Today I worked for five hours for clients and then gardened for three. And watched an episode of Cold Case while I was chilling after gardening.
Blissful ignorance, fun while it lasted.
Am I the only person who eats completely differently in the summer?
In the summer, I’m happy with good ciabatta, toasted with cheddar cheese, and grilled zucchini from the garden. Or a few tortilla chips with melted cheddar, spicy salsa, half of a ripe avocado and fresh tomatoes from the garden. Or a bowl of soup.
Good summer tomatoes are SO GOOD.
Dinner was 10 or so pecans (from the farmer’s market, best pecan growers in Illinois, they crack the shells so they are easy to open, but stay really fresh) and Skylar Rae cherries.
And homemade popsicles. This week I made sour cherry-white peach-lemon popsicles. Next up, I am going to try to make lemonade popsicles. Wish me luck.
The old saying “even the worst sex I ever had was still pretty good” works for homemade popsicles, too. And maybe for pizza.
Bonus picture of Henry and some of his friends. I think we need a medicinal full-size picture after the news today.
I’ll leave you with a question. Henry. As cute as Cole playing Lawrence of Arabia, or cuter?
Oh, and Cold Case. Every episode, so well done. Puts a lot of shows to shame. And the music sticks with me. I was surprised to see two Indigo Girls songs in an episode.
And the booms have started. Didn’t expect that since it’s only Thursday, but I guess tomorrow is the 4th.
Totally open thread.
RevRick
We’ve been hearing fireworks since Sunday. If you have toys that go boom, why wait? We also have heard fireworks on New Year’s Eve, but then that has been a tradition in this region since before the Revolutionary War.
Betsy
I eat very differently in the summer too, I’m happy with such fresh raw and simple things. And big ice cream, of course.
I can subsist for days on tomato sandwiches, grilled in olive oil. Cantaloupe slices sprinkled with feta cheese. Pasta salad with whatever vegetables need to be eaten up. Angel hair noodles with that raw pasta sauce made by blending tomatoes, basil, and olive oil.
And gazpacho, another raw blended easy thing – cucumbers, tomatoes, half a sweet pepper, and some green Tabasco sauce, some chicken broth, some stale bread to thicken it up, served with dollops of sour cream or yogurt.
Potato salad. Deviled eggs. Everyone and their neighbors trying to give away half a watermelon. Oh, summer is such easy cooking.
Another Scott
Yay! Long weekend!
On the way home, I went under an overpass with a group of people with a banner saying “Resistance is Patriotic”. Indeed it is. They got two beeps and a wave from me.
Doggie Ellie just came home from the vet – we took her in because she suddenly has some bumps and crusty stuff in her ears. :-( She doesn’t like things being poked in her ears, so she had to get a sedative to calm her down. It ended up being 2 shots of fentanyl. She’s relaxing now – it’s probably helped with the fireworks noises… We get to do ear flushing and give her antibiotics for a week, then a followup.
In other news – Phys.org:
IOW, we can change math and science instruction so that girls (an[d] young women) aren’t driven away.
And it’s long past time we did that.
Have a good Independence Day, WG, and jackals everywhere.
Strength, persistence, and eyes on the prizes.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Layer8Problem
A peaceful pooch and his entourage. Thank you for the calm image. I’ll play no favorites; Henry and Cole are both pretty damn cute.
laura
We’ve had kabooms for a week. Summer tomato sandwiches. I’m going to make a potato salad, a cowboy caviar and a santa rosa plum crisp. My urge to have tasty things to pick at is high. Local corn is finally hitting the market and the next hot spell should be a good gazpacho time
I can’t see his eyes, because Lawrence blue was a whole thing. So Henry by default.
SpaceUnit
I mostly stop cooking in the summer and buy all my food from the deli. Hard enough keeping this place blissfully cool without turning on the oven or stove.
Also I don’t eat dinner until late – like 9:30 at night.
I’m not a summer person anymore. The only thing that gets me through it is Palisade peaches with vanilla ice cream.
tomtofa
Sorry, no, that saying doesn’t carry over to pizza. . .
But then, I’m not a big pizza person – the best I’ve had was pretty good ;-)
WaterGirl
@Betsy: you forgot the crust red peppers in your rotten tomato sauce recipe! :-)
catfishncod
@Another Scott: As a parent and a STEM professional I certainly agree, but what the heck do we change starting in first grade to make it happen?? I’m well familiar with the bias and misogyny at higher levels but I am seemingly blind to what force could be so strong as to open a statistically significant divide after only four months.
Gvg
And yet we have had several recent conversations about how women were doing so much better than men and were getting into college at a much higher rate these days, among all races. That society was somehow failing males and telling them they were losers at a young age, which was making them fascist curious and even black men had slightly trended towards Trump, because of the anti women bias. There were statistics about how boys test results and grades had been trending down for years that were shocking to me.
So which is it?
Scout211
I had to drive into town for a dental appointment today. I drive two highways that both head up to the mountains way past where we live. Both highways were packed with travelers heading up to the Sierras for the long weekend. It brought back some nice memories for me. We used to go camping with the kids at the same state park every 4th of July. (Calaveras Big Trees State Park for the locals). I hope all the families with their vehicles loaded with camping equipment have as much fun as we used to. Good memories.
prostratedragon
A moment of “Blissful Ignorance”, from Maria Thompson Corley.
Another Scott
@catfishncod: It could be several things – I think.
Back in the olden days, I remember taking some sort of (SRA?) reading ranking test in second grade and somehow doing very badly in it. I got assigned to read things like See Spot Run when I had been reading at much higher levels than that on my own. I thought – this is ridiculous, so I raced through the stuff that they made me start with until I ended up where I thought I should be. But, it could have easily been the case that I took that test result as being correct and that I really didn’t have any aptitude for reading… Kids are very, very impressionable, and they pick up on praise and criticism and notice who gets it and who doesn’t and can internalize things that they shouldn’t…
I hope and expect that the researchers are testing for just about any possible explanation.
Thanks.
And good luck!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
An interesting thing happened the other day at work.
An older white man with an accent I can’t place approached the service desk, asking for a loyalty card. I ask for his ID, like I do anyone, and he hands me a Republic of South Africa national ID card, saying he doesn’t have his green card yet.
Methinks this is one those “poor white South Africans” that Trump and his ilk was claiming were being buried in mass graves.
The address he gave me isn’t low-income housing either AFAICT. It’s a 3400 sq ft 4 bedroom, 4 bath home, older, the kind built in like the 60s or 70s, but certainly not something an actually poor asylum seeker/refugee would live in.
Like, you’re 73 years old dude, what the fuck are you doing here? He’s likely retired, so it’s not like he’s here on an employment visa or something. He (probably) has no work history here, so he won’t qualify for Medicare, what will he do for healthcare? I assume he has some kind of pension, state or employment based, from SA with some personal savings
I know Scrodinger’s Cat and others have talked about how difficult the immigration process is to get permanent residency (green card), that the wait is years long.
Maybe I’m off base, but it sure seems like this guy was one of the white South Africans the Admin was granting asylum to. Countries don’t typically give permanent residency to 70 year olds, do they?
Wapiti
We eat differently in the summer, but a lot of it is not using the oven on hot days. We’re trying to get big protein doses, so will often have Niçoise salads on hot days (greens, canned tuna, hard boiled eggs, green beans or asparagus, cherry tomatoes, and olives.) Otherwise, very few casserole or chili days, more burritos.
WaterGirl
@Wapiti: I think chili is a great summer food. Maybe it’s like coffee we’re drinking. It can make you feel cooler?
Ohio Mom
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I am not sure but I think you can buy into Medicare if you did not pay into it during your working years. I don’t know how expensive it is.
SpaceUnit
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
A while back I came across some story on the internet, I don’t recall where exactly, that suggested that the “South African Whites” that trump is welcoming into the country with open arms are in fact Russian. Russian intelligence or Russian mob (no real difference anymore).
Because most folks will not be able to distinguish a Russian’s English accent from an Afrikaner’s.
Don’t like to traffic in rumors, but we’re currently off the charts.
WTFGhost
@Another Scott: I’ve always wanted to teach math better than we do now. Math is really just an add-on for language – a way of describing hideously complicated concepts, in shorthand, that everyone (almost) understands. And it’s not just “teach how to divide a recipe by 2, or triple a recipe, for three times the servings,” it’s, making sure people understand just the basics of *why*, so they can think independently.
@Gvg: I know part of it is the excuses we make for math. One time, I heard that Japanese students knew math was hard, for most people, but, if you worked hard, you’d finally figure it out. US students (so the hypothesis went) thought you were a braniac, and got math, or, you didn’t.
Now, if I didn’t have a broken brain, I wouldn’t remember how amazing it was, when algebra suddenly made sense. “Wait, you mean those are just *numbers*, disguised as letters?” But I do think that possibility is open to most students.
Rich2506
Only real difference between my summer diets and the rest of the year is that I have grapefruit or pineapple juice mixed with seltzer. Rest of the time, I mix unsweet iced tea with it or just have the seltzer straight.
mrmoshpotato
Quick n easy ciabatta bread
Haven’t tried it myself, but I trust John Kirkwood’s recipes like I trust Chef John of FooooooooodWishes.com.
Kelly
Our local amateur, illegal fireworks have dropped by 95% since the 2020 Beachie Fire burned over 850 homes and nearly 200,000 acres around here. Folks are touchy about spewing sparks across the dry summer landscape.
NotMax
Not a salad person (nor much of a vegetable person for that matter -taters and onions excepted – especially the vile zucchini, which I don’t allow within two feet of my mouth).
As always, YMMV. ;)
Darkrose
Those popsicles sound absolutely amazing. I love all three of those fruits.
WaterGirl
@Kelly: is that how it started? Holy shit that’s awful.
WaterGirl
@Darkrose: they are pretty awesome, if I do say so myself!
prostratedragon
Archive link to WaPo article
They intend to try to continue operating, good news for us Contadina fans.
mrmoshpotato
@mrmoshpotato: FoodWishes
WaterGirl
@Darkrose: I make up all sorts of combinations. I even keep a little spreadsheet of the various ones I’ve tried and I made up ratings so I can remember which ones were especially awesome and which are just really good.
WTFGhost
I fried up some sweet italian sausage in clarified butter until they had four flat grillmarks on them, then cut them into sections, and added some (alas) “4 cheese pasta sauce” jars to the mix, then added basil, a bit of cayenne, then, some authentic red pepper flakes (once I finally found the little effers!), and some Italian seasoning, with a 6oz can of tomato paste.
I boiled some rotini; I know that’s the dull way to cook it, but I like dull.
Anyway, 90 minutes at 175 F (because Portable Induction Cooktop, that’s why!) caused the spices in the sausage, and the herbs I added, to mix up with the several glugs of olive oil, I added, to the sausage grease. I put it over rotini, remembering to put the rotini on a plate, or in a bowl, before adding the sauce, because putting sauce over rotini you hold in your hand is only good for screaming and doing funny dances.
I believe it was an adequate gustatory experience, whatever the eff that means, but it also tasted good and was pleasantly filling. I imagine garlic bread would be good for those of you effers lucky enough not to have to watch your blood sugar. (Seriously – watching blood sugar is *DULLSVILLE*. Watching your heart beat is hundreds of times more interesting!)
Oh: helpful hint, and lesson learned for next time: when adding jars of pasta sauce to your mixture, *remove the sauce* from the *jars* first. It will save you copious amounts of time, later.
wmd
Joke:
I want sex in the worst way
What, standing up in a canoe?
WTFGhost
@wmd: Flashing back to a comic book letter, and response.
“I want fans of X to write me, badly!”
ED: “Okay, fans, send him badly written letters!”
WTFGhost
@wmd: technically, the worst way to have sex is a futile handjob when you’re in too much neuro pain for your brain to register sexual pleasure.
Ask me how I kn… no… don’t ask me how I know, because I might be in a really bad mood that day, 1/2:-), 1/2 :-(.
Chetan Murthy
Henry is a sweet boi. I love seeing all your pet pics, all you FPers and commenters. I know I’m sufficiently adult to care for an animal, so I make do with admiring all yours.
NotMax
@WTFGhost
Great garage band name.
:)
Kelly
@WaterGirl: Beachie Fire was started by lightning. It was slowly grew to several hundred acres over the month of August. Dangerously inaccessible in a wilderness area water drops via aircraft were the only control used. Then evening of Sept 6th it blew up in an unprecedented wind storm. 80mph winds and 10% humidity. The wind also knocked down live powerlines which started at least 13 more fires. Nothing stops a fire in dry 80 mph winds.
The dry windstorm caused or aggravated 25 fires totaling over a million acres statewide. Several were small fires the windstorm blew up. Downed electric lines caused a bunch. The Beachie fire at 194,00 acres was 1of 6 really big 130,00+ acre fires.
Pauline
Henry is adorable! I’ve really been enjoying the pictures of him that you’ve been posting lately.
I don’t have much of an appetite for hot meals in the summer. To be honest, I could live on ice cream but I try to not give in to that very often.
Funny that you mentioned Cold Case! I’ve been binging on that for the last few days. My late husband and I were huge fans and after all these years, it still holds up very well.
Ealbert
Children tend to live up to or DOWN to our expectations. I once read a read an article describing how to make your sure your child would do great at school. It was rather cold blooded but what you did was put your child in kindergarten and then the next year move to another school district and re-enroll them in kindergarten. Since the child had already been through the lessons, they would of course ace the work and be an A student, and since they did so well, they would be moved to the fast track classes throughout their schooling because their teachers knew they were smart.
Also, for a very long time, it has been thought that girls do poorly in math. People may remember decades ago when one of Mattel’s talking Barbie dolls was programmed to say “math is hard.” It caused quite a to do.
My best friend in school grew up in a family that somehow decided that she was the dumb one in the family. I remember helping her over the phone with her math because, while she was bright, she had gone over things until it no longer made sense to here because that is what she had been raised to think. After high school she went to college and became a nurse, first an LPN and then an RN. As far as I know, no one else in her family had any kind of college degree.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
from the thread below,
ETA, bringing your parents over, takes a long time to get through the paperwork, and you have to have proof that you can support them.
Most of the “refugee’s” that Taco Don brought over, aren’t “South Africans” per se. Their parents were “refugee’s” part of the “White Flight” from Kenya, Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, etc and were brought to South Africa as children and never really fit in.
The Soutpiel’s accent is very distinctive, as is the Afrikaner, and they stand out from each other and all other English Colonial accents. It’s nothing like ruZZian or many other Eastern European Slav accents.
ruZZia has their own “White Supremacy Flight” program. It’s called “African Villages”, and so far, has attracted 38,000+ White People from Africa, but surprise, surprise, over 6,000 fled ruZZia since the start of the program.
danielx
I try not to give in, but…despair. Just fucking despair.
FastEdD
@Another Scott: Retired math and science teacher here. I used to do workshops on techniques to improve teaching to both genders. I read similar research to yours, that the math gap starts early. What I found was a difference in using both sides of the brain; men would focus on one thing at a time and women would look at lessons more globally. It helps to keep the focus on one step and block everything else out. I taught high school and while the boys may have innate aptitude they were also busy throwing boogers at each other and the girls were more serious students. I had very few girls in my engineering classes, but I’d get more when we’d do life science things, and others were drawn to it because of their siblings. At the very, very highest levels of math you find more women than men, but it takes a lifetime to get there.
Cheers backatcha, Ed
WTFGhost
@danielx: Despair isn’t productive, especially not when there are some of the most evil, most ugly, most foul, most idiotic, most corrupt, human beings ever whelped since we came down out of the trees, and maybe since we came out of the water, that need to have their asses kicked so hard they look forevermore like hunchbacks.
Now? Now is the time to look them in the eye, and say “y’all are going to lose, you evil motherfuckers. Oh, yes, I just used the eff word out loud, now come closer and try to shut my mouth and (extremely graphic use of a 12 gauge *double barreled* shotgun, elided) your (body part, elided) off your effing body just long enough for you to feel existential despair, then I’ll (multiple expletives, and quite imaginatively specific threats, all so completely impossible they fall under “protected free speech” since “shoving one ankle up your ass before shoving my shotgun up it, and blowing your fucking foot off” isn’t, technically speaking, possible. We think.)
Please note, the threat is to put only the *ankle*, not the *foot* up the, uh, posterior, of the intended victim. That requires a bit more, uh, *bending* than most ankles can manage, pre-manipulation….
WTFGhost
@NotMax: Especially if every band member has “fingering exercises” as part of their instrument learning.
Gloria DryGarden
@Another Scott: I’d like to see a study that correlates to multiple intelligences, focus, and a variety of ways of thinking. I don’t trust that it’s a gender thing. Unless girls start dumbing ourselves down that young, depending on family expectations. Plus, if teachers expect certain students to be the ones who excel, unconscious bias could be involved. Like that experiment we all heard about, where they told a new teacher who the brightest students were, and indeed they excelled. ( and they weren’t the students who had seemed brightest, before)
Part of why I don’t buy it, is because I took to math like a fish to water, and by second grade I was one of two in my class who got xtra and more advanced math, and zoomed ahead, which continued all through school. There are correlations between math and music. And not as often discussed, is the correlation between math and other languages. Math was always just another playground and language to dance with.
of course, I haven’t taught math yet, so I am not fluent in the different ways to model it, and break it down to translate it for different people..The view from a teacher’s perspective might be different
prostratedragon
Some interesting science news:
Chetan Murthy
In 2003 I attended a “systems biology” conference for my employer (IBM). I noted that the researchers there were -overwhelmingly- female. And since it’s systems biology, most of what they did was …. computer programming — MPI, Matlab, etc. A shit-ton of programming. I conjectured that these women got into life sciences b/c ….. well, we program smart little girls to think that that’s what they need to do. But then they discovered that they were good at programming, and katie bar the door.
I am convinced that these preconceptions in our society are the fault. B/c too many female systems biologists for it to be some fluke.
eclare
Henry! And his ears.
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: Not too far from *my* perspective, when I tried to teach it, but… well, the honest truth is, I sucked as a teacher (I was *great* as a tutor, but that’s not *teaching*, you see?). I’ll say it, again and again, math is just linguistic shorthand. “we have *this many* family with young children, and *that many* deer we can easily cull, which is enough for meat, leather, etc., for *this many* families – let’s hunt deer!”
Then you get into geometry, which is complicated, and calculus, which, if you understand algebra, is almost too simple (be careful, or you’ll miss what’s rigorous) But really, counting off, how many fingers, how many rabbits/deer/elk/moose/caboose/entire freight trains/complete cruise ships, sans people, nonessentials, and ship/small bears, wolves, and foxeseseseseses. (I *know* how to says it, I doesn’t know when to stop!), and people start to see how math actually impacts their life, except for the entire freight trains.
eclare
Is Cold Case like Dateline? Because I’m sorry, no one can top Keith Morrison at narration.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chetan Murthy: thank you. Amen
@WTFGhost: the entire freight train might actually have an impact greater than stepping on tiny legos. I’ll cue that up for my silent fantasies about karma for others.
On math, which I say saved me
geometry was a language, and a set of operations, to get from this information, to that. There’s some nomenclature, some symbols, so it’s just language, and you learn to read those charts for sine and cosine, secant, etc. It’s been awhile. Calculus was delicious, all about movement, translating from this info to that. A lot like dance, a mix of kinesthetic and visuals. I don’t know how other people translated it. It was material, and concrete, and applied to real world info.
dif-eq was going to derail me though, too abstract. And statistics never took. Some branches of math are really separate languages, with really different operations. Physics, though, that was hard. And general relativity, took a lot of hand holding. The concepts were hard to imagine and hold onto. Engineering was fun, but I am still convinced i am as dumb as a door nail about electricity. Years later someone gave me a metaphor that helped. Oddly, it was organic chemistry that utterly derailed me.
Gloria DryGarden
On the topic of bliss ( not the math kind that only math lovers would get)
I had organic cherries tonight. It’s a rare treat. The flavor of cherry lingered in my mouth for hours and I slid into a state of calm, inner peace and deep gratitude.
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: Well, I went from thinking I was a Chemical Engineering major in college, to realizing I couldn’t handle second semester Frosh chemistry. That was one of the first times I realized something was wrong with my brain.
Now, I hate that I missed so many opportunities, but, I’m sometimes disgustingly pleased with myself that, when it came down to it, I really was one of the best (not “the best” or “top ten best” but, “if you wrote top 500 best, you’d probably mention people like me, and explain why we didn’t make the holy half-thousand”) in my profession. So, hypothetically, I do sympathize that OChem kicked you around, but I also have to conquer my jealousy that you got to take on OChem, in a semi-fair fight.
But it’s normal, for someone with a good brain, and a strong “liberal arts” background, to have problems like yours.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
I am very much not a math person; was a history major and got a masters in library science, but then fell into computer programming by accident, and I can tell you I had a 30 year career as a programmer analyst while still counting on my fingers. I did like geometry in HS when I figured out it was a logical system ( plus it was visual). I got an A in Math Appreciation in college (ha!), which discussed things like various sized infinities. And I truly appreciate how wonderful the concept of zero is. I never really understood our base 10 number system and how subtraction worked (carry the one to the tens place) until I learned about Base 8 and Base 2. But I still don’t really understand why you can’t divide by zero; if you are dividing by nothing you should have the same number left, like subtracting zero, but apparently not!
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: Also: all of relativity is, in essence, “the speed of light is a constant, from any general point of view. In order for that to be the case, here is what you need to be aware of. If something is moving *towards* you, X; AWAY from you, -X. Spinning in circles, (it’s complicated), spinning the opposite direction, in circles (it’s -complicated). Most of the time, things are moving *so* slowly, you can ignore all of this, but, if they’re moving fast enough, or are far enough away, or, if they must be precisely positioned, relative to space/time, or (let’s be honest, you’re wondering if the next Star Blazers is one you haven’t seen, aren’t you?).”
WTFGhost
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): It comes down to this: if X/0 was “a number”, then that number, times zero, would be X. But 0, times any number, is 0. You can say that “X/0 is infinite,” but that’s not really useful, because sometimes X/0 actually gets so close to 1. You can’t have X/0 be “either infinite, or 1, or some other number,” it has to be *one, specific value* ,or it’s no longer what we think of as division (technically, it’s not what we think of as a “function”).
So, you can’t divide by 0, but, you can evaluate a limit of X/Y, as Y goes to 0, and, if that limit is the expected value of x/y as y=> 0, we call the function “continuous” or, say it has a “removable discontinuity,” (the former, in college, the latter, roughly, in grad school), and, while that might not technically *exist*, it’s… well, it’s “good enough for government work,” as the expression goes. If today didn’t convince people of that, what would?
prostratedragon
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Not at all a mathematician (biology and later econ, at best), but how’s this: dividing, say, 4 by 2, is like determining how many 2s must be added together to make 4. In that sense, dividing by 0 cannot have a determinate answer.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@WTFGhost: OK, I’ll buy this 👏 thanks
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@prostratedragon: this actually makes sense! Good work.
lgerard
Just got a weird email from Social Security
I thought Magats were opposed to politicizing the deep state. Apparently not.
WTFGhost
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): now, me, I remember how frustrated I would get with my mom, when she’d say “what’s 9 from 2?” and I’d say “three” and she’d be all “oh, come one, Ghost, what’s 9 from 2?” *THREE*, I’d insist. She’d ask again, and I rolled my eyes, and groaned with true, old-man agony, “you can’t take 9 from 2, so you borrow one, and get *THREE*, which I didn’t say, because if I said it in that tone of voice, I’d be reminded she believed strongly in corporal punishment, and instead said, “and then, you subtract 9 from 12 and get three,” very calmly, in *my* humble opinion, but I did notice she stopped helping with my math homework shortly thereafter.
Probably a coincidence… but probably not a *chance* coincidence.
NotMax
@lgerard
Discussion about that downstairs. Consensus was it is spam.
lgerard
@NotMax:
I think it is legit myself
lgerard
LOL evidently that is correct
they are so dishonest that even spam looks like something they might have sent
MattF
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I guess I think of the reason you can’t divide by zero in an algebraic way— division is the operation inverse to multiplication, and there simply is no multiplicative inverse to zero. It’s just the way the multiplication operation works.
Ramona
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Dividing by nothing could mean not dividing at all which would make dividing by nothing equivalent to dividing by 1. So zero does not necessarily mean nothing in all contexts. As wtfghost explains, dividing is more like asking: how many of the denominator would equal the numerator?
Baud
Biden is old.
prostratedragon
Oooowee! 🧵 [My bold]
WaterGirl
@Kelly: I think fire might be the scariest of all the natural disasters. I’m not sure how anyone is the same again after going through that.
WaterGirl
@Pauline: It really does hold up well!
WaterGirl
@eclare:
Absolutely nothing like it.
You are familiar with the “We were there” books for kids, I imagine? We were there at the Alamo, for example.
Cold Case is kind of like the TV version. You do get taken on a trip back to the time when whatever crime occurred. But you see it all play out through the eyes of the people, and they have the “now” version of the people and also the “back then” version. So well done!
Denali5
All this math talk is making my head hurt. Actually it is very interesting. I wish I could go back in time and take math again. Maybe it would take.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: I’ve mentioned before that my step mom was recruited in the 60s from a women’s college in Mississippi to do programming in Seattle for Boeing. (They recruited lots of new women graduates and trained them.) Near the end of her career, she had to train a wet behind the ears, male, new MBA as her replacement…
And I remember taking a field trip in grade school to an IRS facility in Atlanta (I got to load a magnetic tape on an IBM tape reader!!) and all the visible workers were women.
And that famous NASA movie had women doing the calculating.
Programming used to be “women’s work”.
These ideas of who is “naturally” good at whatever task are malleable and change over time depending on who is on top and who they want around them. It can be toxic, and my truthiness detector says that there’s very little objective evidence behind almost any claimed “natural” differences based on gender or any other similar grouping.
It’s good that things are changing for the better in many, many fields and industries. The pace has been far too slow though.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Long ago, I read that in Russia, most of the doctors are female AND that a job / career as a physician is not held in high esteem there. Total coincidence, no correlation!
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Yup, I don’t doubt it. Cross-cultural differences are another argument against “natural” stratification.
I went to grad school with an Iranian guy. He said that over there, the highest status professions were architecture and engineering. Law and medicine and so forth were much farther down the list. (He didn’t specifically mention gender rankings, so it’s a little different.)
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
TheronWare
Helloooo Henry!