nearly every music genre, from orchestra to rock, to even marching bands.  It can be used to put down an excellent rhythm, especially if you don't want your drumline to be too bass-heavy.  It blends so well with most genres, likely due to the range of music it works in despite the fact it is unpitched.  The warm, punchy sounds are something I always find satisfying.

Snare drums operate by using snares made of various materials, usually spiraled metal cords, that vibrate against the bottom head when the drum is hit.  It is also possible to move the snares off of the bottom head, in which case the drum has a tonal similarity to a tom.  The snares can also be adjusted to alter the sound when the drum is stricken.  The size and depth of the drum also influences the sound - drumkit snares and standalone orchestral snares are usually similar in size, while marching snares are much larger and have a distinctly different sound.

April 10, 2013: Horrible Hammer-Watching Dog

There was once a zombie dog, one that owned his own dog house with electricity and television.  He enjoyed watching old Hammer horror films, for obvious reasons.  He also still had some nice thick fur on his head from his living days, and very much enjoyed to brush it, although he had to be careful to not pull his flesh off of his skull for it was too rotten to be handled roughly.  He also liked to pelt intruders with hammers.  He led a happy un-life, although he couldn't go out very much due to being a zombie, so he hired a human to act as a supplier, who would go to the nearest prison and request death row inmates for the dog's food, and who would also buy new movies for him.

The happiness would soon end, however.  The neighborhood became fully aware of the undead animal, and with no regard for the fact that it was placid and only wanted to eat dangerous criminals and watch movies in peace, they marched upon the hapless beast, got into it's supply of hammers, and tried to kill it.  The supplier luckily returned at this time and explained everything to the angry mob, calming them considerable and making them return to their homes.  The dog invited several people over as an apology for scaring them, and had a massive marathon of his movies.  They just had to cope with the smell.

April 9, 2013: Freewriteception

Freewriting is the act of writing about whatever one wants.  It is great for encouraging creativity, for it allows students to do whatever they please with their assignment.  Creativity is good, and thus freewriting must also be good!  This assumption is only logical when you take into account the slow decline of creativity in students...at least, that's what I see, MOST of the time.  Thusly, I like freewrites and am freewriting about them!

When one freewrites, it gives a sense of freedom, free of any non-free assignments that suffocate and discourage freeness.  Freewriting makes it so that if you want to write about something, you can without worry of the authority coming down upon you.  It's truly writing free of outside intervention.  Free free free free free free free free free free.

April 8, 2013: IS IT OVER YET

Beginnings and ending...where to begin?  They're perhaps the most diametrically opposed opposites of all, everything about one being antithetical to the other.  The only similarity they share at all is the fact that they're at either end of something.  Thus, drawing any more comparisons than what have already been are is truly a daunting task.  It's almost to the point of impossibility, even!

However, that's not to say it's completely impossible, as it is about to happen.  Even though beginnings and endings are completely opposite, they are still two sides of the same coin.  Truly, it's not possible to have one without the other - every beginning has an ending, every ending has a beginning.  Such seems to be a trend among diametric opposites.

April 4, 2013: The Great National Pastime

Baseball is commonly known as the National Pastime, thought as a symbol of the United States.  The truth is, however, different in that baseball's early origins were possibly in a 1344 French manuscript, perhaps drawing a comparison between modern baseball and a multitude of old French sports.  It wouldn't be until 1845 that Alexander Cartwright, however, would develop the Knickerbocker rules for the game and end up being lauded as the father of modern baseball.  The sport finally went professional in 1869 withe the birth of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, and it has a long history from here.

Baseball is played with two teams, in a time-frame of nine innings, which are the time it takes for an entire team to hit a thrown ball with a bat.  After hitting the ball, should it not be a foul by going out of the side bounds, the person who hit must then run around the four bases at the edges of the 90 foot diamond without being touched by the ball, or they are considered out and cannot play until their team switches sides.  When the batting team receives three outs, they switch sides.  Successfully rounding the entire diamond earns the team a point, and the team with the most points at the end of the ninth inning wins the game.

April 3, 2013: Doll the Big Game Hunter

You'd think the smell of freshly burnt gunpowder in a forest full of large deer wouldn't be particularly notable, but the circumstances behind this firing are much more odd than most oft think.  For, you see, the one firing their armament was no man, or at that, human.  This time, a large, sentient Barbie doll in full camouflage, bedecked with spare ammunition, was the one behind the trigger.  But how could such be possible?

The story began on a quiet winter's day, out in the open countryside.  A little girl living with her family had left her Barbie in the kitchen, where her mother was cooking.  Her mother had a reputation as being the worst chef known to man, with the exaggeration not being too far from the truth.  The girl's Barbie fell into a vat of what was supposed to be mashed potatoes but seemed more like toxic waste, and the effects of the strange and alien brew were immediate - the doll was flung from the pot and stirred to life, growing to the size of a fully grown adult woman.

Several years passed, and the living doll came to realize her passion for hunting.  It's a good thing, that, since she was a far superior cook as well.  Every night she would venture into the deer-filled woods only a mile away and bring back big kills, all with plenty of juicy meat ripe for the stew-pot.  She always aimed for the highest point buck she could find, and only once missed her mark when a doe got in the way.  It would be happy times for the lot of them, with food abundant.

April 2, 2013: Boom

A mainstay of a certain national holiday, fireworks are relatively low-yield explosives designed mainly to provide impressive pyrotechnic displays.  They are commonly filled with gunpowder to give thrust and to cause the initial explosion, and varying chemicals and compounds to give the colors and patterns of the explosions.  Different ingredients give different explosions in different colors, patterns, and configurations, to the point where you can deliberately make intricate shapes from the blasts.

Examples of materials used in fireworks can range from barium, which in most forms gives green colors, to calcium which provides red colorations, as well as copper, which gives the display blue colors.  These are merely some of the chemical groups which can have effects on the blasts, and not all chemicals are used for coloration.  Some can control when the explosion happens, some can control how large or small the blast is, some are even used merely to help keep a firework together.

April 1, 2013: Nocturnum Lumen

As always, the day's comparison this time is of two things that are almost diametrically opposed.  There's a well known saying, "these two things are as different as day and night".  Considering the day's comparison is indeed day and night, this saying is about to rise to a new level of literalness.  Parental guidance is advised for all readers who have a fear of the night, or who just dislike comparison blog posts.  You have been warned.

Day is mainly characterized by the presence of the sun in the sky, which provides for an abundant source of light and heat.  Conversely, night is known for the absence of such a powerful light source, with the moon instead dominating the sky, providing a far less intense light upon the land.  Such allows for the stars hanging in the celestial ether, and the cosmic black void beyond them, to become much more readily visible.  Furthermore, the temperature lowers as the hot, bright sun lowers below the horizon and the cooler moon rises.