In a calm sea every man is a pilot. John Ray 1627-1709
From the Wikipedia:
One of the most eminent naturalists of his time, John Ray was also an influential philosopher and theologian. Ray is often referred to as the father of natural history in Britain.
John Ray was born on November 29, 1627, in the village of Black Notley, Essex, England. His father was a blacksmith, and his mother was known as a healer and herbalist; perhaps it was from her that Ray gained his love of nature, and especially of plants. Entering Cambridge University in 1644, Ray rapidly became expert in languages, mathematics, and natural science; he became a Fellow in 1649, a Lecturer in 1651, and a junior Dean in 1658. In 1660 he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church. Soon after, for political reasons, he left Cambridge. Between 1660 and 1671 he made many trips throughout England, and one trip to Europe, to collect plants, animals, and rocks. He also did experimental work in embryology and plant physiology; among other things, he proved that the wood of a living tree conducts water. His researches received so much renown that Ray was inducted into the newly-formed Royal Society of London, one of the world's first scientific societies, in 1667. Poor health eventually restricted his travels, and he spent the last decades of his life corresponding with the leading scientists of his time, such as Oldenburg, Lhwyd, Lister, and Hooke, and writing book after book on languages, theology, and natural history. He died on January 17, 1705.
Starting in 1660 with his Catalogue of Cambridge Plants, and ending with the posthumous publication of Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium in 1713, Ray published systematic works on plants, birds, mammals, fish, and insects, in which he brought order to the chaotic mass of names in use by the naturalists of his time. Like Linnaeus, Ray searched for the "natural system," a classification of organisms that would reflect the Divine Order of creation. Unlike Linnaeus, whose plant classification was based entirely on floral reproductive organs, Ray classified plants by overall morphology: the classification in his 1682 book Methodus Plantarum Nova draws on flowers, seeds, fruits, and roots. Ray's plant classification system was the first to divide flowering plants into monocots and dicots. This method produced more "natural" results than "artificial" systems based on one feature alone; it expressed the similarities between species more fully. Ray's system greatly influenced later botanists such as Jussieu and de Candolle, and systems based on total morphology came to replace systems based on only one feature or organ system.
A devout Christian, Ray expounded his belief in "natural theology," the doctrine that the wisdom and power of God could be understood by studying His creation, the natural world. This doctrine can be traced back to the Bible, but Ray expressed it so fully and clearly that he started a long tradition of natural theology in England and abroad. As Ray wrote in 1660:
There is for a free man no occupation more worthy and delightful than to contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honour the infinite wisdom and goodness of God.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Backing up the Emusic
Yesterday I backed up my E-music folder on 7 Dvds.
E-music is a service that for a price will let you download a certain number of tracks a month. My current number is 90 downloaded tracks a month. Many of the albums are not ones that you would normally come across in your normal Walmart CD racks. My collection is very eclectic. There are many jazz and blues selections. There are folk singers and players of a single instrument. I have a nice collection of classical tuba tracks.
The country is there too. Some singers such as Taylor Swift have albums that are available on both the popular market and are available as downloads on E-Music.
An interesting group of downloads often occurs quite by accident. This happened recently with the Ettas. I download some Etta Jones who is a wonderful lounge type jazz singer, Then quite by accident I could not remember the last name or a screwed it up in my mind and downloaded a bunch of Etta James. She is a classic blues performer.
So sometimes serendipity can occur when the library is big and the memory is a bit eschew.
: ) Pat
E-music is a service that for a price will let you download a certain number of tracks a month. My current number is 90 downloaded tracks a month. Many of the albums are not ones that you would normally come across in your normal Walmart CD racks. My collection is very eclectic. There are many jazz and blues selections. There are folk singers and players of a single instrument. I have a nice collection of classical tuba tracks.
The country is there too. Some singers such as Taylor Swift have albums that are available on both the popular market and are available as downloads on E-Music.
An interesting group of downloads often occurs quite by accident. This happened recently with the Ettas. I download some Etta Jones who is a wonderful lounge type jazz singer, Then quite by accident I could not remember the last name or a screwed it up in my mind and downloaded a bunch of Etta James. She is a classic blues performer.
So sometimes serendipity can occur when the library is big and the memory is a bit eschew.
: ) Pat
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Testing not Teaching
As a country we are going to spend more time testing than teaching. This is sort of a sad state of affairs.
Even in my job after a lengthy interview with my boss, it became clear that the diagnostic skills of the speech therapists are going to be used more than their teaching skills.
My afternoon classes will be taught be someone else, and I will be evaluating for the rest of the year in the afternoon. It is important that each student, in the caseload be requalified for their services.
And so it goes. Why should we expect to be much different than the rest of the world of education.
Pat
Even in my job after a lengthy interview with my boss, it became clear that the diagnostic skills of the speech therapists are going to be used more than their teaching skills.
My afternoon classes will be taught be someone else, and I will be evaluating for the rest of the year in the afternoon. It is important that each student, in the caseload be requalified for their services.
And so it goes. Why should we expect to be much different than the rest of the world of education.
Pat
Friday, January 9, 2009
Mac World with Dad
They say that this could be the last MacWorld.. it could be.
I picked up Dad when I went to MacWorld on Thursday. I dropped off lesson plans and took some of my comp time. I headed over the hill and picked him up at 10:40. We sailed into the city with the traffic not slowing us down.
We were there by noon. I parked the expedition on the top floor of the parking garage about two blocks from Moscone Hall. After locating our bar coded, emailed free passes, we headed into the exhibit hall.
MacWorld occupied both sides of Mascone.They did not house half of the convention in the West Wing like they had the year before. We dopped down on the elevators and it looked like we were in the vertical software section. It was the side that didn't have Apple. There were a couple of cool cars to look over, including an Acura race car from formula one.
We prowled around a little and decided to head to the other side through the underground tunnel. The other side had the Apple booth. It was pretty big, but not as big as in previous years. They had big posters of ILife 09. We watched a demo of IWork and Pages on the big thetre stage. I told dad that we really needed to look at the new IPhoto to see the changes. We buttonholed one of the presenters and he did an update for us on IPhoto with the new face detection software... very cool considering the number of digital cameras out here and a need to organize our assests. He also ran over the latest innovations on IMovie. Since Dad and I have spent a few hours invested in the old IMovie, were were interested in the latest version. What was cool was the ability to seemlessly stitch two versions of the kid jumping into a single segment.
We stepped outside the area, and got a sandwich each and a water and a soda and gathered up our energy to go back inside and find the area where we could buttonhole another presenter and show us some of what he knew about a photo program called Aperature. Dad has been studying it through the online service called Lynda.com. We a support person from St. Louis who provides the 99 dollar yearly service on all Mac software products. He was able to show us alot about Aperature. Most of which dad knew already.
I bought dad an overlay for his keyboard so that when he is doing Aperature, he will have all the key strokes available to him right on top of the keys.
I found this guy selling some interesting non photoshop software on the floor. It looked like it had great promise for doing photoshop portrait work. Dad bought it.
We were off and out of the center by 4:30. I was home in Merced by 8'oclock and change.
It was quite a day.
No big vendors were at MacWorld. No Adobe. The photo companies had very small booths, and so did the print vendors, HP and Epson.
There really wasn't much new to report. The usual pooled sellers were not there. The book salesmen were there but with much smaller displays.
There were many booths that had names hung on the sign, but no both materializing. The economy may have taken them out after they had paid for their book.
The whole show was much more vertical.. software that fits a niche. It was still worthwhile in the sense we were able to get up close and personal service.
Love
Pat
I picked up Dad when I went to MacWorld on Thursday. I dropped off lesson plans and took some of my comp time. I headed over the hill and picked him up at 10:40. We sailed into the city with the traffic not slowing us down.
We were there by noon. I parked the expedition on the top floor of the parking garage about two blocks from Moscone Hall. After locating our bar coded, emailed free passes, we headed into the exhibit hall.
MacWorld occupied both sides of Mascone.They did not house half of the convention in the West Wing like they had the year before. We dopped down on the elevators and it looked like we were in the vertical software section. It was the side that didn't have Apple. There were a couple of cool cars to look over, including an Acura race car from formula one.
We prowled around a little and decided to head to the other side through the underground tunnel. The other side had the Apple booth. It was pretty big, but not as big as in previous years. They had big posters of ILife 09. We watched a demo of IWork and Pages on the big thetre stage. I told dad that we really needed to look at the new IPhoto to see the changes. We buttonholed one of the presenters and he did an update for us on IPhoto with the new face detection software... very cool considering the number of digital cameras out here and a need to organize our assests. He also ran over the latest innovations on IMovie. Since Dad and I have spent a few hours invested in the old IMovie, were were interested in the latest version. What was cool was the ability to seemlessly stitch two versions of the kid jumping into a single segment.
We stepped outside the area, and got a sandwich each and a water and a soda and gathered up our energy to go back inside and find the area where we could buttonhole another presenter and show us some of what he knew about a photo program called Aperature. Dad has been studying it through the online service called Lynda.com. We a support person from St. Louis who provides the 99 dollar yearly service on all Mac software products. He was able to show us alot about Aperature. Most of which dad knew already.
I bought dad an overlay for his keyboard so that when he is doing Aperature, he will have all the key strokes available to him right on top of the keys.
I found this guy selling some interesting non photoshop software on the floor. It looked like it had great promise for doing photoshop portrait work. Dad bought it.
We were off and out of the center by 4:30. I was home in Merced by 8'oclock and change.
It was quite a day.
No big vendors were at MacWorld. No Adobe. The photo companies had very small booths, and so did the print vendors, HP and Epson.
There really wasn't much new to report. The usual pooled sellers were not there. The book salesmen were there but with much smaller displays.
There were many booths that had names hung on the sign, but no both materializing. The economy may have taken them out after they had paid for their book.
The whole show was much more vertical.. software that fits a niche. It was still worthwhile in the sense we were able to get up close and personal service.
Love
Pat
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
My Dad is 83 Today
I just got through calling dad.
He lives with mom in Morgan Hill. His birthday makes him 83. He is lucid and doing all kinds of things.
My sister Kelly, brought him a chocolate cake. When he was in the navy, his mother would make him a cake, and at his request, send him each of the four corners of a square chocolate cake... So I asked him if he got the four corners. He said that alas the cake was round. His idea tonight was to give everyone a small slice and he would be able to nibble on it for a longer period of time.
He went to the heart doctor today and all of his tests were great. He is happy that their is a pill for cholesterol. He claims that is what is giving him good numbers.
Today I went back to school. The students were there to get some instruction. I had Pao explain his Rose Bowl parade experience. They also performed in Disneyland. He got to meet a lot of students from other bands across the country and around the world. He was given two pins from Golden Valley to trade to others to get some of their pins. One student documented in the paper, traded for a grass skirt off a band member from Hawaii. Pao traded for one other pin from another band.
While they were down there they got a chance to go to the Snoopy Land and Universal Studios. They had a great time.
Some of my students got some very nice things for Christmas, but overall I would judge that the economy has become kind of a scrooge for presents.
This week we are starting to learn the vocabulary of entertainment.
Artists, directors, distribution, production, actors/actresses. choreographers, and scripts. Most of my students don't have any of these words at their disposal.
Have a good one.
: ) Pat
He lives with mom in Morgan Hill. His birthday makes him 83. He is lucid and doing all kinds of things.
My sister Kelly, brought him a chocolate cake. When he was in the navy, his mother would make him a cake, and at his request, send him each of the four corners of a square chocolate cake... So I asked him if he got the four corners. He said that alas the cake was round. His idea tonight was to give everyone a small slice and he would be able to nibble on it for a longer period of time.
He went to the heart doctor today and all of his tests were great. He is happy that their is a pill for cholesterol. He claims that is what is giving him good numbers.
Today I went back to school. The students were there to get some instruction. I had Pao explain his Rose Bowl parade experience. They also performed in Disneyland. He got to meet a lot of students from other bands across the country and around the world. He was given two pins from Golden Valley to trade to others to get some of their pins. One student documented in the paper, traded for a grass skirt off a band member from Hawaii. Pao traded for one other pin from another band.
While they were down there they got a chance to go to the Snoopy Land and Universal Studios. They had a great time.
Some of my students got some very nice things for Christmas, but overall I would judge that the economy has become kind of a scrooge for presents.
This week we are starting to learn the vocabulary of entertainment.
Artists, directors, distribution, production, actors/actresses. choreographers, and scripts. Most of my students don't have any of these words at their disposal.
Have a good one.
: ) Pat
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Eagle Eye and Suffer,Dude
Two quick reviews of a couple of redbox offerings.
Eagle Eye was everything that my sister Kelly wrote in her review. This is an action movie from the start. The car chase scenes were great with a couple of amazing crashes. This is a big brother gone wild kind of movie. The huge computer Eagle Eye, decides to have a mind of its own. Its amazing how integrated we are with the server machines.. in many ways that we have little notion of their connectivity. This is also a movie that combines gone in 60 seconds with Deja Vu. It was interesting and well worth my buck. This weekend the Redboxes in Merced were out of the movie. I think that I lucked out with one that was returned.
The second movie, Surfer,Dude, is one you can pretty easily save your buck and don't even rent it. Staring and produced by Matthew McConaughey, its about a surfer that won't sell out to the corporate types that want to buy his name and his surfing skills. Then along comes a drought of So Cal waves. He tries all kinds of superstitious behavior to bring the waves back.. to no avail. Finally he seizes on the idea that the waves have not come because of his lack of involvement in corporate image. There are some interesting cameos of Willie Nelson and the star of Woody Harrelson, of White Man can't jump fame. And there is some eye candy and some adventure shots out on the surf.. but this movie despite its seven years in production probably shouldn't have been made. It is in short supply also in the Redbox.
Happy Redboxing.. Pat
Eagle Eye was everything that my sister Kelly wrote in her review. This is an action movie from the start. The car chase scenes were great with a couple of amazing crashes. This is a big brother gone wild kind of movie. The huge computer Eagle Eye, decides to have a mind of its own. Its amazing how integrated we are with the server machines.. in many ways that we have little notion of their connectivity. This is also a movie that combines gone in 60 seconds with Deja Vu. It was interesting and well worth my buck. This weekend the Redboxes in Merced were out of the movie. I think that I lucked out with one that was returned.
The second movie, Surfer,Dude, is one you can pretty easily save your buck and don't even rent it. Staring and produced by Matthew McConaughey, its about a surfer that won't sell out to the corporate types that want to buy his name and his surfing skills. Then along comes a drought of So Cal waves. He tries all kinds of superstitious behavior to bring the waves back.. to no avail. Finally he seizes on the idea that the waves have not come because of his lack of involvement in corporate image. There are some interesting cameos of Willie Nelson and the star of Woody Harrelson, of White Man can't jump fame. And there is some eye candy and some adventure shots out on the surf.. but this movie despite its seven years in production probably shouldn't have been made. It is in short supply also in the Redbox.
Happy Redboxing.. Pat
15=2 cups= 1 tray x6 trays
This year's bumper crop of lemons is just too great to waste.
I bought a lemon juicer on E-Bay a couple of years ago. It has a lovely handle that cranks out the juice from the lemons.
I decided to get it out and crank out some lemon juice from my trees. So I brought each dish of lemons in and washed them. Then I cut them and cranked them through the machine. It does a great job. I quickly used up all of the ice cube trays I bought at the grocery store and still there are many lemons on the tree. Wow.. you can see how many lemons I picked off of this "dwarf" tree by doing the math above. And still there are at least that many more lemons on the tree.
I think that the real key is to make sure that the air and the light can circulate around the tree. If it gets jammed up with too much foliage, it will not produce as many lemons.. but then again you won't have to find the ice cube trays and the lemon juicer.
When life gives you lemons.. freeze them in zip lock bags.. Check out new additions to the flickr photostream to pick out the set up.
: ) Pat
I bought a lemon juicer on E-Bay a couple of years ago. It has a lovely handle that cranks out the juice from the lemons.
I decided to get it out and crank out some lemon juice from my trees. So I brought each dish of lemons in and washed them. Then I cut them and cranked them through the machine. It does a great job. I quickly used up all of the ice cube trays I bought at the grocery store and still there are many lemons on the tree. Wow.. you can see how many lemons I picked off of this "dwarf" tree by doing the math above. And still there are at least that many more lemons on the tree.
I think that the real key is to make sure that the air and the light can circulate around the tree. If it gets jammed up with too much foliage, it will not produce as many lemons.. but then again you won't have to find the ice cube trays and the lemon juicer.
When life gives you lemons.. freeze them in zip lock bags.. Check out new additions to the flickr photostream to pick out the set up.
: ) Pat
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