What is home?

On the way home from work, I picked my daughter up and she asked, "Daddy, where are we going?"

"Home." I said.

"Daddy, why do we go home every day?"

She is turning five this month, so perhaps her question could have been brushed off as simply one of the many that children her age ask, but it got me thinking. Or perhaps I should say, "musing."

For me, home is where we choose to live and spend our time. It is the place where we can learn and grow without the care of what others may do or say about us. It is where we "dance like no one is watching." Home is where we are safe from others' thoughts, judgments, criticisms, and words. Heaven willing, it is where we can be safe from others actions. Home is where we can be ourselves and where we have control over our surroundings. Home is where there are loved ones who reciprocate our love and who help us to be better. For me, it is in a very real way, heaven on earth.

That is not to say that it exists in a perfect state, but it feels perfect to us. I hurt for those that come from "broken homes," or that are "homeless" in any sense of the word. I tried my best to explain to my daughter all of the things above.

She replied, "I don't like to go home everyday, because it's boring."

Well, you can't win them all.

My morning drive

Where I currently live there is a often fog in the morning and evenings. Last week we had fog roll in that stuck around for a couple of days. Ever since I was a kid, I've liked the look of fog and they way it shrouds everything, obscuring an object from view until you reach that magical distance and can see it again. As a kid it was amazing. As a driver it is always harrowing. Yet still the kid in me marvels at the fog. I love the way it settles in valleys and riles in the landscape and hugs the ground. It is a gas that acts like a liquid, not because of properties inherit to itself, but because of external factors.

First, what causes fog to form?

Actually, that's a tricky question because there are different types of fog. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) lists 6 types of fog and they are all have a different event that causes them.

"What is fog?" is a lot easier to answer. Fog is simply when the air is supersaturated with water droplets. These droplets, depending on their size and consistency obscure vision can transfer their moisture to objects they touch. In short: Fog is a cloud that likes to hang around at ground level. The situations that causes this low-hanging cloud to form are described in the NOAA link above.

For our part, I believe the fog we get most regularly is the standard radiation fog. It happens more often because of the wetlands near us. The large amount of surface water means that the humidity near ground level is higher than many other areas I've been in, thus allowing the air to supersaturate very quickly.

The fog we had last week, I believe was was probably ice fog. I don't know about it occurring only in polar/arctic air if it just takes really cold temperatures to cause it. We had a series of days where the temperature was well below freezing, even reaching below zero Fahrenheit. One evening while driving to dinner (where we got the fortune cookies I blogged about), visibility was between 100-200 ft. you could not see more than two street lights - the one you were under and the next one.

Granted, after viewing the movie based on Steven King's The Mist, some think that the weather isn't the only cause of fog...

What do frogs and Schlock have in common?

While listening to the NPR podcast How To Do Everything (episode 91) on my way to work I learned something very interesting. I learned that frogs and carbosilicate amorphs have something in common. First, what is a carbosilicate amorph I hear you ask?

This is.

Meet Sargent Schlock of Tagon's Toughs from www.schlockmercenary.com. Schlock was my first descent into webcomics and I'm glad I started with him because Howard Tayler, the creator of this wonderful "pile of poo" started on June 12 / 2000 and hasn't missed a day yet, which means that the archive is very large. Never fear, dear reader. If you want to read Schlock Mercenary you can start any of the storylines easily through the archive link, or simply purchase the physical books. I highly endorse this comic if you are looking for daily comedic epic science fiction.

If you don't know what a frog is, here is one of my favorite ones: Dendrobates azureus a.k.a. the Blue Poison Tree Frog 

These guys are about the size of a paper clip and are deadly poisonous (not venomous - venom needs to be injected, poison is ingested). They live in the Amazon and over the course of many years have had themselves removed the the inner workings of the food chain by the simple fact that anything that eats them dies. While many animals are not very bright, most have learned to steer clear of these little guys. They are often called poison dart frogs because aboriginal tribes apparently use their poison for hunting and warfare.

Anyway on to my musing. According to Albert Lebedev of Moscow State University frogs can secrete different solutions through their skin. Since frogs do not have other defensive measures (teeth, spines, claws, etc) they had to develop something to protect themselves. This is the reason Poison Tree Frogs have the name they do. Apparently frogs can secrete many other kinds of cocktails that are used in killing everything from microbes to viruses and in the podcast he even mentions tumors. Something else he mentions is a vomit inducing mixture that makes it hard to swallow the given frog. There is an article here that give an overview of his research if you want more.

Here is where the connection lies - Schlock also is a chemical plant looking for place to spill over. As seen here (strip from July 5 / 2003) Schlock's chemicals cause the carnivorousness plant to spit him out. Or here (strip from Aug 18 / 2007) Schlock's immune system (visualized by his plasma cannon) expels blood nanies (nanorobots designed to function, interact with, and in this case try to take over physical and mental capacities) from his system. This sounds a lot like what Albert Lebedev was discussing on the podcast. The biggest difference is the Schlock is not from around here and is a lot bigger than any frog on earth.

So the question I have: is this Science fiction mimicking reality or a mad genius just coming up with something cool that happens to be true in reality?

Now isn't that interesting?

Set fire to the snow?

This is what it looks like out of the front windows of my building at work. A lot of this snow has been here for a while, but it stared snowing about 6 hours ago and only recently stopped. It was the little flakes that seem to fall forever. It added a couple more inches to the total. At my house we probably have at least a foot on the grass and close to five feet along the driveway where I pile the snow from shoveling.

I've always wondered by snow is different from ice in it's appearance, but I found out the answer about a month ago watching this video from a few years back. It's from Brady Haran's YouTube channel "Periodic Videos" and I highly recommend subscribing to it for all things chemistry related. Right now they are doing a series of videos with a high speed camera. See what it looks like to explode hydrogen in slow motion and what it teaches us about the color of the flame.

I should explain my reasons for many links and such in my posts. As I am interested in just about everything I offer those resources and sources that have found and enlarged my interest for anyone else that wishes to learn more. I have put a list of links to the right with all of the things I mention in case you want to find them quickly.

Back to snow. It turns out that snow crystals look different from ice crystals because ice is frozen water (liquid) and snow is frozen water vapor (gas). You can find the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) answer to "How are snowflakes formed?" here which also mentions the water vapor freezing. That is why snow looks so much different than ice and because of the many variations of humidity, temperature, etc that is why we have so many different looks and kinds of snows.

Isn't that interesting?

Now comes the fun part. I was thinking if you could makes snow from water vapor, what other gases could you make snow from, i.e. freeze the vapor to form crystals? Then, is there anyway you could light that crystal on fire? Adele sings about "Set[ting] fire to the rain" which sounds cool, but would be difficult to do without causing an explosion. However, would it be possible to, in essence, burn snow?

Looking into it, I can't see how it would work. First, you would have to freeze the material, which generally requires dropping temperature until it changes state. Water, of course freezes at 0 c (32 f). The difficult comes when we try to set fire to the solid. Every substance has a combustion point, a temperature that it burns when brought in contact with an ignition source. The difficulty is that the combustion temperature is higher than the freezing temperature, so most common sense says that if the gas is frozen (such as snow) it cannot burn in that state, but would rather need to change states before igniting, i.e. snow, as snow, is not going to burn, but when it melts... watch out.

This information was gleaned through a quick internet search of ignition, freezing, and combustion. While I do not support Wikipedia as a scholarly source, I will admit that it works well for quick searches. I'm going to keep an eye out for any additional information I can find on this topic, but until then don't go trying to freeze methane gas.

Great food, Poor Fortunes

Tonight my family and I ate out at a Chinese buffet. I've always been wary of Chinese buffets I can't remember having any good experiences at them. However, as I've come to like Chinese food I was willing to try this one. I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the food. It was all very tasty and I made sure I didn't overeat. I think that has been the biggest problem in the past. Anyway, that is not what interested me.

Take a look at the fortunes we got.

 First, two of them aren't even fortunes (the first and the last). They are simply descriptions of the persons. Second, I don't live in a nest. And thirdly, I've known from the 6th grade that the number 4 is unlucky in China. It is closely related to the word "Death" which is why you will never find a fourth floor in a Chinese hospital. Yet it shows up by itself and as a digit in 54 in the first, once in the third (40), and twice in the fourth (34 and 49 right next to each other no less). What's more, according to this video by Brady Haran (one of my favorite video journalists), the numbers 8 and 6 are lucky for being related to wealth and successful travel respectively. However, the fortune which pronounces travel doesn't have a 6 in it. And 8 only shows up once in the fortune describing a love of the arts and music. While I do indeed love art and music they are not associated with great wealth. And lets not forget that there are two 4 in that fortune either. So all in all, the fortunes were not that fortunate when all was said and done.

With that said, fortune number two - the one without any unlucky numbers (or lucky numbers for that matter) in it? My wife put in for a new job today. The problem - I opened that cookie.

Now isn't that interesting?

It could be worse. My wife once got a fortune that said (and I kid you not), "You need to work on your exercise routine." We got food poising from that place too. Yeah, could be a lot worse

Making Dinner

Tonight I made tilapia and stir-fry vegetables. I had two thoughts while doing this. First, while I am not a big fish eater I do enjoy tilapia. The reason for it is - it doesn't taste like fish. Why is it that the biggest thing I can say about a fish is that it doesn't taste like one?

The second thought I had was on my sixth-grade geography class. We had a whole unit on China and one of the things that was mentioned was that for a large part of the country there was not a lot of wood. The most common fuel source for cooking was the straw that left over from harvest or from clearing the land. As straw burns quick and hot, it was the catalyst for stir-fry. My anthropology course in college taught me that what we eat and how we eat it is often times dependent on our surroundings. So thank the lack of timber the next time you dig into some tasty Chinese cooking.

Isn't that interesting?

Education and careers

I'm currently in a Masters of Science program through Kansas State University and the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA). One of my classes this semester is on career advising. As I read through the material for class I was drawn back to my own undergraduate experience. The item in particular that got me thinking about my experience was the statement, "...students that change majors make up approximately 75% of college students"[1]. (Note - I have to use APA for my work and MS, but I've always preferred footnotes.)

It occurred to me that students that change their major and undecided students (often the same, but not inherently so) are often considered a special population by educators. However, the data is showing that such is not the case. They appear to be the majority but a good percentage. I fell into the minority for my undergrad. I went into college wanting to be a history major and I came out as such. The only time I considered formally branching out from my intended degree was to consider a second minor in management information systems (spreadsheets and databases).

This is not to say that I did not take a variety of classes and tried different topics. When I showed up to meet with my advisor for my 2nd semester freshman courses he looked at my three three history courses and said, "This is a great schedule for an upper classman. You're a freshman. Now is the time to take ballet." I never did, but you are reading the post of the only non-business major in his Microeconomics course. I'm also the guy who got the highest grade in said course. I enjoyed all of my classes, but my degree was always to be in history.

Now, the meat of my musing. If I received any career counselling it was that you could do more than teach with a history major. I was told I could do just about anything I wanted to. While many may see that as bad advice, it is correct. I attended a presentation done by the Career Center at Brigham Young University at a professional Conference and they had broken down the numbers. Without going into the whole of their statistics - there are relatively few professions that require a specific undergraduate degree. It is not the facts that are important in an education, but the skills you learn. This is what I had learned as I matched my interests with the things I could do.

So, the next time somebody says that "such and such" is a useless degree, remember that there are no useless degrees. It is all a matter of matching your skills with the employer's needs. And every degree will teach you skills, you just have to recognize them as such.

Now isn't that interesting?

[1] Hughey K.F. , Hughey J.K. Foundations of Career Advising, The Handbook of Career Advising, NACADA, 2009, Kansas State, p.12

You've got to start somewhere

Welcome to a blog that is just what it says. I have many interests. From reading to video and board games. Camping and hiking to education. History and language to physics and math. I've long pondered posting a blog and have decided to start. As I do not expect much from this blog I don't think I'll have any disappointments. Welcome to my mixed mind.