As literate as Viagra spam from the Ukraine.
Looking for a guide to medical conditions? The Sector General novels, by James White, and also The Adventures of Terra Tarkington by Sharon Webb.
For agoraphobia: The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun [Asimov].
And a serious recommendation for those dealing with childhood sexual abuse and its sequelae: Elizabeth Moon's Once a Hero and the rest of that series.
Posting my own request for assistance: Does anybody know of a good document preservation/restoration service? Preferably in the Seattle or Portland area, but I'll take recommendations for good folks in other locations, too.
My mother has been going through old family photos and documents recently, and has several documents (approximately 100 years old, I believe all on parchment paper) that have been kept rolled up in a cylinder. They are all tightly curled, and one is cracked and torn in the middle. As she keeps pulling them out to show people, the rolling and unrolling is causing further damage. The others are in better shape, but since they all mean a lot to her I'd like to see about getting these properly preserved and mounted.
Hilary @30 - if you don't find a local source, Mouser Electronics is your best internet source. [Link is to the LED category page] My husband regularly orders from them for small to medium quantities, and if they receive an order before 8pm they will ship the next day.
Velma - if you don't have one already, may I suggest the addition of a George Foreman grill or equivalent to your household (through purchase or loan)? My sister acquired one when a relative passed away, and she has found it to be an amazingly versatile and useful tool. It can be placed on any convenient surface for tending while seated, and with a good pair of tongs food can easily be placed on it and retreived single-handedly. I've seen my sister grill everything from veggies (even green beans!) to meat (think steaks and chops). It's of course great for panini-type sandwiches, and just about everything solid you can imagine that would benefit from the direct application of heat.
Never knew about epodunk.com, before now. My mother's home town, Parkin, AR, also has no photos. There's not much interesting about Parkin the town now (it's a small small farming town in the Mississipi Delta region, about 50 miles west of Memphis). But there is some archeological interest, which my family had a minor role in possibly destroying some part of.
My mother's family owned a farm in Parkin (actually, my mother and uncle still own it, but it's now leased out). When my grandfather was clearing some additional land for the farm, he wanted to clear an area which had an mound on it. There were Native American cultures who built mounds all over the various river valleys of the midwest and Mississippi regions, and quite a few in the general area in the eastern parts of the Arkansas along the Mississippi. So, my grandfather knew the mound might be of archeological interest, and he contacted some university (not sure which one, might have been U of Arkansas or possibly something in Tennessee) to ask if it should be excavated. They said no, they knew all about the mounds and there was nothing interesting there. So, it got dug up and turned into productive rice fields. This would have been in the late 1930s or early 1940s.
Of course, later on (circa 1965) anthropologists became more aware that there were things they did not know about these cultures, and another mound near Parkin which had gotten preserved because it was in an inconvenient location is now an archeological state park. (Three links, follow each word.) It's an active research location and gets quite a bit of local tourism. It's of particular interest because it is quite likely a site that was visited and described by Hernando de Soto in 1541.
Diatryma @340:
I took a class with that grading policy - Decision Analysis at Stanford with the guy who basically invented the methods. The grading scheme was as you describe - most of the work (homework, midterm, final) was multiple choice, and for each question you assigned each of the four options the relative probability you felt of it being correct. The specific algorithm was grade = (1 + log(p)/log(4)), where p was the probability you had assigned to the correct choice.
The algorithm is weighted such that a .25 probability (1/4, or chance) equalled 0. A probability of 1 gets a grade of 1. Anything below .0625 gets a grade below -1, which means that you are better off being conservative - but not too conservative - because those negative points build up fast.
We were explicitly told never to assign a 1 probability, because that meant the other options would all get 0s. A 0 probability for the right answer would mean a grade of negative infinity, or flunking the class. Exceedingly low probabilities (.0000000000001) had similar effects. Yet, apparently every time the course was offered, somebody did that and got the answer wrong - and failed the course. [Stanford has liberal course drop policies, so if it happened early enough in the quarter they could drop the class without serious GPA effects.]
On side-vent windows...my mother's 1973 Chrysler Duster had REAR side-vent windows - it was a two-door, and so the little side vent windows were all that was available for ventilation in the back seat. They had a mechanism that allowed them to angle out by about three inches - it never let a lot of air in.
My parents later bought a 1980-something Oldsmobile something-or-other that had particularly inane rear windows (this was a four-door) - they would only roll down halfway. They bought it just before I went to college, so thankfully I never spent much time riding around in it. Still drove me batty, though.
Michael - wow! It looks tidy from the front photo, but you have a HOUSE there, all right. Looks like there have been a couple of additions onto the back, hope they were done well. If nothing else, you'll have fun exploring all the nooks and crannies. And heck, for $8000, why not? If there were anything remotely like that in my neck of the woods, I'd consider buying it for cash sight unseen too.
And speaking of qualitative work (@472), I would like to thank all of the participants in last summer's "Mama's little babies love zucchini" thread. I am currently teaching a class in design research, and last week's class was on the topic of qualitative data analysis. I provided that thread as an example of "authentic user data" and we spent a great hour extracting the key themes in how people talk about zucchini (the concept of "too much", humor, and recipes were critical). It was a very successful lesson.
What was even more interesting - I had asked the students to only analyze content, but they also offered some deductions about the participants in the thread. They told me that the participants were educated and literate, creative and with a sense of humor. And they also commented on the obvious camaraderie within the group.
I had given them absolutely no context for the discussion, so I was impressed at how obviously these things came across to them. So three cheers to our hosts, for supporting a place for literate, funny people to hang out together!
Caroline - three cheers for Tufte! I have seen academic talks without bullet points galore, but they tended to be in the social sciences using qualitative work. I don't know your field, but since you mention charts, I assume it is not qualitative. People do appreciate visuals, so I wouldn't go completely slideless - but if you have a polished speech, your committee should be ok without bullet points.
* Know your neighbors. If you at least say hi occasionally, you know to keep an eye out for each other.
* Subscribe to your local newspaper.
xopher @ 9:
I was actually helping my husband with a precursory patent search over the weekend (yay for the full-text-since-1975 patent database online), and did run across a patent for a device to be applied to that body part. It was to be held on by vacuum, and featured plastic extrusions that allowed weights to be affixed to the outside. I don't have the number handy, but I'm sure a judicious use of search terms would turn it up readily.
No, my husband was not looking for such a device. I think the search terms I was using centered around "safety interlock". I'm not quick sure what the safety interlock for this device was, I didn't read it that closely.
More smallpox vaccine anecdotal data: my husband, born in 1965 in Hawaii, has the smallpox vaccine scar. I, born in 1968 in Seattle, do not. I did get all of the usual range of vaccines as a child, and was later tested for resistance to measles and rubella (thanks to one of those outbreaks of measles among college students in the 1990s - I was working on a university campus at the time). I didn't need a booster for either.
I received my last tetanus shot almost 5 years ago (sliced my thumb in a kitchen accident), so I guess I should see about getting another one soon. I also need to check with my husband on his status, since we're doing a lot more gardening recently.
I had chicken pox in the first grade - a fairly mild case - but never came down with any other dire diseases, thank heavens.
Cat @284 - See, I said that Ruth and Mildred were popular in the time. Definitely we are not related unless you are operating under a complete pseudonym! My progenitors have generally not been prolific childbearers, and I can count all of my cousins (first and second) on one hand. I remain in awe of people who talk about large family reunions.
On another topic, my personal gazebo error was with the word "melancholy". I had heard it said, and seen it written, but never connected "mell-anch-oly" with "melon-colly".
Sharon M @271 - nope, in my case Mildred and Ruth were the sisters, and Gladys on the other side. Gladys also had two sisters, Beatrice and Virginia - somewhat more timeless names.
Lois @278 - my favorite boss ever was named Lois. I never heard her complain of people calling her Louise, but then she isn't the type to complain about that sort of thing.
One thing I did: Checked the box on my college freshman housing application that said "I don't care whether I'm in an ethnic theme dorm or not". This led to meeting my husband. [Same university as Alberto, apparently, though a few years earlier.]
One thing someone else did: Asked if I would pick up a copy of the handout at the end of class for her since she had to leave early. Led to a strong friendship that has been good for both of us.
Ah, names becoming famous/popular. I've experienced this twice in my life. The first time - well, Olivia wasn't very popular as a given name when I was born, but then there was this movie in 1978 you may have heard of - "Grease". "Oh, like Olivia Newton-John?" people asked. "Yes" I would reply through gritted teeth. Still not too many girls actually being named Olivia, though.
And then more recently - maybe 8 years ago or so I started hearing my name called in the mall (this never happened before) - I'd turn around and it would be some mother chasing her toddler around. Two years ago it hit the top 5 on the Social Security list of given baby names - and they are everywhere!
At least my name was not trendy when I was born, though. My family has a history of doing that with girls names that didn't stay popular, which means that my grandparent's generation included Ruth, Gladys, and my great-aunt, Mildred.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 24 |
| 2008 | 39 |
| 2007 | 46 |
| 2006 | 71 |
| 2005 | 10 |
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