One would have to be incredibly naive or distracted to think that society is functioning properly. Very little of the federal government is operating in the best interests of the American people. On the local level, several cities have stopped enforcing laws and have gone quite feral.
Over the past 30 years, the values of Judeo-Christian belief that had inspired and sustained Western civilization and culture for centuries have been steadily replaced in a moral, cultural and political revolution of the postmodern ascendancy. But the contradictions and implausibilities inherent in this successor creed have been increasingly exposed, and its failure to supply the needs of the people is discrediting it in the popular mind.
Coffee is a wonderful thing, I wish I’d known about it sooner.
My mother had many wonderful attributes, but cooking wasn’t one of them. She had her own way of doing things. She thought it would be a good idea to make a pot of coffee, then pour it into a pan and leave it simmering on the stove. This was decades before Keurigs, microwave ovens or Mr. Coffee. Did the percolator coffee maker keep coffee warm? Don’t know.
On rare occasions, the coffee boiled off in the pan. Burned coffee has a horrible smell in the same way that burned popcorn does. This ruined coffee for me and some of my siblings.
About the time I turned 55 years old, it occurred to me that walking around school with a can of diet Mountain Dew seemed juvenile. Adults drink coffee.
I developed a protocol to get over my aversion. I stopped drinking any caffeinated beverages, except bottles of Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino. Those are like chocolate milk, so I had only one per day for about a week. That was to get my over the dislike for mocha. After that, it was two weeks of Starbucks Iced Coffee. This was to get my brain to associate mocha with caffeine.
After that, I went to black coffee. Becoming a coffee snob has no appeal, so I get Aldi coffee and make it in a Keurig.
The benefits of coffee are significant. About 20% of coffee drinks are compelled to take a dump after the first cup of the day. I’m one of those lucky people. I like the predictability of it.
Big Cereal convinced us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If I had breakfast, I was hungry around lunch time. If I skip breakfast, I’m hungry around lunch time. Why bother? Having coffee in the morning means skipping breakfast is automatic.
Coffee gives a boost to initiative and clarity of mind. When you get over about 50 years old, less appetite and more energy makes coffee worth the effort.
On the Moon, astronauts will need protection from a different set of hazards. They’ll have to contend with cosmic and solar radiation, meteorites, wild temperature swings, and even impact ejecta. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has found hundreds of lunar ‘skylights,’ locations where a lava tube’s ceiling has collapsed, making a natural opening into the tube.
The International Space Station is only about 300 miles high. That gives the ISS some protection from cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are positively charged particles moving at relativistic velocities. Alpha radiation consists of some of the same positively charged particles, and is the type of radiation that Putin has used to assassinate opponents. He used polonium which emits alpha radiation. Those particles are big and slow, and can be stopped with a piece of paper. When a person ingests polonium, the radiation attacks the person from the inside, with nothing stopping the particles.
Cosmic rays are moving at nearly the speed of light. Shielding with lead, as one might use to block Superman’s vision, doesn’t work because the particles hit lead atoms and knock them free. Those heavier atoms would act like shrapnel.
Hydrogen atoms are good for shielding from cosmic rays, so water, ice or plastic works, but you need a lot of it, on the order of several meters. A lunar lava tube would provide meters of rock and would be excellent shielding.
On the Moon, astronauts will have to contend with the temperature swings. Earth’s natural satellite is a world of temperature extremes. One side of the Moon is in direct sunlight for half of the time, and surface temperatures reach as high as 127 degrees Celsius (260 °F.) The side that’s shrouded in darkness sinks as low as -173 °C (-280 °F.)
The Moon is a world of temperature extremes only on the surface. Apollo astronauts did experiments with thermal conduction on the surface of the Moon. Go down half a meter, and the temperature is a constant temperature of about -4 °F. It gets colder than that in Ohio.
Because the Moon has no atmosphere, heat is not conducted through convection, but only from radiation from the lunar surface to the -450 °F of space and through conduction through Moon rock. A lava tube on the Moon be -4 °F. An enclosure that is insulated from the floor of the cave would lose very little heat.
China’s future plan, after successful exploration, is a crewed base. It would be a long-term underground research base in one of the lunar lava tubes, with a support center for energy and communication at the tube’s entrance. The terrain would be landscaped, and the base would include both residential and research facilities inside the tube.
This is likely to be every nation’s plan. China has 30 million people living in caves, so maybe the idea doesn’t seem as novel to them.
Physicist Richard Feynman is a hero/celebrity in the world of physics. There are many great and interesting physicists, but Feynman had a clarity of thought and range of interests that makes any time spent learning about him is worthwhile. He makes you a better person.
Colin from Accounts didn’t sound like my kind of TV show, but I gave it a try. I’m not usually a fan of Australian comedies. Too many of the characters treat each other poorly and they can be too much. Like, too wacky, too dumb, too confident, whatever. Deadloch on Amazon Prime is one that I tried recently. Colin from Accounts isn’t like that at all.
The premise is that a Gen X guy and a Millennial woman meet over a dog that was hit by a car. How is that a supposed to be a comedy? The dog was seriously injured, and I thought that first episode might be the end of the show for me. Nothing was graphic and the visit to the veterinarian, the surgery and the dog are treated respectfully, but events around that are dark humor that was actually funny. It helps that the dog has Sparky’s cute good nature.
The main characters are what D & D would call chaotic neutral people trying to be good. Much of the comedy comes from the difference in ages and outlooks, but it isn’t stereotypical or cliched. It feels natural and plausible. Both characters are in an uncomfortable situations, but by trying to do the right thing, they are placed in awkward situations. They do the best they can, and it leads them along an interesting journey.
The supporting characters all feel like real people with a backstory. That it is an Australian production, means that a lot of little lifestyle details are different. You don’t get the American approach where it’s a waitress in a $3000 per month studio apartment or working class family in a squalid house.
Colin in Accounts is showing on Paramount +. I really enjoyed it. 8/10
During the Covid year, the first quarter was going to be remote. and that was about all we knew. Teaching remotely, I couldn’t give students the a quality show, so I thought that I’d produce lecture videos that are good in a different way. The intent was to renovate the curriculum while producing videos that would be a resource for my remaining three or four years.
By the end of the year, NoRo management decided that I was done teaching Physics, so the videos were never edited to perfection or to be seen by anyone ever again. I decided that I’d post them here. These are the lecture videos. There were homework explanation videos, practice problem videos and quiz videos. I may post those in subsequent years.
Since this is about the time when the Chapter 2 test would be coming up, these are the “Kinematics in One Dimension” presentations.
This is our first lecture on actual physics.
Then we get to velocity.
Acceleration, and we are done. Usually, students get killed on this chapter test.
I’ve recently been conversing with a couple of students that I had during the Covid year. Both are in engineering at The Ohio State University. I had both when they were juniors in Physics, and again, as seniors in AP Physics 2. Since I knew them prior to the Covid year, I didn’t need to introduce myself. For students with whom I was not acquainted, it seemed important to produce a video that gave them some sense of Physics and how I approached the course.
Both videos were produced a couple of weeks before school started. I had time, but not much of an idea how to edit videos.
For the Physics students, I wanted to get across the fun and wonder of Physics. In an online course, it’s hard to communicate the twin virtues of fun and dangerous. For the intro video, I tried to get across the fun, my unconventional nature and that diligent effort would be expected.
For AP students, the purpose of the introduction was different. AP Physics 2 students are smart and they’ve had a year of physics. They know the score. It’s important that they believe that even if I’m not smarter than them, at least I know physics better than they do.
An award-winning Harvard Business School professor and researcher spent years exploring the reasons people lie and cheat. A trio of behavioral scientists examining a handful of her academic papers concluded her own findings were drawn from falsified data.
With so much of our culture already infected, science was bound to eventually be corrupted by diversity, inclusion and equity. Even before DIE ideology, incentives to get grant funding, published or notoriety caused some scientists to take shortcuts or use shoddy techniques.
Another problem is that scientists don’t or can’t always take the time to be scientifically rigorous. Noted physicist, Richard Feynman discussed this in his fascinating Cal Tech Commencement Address.
Simmons and his two colleagues are among a growing number of scientists in various fields around the world who moonlight as data detectives, sifting through studies published in scholarly journals for evidence of fraud.
It’s not surprising that scientific integrity is being defended by enthusiastic volunteers, rather than through governmental or institutional investigations.
We spent three days at Pier-Lon campground. It’s on the West side of Medina, so pretty close and not far from I-71 so easy to get to. Pier-Lon has a lot of green space, play ground and full setup for $50 per night. There is a big pond with a beach and is a great place for kids. Alcohol isn’t permitted, so it is setup as a family destination.
Pier-Lon is not a great place for dogs. That green space shown in the first photo is posted as a Pet-Free zone. This photo shows that the camper spaces are placed pretty close together. There are a few trees, but it’s all lawn. Like me, Sparky will pee anywhere, but can be particular about where he takes a dump. There weren’t any bushes or rough grass for him to do his dirty business. Walking was limited to along the rode. Sparky seemed a tense most of the time we were there.
Pier-Lon is a quiet place, but the RV’s are close enough that sounds from other RV’s can be a problem. The fire rings are anchored nearly on the road.
Overall, I’d give Pier-Lon a 5/10 for me, but a 7/10 for someone with kids and no dog.
There isn’t much to do in the vicinity of Pier-Lon, but I did find a nice park, with great bike trails, only a few miles away. I went in at the Chippewa Inlet Trail North. There are several loops and probably 6 or 7 miles of trail. It’s all this good and occasionally better.
This article isn’t likely to suggest anything that will actually help men.
Men are trailing women in college and in the workplace, fewer of their relationships are leading to marriage and many men feel masculinity is under attack.
Men are trailing women everywhere, and if a man complains, then the typical response is something along the line of “Fuck you, you built the patriarchy, so if you aren’t happy with it, go die.”
