At Yale, economics majors are required to take two “senior seminars” before they graduate. These classes usually have 10-20 students and revolve around reading and discussing contemporary research in a specific area. After three years of mostly big lecture classes on theory and methods, seniors finally get a chance to apply what they’ve learned to a substantive topic.¹ I just finished my fourth year of teaching two of these seminars, and while that might not seem like very long, I have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work.

Big Goals

Every seminar should have both a substantive theme and a methodological theme. In the fall I teach the Economics of Aging. We read papers on retirement, saving, elder care, and inheritance–if it’s economics and it affects older people, the topic is fair game. Most of the papers we read use structural microeconometric methods. The theory and estimation methods are serious–I still remember the shocked look a senior faculty member gave me when I told him we were reading Rust and Phelan’s 1997 paper on Social Security, Medicare, and Retirement². In the spring, I teach the Economics of Human Capital in Latin America. The papers are mostly about the determinants of health and schooling in the region and most use reduced form program evaluation techniques. I teach just enough about difference-in-differences, matching, regression discontinuity, and instrumental variables so that my students can understand why an author chose a particular method and can interpret the results. By the end of the semester, my students can read a big chunk of the research literature that was previously inaccessible.

Reading

I require my students to read two or three dense articles each week. I tell them they are hard and not to expect to understand everything immediately–these aren’t fluffy beach novels. I encourage them to work at it and tell them I wouldn’t have assigned the articles if I didn’t they they were smart enough to figure them out. To help them focus, students must fill out and submit a worksheet for each paper before we discuss it in class. Some articles (like surveys or policy reports) get special worksheets, but most worksheets contain these seven questions:

1. What is the research question? There may be more than one, but usually one is most important.
2. What is the answer to the research question?
3. Why is this paper important
4. If there is an economic model, what is the behavior or process being modeled? What are the key characteristics of the model?
5. What is the empirical approach?
6. What data does the paper use?
7. What didn’t you understand?

The worksheets keep students thinking critically and constructively. The last question is most important to me as it tells me what I need to cover well during class time. The syllabus also suggests optional papers for most weeks in case students are particularly interested in a topic.

Student Presentations

Each week two or three students help me teach the class. They read the papers ahead of time and we meet to make sure they understand them well. These meetings are a pretty efficient way for me to review the week’s material and get to know my students. We usually plan short presentations on the papers that cover the basics quickly and some of the important technical parts that the rest of the class might have missed when they read the papers. Often the presentations contain new stuff from related or more recent papers to spur discussion. An easy way to put a class to sleep is to tell them things they already know.³ The students then draft slides which I review the night before class. Again, it’s a great way for me to prepare and it means there is never a bad presentation.

During class, I interrupt the speakers often to offer alternative explanations of difficult points and ask the rest of the students questions. I try to do it in a constructive/respectful way–the goal is for everyone to be engaged and at least following along.

Discussion

After the presentations, I usually divide the class into small groups of 4-5 students each and give each group a job. Sometimes they will design a conditional cash transfer program for a particular context. Sometimes they will prepare for a debate on alternatives to social security. Sometimes they will make a list of the three most important questions in an area that remain unanswered. The key is that the students never know exactly what’s going to happen when they walk into the classroom. After the groups work for 15-20 minutes, we all talk about what they’ve come with as a big group.

Sometimes we don’t have time for any discussion because I’ve given a mini lecture about an econometric method that they need to know in order to do the reading for the next week. I’ll have a few questions for the class prepared, but mostly we proceed organically with an eye on the clock.

Papers/Projects

Most seminars require some sort of paper, but it’s often not well-defined and the instructor sees it for the first time when it’s passed in at the end of the semester. That is very different from how it works in my seminars. Each student works throughout the semester on a research proposal and gets lots of feedback from their peers and me during the process.

At about week 3, they pass in a one page summary of their research idea. Before this, I try and give an overview of the topics we’ll cover during the semester. I also describe three or four successful proposals from earlier semesters. Their one-pagers are ungraded but I do tell them if I think they’re on the right track, give them ideas on how to refine their ideas, and point them to relevant literature.

They draft the front-end of the proposal in the middle of the semester. This builds on the research question and contains a literature review, a hypothesis, and an economic model. They’ve seen several models in papers and other classes by this point, but constructing one of your own to explain how a process works is a difficult but rewarding experience. I don’t expect them to formally prove any theorems based on their models–they can do that if they go to grad school.

Before they pass in their mid-term proposal, I spend a little class time explaining what I expect in the literature review and walk through the process of constructing an example model. I also hold three or four “work groups” outside class where 5-6 students and I talk through each student’s project. It’s more time-efficient than having one-on-one meetings and incredibly useful for the students to hear about and contribute to each other’s work.

I spend a fair bit of time giving constructive feedback on the midterm proposal. I give comparatively much less feedback on the final papers as most students don’t read those comments and even fewer will act on those comments. I expect every student to incorporate my mid-term feedback into their final paper.

We have another round of work group meetings near the end of the semester to talk about the last pieces of the final proposal: the empirical approach and the data. Here’s where they have to decide how to actually answer the question they posed at the beginning of the semester. The whole process exercises the creative part of their brain that is vastly under-used in most classes.

The important thing is not that the paper is a research proposal, though that works well for me. The key is that students actually work on it throughout the semester and get feedback along the way.

Miscellaneous Advice

I believe one of the most valuable services I provide is just being available. Elite college professors are not typically great teachers. They are selected for their research skills and knowledge of the field. They should use this comparative advantage in their teaching by answering questions and talking about the state-of-the-art. These classes are small–I am never overwhelmed answering questions after class or during office hours. We aren’t talking about 300 person lectures where you could spend your life answering student email. The bottom line is that most students really appreciate human contact.

I try to have a very open mind about improving the class and talk to other instructors about what works and doesn’t work for them. I also take the last 15-20 minutes of the last class every semester getting direct feedback about what worked and what didn’t. Formal student evaluations are valuable, but they don’t allow for a conversation. I can throw out ideas and see what they think. I can ask follow-up questions. Some students’ ideas spawn other students’ ideas. And every year, I learn new things that improve my class.

I refresh my classes at least a little bit every time I teach. I’ll dump the worst week. I’ll add papers I’ve come across over the last year that are interesting and relevant. I’ll try new exercises in class. And I’ll change what I expect from student presentations. It’s a lot easier to keep students excited when I’m excited.

Footnotes:

Last night I dreamt I was at my high school reunion. Near the end of dinner, one of the organizers came to my table and asked if everyone who was gay would raise their hand because they were planning a separate meeting just for gay alumni. Six attendees from our table of 26 raised their hands. I had no idea about five of them, and while my first reaction was surprise, my second was pride in the social change that’s happened over the last 25 years.

In just the last year, we’ve had the first male American athlete in a major sport (Jason Collins) come out with near universal acceptance. The number one draft pick in the WNBA draft (Britney Griner) mentioned she was gay and hardly anyone noticed. The Supreme Court seems on the verge of legalizing gay marriage (or at least banning the states from banning gay marriage). And my (almost) alma mater¹, Framingham High School, now has a club called the Gay/Straight Alliance.

The reunion and the casual statements about sexual orientation by my old friends may have been a dream, but the reality is much better. Some of the healthiest and most loving couples I know are gay. Some of the best parents I know are gay. And it’s so nice that this is finally being recognized by a majority of Americans.

I am frustrated and I know I’m not the only one. I want want a photo management system that requires minimum maintenance and gives me maximum flexibility. I’ve complained about this before, but I’m tired of waiting for Apple to hand me a gift-wrapped solution. They didn’t last summer in iOS 6 and I have no faith that they will in iOS 7.

In my household, we take most of our photos with our phones, but we also have a big digital SLR which we break out for big events (if we remember to). Ideally, all our pictures would be automatically whisked away into a shared database in the cloud as soon as they are taken. From there we should be able to browse, organize, edit, and share them from any of our device, be they Macs, PC’s, iPads, or iPhones. In 2013, I don’t think that’s unreasonable to ask for.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at several products and hopefully finding answers. Today the journey starts with two separate app/service combos. One is Adobe Revel and the other is Everpix.

Adobe Revel

I was super-excited when I heard about Adobe Revel. The service stores all your pictures in the cloud, and they give you free iOS and Mac apps to edit and manage them. Pictures are streamed to your iOS devices as needed freeing up a whole lot of space. The apps are (supposedly) built on top of the same editing/browsing engine powering LightRoom and they are (actually) very well done. The service is expensive ($5.99/month) but it promises a lot.

Unfortunately, it’s missing some important features. First, it won’t store video clips and that means I need an entirely different workflow for them. With two little kids, we take lots of these “long photos” and I like having them mixed in with the traditional photos. Second, my wife lives in a Windows world and Revel doesn’t provide a Windows app or even a web app. That means she can only browse our library on her phone and that’s a show stopper.

Everpix

After my experience with Revel, I was cautiously optimistic about Everpix. It also stores all your photos in the cloud and has terrific iOS apps for browsing your collection, but it differentiates itself in three ways:

1. They automatically import photos from lots of places you might care about including your photo roll, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr. That’s nice, but not terribly useful for me since I’m not exactly tied into the social network world.
2. They have a terrific web app that works well on Mac and Windows.
3. They don’t allow you to create albums or tag photos but instead rely on “science” to organize your photos for you. Since I always plan to do more manual organization than I actually do, it’s nice that this is done for me. I tend to take several pictures of the same thing but never delete the bad ones–Everpix does a decent job picking the good ones and showing you those first. In fact, I have Everpix configured to email me “random” “reminder” pictures from my collection everyday and it’s a lot of fun.

The package is expensive ($4.99/month) if you want them to store more than the previous year’s worth of photos, and I’d be happy to pay if it weren’t for the downsides:

1. They don’t store video clips.
2. You can’t edit pictures within the apps.
3. They don’t store original images. Instead, Everpix stores compressed versions. I’m no photo snob, but I also don’t like losing information.
4. You can’t easily export pictures. Once your pictures are inside, you can only get them out piece meal. I hate lock-in.

I’m keeping an eye on Everpix because except for the editing, these issues seem eminently fixable and I’d consider using an external editor if I had to.

The quest continues.

I spend a lot of time on this blog raving about great kid books, great music, great writing for grown ups, and even great teaching, but don’t get the idea that I think everything is all sunshine and roses. There are plenty of things I don’t appreciate. Here are just three:

1. The Grateful Dead

When I think of the Dead, the first things that come to mind are dirty feet, ugly tie-dyed shirts, drugs, and silly annoying songs that just go on and on and on. If you’re into that sort of thing, then I’m really sorry you can’t follow them around anymore. At least you’ve got Phish.

2. Ezra Jack Keats

This is Ezra Jack Keats week at my girls’ preschool and besides Eric Carle, there isn’t a more over-rated children’s book author/illustator. I’m not an expert on Jack Keats, but I have read The Snowy Day and Whistle for Willie and thus feel perfectly justified generalizing to his whole body of work. I like that he his stories take place in cities. I like that he’s got African-American characters. And I’m not arguing he wasn’t an important trail blazer–he was. I’m just arguing that the books themselves are uninspired and boring. In the last forty years lots of authors have taken the torch and done a better job with it. My favorites are The Rain Stomper (by Boswell Addie, illustrated by Eric Velasquez), Corduroy (by Don Freeman), and Bear on a Bike (by Stella Blackstone, illustrated by Debbie Harter)

3. New Orleans

For some people, New Orleans is a great city. It’s got world class sea food and its own brand of jazz. It’s got a casino downtown and a whole street full of daiquiris and debauchery. But for a vegetarian who doesn’t drink, doesn’t gamble, and whose musical tastes are a little less hip, New Orleans doesn’t have much to offer. I used to think the best thing about the city was voodoo and while that sounds all cool and mysterious, when you take a closer look, it’s not. Chicken blood, bits of hair, and stabbing little dolls to hurt real people is just creepy. Of course, there is the Insectarium which is also a little creepy, but was a lot of fun with the girls when we visited a couple weeks ago.

OK, I’ll admit it: I’m not usually such a Debby Downer, but accumulated sleep debt from a busy winter and spring has taken a toll on my normally sunny disposition. Hopefully the end of the semester will take care of this I’ll soon be back to being a Cheerful Charlie!

We haven’t read much new in the last six months, and while I’d like to take the blame and say it’s because we’ve been busy with work and other commitments, I’m instead going to throw my almost two year old daughter under the bus. While R (who is 4.5 now) is an extreme reader, L has not been very excited about reading. Or about anyone else reading. So instead of all of us enjoying a long cuddle on the couch working through a stack of books, this would quickly devolve into yelling and then R going off to read on her own, L going off to cook in her kitchen, and just me and Curious George sitting there wondering what to do next. I’m happy to say we have recently turned a corner and L now actually seeks out the social reading experience and we’re back to moving big stacks of books back and forth from the library.

Our last two trips have yielded some keepers, some honorable mentions, and even a couple dishonorable mentions.

Keepers:

• Cowboy and Octopus (by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith) This collection of 7 very short stories about two good friends has something for everyone. L loves the characters and how the cowboy says “Yee Haw!”. Roxana loves the knock-knock joke and when Octopus gets hammered by Cowboy. I love the adult layer of humor and the style that is a combination of collage and old-school comic book illustration. Win win win.

• Mrs. Crump’s Cat (by Linda Smith, illustrated by David Roberts) A hungry stray cat shows up at an annoyed Mrs. Crump’s door. But as soon as she describes him as “exquisite” and “golden” you know how the story is going to end. So cute.

• Cook-a-Doodle-Doo! (by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel, illustrated by Janet Stevens) Rooster is tired of the same old food and decides to bake a cake. Turtle, Iguana, and Pot-bellied Pig “help” and along the way we learn a whole bunch about baking. It’s a great combination of funny, sweet, and truly educational.

• A Frog Inside My Hat: A First Book of Poems (compiled by Fay Robinson, illustrated by Cyd Moore) Both girls love the simple fun poems collected in this book and L especially loves flipping through it on her own and looking at the pictures–she calls it “the froggie book”. At these ages reading poetry is completely normal and I hope we can keep it that way.

• At the Supermarket (by Anne Rockwell) L’s favorite of the bunch is about a boy who goes to the supermarket with his mom. The big twist is that they buy the ingredients for his birthday cake and make it the next day for the party. The author wrote and illustrated a similar book called Supermarket in 1979 and this “updated” version was published in 2010. My favorite part is that it still seems like a 1980’s period piece: There are no laser scanners. No one uses reusable shopping bags. Everyone’s driving station wagons. I can’t wait until Amazon sends me a copy of the original so I can see what actually got updated.

• Our Yard is Full of Birds (by Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Lizzy Rockwell) Both girls love looking at birds in our yard and this helps them identify who is who. Only downside is it makes them want a bird bath even more than they already did. And when your kids are little, bird bath = extra dirty outdoor kid bath.

Honorable mentions:

• Jim’s Lion (by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Ian Andrew) On the first page, Jim says from his hospital bed that “People who have what I have, mostly they die, don’t they?” It gave me the chills and I immediately realized that neither of my girls are old enough for this story. But what a vivid and hopeful story it is. Wow.

• Dawn (by Uri Shulevitz) The art is beautiful and the story is subtle–The sky and the silence are the stars and the grandfather and his son are just supporting characters.

• Hero Cat (by Eileen Spinelli, illustrated by Jo Ellen McAllister Stammen) I am a sucker for true stories about animals helping other animals. This one has a mom cat rescuing her babies from a burning building. If you read it with feeling, it’s pretty dramatic.

• Sarah’s Little Ghosts (by Thierry Robberecht, illustrated by Philippe Goossens) This story is very creative and has a great message. Sarah sneaks into her mom’s jewelry box, breaks her favorite necklace, and then hides the evidence. She feels terribly guilty and everytime she lies about it, another ghost flies out of her mouth. Finally, she can’t take it anymore, comes clean, and feels a lot better. R and I read this one very carefully, and I think she even understood what was going on. Score one for the good guys!

Dishonorable mentions:

• The Big Elephant in the Room (by Lane Smith) This story revolves around two donkeys. One says they need to talk about the “big elephant in the room” and the other is sure he is asking about the myriad of terrible things he’s been doing and confesses to all of them. These include eating all the ice cream, breaking the computer, stealing a video game, and even telling a mutual friend about a pee accident. My girls do not need books giving them more ideas for bad behavior–they’ve got that covered already.

• Ladybug Girl at the Beach (by David Soman and Jacky Davis) I like Ladybug Girl, R loves Ladybug Girl, and we own several Ladybug Girl books. She’s curious, creative, and adventurous. Our best guess is that she and R are both about the same age (between 4 and 5) Her parents are mostly absent, and that’s OK when the story takes place in the backyard or at the playground. At the beach, however, very bad things can happen when parents aren’t around. Like kids drowning bad. In this book Lulu wanders all around the beach by herself and almost gets pulled out to sea without anyone even noticing. As far as I can tell, the message is that you shouldn’t be afraid of sneaking off by yourself to play in the waves when you’re four years old. My four year old already thinks she can swim–I’d rather not encourage that delusion.

My first introduction to My Little Pony wasn’t terribly positive. I was about eight years old and this “girl stuff” was advertised relentlessly on Saturday morning cartoons. I was far more interested in being a pawn of the corporations that marketed branded soldiers, spaceships, and robots to boys.¹

Then in my early twenties, I ran across this Internet quiz that gives you names like “Daisy Sweet” and “Misty Rain” and asks you to identify each as either a My Little Pony or a porn star. I failed miserably and while I was horrified at the quiz’s difficulty, I was also a little relieved that I was not an expert on either topic.

And now, it seems that the third time is the charm. The girls have been in a serious MLP phase the last few weeks and our collection now includes 12 little Little Ponies, each with its own colors, personality, and cutie mark. Apple Jack is the hard working farmer with the southern drawl while Rainbow Dash is the adventurous one with the mischievous streak. You might have guessed we’ve also watched a couple tv episodes.

On our last long distance trip we expanded our collection to include a couple iOS apps. The first was Gameloft’s My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic and it is an awful scam. You create a magical pony land by buying gems for real money–your parents’ real money to be specific. And if you don’t invest, you can’t actually do anything fun.

The second app (Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day) gets pretty mixed reviews on iTunes but frankly is pretty cute and has no crazy-making in-app purchases. It’s a 40 page appified book that you can read with your kid or will read itself. It has a few built-in animations and four mini-games. Two of the games are simple tilt the iPad to negotiate a maze and two are point-out-the-difference between two picture games. R likes all of them though she sometimes accidentally hits the home button when tilting the iPad and that starts the whole thing over. The story itself filled in some history of the pony’s homeland and could have been titled MLP: Origin of Equestria. Did you know the unicorn ponies, pegasus ponies and earth ponies started out with cold hearts? And of course, there is a positive message about friendship since (as everyone knows) friendship is magic! R’s favorite part of the app is the set of pony bios that includes pictures and descriptions.

There are three distinct groups of MLP fans. First, little girls, second, parents of little girls, and third, the bronies. That third group is mostly adult men who self-identify as straight and just love the MLP stories, characters, and positive messages.² For all these fans, I think this app will be a lot of fun. I doubt it will appeal much to a broader audience, but I’m also glad that we live in a world that’s big enough for that to be OK.

Every morning we drop the kids off at day care and walk about 5 blocks to our offices. In those 10 minutes I walk by Trinity Lutheran Church, Trinity Baptist Church, and St. Mary’s Church (Catholic). Just a block off our route are the three big churches on the New Haven Green: Trinity Church, Center Church, and United Church. All these old churches are pretty much empty during the day and even on Sundays they don’t get nearly the traffic they used to.

Even with all the excitement about the new Pope, the Catholic Church in particular seems to be in decline. While membership has held steady at about 25% of the US population since the 1950’s (largely due to the influx of Latino immigrants), the fraction of members attending mass every Sunday has dropped from 80% to less than 25% over the same period. This has led to huge numbers of parishes closing and lots of hand-wringing on the part of priests and bishops.¹

How has this happened? The economist in me says a big part of the answer is competition from newer more exciting denominations and religions. Fundamentalist churches are doing well. The Mormon church is growing like crazy. Around the world Pentecostal and Baha’i faiths are siphoning off members. It also seems that more and more Americans have issues with some of the conservative stances of the Catholic church on birth control, homosexuality, and evolution/creation. Of course, many of the popular new mega-churches are also quite conservative and liberal views haven’t helped the more progressive older denominations.²

The financial cost of losing active members is larger for some denominations³, but I believe the major concern within most denominations is a loss of relevance in the community. I also think most churches don’t want to adapt their principles to gain larger market share. Instead, they’d like new ways to reach out to the community and let them know what churches have to offer. And while I personally am not interested in joining a parish, I do like the idea of other people going somewhere once a week where they are reminded to be nice.

I believe these churches should reach out to their communities by renting out their buildings as office space during the week. They would do it in such a way that it could be converted back and forth in a few hours and so have no effect on weekend services. Imagine office partitions and pews on wheels. If big arenas can have basketball games during the day and hockey at night, this kind of conversion must be easy.

While these churches are beautiful on the outside, the interiors are often breath-taking and always unique. This would induce serious corporate demand. Bigger companies could rent the whole space and break it up into cubicles that could slide in on Monday morning and out on Friday afternoon. Another option would be to turn the sanctuary into an espresso stand and substitute tables and comfy chairs for the pews in the nave. Who wouldn’t rather work there than a cookie-cutter Starbucks or Starbucks-imitator?

This would work out great for the churches too. They would give up almost nothing and get a captive audience for subtle evangelization. The stained glass alone would be a great advertisement for returning on Sunday. The cash infusion to the church would pay for the required capital investment and probably put a fair bit more into the coffers.

In economics there is a concept called a Pareto improvement. This is transaction or change or reallocation of resources that makes at least one person better off without making anyone worse off. It might sound like sacriledge to even talk about turning holy spaces into coffee bars, but it sure seems like a Pareto improvement to me.

Limited edition dishes have a very limited market for two main reasons. First, they feature a very limited selection of art. Cute dogs, American flags, flowers, and Russian folk tales only appeal to so many people. These plates are basically baseball cards for grandmas. Second, most of these dishes are designed solely for display and could actually kill you if you ate off them–this is crazy since the last time I checked normal people used dishes for serving food, not decorating their walls. These companies need to expand their stables of artists and use nontoxic paints.

To get things started concretely, I propose the following set of four limited edition dinner plates by Frank Frazetta. Imagine the look of wonder on your guests’ faces as they clear their plates and reveal the raw ferocity and masculinity of Conan the Barbarian. I know I would buy them. Click through to see them in their full resolution glory!

I first heard about how great document scanners are from David Sparks and Katie Floyd on the Mac Power Users Podcast. A little while later I read David’s ebook Paperless where he describes many more ways to use a document scanner and raved particularly about Fujitsu’s line of ScanSnaps. Then just a few weeks ago I read a mini review/announcement of the ScanSnap iX500 on David’s blog (Mac Sparky). You may be noticing a pattern here. If ScanSnap owners are a cult, then David Sparks must surely be a high priest.

My current workflow doesn’t generate a whole lot of paper, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have file cabinets full of paper. Most of it just sits there, but occasionally I want to look at an old bill or a marked up article. In the best case sceneario it takes me a while to find it and more often I’m not even in the office where it resides. I’ve always wanted instant searchable secure access to this stuff from anywhere. This was especially true for the slow steady stream of paper that arrives in the mail and would eventually find a home in a physical folder in one of these cabinets.

After reading David’s review, I pulled the trigger and ordered a Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500. I liked that it could be plugged into a Mac or a Windows PC or even nothing at all since it could talk to a wifi network. Alas, David was right that this stuff didn’t matter since at the end of the day it’s just plugged into my Mac and sits next to it on my desk. That said, it’s been great. I just plop an article on it and press a button. It scans both sides of pages simultaneously and recognizes when one side is blank. When the pages have print on them, it’s smart enough to rotate them right side up. It’s been very robust to some very crinkly drocuments. And it can gobble up 25 pages per minute.

I’ve been using it for three distinct tasks so far:

1. When prepping classes or doing brainstorming for a research project, I sometimes use pen and paper. When I’m done, I just feed it to the ScanSnap and drop the resulting pdf into my carefully engineered hierarchy of documents. The actual paper disappears into the recycling bin. I do the same thing with articles that I’ve printed and marked up in the past. It’s unnecessary with recent articles since I now do all my markup digitally.

2. I keep a folder of pdf’s that I want to read and when something paper comes my way that I want to save for later, I just scan it and drop it into this folder.

3. My favorite things to scan are bills, reference manuals, receipts, and miscellaneous records that usually (but not always) arrive in the mail. I make the Scanner OCR the documents as it reads them in and just drop them into my “reference” folder. Usually I give them descriptive filenames, but I don’t need to since Spotlight indexes all the OCR’ed text making them remarkably easy to find when I need them. And since the folder is on Dropbox, I can search it on any Mac that shares the folder.¹ We still have our file cabinets of paper at home and I’ve still got 5 drawers full of it at work, but very little new paper is entering those drawers and I’m even removing stuff as needed.

The scanner hasn’t been my only recent step on the path to paperless. I’ve also evicted my office printer and replaced it with a palm tree. It’s so much prettier and never smells bad. It sequesters carbon and doesn’t use electricity. And watering a plant feels so much better than replacing toner cartridges. Both the scanner and the tree are highly recommended!

When most people think of heavy metal, the major themes that come to mind are death, evil, testosterone, violence, and maybe misogyny. And sure, the vast majority of heavy metal is probably inappropriate for most kids. Especially little kids. But that doesn’t mean all metal is inappropriate. Some songs are downright kid-friendly and they’re a great way to inject some fresh blood into the typical parent’s rather limited musical repertoire.

Before I dive into my list of recommended tracks, you should know that there exists an actual just-for-kids metal band from Finland called Hevisaurus and they are awesome. They dress in dinosaur outfits and the videos are the good kind of crazy. Unfortunately, singing in Finnish is a deal breaker for me–my kids love fun lyrics and this music doesn’t sound all that different from traditional Scandinavian metal. We might as well be listening to early Dimmu Borgir or Opeth.

My list comes in two parts. First are the songs that are actually family-friendly. The music isn’t too scary and the words don’t have any unacceptably rude surprises. And they rock. Songs on the second list also rock and might seem OK for kids at first. It’s just that some of the words might induce an awkward conversation (best case) or nightmares (worst case).

Part 1: The best of the best

1. Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne):

This song is almost perfect–Kids love trains and laughing, and so does Ozzy. If you ignore the fake blood and the bat-eating (and maybe the finger tattoos), Ozzy is just a silly old man–he reminds me a lot of Santa Claus without the hat or the beard. This song even has words John Lennon could have written:

    Maybe it's not too late
    To learn how to love
    And forget how to hate

(Full disclosure: This was my high school yearbook quote.)

2. Rock and Roll All Night (Kiss):

The make-up and the costumes are super-fun and the song’s extremely catchy. Some of the lyrics are a little suggestive, but not enough to make me uncomfortable:

    You show us everything you've got
    Baby, baby that's quite a lot
    And you drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy

3. Merry Go Round (Mötley Crüe):

This song is another slam dunk–carousels are on my older daughters’ list of the top five things in life along with ponies, princesses, fairies, and minotaurs.

4. Pour Some Sugar on Me (Def Leppard):

Kids love sugar and messes and this song has both. The band name also provides a good teachable moment about spelling–adults make mistakes too!

5. Ice Cream Man (Van Halen):

It’s not the heaviest song in the world, but it does have an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo and who doesn’t like ice cream? The only issue is that this song is (surprise) not about ice cream at all, but the kids don’t have to know David Lee Roth is a drug-addled perv.

6. Kids Will Rock (Rough Cutt):

Not too many folks have heard of Rough Cutt–they were one of the hair metal bands that didn’t quite make it big in the 80’s though I’m not sure why. This song is about kids and even has a chorus of kids join in at the end!

7. Raise Your Hands to Rock (Mötley Crüe):

Songs that demand specific actions are always a big hit and this one couldn’t be catchier.

8. Jump (Van Halen):

Another movement song and this one might be even more fun to act out than the last.

9. Stand up and Shout (Dio):

Standing up and shouting is fun, but this song is borderline too fast and heavy. Ronnie also mentions being “nailed to the wheel” in passing, but even though I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times, I never noticed until reading the lyrics five minutes ago.

10. Rock You Like a Hurricane (The Scorpions):

We’ve been reading a ton of Magic Schoolbus books lately and hurricanes are pretty cool.

Part 2: Don’t quite make the cut

1. Bark at the Moon (Ozzy):

I wanted so much for this song to be okay mostly because I’ve played it for the girls in the past and they like it. Hopefully they haven’t listened too closely to the words which contain gems like:

    Years spent in torment
    Buried in a nameless grave 
    Now he has risen 
    Miracles would have to save 
    Those that the beast is looking for 

2. Givin the Dog a Bone (AC DC):

I love dogs and I’m OK with innuendo, but this song crosses the subtlety line right away:

    She take you down easy
    Going down to her knees
    Going down to the devil
    Down down at ninety degrees
    She blowing me crazy
    'til my ammunition is dry
    She's using her head again
    She's using her head

3. Give It All (Ratt):

I thought I might be able to spin this song as a tune about putting in your best effort. Too bad Stephen Pearcy is actually talking about how much love he is going to give his partner that night.

4. Modern Day Cowboy (Tesla):

This song is about cowboys and it’s a story about the Cold War that even teaches lessons about geography and spelling with lines like “the USA! the USSR!” Unfortunately even cold wars involves guns:

    Bang Bang, shoot'em up.
    Bang Bang, blow you away.

5. Hungry (Winger):

Kids get hungry and Winger is catchy as heck. But this song is not about being hungry for food:

    Girl I'm hungry for your love
    Girl I'm hungry
    Baby let me in
    Hungry for your love
    Hungry I can't get enough

6. Don’t Talk to Strangers (Dio):

This song had such promise as a fun song that teaches a valuable lesson. Too bad Ronnie James Dio comes across as a paranoid psychotic:

    Don't talk to strangers
    Cause they're only there to do you harm
    Don't write in starlight
    'Cause the words may come out real
    Don't hide in doorways
    You may find the key that opens up your soul
    Don't go to Heaven cause it's really only Hell
    Don't smell the flowers
    They're an evil drug to make you loose your mind
    Don't dream of women
    'Cause they'll only bring you down

7. Iron Man (Black Sabbath):

The story of Iron Man is in many ways a like that of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. He looks different from everyone else and people mistreat him. And just as Rudolph led the sleigh on that foggy night, Iron Man “travelled time for the future of mankind.” But instead of joining in everyone’s reindeer games, Iron Man “kills the people he once saved.” Oh well.

Part 3: Confession time:

I am a true child of 80’s metal and would very much like to share my passion for heavy music with my children. That’s why I’ve gone to the trouble to curate this list of songs that won’t get me fired as a dad. But a few issues remain:

1. The girls don’t actually like these songs very much. I’m hoping they will grow on them, but for now they far prefer kid music, boy bands, girl-pop, and even Latin music and reggae.
2. None of my recommended songs are all that heavy. Korn, Metallica, and Slayer are all conspicuously absent. I’m going to be listening to “real” metal on my own time until the girls are quite a bit older.
3. I don’t suggest watching any of the video versions of these songs. All the subtlety goes out the window and is usually replaced by pyrotechnics and half-naked women.
4. Suppose the your kids love this play list. There isn’t really anywhere else kid-appropriate to go. It was surprisingly hard to come up with even these few songs.

All that said, my girls do put up with it in small doses and I certainly enjoy it!