Results For "Month: March 2008"
Afternoon in the Sun
Blogging the Book of Mormon
I’ve never read the Book of Mormon. I remember seeing it advertised on television — “Another testament of Jesus Christ” or something like that — but to date, that has been the extent of my exposure to it.
This was originally part of a non-defunct religion blog I started. And then stopped.
In planning this site, I decided that one of the things I wanted to do was to “blog” books: read a book and write a commentary on it as I go along. I’d like to do the Koran, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon at the very least. So why not start with the Book of Mormon?
I would like to say that I intend on reading it objectively, with an open mind, so to speak. That is to say, without assumptions. However, I hold such a dim view of Mormonism based on the scant knowledge I have of it that it will be difficult to do so.
And so, coming soon: Part I, the introduction.
Swing
Attention Span
At an in-service a couple of weeks ago, we received the little research tidbit that middle-school-aged students have a maximum attention span of some eleven minutes or so. The implication — made very explicit by the presenter — was that our lessons should have activity changes every fifteen minutes or so. You know, in order to keep students engaged and focused.
No mention was made about trying to expand and stretch students’ attention span and ability to stay on task for more than a relative nanosecond. And the notion that we could just say, “Look — today you’re just going to have to focus on this for more than a few minutes” was implicitly ruled out.
Which is good, because in high school, college, and beyond, all you really need is an ability to focus for about fifteen minutes in order to be successful.
Second Attempt Evaluated
Gautama Siddharta said,
Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.
Salt. Salt is the key to good smoking, and Siddharta could have just as easily framed his analogy in terms of the salt bath for smoked meats (though it probably wouldn’t have read as well).
We added what we thought was enough salt. We did a taste-test of the water, and it seemed to be about as briny as the first time, when Dziadek, the smoking expert, was still here.
Apparently we got it wrong, for while the second batch looks good, the taste just wasn’t there.
Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt?
or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
Apparently not.
A Mess of Meat
We bought an entire pork loin for Saturday smoking. When you buy it in this quantity, the price is almost absurd.
Twenty-five pounds of meat for less than $60. “If I broke this apart for you,” the butcher said, “It would cost you three times as much.”
An hour of cutting gave us two whole deboned loins (I don’t know what you’d call that), two baby back ribs, and six ZipLock bags of soup bones and left-overs (only five shown below).
Saturday morning, I’m hoping to have a more successful smoking session than our first. While the end product was good, the smoke was too hot, producing less-than-perfect meat. Since I only have oak for smoking, and it burns really hot, I’ll be soaking some planks in water to add some smoke and to cool it down a bit.
The Future
There is, apparently, a place in California where gas is now $5.20 a gallon.
But it’s still not as bad as Polska, where gas (due primarily to taxes) is about $7 a gallon (though sold in liters for zloty, of course). When you take into account the significantly lower wages compared to the average here, you end up paying over $15 a gallon.
When gas prices get to be $5 a gallon throughout the States (and it will probably happen ridiculously fast), will we finally get serious about alternatives? Will people start, at the very least, buying more fuel-efficient cars?
Americans, however, are not shunning these beasts. Far from it. Auto industry figures show that after a two-year slump, sales of the gas guzzlers are up over 2006 — in some cases, way up.
The numbers for large SUVs rose nearly 6 percent in the first quarter of 2007, and the April figures were up 25 percent from April 2006, according to automakers’ statistics provided by Edmunds.com, an automotive research Web site. (SF Chronicle)
Probably not.
Most Stunning View in Town Is the One at the Pump – New York Times
Walk
Rocking Chair
The Girl has a rocking chair in her room. Lately, she’s figured out that she’s big enough to climb into it on her own.
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Of course, in typical Girl fashion, she’s not content just to sit.