Curious Children Song

Here is a children's song that you may have heard of. "The Animal Fair"

I went to the animal fair,
The birds and the beasts were there,
The big baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair,
The monkey bumped the skunk,
And sat on the elephant's trunk;
The elephant sneezed and fell to his knees,
And that was the end of the monk,
|: The monk, the monk, the monk. :|

I am sorry, is there a monk visiting the animal fair (but why?), and then an elephant sneezed, fell on his knees and crushed him?

Why does children song has lyrics like this?

Like this a lot: This is how scientists see the world

Came across the following in a facebook link:

I need a stronger than [Like] button... a [Love] button for this. I'll be impressed if you recognize just some of these equations/reactions. But a college graduate should at least seen some of these.

The good news is: you don't need to know all these to enjoy the world as in the top picture.

Where is the dude who dared to mock me with "tell me one use of calculus"?

BASIC Programming nostalgia

Check this out, here is an amazing BASIC emulator (in javascript?): http://www.ngbasic.com/.

Go ahead, enter line-numbered lines right on it (no separate editor and compiler needed).

10 PRINT "HELLO MY FRIEND"

Then run it with "RUN".

In early 80s, BASIC dominated the (personal) programming world. Yes, there were C and other "more professional" languages but they aren't so accessible. The Commodore 64 came with BASIC. DOS machines came with it. Some Apple came with it (I think, I never really owned one)... Although each BASIC is a little different but it lets you create something easily. After all, it is the Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. If you had to fight pointers like in C then it will be too hard for most people. The sensation of able to tell the computer to obey your order is a nice feeling. (Feels even better if you make money for doing that)

Nowadays, given a new computer, although mostly free, you have to download a bunch of things to program something (and not so easily). BASIC lets you play with it right away... I wonder why Microsoft doesn't give you Visual Basic (note, no capital) in Windows... (well there is VBScript, and there is this VBA thing from Office.) Perhaps Microsoft may add a free fun programming tool to Windows Blue so it makes your computer fun again. (Doubtful)

Open Math Reference

This site did what I envisioned about a decade ago. Math education tools: http://www.mathopenref.com which may revolutionize education. I am very impressed. I wish students all over the world can benefit from the demos. This certainly dwarfed my 30 or so demos in my Math Experiments app. My applets/activities are kinda crude compared to Math Open Ref. But I enjoyed the process of writing the apps and proud to say they are original.

But can excellent apps alone really revolutionize education? It is just part of the process. Parents should step in to help their kids...

American gun culture is so very wrong

Only in America, a 5-year-old shoots 2-year-old sister with a gift gun.

Why in the world do you give a deadly gun to a 5 year old as a gift before he even starts first grade? Five-year-olds don't need to go hunting. Nobody really should. Leave the wild animals alone! There are PLENTY of other recreational activities. Give him a NERF gun instead.

What are you going to do with the 5-year-old? Charge him for murder? The sister died in vain. He will probably be sorry for what he did. I want him to grow up to be an anti-gun advocate.

This "normal way of life" gotta change. When will public opinion ever change to what makes sense? Just how many people has to die?

The 2nd Amendment needs to be REPEALED. If you allow guns why aren't you allowing people making nuclear bomb? Only law enforcement should have access to guns. Even the first baby step toward making sense: a sensible background check faced opposition. The American gun culture is just so very wrong.