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12/31
In all the bustle of the holiday season I only have a few moments to
update this web page, but I certainly want to wish everyone a New Year
filled with happiness, fun, adventure, good friends, and family.
And while it might be argued that the third millennium will only start
in 2001, as far as I'm concerned, the millennium ends today.
Happy New Year!
Happy new decade!
Happy turn of the century!
Happy turn of the millennium!
(Note the careful dodge above :-)
12/31
Just a reminder, the Norfolk Recycling holiday hours are
on the Bulletin Board.
12/24
'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
not a keyboard was stirring, not even a mouse.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Hope you all have a wonderful holiday; we'll be back next week.
12/22
Oops, I must apologize for a major gaffe, namely, that
I forgot to include the correct
Encyclopedia Britannica link
the last time. Most embarrassing; sorry.
12/22
Happy Winter Solstice! For those of you who like to keep track of these
things (like I do), today, December 22, was the shortest day of the year. At
2:44 am EST the north pole pointed as away from the Sun as it gets; the days
in the northern hemisphere will now lengthen until Summer Solstice.
12/22
Happy full moon! Astronomically, this month's full moon occurred today at
12:31 pm EST, as at that instant the Moon was opposite Earth from the Sun.
Hopefully you caught a glimpse tonight or last night. It's been very
bright lately.
This year's Winter Solstice is special because it coincides with a
rather out-of-the-ordinary full moon. Earth reaches its perihelion (the
closest to the Sun in its orbit) about ten days from now, so the Sun appears
brighter. Because of this, the Moon, which reflects the Sun's light, appears
7% brighter than usual. In addition, the Moon has just passed its perigee
(its closest point to Earth in its orbit), making it appear 14% larger than
usual. The larger and brighter Moon is a very rare combination that may not
again occur in our lifetimes, and should make a spectacular sight. (I was
spammed by a friend with this information, but this spam I didn't mind :-)
12/22
The e-mail circular was right -- the Moon certainly looks pretty tonight.
The cosmic alignment, combined with the bright, clear skies,
resulted in a very bright full moon. I first learned of this phenomenon
today, but I belatedly heard that the newspapers have also written about it,
so hopefully you've had a chance to prepare and go outside for a little
moon-gazing in the frosty air.
12/22
I heard on the radio on the way home that there are brush fires burning above
La Canada-Flintridge, and that hundreds of residents have been evacuated.
To put this in context, one must realize that I grew up one town over from La
Canada-Flintridge, that JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Cal Tech / NASA
research lab) is in La Canada-Flintridge (nestled right up against the
mountains, too), and that my dad used to work for JPL. It's like receiving
news about an old neighbor two decades later, and hearing that his house is
on fire. What can we do, but wish them the best of luck, and may their
houses and lives be spared.
12/21
I've been noticing little cards from the Friends of the Library in
a number of the murder mysteries I've read recently. Thank, you, Friends,
for brining good books to town, and for helping support my habit :-)
12/21
As of today evening, my car has a new air filter, new spark plugs, fresh oil,
a new thermostat / coolant valve, new antifreeze in the radiator, a new
radiator cap to keep it there, and a wheel alignment for the busted tie-rod
end from the last time. For a Honda that rolled past 229,000 miles last
week, it's a very happy car. It should be all set for winter (and as to
winter, I'll believe it when I see it.)
12/19
Gorgeous Sunday morning! Attended the company Holiday Party last night,
which was pretty nice, got home at midnight, and slept 11 hours. I must
admit, it felt good. And for a change, there are no more Christmas
chores scheduled, so I can laze a bit.
12/19
Ok, we're all ready for Christmas now. The tree is up, the presents mailed,
the air has turned cold and nippy, the puddles have a crust of ice. All that's
missing is the snow.
12/19
The Encyclopedia Britannica site is finally up and functioning.
(The EB link is normally on the Reference page).
Kind of neat, being able to browse and chase references without lugging large
books and flipping many pages. And it's informative! I researched my ethnic
heritage a bit, and found that the English word ``ogre'' is a corruption of
``Hungar'' (I didn't know that), that the natural growth rate of Hungary is
negative (meaning more people die each year than are born) (I knew that), and
that half the population was killed during the Mongol invasion of 1241 (I
didn't know that!, though the Tatárjárás has
become part of the culture and is spoken of to this day).
Their server seems reasonably responsive, with many cross-references, but the
articles seem to be shorter than the print version (or perhaps broken into
smaller pieces to be more manageable).
12/15
Good grief! Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, is retiring
after fifty years to focus full-time on his cancer treatments.
We thank him, and wish him well.
Funny how some comics become part of our heritage. Unlike some
that I wish would just go away already, there are those like Peanuts or
Calvin and Hobbes that become part of our lives and we carry with us forever.
12/15
The Norfolk Recycling holiday hours are on the
Bulletin Board.
Call 528-4990 for more information.
12/15
What a dreary November fall day. Forty degrees and rainy today, forty and
rainy tomorrow. Winter! Winter! It's time for winter!
12/12
Here is an AP article
[article expired - ed.]
that reports that ear infections in young children seem to have a genetic
basis. Estimating from identical twin studies, the researchers conclude
that genetics account for "73 percent of susceptibility to middle ear effusion
[buildup of fluid] in children under 2".
It's interesting that the reporter consistently uses the word
"hereditary" where it would be more appropriate to use "genetic". The
two are not interchangeable; to show a hereditary link one must establish a
correlation of ear infections between parents and their children, which the
study does not do. Quite the opposite, since the study compared genetically
identical twins to non-identical siblings and establishes the link only
between twins, it shows that it is not hereditary -- having one child highly
susceptible to ear infections does not mean that the next will be, too. Even
though genes are inherited, a genetically determined trait is not always a
hereditary trait. One can only hope this lack of precision is due to
the reporting and does not originate in the research, though the article's
last paragraph tends to cast doubt on that.
12/09
New moon today -- the tiniest tiniest sliver of silver visible
low in the evening sky, setting with the sun, gone by dusk.
12/09
The detailed MCAS results have been released and posted to the
DOE MCAS page.
The Norfolk results are reported separately for
K-6 and
the King Philip regional schools.
Detailed
town-by-town results are also available. I even found comparative
rankings on
the Boston Globe
webpage.
It appears that the Norfolk 4th grade is in the top 20% of state schools, and
King Philip schools in the top 25% in English, Math, and Science, and in the
top 10% in History.
12/09
It was cold today, and I liked it! Try as I might,
50 - 60 degrees just does not feel like winter. Now if we could just see
some of the white stuff . . .
12/07
A shame about the Mars probe, which has not been able to establish contact
with earth. Not only the cost (quarter of a billion dollars), but all the
work and preparation, and the several more years that we'll have to wait for
answers. I would have liked to finally know more about what exactly was on
(and under) that planet's surface.
12/07
I apologize for the disruption of service on Monday, the web server was
being moved to new facilities, and our site was down for longer than
expected. However, now that we're back up, everything is on-line
once again, and if anything, a little quicker than before.
12/03
If I heard this before, I must have forgotten -- Thanksgiving originally
fell on the last Thursday in November, but it got moved back a week to allow
for more Christmas shopping time. Though the cynic in me would quip that
in today's consumer marketplace, August might have been a better choice.
12/03
Speaking of holiday shopping, in case you browse on-line, I read of sites
that specialize in price comparisons. I haven't looked into them, but you
might find them useful:
Deal Time,
Bottom Dollar,
Pricewatch,
and My Simon.
I have used Pricewatch to price computer components before, and if the others
are similar, I can offer the following bits of advice: 1) you may not find
everything you look for, 2) some stores list a special discounted price on
the price comparison sites that you won't find on their web page (you may
have to ask, or order through the comparison site), 3) some prices may be
for similar items as the item descriptions will not seem quite correct,
and 4) some prices listed are clearly mistakes. But in general, the
convenience far outweighs the small glitches, and I've found several
interesting stores from their price comparison listings.
12/03
More shopping tips -- there is a site that gathers on-line shopping coupons!
One of them was $10 off a purchase at Barnes and Noble, which came in handy.
The URL is FlamingoWorld.Com.
12/01
Oops, they called off the storm. Flurries possible, but no real snow this
time. And here I was, all ready and eager to see the white stuff again :-)
12/01
Snow watch! For this first day of the first month of winter, they have
appropriately forecast snow. Which, other than being expected during the
evening commute, would be sort of nice; I always consider the first
snowfall to mark the real beginning of winter.
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What a beautiful weekend! Saturday we went to
community day, Sunday on a shopping run, but then got to laze about the house.