Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Toby relaxing



Toby being a good Tobster

It's not necessarily a world invention, but it's a personal invention

Last night, I intended to bake some chocolate chip cookies.  I had the store-bought Pillsbury cookie dough in the back of my fridge for awhile, and it was time to use it...many months too late.  The expiration was back in March.  Apparently, the dough has been at the back of my fridge a bit longer than I remember.  Not to be deterred from enjoying some sort of cookie based after-dinner snack, I start thinking about ingredients I had around the kitchen.  (No way was I going to make cookies from scratch at that point.  Maybe some other day, but not last night.) 

Nillas!  I have Nillas!  And large marshmallows!  OK, I can make a kind of a smore with some chocolate that doesn't need melting.  Chocolate Syrup, I have that too!  Hmm, there's something missing still.  This endeavour isn't quite decadent enough just yet.

Think.  Think harder!

Coolwhip!

I piled these all together and had an awesome treat.

To repeat this achievement, take 3 large marshmallows and tear them in half.  Briefly roast each marshmallow piece, one at a time over a stove burner.  When just slightly burnt, mash the marshmallow between two Nillas just like smores.  After making 6, add a dollop of Coolwhip on each, and then drizzle chocolate syrup on top. 

Glorious!

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Boston talk


Learn Boston as a second language, repeat after me, "I luhnd on Shahk Week tha electric eels rahly shak shaks in shaks."

Monday, August 12, 2013

The River of No Return book review

The River of No ReturnThe River of No Return by Bee Ridgway
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though the concepts introduced in this book are an inventive twist on the time travel idea, the character dialog and motivations are dreadful.  In this story, there are competing time travelling organizations struggling for control of time travel throughout human history.  Nick, an English nobleman who fought in Spain in the early 1800's finds himself in the 21st Century just before he is about to die.  This is the story of his struggle to dance between these two organizations while sorting out his own role both in the 21th Century and the 19th Century.
I did enjoy reading much of the book as the plot unfolded, but found myself suffering through some dreadful character interactions. Some of this was due to character development that was somewhat engaging, but drowned out by the chorus inauthentic thoughts and experiences. The leading male character, Nick, was a noblemen from the 19th Century and only spent 10 years in the 21st Century, but somehow seemed more in tune with 20th Century social and entertainment elements than us normal people that lived through that time period, even though he did not. His experience with the 20th Century would've have been more authentic if it had been taken from the approach of a child growing up in the Aughties (2000-2010). Also, the characters of British origin often felt more like Americans, often using Americanism and seemed both out of place globally and chonologically.  Additionally, the writing of the characters while in the 19th Century felt more like rejects from Jane Austin novels rather than real people.
This book appears to be the first of a new series. Will I look forward to the next book? Eh. The author has to polish her skills of writing for characters with more authenticity, as her first attempt to do so is a distraction from an otherwise good concept and plot.


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Monday, June 17, 2013

Notion of Creation is not a theory, and scientific theories aren't proposed notions

Bible based knowledge does not lead to new scientific knowledge.  People used to think the Bible was useful to learn about nature.  They did try to use it as a guide to make new discoveries.  However, over time, scientists started finding out that the Bible just gets so much wrong.    The Bible literally has almost every major point wrong about the universe, from its description of Earth as a flat world with a tent over head to its description of rabbits as cud chewers. The value of the Bible is it's a general moral guide taken in the context within the times each portion was originally written/re-written. Taking it for more than that is truly grasping as straws.  People discovered the hard way that the Bible was not a good starting point to learn about nature. That's why the practice of referring to the Bible as a source for science was stopped over time.
So, to that point, Creationism based on the Bible isn't a theory. It is a failed notion. A theory isn't just a proposal. It is a proven working model of the Universe with a lot of peer reviewed data, from which accurate predictions can be made. To extend this further, those predictions often create new areas of exploration and further growth of knowledge, directly leading to new technologies, either in the exploration of the theory or as a result of knowledge learned from the theory. Last major invention spurred by Bible belief was the telescope, and use of that technology disproved that belief; the creator being forced to recant his statements about reality and live under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

On the other hand, Darwin didn't create the Theory of Evolution, he proposed the core concepts based on his observations. Evolution was born out of the peer review process with much more independently collected data. Evolution wasn't a theory until there was a massive amount of data and extraneous amount of analysis of that data, from which the natural model was molded.

Why is Creationism not a theory? Because it doesn't have one iota of this. The supporters want a magical shortcut, using circular arguments and cherrypicked research of other people's works in the form of anecdotes and impressive looking fake equations. No actual proven predictions come from Creationsm nor from its child contrivance called Intelligent Design. Creationism is the end of knowledge, not its birth. That is why is it not a theory and it is not science. Now, that said, the challenge is always there for Creationism supporters to objectively collect data and test hypotheses. Even if they don't prove their hypotheses, at least new knowledge would come from that. This process has yet to be undertaken by Creationist (and Intelligent Design believers), or if it has, results have been hidden.

Examples of observations that would grow knowledge along the Creationist track:
  • Find DNA in mammals that cannot be traced back to a common ancestor or introduced by some other natural process.
  • Show completely distinct lifeforms with no ancestry at all. 
  • Find data that offers new evidence to reinterpret apparent evolution in our own species, from malaria resistance to lactose persistence.
  • Additionally, find data that better explains why pre-agricultural humans did not have cavities and modern humans with no cavities is almost unheard of? (Hint, that has been very well explained with a recent study of mouth-dwelling bacteria and their evolution to adapt to our changing diets, along with our own evolution for such too.)
These examples cannot be explained with anecdotes.  Hard evidence has to be presented from scientific studies using the Scientific Method.  Research doesn't count for this.  New evidence has be presented.  That evidence must be collected and peer reviewed.  Until that happens, Creation Notion can never be put on equal footing with any Scientific Theory, especially the Theory of Evolution.

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Article from Northwest University sites big breakthru for Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Big Multiple Sclerosis Breakthrough - Phase 1 trial safely resets patients’ immune systems, reduces attack on myelin protein


From the article:
A phase 1 clinical trial for the first treatment to reset the immune system of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients showed the therapy was safe and dramatically reduced patients’ immune systems’ reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent, according to new Northwestern Medicine research.