Random Notes from a Crank

I'd like for someone to give me a scientific explanation as to why chili tastes better after you've cooked it, stored it in the refrigerator, and eaten it later.

Here are some interesting stats and factoids from the May Harper's Index:

• Number of weeks the median American head of household had to work to support a middle-class family in 1985: 40
• In 2022: 62
• Percentage increase over the past two decades in the number of Americans over 65 in the labor force: 132
• Percentage increase since 2011 in the number of managers in the U.S. labor force: 32
• Factor by which this is more than the overall increase in U.S. workers: 2.5 

And here are some more the April 3/10 issue of The Nation:

• Amount the United States spent on its military in 2020: 778 billion
• Number of Iraqi citizens killed in direct war-related violence since the 2003 U.S. invasion: 275,000
• Amount the U.S. paid private companies for products and services during the Iraq War between 2003 and 2007: 85 billion
• Estimated number of people killed directly in major U.S. wars since September 11, 2001: 900,000

The Nation had a good reprint of their editorial in that issue about how they came out against the Iraq War. What a waste of lives and resources. We never should have invaded Iraq, a position I shared with the editorial staff of The Nation.

Random Notes from a Crank

I'm in the midst of reading Range: Why Generalist Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, and in Chapter 4: "Learning, Fast and Slow," he relates a lot of educational research that I already knew about spacing learning, generating educated guesses even if they're wrong, and self-testing. 

Another concept is interleaving, which is in contrast to blocked practice, which is when one practices the same thing or procedure over and over and over. In contrast, is varied or mixed practice, which researchers call "interleaving." With mixed practice, you vary the practice, so your mind can revisit the points, procedures, or moves. 

I came to one passage in the chapter that applies directly to my son. One of the sports he plays is competitive basketball. He's a strong ball handler and shooter, but he needs to do better at free throws. 

Here's the passage that stands is this one: "The 'desirable difficulty' coiner himself, Robert Bjork, once commented on Shaquille O'Neal's perpetual free-throw woes to say that instead of continuing to practice from the free-throw line, O'Neal should practice from a foot in front of and behind it to learn the motor modulation he needed." 

It's a technique to try. 

A few years ago I watched The Twilight Zone from the start, season 1 episode 1, to the end, which is season 5 episode 36. Seems like the appropriate time to rewatch all those fine episodes again. 

I could used to this working from home gig. I can't remember the last time I wore pants or jeans. I wear athletic shorts in the house, and then I change into shorts or athletic pants when I walk the dog or venture to a store. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I know the ingredients of hot dogs are notoriously sketchy, but every once in a while a good old hot dog just hits the spot. The other day I just had a hankering for a hot dog, so I got myself a chili dog. 

I actually prefer Chicago-style hot dogs sans the raw onions. 

When my siblings and I cleaned out my dad's apartment after he died, no one else wanted a number of my parents' cooking utensils, so I snapped them up. One of those that I inherited is a serrated knife for cutting into grapefruit. I've been eating the hell out of grapefruit lately.

The whole deal makes me think about the nutritional qualities of grapefruit. Check out the stats on grapefruit. Mash the links if you're interested. 

I was also thinking the other day why some scientist hasn't crossbred an orange with a grapefruit, so you could have the grapefruit taste, but you could peel it like an orange.  

I am re-watching the Ken Burns documentary about the Vietnam War. 

One of the books I'm reading right now is the biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, the book that inspired Hamilton the Musical. I first reader Chernow's biography of Grant, which I absolutely loved. The Hamilton biography is quite good, but because my store of knowledge about the Revolutionary War period is pretty strong, I'm not as smitten with the Hamilton biography as I was with the Grant one. 

I'm having my daughter read Gaiman's American Gods. It's a gateway to his other works. 

There is a certain art of not saying what you really want to say in email.

Random Notes from a Crank

I made a couple of new dishes based on recipes from Cooking Light and Milk Street magazines. The first was a slow cooker affair that used apricot preserves and jalapeños as the flavoring agent for boneless chicken thighs. They turned out like chicken sloppy joes. The second was a grated carrot salad that used a bunch of flat leaf parsley from my garden, so I got to use my grating implement of my food processor. 

There's some kind of varmint eating my tomatoes in my garden. I suspect it's a damn raccoon. 

Recently I've been researching dog breeds. Our dog is getting older, and when she passes, we'll probably get two dogs, one smallish dog for Mrs. Nasty and a dog I like. Because I want a dog that doesn't shed much and one that will make me take it for walks, the two breeds I'm interested in currently are the Vizsla and the German Shorthaired Pointer. 

Here are some links about those breeds if you're interested:

• Vizsla
• German Shorthaired Pointer

Rick Perry got early Daily Showed: "U.S. Energy Secretary Duped into Fake Interview with Russian Comedians." 

A scientist wrote a great opinion piece in the Washington Post: "I'm a Scientist. I'm Blowing the Whistle on the Trump Administration."

Random Notes from a Crank

I'm close to a decade late, but I've started watching Breaking Bad. I'm currently in season 2. 

A new show I've gotten into is FX's Taboo. At times I have a hard time clearly understanding the dialogue because it's set in London circa 1814. Here is Variety's initial take on the series. 

The esteemed Bill Moyers has some good advice on some certain news outlets to follow and read in "10 Investigative Reporting Outlets to Follow." I'm a fan of ProPublica, Mother Jones, and Real Clear Investigations.  

Since a few states have legalized marijuana and many have legalized medical marijuana, a recent article by Consumer Reports is notable. "Marijuana: Good for You or Dangerous?" distills a review by the National Academy of Sciences. More research is needed, but this conclusion in the article, "evidence that cannabis use will lead a person to smoke or trigger a change in their rates or patterns of other drug use, legal or illegal, was limited," does nothing to dispel people from talking about it as a "gateway drug."  

If you're on Twitter, I'm on there now: @Quintilian376. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I abhor how religion mixes in with politics. One of the most annoying things I find is when some politician prattles on about God this or Jesus that or how America is a "divine" nation. I especially hate when our so-called leaders cite Scripture as some "reason" for whatever @#$%ed up policy they want to implement. Regardless of all that and my distaste for organized religion and my agnosticism, Bonnie Kristian's "The Idolatry of the Donald" on The American Conservative is worth a read. 

John Oliver had a great segment on scientific studies and how they're reported on TV morning programs and elsewhere. It's a solid take on what is real science and what are good sources. We need many more replication studies. Check it out. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I was happily surprised to read Tom Philpott's article in the May/June issue of Mother Jones. In "Playing Chicken," the author informs readers about how Perdue, the chicken industry giant, has gone to not using antibiotics. Let's hope other meat producers follow their lead because Perdue has based its decision on science and the fact that antibiotics really don't significantly increase weight gain. 

The President killed it at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner. 

I'm not surprised at all that students who have a "consumer" mindset to their coursework often get lower grades than students who see themselves as learners. Read all about it in "Students with Consumer Mindset Get Lower Grades." The final ¶ is noteworthy because students are getting that attitude from somewhere: "Government, too, should be cautious when talking about the ‘value’ of higher education purely in terms of a financial transaction as it may encourage students to feel like they are simply buying their degree. As a result, they may start to develop a ‘you teach me’ attitude rather than one that fosters effortful engagement with their chosen subject.”

I'm glad to see the Game of Thrones tv series has rediscovered the Iron Islands. I suspect they'll play catch-up with the books as new happenings unfold. I had suspected Ian McShane will play Victarion Greyjoy, one of my favorite characters in the books, but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I've had John Brereton's The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925: A Documentary History for a long time, and I finally got around to reading it the other day. I usually enjoy examining writing from the 19th century because it's fun to read an older style of writing. I was reading a report by Adams Sherman Hill, and here's a passage that demands attention: "Awkward attitudes, ungrammatical or obscure sentences, provincial or vulgar locutions, fanciful analogies, far-fetched illustrations, ingenious sophisms, pettifogging subtleties, ineffective arrangement--all come in for animadversion; and corresponding merits for praise." It reads exactly as you would expect the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard to write, but I like the word pettifogging, which is a derivation of pettifogger, defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as a "petty, quibbling, unscrupulous lawyer" or "one who quibbles over trivia." I want to work that word into my vocabulary, and I may get a chance soon since tomorrow is Election Day.

I recently read "Ecosystems on the Brink" by Carl Zimmer in Scientific American. SA only gives you a preview unless you're a subscriber, but the upshot is that researchers are using mathematical models and empirical research to create early warning systems to try to stop ecosystems from crashing. The research is interesting and important, but what I'm more concerned about is whether homo sapiens really gives a damn about the environment and if  we're willing to actually do something about tipping points and the results of data-driven, scientific research. 

The Social Conquest of Earth

In the November issue of The Atlantic, Howard W. French profiles one of the most influential biologists and ecologists on the planet, E. O. Wilson (a U of Alabama alumnus, by the way).

I've been a huge fan of his work for a long time since he writes about important and intricate concepts to laypeople in compelling ways. From Biophilia to The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, from On Human Nature to Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, from The Future of Life to Anthill (a novel that I had no idea about), he articulates scientific knowledge and theoretical concepts in articulate and interesting ways

Check out French's "E. O. Wilson's Theory of Everything" if you have a chance, especially because it previews his next book that will come out in April: The Social Conquest of Earth. It should stir some controversy.

Roll Tide, Professor Wilson.

We All Emit Light

I was reading an article in Ode Magazine the other day titled "No Such Things as a Thing" by Lynn McTaggart. In the article, there's a section of it that really got me thinking, got me tripping on a concept.

You see, we all emit light--biophoton emissions to be exact.

The force is with us.

I'm going to quote the article at length since the author does a better job of explaining the concept than I could:

• McTaggart relates, "In 1970, while investigating a cure for cancer, German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp stumbled on the fact that all living things, from single-cell plants to human beings, emit a tiny current of photons, or light, which he labeled 'biophoton emissions.' Popp immediately understood that a living organism makes use of this faint light as a means of communicating within itself and also with the outside world" (38).
• Since then, Popp and over forty scientists have researched this phenomenon, and "They maintain that this faint radiation, rather that DNA or biochemistry, is the true conductor of all cellular processes in the body. They have discovered that biophoton emissions reside within DNA, setting off frequencies within the molecules of individual cells" (38).
• After years of experiments, "Popp recognized that he had uncovered the primary communication channel within a living organism, which uses light as a means of instantaneous, or 'non-local,' global signaling. Popp also discovered that these light emissions act as a communications system among living things. In experiments with a number of organisms, including human beings, he discovered that individual living things absorb the light emitted from each other and send back wave interference patterns, as though they are having conversations. Once the light waves of one organism are absorbed by another organism, the first organism's light begins trading information in synchrony. Living things also appeared to communicate information with their surroundings--bacteria with their nutritional medium, the inside of an egg with its shell. These 'conversations' also occur among different species, although the loudest and best dialogues are reserved for members of the same species" (38-9).

The connection that many folks will make after reading that infrormation is the how biophoton emissions sound similar to "the force" within the Star Wars movies even though Lucas took that concept from Maori mythology/religion--the idea that there is a life force that interconnects all beings/Nature, a more interesting Oversoul from my perspective that predates Emerson anyway.

I don't know how respected this view of living systems is though. I'm no scientist. But it's certainly interesting.

If biophoton emissions are indeed true, if that's how this all works, the Maoris were on to it before the folks in lab coats got to work.

Newton on Football

Click HERE for an interesting look at the "physics of the hit," a scientific look at the art of tackling.

I offer this link as a prelude to Super Bowl Saturday. 

The Steelers play serious defense. I like that.