It is that time of year when the pig pile heads back to school. We sent our oldest off to college last weekend and gave our resident senior, freshman and 6th grader a kiss goodbye yesterday morning, summarlily retiring the Summer of 2010.
 

They say that the eyes are the window to the soul.  I think that you can tell a lot about a business owner's experiences and tenure by the tenor of the help wanted ads they place.  Here's our latest.

We have two big cherry trees in our yard and most years, the Spring Snow Gods willing, we can look forward to eating cherries right off the tree around the Fourth of July.  This year was particularly abundant and we have been feasting on cherries for a couple of week now.  So have the birds.  Aubrey was commenting on the partially pecked leftovers and I told her to hang on to tho

The Experiment
The back of your eyeball gives residence to two different kinds of light-sensing receptors: rods and cones.  The cones see color and the rods see black, white, and shades of gray.  Our eyes adapt to darkness by producing a chemical called visual purple, which increases the ability of the rods to collect and transmit images in low-light situations. To increase the amount of light that enters the eyes, the diameter of the pupil (the black area in the middle of your iris) increases automatically.  The increased amount of light and the production of visual purple makes it easier for us to see in darker places.

Summer time always means movies.  As a kid I can remember walking up to the corner movie theatre with my sisters and taking in the afternoon matinee.  When the movie was over we would zip outside, only to be stopped dead in our tracks as our eyes adjusted to the bright light. 

The Experiment

In honor of all kids who have recently performed a band or orchestra concert and especially for their parents who smiled through the entire performance, we celebrate the joy of music with Straw Flutes and s'Trombones being added to our Professor Tightwad stable of ideas.

The Experiment
An s’ Trombone is a straw trombone. Once you get the straw flute thing going, we are going to show you how to create an instrument that will allow you to alter the pitch or note that you produce without having to cut the plastic.

I have had several people write and call about our summer workshops and after spending a fair amount of time answering many of the same questions, I decided to lump them all together and answer them here.
 

As I zip in and out of classes testing lab activities,  I sometimes get asked questions by  teachers and kids that I think I can answer rather confidently on the spot .  However, when I get back to the office and think about it for a minute it sometimes bugs me enough that I have to look up the current thinking on the topic and sometimes find out that I was wrong.  The most