Jun 9, 2006 | Educational, Informational
I never thought I’d choose as a mate someone who was in the same field as I was in, but, as is often the case in my life, God had other plans. As time goes on, the wisdom of that move becomes more apparent. Only another teacher can understand 13-hour days to get the latest round of mandated paperwork. It’s nice to have someone to go in to work with you on Saturdays or Sundays to get individualized lesson plans done. And of course it makes for good “quality time” to have someone to grade papers with of an evening over a mug of hot chocolate.
Many people outside of education don’t really understand a teacher’s calling. In fact, there are those out there who try to minimize the job of school teacher. Never mind that a very high number of teachers get out of the profession within the first few years, and for those who stay, burnout is a disproportionately high occupational hazard. Teaching requires more time, effort, and energy than most people realize. Plus, no one gets rich off a schoolteacher’s salary, and for those who think that the real benefits of being a teacher come in “cushy” hours and summers off, think again!
Our contract time is for 40 hours per week, barring any extra duties such as coaching, clubs, or other sponsorships. There is, of course, time spent at home grading, planning, researching and contacting parents. Actual in-school time for us averages 56 hours per week, which, by simple mathematics, is much more than enough when spread out to cover 40 hour workweeks for summers and other vacations. (more…)
Mar 31, 2006 | Educational, Informational, Personal
I guess I can’t take full credit for jinxing this mission. After all, the mission had already been canceled once, uncancelled, and then put on “stand down” status before I even got involved in the project. The mission of Dawn is to study Vesta and Ceres, two bodies in the asteroid belt, and Dawn will be the first to visit multiple bodies under its own power, in particular using its new ion thrusters. And my involvement … well, I am one of the space enthusiasts whose name (and Angie’s, I take full responsibility for that) is carried on the craft embedded in a microchip mounted between the forward thruster and the high gain antenna.
Of course, after we became involved the mission was canceled.
Then, the manufacturer of the Dawn spacecraft, Orbital Sciences Corporation, appealed, offering to finish Dawn at cost in order to gain experience in this new field. Just a couple of days ago, the mission is back on again. Angie and I are going into space.
That is, if we don’t jinx it again….
Nov 24, 2005 | Informational, Personal
This will be my last post at http://radio.weblogs.com/0131531/. Please meet up with me again at my own domain: http://www.toddswebspace.com.
Though there hasn’t been much apparent activity on the weblog in a couple of months, a lot has been going on under the hood. I’ve been planning to jazz up the site a little bit. A few things have been broken on the weblog side, so I’m moving the whole shebang to my own server to better control how the different pieces fit with one another. The appearance of the site will hopefully be a little less bland as I introduce a new concept into the design: color. I hope to fix those things that have broken in the past year or two as well.
Any techies out there might also be interested that I’m rewriting the code of my weblog from the ground up to have a table-less three column main page achieved through cascading style sheets. The entire process could take me up to around Christmastime as I chip away at it. (more…)
Aug 5, 2005 | Informational, Personal, Recreational
This is a picture of the Haig Point Lighthouse on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina. The lighthouse was built in 1872 as one of two range lights that ships could use to safely enter Caliboque Sound. It is still operational today as a private aid to navigation and a bed and breakfast; and it’s on the National Register of Historic Sites. One more thing: it’s also the site of my wedding last month.
I know some of you want details! Here you go:
Existing Historic Tower: YES
- Year Light First Lit: 1872
- Is the Light Operational? YES (PRIVATE AID TO NAVIGATION)
- Date Deactivated: 1934-1987
- Automated: YES
- Foundation Materials: TABBY
- Construction Materials: WOOD
- Markings/Patterns: WHITE W/RED ROOF
- Shape: SQUARE ON HOUSE
- Relationship to Other Structures: INTEGRAL
- Original Optic: FIFTH ORDER, FRESNEL
- Year Original Lens Installed: 1872
- Height of Focal Plane: 70
- Has tower been moved? NO (more…)
Jun 24, 2005 | Informational
We all learned that matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. Our teachers told us there are three states or phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Some of us with cool high school teachers or college teaching assistants learned about another state: plasma. Then there were those of us who wanted a degree in physics who learned there were many more. Extremely low temperatures yield superfluids, supersolids, Fermionic condensates, and Bose-Einstein condensates. Particle accelerators give us quark-gluon plasmas. Stars hold degenerate matter, neutronium, and strange matter. And then there are a few states of matter associated with the instant after the Big Bang.
I found this article about a newly discovered form of matter.
MIT physicists create new form of matter. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — MIT scientists have brought a supercool end to a heated race among physicists: They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity.
It’s always mind-boggling, the things that happen at the extremes of temperature, size, time, speed, or distance. If one day we are able to harness these phenomena, our civilization will undergo a paradigm shift. Our lives will be forever changed in a qualitative way, rather than the incremental way that normal technological advancements tend to do.
For now, though, we can only watch these things from the window of the hovel we’re confined to. Taunting us, prodding us, these extreme behaviors educate us that our day to day experience on Earth is only a tiny subset of the complexity of the universe.
Mar 6, 2005 | Educational, Informational, Miscellany, Personal, Recreational
