A Website for Action

My good friend Jerry in New Jersey read my "I am Pushed to the Limit" post about my next door burned out house. And Jerry sends me a great quote from Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher and mathematician who is considered "one of the great minds in Western intellectual history." (from Encarta)

"A long time ago, Blaise Pascal said that the world is in disarray because people no longer know hoe to sit quietly in their homes."

Oh, does that hit home for me! I have trouble saying "No" and I want to do it all myself - including rectifying inaction of government, citizens, corporations, etc., where action is called for; or visa-versa. And I want to do it NOW!

Well, thanks to Jerry and Blaise :-), an idea came forth for me to use the Internet to make a decisive move concerning disposition of the burned house ... and do it while sitting in my house. I built a one-page website for the "Citizen's Committee", made up of neighbors on my block, stating what we are doing while the house still stands and actions planned to facilitate demolishing the house. It is easily accessible to whoever may be concerned, including newspapers, radio and TV. And printouts make handy handouts at city council meetings, etc.

The "Citizen's Committee" website is at:
http://www.geocities.com/jackinwestok/East_Arapaho_200_Block_Committee.html

The website includes a picture of the burned out house. This is a case where a picture IS worth a thousand words.

I am Pushed to the Limit

December 28, 2001. A horrifying night I cannot get out of my mind ... nearly a year ago. My neighbor's house catches fire and a mother, age 41, and her two children, ages 11 and 12, are dead. The husband jumps off the roof and survives. These are my neighbors. These are my friends. And the burned shell of a house still stands - a reminder of the horror. I am pushed to the limit.

I am a patient person. Legal matters among family members cause delays. I don't want to add to their grief. The mayor and city council make promises and serve a 30-day notice to demolish the condemned building. Then the council serves another 30-day notice. Then the council serves another 30-day notice. ... etc. I am pushed to the limit.

I start organizing a block committee to show up in force at the next city council meeting and demand closure - that being demolishing the burned house. I find we are all pushed to the limit. I try to organize my thoughts, I try to write down things, ... and I am sitting here with writer's block, a headache and shaking hands. I am pushed to the limit.

I have to be realistic. I am heavily medicated for bipolar disorder - manic depression. Decompensation is always "just a step away" and I feel the aura that precedes losing stability. I am close to crossing the Rubicon. Do I risk harm to myself? I think I must take the risk because my neighbors need leadership. I notice a feeling among all of us of empowerment just from the few conversations about organizing a block committee. We need to make our position known. I am pushed to the limit.

Carrying in the Coal

Sitting in Goldmann's Main Street Hardware I am privileged to hear oral history from citizens often over 80 years old who still remember the life of pioneers settling the High Plains.

An older woman today saw a coal bucket for sale in the hardware store to use as decor near a fireplace. She reminisced how she had the chore to bring in a bucket of coal every evening. And with a broad smile she recalled that her parents never had to worry about her getting home late. She was afraid of the dark! So she always made sure to bring in the coal before sunset. The coal was carried from a coal crib around the back of the house into the house where it was used for heating and cooking.

With a laugh, my new found friend said that her brother who is six years younger claims he always carried in the coal. Well, she said, her brother distorts facts. She carried in a lot of coal before her brother reached an age where he could do it. I sensed that her brother is prone to an attitude that "women can't do men's work." She counters her brother's exaggerated memory of his own "male strength" by saying that for her carrying in coal was an easy job. As long as she did it before dark!

I got to thinking that on a remote plot of land with coyote howling, bobcats prowling, snakes slithering, ... etc., it is not a bit unreasonable that she was afraid of the dark.

Great lady! Great tales!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jack finds these words of Emerson spellbinding. I think: "It doesn't get any better than this."
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"To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends,
To appreciate beauty,
To find the best in others,
To leave the world a better place,
Whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived,
This is to have succeeded."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Turkey Shot Out of the Oven

The turkey shot out of the oven
and rocketed into the air,
it knocked every plate off the table
and partly demolished a chair.

It ricocheted into a corner
and burst with a deafening boom,
then splattered all over the kitchen,
completely obscuring the room.

It stuck to the walls and the windows,
it totally coated the floor,
there was turkey attached to the ceiling,
where there'd never been turkey before.

It blanketed every appliance,
It smeared every saucer and bowl,
there wasn't a way I could stop it,
that turkey was out of control.

I scraped and I scrubbed with displeasure,
and thought with chagrin as I mopped,
that I'd never again stuff a turkey
with popcorn that hadn't been popped

by Jack Prelutsky

The Invaluable Common Sense I Learned in a Farm Country Upbringing

Over the years I told many people I owed much of my success working in industry to the common sense I learned from my Oklahoma farm country upbringing: having farmer friends, working weekends on farms - shocking oats, loading bales of hay, picking cotton, helping to build a pig feeder, safely driving a tractor; work hard - "put in a day's work for a day's pay"; be trustworthy - "do what you say you will do, and do it on time if humanly possible"; show respect for the "boss" and for fellow workers; have pride in work; etc.

I got "book learning" at Weatherford High School and then the University of Oklahoma and Rutgers University - all wonderful schools for education in my chosen field of science. And my science education was essential for my success. But the common sense from my upbringing in farm country also led to success in science in ways too numerous to count.

In the magazine Successful Farming - Voice of the people on the land I find an article that is so reminiscent of the "down home" gift of common sense I owe to farm people and farm knowledge. There is a "ring" of the Scientific Method to the subject of collecting and using data to optimize farm production - and to the resourcefulness needed to gain knowledge from research and data handling with minimum effort (think cost.) A summary of the article is included with this post.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o
The call of the wild data
Article in Successful Farming - Voice of the people on the land by Katie Thompson
@agriculture online
2002-10-18 19:39:28.0
http://www.agriculture.com/default.sph/agNotebook.class?FNC=ArticleList__Aarticle_html___8249___800

Yours for the taking:
Data

It takes time to start using your data, and it should.

Step One: Look

"I always recommend to start with yield maps," says Robert [Pierre Robert, professor of precision agriculture at the University of Minnesota]. Get to know your fields. "Some may have more variability than others."

Step Two: Triage

Select 'management zones'. The best targets for improvement will be the fields with the most variability.

"Within the field, when he has several years of data, then he may start defining zones," says Robert. You have to narrow down your targets for a good reason: Money.

"Grid sampling is expensive," says Robert.

Step Three: Get more data

Grid sampling is soil testing done at intervals over an entire field, so that each 2.5 acres (or so) is tested separately. Soil testing can also be done on smaller areas -- management zones of a few acres, for example. The tests look at nutrients and pH of the soil.

"I would always look at pH," says Robert. Why? Because pH can have a big impact on plant growth.

Step Four: Use the data

Now you can do precision application of nutrients or precision liming, for example.

"Liming is always a good candidate for variable application for benefits," says Robert. "We have many examples where that works."

And beyond

The next step might be variable planting, where the planter automatically plants more or less seeds, depending on the quality of the soil at each position in the field.

"But that really requires some experiments," says Robert. It may not be the best solution for all fields.

Video of A VERY BIG Electrical Discharge :-)

Natural History online (September 2002) offers a free videotape of a humongous "electrical flash phenomena."
http://www.amnh.org/naturalhistory/

Since I was a kid I am fascinated by things like the movie props used in Frankenstein movies, serious scientific apparatus such as Tesla coils, etc., with dramatic display of electrical discharges.

So WOW! The online video from Natural History showing an electrical discharge "that stretches from the tops of thunderclouds (about ten miles above Earth) to the bottom of the ionosphere (about forty miles up) just about "knocks my socks off."

The electrical flash phenomena was videotaped for the first time by researchers working at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. (Video courtesy of Victor P. Pasko, Mark A. Stanley, John D. Mathews, Umran S. Inan, and Troy G. Wood.)

Note: In order to view the video clip, software that supports the MP3 file format such as the RealPlayer is needed. A link is given to install RealPlayer free at the RealNetworks website.
http://www.real.com/realone/index.html?src=player_redct
(Additional Note: Unless wanted, a "for-pay" subscription for "RealOne RadioPass" need not be turned in.)

QUOTE OF THE WEEK --------

"A series of failures may culminate in the best possible result."

-- Gisela Richter
(in www.DiabetesinControl.com newsletter)

Hypotheses of the Origin of Life

One of the exciting moments of my early scientific career in chemistry was reading the monograph "The Origin of Life on the Earth" published in 1957 by the Russian biochemist Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin (known only to me at the time as A.I. Oparin) 1894-1980. This was my first exposure to the hypothesis that chemicals with the potential to form replicative life, including amino acids, proteins, DNA, etc., can form in nature under conditions of the primordial earth.

So I am excited again like I was as a young man to read recent scientific research supportive of Oparin's ideas. News about the research appears in an article "Trapping DNA Through Thermophoresis" in the American Institute of Physics Physics News Update Number 610 #1, October 22, 2002 by Phil Schewe, James Riordon, and Ben Stein.

In experiments conducted by Dieter Braun and Albert Libchaber, fluorescent-tagged DNA molecules in a water media are repelled by a laser-generated hot spot and then "come back." Close observation showed a convection cell pattern about 20 microns across and with the DNA concentration enhanced by a factor of 1000.

These findings are especially interesting for me because the theory and application of non-equilibrium processes, including convection cell formation, are concepts commonly used in chemical engineering - and during my career I had the good fortune of working both in research chemistry and later in chemical engineering. Boy, that was enjoyable!

In summarizing the research, the authors of the Physics News Update article state: "Demonstrating a mechanism for confining early metabolic and replicative life forms in a far-from-equilibrium environment such as localized heat sources (e.g., hydrothermal vents) immersed in a cold ocean, should be of interest to biologists who ponder the advent of life."

Dining in Baku, Azerbaijan

My blog readers know I sometimes take interest in cuisine that is off the "beaten track." An example is my post [9/4/2002 8:20:32 PM] about cherryburgers made with 10% minced tart cherries mixed with lean burger meat. Unfortunately, fresh cherries are currently out of season in Oklahoma. But, not to be a "quitter", I got the idea of making cherryburgers with canned cherry pie filling. Bad idea! :-) I managed to make a "muckburger" that was barely edible.

Now my interest is perked by a "Tales From the Caucasus" column in the October 22 Moscow Times entitled "You Can't Beat the Taste: This Tomato's for Real" by Chloe Arnold in Baku, Azerbaijan. For example, my taste buds are whetted for Azeri cuisine by learning: "If you ask for a salad, the waiter will bring you a plate with two tomatoes, two cucumbers and a fistful of fresh herbs torn straight from the garden. Sometimes they're still clinging to clods of earth with perhaps a worm or two struggling to get away."

Continuing the description: "Because they taste so good, there's no need to char-grill them or roast them or smother them in fancy dressings. Azeris just sprinkle on a little salt and a dried herb called sumakh, which looks like fine red tobacco."

From the article, it sounds as if the real dining fun starts on leaving the capital Baku for the countryside. Evidently the basic menu choices are mutton, mutton and barbecued mutton served in the ubiquitous kebab style. :-) But there is a mutton delicacy for special occasions called khash that is worth reading about. Suffice it to say - "Tradition has it that the khash must be eaten before sunrise -- and accompanied by jugfuls of vodka." Hmmm. Now that sounds daring to try. ;-)

In mourning for Senator Paul David Wellstone and family members and friends

I mourn a fellow Jew, a fellow liberal, a fellow advocate for the mentally ill, a fellow decent human being ... and on and on.

After reading a message from Barry about the tragedy of Senator Wellstone's death today in an airplane crash, along with his wife, and one of his three children - and also with his close supporters, my first response is my mourning and then placing an order with Amazon for Senator Wellstone's book. I am compelled to read about his "compassionate agenda."

The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda
by Paul David Wellstone

The editorial reviews say it all about Senator Wellstone's great accomplishments, and what might have been :-(

-- Jack
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Amazon.com
"When senators think about running for president, they write books like The Conscience of a Liberal. Indeed, Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota thought about pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, but ultimately backed off. There's some speculation he'll run in 2004. Whatever the case, he's known in Washington as one of the Senate's most liberal members--giving his better-known colleagues Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton a run for their money in this category. The first part of the book explains Wellstone's unlikely ascension to the Senate (he was once a college professor), and some of his campaign war stories are fun reading for political junkies. One of the most amusing passages describes how he once nearly clocked New York Republican Alfonse D'Amato over a disagreement: "When the train reached the Senate chamber, I jumped out and lunged forward, intending to catch D'Amato and deck him. My body was shaking with uncontrollable anger." Another senator held him back, and Wellstone calmed down.

The bulk of The Conscience of a Liberal, however, is given over to laying out a political agenda that includes universal health care, reversing welfare reforms, prekindergarten education, raising the minimum wage, and campaign-finance reform. He closes with a call for a new politics: "This is not a conservative America.... There is a huge leadership void in this country that the Democratic Party, emboldened by political courage and a commitment to the issues that made our party great, can fill." Democrats looking for a candidate to support in the next presidential election may want to start here." --John J. Miller

Twenty-first Century "Caveat Emptor"

Of the many Latin expressions used in English, I best remember "caveat emptor" - Let the buyer beware.

I think of "caveat emptor" nearly every day in making purchasing decisions.

But I am impressed with a "new age" (my wording) expression used in the current Village Voice Mr. Roboto computer column in a long and useful discussion of various ink-jet cartridge cost-saving alternatives.

The article closes with a word of caution if shopping for ink-jet cartridge bargains on the Internet.

"Just promise you'll never do business with an e-merchant who doesn't offer a money-back guarantee in writing, or who lacks a fixed address and phone number. It'd be a shame if your humble quest for cheaper ink wound up enriching a Vladivostok fraudster, now, wouldn't it?"

So now I am going to think of not "enriching a Vladivostok fraudster" every time I think of "caveat emptor." But my sense of political correctness will probably keep me from speaking this phrase out loud. :-)

Tear-inducing onions get the chop
NewScientist.com news service October 16, 2002
James Randerson

(Note from Jack: A previous blog post talked about why cutting onions causes tears and we had some fun discussion among blog readers. Gee, think of the excitement lost if cutting onions causes no tears! ;-) Previous Post: [8/26/2002 3:46:49 PM | Jack Schwartz] The Tear Factor By Robert L. Wolke, Washington Post , Food Section, Wednesday, August 21, 2002; Page F01)

Excerpt from New Scientist article:
"Onions that taste as good as the original but do not have you weeping over the chopping board are now a possibility, say Japanese researchers.

The team have identified the gene responsible for making the tear-inducing substance. They say it would not be difficult to make genetically modified onion varieties that lack the substance altogether."
[Click here for full article.]
Journal reference: Nature (vol 419, p 685)

Mooses Come Walking
by Arlo Guthrie

Published as an illustrated children's book.

Jack connects "Mooses" with Arlo Guthrie from a vivid personal experience. Not long after the moose hunt in 1980 when I first shot my own moose, I skied with a good friend, Mike, at Brighton Ski Area near Salt Lake City. We had tickets to go to an Arlo Guthrie concert in the evening. Near the end of the ski day, Mike "crashed and burned" and was slow getting up. I nearly called first aid, but Mike got up and skied again.

Then at the Arlo Guthrie concert Mike nearly passed out after the first three songs, and I assisted him, with difficulty(!), to the car and the hospital. He nearly died from internal bleeding. :-( His parents came and I drove the car home to Green River in nearby southwest Wyoming.

So "mooses" (my hunter friends and I say "meece" :)) and Arlo Guthrie are forever connected in my personal memory - and now in Arlo's poem.
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Mooses Come Walking
by Arlo Guthrie

Mooses come walking over the hill
Mooses come walking, they rarely stand still
When mooses come walking they go where they will
When mooses come walking over the hill

Mooses look into your window at night
They look to the left and they look to the right
The mooses are smiling, they think it's a zoo
And that's why the mooses like looking at you

So, if you see mooses while lying in bed
It's best to just stay there pretending you're dead
The mooses will leave and you'll get the thrill
Of seeing the mooses go over the hill

1993 Arloco Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Jewish Proverb About Work

Thanks to Allan who gave Jack for his birthday last year the book: "Where There's Smoke, There's Salmon: The Book of Jewish Proverbs" - "Jewish Wisdom-From Moses to Woody Allen", by Michael Levin, Citadel Press, c. 2001.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

"To succeed in business, always follow two principles: honesty and wisdom. Honesty means that if you promise to deliver a shipment of goods on the twenty-fourth of March, you deliver the shipment. Wisdom means being smart enough not to promise anything."

-- Sam Levinson

Happy 75th Birthday to Günter Grass

Jack believes in giving praise where praise is due. On reading about Günter Grass, I think of Leonardo!

DW-WORLD.de (Deutsche Welle German Radio News Service)
"Günter Grass: author, poet, painter, sculptor, public moralist and Nobel prize winner. Germany’s best-known living writer celebrates his 75th birthday on October 16 and shows no sign of slowing down."
http://kleist.dwelle.de/english/culture/culture2.html
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Nobel e-Museum
Günter Grass
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1999
"whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history"
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1999/

Günter Grass – Prose
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1999/grass-prose.html
This website contains excerpts from The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass
selected by Åke Erlandsson, The Swedish Academy

On Risk Perception As It Relates To The 9/11 Casualties

This is a bit heavier subject than the topics I usually pick for a blog post. But I have an intrigue with rationales for modern human behavior and the "human condition" that relate back to our distant "hunter-gatherer" life as nomads and cave dwellers.

For just one example that directly affects me, there is a rationale for the "diabetes epidemic" that our body metabolism is adapted to high protein and fat - thus being used to low carbohydrates including sugars. The primitive diet was mostly game meat, nuts and berries, seeds, etc. The modern diet includes high carbohydrate potatoes, wheat, corn, rice, etc., that are adapted to efficient high-yield agriculture - and with palatability enhanced by techniques such as milling to flour and baking bread, tortillas, rice patties, and so on. As the scenario is painted, our metabolism has not adapted yet in the relatively short time (from an evolution standpoint) to a high-carbohydrate diet. Hence, metabolic regulation of blood glucose (think blood sugar) is inadequate for a large segment of the population. Hence for my own personal regimen as a person with diabetes, I achieve tighter blood glucose control by going on a low-carbohydrate diet.

Without further ado, I include an excerpt from a Skeptical Inquirer article relating to distorted risk perception following 9/11. The excerpt brings out factors related to our primitive past, and even fairly recent past, that are intriguing to me.
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Skeptical Inquirer magazine : September/October 2002
http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-09/9-11.html
A Skeptical Look at September 11th
How We Can Defeat Terrorism by Reacting to It More Rationally
by Clark R. Chapman and Alan W. Harris
"At the one-year anniversary, we examine reactions to the September 11, 2001, attacks in the context of other causes of premature deaths. An objective of terrorism is to multiply damage by inducing irrational fears in the broad population. One defense is to learn to evaluate such situations more objectively."

[Excerpt - in middle of article]
Death and Statistics
"It is a maxim that one needless or untimely death is one too many. So 20,000 victims should be 20,000 times worse. But our minds don't work that way." .................
[--------]
..........."To researchers in risk perception, this is natural human behavior. We are evolved from primitive nomads and cave dwellers who never knew, personally, more than the few hundred people in their locales. Until just a few generations ago, news from other lands arrived sporadically via sailors; most people lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. Tragedies invariably concerned a known, nearby person. With the globalization of communication, the world-not just our local valley-has entered our consciousness. But our brains haven't evolved to relate, personally, to each of 6 billion people. Only when the media singles out someone-perhaps an "average layperson" or maybe a tragic exception like JonBenet Ramsey-do our hearts and minds connect."

Post Mortem - Will I Ever Get My Files Organized? :-)

One of my blog readers sent me a joshing comment:
"And about the mess of papers building up... tsk, tsk. ;-) "

After a good chuckle, I thought about the "real" basis for my organization dilemma. When I file things they are sometimes harder to find than if I leave them in piles. :-(

Actually, I did have a two-year period my papers were timely filed using a system that made retrieval easy. Those were my two years as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. As such, I was in charge of a large supply room and machine shop for a chemical, biological and radiological materials transportation unit. And the Army DOES run on paper, as legend has it. :-) And most important for me, I delegated the filing duties to my Supply Sergeant. And he did a very good job! Also, the Army filing system is very methodical - similar to library cataloging. Hey! Even I figured out the system. :-)

Will I Ever Get My Files Organized? :-)

I notice since starting the Jack in Oklahoma blog that I add "favorites" (a.k.a. "bookmarks") more frequently to my MS Internet Explorer browser - and also I use them more frequently. Fine and good. But, now I have a massively disorganized favorites list file. My Internet files, my work files, my home files - you have it - they are disorganized.

Here is a little background. In my thirty-two year career with FMC Corporation, my improvement objectives almost every year included getting my files more organized. You got it. :-) I never achieved the goal.

My files are always a mess and my desk is 'always' stacked with papers. For awhile the engineering supervisor made every Friday afternoon a "cleanup day" and we had to have clean desk tops. OK - so I just found places to hide the piles. ;-)

At home - the same thing. On my left, I am looking at a pile of paid utility, phone, etc., bills that go back several months. Behind me is a multi-month pile of medical statements, medical records, etc.. There are just plain piles of paper everywhere! 8-]

I've misplaced many things, including at least two books on how to get organized. Ho ho ho!

Back to my web browser favorites list. I looked at my list and I have a tendency to make a new folder for each new link I decide to file. Great! But I end up looking, looking, .... often through most of the files with much frustration to find where I filed that link I need RIGHT NOW> <-8) So today I tried merging folders, creating sub-folders, and so on ... in some sort of logical way.

I repeat. Will I Ever Get My Files Organized? :-)

I Like "One Liners". :-)

Found in The Village Voice (New York) sports column "Jockbeat" concerning a season opening loss by the New York Rangers hockey team:

"Why are the Rangers like the Titanic? They look great until they hit the ice."