A Few New Books

It's been a bit quiet on the ole blog here for the last few days.  There's been no crazy weather to speak of, though it's -10 right now with wind chills around -25.  The Wind Chill warnings don't even get me really excited anymore, it's just chilly.  Though I did take out the recycling to the garage this evening in nothing more than shorts and a t-shirt, it was indeed brisk.

So being that the weather hasn't been blog-worthy and the four legged inhabitants haven't partaken in any entertaining shenanigans, there hasn't been much to say.  That and this week has demanded some actual work time and attention.  Not the excuse you expect from a slacker like me, that it's da truth. 

You can also blame the lack of blogress (that's a combination of blog & progress) on a recent reading binge.  With the help of my library matron, Professor Alycia, I have an unlimited well of books at my disposal.  I spent the last weekend/week reading a couple of books that have been on my list for several years - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.

Both were great reads, highly entertaining and humorous pieces of fiction.  I'd recommend them strongly.  I also have a handful of Christmas books to get crackin' on.  Too many books, not enough free time to read them all. 

And in case you want to purchase either of those books for a friend, you can access my Amazon Associates page on the blog.  Yes it's a new feature, and yes I've totally sold out.  This shouldn't shock you.  If you happen to be in the market for something from Amazon.com, access the site through my blog, I'll get a referral for it, and you'll get my undying gratitude.  OK, now I feel dirty for pushing the hard sell on you all.

Vanity Fair Article - Roll Over, Charles Darwin!

A highly entertaining travel afield review of Kentucky's Creation Museum, where dinosaurs and people frolic side by side, science be damned.  

Vanity Fair Article - Roll Over, Charles Darwin!

Here's an exceprt:

"The Garden of Eden is well worth the trip to Petersburg, Kentucky. Seeing as this museum is in the literal-truth business, this must be the literal Garden of Eden. This is exactly what it looked like. This is no simile, no mock-up, no artist’s impression. This is it. And it takes your breath away. Sharing the perfect rest stop with Adam is a whole mess of animals. There’s a worried-looking sheep, a fox, a chimp, a wallaby, a bear, a llama, a scarlet ibis, a fallow deer, an ibex, a cougar, a dinosaur, and a snake. It could be the diorama in a hunting-goods store. The animals aren’t doing much, just hanging out, waiting for something to happen. There’s nothing to do. No hunting, no mating, no nesting, no getting better, no getting worse. Just the infinite drip, drip, drip of bliss. Things that weren’t in the Garden of Eden at its planting but came later as part of the fruit-knowledge-shame-punishment plea bargain—poison weeds, carnivores, carrion eaters, fear, and thorns—are of great concern to creationists. A fossil with thorns is proof that it must have been made after the fall from Eden, because Genesis is quite specific about Eden’s being un-sharp and blunt, or, you might say, dull and pointless."

Professor Cummings In The News

One of Alycia's colleagues has grade school aged children, who in exchange for being subjects for Alycia asked that she attend their most recent Science Club meeting.  The event was covered by the local newspaper - The Grand Forks Herald.  Even though she mentioned that news photographers took many photos of her, sadly none of them made it to the paper.  This article ran on the front of the B section - City and Region

Here's the article in its entirely.  You can also (hopefully) read the article through this link.

On the same wavelength

St. Michael’s Elementary Science Club studies sound 
 

About two dozen third- through sixth-grade students at St. Michael’s Elementary School in Grand Forks put their voices and ears to good use Thursday afternoon.

The members of the school’s Science Club donned electro caps and headphones, tapped and blew into glass bottles filled with water and made noises into microphones and plastic tubes, each exercise with one subject in mind.

“The idea I want you to get used to is waves,” said Sarah Robinson, professor at UND’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She and fellow professor Alycia Cummings have been studying children’s brain and sound waves in their research models. On Thursday, they were joined by eight UND students to bring a little of their classroom to St. Mike’s.

The Science Club kids took turns wearing the “biosemi hats,” which look like swim caps with 64 connections for electrodes plugged in to record brain waves. Students are shown and asked to identify images. Their responses are measured in waves from parts of the brain that deal with vision, memory and comprehension.

“There’s all sorts of activity going on in your brain,” Cummings said. “We’re trying to learn how your brain is coming up with that word. How do you think brain waves get smaller?”

“You don’t need to think about it as much,” came a quick answer.

The students learned how their vocal folds, facial muscles and scalp muscles all assist in making and changing sounds and their frequencies.

Nicole Lee is the organizer of the club, which has been meeting every third Thursday since September. She said Father Gerard Braun has tasked the club with monitoring a crack in the choir loft of St. Michael’s Church. She said she wouldn’t be surprised to see the kids correlate the impact of sound waves on the crack.

“They create their own experiments and come up with results you wouldn’t expect,” Lee said. “I don’t have to give them much guidance.”

Vocabulary Day

We're gonna learn some new vocabulary today.  Are you ready?  We learned in the paper yesterday that the cool, frozen fog that painted the trees with delicate white frost is actually called hoarfrost (suppress your juvenile jokes children).  You can see the definition for hoarfrost here.

Our other vocabulary word is an odd weather condition called graupel.  Graupel exists in the strange nether world between hail and snow, it's soft hail, not quite fully formed snow.  Since it's neither hail or snow, it gets it own special word.  You can see the definition for graupel here. 

The odd thing about the word graupel is that I've never heard it before in my life, but today I read it twice, within an hour of one another, from two totally different sources - The San Diego Union Tribune and the Grand Forks Herald.  It turns out that the weather conditions in both San Diego and Grand Forks actually have the possibility for this odd weather phenomenon.  Weird.   

Now that you've learned something, here's your reward.  More cool pictures from the hoarfrost the other day.  Admittedly these are a day late, but I have an excuse, I've been fixing the snowblower in preparation for this weekends big storm, another foot or so of snow is on the way, and I gotta be ready. 

Here's a picture of the Riverside Park near our house.  

Another picture from the park. 

My intrepid photojournalist sidekick in her lovely brown cardigan.  I don't claim to be a mind reader (in fact I frequently make statements to the contrary) but I think that look is the "Uhhhh when can we go running again?" look.  Soon enough, soon enough. 

Pictures of the Freezing Fog Aftermath

Got your attention there, didn't I?  Was it the freezing fog?  Aftermath?  The promise of pictures instead of poring through my tedious prose?  

Starting at midday yesterday the whole Red River Valley (which includes Grand Forks - this is your geography lesson for the day) was under a dense fog advisory.  The last week or so has seen very mild temperatures, and yesterday we had some "warmer" southern winds that crept up and created the dense fog.  During the day this was cool, and quite odd since that type of fog is rare around here, but at night the temperatures dropped well below freezing again, meaning that whatever the fog touched, it stuck to.

We woke up in the morning to a scene even more dramatic than after a big snowstorm.  In stead of white snow everywhere, everything was coated in fine white frost, the trees look like they have bright white leaves, it looked very cool indeed.  A world that had been turned into Frosted Mini-Wheat Land.   

In following my standard opearting procedure, I waited until the normal job-having folks left for work before I ambled out in my own yard and snapped pictures like a tourist.  I feel as though this is a good policy to have in order to help the acclimation process and so Alycia and I don't look like, well, like folks who fell off the proverbial turnip truck from California. Unfortunately I stepped out the front door and who's standing on the sidewalk, but our neighbor from across the street.  Luckily he was taking pictures too and said that he'd never seen anything like this before, which made me feel better about snapping pictures on my own sidewalk. 
   
Here's a picture looking down our street to the west, taken from the front sidewalk. 

The other street, pointing north with some frosty trees. 

This is the view from the balcony, towards the southwest over the driveway.  It's hard to believe, but that huge pile of snow to the left of the tree is my garden area.  Seriously, in a few months there's gonna be all manner of green things growing there.  Hopefully.

 More frosty treetops.

I'm gonna wrangle up the pooch in a bit and walk out to the park for a National Geographic-esque photo expedition.  The trees are denser there and should have some more dramatic pictures.  Now you'll have to come back tomorrow and see what photo journalistic excellence I have captured. 

A Day of Mourning

Howdy faithful blog readers.  I don't have a lot to say today, feeling sad and mopey after the Chargers utter and complete playoff debacle yesterday.  With very little hope for the Padres for the next two to four years, all my hopes were pinned on the Chargers, and as usual they disappointed yet again.  I'll leave it at that and just wallow around like a sad panda today.  :(

Class War - How Public Servants Became Our Masters

How about some fun reading for a Thursday?  I challenge you to read this article without feeling sick to your stomach.  Not in the gross, dead body kind of way, but in the "I understand now why our cities are being flushed down the toilet in California".  I read it and immediately wanted to go and hug a Libertarian....


Class War - How Public Servants Became Our Masters

Loose Ends

I realized today that I never wrapped up our pre-Christmas poll, sorry there faithful readers.  I dropped the ball on this one.  But the poll results did give me a measure of great satisfaction knowing that I'm preaching to like minded souls.  More than half of the poll respondents need their cup of coffe ASAP, even though it's Christmas morning and there are presents to open and festivities to enjoy.   On a certain level it's good to know that my readers are also cafeine junkies.

I'll also try to come up with a new poll today to both dazzle and astound y'all.  

Alycia and I had an evening out on the town yesterday, went out for a delicious dinner at one of our favorite restaurants downtown - The Toasted Frog, then to purchase some cross country skis.  Yeah it's a bit of an extravagance, but we're going to use them for years to come, and if they help us look forward to winter by having a fun winter time activity, it's worth the expense.  And in my opinion anything that encourages physical activity and exercise out in nature is a good thing. 

So cross country skiing might take the place of running for me during the winter.  I think I can manage two to three days a week of moseying around on skis through the park just a couple of blocks from the house.  Lot's of potential here.  I'm gonna venture out in a bit here, for some mid-week cross country skiing, it should be fun.