The Weekly Notes 2007

Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives
Weekly Notes:

April 9, 2007:

Chemistry:

I am reading a book called “The Scientists” by John Gribbin. It is kind of a history of science the way the best scientist of history experienced it. It is not the easiest book I have ever read, but I was amazed at one part about chemistry. In a few succinct paragraphs, Gribbin explained more about chemical bonding and the nature of and reason for the periodic table than any of the chemistry books I have ever attempted to read.

On the other hand, I had trouble with Gribbin when he got into astronomy. He used terms that I did not know. As a result, I had an encyclopedic adventure. I began by looking up parsec in Microsoft’s Bookshelf. That led me to several other lookups in the same reference. Here they are.

parsec, (pär´sèk´) unit of length equal to the distance (206,265 astronomical units; 3.26 light-years; 1.917 × 10¹³ mi; or 3.086 × 10¹³ km) at which a hypothetical star's parallax would be one second of arc. The distance in parsecs of an object from the earth is thus the reciprocal of the parallax in seconds of the object.

astronomical unit (AU), A unit of length used in measuring astronomical distances within the solar system equal to the mean distance from Earth to the sun, approximately 150 million kilometers (93 million miles).

light-year, in astronomy, the distance (5.87 × 10¹² mi/9.46 × 10¹² km) that light travels in one sidereal year.

sidereal year

The time required for one complete revolution of the earth about the sun, relative to the fixed stars, or 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, 9.54 seconds in units of mean solar time.

Mendel:

A History note. Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) was a botanist and an Augustinian monk. This guy experimented with garden peas to learn the laws of heredity. After several years of painstaking experiment and study, he was able to outline the principles that govern heredity. He did this by preventing the natural self pollination of peas and cross breading the blossoms by hand to produce thousands of hybrids with various combinations of characteristics inherited from different parent stock.

Learning to Speak:

Our local media often interviews high school kids who play basketball. Most of these kids do not know how to articulate. They have a problem I tend to call lazy-mouth. They learned it at home and no one has taught them better, even in high school. Remember now, in Flint basketball is more important than education. These kids have been set up to believe they are going to be stars like Jordan. They give learning a short stick, while the coach and teachers wink. Possible one in ten thousand will make the cut. Most will not even be good enough to be starters in college. What will happen to these kids? What kind of work could a kid who cannot speak English get?

Same Old, Same Old:

I watch the news, I watch This Week with Stephanopoulos, and I occasionally watch 60 Minutes. I am just plain sick of all of it. Nothing changes. It’s the same old two-bit political hacks spouting the same old time worn and tired clichés and slogans. They are all bums, con artists, and rectum-holes. We could replace all of them with a huge pack of howling hyenas and get better harmony.

Criminals:

Did you ever wonder why we have so many crooks nowadays? One reason is that they are not punished even when they are caught. Here is an example from Mid-Michigan. A two-bit punk shot a man in the back with a shotgun. Strangely enough, the victim survived, so the charge was attempted murder. Right? Wrong! This scumbag with his scumbag attorney and scumbag prosecutor reduced the charge to a misdemeanor. The punk got off with community service, no jail time at all. The judge was enraged, but he was powerless in this case. The punk walked. My bet is he will do it again.

Ford:

Sales are down another 9%. Are we surprised? Business as usual. William Clay does not have a clue. He is one of the most naïve people on the planet. He is also probably one of the nicest guys in Michigan, but nice does not translate into business acumen. I wish it did. I wish he had sense enough to hire some real car people to replace all of those dull-minded bean counters and appliance makers he has on staff. Meanwhile, the Ford CEO, Mulally got paid some 28 million for coming to Ford. Of course, he also got the normal almost 28 million golden parachute clause in case he decides he does not like working for Ford. They claim he is a world-class talent. Sure, that’s why Ford keeps on hemorrhaging money.

Learning:

Very few people learn for the joy of it. There is usually some other goal in mind, like a degree. Most university courses are wasted on most students. They study with the purpose of passing the test so they can get a degree then thy forget it. Later, if they discover they really need it in their profession, they must relearn it or fake it.

Iran:

It looks like they have bled all of the political gain they can get from that kidnapping. They have nothing more to gain and nothing to lose by releasing them. It makes sense.

Saginaw:

The school administrators have reached a new low in Saginaw, Michigan. This bum had to lay off a bunch of teachers. So how did he tell them? He used email to tell them they were fired. He did not even have the courage to face them. What a coward! I wonder how much he makes. I wonder how many teachers that would pay. I wonder how many overpaid vice-principals that school district has, who are doing what clerks used to do when I was a student.

Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives

Wesoomi Home Page

The Wesoomi Archives

Wesoomi Site Map