First?!? O joy!

yelljkt, that book list started off with the worst summation of Great Gatsby I have ever read.

I'm glad to know, from previous posts, that the boodlers think we aren't in the line of fire - for now.

I'm curious if there is still sexism at NASA?

Loomis, the Bush admoinistration fired all the sexists in NASA years ago, and replaced them with creationists and intelligent design theorists. Things are much beter there now.

Dreamer,

thanks for the links in the last boodle, they were much appreciated.

Mudge, you remind me of the SNL news segment on Saturday night that said that Sam Brownback told supporters he would defend his beliefs "from one edge of the earth to the other."

Not to pile on Brownback (tee hee), but anyone see the article about him making the major gaffe of praising Peyton Manning as "the greatest QB ever" while smack in the middle of Packer country?

:-)

JA, I dispute your characterization of me as "unkempt." I was the kemptest person there!

TBG, SNL's Weekend Update likes Brownback - a couple of weeks ago they described him as "so conservative he thinks watching 'Will & Grace' gives you AIDS."

By the way, today is the anniversary of the launch of Skylab.

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/history/skylab/skylab.htm

Congratulations on making the front page of the Outlook section!

Just in case we are zapped by gamma rays, I must tell you about my mother's day meals. Brunch was cooked under son 1's direction and was lovely. Supper was cooked under Kerric's direction and was stupendous. He did this thing with frozen green beans on the grill that conviced me that he gets his cooking talents from my mother, not from me. She will be very proud.

Just a question about why journalist bloggers and media critics get all huffy when the comments turn nasty. Why do they worry? Afraid their hit count or number of comments will go down if the "nice" people aren't protected?

I ask because I think that most blogs could have better comments if the blog author followed JA's example of showing up now and again and going so far as to boodle mine the real gems. Either that or people who care about grammar, spelling, science, literature, pie and pi, are just plain kind. In which case more literate blogs would be a better first step toward a civil discourse than eliminating pseudonyms.

So say I,
Frosti Forever!!

dr... sounds great! Please tell us what he did with those green beans. The combination of "frozen green beans" and "the grill" sounds great to me.

Good morning, all. It's a busy morning, so all I have time for is a Boodle flyby.

NASA's Mission to Mexico: Operation Sinkhole (aka finding aliens on a budget):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/13/AR2007051300989.html
[seriously, they're testing automated robotic systems which are less likely to don adult diapers and drive 900 miles to an airport and threaten astronauts with bodily harm if they don't stay away from their boyfriends. Say, when do those Three Laws of Robotics kick in, anyway? I've got a TiVO machine that's causing me psycological harm.]

Reposted from previous Boodling, with a SCC correction factor applied in one instance:

"A couple of quick comments regarding radiation and gamma ray bursts (GRBs) from stellar activity, whether it's exploding stars, black holes, etc. and the danger posed to Earth by them.

Typically, those intense bursts of radiation are along the axis of rotation of the stellar body emitting them, as the magnetic fields of large rotating body are weakest at the poles. Here on Earth we see the northern and southern lights because bursts of solar radiation can find their way to lower altitudes through those weak spots where they can interact with the upper atmosphere and become visible. Fortunately, the Earth's axis of rotation is reasonably close (about 70 degrees from the to the sun's axis of rotation (and the plane of the ecliptic, FWIW), so the brunt of bursts from solar flares and sunspots are deflected by the stronger sections of the Earth's magnetic field along the equator.

Ok, let me get back to my point; the weak spots in those stellar magnetic fields alont the axis of rotation act like a magnetic gunbarrels at both ends for hard radiation that the stellar body may be spewing out (as a side note, black holes emit signature X-ray "burps" along these axes as matter is being drawn into the event horizon). All of that radiation is channeled from across the stellar body out through a relatively small hole, in a fearfully condensed and energetic fashion. I think of it as a big particle beam ray gun.

So, it occurred to me that one way to assess the danger posed by nearby stars that fit a profile of going nova (super-, hyper-, bossa-, whatever), would be to determine those star's axis of rotation, and whether it intersects Sol's orbit around the center of the Milky Way.

While it would be logical to infer that the most stars in the Milky Way axes of rotation would line up more or less with the Milky Way's roataion (and the main galactic disc), that inference would be incorrect. The Sun (and the plane of the Solar ecliptic), for example, is flipped over 60 degrees to the main plane of the Milky May (the northern axis aligned more or less at the North Star), so it'd take some research and observation to figure out how many threats there may be from that.

Anyway, this is far too long for my liking, but there it is.

That stellar survey might give the folks who are doing the observation and cataloging of Near Earth Objects (comets, asteroids, etc.) and an assessment of their danger to earth something to do after they get that work done...though the observation methods are completely different."

bc

Repost of a link from the last Boodle:

We all like booklists. This one is 25 Best Ways To Look Like A Poseur:

http://www.gradspot.com/articles/8-25-books-that-look-good-and-read-even-better

It tells recent college grads what books to put on their shelves to impress people.

'Morning, all! *stretch...yawning* Hooyah Monday! We had a busy weekend. Friday night baseball: our son scored a run, and the umpire invoked the 10 run rule. Ball game, and our side puts one in the W column. My wife was at the band banquet and didn't get home until 11 ish. We drove nearly 350 miles Saturday, picking up dog food (our brand hasn't been recalled)and learning the wonders of AI for dogs, since our couple seems to be having trouble coupling. Enough said. Yesterday, I cooked breakfast for my wife. I had intended to present a card with breakfast, but lost the card I bought a couple of weeks ago somewhere in the house. Then, we had to prepare the house to host my wife's family because of a change in plans. I tried to keep her in a stationary mode, as it was Mother's Day,and was largely successful. The card materialized during the rushed clean up. I have a book that outlines how to execute such holiday gaffes, if anyone is interested. Nice to read that everyone had a nice holiday. BTW, I spoke to my cousin Saturday evening, as he is now respirator free. I suspect that once he can pass the swallowing test, he's going to be discharged. Thanks again for all the positive vibes sent through this corner of the ethernet.

*l* Speaking of creationists and intelligent design theorists, here's Kathleen Parker's (she of the Washington Post Writers Group) op-ed about why the 10 Republican candidates should not have been asked the question in their recent debate forum about evolution. (Our paper decided not to print it but mentioned it was available via its website.)

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/stories/MYSA051407.O.Parker.en.576cfbfb.html

That's a different sort of answer than what is inferred from a simple "no" forced by the manic pace of a 90-minute "debate" among 10 candidates, none of whom is qualified to seriously debate scientific theory. Nor, as president, should they try. ... [Well, why the heck not? And none of those 10 candidates is president yet. Anyone see the coverage in the NYT today about how Giuliani is taking heat about pushing through recovry efforts at Ground Zero while at the same time failing to protect workers' health?]

The debate question was fundamentally a setup for ridicule. No one was served and no one, alas, is the wiser. [Ridicule? Are voters not supposed to know where the candidates stand on basic science?]

Say, did anyone catch the NYT review of Chris Hitchens' new book about the god delusion this weekend? So much smarter and wittier than what the WaPo threw at us.

Uh, and Ceci Connolly's story on the home page about the Depthx probe is, um, only about 2 months old. Guess that's the time it takes for science news to travel from Austin to Washington, D.C. *w, l*

http://www.utexas.edu/opa/news/2007/03/jsg07.html

Joel, when I first learned that you were going to be writing for the Outlook section, I must admit I was a little concerned. I envisioned your editors attempting to force you into writing long pedantic stories about the impact of Yen devaluation on agricultural subsidies. I see now that my fears are unfounded. Instead of having Outlook transform you, the intent is clearly to allow you to transform Outlook.

An R Family memeber was on this ship last year. Two years ago mrdr and I were on the Queen of the North and it sank. The R family seems to be a jinx.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/14/AR2007051400129.html?hpid=moreheadlines

SCC (again): "psychological".

A side note; someone please notify me if NASA decides to send a Mission to Mianus.

I'd like to arrange for a soft landing if possible.

bc

PS: Didn't NASA name one of the Lunar orbtial surveyor satellites from the 90's "Clementine?"

I guess it's OK to reuse names for spacecraft; there seem to have been a heck of a lot of Enterprises over the years...

bc

I know Joel is heavily invested in looking for extre-terrist-y'alls and everything, but telescopes ain't sexy. Not even as sexy as tractor. Not even large orbiting telescopes that unfold like an upside down umbrella.

Let's hope NASA has that umbrella technology down because they have lost a few probes and such when all sorts of things get stuck and there is nobody out there to shake things and push harder.

A picture of the karst aquifer in Mexico that Depthx is exploring.

http://www.geo.utexas.edu/zacaton/main.htm

Research at Sistema Zacatón encompasses a variety of methods and techniques, all of which will greatly expand our knowledge of karst aquifers [we live here above karst aquifers]. One of the primary goals is to understand the physical geometry of the cave system. By utilizing emerging and yet-to-be-developed technologies related with robotics and instrumentation, these unique environments can be explored and documented to levels of detail previously impossible. A detailed hydrogeologic investigation is underway to document the physical and chemical processes that have formed such a unique and immense cave system. By understanding how the groundwater system operates today, and inferring how processes have evolved through time, we aim to develop an accurate model to describe the natural conditions that have created such a amazing cave system.

Funny, this description sounds more like basic geology and hydrology--no mention of the space exploration added to the mix.

Maybe the paddlewheeler Empress sank because it was carryin' all that high-falutin' art gunk?

The Empress of the North is operated by Majestic America Line of Seattle. The ship has 112 staterooms, a three-story paddlewheel and galleries featuring Native American masks and Russian artwork, including Faberge eggs, according to its Web site.

Nice to know they offloaded the passengers first.

RD: Hmmm....I like that Yen story idea. I'm going to the Outlook meeting shortly. The weekly meeting. I wore a tie. I'll suggest that we run a story on political discord in a distant part of the world that most of us couldn't find on a map. Like: Trouble In Uzbekistan. Or: Pondering the New Regime in Uruguay.

Frostbitten: I think the essential question is whether The Post should create forums that allow anonymous people to spew venom, hate, racism, etc. A lot of people in-house have had a problem with the anything-goes policy and I'm glad to see that people now have to register to post comments on stories. I hope they don't put any additional hoops here, as there's not a problem on this blog. But it's all still shaking out.

I remember using this cool tripod mounted Bausch & Lomb telescope, when we were children, to look at the moon. Later, about the time I met my wife, I saw Jupiter and some of its moons at an exhibit set up by the local astronomer's clubat the Festival in the Park in Charlotte Recently, I used this great telescope at Roper Mt. Observatory (supervised, of course)near Greenville, SC. When it was built, ca. 1940 ish, it was one of the larger reflecting telescopes in the US. Way cool. Remember the shows on PBS hosted by the British fellow, "The Day the World Changed", or something like that? One of those programs was about Galileo. I favour spending our space bucks on things like telescopes, satellites and robotic probes as opposed to manned exploration. One can always replace stuff.

I still find it odd to think that what we see in the nighttime sky is a mishmash of the old and the new. That the stars do not, and never have, simultaneously existed in the guise we see still leaves me feeling a bit woozy.

It's a bit like opening a high school yearbook and seeing the senior class represented as a mixture of toddlers, tykes, and teens. And with the sky it is even more bizarre because many of the objects we see might not even exist anymore. Sprinkled throughout the constellations are doubtless many ghosts.

Finally, of course, as unlikely as it might be, I find it curious to consider that the final chapter of earthly existence may already be written. It is possible that the end of life on this planet might have been preordained sometime in the murky past when some distant cosmic object exploded. Perhaps a lethal dose of gamma rays is even now rushing towards us, and has been for all of recorded history.

But given that life on this planet has avoided that bullet for the last, what, 3000 centuries or so, perhaps we shouldn't cancel our vacation plans quite yet.

Joel. Beware the tie. Those things can prevent all blood flow from reaching your head. I used to wear them all the time. Now, of course, if I were to even attempt it my coworkers would throw me to the ground and physically rip it of. They are a feisty bunch.

I still keep an emergency one in reserve, though, for when I must speak with those who are less enlightened.

Note to bc:
The Empress of the North hit Hanus Rock. eee eee eee, that's hitting rock bottom.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_Cruise_Ship_Aground.html

dr, you were on the Queen of the North? Wow. I know from a good source that the TSB Report is finished and ready for publication but will not be published until around June 5. A stakeholder is not happy with something in it and was given a month to come up with a rebuttal.

Linda, Dawkins responds to some of his critics:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1779771.ece

I guess I should have said "human life" extends back 3000 centuries. I hear tell that there were some other critters wandering about quite some time before then.

Shrieking D, yes but we were on board about a year before it sank. Sorry for leaving the wrong impression.

See what I mean though about the R family though? I will, from now on inform people what ship, boat or other, the R family boards, and will then warn the unwary that it's jinxed.

SD, "Hanus Rock," that's funny.

bc

TBG, he put the green beans on a pan (though he could have just put them on a tinfoil sheet, with a bit of butter and soy sauce, and topped it off the final few minutes with some parmesan cheese. He wanted to catch the beans when they were firml and a bit crunchy, but I think he'd have required fresh green beans for that.

On Depthx "Clementine:" This aptly named robotic has a shape and color akin to an Algerian tangerine and a mission that evokes an American folk song. "In a cavern, in a canyon/ excavating for a mine/ lived a miner, forty-niner/ and his daughter Clementine." Hopefully the name is not prescient. The Clementine of song was "lost and gone forever."

"I guess I should have said 'human life' extends back 3000 centuries."

Ppppttthhhhhtttt.

No cell phones, no cars, no Internet, no supermarkets, no cable TV, no iPods, no pizza delivery, no Paris Hilton.
Some life.

And not exactly what I'd call "human."

They did have Ultimate Fighting, though, so I guess that's something.

bc

>And with the sky it is even more bizarre because many of the objects we see might not even exist anymore.

I've always been vaguely disturbed at the notion that the universe may have actually ended long ago and we just haven't found out yet.

"I've always been vaguely disturbed at the notion that the universe may have actually ended long ago and we just haven't found out yet."

I hope I find out before I make a down payment on a new car.

EF,

Whoa, dude! If we got telescopes strong enough, maybe we could look into the telescopes of the people on the other planets and see what happened here 100 million years ago. It would be like time travel television. Crazy, man.

What if our entire universe is just the dirt in the fingernail of some guy in an even bigger universe?

I need more munchies if we are going to get all philosophical.

yellojkt, I must give you props on your 11:28 with a scarily economical set of literary and media references for satirical purposes.

Well done, sir.

EF, if the universe were over, we're obviously not important enough to be notified.

bc

M. O'D -- such a recipe! I hope I can try this soon. I snagged more rhubarb, so am in seventh heaven.

Did we get the memo about the falseness of reality? I'll check my spam folder.

Tell me quickly if we are already over, so I don't grade papers this week. I would rather look at flowers.

BTW: My students, forced to read selections from JA's _Why Things Are: Volume II: The Big Picture_, report this:

"The Auchenbach reading was not boring."

"Like the Auchenbloch (sic) guy."

Speaking of munchies, here is an article on the growing population of Seniors with drug additions.

"I did have an old lady there who smoked pot but it was so frowned on," Ms. Becker said. "Her son used to take her on a little drive and when she came back she was much more relaxed and happy."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070514.wxlseniors14/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20070514.wxlseniors14

jack writes in his 10;45:
I favour spending our space bucks on things like telescopes, satellites and robotic probes as opposed to manned exploration. One can always replace stuff.

http://www.sfgate.com/templates/types/popunder/orbitz/orbitz.html

Even if the space station as it is today is almost useless for scientific research -- as some non-NASA scientists charge -- advocates say the manned station is a worthwhile symbol of international peace, a sort of United Nations in orbit. [Shall we send Colin Powell to give a talk, with George Tenet looking over his shoulder? Any Iraqis on board? The dateline on the story that I linked to is August 2005.]

By the way, "manned" seems like an increasingly archaic word for the space shuttle's crew: Before dawn Tuesday, at the hands of Commander Eileen Collins, Discovery slid back to Earth with feline elegance. Once notorious for its sexism, NASA has become one of the most visible champions of women's rights in the federal bureaucracy [would like more info on this, more follow-up, perhaps a current article]. In the process it has reinforced its popularity with half of the voting, taxpaying population -- the half whose mothers and grandmothers long ago remained Earthbound while men, and only men, soared for the stars. [Is Keay Davidson who wrote this of the distaff gender?]

Keay Davidson is, I believe, of the non-distaff persuasion. A dude. He wrote a Sagan biography about the time my aliens book came out.

http://www.amazon.com/Carl-Sagan-Life-Keay-Davidson/dp/0471252867

Joel, some suggested words to take with you to your necktied Outlook staff meeting: recondite, incontrovertible, ennui, nonce, concatenation, jejune.

Just trying to be helpful and supportive. Try not to use "angst" it makes people nervous.

JA may need to insert or sprinkle these words:

confabulation
conflagration

post modern
deconstruction

antediluvian
antidiluvian

brio
robust

atrophied

albedo

My dad built a reflector telescope from scratch, with some modest participation from me.

Here in winter touristland, the traffic lights are being converted to shorter cycles for the summer. The logic is that with less traffic, the lights work more efficiently if they go through their sequence quickly, allowing the few vehicles to go ahead without a long wait.

A tiny, isolated, but very welcome shower just passed through. Starting to feel like summer. End of spring drought?

I really like "brio," CP, but "post-modern" needs a hyphen.

I'm looking forward to our discussion getting back to personned versus unpersonned spaceflight.

I don't think any proper post-modernist Outlook piece would be complete if it didn't suggest a paradigm shift somewhere along the way. Perhaps in the gestalt. There is just nothing quite like a paradigm shift in the gestatlt to make one feel all perky and minty fresh.

I read the piece on enabling blog flamers. Having read some other blogs, I'm glad to be in good company.

Jack, that's because here on the boodle, we're all about the paradigm shift.

My next deeply philosophical question is this: how come a company I never ever heard of and which appears to be named after the Hound of Hell (Cerberus) is going to buy a major car company? Surely Dick Cheney has his eveil hand in this somewhere. Don't the marketing people see a bit of an image problem on the road ahead?

I should think we are shifting left instead of right. Being left-handed, I applaud that.

CP-The Auchenbach guy not being boring reminds me of this journal entry after reading Romeo and Juliet with some troubled youths "Did that Shakespeare dude write anything else?" (Perhaps I've commented abou that before. What's that disease I have, altimeters?)

New entry on NOT Suing
http://www.notsuing.blogspot.com/
Alas, not everyone who eschews remedy in court is warm and fuzzy.

Talk of stars already exploding and us not knowing about it presents quite a conundrum for my pea brain. Is looking through a powerful telescope the same as watching a tape delayed sporting event? The outcome is already determined but the viewer doesn't know what that outcome is. Is rooting for our species and planet to endure the same as watching ESPN classic and cheering a known loser? Hmmmm...

*shaking head in disbelief* I thought I was around some shifty people...

Well, I thought the Outlook piece was very good. However, I'm not familiar with the place Outlook and clearly don't understand the rules. I take it Outlook is where the Post relegates its intellectual pontification? They've allowed Joel in to add some level-headed pointyness?

I find it oddly charming to think that the universe may already have exploded and we're just waiting for the news.

Slyness - I am a righty who used to date a left-handed woman. I greatly appreciated the ease with which we could share a large bag of popcorn.

And speaking of sinking paddlewheelers, it's time for a sinking paddlewheeler tune cootie:

"High on the top of Hickory Hill
She stands in the lightning and thunder
Down on the river the boat was a-sinking
She watched that queen go under"

*"Evangeline," by The Band; q.v. Emmylou Harris and Levon Helms' terrific version on "The Last Waltz."

There's a corporation called Cerberus? Thanks for clearing that up, mudge. I thought Chrysler had gotten bought by an aardvark that likes carrying around a broadsword.

Wait - so this means no more "Dr. Z" comemrcials, right?

Thanks for the save, Dead-Eye 'Mudge. I tell my students that when a document really matters, pay a copyeditor to scan and polish.

Gestalt -- such a word! Now, include 'Weltanshaung,' as in particular world view;
AND
'Wissenshaft,' to mean all knowledge. And the Germans DO MEAN ALL knowledge.

The words fit nicely with the Germanic and authoritative handle that J. sports.

LOL, RD. I am sensitive as to where I sit in a group of people in a restaurant, because bumping elbows for an entire meal can be unpleasant.

Here's another "wow" aspect of the universe. As Joel hinted at in an earlier kit, the universe might be vastly larger than what we can see even with the most powerful telescopes. The "Expansion Model" postulates that in the split second after the big bang, space itself expanded to many billions of light years across. Matter then precipitated from space like drops of water from moist air. The net effect of this is that there might very well be objects in the universe so far away that their light hasn't had time to reach us yet.

Like. Wow.

Ach du meine Gute!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view

Weltanschauung

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wissenschaft

Wissenschaft

Course, I s'pose you could give the shaft to all of your Wissen.

>light hasn't had time to reach us yet<

What, it's too "busy" to be bothered by the likes of us, stuck over here as we are in some plain ol' ordinary nondescript
galaxy? Just because we're not some fancy-schmancy bar-arm galazy, or a giant exploding nebula, or a black hole, of one of those tie-dyed technicolor swirly cloud things ya see in those photographs from the Hubble Space Kaleidiscope? It got all pooped out tryin' to travel all the way across the vast infinite reaches of time, and stopped for the night in a Motel Six in the constellation Krakatoa? Uh huh. Sure. I know when I'm being ignored. Well, you just wait. When that light finally arrives, I'll show it a thing or two. I'm putting on my sunglasses.

You're thinking of Cerebus, yellojkt!

Maybe it isn't that light hasn't had the time to reach us, maybe it's just wisely staying clear of the neighborhood.

Ya think the nasty comments in the Mommy Blog scared it off?

Martooni..Going back to yesterday for a minute, I doubt your recent writing is guano. And even if it is, that's no reason to stop (and may be the reason to continue). Writing about the troubling thoughts allows me to organize them in my mind, give them their proper weight. It may not be my best writing, but it does serve a purpose.
And then sometimes I find it very therapuetic to set fire to it.

I thought the pictures from Mars were just great. I like that kind of stuff, looking at space, the planets and stars, and whatever else is out there.

As for the folks that comment on different blogs, and take it to another level, hateful level, that is just not something I enjoy. Yet I think we all can go there when we dig in, the potential is there. People are always more forthcoming when there is no way to know exactly who one is talking to. Same thing with the telephone. People have a tendency to be real brave over the phone, but in person that might not be the case. I guess what it all boils down to is that we are an angry bunch. And that we always want to one-up the other person. We surely cannot leave out the fact that for some, and this applies to many, it's just seems easier to be nasty than nice. I'm victim of this can of worms myself. We all have our days. No one is immune. Of course, we have those that are challenged every day. You know the folks we often refer to as being off their meds.(smile)

I am slow, real slow. It never occured to me to use a phony name.

Cassandra..a little time as a barmaid taught me a nom de guerre is the way to go unless you want some sap showing up on your front lawn.

>I find it oddly charming to think that the universe may already have exploded and we're just waiting for the news.<

Puts that bad commute into perspective, doesn't it?

There's got to be a better way to encourage online civility than to require signing a real name. There's some pretty shady characters out there (present company excepted, of course.)

Er, I'm witholding judgement on the Cerberus/Chrysler thing until I know more about it.

Besides, I have friends inside ChryCo, I want to hear what the word is on the street in Auburn Hills (yes, I have a Huggy Bear in there), before saying anything stupid.

And you know I will.

At a glance, if Cerberus is really bringing Wolfgang Bernhard back to Chrysler - even as a board member -, I'd call that a very good thing.
Bernhard is one of the best in the business.

bc

Hi, ScienceSpouse!
So, will the light from the unplumbed depth of the Universe reach us before, or after, we've been destroyed by the rest of the Universe's explosion? Can the Universe be so vast that the part which explodes first is nearest us, and therefore gets to us before the light from the objects so old and far away we can't see them yet?

A little science is a dangerous thing to a frivolous mind.

Raysmom - I guarantee that a requirement to use real names would pretty much destroy the boodle. The potential wrath of employers and relatives would surely kill the kind of open and copious comments that characterize this forum.

distaff - the staff on which wool or flax is wound before spinning, and by extension the sphere of work done by women

It would be more cost-effective and in keeping with the current administration if NASA adopted faith-based astronomy. All data were recorded 2 thousand years ago and no verification is required.

I'm dizzy trying to figure out how old all of the light that we see is. *trying to find my pointy hat*

SciSpouse,

In the words of Emily Litella, "Oh, that's quite different... Never mind."

Thanks for reconfirming my faith in the geekiness level of the boodle. There just aren't enough epic graphic novels about poorly drawn aardvarks becoming religious leaders.

I suspect if they show up in my yard they may just look like what is already there. I understand what is being said, just points to the fact that I am just a plain old country girl, lacking the big city smarts and common sense.

Would those giant telescopes be able to see something bad heading our way? And if they can, what, oh what, can we do about it? Is there any way to really avoid some kind of bang? Do we have defense machinery for that kind of thing? Or do we just dig a hole?

Regarding JA's use of the word "non-distaff." I thought the opposite was "staff."

Ivansmom - I think our own sun will go supernova well before the extent of the universe becomes apparent. But perhaps by then we will have figured out some way to spread our influence throughout the universe.

Personally, I think the distances involved preclude our fleshy bits from ever wandering too far from the home world. I envision a distant future in which mechanical avatars built to be essentially immortal go outwards in our stead. These entities would spread intelligence and, one hopes, happiness and kindness throughout the universe. We air-breathers would just wave goodbye and wish them godspeed.

I could live with that.

I'm whiling away the hours today by moving or deleting documents from my computer, at whim, while waiting for the end of the world tomorrow when our servers are disconnected and moved.

By the time we receive signs of the official end of the universe, it will be a relief.

jack - the oldest light reaching the universe is about, 13.7 billion years old dating back to the big bang. The tricky thing to envision is that the universe may be far larger than 13.7 billion light years across.

Lots of coffee help.

RD, another thing to consider with the Universal Expansion (sounds like dinner time at the Golden Corral buffet - and something we've discussed in here before - is that galaxies and other faraway objects might be dropping out of our visible universe.

It isn't just that objects themseleves are receding, but that spacetime itself is expanding. And cosmic expansion isn't bound the speed of light limit in special relativity.

The upshot is that at great distances, the expansion of the universe from our frame of reference appears to be greater than the speed of light. And any photons or other radiation emitted from those galaxies or bodies at those great distances would never get to us... or just take forever.

This however, is however is still theoretical, IIRC.

bc

SCC: I meant the oldest light reaching the *earth* is about 13.7 billion years old.

I like the idea of mechanical avatars, RD, and agree that until we solve that pesky time & distance problem advanced space travel is unlikely.

I had continued with the thought that surely we could include one or two or six human representatives of the planet, just to get rid of them (Kim Jong Il? Darth Vader? Any other takers?). Then I remembered that we're sending out emissaries of intelligence, hopes, happiness and kindness. So I deleted that part.
Never mind.

Cerberus was the 3 headed dog that guarded the gates to Hades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerberus
It's also the name of a security application for Unix, I believe. The company that bought Chrysler is a "private equity" company, meaning no pesky shareholders, I guess, and is headed by John Snow (former Bush Sec of Treasury).

Ivansmom, you know cleaning up is just asking for trouble.

bc - You are absolutely correct. It comes down to just how big the universe really is.

And the avatars could be self replicating, so they would spread out like Amway Distibutors.

Yes, I know, mostlylurking, but it makes me feel proactive! and responsible! as though I'm taking some action which will result in ever seeing some of these documents again. Life is illusion.

I brought in a flash drive but discovered my computer doesn't have a USB port. Surprise. So I used our secretary's computer, as she has access to the files I wanted. Then we discovered that the system won't let us copy most of the documents in question to the USB thingie (that's a technical term). It did, however, give me the only two documents I really care about: two monsters containing descriptions and summaries of all our published cases for about eight years, by category, lovingly put together by me. I'm a trifle obsessive.

I believe I have a recipe for avatars around here somewhere. Calls for mustard, horseradish and capers, if I recall. And corn meal. I think you deep-fry them in peanut oil (sorry about you folks with allergies). They go well with dopplegangers.

Well, all this talk of imminent doom is all just academic anyway; a friend just e-mail me a story that says because of global warming and the resultant flooding and climate changes, about a billion people are going to be displaced from the present habitats by the year 2050. That's "billion" with a Carl Saganish "b." Me, I'll be 103 years old by then; I'll be lucky to still have some bladder control.

But 'Mudge, you DO remember the design for the Ark, doncha???

:-)

Yeah, still got the plans here somewhere. Got some giraffe poop on one of the pages, I think.

>Well, all this talk of imminent doom is all just academic anyway; a friend just e-mail me a story that says because of global warming and the resultant flooding and climate changes, about a billion people are going to be displaced from the present habitats by the year 2050.<

TBG, be sure to bring this up the next time you see our mutual hair stylist. I guarantee it will result in an interesting conversation. (She's probably already bought her inflatable raft.)

Total off topic - but I just saw the following headline:

"McDonald's to expand Angus burger test"

Long time boodlers will understand, I hope, why this made me laugh.

Speaking of avatar recipes (and where the heck is Yoki? I miss me some of that Yoki) I have a food tip: the Mt. Olive company now makes bread-and-butter pickles (my favorite) with no sugar added; they use Splenda. Pretty good. Also, a company I never heard of before called Langer makes an orange juice concentrate with no sugar; they use Splenda, too. Us diabetics pretty much cannot drink OJ at all because of the glycemic index. But we can probably drink this stuff. Only has 13 grams of sugar in a can--that's pretty durn good.

OK, you may all return to your pointy-headed doomsaying.

Avatars are mighty tasty and dopplegangers are good if well marinated, but golems are way too gamey.

To your point, RD, if there is/were a central point of the Big Bang, it would have been expanding for 13.7 billion years in all directions.

But because cosmic expansion isn't limited by special relativity, the diameter of the universe is typically estimated to be somewhere betwwen 40 and 100 Billion light years in diameter. And the observable universe for us is that sphere of what we can see back to about 12 or 13 billion years ago.

Talk about not having enough time to see Everything...

RD, your automated Von Neumannesque idea of seeing the universe by autmoted proxy (starting with Mexico, I guess) made me wonder if the Administration would kick up their allocations to NASA if we told them that there were Alien Terrorists in the universe, and that we needed some Saberhagen-style automated Berserkers to bring Democracy to the Observable universe.

At least we could bring our troops home.

Hey, I use a phony name in here, and I'm a sap...

bc

I certainly plan on being displaced from my habitat by 2050. Too many stairs.

Well, at least the Yness houses, at 750 and 3600 feet elevation, will be okay, even if I'm not...Mudge, do you think you could rebuild the ark and rescue some of us?

I'd like to offer a few words to the boodle myself:

Nitwit, oddment, blubber, tweak!

No no, yellojkt, golems are chalky, very chalky...

So I hear.

:-)

Seriously, somewhat...

I truly enjoyed this astronomy piece. Of course, I'm a sucker for elegant writing on subjects of interest to me -- astronomy, sports, music, etc. etc.

I knew there was a reason why I kept reading the Post.

Thank you Joel.

-- an amateur astronomer

And dopplegangers taste like chicken!

Dopplegangers taste like chicken, and pork, and beef, and shrimp, and lobster, and...

...Venison, and ostrich, and alligator, and...

Avatars.

Mmmm.

Deep fried doppelgangers.

Speaking of Doppelgangers, anyone remember the film "Doppleganger: Journey to the Far Side of the Sun?" Yes, I do.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064519/

[omni, this is a Gerry/Sylvia Anderson film. Totally down your alley, my friend]

Speaking of interplanetary Arks and global warming/catastrophe (and gettin' off the stinky mudball), I'm reminded of Doug Trumbull's weird and sad "Silent Running" with Bruce Dern as an astronaut charged with flying what's left of Earth's forests around the sun since there's no place for them on Earth.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067756/

Still a good flick though. But I haven't seen it in a good 25 years...

bc

But you remember that great ending, don't you, bc? When Charleton Heston runs around the spaceship yelling "Soylent Green is Bruce Dern!" and then HAL locks him in the pod and won't open the pod bay doors and Charlton gets ejects and lands on the beach near the Statue of Liberty. Yes, a great flick. But I still don't understand exactly why Mars needs women.

I remember that movie, bc. It played in the olde worlde theatre (mom and pop kind) in our very small town. It was back in the day when I was old enough to go to the theatre with friends but not old enough to stop for a soda on the way home.

And Silent Running. I've seen this movie at least 5 times. One of my favourites. It took the place of 2001: a Space Odyessy, which I was too young to view. I still have not seen the whole movie. It makes me fall asleep.

Mars needs women so the Rebels can blow up the Death Star and make sure Kal-El makes it to Earth, of course.

:-)

OK, that makes sense. But remind me again which planet the Killer Klowns From Outer Space come from? Shadrack, Meshack or Abednego?

My mechanical avatar is gonna have a honking big hammer and will have RD Padouk written on one side and Martooni on the other. Witnesses will be confused.

All this talk makes me wax nostalgic for hearing the radio plays of Hitchhiker's Guide. I like the movies, but oh, the aural experience without visual. You must concoct images. I can recall listening to poor quality audio cassettes of them on a car deck, when driving too and fro was a pleasure.

I think I will set aside a bathrobe and towel. Just in case.

Gardening weather, I should say. I just may whisper to the flowers that the terra is not so firma, after all. I am not sure they have language for this.

May I suggest that the grapefruit margarita described in the May issue of Living, by the lower-billed diva and former inmate Martha is quite good.

Am wondering if rhubarb can be adapted to a margarita recipe....more on this later.

CP, you've got me laughing. I'm beginning to think your fondness for all things rhubarbarian exceeds even my fondness for all things Mojitolian. A rhubarb margarita...? Okkkkkkayyyyyyyyyy.

I'm pretty sure it was Barsoom.

Or was it Gallifrey?

:-)

CP, did you see the recipe for the Rhubarb Collins, with rhubarb syrup, that I linked to in the previous boodle? It was in my local paper, no lie. I bet you could put rhubarb syrup in a margarita. Note I said "you" - I would never try such a thing.

Boko, I'm not quite sure I get your last post, but it made me laugh. Out loud.

Hobbling for the bus. (A new play by Harold Pinter.)

Rhubarb -- I am becoming my own one-food town.

ML -- recent boodly-info? How did I miss it? I am still salivating over the dessert carefully posted by M O'D. And such a nectar as ambrosia syrup? I shall google momentarily.

'Mudge: Get ready. R.h.u.b.a.r.b M.o.h.i.t.o

Back to the topic: I think I own a copy of a book about interplanetary travel: the controversy...a series of letters between C.S. Lewis and A. Clarke.

BTW: Clark is at least semi-responsible for introducing Joy Davidman to C.S. Lewis. Joy and Clive lived a brief but deeply satisfying love affair, until she died of cancer.

Somewhere at home I have a recipe for a very refreshing rhubarb drink. From what I recall it does go very very well with certain things which won't overwhelm its delicate taste.

Please don't tell me that you are all forgetting the epic adventure, Abbott and Costello go to Mars, in which they never get to Mars?

Rhubarbarian is excellent coinage and a fine boodle-name. Dibs, if we must change.

MoHito...would be the spelling in the great middle of Oz, say Omaha.

Mudge may adopt this persona next time he is miffed or inspired: Mojitolian

(sounds a bit like an Armenian bandito)

>Doppleganger: Journey to the Far Side of the Sun?"

How did I miss that one? From Gerry and Sylvia Anderson no less?

For penance, I will go home and watch some "Stingray".

Also... we can't ignore The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147926/

Here you go, CP:
RHUBARB SYRUP

Makes: 3 cups

6 stalks rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 cups baker's sugar

2 cups water

In a medium stainless-steel saucepan, combine all the ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook for 15 minutes, or until rhubarb is tender and liquid coats the back of a spoon.

Remove from heat, cool to room temperature. Strain through a fine sieve. Can be refrigerated for a month.

From the Seattle PI:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/315382_staydrink12.html

'The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars' I didn't know about this one, but I do see that a role in this movie was DeForest Kelly's final role.

I am thinking that rhubarb syrup would make a mighty fine addition to a G&T instead of the Rose's lime I usually favor over fresh lime. I can also imagine it as a tasty addition to sangria. A splash in some hard lemonade or in a Long Island Iced Tea. If it weren't for having to preside over a city council meeting tonight I'd be calling in some favors to get my hands on the frozen remnants of last year's rhubarb crop.

Surely someone already posted this link about local news in Pasadena being outsourced to India:

http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/05/11/local-news-reporting-outsourced-to-india/

Wow. Will make rhubarb syrup ice cubes today or tomorrow.

Frosti -- good ideas on a rhubarb kicker to those libations.

I also freeze cilantro leaves in water....who can use the whole bunch anyway unless you are making salsa for the entire boodle-meet up on, say Eta Carinae in four or five light-years.

Joel that is like the US papers covering Canadian news without having a news bureau here :-)

So, "Joel" or whatever your real name is. How do we know that you are actually a charming Francophile from Florida who lives in the District with four women and some cats? For all we know you could be typing this from the outskirts of New Dehli.

Which would certainly explain that whole "malfunctioning" time stamp thing.

Speaking of "Silent Running." I was positively obsessed with that movie, cheesy Joan Baez music and all, as a kid. I so desperately wanted to live in outer space with two anthropomorphic robots (poor Louie) and a bunch of plants.

Also, that movie forced my mom to explain to me what a "celibate" was.

(SciFi Trivia: The geodesic greenhouses showed up in the 70s version of "Battlestar Galactica." )

Joel, I am concerned that your 1 PM Wednesday online chat isn't listed on the "Discussions" weekly schedule.

Thanks for the RHUBARB SYRUP recipe mostly. I've got so much of the stuff I don't know what to do with it. Did I mention I spent this morning surrounded by 300,000 tulips? My eye would be attracted to the colour of a bed, then a flower and I'd be staring inside a tulip wondering if dinosaurs were colourblind. Talk about not having time to see everything!
Then off to the Air Museum so my buddy Don (Ace Mekanik) could explain the exhibits to the staff.

I hope you Moms and Mums had a good day. My sister and I took flowers to my folks gravesite. They're next to the grave of a little girl who loved dinosaurs (( I wrote "a little girl who died of cancer" then thought 'screw that' and wrote "loved dinosaurs", and now I'm wondering if the girl's dino models inspired the dinosaurs being colourblind thought. I hope so.)) And this completes our tour. Please watch your step.
Anywhoo, after the visit to the cemetary we BBQed and I fixed the stuff I fixed last week.
*curtsey*

Still waiting for our opportunity to nuke the rhubarb before it devours the entire garden. Rhubarb-strawberry jam, ummm...

Killer Klowns from Outer Space, of course, are from the planet Gacy.

I suspect Joel is working on his next book: "Kidnapping Aliens".

>I so desperately wanted to live in outer space with two anthropomorphic robots (poor Louie) and a bunch of plants.

RDP, I believe that's why we have MSTK3000.

Is Shirley Someone available as a boodle handle?

Boko... you remind me of yesterday's outing with my husband and kids to the cemetery to visit my parents' graves.

Near them is the grave of a young man--about age 20, I don't remember exactly. His marker is adorned with an engraving of a football player running with the ball. Facing the football player is an angel.

My husband said, "Look! He's playing football against an angel! That's not fair!"

I guess I should have explained that when we go to the cemetery, we talk about the people who are buried near Mom and Dad. We say things like, "Dad... do you ever play bridge with Mario over there?" or "So... Mom? What do you hear from ol' Myrtle next door?"

We enjoy looking at the other graves and paying respect to the other people and families buried there (yes, all that banter with Mom and Dad is said with respect and love).

It's a beautiful place; so peaceful and wonderful. The markers are all on the ground--no headstones. It gives the place the look of rolling hills of grass and flowers--like my parents are buried in a beautiful meadow. There are lovely trees and the ground are maintained meticulously.

It's also only about a mile as the crow flies from the house I grew up in, where my parents lived for 46 years. And it's only about 2 miles away from where we live now. So we feel like my parents are "home" and it makes us all feel good.

We drove past a cemetary yesterday and saw losts of families visiting. It reminded my wife to make sure she finds out where her father's ashes are. It could be awkward trying to hunt them down later.

I love cemeteries, they're so rich in history. I find reading headstones to be quite fascinating, especially the ones with photos or stories about the person on them. There's a historian in who wrote a book about the old cemeteries in our state. A great read and a wonderful way to learn about our history.

I'd rather look at family pictures than go the cemetary but my sister likes to go. Kieffer Sutherland's grandfather , Tommy Douglas [The Greatest Canadian} is nearby. In a pot. Urn?

Yello, I hope your wife finds her father's ashes. Our family had a huge heartbreak last year when my mother-in-law's ashes were disinterred so that we could put them together with my father-in-law's ashes (he died last year about this time). My husband's mother died in 1979 and her ashes were buried in Punchbowl Cemetery. Well, when they opened up the urn to move the ashes to the new urn - no ashes. Just an empty plastic bag with a twist tie. From the looks of it, her ashes never made it into the bag or the urn in the first place. It was heartbreaking, especially with the rawness of having lost my father-in-law. Finding out that mom-in-law's ashes were no where to be found was just devastating.

Boko, I agree that family photos are best. I just enjoy learning about other people (not necessarily family) who inhabited my city way back when. It's neat to make the connection between stuff I've read in history books with names on these graves.

Quite agree Aloha. I guess I like 'other peoples graves.' When I worked for the Assesment Office I enjoyed exploring old churches and graveyards.
Its a good education on the benefits of modern scientific medecine. The infant mortality and the ages of the women lost in childbirth are heartbreaking.

Basic hygenie matters a lot, too, Boko999.

Lots of those women who died had doctors visiting them who never washed their hands or changed their coats. Doctors were the principal vectors of puerperal fever.

As for childhood illnesses... vaccines, vaccines. No matter what people THINK about autism, vaccines aren't causing it. Since the 1950s there have been thousands of new chemical compounds coming in being, so to single out vaccines as the sole cause is a little much.
Autism watch also mentions that the evidence seems to be that thimoseral has no connection whatsoever.
http://www.autism-watch.org/general/thio.shtml

>Basic hygenie matters a lot, too, Boko999.

The imporatance of was discovered by that good ol' neocromancer, Louis Pasteur

Hi all. Did you miss me? Worked all weekend and will work late into the night tonight. I have a moment whilst waiting for the print shop to bring up the copies of my financial proposal. I'm sure you needed to know that.

Aloha and Boko, you are gentlemen after my own heart. I love old graveyards. My mother thinks it is genetic; her father was a stone carver and artist who supplied beautiful headstones in the Napanee area for many decades. His sons cut his stone, which I think the finest in the cemetery.

When Himself and I were honeymoon-ing in Vermont, we visited the local burial ground, which dated back more years than any place in Canada (almost). Our favourite inscription was:

Here lie the earthly remains of

Joseph Porter Biggs
1776-1779

His death was occasioned by falling into the pitman of a sawmill.

I felt sorry for little Joe, and even sorrier for his parents. Clearly a three-year old has no business running about a sawmill, especially near the pitman. Of course, the first thing I wondered was, "What earthly remains?"

I enjoyed the conflation of science fiction B movies. Very funny.

Raysmom's 3:48 and yellojkt's 3:53 win LOL Award of the Day, though.

Headstone we saw in New Jersey 25 years ago - from the early 20th century:

She was a good wife. She never forced me to rob my employer to keep her in luxury.

We loved that one! It sounded so sincere - he really wanted to say something deeply appreciative, but didn't know how.

The Bravo channel is right now re-running it's 2-hour interview with Robin Williams on the Actor's Studio, possibly the most pants-wettingly funny 2 hours I've ever seen on television.

Wheezy, that is great.

Yoki!

I believe James Beard's *American Cookery* has a recipe for rhubarb shrub, a drink.

Seems to me that if you can make rhubarb syrup, you can make rhubarb liquor. Let me think about this.

My favourite epitaph is by another Philly curmudgeon, Claude Dunkenfeld aka W C Fields.
"Personally, I'd rather be living in Philadelphia."

There is more to the headlines regarding the sale of 80% of Chrysler stock to the private company Cerberus (fun mental exercise, picture Bush, Cheney and Rove as the three headed sentinel at the gates of hell).

The $7.4 billion purchase price trumpeted in headlines, as embarrassing as it is to Daimler given that they paid $36 billion for it 10 or so years ago, doesn't reflect the fact that, in fact, Daimler will PAY between $500-700 million to consummate the transaction. The $7.4 billion will get sunk into the new company. In essence, Daimler has to pay Cerberus to get rid of Chrysler.

I think this will have a tremendous effect on the auto industry. Even though the UAW made a statement that they were ok with the sale, this is going to be a sea change in the auto industry. Chrysler workers are up for a renewal of their labor contract in a year or two. Ford and GM will be watching carefully. Private equity firms buy companies to slash costs, make the company hum, and sell at a sweet profit.

I think this is a huge story. You right coasters may be unaware of the extent to which, outside of Detroit, Indiana has the greatest concentration of the automotive industry. But for Henry Ford, news of the automotive industry would be called the news out of Indiana. That's how we got the little regatta known as the Indy 500.

This is really an important day in American automotive history.

I just discovered that either I can't play the piano anymore or there's something quite wrong with some notes on ours. Anyway ...

For some reason, I can't get a local anecdote from 1-2 years ago out of my head: folks wanted to open a tapas restaurant in an area of our town mostly populated with the elderly, but right next to a hip metro area. Because of zoning laws, they were forced to gather signatures of 70% of the immediate neighbors approving the zoning change. They went around with their clipboards, but no one would sign. Very frustrating - the site was vacant and an eyesore, no one could figure it out. Finally, a local went back to some of the places they had visited and asked why the residents wouldn't sign. Turns out "tapas restaurant" was interpreted as "topless restaurant" by most of them.

I thought it was amusing. Hey to everyone - I've got to go ride herd on some homework avoiders - see you all later.

Thanks, bill everything. Very true! //Private equity firms buy companies to slash costs, make the company hum, and sell at a sweet profit.//

I was just looking up the reference to a very interesting article I'd read about private equity buying utilities, and the possible consequences.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/TheWarForYourElectricBill.aspx

I guess I'd rather have p-e focusing on Chrysler than my electric company.

Rhubarb Liqueur
From Classic Liqueurs, by Cheryl Long and Heather Kibbey:
4 cups fresh rhubarb
3 cups granulated sugar
3 cups vodka
Wash and trim rhubarb. Slice rhubarb about 1/4" thick by hand or in the food-processor. Place in aging container (glass jar w/lid). Add sugar and stir. Add vodka and stir again. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 2 to 4 weeks. The color will change to a rosy glow. Stir occasionally.

After initial aging, strain through metal colander placed over a large bowl. Press juice out of rhubarb with spoon. Discard rhubarb. Strain and filter until clear. Bottle as desired, cork and age at least 1 additional month before serving.

Rhubarb Collins
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/230581

dbG, de nada. Rhubarb? Does Keillor know about this?

dbG!

Land sakes, have we turned Mr. Everything into a nihilist? Is our pointy-skeptical power so overwhelming?

that story about pasadena is incredible, especially considering how wealthy the city is. i wonder how many pasadena residents actually know about it.

Yoki, didn't you get the origami tinfoil brooch I sent?

We all have to wear them on the same day to achieve maximum effectiveness. Then, we can nill anything!

Of course, the brooches are in the shape of little tinfoil hats.

I don't know if any but the Canuckistanis on this site will get it, but dbG's Rhubarb Liqueur recipe reminds me very much of Anne and Diana digging into the Raspberry Cordial, the effects thereof.

I've always suspected that Keillor was in with the nihilists.

Yoki, I knew we could drag you away from work if we tried hard enough.

And now, I'm going to drag myself to bed. Sleep well, everyone.

Got it dbG. I wear it like the tiniest yarmulke ever.

Sorry, that should have read:
Bebop-a-rebop Rhubarb Pie ("Nothing takes the taste of humiliation out of your mouth like a piece of rhubarb pie")

Great! I was wondering how my dry economic analysis was turning me into a nihilist!

Further proof that this blog is readily self-regulating!

Yoki: //Got it dbG. I wear it like the tiniest yarmulke ever.//

It's not nice making me laugh so hard I choke, Yoki!

g'night dbG. Sorry!

Ah, I see it is time for us to take a turn toward foodie talk. Here is an excellent piece from the always interesting 3 Quarks Daily-
Dispatches: On the Bowery Whole Foods

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/05/dispatches_on_t.html

I know this is embarrassing, but I must just say how much I love this community. To make a nihilist joke, and have -999 reply with a Bakunin handle? Excellent!

Boko, correct, but the germ theory of disease only started to develop momentum around the 1860's to the 1890's.

A few doctors were at the fore of the movement to make doctors actually be hygenic... Joseph Lister (of Listerine fame) being one. More and more French-trained American physicans came back with actual training in the science of medicine, as can be read in that fine book on the Great Flu Epidemic (Mudge, you know which one I mean).

I wound up trying to do a paper on pre-civil war medicine for American history. It stank to high heaven because everyting was "heroic"-- vomit, purge, or bleed it all out, and absolutely nothing changed from 1779 to the Civil war, it seemed. Every innovation occured in the Civil War or afterwards.

It's thought that the Man in Joel's Basement was hastened to his death by doctors that insisted on bleeding him dry-- and in more than monetary terms.

Look up Benjamin Rush.

http://www.nd.gov/hist/LewisClark/medicine.html

Mmm, they sure believed in lube jobs back then.

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets:
An Empirical Study

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

With photos even.

Wilbrod, one of the scariest books I ever read was the history of obstetrics - when I was pregnant with my elder daughter. The tragedy that sticks in my mind was the treatment of Princess Charlotte of Wales, daughter of George IV. Her doctors basically killed her by bleeding her until she was so weak she couldn't survive childbirth. And, of course, the doctor who made the connection about puerperal fever and went insane because his ideas of hygiene were so vehemently rejected.

Correction, Wilbrod. Significant medical innovation in America happened during/immediately after the Civil War of America (because the alternative was so appalling).

There were many clever experiments / innovations going on before and after, in other countries (France, England, India, Greater Arabia) which weren't included in the American literature.

If your point is that the sepsis of war wounds is a spur to innovation in medicine and surgery, I will agree. If your thesis is that only Americans made progress during the Civil War, I would challenge you to read about the Crimean and Boer Wars, and think you will then agree that science goes where it is most needed. And that having reliable technology with which to test hypotheses meant that many innovators were working at roughly the same time (commercially available microscopes, etc.).

The rhubarb liquueur reminds me that a local Publix was selling organic pomegranate wine from Armenia. I guess it's part of the antioxidant fad.

There is a historical marker on US52 between Indianapolis and Lafayette that celebrates the first "successful" Caesarian section operation (meaning the mother survived).

Wow, puts things a little in perspective.

I did say my paper was on pre-civil war American history for an American history class, Yoki.

If you'd care for an overview on this subject by somebody else:
http://www.cl.utoledo.edu/canaday/quackery/quack-index.html

To quote:

"When the Civil War began in April 1861, medicine was approaching what Surgeon General William Hammond called "the end of the medical Middle Ages." In Europe, the work of Koch and Pasteur was just beginning and American physicians had little knowledge of the cause and prevention of disease and infection."

That was my major point. Lister proved the principles of antisepsis in 1865-- AFTER the civil war ended, and he was British.

You are correct that the Crimean War, which had only occured around 10 years before did help Civil War medicine.

If you want to make the point at large that America isn't the only place medicine happens, you're preaching to the choir here. My degree is in biology, not American patriotism.

Why would Paul McNulty make his announcement from here--AG AG's birthplace?

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=politics&id=5303922

McNulty, who has served 18 months as the Justice Department's second-in-command, announced his plans at a closed-door meeting of U.S. attorneys in San Antonio, according to two senior department aides. He said he will remain at the department until this fall or until the Senate approves a successor, the aides said.

McNulty could not be immediately reached for comment Monday. Justice aides said he has been considering leaving for months and never intended to serve more than two years as deputy attorney general.

Jeez, I was just stating a fact about how American medicine was unchanged from 1779 (or even before) to the Civil War, and I get corrected and told that the Upper Hautians of Westphalia-Saxony-Allergy in Old Prussia-Pruneland were busy developing the cure to cancer right around that period.

Those of us who are anti-nondistaff in orientation are ineluctably confabulated by the conflagration of post-modern deconstruction with the rather robust antediluvian brio that, when atrophied, will demonstrate that the albedo of Eta Carinae will be no brighter than rhubarb.

--and I already use my own name, unlike that obvious imposter "Joel Achenbach".

And the chorus murmers "rubarb, rubarb, rubarb"

SCC: rhubarb

SCC: rhubarb

SCC: rhubarb

Hey, Boko - are you trying to be the nihilist peacemaker? Good luck with that. How did your flooring job go, is it nice?

When I was a girl my Grandma had a teeny-tiny house in Detroit with a big apple tree and lots and lots of raspberries and rhubarb in the back yard. We visited every year and I was in charge of picking all the fruit. For some reason Grandma wouldn't eat sugar (not a diabetic, she was just careful of her figure, I think) and so we would stew the rhubarb up with saccharin. Not bad, really. She had these itsy-bitsy saccharin pills which she would drop in her coffee, and we just dropped a gazillion of them into the rhubarb while it was cooking. Of course, we would put the resulting glop on top of ice cream, so I'm not sure why we bothered. I think Grandma ate hers plain, though. She also put perfect half-dollar sized circles of red rouge on each cheek every morning - vanity, thy name is Grandma.

Good night, all!

My new floor is neatly stacked in the basement Wheezy. I'm still stripping wallpaper and painting. If I did renos for a living I'd starve to death.

I am psychic (& sick, & physic!), so I'll now share my prediction:

Nearly a billion people (with a Sagan "B") are gonna be "displaced" by car accidents, suicide, old age, and other various statistically predictable stuff by 2050, no matter what global warming trends develop!

Sorry - I actually (kinda) promised that I was going to think before I posted. That last one didn't actually qualify. Just amusing myself!

I've been doing a lot of painting lately, too, Boko. I just found out my brother has one of those weird "little giant" ladders (of infomercial fame) which can contort into scaffolding. That solves my last problem for two small high walls. I had been planning to turn into a human fly and dip my feet in the paint and simply fly up there and dance around to paint them. Borrowing his ladder sounds simpler, though.

Think then post. Facinating.

The ladder may be simpler Wheezy but I'd pay good money to see the human fly gag.

Yup, I want to see the "fly"!

Odd video about electrical linemen - not for the faint of heart.

http://www.glumbert.com/media/highpower

Hi Bob, Yoki and Wilbrod! If we're talking contagion, do either of you think it's absolutely amazing that Judaism requires one caring for the sick to remove his/her outer garment upon leaving the sick room and wash? I mean, really, how did they come up with these ideas? No shellfish? No pork? Wash your hands after tending to the sick? Trial and error did a pretty good job of keeping a people healthy, no? Of course, my knowledge of this tenet of Judaism comes from a kids' book, "The All-of-a-Kind Family" and its many sequels.

I really should go to sleep now, but I'm waiting for a cheesecake to cool enough to cover it and put it in the fridge.

scc: any of you, not 'either of you'

Simultaneity is a tricky concept in a relativistic universe. A thing doesn't happen until you find out that it happened. Therefore, it doesn't mean anything to say that the universe may have already ended and we just didn't get the memo. It's not over until the memo gets here.

I was going to try to write a humorous comment on whether NASA is still sexist, but it didn't work out. So, let's play it straight: yes and no. The population is still largely male, because so much of the workforce was hired in a tremendous rush from about 1960 through 1975 or so. The oldest guys in that population are about 72. The youngest are about 57. Scientists usually die at work, so they're mostly still employed, so spots have not opened up. I, for instance, do not work for NASA -- it's been under a hiring freeze except for "exceptional circumstances" since the Reagan administration. However, exceptional circumstances include correcting historic imbalances by replacing deceased or bought-out scientists by women or minorities. Because of the old dictum that women and minorities have to be twice as good to get half the credit, my impression is that these folks also tend to be on a fast track once they are in-house. Thus, when I think about it, I realize that the leadership of NASA has a relatively high fraction of women (still not so good with minorities) compared to the fraction of the rank and file that is female.

"The $7.4 billion purchase price trumpeted in headlines, as embarrassing as it is to Daimler given that they paid $36 billion for it 10 or so years ago, doesn't reflect the fact that, in fact, Daimler will PAY between $500-700 million to consummate the transaction. The $7.4 billion will get sunk into the new company. In essence, Daimler has to pay Cerberus to get rid of Chrysler."

They are honorable (or should I say European?) enough to pay someone to accept their liabilities (largely benefits promised to current and retired employees), rather than simply declaring bankruptcy and dumping them.

I saw an article a few years back that pointed out that "manned" does not refer to the presence of testicles in a ship's crew, it refers to the presence of hands at the end of the arms (regardless of what they are doing with those hands). Latin manus = hand. It has nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxon word for a male human.

LTL, I'm not sure it's honor involved. I think they have no choice. Daimler is doing well in its other parts and can't declare bankruptcy just in its Chrysler incarnation. If you know otherwise, please tell me, because I would really, really love to think that a company still exists on this planet that IS honorable.

Have you heard that a large percentage of U.S. companies now purposely underfund their pension fund simply because the Pension Fund Guarantee arm of the government must cover the shortfall? How honorable is that?

animacules is a funny word.
Just saying.

Why, yes - yes it is, Boko.

See you all tomorrow!

I see that I was ambiguous -- I meant that the women and minorities hired into NASA to correct old imbalances are on a fast track because they actually are exceptionally good, even though they are not a large fraction of the total NASA population.

Wheezy, you may be right, and maybe the Chrysler employees and retirees will be dumped by their new benefactors (or whatever they are). But at least it seems that Daimler tried to regularize the situation before walking away. Of course with union reps on their board in Germany, they needed to.

Is regularize a word? Do any large US companies have union reps on the board?

...and your point that the problems are left for the pension fund guarantee arm of the government reminds me of the old saw that Republicans campaign on the slogan that government can't do anything right, and when elected, set out to prove that. That instrumentality is seriously short on funds, I believe.

Wheezy, Judaism is a very hygenic religion. I'm glad washing hands after visiting the sick is included.

Hindus, Egyptians, Greeks, etc. also had solid ideas about hygenie and washing regularly which contributed to health. Sikhism also incorporates handwashing as part of the religious rituals.