First, I broke down and bought a pair of budget headphones (Philips SHP2500) for home. I didn't realize it until now, but the Grado SR80's I listen to at work have really spoiled me and I'm mildly stunned at the difference. Budget headphones get the job done and sound better than budget headphones of 20 years ago, and I'm happy since they were cheap. But I have noticed that sounds blend together and have less depth and I find myself straining to pick out things that I take for granted I will hear on my high end 'phones. I think somehow I've become a sort of mild headphone audiophile. Translation: I'm destined to lose my hearing at an early age. Sigh.

Second, I started in on a xylophone project for Henry and whipped up something with a PVC frame and pine boards for notes. The complexity of sound from the pine planks is really surprising and tuning this thing is rough. The electronic tuner seems to have no idea which frequency to analyze. Tuning longer boards is getting interesting because the density of the wood makes two boards of equal length have very different tones, and the method of suspending the planks (hooks, string, etc.) not to mention the tension, plays a role in the tone too. So I really underestimated this project, but it's fun and Henry seems to dig it.

As I was striking the wooden planks and listening to them carefully, I experienced a big flashback to a nice era in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) when many spectrometers would play the audio equivalent of your data. The ear (technically the brain I suppose!) can sometimes analyze the character of the signal better than visual inspection of the raw data as it would appear on a scope. It's a long story, but NMR has a great deal in common with an FM radio station. Anyway, the NMR data we generated usually sounded like a slightly metallic bell with various reverberations and complexities that we trained ourselves to pick out by ear. I long for that again, for its deeper sensory connection to the data and the work we do. In addition to some potential advantages to processing our data by listening, the use of more senses forged a deeper emotional connection to the work also I have to admit.

If you think about it, in the chemical sciences at least, sound plays virtually no role in the application of our senses to the discovery of knowledge. We view data and we handle chemicals - so sight and touch are especially important. Smell can still be useful, and taste is forbidden for obvious reasons. But I claim that hearing is underutilized. So I'll end on a speculative question for fun if nothing else: is it possible to better engage our hearing in the conduct of scientific inquiry?

When we first moved in to our fair abode, we couldn't be there for the home inspection, and as far as I can tell the guy just phoned it in. That's a disappointment but I've made my peace with it for now because we anticipated a lot of the issues for ourselves. But the biggest surprise probably was the "insulation". I have to use quotes because when I poked my head into our little attic space I was horrified that about 20% had no insulation and the rest had 2-3 inches of crumpled up mess. I happily took care of most of this and smugly indulged in way too much diy pride.

But incredibly the house was as cold as ever, especially upstairs. "How", I wondered, "could I have taken major tracts of ceiling from no insulation to R-34 and see no return?". It must be the windows right? They give us a nice breeze whether they're open or not. But our house has about as many windows as our four door sedan, so that can't be it. I sat on it for a while, stewing.

Then for a birthday (I think?) I got this awesome surface-scanning thermometer gun that I'd wanted for a while (initial motivation was to monitor the temperature of my smoker without lifting the lid). And I wanted it out of sheer gadget-envy too, ok. I was reading the literature that it comes with, and that was annoying because it didn't explain the science. Closest I could figure from the vague description - and this strikes me as a little unlikely - it may do a blackbody radiation analysis, which I find surprising for the temperature range it covers. But the one reason why this might be right is that blackbody radiation is theoretically independent of the material (not quite true in reality), a very desirable property of a surface scanning thermometer. But even if I can't find a source on the science, I can see plainly that it works.

And I was surprised at how good the good precision was, and realized I could use this to start hunting for variation in wall temperatures. It's so good I can use it as a stud-finder.

And I now know why our house is still cold. First (cue the 'ironic surprise' music) large tracts of ceiling that were not visible to me from the attic are not insulated and it was really easy to spot with the thermometer from inside the rooms; and I went spelunking in crawl spaces and found it. Yes at least 50% of our ceilings were not insulated at time of purchase. I see in hindsight that after I fixed the attic, it dropped to maybe 30% of our ceiling being uninsulated. If I ever meet our home inspector I don't know if I'll be able to be civil. So I'm about to start on putting that missing insulation up.

Second, 60 year old insulation is really, really bad. I replaced an original batting with a combination of styrofoam board and new batting and saw the wall temperature increase 3-4 degrees over a region with old insulation. So I'm now on a humbug to go through and do that all around also.

Those two are the biggies - I found a bunch of other problems less interesting to mention here. So, if your house feels cold don't be a dope like me - there's probably an obvious, fixable reason and a cheap surface thermometer gun will at least make it fun to discover how the person before you bungled the insulation.

Seems crazy right - how is this possible? The modern car is a study in complexity and when a failure is sporadic and unpredictable, how do you test if the culprit is mechanical, software or electronic? Even worse, nearly every system in a car contributes to 'making the car go' so that there are thousands of mechanical parts directly or indirectly contributing to accelerating the car. And that's just the mechanical. So something is failing sporadically - and spectacularly - and its only symptom is that the car accelerates. Not good. Analysts are railing on Toyota for reckless outsourcing and cost-cutting that may have contributed to this. So don't feel sorry for Toyota, but let's hope they figure out a way to deal with the complexity and find the culprit soon or that the NHTSA does first.

Compare to NASA who manages complexity on an entirely greater level and scope - every successful shuttle launch is a technical marvel in which millions of parts work together in astounding harmony to lift many thousands of pounds off of our fair earth. The feat can barely be described by words. They make it look too easy. I DO feel sorry for NASA.

Anyway, I meant to build all of this up to reflect on the role of complexity in scientific data, and really took my sweet time doing it. Well with over the counter terrabyte storage and wondrous new instruments, we can collect such vast quantities of data that human inspection of the raw results is utterly impossible. Such a thing would normally have been frowned on - experimentalists have always aspired to elegantly design studies that isolate variables one at a time (and still do). But what is new is that there are more ways of extracting meaningful information from vast quantities of data. I met a scientist who can take an orange and tell you exactly where it was grown because they have a wealth of data on oranges in a data base - another who could take a cod (yech) and tell you where it was caught, all in the space of a few minutes (not counting wrestling the cod I suppose).

These are impressive, but the big prize is to demystify body fluids. There are a lot people working to develop what you and I would most closely recognize as the Star Trek 'tricorder'. You pee in a cup - maybe submit a blood sample too - and a few minutes later, you receive an astonishingly complete medical diagnosis of diseases, conditions, etc. This will probably happen in our lifetimes. You heard it here first.

I tried to think of a really cheesy, clever Star Trek quote to wrap this one up and got writer's block about it. It's monday night and BBT was new and awesome so in honor of Sheldon, I'll leave it to Spock,"Life...is not a dream".

1 pack of chicken ramen (any brand)
1 green onion, diced
half a celery stalk, diced
chicken broth (splurge on organic)
soy sauce
ginger powder
dried oregano

Make a 50/50 mixture of water to chicken broth in a medium sauce pan and turn the heat to high. Make a lot - make a little. Up to you. Add the green onions and celery. Add a splash of soy sauce, a pinch of ginger powder, the spice packet that came with the ramen noodles, and a couple shakes of the dried oregano. Bring to a boil, let boil a minute maybe two, add dried noodles from the ramen pack, decrease heat to medium. Serve after about 4-5 minutes (absolutely no longer). Yes, it's flipping awesome.

Want to get crazy? Then splurge on fresh cilantro and sprinkle on a generous amount of cilantro whole leaves right after you pour it into a bowl.

There, I gave it away. World peace through ramen, man.

Now flashback to yesterday. I was thinking about Robert Boyle and about how his legacy is still being re-interpreted today. And I got a big hankering to read one of his important works, The Sceptical Chymist. Amazon had a number of cheap versions, which Jenn kindly ordered for me, but then I stumbled upon this. For the same price that Starbucks would charge you to combine water with mass produced syrup, you could instead purchase the digitally photographed version of the original Sceptical Chymist and have it at your finger tips, in under 60 seconds. I was impressed.

This is good news right? Maybe not for everybody. Dover Books has made a solid business and earned a deeply loyal clientele by republishing beloved out of print books in all fields that have very little mass market appeal, especially in the sciences and mathematics, books just like the Sceptical Chymist. Dover's editions are extremely inexpensive, yet very high quality, respectful, photographed reproductions with no meddling, editing, etc. Half of my library is Dover, maybe more. Dover books have saved me on multiple occasions. And for now I still prefer the Dover editions. But it's clear now that it's easier for others to offer these unusual titles and to circumvent paper publishing. I could see Dover thriving or perishing and I think they're clever folks and will succeed, but I can't help but worry a little bit.

Well, that's all I've got (plus I finished my Ramen and spicy chicken).

First off, I just have to say what a great father's day it was with Jenn and Henry at Knoebels. After Jenn got me cool goodies from Woodcraft because she knows me sooooo well, the fam had a gut-bursting breakfast which we worked off on all kinds of kiddie-rides at the nation's largest free-admission park. Henry was in heaven and so was I and Jenn staged the perfect Father's Day. I felt like the biggest man around.

Second off (that was for you Kyle, if you're watching), I will now explain for all once *and once only* how the perfect caramel apple must be achieved:

1. start with an incredibly tart granny smith apple; anything else will be crap. You don't want it sweet or mushy. It has to be a crisp, violent-pucker-inducing apple the size of a baseball. Cheaping out on the apple is the worst sin of all. I submit that there is a special level of hell for any one who gets this wrong.

2. Apply a strong stick (3/8" diameter minimum) through the entire length of the core. This stick must stay in the apple even if an F5 tornado blows through, which coincidentally is equal to the force needed to bite into a caramel apple (get it? dentally?). See the previous comment about the importance of a crisp apple. It should be obvious that the right apple also helps in securing said apple to a huge stick that could double as a rake handle.

3. Dip apple in real hot caramel, not the fake junk, so that it forms a deep 1/4" covering EVENLY over the entire apple. We will say no more about the evil-doers who can't even bother to melt their caramel and use mystery-liquid-food-stuff-instead. But there should be no doubt about the importance of coverage: honestly, who can stand the amateurs who put the apple upside down and let the caramel cake on the top leaving an essentially bare apple behind. This is an insult that should not be endured : YOU should be dipped in hot caramel if you commit this sin.

4. Roll freshly dipped apple in nuts so liberally that at first sight you don't even see the caramel. DON'T wait for caramel to harden to do this.

5. Serve ASAP while caramel is luke warm.

FINAL PRODUCT: every bite must rake in gooey caramel, crunchy peanuts, and crisp, sweet-tart-like apple achieving ideal contrast and harmony simultaneously and setting off taste buds in your mouth you didn't know you had.

Knoebels nailed parts 1-4, which is extraordinary. Let's put it this way : I challenge you to remember the last time you met a caramel apple that even made it to part 1 successfully. And to give some credit, I sympathize that they have logistal issues to deal with and aren't in a position to hand dip right in front of you (IT CAN BE DONE, Knoebels - take that last step to caramel apple nirvanna). So there it is.

Funny story. I was struggling tonite to watch Bill O'Reilly to broaden my cultural horizons; he was yelling a lot and hurling insults and acting up a storm. Do people think this is news? And apparently some viewers like this but I was grudgingly forcing myself to watch. It's a free country - I don't like what he says so I don't watch him. But as I was grappling with why anyone would actually want to watch this, suddenly the screen went blank, then there was a pause, and then in plain text the words 'poor quality signal' flashed on the screen.

Back to science. Once again, I haven't felt like writing. I could continue my various humbugs about the miserable science reporting on CNN. Or I could regurgitate the popular science stories in the news like the one about element 112 being confirmed by IUPAC or that a high school student self-diagnosed herself in the middle of a lab class. Great stories, but you know them already and I have no insights on them. I don't enjoy watching MSNBC either, but I really liked Bill Nye's guest appearance tonite talking about clouds. I mean this guy is good - he can really show why talking about the weather (ok, this bizaare cloud picture) is exciting (and it is, FYI - I'm not being cheeky). But put all of this together (yes, even include BBT) and it feels like there is more science out there in the mainstream.

Now I'm not saying we should we go as far as professor trading cards, but it feels right to see all this science capturing the country's imagination. Is this a blip? Will it continue? And while I'm at it, just where is the next great kids science show? Henry's only a few years away from the age where I started to watch Mr. Wizard; Bill Nye is doing other important work. Actually, some of you may recall I was bummed out about this in a post that I wrote ages ago and it just hit me that there still isn't anybody out there doing this that I know of. (Does Mythbusters count?)

Meanwhile I'm still missing the Kirk burger king glass. KAAAAAAAAAAAHN!

This year we (translate : Jenn) think to ourselves: why not do it again except bigger and better? So we plant a leafy forest of mixed greens that takes up half our planter (don't worry, you'll get to see that soon enough) and congratulate ourselves for our initiative, healthy choices and all-around suburban coolness.

I still need to impart a little more background. Long story short : our neighbor's house is pretty badly neglected, and the large, cavernous space underneath the deck has several access points where we have seen herds of cats entering and leaving. One such opportunity looks like this (and if you have sharp eyes, then yes that is in fact poison ivy all around the neighbor's deck)

This was all fine and well until Jenn saw a groundhog saunter into that very opening yesterday afternoon and then she and I saw it again a few minutes later - double visual confirmation. Awww, cute groundhog, wonderous survivor and creature of nature. After oooo'ing and ahhhh'ing over the waddling, plump groundhog butt as it scurried under the deck, I averted my eyes towards the garden and discovered that about a third or so of our plants looked like this :

Yes, our uninvited guest (honestly, who else could it be?) had dined yesterday morning on a springy mix of sweet and delectable young sprigs of lettuce and clearcut about a third of our less-than-a-week-in-the-ground plants. And he had done it in the space of a few hours, because yesterday morning, Henry and Jenn and I had been admiring the fabulous lettuce plants in their full non-chomped glory.

Now growing up there was a lot of gardening going on - dad is the champ of gardening. And if I've learned anything about groundhogs ... it's that they always win. The only course of action is to lock horns in mortal combat, playing out the epic struggle of man vs beast, and hope to spare some shred of edible matter by the end of the summer. I had no illusions about this: the remaining lettuce would be eaten to muddy stumps by this morning. Indeed, yesterday afternoon I watched the groundhog and the feral cats prance around and underneath the neighbor's deck, vying for space (sorry no groundhog pictures...YET). The groundhog knew he wanted a condo right next to the garden and was trying to claim it, and I knew that no matter what he would be back for the rest of the lettuce.

So into the car I go -ostensibly to go to work and grade (that's what I told Jenn), and make sure I can turn in my grades on monday when they're due - but instead I truck to Lowes, truck back home, and assemble this minor masterpiece:

As of this writing, the lettuce survived the night and I am declaring an initial victory (with apologies to the cute but annoying groundhog - lest you feel sorry for him, he was very plump prior to discovering my ultra-low-calorie treats).

But let's not forget rule number 1 : the groundhog always wins. So I am waiting for him to escalate the arms race and do something new and drastic. For starters, they are good diggers. Sigh.

Hmmm, need some science here. Well, I just rejected a paper that I peer reviewed and luckily that doesn't happen much, but when it does it puts me in a funk. It's a lot like grading. Correct assignments are easy to grade. But when a student homework or exam goes way off track, it's really time consuming to work through it all, make sure they get the benefit of the doubt, and figure out a fair grade.

A weak paper is similar - you have to look up a bunch of their references, read lots of extra papers, and realize that you better be sure the paper is too weak to publish and exactly why it is, because there's a really nice research group out there that's going to be very disappointed. Well, it's way too late again, so I'd better turn off youtube and hit the hay.

If you too wish to do this, then take the temperature in Celsius, add 273.15 (it's a lot easier to skip the .15 for convenience - do you really care if you are off by a tenth of a degree?) and voila. So 7 C turns into (7 + 273) = 280 K.

Some temperatures that every chemist should commit to memory in Kelvin: (many of these assume 1 Atm ambient pressure).

0 K (-273.15 C, -459.67 F) - absolute zero; funny thing about this is you can never reach absolute zero in the laboratory (or anywhere else for that matter...) - that's a law. But you are allowed to get as close to it as you like.

4.2 K (-269 C, -452 F)- boiling point of liquid helium, very possible nature's most precious resource for supporting modern science and medicine.

77 K (-196 C, -321 F) - boiling point of liquid nitrogen; this is the temperature you need to reach to liquify nitrogen.

90 K (-183 C, -298 F) - boiling point of liquid oxygen; yup - when working with liquid nitrogen, you can liquify oxygen out of the air.

273.15 K (0C, 32 F) - freezing point of water; ho-hum.

298 K (25 C, 77 F) - the classic default temperature we all call 'room temperature'.

310 K (37 C, 98.6 F) - body temperature!

373.15 K (100 C, 212 F) - boiling point of water; yawn.

Here's a common definition : a magnet is a material that creates a magnetic field. Totally useless. Nobody should accept this. It's like saying a pork chop is a chop made out of pork. Yes I know it's technically correct, and there's a deeper meaning in it when you think about what a field is, but fundamentally, what is a magnet? Light is a photon or a wave depending on how you look at it. Electricity is just electrons moving around. A magnet is, ummm, uhhhh,.....

OK here's another common definition : a magnet is an object that sticks to metals. This one is kind of tempting, but has the major problem that there are certainly metals that a magnet won't stick to (ok - weakly diamagnetic, which repels the magnet anyway) such as copper I think.

With my cow-eyed three year old staring up at me, I came up with ' a magnet can stick to some metals, but not all, and it's kind of funny how it sticks to some and not others and...' and then I was totally losing him. I was thinking, how can I tell my kid that any charged particle with angular momentum has a magnetic moment? Why is this so hard?

Then Jenn saved the day. Because of course we were playing with Henry's magnadoodle at the time and she says simply that a magnet is anything that can draw on the magnadoodle. And so he starts imaging all kinds of magnets from our fridge on the magnadoodle and drawing with them too. I'm not worthy.

This led me to stumble onto Wired's top 10 amazing physics videos and then Wired's top 10 amazing chemistry videos. Why do I get the strange feeling I'm the last nerd to know about these?

No doubt we will be inundated by this story shortly, but why not use science to find bin laden? The rough idea is to apply principles used to hunt for endangered species. One assesses needs in terms of natural resources, shelter, social requirements, etc... and then overlays them on satellite images and computes probable locations where all needs are maximized.

But back to Wired magazine -they'd like to give you advice on how to make a home chemistry lab , and even want to start you off with something that could melt holes in your floor. I admire them for being true to their word and NOT having the 'don't do this at home' disclaimer.