This time we have decided to get back to geeky science and technology.  I had thought about writing about Winter Solstice celebrations through the eons, but that has passed now.  Next year for sure.

The Rare Earth Metals are a group of elements that are extremely closely related in atomic number (henceforth called Z), mass, and chemical properties.  I would wager that most folks who are not technical have never heard of them, except maybe on Mythbusters (the neodymium magnets are the strong ones that they use now and then), let alone touched one to their knowledge.

But almost everyone uses them on a daily basis, and most have indeed touched at least one.  Please come with us and let us explore these interesting and essential elements.

I was going to write on a completely different topic, but decided that some Christmas music would be appropriate, since I often write about music here.  Most of the songs are either from my childhood or from comparatively long ago.  I have no “new” favorite Christmas songs.

What I intend to impart is just this:  Christmas is a legal holiday in the United States, but is also a time for people of any, or no, faith to come together and celebrate family and friends.  I care not a whit if you are Jewish, Wiccan, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Shinto, Taoist, Buddhist, a believer in Confucius, or any other religion, or none at all.

In the United States, Christmas is recognized officially, for good or ill.  If all of the great religious can agree about anything, it is good will towards everyone.  With this in mind, please enjoy with me a bit of music that sort of makes the season for me.

This is the time of the year that I get creative in the kitchen, and almost all of what I prepare is given away to friends and family.  I had hoped to be ready to ship tomorrow, but I got behind and will have to ship Tuesday.  Perhaps too late for Christmas, but certainly not for the rest of the holiday season.

I vary my menu year to year, but a couple of things are standard.  One is Lizzies, a sort of fruit cookie that is reminiscent of fruit cake, except Lizzies are good.  Another is chocolate fudge, with black walnuts.  Both of these were always around during my childhood, because my mum loved everything about Christmas and was an excellent cook.

Those of you who read this column know that from time to time I write about TeeVee adverts.  It seems as if some of the worst ones come out during the holiday season, many but not all connected with extracting money from you for gifts.

Before we get going on these new ones, please remember back a couple of months when I wrote about the Tide laundry detergent advert that featured the daughter asking her mum if the mum had seen her green shirt.  The mum thought back to wearing it and stained it with food.  Then she lied to her daughter saying, “Honey, that’s not my style”.  This advert has been modified and now the mum says nothing to the daughter about it.  I consider this a small victory for decency in advertising, and credit this column with at least a bit of influence.  Thank everyone for the support.

One of the more revolutionary innovations in lighting is the Light Emitting Diode, or LED.  This cutting edge technology was first discovered 103 years ago!  However, only comparatively recently have LEDs been either efficient or cheap enough for wide use.

LEDs operate just like any other diode, allowing an electric current to pass, for the most part, in only one direction.  They are built by placing into contact a P-type (positive) and an N-type (negative) semiconductor and passing a current from the N to the P materials.  In the case of LEDs, when the electrons and holes recombine, light is emitted.  In most diodes, heat is emitted.  Actually, LEDs do produce some heat as well and this becomes important for reasons to be discussed later.

After the food contamination incidents over the past couple of years, the Congress has put forth a revamp of food safety law in the United States.  This bill bass the House back in 2009 and was tied up in the Senate until last week.  The Senate passed its version (with amendments) and so it has gone back to the House for either passage of the Senate version or to head for a conference committee for resolution.

This act (S. 510) has created an outcry from both the extreme right and some “back to nature” types on the left.  Herein we shall examine some of the key provisions of the proposed law and make some judgments.  My personal feeling is that it will die before the Congress completes action on other, critical legislation like the tax issue, unemployment benefits, the federal debt ceiling, and funding the government, but who knows?

Many of you who read my posts on a regular basis know that I was born and raised in Hackett, Arkansas.  Hackett is about nine miles south of Fort Smith, and just about a mile from the Oklahoma border.  Many people are of the mistaken opinion that the hill country of Arkansas are all Ozarks, but that is not right.

There are actually two major hill ranges in Arkansas, the Ozarks and the Ouachita (pronounced wash’-a-tah) Mountains.  These two ranges are quite different both in geology and in the old language.  The Arkansas River is roughly the dividing feature betwixt the two ranges.  You might know the Ouachitas because of the excellent natural sharpening stones that are quarried there.

In the kitchen, oftentimes we desire to thicken a sauce or a broth without significantly changing its flavor.  There are several ways to do this, and the physicochemical principles behind them are quite different in many cases.  One way of thickening things is just to reduce them (i.e., boil them down), but that often involves chemical changes that alter flavor.

Other ways of thickening things including adding small amounts of rather bland ingredients that cause the sauce or other material to become thicker without extreme heating, or to create a complex emulsion that thickens materials due to physical rather than chemical changes.  We shall examine some of both this evening.

Most everyone who is aware of The Who as a major British band realize that the three instrumentalists were very good at their crafts, and some say that Keith Moon may have been the best rock and roll drummer who ever lived.  However, the bass player, John Entwistle, did much more than play bass.

John Alec Enwistle, born 19441009 and died 20029627, was one of the original members of the band.  He and Pete Townshend formed a band in the late 1950s, and he left to join Roger Daltrey’s band in the early 1960s.  He convinced Daltrey to have Townshend join, and with the admission of Keith Moon The Who were formed.

Folks, tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.  I shall not go onto the history of it, since everyone has her or his own interpretation, and the pundits have theirs.  The Big Bloviator promised to repeat his distorted idea of it again today on his foul radio program.  I made it a point to miss it.

However, it is important to reflect back on the previous year and consider the things for which one gives thanks, and actually to give those thanks.  I do not care if your thanks goes to a deity, to other people, or to communities like these.  The important is that one thinks about the good things that have happened during the past year and thanks someone other than one’s self for them.

The concept of “small business” being damaged by increasing the progressive tax rates on what is purported to be them has not been presented correctly.  Keith Olbermann did a pretty good job a couple of weeks ago, but since his show is necessarily fast paced, the point did not make its mark as well as it might have done so.

That is no criticism towards him, because he is one of the “good guys”, but on a TeeVee show there is just not time enough to examine all of the documents that need some detailed explanation.  It he were to go into the detail that we are about to find, his show would be canceled for being extremely boring.

That is the one advantage that I have.  I can show exactly where the fallacies lie, without the restriction of a three minute treatment.  I will admit that he does indeed have a face for TeeVee, and I have one for blogs or radio.

I have been threatening to write this for some time and finally got around to it.  The hard core conservative pundits have no compunction about calling their political opponents different names (“Rahm, Rahmbo, Dead Fish”, for example) and sometime the progressive pundits do the same.

However, the more progressive pundits have better manners than the conservative ones.  Since I have no manners at all, I have no compunction for making up names.  Ed Schultz does quite a few, like Slant Head and The Drugster, but I find them sort of weak.  Olbermann did better with Lonesome Rhodes, but that still does not have as much punch as I would like.

To make this more fun, I shall list some names and give sort of riddle as a hint, and then ask readers to guess the identity of the person in a comment.  If you have better ones, or if I leave out a favorite target of yours, please comment as well.