PantsForSquares

YOU'LL NEVER LABEL ME ALIVE! NEVEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR!!!!!!

So, I had my first serious lab in chemistry today. It was the extraction of benzocaine and benzoic acid from a mixture of both, and holy benzene, Batman! it took forever. I got to use a separatory funnel (which was neat), and got to work with DCM, which is toxic! I also spent two hours to get two separate white powders.

WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT TO BE LABELED WHAT DO WE DO FOR THEM

I'm typically the random trivia/fact person in almost every circle of friends I'm in, which is neat. Today's random fact was sponsored by Cracked, and featured the fact that dummies exist for dentistry practice. They range from bizarre (one company made a calendar by Photoshopping the model into stock photos, leading to some genuine Twilight Zone weirdness) to nightmare-inducing (one might as well be a Terminator with dentures).

Depends on what you're making. If it's something that can stay relatively stable with just one slice of bread (jam, peanut butter, PB&J, basically), then you can totally make it with one slice and bring it elsewhere. Making a full-fledged sandwich (with greens, meat and maybe cheese) with just one slice of bread usually gets too thick to really handle well. I personally prefer making wraps nowadays because they're portable, and can fit a full serving of vegetables and meat in a small package.

Out of curiosity, do you live in the same town/city as your family?

In my opinion, it's easily the strongest of the three Netflix/Marvel series. I loved every moment of it.

That sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen, but I'll give it a shot anyways. I usually add a bit of instant coffee to my brownies, just to round out the flavor. Unfortunately, since my apartment has an objectively terrible oven, I can't bake a thing.

Feruchemical Bronze and Allomantic Bendalloy. Feruchemical Bronze is one of the most overlooked metals, but the cool thing is that you can store it while sleeping. Start storing before you go to bed, and you get a full night's rest (might be a bit hard to wake up, but that can be controlled), and a full bronzemind. It's an incredibly mundane ability, but probably the one with the most practical use in day-to-day life. A-Bendalloy is just all sorts of fun, especially with the fact that the bubble provides some degree of deflection.

Alrighty then. I hurt without moving, and poison without touching. What am I?

Honestly, the best way to familiarize yourself with jazz is to get your hands on a book of jazz standards. These are famous (of course, varying in fame) jazz pieces that a lot of artists will cover, and just looking them up on youtube will expose you to different artists, and their styles. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Weather Report, though. How can I say no to Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Jaco Pastorius?

Probably. And a chasmfiend is totally a platypus.

Australia confirmed for Roshar. There's even the weird animals!

"It's Reynarin time!"

I was lucky enough that my high school had a lot of funding and good teachers because of the neighborhoods surrounding it, but I've spoken to people who have had high school teachers with only a passing familiarity with their subject material. Politicians need to recognize that a short certification does not necessarily qualify a teacher to teach something like physics or chemistry at a competent level, especially if they don't want to compromise their students' future academia. I can't say how it is for liberal arts majors, but starting a STEM major at a decently competitive university without a decent foundation (or the drive and dedication to compensate for that) is a difficult prospect, to say the least. Honestly, I wish teaching was a valid career. Personally, I wouldn't want to teach, but it's still absurdly important to ensure the competency of future generations.

I'm three years older than the rest of my peers, and it's a bit strange being older than everyone else. It's hella easy being single, but I'm trying to change that. It's a bit weird, though, how my three year gap makes me view a lot of things differently than people straight out of high school.

No clue. I own two jackets myself (a pleather jacket and a full-blown winter one), and that's more than enough. If the weather warrants something between the two, then I just add gloves, the sleeves I use for woodworking, and a scarf (on top of the pleather jacket). If it's extremely cold, I just use the above combo with my winter jacket. Generally speaking, that's all I need.

Fun fact: Antarctica is being used as the world's largest neutrino detector. Basically, how it works is that when a neutrino hits an electron just right, that electron starts moving through the water/ice. But, since it's moving through water at a speed faster than the speed of light in water, it creates the equivalent of a sonic boom (known as Cherenkov radiation), but for light. There's a research station in Antarctica that's just dedicated to the detection of neutrinos and muons.

The man lived in a lighthouse.

A lot of the time, chemical compounds tend to be named for how they were originally discovered. Benzene, for example, was derived from benzoin gum, a term that arose from the French version of the Arabic term for "incense of Java." Hydrocyanic acid was originally known as Prussic acid because it was derived from a very specific blue pigment - Prussian blue. Acetic acid, commonly found in vinegar, is named for the Latin word for vinegar (acetum), and there's a whole host of examples. They're less common now, with the IUPAC naming standards and increasingly complex molecules, but if you look at etymologies, they usually have historic roots.

Barbossa is the Pirates villain. Operation Barbarossa is the failed offensive. Plus, Barbarossa wasn't a single battle (unlike Overlord), but instead a series of battles that "ended" with the Battle of Moscow. Then the Russians pushed back. Also, it's Stalingrad.

I've had the pleasure of seeing Nightwish live, and they are absolutely amazing. Their music is of consistently high quality, and I got several of my friends, who enjoy classical music, into metal thanks to them. As for Dragonforce, I've heard that they can't play live, and that their performances are basically sped up. I've never been one to enjoy their music (except for the Thomas the Tank Engine mash-up of Through the Fire and Flames), but Blind Guardian has basically been doing the same thing, but (subjectively) better. As for technical skill goes, I'd say that it's only cool for guitarists and drummers. The more interesting stuff for bass players comes from jazz or funk, where you get people like Victor Wooten (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) or Mark King (Level 42), who have the sort of technical skill that can only be described as divine.

Not quite true. They don't have an in-house video game developer, but they do own the rights to games based on their properties. Anyways: 1) Connect 4 2) Monopoly 3) Battleship 4) Clue 5) Rubik's Cube (the official version, at least) 6) Magic: the Gathering 7) Dungeons & Dragons 8) Ouija 9) Risk 10) Scrabble IIRC, Hasbro owns WotC, and MtG is their most profitable product by quite a bit. Anyways: WLIU, name 9 battles of World War II.

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Historically, there was a blue pigment that could be heated up to obtain cyanide, and the Greek word kyanos (dark blue) was used for cyanide as a result.

No Shave November is but a month away.