THE YEAR 2011 - monthly notes

Early February brought our first real snow so I have been 'shoveling', and hauling wood. Fortunately, Hart's Abode is easy to keep warm because of the house building material, which is a concrete insulated product, the Norwegian sub-floor electric heating systems in each room, and the wood burning stoves [check out www.BisonEstate.com].

A few things happened at Hart's Abode during the past couple of months.. I 'redid' the theater – removing the 13^th century stone temple columns and the large shelf below the movie projector. I finally hung the dumb-waiter box – it works perfectly. Clare worked hard in the garden – as she does every Spring and as a result the patio areas are in excellent condition. The landscaping included, finally, surfacing the walkway with Lyons sandstone - it looks good! I added steps from the east patio down to the south meadow and more down on the west side to improve access to the Pump House. We are finally getting all the small details of Hart's Abode completed - just in time to sell it! Oh! and I bought a new camera: a Nikon P7000 and am having fun and frustration learning how to use it.

Science-wise I updated my operating system to Ubuntu 11.04 – which is excellent, but did little else scientifically except spending a couple of weeks trying to dissect an electronic circuit so that I could connect the dumb-waiter hoist correctly – success was rewarded with a bottle of red wine!

Some of you may remember the unpublished articles I circulated, as hard copies, in 1993. The titles were:

“Is zero a better name than God for the phenomenon that created the Universe?” and,“Life: a natural stage in the development of Matter?”.
It seems that there is renewed interest in this topics so I have put them out on my blog-site at www.ScienceAnd.net for those who are interested. In the same vein I am currently converting my first two published paper into .pdf and will place them on my academic site www.geol.lsu.edu/Faculty/Hart. These were entitled:

The species concept in Zoology and Palaeontology [1957] and The Origin of Life [1958].

I worked a little on my R book and in September Mohamed Agha, Ray Ferrell and I submitted an interesting paper to the journal Clay and Clay Minerals on a statistical study, using R, of some Egyptian quarries. I developed a discriminant function that allowed unknown samples to be equated with a particular quarry. Although this was principally a study that had potential economic benefits I also saw it as an interesting study in forensics i.e determining whether or not a particular person was in a particular quarry, based upon dust samples from a shoe – would make an nice plot for a short story!

I came across a wonderful educational site from Khan academy www.khanacademy.org start your kids using it right now. If you have not realized it yet your children need to be studying mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology: the scientific age is finally defeating the humanist age and most children will be 'dead in the water' as far as job opportunities go unless they get a scientific background. This is something I am not even interested in arguing about as the opposition is completely wrong almost to the level of criminality!

Something else came up of interest; it seems that some people think that because I am an atheists-atheist I am against religion. This is not true! Indeed, I think religion has many fine attributes that it can, and does, contribute to society. I do profess that religion is a belief system and science is not but represents the language with which human beings describe and interpret reality. I claim that religion should be expressed within designated locations, principally one's home and a specified place of worship. My main opposition stance is that religion must be completely separated from the State and play no part in politics [this is difficult as religion grew as a primitive political system]. To see my views go to www.ScienceAnd.net. I have a slide show somewhere on that site. Oh! and where will I go when I die? My atoms always have been part of our Universe and they will simply continue to flow within our Universe until the end of time. My soul - although I would not call it that - is perpetuated in all the interactions, words and deeds I have had with others since I was born and until the day I die. It gets disseminated with time as my immediate family and friends die off but little bits, just as with my atoms, are perpetuated forever, within the continuum of life.

For the past few years I have been writing three new books. The R statistics book you already know about but one of the others: The Science Of Man: evolution of our gamodeme and the future of society, is in the initial draft and in need of critical reading prior to final editorial work. Because I want to publish it before the next election, in 2012, I have decided to place it on my blog [www.ScienceAnd.net] section-by-section, with the hope that some of you will take the time to write down your observations and comments on what I have written. My blog site is a closed site so please send your comments directly to me at zulu@mric.coop or zulu@mric.net. Please be brutal if you think it is necessary but, whatever else, please give your honest opinion. I will put the first two sections out this month under Science of Man – 01 and 02.

We had a marvellous spring-summer cleaning! I donated a few hundred books from my library to Boulder Public Library and boxed-up most of the others. We donated lots of stuff to the good will, especially old furniture, and sold a few things on eBay and Craig's List. We are putting Clare's BMW up for sale and selling a few personal more valuable items whenever we can: it's called downsizing!

Here is one of the items some of you might be interested in!

Two Volume FAMILY BIBLE for sale: $1,200

REVEREND ROBERT JAMIESON The Holy Bible, With a Devotional and Practical Commentary, 1860.

According to the web there are 23 known copies of these bibles in libraries in the USA, 4 in the UK, 1 in Israel, 3 in Australia and 1 in South Africa.

According to www.worldcat.org. SIX editions were published between 1860 and 1872 and are held by 41 libraries world wide. I do not know which edition I have.

Original gilt tooled binding. Jamieson, R. & Bickerseth, E. (Notes By). Two volumes both beautifully bound in leather, and many superb steel engraved plates (the John Martin series). English. Very Good condition, with some fraying on the spine binding. Published by James S. Virtue.

Currently the two volumes bound as one are for sale for 832,00 € or $1,167 at www.en.todocoleccion.net. I have the two original volumes separately bound.