Random Tuesday Fact

Gack! Or as the White Rabbit said, "I'm late. I'm late. I'm very, very late..." (or something like that; I'm too lazy to get up and check my Annotated Alice).

Here's a quick one for today:
(The photo is of the Large Hadron Collider.)

Top 10 Scientific Discoveries of 2008 (yes, I do know it's 2009, but did you not read the second sentence after "Gack!" above?)

More later - hopefully by Thursday...photos, thanks, and all that jazz! Wishing you all a lovely week!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random Tuesday Fact

Hah! I'll bet you thought I've forgotten. ;)

Inspired by Ian's (First Contact) post, I set up the telescope last night and the guys and I viewed Jupiter and the 4 largest Jovian moons.

While not quite as clear as the photo above (courtesy of NASA), it was pretty darned close. Ds#1 spotted the bands first, and then we all saw them. Granted on our lousy 'scope, Jupiter had to be dead-centered and very focused.

I spent half the evening trying to remember the names of the four largest moons. Ds#1 and I remembered Io, Ganymede, and Europa pretty quickly, but Callisto took a good while longer. (And then I smacked my head because any fan of the X-Men comics will remember Callisto in that motley pack of underground mutants...but I digress...)

Jupiter has many, many moons (I lost track of the last count from the most recent fly-by), but the 4 largest moons have been known ever since Galileo trained his telescope on the gas giant. And, yes! You can see the 4 moons through the most modest 'scope. It's pretty fun, if you can stay up, to watch them actually move around Jupiter.

Alas, the Great Red Spot, a perpetual super-storm that's been on Jupiter ever since humans first gazed upon it with instruments, was not to be seen.

Do you have a telescope or an observatory near you? Have you ever star-gazed?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random Tuesday Fact

...which is a day late, but this time, I have my satellite internet connection to blame. I was all set to write this up last evening, but the connection winked out and never came back before I went to bed.

Just a little fact today: sugar is nature's antifreeze. This is why some cool weather crops are best planted in the fall (when the weather turns colder every day) than in the spring (when the weather actually gets warmer every day, heading toward summer).

Examples? Carrots, cabbage and beets.

And on the topic of veggies, peas, which normally do fine in the spring, kind of sucked for us this year. It was such a wet spring that dh got them in a little late, and then we had a stretch of really hot weather which didn't make the plants happy. So, our harvest this year was much, much smaller than last year's. Had some for dinner the previous night: butter and Jane's Mixed Up Crazy Salt does wonders for most foods. Dh made potato salad last night: our potatoes, our eggs, our celery, and our dill. If we weren't so lazy, it'd be our mayo as well. Our plan is to make our own pickle relish this year. Does anyone have a good pickle relish recipe to share with us? :)

Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians today!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random Tuesday Facts

Just a short one today because I didn't get as much computer time as I'd hoped. So, what's the random fact?

Sharp knives. Ok, so that's not really a fact. But every kitchen should have at least one pair.

Yeah, really. Dh is an excellent cook, and one thing he insists on is high quality knives kept sharp. We've heard elsewhere that dull knives are what causes accidents, and I believe it. After trying to eviscerate a chicken at a friend's house with a dull knife of hers (and stabbing myself...luckily, not seriously...with the knife), I was thrilled to cut up a chicken a few days later with a knife that dh honed for me right before cutting. The job is made so much easier with a good knife.

We have Henckels and Cutco knifes that we're very fond of. Do you have some knives that you like and do you keep them sharp?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random Tuesday Facts

It's been a lovely at-home day. I had planned on taking the kids to a couple of academic talks, but opted to give them, and me, a rest from running around, and, instead, stay home to enjoy the lovely daffodils.Perhaps I can even work on my sweater, which is progressing (although as soon as I finish it, it'll be summer weather).
Anyway, I had grand plans to type a long post today. In fact, I had already hand-written it, but then I saw the following article, which will also serve as my random fact of the day. So instead of typing in the long post, I'm going to make soap and then play board games with my sweet boys. :)

Computer Vision Syndrome

How are the rest of you enjoying your week?

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe

Random Tuesday Facts + thanks!

Some little snippets of Tuesday facts for you today:

1) As my ds#1 likes to tell people: infinity is not a number; it's a mathematical concept.

2) If you've had a dry spell writing in your blog (oh yeah, that's me), here's some advice on how to prime that pump: How to Generate Great Content Week After Week by Write to Done

And my thanks? It goes to Joanna, Ms. Product Body herself! My order of Whipped Shea Butter (order now before the summer heat prevents their shipment!) arrived with extra goodies from Jo: a sample of Crush on You in Baked Bread scent (I have to keep reminding myself not to eat my bath and body products) and her ta-da!! totally perfected Creme Fresh! To say it's a delightful and emollient cream doesn't do it justice; you need to order one yourself and try it!

Ok, have to run again. Hope you are all having a nice start to the week! I was feeling a bit harried and grumpy this morning, but then I won a book from Algonquin Books - through Twitter, no less!, so that perked me right up. :)

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe

Random Tuesday Facts

We're home...hooray!! The trip was really great overall, and I hope to post about it soon, with photos. In the meantime, I wanted to let folks know I'm back and will be starting to visit your blogs again. :)

Also, it's Random Tuesday Facts once again and I have a couple for you.

1) For those in the U.S.: Unless it's high travel season and you're on a tight schedule with no wiggle space, don't book a hotel in advance. Pick up one of those Travel Coupon booklets, such as this oneand save yourself a ton of money. A nice young man at the Comfort Inn in Fruita, CO, told us that it's way better than the AAA discount of 10%. He said that our coupon saved us $30 for that particular motel.

2) A friend remarked about something being "ironic" and it reminded me that many people misuse the word "irony" when they mean "coincidence". Irony is defined as (and I'll use the Dictionary.com definitions since they're very similar to the ones in my American Heritage Dictionary definitions): 1) the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, "How nice!" when I said I had to work all weekend; 2) an outcome of events contrary [emphasis mine] to what was, or might have been, expected, as well as the incongruity of this.

Coincidence, on the other hand, is defined as: 1) a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance: Our meeting in Venice was pure coincidence; 2) the condition or fact of coinciding.

My favorite memory of learning the meaning of irony was in grade 8: the English teacher showed us a cartoon with the headline, "Olympic swimmer drowns in bathtub" - morbid but a great way to demonstrate irony!

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe

Random Tuesday Facts - day late, dollar short

Since the semantic English theme was so popular last week, I thought I'd continue it, but with a science twist!

Light year - is a unit of distance, not time (as some sci-fi shows have sometimes erroneously used it). It's the distance light travels in a vacuum in a year; that is, 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers.

Theory, hypothesis - when people think about the word hypothesis, they think only of an idea that is to be tested in a science class. And when people use the word theory, they use it synonymously with hypothesis, which is interchangeable with idea. In the scientific community, however, the two terms are vastly different and can't be interchanged.

In science, a hypothesis is an idea - indeed something to be tested. However, a theory is not just an idea. A theory can be thought of as an hypothesis that has graduated: it's been tested numerous times, yielding the same results (within an acceptable margin of error), and is taken by the scientific community to be something close to fact.

The beauty of science is that it's constantly changing - as we learn more about the universe, we can add to or subtract from an idea. It doesn't necessarily mean the principle constructs of a particular theory is wrong; just that our understanding of it was still incomplete.

The main problem lies in the fact that the general public and the scientific community don't use the word theory in the same way. I cringe every time I hear the term "it's just a theory" used in a sneering sort of way.

And on a "lighter" note (heh):"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe

Random Tuesday Facts

...because Julie (Cool Mom Guide) begged for it, and I hate to see her beg. Heh! Random facts are as good as random thoughts, right?

Today, we'll tackle the English language...but not too hard since I don't want it to get a concussion. I'd like to highlight the nit-picky distinctions between these pairs: Farther/Further, Eager/Anxious, Use/Utilize.

Farther refers to a greater physical distance, while further means to a great extent, or more.

Eager means to look forward to something, or a happy anticipation of something, while anxious means the nervous anticipation of something, not exactly looking forward to, but more of a dread. An easy way to remember the difference is that "anxious" come from the same root as "anxiety."

Use...well, you all know what that means, whereas utilize means to use something for a purpose for which it was not intended. See this page for a more detailed explanation and an example.

And to round off this intense lesson *snort*, I leave you with a funny (which I had first seen at Diane's Much of a Muchness blog) - "He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe

Random (Facts) Tuesday

As you probably know, I can't seem to do exactly what everyone else does...so this variation is on the Random Thoughts Tuesday theme.

This week, I want to post something cool that ds#1, my just-turned-13 year old shared with me:

The blue that is seen on most birds, such as blue jays and Eastern bluebirds is not a color. Rather, it's what is known as a structural color and depends on the physical structure of the feathers to reflect certain wavelengths of light. Destroy the structure, and the color is gone.

Reds, yellows, and browns, etc. are true colors and result from pigmentation (melanins, carotenoids, or porphyrins). (Eastern bluebird image from http://animal.discovery.com/guides/wild-birds/d-h/eastern-bluebird.html)

Reference: Handbook of Bird Biology by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe