Monday, June 18, 2012

MY SCIENCE PROJECT

Oh wow. When I was in the ninth grade I had this album by a band called Bang, and they had a song on it called "Future Shock". I loved that album, and the next year a book appeared on a reading list at school called "Future Shock" by a guy named Alvin Toffler. So naturally I picked this book, and did my book report on it.
I think the song was about the book, because it warned of the nightmares that our technological progress was going to create.
My friend Nita did a post about this book, and she says she didn't finish reading it, and the thing is, I don't think I really read the book. I have no recollection of it, and I think maybe I did my book report on the song, not the book.


That sounds real right to me because there was another Bang song called "Our Home" on the same album, and I used it on my science project that same year. The project was that I got an aquarium, and put some fish in it, then poured oil in it to simulate an oil spill, and recorded the results; i.e. how long it took the fish to die.
I had a cardboard exhibit set up in the lunchroom, and the centerpiece was the lyrics to Our Home, with a cassette player that played the song,  and in a small corner of my poster board backdrop, there were the results of the study:
That the fish had died painful deaths as a result of the simulated oil spill I had created.
But the teacher asked me why I had no pictures of the project, or the aquarium itself as part of the exhibit, and stuff like that and all I could do was point to the lyrics, and ask her if she wouldn't like to hear "Our Home " again..
Finally she said "You didn't really do all this, with the fish and aquarium, did you?"
and I bowed my head and said "No ma'am" and she still gave me a "D".

That's the kind of student I was in the 10th grade.

I know you guys are dying to hear a Bang song, just to see what scholarly music it was that I was listening to in the 10th grade. I'm really torn as to which one to play for you, they are both so great...haha.





Thanks Nita, for reminding me what a horrible student I truly was.

5 comments:

AnitaNH said...

I did something like that once, too. I was supposed to be doing a report on The Plague by Camus my Junior year in High School and instead I talked about another book entirely--this one:

http://anitanh.blogspot.com/2009/02/other-side-of-mountain-revisited.html

AnitaNH said...

Hey Steve, I just found out about something called "meat glue" this afternoon:

http://gizmodo.com/5906853/meat-glue-pink-slimes-classier-cousin

Is this something you have encountered in the food industry? Sounds pretty gross to me! (sorry to get off-topic)

bulletholes said...

I've heard of meat glue, but I can't imagine that you would find it in a steakhouse. The idea that you can take stew meat and bind it together in the shape of filet mignon or New York is really preposterous. Any place trying that would be in for a lot of trouble. You arent going to fool anybody.

I can see where its use might be good for institutional foods. Frozen dinners, school cafeterias, jails ect. I can find nothing about it that especially grosses me out. I love a good blood Sausage, and thats basically what you got here.

bulletholes said...

Here's a pretty good article.
http://meatblogger.org/2011/05/27/meat-glue-mania-and-mayhem/

red dirt girl said...

LMAO on this one, cowboy!

No comment on the 'meat glue' ... I regularly eat Salisbury steak and I really do NOT want to know what is in it. I'm happy calling it mystery meat.

xxx