Jack the Frog

I am taking a handful of classes this semester. It is my second semester here at Henderson, and I am trying to mix the required stuff with some fun media stuff. Sometimes the required becomes fun. Biology lab was a blast this week.

Typically, Biology lab is microscope work. For example, last week we examined bull semen under the scopes. Sometimes it's homework, like classifying new species of pocketbeastus. This week it was frogs.

Some animals hibernate to get through the cold wintery months. During these months it is difficult to find food, because the cold weather slows the creatures down. For example, the colder it is, the slower a frog can hop, making him slower at catching food, and slower at running away from being eaten. So, during the cold slow winter, frogs dig down deep into the mud, below the freeze line, and simply hibernate for a few months.

The goal of the lab was to take frogs in room-temperature environments and simulate a season change. We wanted the frogs to think winter was coming, and to prepare to hibernate so we could watch them. It takes about a month for the change to happen in the wild from normal temperatures to near freezing temperatures. We did it in about 12mins.

There was a tank with about 18 leopard frogs in it. We chose one and put him (we're positive it was a him) in a small beaker. We filled a large beaker with ice water, and set the small in the large. This chilled the small without bringing it completely to freezing, and without ice contacting the frog's sensitive skin.

As the temperature lowered, the frog got as low he could in the beaker, braced himself in a defensive stance, turned pink, and fell asleep into hibernation. He was prepared for a few months like this. After he was ready we plopped him out onto the lab desk and watched him warm up. He slowly woke up and began acclimating himself with the new warmer environment. Like I said, the warmer it is, the faster they can jump. As he warmed, he became more and more active, until we had to put him back in the tank with his friends, because he was jumping around like a madMan (madFrog).

"crab legs come from crabs"

Jack was a really good boy for us. We found out he was a boy because... (it's about to get serious)

During mating season, male frogs jump on other frogs' backs, trying to find a female to mate with. If a male accidentally jumps on another male, this male will ribbit in a way that's code for "dude, I'm a dude". Well, Jack was doing that when my lab partner Liz would grab his back. He thought Liz was a dude frog, and he thought she meant business.

Lab was great. It made for some good, wholesome blog content, too. Thanks for reading!

Recreation Center Scheduled to Open This Week

Students residing in East Hall have had the privilege of witnessing a 50,000 square-feet facility being erected outside their windows, and now it is time to stop the construction noise and hit the weights.

The building is the new Charles D. Dunn Student Recreation Center. Henderson will open the doors to this new physical fitness center on Wednesday, April 15, 2009.

Discussion of the recreation center began over two and a half years ago, with a combination of the SGA, Student Services, and the HPERD Department. The building was a group effort, with staff support coming from Dean of Students Chad Fielding and Director of Campus Recreation Kris Dunn. “Many people had their ideas on placing a recreation center on campus,” said Dunn.

Dunn has been pleased with the development of the center, especially on the construction end. The original anticipated cost of the facility was over $7 million dollars, but the facility will come in under budget resting at a final cost of $6.5 million. As the facility operations manager, Dunn couldn’t be more happy with the construction company, Kinko. “Construction is basically right on time,” said Dunn. “Due to rain and bad weather through the year some minor push backs have taken place, but overall, Kinko the construction company has done a good job of staying on pace with the original schedule.”

The recreation center will be a self-sustained operation, with no money from the university being used to help keep the building functioning on a daily basis. However, $6.5 million dollars doesn’t just come raining down onto the quad, so the money has to come from somewhere. Bonds were issued to build the facility, and once opened the building will run solely on a fee from students. All students taking seven or more hours will be charged the fee automatically. The fee is $125 per semester, with a $32.50 rate for each summer term. Some quick Reddie math on those figures rounds the total up to $315 for an entire year.

Henderson employees do not have free access to the new facility. In an email addressed to all faculty and staff, Dunn announced “You all will be charged the same amount as the students.” The building is set to open just two weeks before commencement. These two weeks will run a trial period, with real hours beginning in the fall. During these trial weeks, the center will run a modified schedule. The building will be open 8a.m. to 9p.m. on weekdays, and 1p.m. to 6p.m. on the weekends. The hours will be extended in the fall to 6a.m. to 11p.m. on weekdays, 10a.m. to 8p.m. on Saturdays, and 1p.m. to 11p.m. on Sundays.

Use of the facility will be closely restricted to people related to HSU. Students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni and spouses of all these are allowed to pay the membership fee and join. Not included in this list would be parents, friends and OBU students, who would all be classified as guests. Guests are allowed, but there is a fee. Just like the front doors to the dormitories, a student I.D. swipe will be required to enter the recreation center.

$6.5 million dollars didn’t just go to bricks and mortar, the new facility is going to be packed full of features. According to Dunn, the facility will have a “bouldering wall, indoor track, hang-out lobbies with TV’s and couch’s, three hardwood basketball courts, full scale weight room with over 24 cardio machines, full line of Nautilus One machine select weights, great selection of free weights and dumbbells, aerobics/multipurpose room, etc.” The building will also feature an outdoor programming area for checking out tents, camping gear, mountain bikes and kayaks.

The salaries, work study payments, and any other operational costs will all be covered under the fee. The staff will be Dunn as the director, Brandon Randle as assistant director, four GA’s, 23 work study positions, one full time custodian and two part time.

During the final weeks before the opening, the Garrison Center fitness equipment has been unavailable. All equipment, old and new, had to be moved over from the Garrison Center to the Dunn Center, a process that could not be handled in an afternoon. Freshman finance major Brantly Neighbors is awaiting the opening with greater anticipation as the date approaches. “I’m getting more and more excited about the new facility because I haven’t been able to use the Garrison,” said Neighbors.

It takes over two years of planning and over $6 million dollars to pull off a facility of this nature. The facility opens Wednesday with something for everyone. Students taking seven or more hours will be enjoying the facility by inadvertently paying the associated fee, and jogging on treadmills running parallel to faculty knowing the price of every step.

Tree Philosophy

I'm taking Honors Philosophy here at Henderson State University, and thought my homework for tonight might actually be interesting enough to post. I really have no credibility or relevant knowledge on the topic, but here is my argument. Oh, and my photos too! If you're not crazy about my writing, at least you'll have those.

IF A TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST AND THERE IS NOTHING THERE TO HEAR IT, DOES IT MAKE A SOUND?

If a tree falls in the forest and there is nothing there to hear it, does it make a sound? To resolve this, we must first define and set up the problem in a manner that can be evaluated with minimal grounds for falsification.

DEFINITIONS
Tree - a large, wooden body of a plant, we’ll make ours a nice big one, 200ft tall.

Fall – crash from being once-stable. Transformation of potential standing energy to kinetic plummeting energy. Falls must have a crashes, they are not infinitely long.

Forest – group of the defined trees, all peacefully storing potential falling energy.

Nothing – no people, no animals, no microphones, no anything that can hear.

Hear – act of witnessing sound waves.

Sound – wave of energy created typically when something crashes into something.

Now that these definitions are clear and non-falsifiable, the argument can be created. Sound is created when something crashes into something. Hearing is witnessing these sound waves.

Under normal conditions, sound would be made by something (or someone capable of hearing) would be the subject crashing the two objects together, such as a marching band bass drum player hitting a mallet against a drum head. This is a perfect scenario with there being a subject to not only create but also witness the sound waves being emitted. They created them, they witnessed them. Let’s place this drummer on a football stadium, with 10,000 people witnessing this act. The drummer crashes the stick against the drum head, sound waves are emitted, he witnesses it, and the 10,000 people sitting there witness it. The drum stick moved toward the head, it hit the head, sound was created, sound was witnessed. Let’s remove them 10,000 people, and place the drummer by himself in this stadium. The act is repeated. The stick crashed into the head, sound came out, he witnessed it, it happened.

What cannot be confused is the definition of sound and hearing. Both words are used in the problem, “nothing is there to hear it, does it make a sound”. The complications of the question come in that “nothing is there to hear it”.

Let’s have our bass drum player set his drum down face-up and evacuate the stadium. With the stadium empty of it’s 10,000 people and one drummer, there are no witnesses to what is occurring, whether it is a bass drum being struck or a lightning bolt hitting the 50-yard line, no one will see anything, whether anything happens or not. The key here is to gather that just because 10,000 people didn’t see a lightning bolt hit the 50-yard line, there is still going to be a gigantic hole for someone to clean up later. With everyone out, let’s send our drummer up to 35,000ft and have him drop his mallet out of the back of an airplane. With the utmost precision, his mallet falls to the stadium below, striking his bass drum (which he left face-up) and emitting sound waves for the empty, witness-less stadium. Our drummer would be disappointed that no one witnessed this act of immaculate precision, but the act nevertheless did occur, and is a moment in history. No one was there to witness the sound, but from 35,000ft our drummer saw his mallet hit and knows it was a success.

Using our stadium drummer scenario, let’s match it to the trees in the forest. In this setup, “a tree falls in the forest,” our tree crashes into the ground. The forest is empty of witnesses, just like our empty stadium. Our drum mallet becomes a tree (ironically the reversal of it’s history) and our bass drum head becomes the forest ground. The tree falls, just like the mallet dropping from the airplane, and strikes the ground, just like the bass drum in the stadium. Because the tree crashed into the ground, by definition, sound waves were emitted. No person was there to witness these sound waves, but if our drummer happened to be flying overhead at the time, he would have witnessed, visually, the act, and could testify that it did indeed happen, just like his mallet drop on the stadium.

The tree fell, sound was emitted, whether there were witnesses there to “hear” it or not, the act did happen. Nothing has to hear sound for it to exist, just like nothing has to watch a lightning bolt hit the ground for it to make a giant mess. If a tree falls in the forest and there is nothing there to hear it, it makes a sound.

I apologize for any inaccuracies. The rules of the assignment said we couldn't consult any sources. So, this is no internet reading, friend asking, or library time here. Sorry if it's elementary or inaccurate because of it, but this is what I had by myself.

What's in the Bag?: My Stick Bag

I try to keep a decent variety of tools in my stick bag, while keeping the bulk and quantity to an absolute minimum.

I'm no pro drummer, I wouldn't really call me a "drummer" at all, so I don't need 68 pairs of sticks on my hip every day. However, I do keep a decent variety with me, and enough to keep me moving even if something fails or breaks.

All this goes into a Zildjian Stick Bag that I think costs about $12. Nothing flashy, in fact I got mine for free or I wouldn't have bothered with the thing. Before this bag came along, I rolled all my sticks up in a towel, and that worked just fine. Plus, then I had a towel.

OK, first of all, the outer, smaller pocket. I keep a few basic items in here, that are fairly standard tools of the trade.

Gibraltar Extended Drum Key
Jim Dunlop Egg Shaker
Standard Drum Key (Earplug wrap)
5ft Measuring Tape
Black Sharpie (another Earplug wrapper)

That Gibraltar key is nice for getting more exact tuning. The JD shaker is the best sounding shaker I've found to date. If I ever find a better one, I'll spend the $1.85 on it and do a post so you can too. Then I've got the standard key for tight places, with my primary ear plugs wrapped around it. With both plugs in, the weight of the key keeps the line in between the ears tight and dropped behind my neck. The measuring tape is for when I say "dang, I like this snare, I wonder how deep it is?" Because I'm not really good enough to eye ball it yet, and I'm snare shopping. And finally, that sharpie does the same things as the spare key, only it's nice to have something to write with too.

Let's go inside (all sticks hyperlinked).

Left to Right:
Zildjian DIP 7A
Zildjian DIP 7AN
Vic Firth HB Brushes
Vic Firth SD10 Swingers
Vic Firth T1 General Mallets
Cameron Magee 7B Multi-Rods
Pro*Mark Stealth Rods
Cameron Magee 3B Multi-Rods

Standard (Left) Section:
I like to play with those 7A's because of how light they are, and they don't have the extra loudness of a 5A. I use these 50% of the time, and a combination of everything else in the bag the other 50%. Same story with the 7A Nylons, I just keep a Nylon pair to avoid redundancy.

Specialty (Center) Section:
Those Brushes are pretty cool, but are usually too quiet unless the entire kit is mic'd up. The SD10 Swingers are the loudest sticks I own, so naturally, I use them as little as possible. The Mallets are nice for cymbal rolls, on intro's and outro's of a lot of the worship music I like to play.

Quiet (Right) Section:
If you missed the post, I like to make my own multi-rods (click the link to read the story). I use what I think is 3/16" dowel rods, and make different sizes, with this size being my primary. The Pro*Mark Stealth Rods are the most impressive set of sticks I've ever gotten to mess with. They are crazy unique, and out of all the sticks in here, are the only pair that I would suggest running out to buy (unless you want a pair of Cameron Magee Multi-Rods, that is!) They are nice and bouncy, not too loud, and give to the Toms what the CM Multi's can't. The far right and last set is a set of CM 3B's, the little babies of the bag. Nice and quiet, while maintaining a beautiful snare crack sound.

That's the bag. It gets me through just about anything in the worship drumming world. I'd suggest running to Guitar Center and picking up a pair of those Stealth Rods if you can, they are really something. Oh, and emailing me to order a pair of Custom CM Multi-Rods, too, of course!

as always, you can see more photos from this post by visiting my Flickr at: http://www.Flickr.com/CameronMagee

thanks for reading all this stuff I type up. Feel free to comment and let me know how to type better stuff.

Potter's Bass Amp Rig

I love to do stuff like this. My friend Matt Potter plays Bass Guitar, and needed a new Bass Amp. We went to Guitar Center together, and spent a few hours comparing the inventory until we decided on a head-and-cab for him. In case you're curious:

GK 700RB-II
GK Neo410

That was only the beginning. Matt wanted more than just a head and cab, he wanted a BASS AMP RIG. Meaning, instead of just having two pieces of gear, he wanted it cased and mounted and wired and wheeled and road-ready and well... LEGIT

I have never needed to use this word more appropriately.
it. was. LEGIT.

First, we got some 4" blue swivel locking casters for the Cab. Those babies are like Butta. That cab is totally road ready.

Then we got a 4-space Roadcase Rack from AudioPile.

side note: AudioPile is fantastic, you should check them out.

We also picked up a dbx 31-band EQ, which sounds FANTASTIC on a bass amp. The control is absurd.

I pull the EQ and the amp head into the rack, and went to work on that sucker.

I wanted this rig to be really customized, and really tight. To do this, I wanted all his connections to be in one place, the front of that rack. I got a blank rack panel and outfitted it with a powercon, speakon, and two XLR connectors.

On the inside of the rack, the powercon terminated to a standard power outlet, mounted in the back of the rack. The speakon terminated into a 2ft cable to come out of the back of the amp head. The XLRs terminated to 1/4" cables to go in and out of the dbx EQ.

On the outside, I soldered up custom-length powercon and Speakon cables, as well as XLR-1/4" patch cables for the loops of that Bass head into the panel.

I love this rig. I almost hated to see it leave our living room. This setup is SO road worthy it's insane, and Matt just called me to tell me all the compliments he's already gotten on it. Then he told me he wanted to expand at Easter.

let's do it, Matt.

(you can see more photos of the Rig by going here)

I hope someone else will just trust me with a stack of money to trick them out a system like this. It was incredible, I can't wait to do another!

please comment and let me know you dropped by!