Category: Teaching

and out of that heightened violence came the massacre for which Thanksgiving is named.

The intent to commit genocide at Washita is hidden in plain view, unless key elements are brought together. These are: that the Cheyenne were placed on land where they would starve while promises to avert starvation were broken; that George Bent observed how Civil War soldiers did not harm white women and children by a “code of honor,” while Indian women and children were slaughtered; that Sheridan declared “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead;” and that the War Department did not differentiate between peaceful and warring Indians. Hence, the orders “to kill or hang all warriors.” As the consequence, the intent was to kill all men
of a specific race.

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“In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians

were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them.”

“It may be demanded…Should not Christians have more mercy and

compassion? But…sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”

-Puritan divine Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana

The clear origins of the Native American Flute date back several thousand millennia to flutes made of bone, to petroglyphs, and oral history. Unclear “origins” involve the Spanish Conquest insofar as the Spanish stealing the bamboo flute from Asia, and then introducing it to the Five Civilized Tribes. A Cheyenne Flute Maker relayed this to me. The idea goes, that the bamboo flute was made out of river cane by the Five Civilized Tribes after the Spanish “brought” the bamboo flute to the “New World.” Subsequently, river cane flutes then proceeded to be constructed out of cedar wood by the Plains Tribes; hence, its origins within this idea being called Asian – Spanish. However, the Cheyenne Flute Maker said that the tribes already possessed the flute prior to the invasion, and the Spanish may have introduced it to a few. That raises some questions, but the ultimate answer we shall see is one of mystery.

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is often used as a flavor enhancer in many savory dishes.  What most people know is that it often added to foods.  What most people do not know is that is present in many foods naturally, either in free form or as glutamic acid in proteins, since glutamic acid is a very common naturally occurring amino acid.

There is considerable controversy surrounding MSG, mostly due to the so-called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome (CRS).  Symptoms commonly reported include numbness and tingling of the extremities, facial flushing, and several others.  Tonight we shall take a fairly in-depth view of MSG.

  By any standard measure the suicide of Wesley Everest should be considered unusual.

  Everest had only recently returned from the front lines of WWI France, so a suicide isn’t all that shocking. However, the circumstances of his death on Veterans Day 1919, should have raised questions with the coroner. That is, if the coroner had bothered to examine the body before declaring it a suicide.

 Everest’s teeth had been knocked out with a rifle butt. He was then tossed over the side of a bridge several times until his neck was broken from the noose tied around it. Afterward his lifeless body had been shot full of bullets, which is very difficult for a dead man to inflict upon himself.

 Perhaps the coroner was just stating that Everest’s suicidal action happened long before his death. It happened when he decided to become a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.

I was reflecting this Veterans’ Day, and thought about John.  He was a good man, and I realized that I actually on very close personal terms with a World War I veteran.  By the way, there is, from what I have been able to find, only ONE American World War I veteran still breathing, and he is 108 years old.

John did not live that long.  He had a hard life.  He was also the most kind, most tender, and most loving man for kids that I have even known.  Please follow me on a very emotional track here.

Distillation is a technique of “squeezing” out the essence of a given material (or series of thoughts to one or a few abstractions) into a concentrated product.  The term is from the Latin, distillo, from the combining term de, meaning “down” and the noun stilla, a drop.  Thus, distilled water is literally a drop of water coming down something.  Taken to the extreme, distilled water literally means “a coming down drop of water that is water”.  That does not fit with the modern usage, but is illustrative.

Aristotle, with all of his faults, noted that seawater, boilt under cool sponges, would yield fresh water when the sponges were pressed.  Distillation was known in the ancient world, but not much used except for preparing “medical” remedies, most of them toxic, in a manner that I will describe to you later, in a more modern form.

Actually, the earth is a huge still, with the water cycle reproducing exactly, but on a massive scale, what goes on in an industrial or laboratory still.  Heating, evaporation, segregation of components, and condensation are all essential parts of distillation, and our planet does it well.  Without that process, the planet would not be recognizable.

We shall get away from food for this installment of Pique the Geek and talk about something more, well, geeky.  The concept of nuclear power is widely known, but the actual way that is works is mysterious to some because people think that it is hard.  Actually, the basic science behind nuclear power is very simple, but the technology to contain and make it practical is complex.

This complexity is due to several reasons, not the least of which is safety.  Whilst the nuclear fuel to power commercial reactors is not very malignant, after that fuel has been used a while it becomes extremely radioactive due to a large number of complex nuclear interactions.  It is the spent reactor fuel that is the real problem.  However, there is a completely different technology used to generate electricity that does not involve a nuclear reactor, and we shall discuss this one first.

I know that this essay is likely not to be popular with progressive folks, but I am not only a progressive, I am a scientist as well.  In my opinion, the only relatively clean option for power that we have, other than natural gas (which is less plentiful and not as clean as the TeeVee adverts say) is the fission of uranium and plutonium.

I realize that this sounds pretty bold, but please bear with me whilst I build my case.  We need power in the meantime for the transition between fossil fuels and truly sustainable ones, and nuclear power is the only one that can provide that power.  First the physics, then the economics, and then the future.

The fall apple crop is in and so jelly has been on my mind.  We shall cover jams and other preserves as well, but jellymaking takes more technique, so more detail will be given to jelly.  If you can make jelly well, the others are easy.  Jellymaking is not really hard, but there are a couple of rules that have to be followed.

Jelly and other preserves thicken upon cooking because of the interaction between pectin (found in many fruits), sugar, acid, and water.  Pectin is one of the soluble fibers that get so much attention as part of a balanced diet, even though it contributes few nutrients.  Its main purpose in the diet is to help regulate the metabolism in the gut, and soluble fiber has been shown to be beneficial for blood pressure and blood lipid regulation.

Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 combined with his religious motivations for making it led Pope Alexander VI to issue a Papal Bull in 1493.