Category: Teaching

Well, it is the time of the year for holiday cooking.  You know, those things that we all love but do not often eat.  I suspect that if we ate throughout the year like we do during this season, we all would be more corpulent.  However, eating heartily during the cold season has a biological function, or at least it did as we evolved.  We need energy to produce body heat, and, not that long ago, caves, hovels, tents, cabins, and other dwellings were just cold in the winter, so we needed the extra energy.

Unfortunately, our lifestyle has become in conflict from our biology, so we must eat these highly calorific foods with caution.  That is no reason to avoid them, but certainly it is a good idea to eat them in moderation.  None of the recipes that follow are what you would call low sugar nor low fat.  By the way, dinner for me tonight is homemade beef stew with lots of vegetables added.

There is a little known but deadly breast cancer that presents itself without a lump, so most women do not know how to check for the signs. It is cunning because it looks like a common, everyday irritation when it’s in the early stages, and it can progress to Stage IV in a matter of weeks or months. Many doctors see this cancer and mistake it for a spider bite, an allergic rash, or a mild infection.

Inflammatory breast cancer is a rare and aggressive disease. It strikes black women disproportionately, and doesn’t discriminate against the young. The average woman who gets this diagnosis is 57, but it’s seen in teenagers, as well. It kills young people more visciously than the rest: the trend is that younger patients commonly fail to survive five years after treatment. Perhaps they are less likely to seek treatment as soon as older women. But this disease can kill a woman stone dead in a matter of months without treatment.

Update: Photobucket removed the pictures of this disease, probably because they contain breasts. Great. Look in the links and the videos, and you will see many good photos of this disease’s various expressions.

Originally posted by Will Urquhart (Rusty5329) at Sum of Change. Please check out the new comment widget from Ameritocracy that we just recently installed at the bottom of every page at Sum of Change

Every political campaign and organization must spend money to maintain serious levels of activity. Increasingly, campaigns must raise significant amounts of money to become and remain competitive. Although we can protest the growing costs of campaigning, the reality for any campaign is that without these funds, there can be no staff, no office, no phones, no computers, no signs, no media coverage – no campaign.

-From the Democracy for America Campaign Academy Training Manual

Atomic theory had been pretty well established well before the turn of the previous century, but no one knew much about the nature of atoms other than that the atoms of different elements had different masses (later advances revealed that they have different numbers of protons), and were composed of a positive nucleus and negative electrons, with positive and negative charges being equal in number so that the net electrical charge was zero.

Electrons were definitely established by J. J. Thomson in 1897, and he postulated that atoms were more of less continuous lumps of matter matter with positive charge in which lumps of negative charge (electrons) were embedded, although they had some freedom of movement.

Atomic theory had been pretty well established well before the turn of the previous century, but no one knew much about the nature of atoms other than that the atoms of different elements had different masses (later advances revealed that they have different numbers of protons), and were composed of a positive nucleus and negative electrons, with positive and negative charges being equal in number so that the net electrical charge was zero.

Electrons were definitely established by J. J. Thomson in 1897, and he postulated that atoms were more of less continuous lumps of matter matter with positive charge in which lumps of negative charge (electrons) were embedded, although they had some freedom of movement.

Atomic theory had been pretty well established well before the turn of the previous century, but no one knew much about the nature of atoms other than that the atoms of different elements had different masses (later advances revealed that they have different numbers of protons), and were composed of a positive nucleus and negative electrons, with positive and negative charges being equal in number so that the net electrical charge was zero.

Electrons were definitely established by J. J. Thomson in 1897, and he postulated that atoms were more of less continuous lumps of matter matter with positive charge in which lumps of negative charge (electrons) were embedded, although they had some freedom of movement.

  40 years ago the first UnThanksgiving Day happened.

Oh, it wasn’t called that then. Nor was it called that the following year. You see, it wasn’t about Thanksgiving at all. It was about the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, and federal policy for native Americans.

One of standard measurements that we take for granted these days is the charge of a single electron.  This is a vivid example of how scientific knowledge has exploded during the past century.  In 1870, there was no concept of an electron, and atoms were just very crudely becoming accepted.

After the turn of the previous century, it was generally accepted that there were atoms, and that electrons were likely a part of them, but no one knew much about them.  We still have not all of the answers, but Robert Milliken elucidated the intrinsic charge of the electron in xxxx.

Chief Black Kettle:

I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.

As a professional scientist, I am accustomed to observing some phenomenon that is interesting to me, wondering about its significance, looking at background data (if any exist, and yes, “data” is the plural form of “datum”), and then trying to figure out the principles behind.

That works well, for the most part, in systems that can be controlled and only one variable at a time changed.  That is the essence of the scientific method as it generally practiced.  I dispensed with the classical steps, which are observation, formulation of a hypothesis, experimentally testing the hypothesis, refining or rejecting the hypothesis, and then doing more and better experimental tests to test the hypothesis further.  If one is very lucky, the refined hypothesis becomes a theory, and if no exception after crushing peer review, becomes a principle or a law.

United States coins have traditionally been forged and minted with gold, silver, and copper.  Very small amounts of other metals have also been added to improve the wearing properties of the coins.

Gold, silver, and copper, in their pure states, are actually too soft to make good coins, in that they wear must too fast.  The chemistry of good alloys is a fascinating part of numismatics, the study of coins.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence, crossposted from MyLeftWing

I return to 2007 for “America was made for HSR” (Agent Orange links retained as the other blog I was posting to at the time is no longer up)

Wow, what a ride. Sometimes on Thursday …

Thursday 22 March 2009, that is …

… it felt like the America was made for High Speed Rail diary was going 200 mph itself. And I kept the ride going, cross posting the diary on the Euro and Booman Tribunes. And based partly on comments here and partly on comments there, kept polishing up the map.

Like the first diary, this is only a sketch, and 200mph routes are not the be-all and end-all of passenger rail, and this isn’t a silver bullet … but damn if it isn’t one silver BB that is cool as all hell.

Now, I’m going to say the lessons follow below the fold in no particular order, so that if you see an order, I can call it serendipity, and if you don’t see any order … I told you so. …

… (and anyway, any excuse to use the word serendipity is a good excuse, it’s such a lovely word … and you’d never believe how I stumbled across it … but that, dear readers, is another story) …

… with some additional reflections from late 2009.