Hello, all!  This installment was inspired by Kossack dsteffen who correctly identified a rather obtuse reference to the abovenamed comedy troupe in the comments at the big orange Wednesday past on My Little Town.  I gave him two honorable mentions in the comments there, but perhaps this more than honorable one will get him some notice.

The Firesign Theatre was, and continues to be still, a very bizarre and very funny comedy troupe.  This is going to be an extremely difficult piece, because most of their work was on vinyl, and around 45 minutes long.  In addition, everything sort of interlocked, so what is hilarious in context is likely to fall flat without the previous half hour or so of it.

I shall attempt to extract the ones that can sort of stand alone, and for the ones that do not shall attempt to include what might seem to be rather long pieces that do not make sense until the end.  Hey, that is what we do here sometimes.

Those of you who read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I rarely write about living people except with their express permission, but this installment is more about THINGS, particularly brands of things, that have essentially disappeared now.  Many of them were foods, but some were non food items.

I was raised eating mostly from scratch, home cooked food that Ma, my mum, or my dad (he was very good at a few things) cooked.  I have introduced you to Ma before, here, and as soon as I introduce you to my mum I shall use a more personal term for her in future.

A comment thread on Friday evening’s Popular Culture installment got me to thinking about this, and I decided that it would be a good topic here, and some Geeky stuff that can be used by a wide range of the public.  Thus, I write this as a public service.

There are several situations that people can find themselves in due to circumstances beyond their control.  Many of them involve interruptions of utility service, but some other eventualities can also require fast attention to mitigate further damage or even personal injury.  We shall discuss a few of those this evening.

Probably the most common situation that occurs is electrical service interruption.  This can be more serious than one might think.

This may be a bit of an enigmatic title, so I shall explain posthaste.  I have quit listening to and watching the extreme right wing talkers.  I have monitored them for years, so you do not have to do so, but I finally just had enough, and could not take it any more.  There are a couple of reasons, but the largest one was that I was stupider after listening than before.

Ma always told me that after I read a book, listened to a radio program, or watched a TeeVee show to ask myself one question:  what have I learnt?  In the case of the radical, hate filled, ultra right wing talkers, NOTHING lately.  I learnt some time ago who they were and what they were preaching, and it is nothing but hatred and fear.  I guess that I was just listening more recently for how they would do it.

That is enough.  I am gone.  I quit listening to the drug addled and deafened Limbaugh some months ago because all he does is bellow.  More to follow.

Those of you who read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I rarely write about living people except with their express permission, but may make an exception or two here because it might be important to talk about some of her decedents who still breathe.  None of those references will be derogatory.

I actually know less about Granddad than I do about Ma, because he died in 1969 at the age of 91.  I was only 12 years old then.  Ma lived until she saw me as an adult and married and their mother having her great, great grandchildren.  Here is what I know about his history.

Boron, the chemical element with an atomic number (Z) = 5, is an uncommon element.  The reason is that there is no really easy way for stars to make it except through going supernova.  A more technical way of saying this is that stellar nucleosynthesis is not a viable pathway to produce boron.  As a matter of fact, it is the least common very light element except for lithium.

Tonight we shall look into some of the properties and uses of boron, as suggested by Kossack shrike Friday evening during comments on Popular Culture.  The interest that shrike has in some new medical uses for boron, and we shall go into some detail near the end of the piece.

This shall complete our discussion of Tommy, the seminal record album by The Who from early in 1969.  We had an excellent discussion last week, and hope to have an equally good, if not even better one tonight.  I was particularly interested that there was a range of thoughts about it, from some who just hated it to those who just loved it.  That is fine.  That is just personal taste.

I should go on record to say that my mum liked Overture.  She was pretty reserved about music other than the Swing Era kind, since she came of age then, but allowed to me that she really liked the French horn.  I was pretty dumb at the time that we were listening to, on the radio, one of the most important bands that ever existed.

With no more ado, here is the second disk (the third side) of Tommy.  Please comment profusely.

Those of you who read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I rarely write about living people except with their express permission, but may make an exception or two here because it might be important to talk about some of her decedents who still breathe.  None of those references will be derogatory.

Ma was my maternal grandmother.  I shall explain the origin of her name in due time.  Elsie Roberts was born 19030628 near Hackett, Arkansas.  Think about this for a minute.  She was born before the Wright Brothers made the first aeroplane flight!

This week we shall explore misconceptions about science generally, and then take a few specific cases for further examination.  There are a few concepts that are essential to understand about what makes science work, and why it is the best tool that we have to understand the natural world, and to use science to improve the human condition.

There are two fundamental large scale misconceptions about science, and we shall treat them first.  Then there are an almost unlimited supply of what I call false science, meaning that scientific terms and logic based on incorrect premises are used in attempts by those who actually know better to influence people.  The fundamental misconceptions are sort of to be expected from folks who are not educated in science, but he false science is used by nefarious persons to influence those not versed in real science, usually for a monetary or a social goal or goals.  Please let us explore.

In 1969, the seminal Tommy was released by The Who.  Track Records, The Who’s own brand, in collaboration with Polydoor was the UK record company, and in the United States Decca was.  I have a mint Decca one.  It was billed as the first rock opera, but it actually was not.  There had been at least a couple before Tommy came to us.

Not counting the composition effort (by far the bulk of it by Pete Townshend), it took the better part of year to record, edit, and redub the work.  This was Kit Lambert, their producer, at his finest, and also extremely fine efforts by all of the band and the production and engineering staff.  It is truly a masterpiece.

Those of you who read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I rarely write about living people except with their express permission, but may make an exception or two here because I do not know for certain that two people are not dead.  If not, they will be approaching 80 years of age.  Hackett was relatively calm in the early 1960s, but that began to change in the mid 1960s.  A group of hooligans began to take over the town, and they pretty much ruled it for a couple of years, at least at night.  I do not know the names of all of them, and some might even still be alive, but too old to be reading this, so I shall name names.

The process of curing meat (including fish, shellfish, and poultry) is an ancient process, the origins of it lost in antiquity.  The origin of our verb to cure comes from the Latin verb curare, meaning “to take care of”.  The word passed into Middle French as curer, and after the Norman conquest in 1066 into what became Middle English as curen.  Thus is shares its roots and ultimate meaning as the medical use, “to take care of”.

Real curing requires salt, but for several reasons salt alone is not the ideal curing agent.  In a truly cured meat (I shall continue to use that term to include the items in the first sentence), the salt content is high and the moisture level is low.  Remember, the primary purpose of curing is to prevent bacterial and fungal attack on the meat, but there are other factors at play as well.