pdm55

From the Wikipedia article: " ... his significant first meeting with a group of Wathaurong women, [occurred] several months after his escape [in 1803]. Buckley had taken a spear used to mark a grave for use as a walking stick. The women befriended him after recognising the spear as belonging to a relative who had recently died and invited him back to their camp. Believed to be the returned spirit of the former tribesman, he was joyfully welcomed and adopted by the group. ... Buckley also recounted information about warfare among Aboriginal people. According to Buckley he was a central part of life among the Australian hunter-gatherers. He had often witnessed wars, raids, and blood-feuds. This information was uniquely important ... "

The Wikipedia article links to John Morgan's interesting account of William Buckley's life, written in 1852: https://archive.org/details/lifeandadventur00morggoog/page/n...

All the talk in the comments about dissolved oxygen brings back a few memories of student lab work that went wrong. I was given a freeze-pump-thaw protocol to follow in order to remove oxygen from a copolymer solution. Basically we used liquid nitrogen to freeze the mixture, then used a vacuum pump to remove the gases above the mixture. When we thawed the mixture, the dissolved oxygen would escape, in order to equilibrate with the amount above the surface. I repeated this for a few cycles. It was all done with sealed glassware.

Unfortunately, the glassware kept cracking during the thaw stage. This went on for a couple of months, till finally my supervisor reviewed the procedure, and realised that, whether cracking occurred, depended upon the relative concentrations of the two polymers. If I recall correctly, the problem occurred when the polymer with the lower freezing point (which, thereby, thawed first) was present at a lower concentration. It was basically trapped inside the other still-frozen polymer, and expanding, as it thawed ... till crack!

The solution was surprisingly simple. Change the method. Bubble nitrogen through the mixture to drive out (sparge) the oxygen. Replacing the oxygen with nitrogen was beneficial, as nitrogen didn't interfere with the copolymerisation reaction.

The main problem was that I had lost two months of experimental time, and this was just the start of a series of experiments and instrumental analyses. It was now Easter and the deadline to hand in my student thesis was early December.

Please don't believe anyone who says students have an easy life.

The first rule of money is, "Don't lose it".

As to what to do with it? If interested in shares, a rule that I like is to invest in companies that make products that you like. Also, hopefully, you can make some assessment about the management of the company. If they are bringing a new product to the market, can you use your expertise to evaluate that product?

Michael Burry argues that Index Funds distort the market. Think lemmings. Better to use one's own judgement.

Is the sun always going to be shining? No, rainy days always come. In life, you will have both lucky and bad breaks. So make the most of your lucky ones.

And don't think you are a genius, when you make a lucky investment. Back to rule #1.

WARNING WARNING WARNING

FDA has issued a warning about hand sanitisers: The FDA’s ongoing testing has found methanol contamination in hand sanitizer products ...

The FDA first warned about some of the methanol-containing hand sanitizers being sold in retail stores and online in June. The agency issued a further warning earlier this month about an increasing number of adverse events, including blindness, cardiac effects, effects on the central nervous system, and hospitalizations and death, primarily reported to poison control centers and state departments of health. The agency continues to see these figures rise.

In most cases, methanol does not appear on the product label. However, methanol is not an acceptable ingredient in any drug, including hand sanitizer, even if methanol is listed as an ingredient on the product label. The FDA’s ongoing testing has found methanol contamination in hand sanitizer products ranging from 1% to 80%.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi... [Includes links to list of specific products.]

The US Food and Drug Administration has been repeatedly warning about methanol in some hand sanitizers distributed in the United States. Unlike ethanol -- the alcohol usually used to make hand sanitizer -- methanol is toxic and can even poison people through their skin. The FDA has warned against more than 100 hand sanitizer products.

In July, the FDA continued to warn consumers and health care workers not to use hand sanitizers containing methanol or wood alcohol (aka denatured alcohol).

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/05/health/hand-sanitizer-cdc...

try https://theconversation.com/half-the-matter-in-the-universe-...

These scientists must really have gotten some insights into the skin to be able to do what they did. They used a polyurethane scaffold for skin grafts. I cannot believe how fantastic the skin of the burns' victims now looks. Repaired with no scarring! (Scroll down. Warning: graphic images)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246891221...

"The same goes for deodorant. It is a must."

I perspire, particularly under my arms. I have been using deodorant to mask the odour, or anti-perspirant to stop the sweating. I figured that, as it's the bacteria that live in armpit that cause the unpleasant smell, maybe low-perfume, alcohol-based hand sanitiser might be the answer. It has worked, there is no perspiration smell! So far - two weeks and counting - it has turned out to be a cheap, effective answer to my body odour problem.

Is Warren upset that he went ouside his sweet spot when he bought major shares in American, Delta, Southwest and United airlines? His analysis showed that investing in airlines last century would have netted him precisely zero dollars. However, this century's tourism boom seems to have persuaded him that now was the time to set aside that analysis. So in he went. THEN the coronavirus pandemic hit. And out he scampered for a $7 billion dollar loss! I wonder what an experience like that does to one's psyche.

Agree. The key skillset I needed to learn was to get along with people. Being nerds, we think we are always right. Hello! The truth is that there is often no one true answer. Learn to bite one's tongue. Still hard for me to do - but I look at my easy-going my friends and see that they have had a smoother journey through life, maintaining their jobs for much longer than me.

Some advice from Gary Provost, author of "Make Every Word Count".

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.

Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music.”

Quoted in http://www.timcasasola.com/blog/writing

The captain of Qantas Flight 32, Richard de Crespigny, credits his first flying instructor with schooling him in "not panicking when engines are lost and you have to glide your plane". He writes about it in his account of the explosion of QF32's Rolls Royce engine which degraded 21 of the Airbus’s 22 flight systems. With the aircraft in glide-mode he built up enough functions to be able to land the aircraft. With no reverse thrusters, no wing slats and badly degraded brakes, four tyres blew out when they landed. https://www.amazon.com/QF32-Richard-Crespigny-2012-05-04/dp/...

>>Had they not heard the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”?

My favourite riposte to the latest directive from the Education Dept was by a fellow teacher who said he always knew when change was coming: it would happen just when he had finally worked out how to implement the present policies.

I send links to my brother &/or sister, if I think it will interest them. I often add a short summary. They often make some comment.

Thx. With my failing eyesight (macular degeneration), I'm always on the lookout for audio stories. I like BBC Comedy https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/category/comedy-sitcoms - something to cheer me up. And these conversations, mostly with Australians, are surprisingly illuminating: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/episodes...

Science is accidental, boring, repetitive, focused, finicky, wasted, political, ... A beast not easily tamed. Think of Edison's 100 trials to develop the light bulb. I continually think of my own truncated scientific career. I couldn't, early on in my projects, see the woods for the trees. About the only thing, I recognised was that I was just one cog in a vast enterprise. Looking back, I wish I had had the energy and insight to see beyond my lab work to where it might lead.

Back in those days, you needed the term "business model" in your grant submission in order to attract funds. I walked away, thinking I had interests that could better generate a business.

A group of men have to react instantly in order to survive. This is the point of your training. You learn to follow orders, instantly. There is no time to discuss the issue. It is a case of kill or be killed.

Australian news outlet uses a log plot. It certainly has a benefit, as you can clearly compare different countries. Is your growth rate more like Italy's, or more like Japan's? We, in Australia, certainly need to do better.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-26/coronavirus-covid19-g...

COVID-19 diagnostic tests included on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) for legal supply in Australia

https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-diagnostic-tests-included-ar...

Advice re Legal supply of COVID-19 diagnostic tests in Australia

https://www.tga.gov.au/legal-supply-covid-19-diagnostic-test...

Measures in Nanjing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be

Procedures at Zhejiang Hospital (zero fatalities)

https://video-intl.alicdn.com/Handbook%20of%20COVID-19%20Pre...

Because you need to get the attention of (1) the man in the street, and (2) politicians. And if the politicians aren't taking notice, they will get a quick wake-up call from their electorate.

Small Basic

https://smallbasic-publicwebsite.azurewebsites.net/

https://www.kidwaresoftware.com/computerscienceforkidssmallb...

html + javascipt

https://www.freecodecamp.org/

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/i-completed-the-entire-fre...

Discussion re new simpler antibody test https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/new-blood-tests-anti...

Resources for shifting instruction online https://illustrativemathematics.blog/2020/03/14/links-to-res...

Smart videos for curious kids (curated site) https://thekidshouldseethis.com/

Sal's software (2012)

https://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/04/de-mystifyin...

I have been thinking about the simplest, quickest way to tutor online. It might be some adaption of what I have been doing 1-on-1, face to face. There would usually be some problem that couldn't be worked out in the tutoring session, so I would go home and write out the solution on paper (using pencil), scan it into my computer, put it in OneDrive and send my tutee a link. Anything else took too long.

I use screencast-o-matic, because it is so easy to use and very affordable, to make videos that I upload to Youtube. I have a dynamic microphone, Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB, which has been working well for years.

https://screencast-o-matic.com/tutorial/welcome-to-screencas...

I recall listening on the radio recently to an adult learner describing her positive online experience. She said (1) the collegiate atmosphere was what made it so "wonderful", aided by initial exercises they did which were about cooperating with other students; (2) she liked being able to fit in her learning around being a mother; and (3) doing peer assessment of other students' draft assignments really helped the students to bond.

I had a similar experience to point (3) when an online course I did included being given other students' short computer programs to comment on and make suggestions about.

NSTA teachers have been given some advice

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2020/03/teache...

One tip was "Teachers are using the hashtag #virtualschool on Twitter to share resources."

Other tips from https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-teachers-china-have-le... were

-- Start by continuing to use lessons that are clear and simple, and don’t introduce new programs for teachers and students to learn if you can help it.

-- When building digital lessons, it’s helpful to reduce the number of external links on your online learning platform. For example, if you want students to read an article, it’s safer to upload a PDF (to OneDrive or GoogleDrive), rather than a link to an external site that may or may not work.

-- Many of our classes at school intentionally used workbooks and paper-based tasks instead of laptops to reduce students’ screen time.

An alternative: "Anitoa systems, a Silicon Valley biotech company has demonstrated a solution for rapid on-site nucleic acid test of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Anita combines a high performance ultra-portable Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) instrument called Maverick, with an innovative “one-step” reverse transcription qPCR (RT-qPCR) reagent for testing 2019-nCoV."

http://www.anitoa.com/docs/press-ncov.pdf