Category: Teaching

We in Western society frequently latch hold of the concerns of the Third World in a laudable desire to reform, enlighten, and correct the injustices which exists in countries who do not enjoy our same basic freedoms.  Though this impulse is meant to bring light to the darkness, we must also be careful not to let our own biases and own paternalistic impulses overshadow the good work we seek to accomplish.  When the reform we seek thinly veils our own individual internal struggles, then we are not truly working for unselfish means.  However, rather than beating ourselves up when we fall short, we would be wise to forgive our shortcomings and strive to listen more and hector less.  It is only with listening and absorbing the complete picture that truly effective change ever comes to be.  If short-cuts guaranteed successful outcomes, we’d have colonized Mars by now, viewed a time where same-sex marriage was illegal as unspeakably barbaric and nonsensical, and learned to take for granted a single payer health care system.

The controversy over women who demand the right to wear the Niqab or the burqu despite laws banning it altogether has become a highly politicized issue in Western Europe and even in our own country.  Feminist activists, particularly female feminist activists, have grabbed hold of the head scarf and veil issue as a clear-cut visual example that shows conclusive evidence of brutal Patriarchal oppression.  When sexism and anti-feminist offenses are so often disguised and ingrained within a society, the head scarf has become an endearing image to invoke due to its unquestioned visibility.  If one takes into account a purely Western point of view, nothing could be a more suitable example of the malicious intent of men harshly imposing their will upon women.  In comparing their perceived interpretation of the custom to their own lives and their own hard-fought struggles as women, they have incorporated the practice into a Raison d’etre of a particular school of thought.  This endearing symbol pushes social justice and personalizes the lack of human rights rightly due to oppressed women through the world.  The cause has been so heavily politicized and eagerly embraced that few have felt any need to examine the subtleties that sometimes contradict and frequently complicate any resounding rallying point or slam dunk.  The reality, as it so often is, is full of subtle nuances that make any black and white reading much more complicated or even impossible.

This essay is sort of a prequel to two that I am scheduled to write for What’s for Dinner, posted at Dailykos.com (and here) Saturday evenings around 7:30 Eastern.  Next Saturday I am writing rather long one about jellies (and related items) with lots of technical information and pictures of the process from start to finish.  On 05 December I return to write about my favorite holiday goodies.

This got me to thinking that some of those goodies need background preparation before cooking them.  Tonight we will discuss several key ingredients in some of my favorites, and some of the biology and natural history about them.  Some things, like preparing nuts and persimmons, HAVE to be done in advance for various reasons, and some can be done in advance to ease the workload during the busy holiday season.

Preserving food by drying it is prehistoric.  Humans have dried food for millenia, and it works as well now as it did way back when.  In this sense, I am not talking about grains and seeds that naturally dry on the plant, with no interaction from humans, but rather foods that need a bit of help to dry without going bad.

Let us take, for example, apples.  Dried apples are wonderful, but leave that apple of the tree and it falls to the ground, and just rots.  Apples are too moist in their prime state to dry whole, especially if nature is all that is working for one.

Enter mankind to make a better process.  We have learnt to peel and slice the apples, and then put them into a place where the water is lost rather quickly, before bacteria and molds can grow.  Please read further.

“I pledge allegiance to Bill Gates and to the corporation for which he stands.  One nation, under Microsoft, with standardized testing and low wages for all.”

Yesterday buhdydharma posted a diary Turns Out It Is Not The Republicans After All that I will reference often as I write about the education coup de tat that is occurring right under our noses.  The very rich, the ruling class, is usurping our public schools. It is a slow and deliberate coup. They are taking us in with their money, promises, and dictates, and if we don’t start paying attention, good public schools will be a thing of the past.

It’s difficult to know where to start with so much happening and so little education news ever being reported in the MSM.  So, I’m going to start in the middle and hope to provide more information in subsequent diaries. There is so much to know.  

First, I want to say that Bill Gates has done much good in the world through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  I thought his “small schools” initiative was a good idea in theory, although the execution has left something to be desired.  That being said, his newest endeavor is wrong is so many ways.  We should pay attention.  The people with the most money want to control ours.

Food preservation is as old as humankind, and actually predates us.  Animals are known to preserve food in a crude fashion, from dogs burying bones to squirrels stashing away nuts and acorns for later consumption.  Strictly speaking, that is not really food preservation but rather food stockpiling, but the two are extensively connected.

Our hunter/gatherer ancestors began to preserve food with the discovery and taming of fire.  The mere act of cooking meat has a preservative effect, especially when the meat is cooked to near dryness.  Drying food in the sun was also certainly practiced in warmer climates, and freezing food for later use was and still is done by nomads in the Arctic regions.

With the advent of agriculture the need for preservation of food on a large scale became essential to provide sustenance during times of crop failure, especially for grain crops.  Grains are fairly easy to preserve since they are dry, so keeping them dry and vermin out of them are the keys.  It is thought that the cat became domesticated around this time.

This series will examine various food preservation methods from the ancient to the modern, including an extensive installment on chemical preservatives.  Some of these have gotten bad press undeservedly, and some are not as safe as commonly thought.

Senator Inhofe commonly makes claims about the science of global warming. When Chris Mooney asked about Inhofe’s disdain for the scientific mainstream, a member of his committee staff responded

How do you define ‘mainstream’? Scientists who accept the so-called ‘consensus’ about global warming? Galileo was not mainstream.

Galileo’s spirit looked on, more than a little irritated. But it wasn’t provoked to return until Inhofe said:

…God’s still up there. We’re going through these cycles…The [AGW] science really isn’t there.

That very night in Inhofe’s office, a spectre rose up from the floor in a great, billowing cloud.

Last time we talked about the history of the periodic table and some of the reasons behind why it “works”.  We also took a look at the first three periods (rows), the very short first period, with only two elements, and the two short periods with eight elements each in them.  We also grouped these elements into families (columns) that show similar chemical properties.

Now we shall look at Periods 4 and 5, the two long periods.  These periods (and later ones) contain the transition metals.  In the first three periods, chemical properties change radically from one element to the next as atomic number increases.  For example, fluorine, the most chemically reactive element sits next to neon, which forms no known ground state chemical compounds.

Wild jungle. Deserted beaches with great snorkeling or surfing. Mountain lakes. Volcanoes. Orangutans. Oh, and did I mention it’s one of the cheapest places on Earth for backpacking? Really, what more could one ask for in a destination?!?

The sad news this week from Sumatra, one of the most seismically volatile regions in the world, has left me wanting to do more to bring attention to this beautiful island and its people. Alas, what follows is but a brief introduction, but I hope that the critical importance of what happens on this, the world’s 6th-largest island, can be better understood as a result.

Take it from the folks at Lonely Planet:

Sumatra is an adventure, the kind of demanding ride that requires a dusty knapsack and tough travelling skin.

Please follow below for a tour of the north of Sumatra, what just may be my favorite place on Earth.

X-posted @ TLP

After this, I don’t know what to do next.

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It seems like someone ought to let the president know that an American Indian man fasted in front of the White House for one week. Someone ought to say this man sat on a bench in Lafayette Park, starving in a silent protest, not taking even water.

Except to briefly say –

Someone should tell the White House there was a Native American man starving for the freedom of Leonard Peltier on their front lawn.

Mr. President, Ben Carnes was fasting on the White House Lawn for Peltier’s freedom.

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The Indian removals which destroyed one quarter of the Cherokee tribe, were actually conceptualized by Jefferson and then extended and carried out by Jackson. There were great debates about whether the “redskins” were human and whether they had souls.

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The Indian removals which destroyed one quarter of the Cherokee tribe, were actually conceptualized by Jefferson and then extended and carried out by Jackson. There were great debates about whether the “redskins” were human and whether they had souls.

The single most important piece of scientific literature is, in my opinion, the periodic table.  Those who understand what it means, and what it actually implies, have mastered more science than most professors ever will.  This may sound like an exaggeration, but come with me and I think that I can prove it to you.

One thing that scientists like to do is to make order out of what seems to be a myriad of disjointed facts.  The table does just this.  The table did not just appear overnight; it is the product of contributions by hundreds of scientists over decades and finally took a form sort of like what we use today in 1869.  That was the year in which Dmitrii Mendeleev published his table, but he was not alone by far.