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Had a wonderful three hour visit with my Mom on Sunday. I loved seeing the surprise on her face when I walked in...I realize it might not be too long before nothing will register when she sees me, but I hope that can be a long time from now. She was calmer and more coherent than she's been in months (at least when I've been around) and it was a joy to show her my needlework and look through hundreds of Facebook photos with her.
I've just ordered and received my copy of The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, on the recommendation of Ann Voskamp from A Holy Experience. When I get home I'm going to work my way through it in 13 weeks per her suggestion.
Rick Perry looks closer to running every day, and it appears that Mitt Romney will be the loser. Ah well...
I believe I've mentioned YNAB budget software before, but if you're not familiar with it, here's a nice review by Tim Challies. If I swore, I'd swear by it.
My conversion to Apple gets more complete all the time. I'm now running a MacBook Pro, an iPhone4, and an iPad2. As soon as life slows down, I'll finish the conversion by getting a Windows platform on the Mac so that I can run all the programs I use that aren't compatible with Mac or that Mac just hasn't mastered yet. Like Office 2010.
For you natural history and biology buffs, this is simply astounding.
And despite the references to evolution, here's another fascinating study:
Researchers from Oxford University studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of 55 human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains.
It's not because they are smarter, however, but because they need bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with the low light levels at high latitudes, the scientists said in a report of their findings in the journal Biology Letters.My summer is flying by, and it's time to start getting serious about the school year. With just two students left, my workload is not what it used to be, but I am determined to finish well. This year I will be teaching geometry to my boys and assisting in their history (still Tapestry of Grace). The rest they'll be taking at co-op or, in the case of John Caleb, the community college. I think I'll be driving more than teaching. 26 years ago I could hardly have imagined where this journey would lead!
And now, it's time for me to cool off with (another) Diet Coke. Have a great weekend, y'all!
Labels: Decorating, Devotional, Homeschooling, Money, Political Observation, Science, Technology, Texas, Weather
"I know it will be called blasphemy by some, but I believe that pi is wrong."That's the opening line of a watershed essay written in 2001 by mathematician Bob Palais of the University of Utah. In "Pi is Wrong!" Palais argued that, for thousands of years, humans have been focusing their attention and adulation on the wrong mathematical constant. Two times pi, not pi itself, is the truly sacred number of the circle, Palais contended. We should be celebrating and symbolizing the value that is equal to approximately 6.28 — the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius — and not to the 3.14'ish ratio of its circumference to its diameter (a largely irrelevant property in geometry).
Hey, I always think that twice the pi is a good thing :-)
Mathemeticians Want to Say Goodbye to Pi
hat tip: The Papa
Labels: Science
Spitting and urinating chimps 'replay Aesop's fable'
Labels: Science
Of course, this pales in importance to the loss of life, but in many cases, one has caused the other...
A University of Arizona researcher says you may want to grab one of those disinfectant wipes right before you grab a grocery cart.Professor Charles Gerba, the lead researcher, swabbed the handles of 85 carts in four states for bacterial contamination.
Gerba says 72% of the carts had a positive marker for fecal bacteria. When they examined some of the samples, they found Escherichia coli, also known as E. coli, on half of them.
Researchers say they actually found more fecal bacteria on grocery cart handles than you would typically find in a bathroom, mainly because bathrooms are disinfected more often than shopping carts.
Since most stores do not routinely wash and disinfect their carts, it's up to you to do it.
Scientists say this study helps explain why earlier investigations found kids who touch the handles, are more likely than others, to get infected with bacteria like salmonella.
Gerba also says you should pay attention to what you put in reusable shopping bags. Make sure your meats and veggies are wrapped because bags that are not washed on a regular basis can become a what he called a "bacterial swamp."
Carts one of dirtiest places in grocery store, study says
Labels: Science
As one who has spent much of the past decade on narcotics and other drugs prescribed for pain relief, I find this study very interesting. I'd love to see my brain on drugs!Labels: Science
Labels: Family, Food, Kids, Political Observation, Sanctity of Life, Science, Sundays, Theater of the Absurd, Weather
Labels: Science, Theater of the Absurd
Labels: Science
If you are trying to inculcate good study habits in your children, or if you're simply engrossed with how the learning brain operates, or as in my case, both, you need to read this.
For one thing, it will make you feel better about what you always knew about studying but your mom and the experts told you otherwise. They said study in the same place all the time, minimize distractions, etc. But you instinctively knew you studied best to music, lying on the floor while snacking.
For another thing, it helps to debunk what I've thought for a long time--that all the hoopla about different learning styles is way overdone and really has no basis in scientific research.
One of the reasons I've doubted it is because of my own personal brain quirks. I've always thought of myself as a visual learner, but there are whole areas where I don't learn visually. You've heard people say, "I can't remember names, but I never forget a face"? Well I'm the opposite. I remember the names but I can meet you today and not remember your face the day after tomorrow. I used to think of that as a moral failing, but I've learned that it's just the way my brain works (or doesn't). To make it even more confusing, I can probably identify by face on TV 90 out of 100 U.S. senators, and maybe 30% of U.S. representatives. I can hear the voices of most of them without looking at their faces and tell you who they are. If I don't know their names after hearing their voices, I can probably at least tell you their party affiliation. Isn't that weird? And yet let me meet one of The Papa's co-workers at a Christmas party and then run into him at the grocery store later in the week, and I won't think I've ever met him.
Learning styles are neither as set nor as universal as the past generation of experts has led us to believe. Some kids learn math best visually and literature aurally. Some kids learn science kinesthetically but a hands-on treatment won't help them learn history. And some of us learn best visually at one point in our lives and aurally in another. Moreover, I believe after working with quite a few children that just because they've been tagged as a visual learner doesn't mean you need to use a curriculum with them that is predominantly visual. That may even stunt their growth in other areas by helping them to believe they can only learn one way.
Lecture over. Read this and see what you think.
Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
hat tip: The Papa
Labels: Education, Homeschooling, Learning, Science
Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything
hat tip: Penny P.
Labels: Good Stuff, Science
Ship lost for more than 150 years is recovered
I have long been intrigued by Stonehenge and other "prehistoric" structures that were obviously the products of some pretty advanced minds...not only because of the logistics of building them but also because of the astronomic calculations that went into their placement and use. So I love reading about new discoveries associated with these messages from the past. Today, this news:
Sister monument to Stonehenge may have been found
Errors in Big Bang Data Larger Than Thought?ScienceDaily (June 14, 2010) — New research by astronomers in the Physics Department at Durham University suggests that the conventional wisdom about the content of the Universe may be wrong.
Graduate student Utane Sawangwit and Professor Tom Shanks looked at observations from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite to study the remnant heat from the Big Bang. The two scientists find evidence that the
errors in its data may be much larger than previously thought, which in turn makes the standard model of the Universe open to question. The team publish their results in a letter to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Launched in 2001, WMAP measures differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the residual heat of the Big Bang that fills the Universe and appears over the whole of the sky. The angular size of the ripples in the CMB is thought to be connected to the composition of the Universe. The observations of WMAP showed that the ripples were about twice the size of the full Moon, or around a degree across.
With these results, scientists concluded that the cosmos is made up of 4% 'normal' matter, 22% 'dark' or invisible matter and 74% 'dark energy'. Debate about the exact nature of the 'dark side' of the Universe -- the dark matter and dark energy -- continues to this day.
Sawangwit and Shanks used astronomical objects that appear as unresolved points in radio telescopes to test the way the WMAP telescope smoothes out its maps. They find that the smoothing is much larger than previously believed, suggesting that its measurement of the size of the CMBR ripples is not as accurate as was thought. If true this could mean that the ripples are significantly smaller, which could imply that dark matter and dark energy are not present after all.
Labels: Science
The Bible contains many metaphors, literary devices that work as word pictures and increase our understanding of the Creator and His creation. Many of them are meant only as metaphors...no one really believes that a man can have a heart of stone, for instance. Stone is the word picture that helps us understand just how hard, cold and dead the human heart is without the life-giving touch of grace.
But when we look at every word picture in Scripture as no more than a metaphor, we may be missing truths that God has meant us to experience in the natural world.
Yesterday I ran across this story:
Astronomers at the University of Sheffield have managed to record for the first time the eerie musical harmonies produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of the sun.
They found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.
In other cases they behave more like soundwaves as they travel through a wind instrument.
Using satellite images of these loops, which can be over 60,000 miles long, the scientists were able to recreate the sound by turning the visible vibrations into noises and speeding up the frequency so it is audible to the human ear.
Professor Robertus von Fáy-Siebenbürgen, head of the solar physics research group at Sheffield University, said: "It was strangely beautiful and exciting to hear these noises for the first time from such a large and powerful source.
While this may be a surprising finding, it should be totally believable to those familiar with the Psalmist's words:
3 Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars.4 Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies.(Psalm 148:2-4, NIV)
Why shouldn't this praise be literal music? We praise God with music, so why shouldn't we assume that the heavens could have been created to praise Him with music as well? And yet, for thousands of years, it's been heard by no one but the Creator and maybe His angels, just as all the brilliant colors in the deepest, darkest part of the sea have been visible only to His eyes until recently. He's now allowing us to hear the music of the heavens, but He created it for His own pleasure and is just now inviting us to share in His enjoyment!
It makes me wonder how many of the metaphors of the Bible (trees of the fields clapping their hands, heavens being glad, etc.) are also part of the natural order that we're just not aware of yet. What an opportunity it is for Christian astronomers, biologists, chemists, geologists to look for manifestations of God's voice and character in the arenas they study and to make them known to the world!
Labels: Devotional, Science
OSLO, May 23, 2010 (Reuters) — Whales and dolphins should get "human rights" to life and liberty because of mounting evidence of their intelligence, a group of conservationists and experts in philosophy, law and ethics said Sunday.
As disturbing as it is to me that we might pretend that any animal has "human" rights, I'm even more disturbed about the basis for this distinction between whales and other animals: intelligence and self-awareness. Let's admit it...going down this road does not portend well for unborn babies, mentally retarded children and adults, or those suspended in a coma or near-comatose state. If awareness of self and IQ are to be our measures for whether or not to extend human rights, then a large part of our population is in trouble, not to mention animals with smaller brains than whales.
"Human rights" urged for whales and dolphins
*Lyrics from "I Am the Walrus," by Paul McCartney and John Lennon
Labels: Science, Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd
If you read the article below on the moral life of babies, you may be interested to read Al Mohler's take, both on the methodologies of the study and the implications for worldview...
The Moral Life of Babies (and the Ideological Life of Adults)
Labels: Babies, Science, Social Observation
Attention: If you have a baby, are expecting a baby, or are a lover of babies, get yourself a big mug of coffee or a tall glass of sweet tea and read this admittedly long but delightfully informative article on the development of the moral life of babies. Despite the evolutionary explanations, you'll get a peek into the mind of the God who makes baby humans :-)
The Moral Life of Babies
Labels: Babies, Science, Social Observation