The Grambling State men's baseball team finished 2-1 in a three game matchup against Prairie View A&M March 8-10.
Grambling State (6-7 overall, 3-1 SWAC) took the series opener and came within a run of earning its first shutout victory since they blew out Texas College 17-0 on April 25, 2016.
Game 1 - Friday, March 8.
After four scoreless innings, GSU broke the 0-0 tie in the fifth inning.
With one down in the frame, Kevin Whitaker, Jr. walked on an Ian Bailey double down the left field line. After Isaiah Torres struck out, Richard Ortiz doubled to left, scoring Bailey from second giving GSU a 2-0 lead.
GSU extended the lead to 9-0 with seven runs in the sixth inning.
Garrett Smith opened the frame with a base hit and moved to third on a Jahmoi Pervical double to right. With two out, Whitaker walked to load the bases. Bailey followed with a bases clearing double to right center. Ortiz and Rafael Ramirez III drew back-to-back-to-back walks as Bailey scored from third. Smith, batting for the second time in the inning, tripled to right center to bring home Torres, Ortiz and Ramirez.
Prairie View A&M closed the gap to 9-1 with a run in the bottom of the eighth inning, but it was not enough as GSU took the first win in the series.
In game two, Prairie View A&M jumped out to a 2-0 lead, but GSU responded with six runs on four hits taking advantage of two errors to grab a 6-2 advantage in the top of the second.
Rafael Ramirez III began the frame with a base hit to right and moved to second on a Garrett Smith walk. Jahmoi Pervical singled as Ramirez scored. Drexler Macaay walked to load the bases and Kristian Franklin reached on an error, allowing Smith to score. Kevin Whitaker Jr. reached on a fielder's choice as Pervical was out at third. Ian Bailey continued his strong outing at the plate with a double center to plate Macaay and Franklin. Isaiah Torres followed with a base hit to left as Whitaker scored.
The Panthers answered in the bottom of the second inning with four runs to tie the game 6-6. GSU plated one run in the third inning, but Prairie View A&M scored five in the bottom of the inning to grab an 11-7 lead.
The Tigers took the lead for good with a five-run sixth inning. With one down in the inning, Torres doubled to right center and scored on a Richard Ortiz single to center. Ramirez and Smith walked to load the bases. Jalin McMillian singled to right center to plate Ortiz.
With two down, Franklin hit a bases-clearing double to give Grambling State a 12-11 lead.
The Tigers added a run in the seventh inning when Bailey was hit by a pitch and scored on an Ortiz double.
Grambling notched a victory with a final score of 13-11.
The Panthers opened the scoring with a run in the bottom of the first inning, but GSU answered and struck for six runs on five hits to grab a 6-1 lead.
GSU added to the lead in the top of the third inning.
Rafael Ramirez III walked to begin the frame and advanced to second when Sookdeo reached on an error. Felder moved the runners up on a sacrifice and Macaay followed with a base hit to center to score Ramirez. Kristian Franklin tripled as Sookdeo and Macaay scored as he was tagged trying to score as GSU increased the lead to 9-1.
The Panthers responded with three runs in the bottom half of the third inning to cut the lead to 9-4. GSU got a run back in the fourth inning as Macaay reached on a fielder's choice as Ramirez came across to score, giving the Tigers a 10-4 lead.
GSU continued to put runs on the board as the Tigers added three runs on two hits and took advantage of one error in the fifth inning to stretch the lead to 13-4.
Back came Prairie View A&M in the bottom of the fifth inning with four runs and took the lead with seven runs on three errors and took advantage of a pair of Tiger errors to grab a 15-13 advantage. The Panthers added two more runs in the seventh and took a 17-13 lead into the eighth. GSU trimmed the deficit in the eighth with one run, but the seven-run sixth was tough to overcome as the Tigers dropped their second conference game.
GSU returns to action this weekend for a three game series against Arkansas-Pine Bluff. First pitch is set for 6 p.m. Friday at Wilbert Ellis Field at R.W.E. Jones Park in Grambling, La.


Shane Siewert, a wrestler at Rochester Community & Technical College from Lake City, MN, has earned the first MCAC Wrestler-of-the-Week honor for the 2018-19 season.
Competing in the 174 lb. weight division, the RCTC sophomore went 3-1 this past weekend at the Yellowjacket Open, a season-kickoff event for several four-year and two-year college wrestling programs. His 3-1 effort was good for second place in his division, and his success included a win over 2017 NJCAA All-American Bunmi Smith of Iowa Lakes Community College.
Siewert and Rochester Community & Technical College will next compete at the Luther Open, in Decorah, Iowa on Satuday, November 10.


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Q: phpDoc @var for compound statement isn't displayed correctly I have a compound statement in one of my classes and as far as I know I'm following the phpDoc docs here. This is just the relevant part of the file. The file itself and the class do have docblocks.
class contact {
    /**
     * @var PDO $pdo                The PDO class for database communication
     * @var int $id                 The id of the contact
     * @var int $clientId           The id of the client the contact is linked to
     * @var string $name            The name of the contact
     * @var string $address         The first address line (normally street and house number) of the contact
     * @var string $postal_code     The postal code of the contact
     * @var string $city            The city of the contact
     * @var string $state           The state or region of the contact
     * @var string $country         The country of the contact
     */
    protected $pdo, $id, $clientId, $name, $address, $postal_code, $city, $state, $country;

When I run phpdoc on this file, it's parsed fine without any output. However, when I look at the generated docs, the information isn't displayed correctly:

What am I doing wrong?

A: This is supposed to be supported in phpDocumentor 2.x, though it was not in 1.x.  Since that looks like a 2.x output template, this is likely a bug in the template that you could report as an Issue at the Github repo (https://github.com/phpDocumentor).

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Andrew Talanksy
Paris-Nice 2013 – Race Report
Despite losing the top dogs to Tirreno-Adriatico, this year's Paris-Nice was once again full of drama. We saw the maillot jaune crash and quit, SKY's dominance on the climbs and a classicist in top form early in March.
The race started with a very short prolog, won by Europcar's Damien Gaudin – a big surprise for everyone, even within the pelaton. Next day, in French road champion colors Nacer Bouhani won the opening sprint stage, but unfortunately later crashed and had to quit the race, this time wearing the yellow jersey. Argos' German sprinter Marcel Kittel later won sprint frenzy in Stage 2.
As the climbs starting to appear one after the other, the general classification started to shape up. In Stage 3, Garmin's American rider Andrew Talanksy stepped in to the maillot jaune after winning from a successful breakaway that formed on the ascent of Cote de Mauvagnat. Michael Albasini won Stage 4 while Talansky managed to keep his jersey the day after.
As we approached the queen stage of the race, Talanksy was leading the GC only by 3 seconds, and a record number of 6 riders were following him all under 10 seconds behind. It was Richie Porte attacking to the yellow jersey, thanks to SKY's climbing lieutenants. Porte kept his lead in the 6th stage, which was won by Sylvain Chavanel in sensational fashion.
As we approach the decisive time trial on the ascent of Col d'Eze, Porte was leading with 32 seconds which proved to be more than enough as he won the stage 17 seconds ahead of runner up Andrew Talansky. Jean-Christophe Peraud moved to the last spot of the podium with his last day performance, moving on top of Chavanel and last year's runner-up Lieuwe Westra.
Sylvain Chavanel won the points classification, Johann Tschopp of IAM Cycling won the mountains classification whereas runner-up Talanksy finished on top of young riders' classification and won the white jersey. It was Katusha, leading the teams classification with 4 riders in the top 30.
1. Richie Porte (Aus) Sky Procycling 29:59:47
2. Andrew Talansky (USA) Garmin-Sharp 55″
3. Jean-Christophe Peraud (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 1′ 21″
4. Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team 1′ 44″
5. Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 1′ 47″
6. Simon Spilak (Slo) Katusha 1′ 48″
7. Diego Ulissi (Ita) Lampre-Merida 1′ 54″
8. Lieuwe Westra (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team 2′ 17″
9. Andreas Klöden (Ger) RadioShack Leopard 2′ 22″
10. Peter Velits (Svk) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 2′ 28″
Points Classification
1. Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 88 pts
2. Andrew Talansky (USA) Garmin-Sharp 83 pts
3. Richie Porte (Aus) Sky Procycling 68 pts
Mountains Classification
1. Johann Tschopp (Swi) IAM Cycling 64 pts
3. Thierry Hupond (Fra) Team Argos-Shimano 24 pts
Young Rider Classification
1. Andrew Talansky (USA) Garmin-Sharp 30:00:42
2. Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team 49″
3. Diego Ulissi (Ita) Lampre-Merida 59″
Teams Classification
1. Katusha 90:06:49
2. Ag2R La Mondiale 1′ 23″
3. RadioShack Leopard 3′ 38″
Andrew Talanksy, Andrew Talansky, Damien Gaudin, Johann Tschopp, Lieuwe Westra, Marcel Kittel, Michael Albasini, Nacer Bouhani, Richie Porte, Sylvain Chavanel
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Deborah Douglas
Somewhere in the Middle: A Journey to the Philippines in Search of Roots, Belonging, and Identity
Deborah Francisco Douglas, author
Half Filipino but raised in an American household, Deborah Francisco Douglas had always longed to know more about her Filipino heritage. So when a thick government-issued envelope arrived at her door announcing her assignment to the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer, she snatched the opportunity and set out on a journey of self-discovery, travel, and adventure. Arriving in the mountain town of Baguio City, Philippines, she was introduced to a life of obnoxious roosters, bucket baths, and kids shouting her name every time she walked down the street. Despite her attempts to get involved in the community, her desire for belonging and identity did not materialize as quickly as planned. Realizing that "Filipino time" means nothing ever happens in a hurry, Deborah braces for the journey ahead, hoping to find answers, and above all, to find herself. Filled with warmth and humor, Somewhere in the Middle captures the simple joy found in ordinary moments and in the people we share our lives with, shedding new light on what it truly means to find the place where you belong. Whether you're hoping to unearth your own cultural roots, volunteer abroad, or find your next travel adventure, this memoir offers inspiration for all those yearning to discover who they are and where they belong in the world.
In this energetic debut, Filipino American blogger Douglas narrates her "quest for self-identity" while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines, a country she knew little about despite being the birthplace of her father. She lived in the country from 2011 to 2014, and tells of life in Baguio City, "the salad bowl of the Philippines" located in the mountainous Cordillera region. Douglas's introduction to Filipino culture is thwarted at first by her vague grasp of the language. Assigned to a local school and community center, she forges relationships with co-workers over snack and coffee breaks as she discovers that, for Filipinos, "sharing a meal means generosity, kinship, connection." Some of Douglas's observations, however, can verge on whiny (while in a hospital being treated for asthma, she says, "This isn't what I envisioned when I first learned I would be living in the Philippines"). On the other hand, Douglas's stories of weekend trips to remote, unspoiled areas for hiking, caving, and waterfall climbing are high points, conveying her thrill of exploration. It's her efforts during her stay to integrate music into her life—via guitar lessons, choir rehearsals, and monthly coffeehouse music sessions—that enable her to form lasting friendships. Douglas is an amiable narrator, and those searching for their own roots will take pleasure in this heartfelt memoir. (BookLife)
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On Wednesday, Brown walked a tightrope, seeming to want to do two things at once in his speech -- celebrate California's vastly improved finances while calling for thriftiness with both money and water.
Brown's State of the State addresses never lack entertainment. This year, he brought a parable and a prop to preach fiscal discipline to lawmakers.
"Boom and bust is our lot and we must follow the ancient advice, recounted in the Book of Genesis, that Joseph gave to the Pharaoh: Put away your surplus during the years of great plenty so you will be ready for the lean years which are sure to follow."
He accused most recent governors and legislatures of forgetting that advice, but vowed not to do that himself.
"To help us keep our fiscal realities in mind, I have some playing cards here," he said holding up a card. "You probably can't see this, but it's mostly red."
On one side, a chart of the budget surpluses and deficits from the last 15 years, with philosopher George Santayana's famous warning: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
On the other side, a picture of his dog Sutter, and a quote: "Bark if you don't like deficits."
"And so I'm gonna put this right here, just in case we forget," Brown said.
With California's lack of water having replaced its lack of money in the headlines, the governor's comments on the drought drew attention as well. Brown called for conservation, voluntary water transfers and a lot more.
Notable this election year was the absence of any big new policy proposal, such as last year's school funding overhaul or how to address the state's $350 billion in unfunded retirement liabilities.
Meanwhile, lawmakers offered various reactions to the governor's speech. Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway said she's more interested in what Brown didn't say.
For instance, she disputes California has a true budget surplus. She points to the large federal loan the state took out to cover unemployment payments as an example of California's debt.
"You know, we owe the feds $10 billion, that's not going away. So we raise this tax on employers just to pay the interest. If we have a surplus, we should be paying our bills."
Brown acknowledged in his speech the state owes hundreds of billions on pensions, retiree healthcare and infrastructure maintenance.
But Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson said Brown hit the right tone in his address, emphasizing paying down debt, putting money aside and making strategic reinvestments.
"And I thought his ending line, that we need to build from the future, not steal from it, was a recognition that there are investments that we need to make in order to get a return that will benefit future generations," Dickinson said.
But not all Democrats were satisfied with Brown's speech. Senator Holly Mitchell said she would have like to have heard a lot more about addressing poverty in the state.
"When you consider the fact that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation, I think paying a little bit closer attention to investment in our safety net for the hundreds of thousands of California families and millions of California children that are living below the poverty line is worthy of mention and worth our attention."
Now that Brown has set his agenda for the year, lawmakers will begin to deal with the budget he's proposed. It must be complete by the middle of June.


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Home News Green Mountain Falls Green Mountain Falls Trustees Approve $1 Million-Plus Budget
Green Mountain Falls
Green Mountain Falls Trustees Approve $1 Million-Plus Budget
Concerns Raised Over New CSU Water Utility Pump Station
With little debate, the Green Mountain Falls Board of Trustees gave the final green light for their 2023 budget, calling for a little more than $1 million in spending, including some key capitol projects.
But the big question still persists over the re-opening of the pool, as the town is hoping to secure private sponsors for this operation, unless it wants to incur a deficit. In addition, another community leader hit the alert button on the lack of money for fire mitigation with the town now ranking as one of the prime fire danger spots in the region.
Regardless of these concerns, the town's Board of Trustees unanimously approved their 2023 fiscal blueprint during the final meeting of the year.
The town's nuts and bolts general fund will remain largely the same, with the town dealing with close to $800,000. The town has also budgeted closed to $290,000 for capital projects, with monies allocated for a comprehensive road improvement study and the capital purchase of a marshal's vehicle and the implementation of body-worn cameras for the agency, which is part of a state requirement.
David Douglas, who heads the fire mitigation committee, though, questioned the lack of funds for fire mitigation and cited evidence that the town ranks as an area at definite risk. He said this has been a consistent trend for the last few years. "This town does not have a track record of making fire mitigation a priority."
Douglas argued that their committee's original request of funds for 2023 was not even close to being fulfilled, and believes town leaders are sending a bad message by not addressing fire mitigation concerns.
The elected leaders didn't respond to Douglas's comments. In last-minute adjustments, the board did agree to $1,500 for trail maps.
In the past, the board has advocated having a more full-proof evacuation plan, in case of a disaster. The majority of fire mitigation work has come in the form of grants.
New Springs' Utilities Pump Station Ignites Residents' Wrath
In their final meeting of the year, town leaders also took a beating from former trustees Howard Price and Mac Pitrone, pertaining to recent negotiations with Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) over a new water pump station.
The two residents mainly accused the board of caving in to the requests of Springs Utility, and not negotiating a better deal for the town and for local residents.
"You should be ashamed of yourselves," blasted Price, who said he received no notification of the board's previously decision meeting on the plans for a new water pump station off Hondo Avenue, at the base of a few key trail areas. Price alerted the board he plans to file an injunction against this project.
Price cited the location of this facility and questioned why other technology could not be utilized to achieve the company's infrastructure expansion goals, so it wouldn't impact local residents, and why it is using this particular property. "You are afraid of Colorado Springs Utilities," said Price.
Pitrone didn't spare any criticism either, sarcastically referring to the Springs Utilities company as "The Center of the known Universe."
He said for years Springs' Utilities has ripped off the town with higher rates than what is charged for customers in Colorado Springs. "It is time we started getting treated better," said Pitrone. "You blew the opportunity to negotiate that."
Price and Pitrone were referring to a recent board decision that gave Springs Utilities the go-ahead in building a new water pump station. The current one is quite outdated, according to company and project engineer representatives.
Actually, during the meeting in question, the main issue of concern for the trustees dealt with a pre-construction staging area, rather than the expansion project itself. The board toiled over this construction staging question extensively, but didn't really question the merits of the expansion bid.
According to a town staff report, "the new pump station will be located at 10685 Hondo Ave. and will ensure reliable water service for residents and businesses in Green Mountain Falls. It will also provide a safer and more readily accessible working space for CSU (Colorado Springs Utilities) enabling more efficient maintenance and repair activities. CSU is currently finalizing an easement agreement with the property owner to allow the pump station to be built on the site."
Mayor Todd Dixon asked both Price and Pitrone, who served previously on the board, to work with the staff in addressing their concerns.
In other action, the board approved a new land use comprehensive plan, a project in the works for months. The new revised code is aimed at making the process simpler for developers and for residents doing small projects.
Previous articleWP RE-2 District Rocked by Student Protests/Walk-outs and Meeting Outbursts
Next articleSchool Reform, Political Feuds, Elections and Pot Dominate the Radar In 2022


sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/stepmania sudo apt-get remove stepmania stepmania-data In addition , after first launch the game will create .stepmania …... StepMania is a music/rhythm game. The player presses different buttons in time to the music and to note patterns that scroll across the screen. Features 3D graphics, visualizations, support for gamepads/dance pads, a step recording mode, and more!
17/02/2015 · Yes, when opening the .SM file, it shows what I want it to show. However, Stepmania won't show it. I just deleted some song folders and those DID update.
Contrary to Stepmania and Dance with Intensity, In The Groove features a mix of songs you do not need to download on the web (after all, you paid for it). This is much like the games Dance Dance Revolution 1,2,3,... you can buy on Playstation or play in arcade. You can not add others songs by yourself.
But while those songs use a sixth as a splashy embellishment, "The Fool on the Hill" gives us a better example of how to use major sixth chords as an integral part of throughout a song.


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Japanese Plastic Company Opens First North American Production Plant
Nissei Plastics will boost its global production network with a new 115,000-square-foot facility in San Antonio, TX.
https://businessfacilities.com/2018/05/japanese-plastic-company-opens-first-north-american-production-plant/
Home » Industry News » Plastics & Medical Devices » Japanese Plastic Company Opens First North American Production Plant
Japan-based Nissei Plastic Industrial Co. is celebrating the grand opening of its subsidiary, Nissei Plastic Machinery America Inc., located in San Antonio, TX. The new 115,000-square-foot production facility represents $21 million in capital investment at Brooks City Base on the city's South Side.
The company cites San Antonio's geographic location and Texas' tax structure as main factors that led to the choice to locate in San Antonio. Also recognized by Nissei, San Antonio has attracted a number of auto makers and is in close proximity to automotive manufacturing clusters in the Midwest region. San Antonio also boasts ready access to Mexico, with its own rapidly growing auto industry.
"San Antonio is centrally located between North, Central and South America, which are key markets for our future and Texas is ranked #1 in the U.S. with a total of about 77,000 workers in the plastic industry," said Hosumi Yoda, President, Nissei Japan.
Image: Nissei Plastic Machinery America Inc.
Production at the facility includes medium-to-large-scale hybrid injection molding machines (mold clamping force 600 to 1,440 US tons), with the main components supplied by Nissei plants in Japan, China and Thailand. The new plant also includes a Technical Center equipped with demonstration machines for mold and material, which enables testing with customers prior to purchase.
"A facility like Nissei's can change lives," said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg. "The manufacturing jobs and opportunities afforded can provide the kind of economic mobility that changes lives and shapes futures."
The new facility is ideally situated to supply Nissei's expanding demand in North America and represents a key part of the company's global production and distribution network. The San Antonio plant will initially supply markets throughout the Americas and in the future may expand to European markets.
"Our region has a longstanding and powerful manufacturing industry with enormous economic benefits. I'm confident that Nissei will be a strong addition with lasting impact on the community," said Judge Nelson Wolff.
"We're excited to help bring these manufacturing job opportunities to San Antonio and look forward to having Nissei employees and their families living, working, learning and playing at and around Brooks," said Brooks President & CEO Leo Gomez. "Our mixed-use community provides the quality of life benefits that Nissei was seeking for its employees, with the Greenline linear park, eateries, entertainment venue, attractive housing options and superior education opportunities from kindergarten to graduate school all within walking distance."
"With our partners at the SAEDF and the County, Team San Antonio is proud to see our collective strategy for target industry growth come to fruition with a high-performing, global company like Nissei. The benefits to San Antonio will be felt for generations," said City Manager Sheryl Sculley.
The San Antonio plant is Nissei's third production facility outside of Japan, joining the Taicang subsidiary in China, which opened in 2009, and the Rayong subsidiary, which opened in Thailand in 2012. With production facilities at five key locations, Nissei will boast a global supply chain, with access to markets all over the world and the ability to pursue procurement on a global scale.
Relocating or Expanding Your Business In Texas
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Nissei Relocating U.S. HQ To San Antonio Nissei America, Inc. will relocate its U.S. headquarters from Anaheim, CA to its subsidiary Nissei Plastic Machinery America facility in San Antonio, TX.
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text:
In which I am an amateur linguist, just for fun.
Today I feel like blathering about an academic subject in which I am completely untrained, and yet have Opinions.
Friend of mine on Facebook yesterday shared this post from Letters of Note, the photograph grabbed apparently from a book called 'The Elements of Eloquence,' author Mark Forsyth, and posted originally on Twitter by Matt Anderson.
Said friend and I -- alright, it was Melanie -- had a blast discussing it. The most fun I've had on a Sunday afternoon in a long while. It must be the long weekend.
Before we start to criticize, let's discuss the overall pattern. Have you noticed this feature of spoken English before? That when you prepend -- without conjunctions -- more than one adjective to a noun, often there's a particular way to order the adjectives in series that sounds better than the other possible orders?
Native English speakers would say, unless there was some special reason of emphasis,
The little red wagon
The red little wagon
The old brass key
The brass old key
The enormous antique rocking chair
The antique enormous rocking chair
The antique rocking enormous chair
The rocking antique enormous chair
(Even though the author used an amusingly long string of adjectives as an example, I'm not going to go with more than three or four of them here, since our test of validity is simply to see what sounds okay. Overlong strings of adjectives don't sound like natural English to begin with, so they don't make good test examples.)
How do we know which order is right? And is there a permanent pattern? Mark suggested to me that we simply know what is right because we are used to hearing it some ways and not others, but I don't think so because I can construct an entirely novel phrase and we still know that one is better than another:
The delicious square German vegan liverwurst
is obviously (to me) preferable to
The German square vegan delicious liverwurst
but it isn't obvious why.
Some kind of pattern production program exists in our language brain. This isn't mere mimicking. We have a pattern inside our heads, and we know when something doesn't fit the pattern, without ever having been explicitly taught it. What is this pattern?
The author of the photographed excerpt considers pre-nominal adjective sets as a string. Like beads, they go onto the noun one after another, and since we apparently prefer some permutations to others, he looks for a pattern that tells us what order we automatically identifies an ordered list of attributes that, supposedly, describes the order in which English speakers string adjectives. Here's the order again:
Opinion - size - age - shape - colo(u)r - origin - material - purpose - Noun.
This doesn't of course mean that we are likely, in ordinary speech, to craft sentences in which we describe a noun with a string of eight adjectives. It just means that we supposedly put size-adjectives before material-adjectives, opinion-about-the-thing-adjectives before origin-adjectives, and so on.
Let's see the examples I wrote just now:
"little red" wagon is size-color .... Check!
"old brass" key is age-material.... Check!
"enormous antique rocking" chair is size-age-purpose I guess... Check!
Or is it size-age-shape? What if the chair is, er, shaped like a rocking chair but intended for an office? Then it would be an enormous antique rocking office chair. Still fits the pattern, I suppose. Check!
"delicious square German vegan" liverwurst is opinion-shape-origin-(material or maybe purpose) ... Check!
So far so good. But! If one sits and thinks for a while, one may come up with contrary examples. So the "absolutely" in the author's paragraph must certainly be struck out.
The first one I thought of was
She has a new little baby.
This pattern puts shape before age, yet it is clearly better than
She has a little new baby.
Later I thought of
The white crescent moon shone above
which, though it puts the white color before the crescent shape, sounds more correct than
The crescent white moon shone above.
Okay, so the "absolutely" isn't warranted for our pattern. Yet it seems almost right. Is there a way we can generalize? And what makes this pattern appear in the first place?
One of our interlocutors suggested that it had to do with "essence" -- that the more essential qualities are placed closer to the noun, and the more superficial ones are placed farther away. So, for example, a little red wagon is more essentially red and only superficially little. A German rocking chair's rocking-ness is more essential to its nature, and its German-ness less so.
This seems like it is on the right track towards the pattern, but not so much on the how-we-apply-the-pattern. Deciding about the essential nature of things is a philosophical exercise. But we don't stop to practice philosophy every time we order our tall skinny decaf latte. We just ask for it, and make the poor barista hunt for the keys in a different order. (From the perspective of the cashier, the size of the latte is more essential, since it specifies the cost of the item; options like decaf and skinny are not.)
But there is something to this notion, and I think if we carry it farther we will find something better than the "string-of-attributes" theory.
Let's start by asking the question: Why is purpose placed in the closest spot to the noun?
I don't think it's because the purpose of the object is the most essential quality of the object, but because of the natural way in which English speakers form compound nouns made up of multiple words.
A tennis racket is a thing. We aren't speaking French: We do not have to say "a racket of tennis." For all practical purposes, in English tennis racket is a single noun. We've never joined the words into tennisracket -- we aren't speaking German -- and that has created a bit of a red herring, in that, yes, "tennis" is a modifier, behaving like an adjective, describing the purpose of the racket -- but face it, a tennis racket is a thing. It is not a racket that might or might not be for tennis, at least not in the same way that it might be green or lightweight or expensive or homemade. It functions as a noun. You don't drop the "tennis" part of the noun unless it's obvious that you're in a tennis context.
Because a tennis racket is a thing, we don't divide the "tennis" from the "racket" by interspersing any other kind of adjective, any more than we divide the "dish" from the "washer" when I describe to you my new household appliance. I don't have a dish shiny washer, and for the same reason, I don't have a tennis new racket.
Is this because tennis-ness is the most essential quality of the racket? Indirectly, maybe; but the proximate reason is linguistic. When we talk of a tennis racket, we join the two words into a compound.
So the handheld implement for striking the ball in tennis, having a certain color and size is not described with a string of three adjectives: large-blue-tennis RACKET. Rather, tennis is joined to RACKET: blue (tennis racket).
But purpose isn't the only kind of modifier that we make functional compounds with. I talked of liverwurst up there. We stick that together because, I suppose, liverwurst is German in origin, but we're really discussing liver sausage here -- "liver" denoting the material of which the sausage is made. And doesn't it often function as a compound too? Liver sausage is a thing. If you say "liver sausage" I get a mental image of a package of braunschweiger at the supermarket, followed by a strong association with rye bread and mustard -- I don't imagine a sausage (different mental picture) and then, thinking of liver, modify my mental picture.
"Pork sausage," same thing, until you want to mention that it's pork breakfast sausage (material-purpose-noun). But "pork breakfast sausage" is also a thing, although not as securely as is breakfast sausage and pork sausage.
I propose that in English, when we increase the number of modifiers on a noun, what we are really doing is creating nested compounds. Not sausage that is made of pork, and intended for breakfast, and which I think is expensive, and which is of a brown color, all on a string; but
expensive ( brown ( pork ( breakfast sausage ) ) )
That is, it's breakfast sausage that happens to be pork.
And, it's pork breakfast sausage that is brown.
And, it's brown pork breakfast sausage that is expensive.
Let's look at our counter examples: the white crescent moon and the new little baby, both of which violate the prescribed order.
The white crescent moon is easy to explain. "Crescent moon" is a common compound. Yes, "crescent" literally describes the shape of the moon. But in the English language, a "crescent moon" is a thing in and of itself, much more strongly than is a "white moon." So while you might write about a crescent white moon, you are much more likely to write about a white (crescent moon).
Too, look at this:
white full moon (color before, nominally, shape)
round white moon (shape before color)
And that's because a "full moon" is an established compound and a "round moon" is comparatively only an adjective plus a noun.
How about that new little baby?
"Little baby" definitely functions as a compound in many contexts. Sweet little baby, good little baby, third little baby. Little almost goes before baby as a tic.
"New baby" is also a common utterance.
Why, then, "new little baby" and not "little new baby?" I think it's because new babies are by definition little, whereas little babies may or may not be new; so when we want to say, "She has recently given birth to a child!" we say "She has a new (baby)!" or "She has a new (little baby)!" almost interchangeably. The newness is up front. It's what we're emphasizing.
But if we want to say "She has a BIG new baby!" we are probably talking about a nine- or ten-pounder. It's a big (new baby).
And what of compound adjectives?
Check out this triplet of adjectives along with the noun "baby", two nominally denoting size and one nominally denoting age, and consider how it works:
tiny new baby (but not new tiny baby)
little tiny baby = tiny little baby (interchangeable)
new little baby (but not generally little new baby)
What's up with this? Tiny must go pairwise before new. New must go pairwise before little. But tiny and little are pairwise interchangeable.
I think this is because "tiny little" and "little tiny" function, and equally well, as compounds. "Little baby" can be a compound, but we can force it apart with the right choice of modifiers and then you can get something like
(tiny little)(American baby).
With new, tiny, and little, there's six possible orders:
little tiny new baby
tiny little new baby
new tiny little baby
new little tiny baby
little new tiny baby
Some of these sound better to me than others. How about to you?
Anyway, that's my untrained blathering about English syntax for the day. I have a vague notion that the concept of a "parse tree" is the one that trained linguists would use to point out the flaws in my crackpot analysis is. As they say, any fool can criticize, and I am always happy to play the fool for that purpose. But, as I said to Melanie via FB, the fun thing about linguistics is that any nerd can do original amateur research on your own brain and your friends' brains, something that is hard to do in other sciences unless you have an MRI machine in your cheerful spacious well-equipped American kitchen laboratory.
05 September 2016 in Language(s), Science, Something different | Permalink | Comments (3)
Homeschool assignment: Reading Augustine on Genesis as a prelude to studying evolutionary biology.
I finished writing my assignment on Augustine for the beginning of the 9th-grade evolutionary biology course my son will be taking next year. I thought I'd share it freely here, in case any other homeschoolers are interested in using classical authors to put modern science into long-term perspective.
Suggestions are welcome as I won't be assigning it till fall 2014.
Augustine lived from 354 to 430 A. D. and was one of the most influential early theologians of the Church.
Page numbers refer to readings from The Literal Meaning of Genesis, appearing in the volume On Genesis, ed. by John E. Rotelle, trans. by Edmund Hill, New City Press, 2002.
1. Read Book I, no. 1 (p. 168) for an introductory idea of the multiple meanings of Scripture. List the different kinds of meaning that Augustine thinks Scripture can have.
2. Skim over nos 2-28 (pp. 168-181) to get a flavor of the way Augustine lists questions to establish the difficulty of interpreting Genesis. Dip in here and there and read paragraphs in more detail. Give three examples of problematic questions Augustine mentions.
3. Read closely no. 29-30 (p. 181-182). Why does Augustine believe that it is necessary to list the parts of creation in a certain order? Why does Augustine believe that the scripture uses the words "earth" and "waters" to represent formlessness?
4. Skip ahead to Book II, no. 25 (p. 205), about the creation of plants. Why does Augustine say plants are described as a separate creation from that of the land, but on the same "day" as the creation of land?
5. Read the episode in Book III, par. 12 (pp. 222-223), in which Augustine refutes someone's scriptural interpretation (that a certain language is used of fishes because fishes lack any kind of memory) by pointing out that direct scientific observation of fish contradicts such an interpretation.
What does this episode demonstrate that Augustine believes about the relationship between the interpretation of truth as revealed in Scripture and facts that are learned by observation of the natural world?
6. Read nos. 18-19 (pp. 227-228). (It may help you understand if you begin at par. 16 on page 225.)
Pay particular attention to this:
The reader may also wonder...whether the phrase 'according to kind' comes up again and again just by chance... or whether there is some meaning in it, as though they were already in existence beforehand, though the account of their creation is only now being given... In fact this expression begins to be used about the grasses and the trees, and so on until we get to these terrestrial animals... Is it because these things sprang into being in such a way that others would be born of them and in succeeding to them would preserve the shape and form of their origin?...
This then is the significance of 'according to kind,' where we are to understand both the efficacious force in the seed and the likeness of succeeding generations to their predecessors, because none of them was created just to exist once and for all by itself, whether to continue for ever, or to pass away without none to succeed it.
Does the above passage refer to the possibility of God creating animals that would then produce new ones of the same kind, or does it refer to the possibility of God creating animals that would eventually give rise to animals of different kinds?
7. Read no.s 22-23 (pp. 229-230). Augustine subscribes to the then-current scientific theory of "spontaneous generation," i.e., that maggots and flies spontaneously come to life in rotting meat. (Never mind for the moment that moderns know the maggots are not spontaneously generated, but come from eggs which are laid in the meat by insects.) What philosophical problem does Augustine say the theory of spontaneous generation creates for those who study creation?
Augustine's answer is phrased as follows: "...possibly there was some natural tendency in all animated bodies, so that they already had seeded and threaded into them beforehand, as it were, the first beginnings of the future animalcules, which were going to arise." How might we apply this same principle, based on a now-outdated scientific theory, to the more current idea of biological evolution?
8. Read par. 30 (p. 234). What does Augustine say is the defining aspect of humankind, the aspect in which man is made "in the image of God?"
Do you think that the distinctive characteristic of humanness is something we can measure with current technology? Why or why not?
9. Read Book V, no. 12 (p. 282). Does Augustine argue that the act of creation is a single act, or a series of acts? Was there a time before the beginning of the universe, according to Augustine? Tell what you know about what cosmology, a modern branch of physics, says about this question.
10. Read Book V, no. 41 (p. 297; note that it is two paragraphs long). Can this philosophy be said to admit the possibility of biological evolution?
11. Optional: If you are interested in Augustine's mathematical interpretation of why there are six days of creation and not some other number, see Book IV, beginning on page 241.
20 June 2014 in Books, Education, at home and elsewhere, History, Science | Permalink | Comments (2)
Darwin's liberal arts program.
Darwin is writing about his own ideas for a redesigned "modern liberal arts curriculum:"
Last week I tried to expand a bit on the concept of the Liberal Arts as "the skills of a free man". I described the purpose of the ancient and medieval liberal arts education as being to develop a general and adaptable set of skills that allowed the liberally educated person to understand and reason about the world, and I attempted to contrast this type of education from being trained to perform some one task or set of tasks well.
The classic set of liberal arts is: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy
Some of these disciplines are defined rather differently now than they were in the pre-modern world, and the modern world presents its own particular challenges to understanding, so I think it's worth thinking a little on how one might update this list.
Darwin goes on to list thoughts on a slightly different set of arts: history and literature; writing and rhetoric; philosophy; language, grammar and linguistics; mathematics; natural science; computer science; and social sciences. Please go and read his thoughts; this post is my response.
Even though I took a concentration in the sciences in high school, and went on to major in engineering, I appreciate and share the goal of producing broadly educated individuals who have a sense of the way different disciplines interrelate and who have had practice in writing, in forming arguments, and in taking account of the whole human person in their work in the world.
But I don't think liberal arts colleges always succeed in this goal, particularly today. I think there are three major problems here:
Number one: the leftist political slant of nearly every liberal arts department in the country. Slant is inevitable, but it shouldn't always be in one direction, and departments ought to conscientiously try to correct it. They don't.
Number two: Education isn't broad, general, and adaptable, and it limits the ability of the educated person to think and reason about the world, when mathematics and physical science are absent or only afterthoughts. It's utterly ridiculous to call an education "broad" and "adaptable" when the graduates have only a vague understanding of the physical laws that govern the world they live in; a poverty of knowledge about the human body, the organisms that inhabit its surroundings, and the materials that make those surroundings; and ineptitude with the mathematical language in which we express relationships among all these things.
Number three: the declining academic standards of those colleges. Some of this is associated with the leftist slant, in my opinion -- not that leftist slants are necessarily less academically rigorous than rightist slants, but "slant" is generally expressed by ignoring whole points of view and areas of study. Theology, Western civ, and military history, once important aspects of their fields, are gathering dust. If it was a rightward slant, we'd see different things ignored. That's part of it. Another part of it is simple grade inflation and reduced reading loads. The physical sciences and engineering just have not suffered from this as much.
To sum up: I don't think a lot of liberal arts colleges really are delivering what Darwin describes as the mission of the liberal arts.
I haven't much advice about how to fix political slant or grade inflation, but I do know something about the sciences and mathematics. And here I will try to strengthen my liberal-education cred a little bit more: Even though in college I specialized in chemical engineering, and even though in graduate school I had to get even more narrowly specialized, at heart I am a science generalist: I enjoy being at least a little bit conversant in everything much more than I enjoyed becoming an expert in a tiny little area of materials science. This is one of the reasons why staying home to educate my children attracted me more strongly than going on to look for work in research, when it was time to make a decision. I could maybe make an argument for a liberal sciences major to complement the liberal arts major: why not develop a generally adaptable set of skills that would allow the person so educated to understand and reason about the physical world and its laws? (Bonus: the objective nature of physical laws insulates such a program, just a bit more, against political slant and grade inflation.) I could even point to my chemical engineering major and suggest that it comes pretty close to actually embodying a liberal science/engineering major, since the curriculum is a fairly broad combination of science and technology areas (particularly if you take biology electives). It's really why I felt so comfortable there as an undergraduate.
Here are some thoughts. I am cribbing a little bit from what I wrote in Darwin's comboxes.
Mathematics. The key to making math work as a liberal art is to think of it as a means of expanding cognitive abilities. It isn't all calculation - it is a means of understanding the world and what is in it, how stuff moves around, interferes with other things, increases and decreases. Many people don't get to see the beauty of mathematics, even if someone has been wise enough to show them its utility.
MrsDarwin wrote in response to that comment,
One of the ways I've tried to make our homeschooling different from my own experience is that I'm trying to present math as a mode of thinking, not just as an exercise in memorization....
I, like Darwin, worked my own way through Saxon Math, but although I learned much about following formulas exactly as they were presented to me, I learned little to nothing about mathematics as "understanding the world and what is in it, how stuff moves around, interferes with other things, increases and decreases"....But that could also be because math and science had never, not even in my early years at school, been presented as anything other than formulas or drudge. I do think that if I had been inculcated with an interest in, if not a love for, math from an early age, my later studies would have borne more fruit. But I also think that having a good instructor would have been key.
Mind you, not every scientist or engineer winds up with the attitude toward math that I have. But my experience was that (except for proof-based geometry and much later, in graduate-level continuum mechanics, which sounds like science and was taught by an aerospace engineering professor but is really math) it wasn't in my mathematics classes that the "beauty" of math happened. It was in science and engineering classes. It is in the study of "stuff" that it becomes clear how math works its magic on it: setting limits on the world, describing how that stuff moves around, increases and decreases. Writing a mass balance on a differential element of a spherical shell -- a basic problem in introductory chemical engineering -- always felt beautiful to me.
Yeah, I am kind of a weirdo. Please don't roll your eyes at me.
That being said, I would think that proof-based geometry would tie in neatly to the liberal arts curriculum. You could easily put a historical emphasis or logic emphasis on it, or even use it to substitute for a different type of logic course. I plan to use proof-based geometry as the main way of including logic in my homeschool curriculum.
But geometry is so useful with such wide application that it goes beyond logic. Geometry, the calculus specific to understanding related rates, and maybe a study of functions -- any of these could be applied to a wide range of intellectual activities.
Sciences. If you have to only have one science, I nominate physics. For one thing, it gives you a shot of putting all that mathematics in context -- of working together with mathematics to demonstrate how we use it to grasp the world. For another thing, even elementary Newtonian physics does a good job of demonstrating how things are not always as they seem -- how we become fooled by the specifics around us into misunderstanding general laws. Air resistance and friction and frames of reference create so many red herrings! For a third thing, it's the most "generally applicable" of all sciences. Biology is just chemistry at bottom, and chemistry is just physics at bottom. For yet another thing, it encourages the contemplation of the fundamental nature of the material world. It is the interface of creation.
But since "general" is the aim, it might be better to have a little physics, a little chemistry, a little bio, and then maybe an elective in some other area of science.
How to design such a course in order to create scientifically literate citizens would be instructive. And difficult: to take two whole semesters of the chemistry program, for instance, barely scratches the surface of chemistry. You would want to design it from scratch, not just rely on the introductory material that science majors have to take. You want a "chemistry for liberal arts majors" that isn't just code for "chemistry for people who hate math and need an easy way to get the science credit the stupid college says they have to have." And in many universities that would be hard: the chemistry department will want to save its best teachers for its own students (the chemistry majors). So unless you have buy-in from the department chair, and professors who have a passion for sharing their subject with students in other majors, it'll be so hard to put together a quality science series.
Languages. In countries where English is not the spoken language, I would require the study of English for the same reasons that the medievals studied Latin and Greek: it is a modern-day lingua Franca. But here in English-speaking North America, I would advise learning a second language: not so much for the ability to converse in the language or to read its literature, but for the cognitive development and deep knowledge of "how language works" that comes from translating one's thoughts into another idiom. I don't think you can really understand your own language until you have studied a different one for long enough to get its grammar and it's mode of thought. Sure, you could learn about language by studying linguistics instead. I have never taken linguistics, so I can't really judge. But my instinct is to say that you can learn enough of what is generally applicable about language by delving into the process of learning one language well.
Computer science. Darwin had some thoughts about this in his post. I agree with them. If you are going to have a basic understanding of the social forces that shape the modern world, then at this point in history you need to have an understanding of computing. I suggested "a notion of the algorithm" as the fundamental concept around which to build a liberal computing art. Darwin has some more ideas. Whatever you include, I think it would be instructive to include a little bit of computer programming: just enough to demonstrate the thought process that goes into instructing a computer to execute step-by-step instructions. See how a loop works, and an if-then command. Experience the frustration of accidentally dividing by zero. Debug something: discover how important accuracy really is when you are dealing with a machine that cannot guess what you really meant. Understand a tiny bit of what makes human intelligence so unlike machine language, and appreciate the human accomplishment that is inventing computer languages.
I think what I have written here demonstrates a piece of my educational philosophy, or maybe you could call it a bias, or a theme that pervades my understanding of learning. It is this: To acquire mastery of a skill is a way to acquire generally applicable knowledge.
This has certainly played out in my own life. I could not appreciate the general beauty and utility of mathematics until I exercised my mathematical knowledge in wrestling with physics and engineering problems. I could not have taught myself Latin and Spanish (enough to teach them to children) without the experience I had being taught French -- a specialization! -- to fluency. To the extent that I understand the notion of an algorithm, the process of formulating a problem in the way a machine can understand, and other abstract aspects of computer science, I understand them because I have written computer programs, and struggled to debug and improve them.
I think you can't really learn linguistics until you've learned to speak a language. I think you can't really say you appreciate music until you've attempted to play an instrument well.
You might argue, well, linguistics is more than learning the grammar and vocabulary of one single language. Music is far more than convincing a French horn to emit the notes written on the page. Mathematics is more than a mass balance. And so forth and so on. You need context.
Yes. You need context. But I think it isn't so terribly hard to start with a practical skill and work outward to generalize it. One could argue that the necessary context is provided by acquiring practical skills in a variety of fields -- as mathematics, physics, and philosophy work together to create context for the understanding of creation.
Or we could put it this way. The liberal arts are supposed to educe an individual who has a general and adaptable set of skills. I argue that to be able to specialize -- to be able to dig deeper -- to be able to apply knowledge -- to make the abstract practical and concrete -- to check one's theories against the problem of the physical universe is itself a "generally applicable skill" that is utterly necessary in order to reason about the world.
And you can't acquire that generally applicable skill without practice specializing, without practice developing expertise in something, without practice in "practical skills" here and there, without asking yourself if reality confirms that your thoughts are correct.
22 October 2012 in at home and elsewhere, Education, Engineering, Language(s), Music, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Sugary.
The article content is, actually, interesting, but what grabbed my attention was the stupid posed lab photo.
"Hey, Mr. P.I. -- sorry, that's doctor P.I. -- you, hold this blue folder and make a serious face while you read aloud to the visiting research associate.
Okay, now, we need this photo to look all sciencey and stuff, so why don't you put some lab equipment on the desk. No, not that lab equipment, the new sparkly lab equipment.
No, don't fill it with that transparent solution you were studying. Too boring. Hey, kid, run down the hall and get me an orange Fanta out of the vending machine. Okay, now SMILE BIG. Not you, professor, just the girls. Say cheese!"
25 January 2012 in Media, Science | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
"Wakefield's article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent."
Wow. If the allegations referred to in this British Medical Journal editorial are true -- that scientist Andrew Wakefield, who was being paid by law firms who wanted to sue vaccine companies, deliberately manufactured data linking vaccines to autism -- then Wakefield has blood on his hands.
Count me in among the mothers who (back in 2000 when my first child was born) chose to vaccinate on a delayed and modified schedule in part because of the doubts engendered by reports like Wakefield's 1998 paper in the respected British journal Lancet.
It has been suggested for a long time that the preponderance of the evidence since Wakefield's report tended to refute the alleged vaccine-autism connection, and I had come to believe that it was in error -- one of those common dead-end pathways in scientific research. Eventually, the paper was even retracted, as does happen sometimes when there prove to be mistakes. I no longer had a concern about vaccines and autism specifically. I hadn't been following the story closely since then, and so I wasn't expecting a finding of fraud.
Full disclosure: I'm still unhappy with vaccines that have a fetal-tissue connection. I still prefer to give kids one vaccine at a time the first time they get one, so that the cause of any reaction can be known. I'm supportive of religious- and philosophical-exemption laws. And I am aware of the concerns about vaccine reactions of other kinds, and am understanding of the nervousness with which many parents approach them, as well as being generally sympathetic with a low-medical-intervention and individual- rather than population-focused medicine.
But this? Outright falsification of medical data that affected vaccination decisions (and possibly disease outbreaks) in several countries, as well as influencing the direction of autism research?
I can't figure out whether I'm outraged more as a mother or as a scientist.
(Knowing me, probably as a scientist.)
Mainstream-type folks often like to characterize alternative-type folks as crackpots. Homeschoolers know this. Home-birth mamas know this. Mothers who practice extended breastfeeding know this. Consumers of alternative medicine of all kinds know this. People who source some of their food outside the mainstream production/processing industry know this. Hey, religious people know this. It's annoying to see experts whose knowledgeable advice you rely on, referred to as crackpots, or evil.
It's even more annoying when some of the "experts" DO turn out to be crackpots, or evil, or both.
Chemistry blogger Derek Lowe weighs in:
The 1998 paper that linked MMR vaccination with autism has had a long way to fall. It made, of course, a huge media sensation, and energized the whole vaccination/autism controversy that still (in spite of evidence) goes on. But it didn't look very robust from the start, scientifically. And over the years it's gone from "Really needs shoring up" to "hasn't been reproduced" to "looks like there's something wrong with it" to "main conclusions retracted" to the final, lowest level: outright fraud.
Here's a good history of the whole affair in the BMJ. And here's the first part of a series of articles by Brian Deer, the journalist who dug into the study and found how fraudulent it really was. Not one of the 12 cases in Wakefield's original study hold up; the data were manipulated in every single one to make it fit his hypothesis. His hypothesis that he was getting grant money for. His hypothesis that he was already planning lawsuits around, before the study even started.
His hypothesis, I might add, that has led to completely unnecessary suffering among the unvaccinated children this scare has produced over the years, and has diverted enormous amounts of time, energy, and money away from useful study of autism. This sort of deliberate action is really hard to contemplate, as a reasonable human being - it's like some sort of massive campaign to persuade people to throw bricks through the windows of ambulances.
In a better world, we'd be getting expressions of sorrow and contrition from all the celebrities and others who've profited from this business. But that's not going to happen, is it?
06 January 2011 in Bad things happen, Science, Science (Biology), Science (Pediatric Research), What's Wrong with the World | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)
Derek Lowe, defending chemistry blogging against the usual charges (no fact-checking, no editorial oversight, yadda yadda yadda) is absolutely right:
There is indeed a lot of inaccurate nonsense on the internet. And everyone should read what they find online with a thought to who's written it, and why. But everyone should do the same with stuff that's printed on flattened sheets of dead trees, too, even if there are flattened-dead-tree-sheet editors and fact checkers. This is no place to list the stories that have been horribly messed up by even the most respectable of the old media. I'm thinking of a good list right now; any well-informed person should be able to. (If you can't, you're not as well-informed as you think you are). And there is indeed a lot of good science reporting in newspapers and magazines, although we can't ignore the fact that there's an awful lot of lazy and sloppy science reporting, too.
But there's a lot of inaccurate nonsense in the peer-reviewed literature, too. Without editors and reviewers there would surely be more, but too much junk gets through as it is. And if you want to see that stuff flagged, you'll do well to read the chemistry blogs.
Professional journalists -- even (especially?) sci-tech journalists -- don't have a monopoly on the wide dissemination of sci-tech information anymore. And we're all better off for it.
15 October 2010 in Media, Science, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A silly physics joke I hadn't heard.
From Jamie at Light and Momentary. To my delight, much like another silly physics joke I have long appreciated, it also involves cows.
Of course, I might change it to "interrupting viscosity" or possibly to "interrupting chemical potential." We are, after all, engineers here.
24 October 2009 in Humor, Science | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
The final form of the basic recipe: Whole wheat bread from a machine, with soaked flour.
(Other posts on soaked-flour recipes in the bread machine:
an introduction and experiment #1 on keeping the yeast dry,
experiment #2 (keeping the yeast dry with some of the dry ingredients),
results of #2,
experiment #3 (mix in the pan with only 1/2 tsp of yeast) and experiment #4 (soak the flour and liquid and add the rest later),
the successful results of #3 and a consideration of how baking like this would fit into my schedule,
leaving out the sugar,
the results of leaving out the sugar,
the same bread with sugar but without gluten)
Results of the no-added-gluten bread with 3/4 tsp, rather than 1/2 tsp, of yeast:
Not quite perfection (the top is kind of gnarly), but the right amount of rise and a good texture.
Here it is soaking and rising in the pan before the machine came on:
So, to sum up, I started with a recipe for "buttermilk whole wheat bread" in the bread machine. Here's how I adapted the recipe for soaking:
Left out the added wheat gluten
Halved the yeast
Reserved the salt and added it to the top of the dough after mixing
And here's the procedure I used with my bread machine:
Added to the bread pan 1 and 1/2 cups whole milk soured with 1 and 1/2 Tbsp white vinegar; 2 Tbsp coconut oil; 3 cups whole wheat flour; 1 and 1/2 Tbsp sugar; 3/4 tsp bread machine yeast
Locked the pan on the machine, set it on "quick bread," and allowed it to mix the dough. Stopped the machine after the bread was mixed, when the machine entered the BAKE cycle.
Sprinkled 1 tsp salt on top of the dough.
Set the machine to "whole wheat" and set the timer such that the machine would not come on until the dough had rested and risen at least 8 hours in the pan.
The next thing I'll try to do is adapt my family's favorite recipes to this method.
11 April 2009 in Food, clothing, and/or shelter, Homemaking for engineers, Recipeblogging, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Same bread with sugar, but without gluten.
Last time I left the sugar out of my low-yeast, long-soak-and-rise bread machine bread. The results were pretty good. This time I kept the sugar and left out the added gluten.
Both loaves --- the one without sugar and the one without gluten --- baked up to a similar texture, with a similar flavor. They're both a little short, but they still have a wonderfully soft texture --- I guess that's the soaking.
I think I will continue to put sugar in my bread, because we are all very fond of honey-oatmeal bread and molasses-rye bread. If I always put some kind of sugar in the bread, then I'll get more-or-less consistent results, I guess. But I think I will perhaps stop putting gluten in soaked bread recipes.
I wonder, now, if I can get the loaf to rise a little higher (even without added gluten) if I add just a bit more yeast. I think that will be the next experimental bread.