Dippy Triumvirate

Pro Tip:  Once you get the blender dirty from making one dip, you might as well go ahead and make your other dips.  Now you only clean that pesky blender once!

Baba Ganoush - Hummus - Tapenade

Be Safe!

Good job buckling up, Opackway!

Staying Safe 

Celebrating Voting

It's very fashionable to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of women getting the right to vote.  However, as Irene pointed out to me, the tale of voting rights is much more complicated than that ("100 year anniversary of wealthy, white, long time resident women getting the right to vote" just doesn't have the same ring!).  It's an interwoven tale of federal citizenship rights plus federal voting law plus (and this is key!) state specific legislation.

Piggy-backing on some research that Irene forwarded me, I picked out the most interesting dates to me and created this scaled timeline (pet peeve alert:  can't stand it when people do timelines with no scale - what's the point? That's just a chronological list!)

How come racism and sexism is so ingrained in modern society?  Stare at the chart for a while and see if you can find an answer...

sources:

https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/report/50-years-voting-rights-act-asian-american-perspective

https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-02/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_the_United_States#Timeline

T. H. White and Socrates

Traditionally, when a student asks me "Why?" in a metaphysical sense, I respond with the old trusty and pithy Socrates quote:

"The unexamined life is not worth living..."

Socrates

However, I just ran across someone quoting Merlin in T.H. White's classic The Once and Future King which spells it out a bit more:

"The best thing for being sad is to learn something.  That's the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. 

There is only one thing for it then - to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust , never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you."

White

I should have known it - Merlin was a physicist!

Good Dimensional Analysis Problem

How much of this:

3 cubic yards of gravel

Does it take to make this:

Our backyard gravel walkway

Apparently the difference between the first picture and the next:

Leftovers

I had Isabelle do the measurements and calculations in centimeters before I found out that you order in cubic yards!

Her calculations were right on though - I had to round up to 3 cubic yards to get free delivery!

Thanks, Isabelle (assisted by Seb)!

False Idols, Bacon, and Physics

For years I've been struggling with expressing why learning physics is hard (e.g. lying, words being imprecise, belief, our shallowness, objective vs subjective, bad intuition).

For months I've been picking my way through an impulse buy, one philosophy idea at a time:


Today I read the passage for 1626:

Francis Bacon and his four false idols that prevent us from seeing things clearly.  Aha - here it all is, already nicely packaged:

scanned from the book above

Here I was all embarrassed by my impulse buy being somehow low brow, but - you know what - turns out I should have studied more philosophy in school!

Family Reunions, Now and Then, Half and Half

On Irene's side, there's an annual get-together in Old Saybrook, CT.

Here's the oldest picture of the two of us at that get-together:

Aug 2002

Here's the most recent picture:

Aug 2019

We look just the same, right?  ;)

Despite the older generation bowing out more and more as the years go by, there are plenty of new young folks joining as you can see below:

Not the biggest get-together, but close!

I think this get-together may be the biggest convention of 'halfies' (what I call my kids: half asian/half white) on the East coast. Check out this pic of just the younger generation:

Fourteen 'Halfies'

Parental Units

49 years later and still on duty as my parents!

Florida, 1970

North Carolina, 2019

'Tis one of those truisms that it doesn't really hit you fully until you yourself are a parent just how much they do for you!

Thanks,

M & D 

aka

G & A 

aka

the 'Rents 

aka

(their favorite) The Parental Units (Paternal and Maternal versions)

----

Thanks to Isabelle for the bottom photo.  I could find no pics of just the three of us from when I was a baby!  I think that's the New Yorker Magazine my Dad is trying to get me to read...