From Natural Resources Conservation Service
Upon request from some of our local teachers, I thought I would run this article again. This is an excellent classroom activity for any age.
There are times that I am called upon to give teachings of conservation to schools throughout Grant County. I learned this simple but profound lesson from our soil scientist.
First, slice an apple into four one-quarter pieces. You have successfully cut the world into four pieces. Three of these slices represent the oceans of the world. You may eat or share these pieces with a friend.
The remaining section represents land. Take this section and cut in half length wise. One section represents deserts, swamps, Antarctic, arctic and mountain regions. You may eat or share this piece. The other half section represents where man lives, but not all of this land grows food.
Take this slice and cut it crosswise into four equal parts. Three of these small sections represent land that is too rocky, wet or too hot to grow foods. Eat these three small pieces.
This leaves you with one small piece of apple. Take this last piece and peel it. Save the peel and eat the meat of the apple (you have just eaten the urban areas of the world). Now you have an extremely small piece of apple left on your napkin. This represents the soil of our earth on which we depend for food production.
Comparing the apple to earth is a simple concept. The visual of a small peel of apple as it correlates to the earth’s productive soil is quite profound. To think that we can grow food for millions of people with such a minute resource amazes me. We need to keep it in place and not let it wash away to the Mississippi River.
From scientific and human standpoints, cephalopods mesmerize me. Hands down (no pun intended), they are the coolest creatures ever. All the way from extinct ammonoids and the graceful spiral that consitutes their fossilized exteriors to modern squids and octopi with their watching eyes and ever-ready tentacles.
The revelation that the octopus is the smartest creature after primates was no surprise to me. But that they are truly devious? Today’s science news shows a video of an octopus going bipedal, to disguise itself as something else and to scurry away from potential captors. What an incredible vignette from the pages of evolution!
“It’s a lot cheaper to rehash what’s already been done than to come up with new material.” Yet another stoicism that issued forth from D’s mouth, this time over my complaint of How In Entertainment’s Name Can NBC Rip Off The Office? The original is a work of comic art whose transcendence ought to be spread across the world in its genuine form, not as a cheap knockoff. D continued, “Americans will watch anything.”
No matter, the show will die mid-season. The voodoo priestess hath spoken.
Gervais Posers Guilty is, alas, not news that the American peddlers of the aforementioned abomination were taken in by the Innovation Police.
In other news, RZA can Wu my Tang any day.
Srinivasa Ramanujam’s classic number theory puzzle has been solved, by a University of Wisconsin* graduate student no less. Yes, a Badger by the name of Ken Mahlburg just proved why prime numbers have congruences by proving that the crank (read the article) can be extended to all primes. Richard Askey, UW-Madison emeritus math professor says, “There was no reason at all that multiplicative behaviors should have anything to do with additive structures involved in partitions.”
You know you’re a nerd when you understand that last sentence and know some of the people mentioned in the articles above.
This, of course, placed me on the trail of the Tamil word for badger. It is Thavazkaradi, literally translated as “creeping bear.” Makes sense. For further personal edification, here’s an article about the badger invasion of the Indian subcontinent.
* Only the finest institution of post-secondary education on this planet.
Create your own Irish curse!
This is mine:
Go gcreime na gráinneoga cealgrúnacha do thóin bheagmhaitheasach !
(May malevolent hedgehogs gnaw at your worthless butt!)
Now that spring is upon us … well, at least here …
Hamlet’s Cat’s Soliloquy
To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether ’tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock’s bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal’s opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there’s the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household’s petty plagues,
The cook’s well-practiced kicks, the butler’s broom,
The infant’s careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor’s yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans’ faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.
