That's a lot of stars; That's a lot of galaxies

Unless you've had a chance to get away from civilization, way away from civilization, you don't really know what the night time sky looks like because of light pollution. Years ago TPP found himself in the outback of northern Queensland at a quaint place called the 40-mile Scrub. So no lights, no clouds, no humidity, and it was amazing what you could see of this unfamiliar night sky. The scope of our galaxy and the universe it occupies is quite mind-boggling, the more so that this is a Monday morning when the mind is more easily boggled. At any rate here's a link to a photo essay about how many stars compose the Milky Way Galaxy (which BTW means milky). Personally, you should check the accuracy of this report because 200 billion sounds a bit off. And if that isn't enough, then here's a computer generated image of our local galactic super cluster, called Laniakea, and the tiny little dots aren't stars now but galaxies. The bright lines show more densely clustered galaxies, and remember the nearest similar galaxy, Andromeda, is 250 million light years away (and yes, that's not counting the 20 or so smaller galaxy like clusters of stars that are satellites of the Milky Way, e.g., Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds). See the nice little comforting "you are here" dot? My Garmin just melted down.

When is a pumpkin not a pumpkin?

TPP knows where the pumpkin capital of the USA is located.  Morton, a little town right here in Lincolnland. And very few pumpkins are grown there. The reason for this is that the jack-o-lantern pumpkin is not the pumpkin of pies, and it never has been. Usually the news media get this wrong, so what a surprise to read a correct and well-informed article about pumpkins, in the HuffPo!  Jack-o-lantern pumpkins are a very watery fruit, not as watery as a tomato, but watery none the less. The pumpkin of pies are from a different species of Cucurbita, basically big orange squashes. There is a variety of pumpkin/squash called a "sugar pumpkin" that are smaller, denser fruits, sometimes called "baking pumpkins", but TPP is not even certain if this is a C. pepo or one of the other species. In addition to jack-o-lantern pumpkins, this species includes all ornamental gourds, summer squashes, acorn, delicata, and spaghetti squashes. C. moschata includes the butternut and similar orange winter

squashes, but not all. The large Hubbard squashes, all the "giant pumpkins in the news", turban squashes, banana squashes, and a number of other varieties are C. maxima. So Cucurbitas can be pretty confusing.
Here's a cleverly carved "pumpkin". Do you know what this pumpkin is going to say? If not, then you don't know jack(o-lantern) about Who. 

PlantingScience - creating tomorrow's scientists today

As you may or may not have noticed, no ads, no commercial pop-ups sully the pages of this blog. Yes, you get the wisdom, knowledge, and wit of TPP for free, and it's darned well worth every penny, too. Endorsements are far and few between. Here though is an educational program in botany called Planting Science, which is worthy of attention.  PlantingScience teaches science via inquiry, which is how it should be done. And has it been successful, wow! Unfortunately you can be hampered by your own success, so the Botanical Society of America is seeking help to greatly increase the capacity of the website and the program. There are classrooms full of kids just waiting to sign up. You can read all about PlantingScience and see a very nice little video at the link provided. Maybe you're a teacher and you'll see this as a great opportunity to change your science classroom. The most remarkable part of this program is that kids get mentored by over 800 members of the Botanical Society! Can you imagine that? Professional botanists taking time to help and encourage kids doing science! So if you can, lend a hand. A donation of any size will help things out, and if you want us to name a plant after you, the BSA only needs $75,000 to accomplish its educational goals. Please do pass this along to others. Post it on your blog or on your social medium of choice. Thank you.

Fun and Games with new maps of the USA

This article is just a lot of fun. What would the USA look like if all 50 states had the same population?  Or perhaps some other number of states?  Or whatever! TPP is annoyed because it's Lincolnland not Land of Lincoln. You'd think they'd know.  Or in another option, posting to you from Sangamon. And it's fun to know that if they were states, North and South Manhattan, divided at 186th and 187th streets, each would have more people than North and South Dakota. New Jersey has 15 times as many people as Wyoming, but is just one tenth its size. No room for buffalo to roam there in the east. And there will be more to come as the series continues. In particular you have to like the four state option, One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State, which has the making of a really good children's' book.  Enjoy.

What does it take to be an expert?

Someone somewhere came up with the idea that it took 10,000 hours of “practice” to become an expert.  However this is in part a quite silly idea.  TPP could devote 10,000 hours practicing the violin, and at the end of that time, he would not be a violinist of any sort although maybe turkey in the straw would not be out of reach. A certain amount of talent and aptitude are also required at the starting point, meaning that if you have already shown that you are pretty proficient and capable as a violinist, then it takes maybe 10,000 hours of practice and time spent with able teachers to elevate yourself to the entry level of what could be considered an expert. 10,000 hours is a lot of time. That’s 2000 hours a year for 5 years, the amount of time it took TPP to earn masters and PhD degrees. So TPP entered into that 5 year period with a reasonable aptitude and ability to learn science and an undergrad knowledge of biology.  And if you continue with the math, you can get to 2000 a year with 40 weeks of work at 50 hours per week.  This is not an unreasonable number for being a half time student, a half time scientist-in-training, and a half time teacher (yes, that is one and a half.).  So, yes, after 10,000 hours of “practice” TPP had reached the expert level of botany at least in his field therein. Now it really doesn’t stop there, and the “practice” has continued ever since, and yes, sadly, 50 hour weeks are not all that unusual for active biological faculty. And undergraduate students wonder, or can’t figure out, how it is that faculty know so much. It’s because students with only a few exceptions haven’t put their foot on the first rung of the ladder of expertise as yet. And don’t get TPP started about those “master gardeners” who think their modest educational efforts elevate them out of the amateur status into experts.

Curried squash apple soup

Give yourself a treat and try this soup.
Ingredients: 1.5-2 pound butternut squash, peeled & cut into 2 cm cubes, 2 somewhat tart medium-sized apples, peeled & cut into pieces, 1 TBSP cooking oil, 2 cloves garlic minced, 1 medium onion diced, 2.5 to 3 TBSP good quality curry powder that look yellowish (heavy on the turmeric), 6 cups vegetable broth, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground pepper, 1/2 cup orange juice. 
Saute the onion & garlic in the oil in a heavy bottomed pot until it just begins to brown. Add the curry powder and stir for a minute being careful not to burn it. Stir in the broth. Add the squash and apple chunks, bring to a boil, then simmer for 20-30 min. Let the soup cool briefly until it can be handled. Take the chunks out of the broth and process them until smooth and creamy. Return to the broth.  Add orange juice, salt, & pepper. Simmer until desired thickness, which may not be necessary. Adjust seasonings. Serve with a dollop of sour cream in the soup. Careful, this soup can turn anything yellow.

Apple quest

After a week of unseasonably warm weather, a dousing of nearly three inches of rain, the weather has turned a bit unseasonably cold. Yes, you can average our weather, but the great mid-west of North America never gets average weather. So Saturday was going to be a bit cool and maybe a bit wet, and this is a university town, so football, and homecoming, so best to get out of Dodge. All in all, a good day for an apple quest to southeastern Michigan. Locally the early varieties of apples did well, and the Jonathons and Jonagolds were excellent, and the Phactors recommend you try Crimson Crisp if you get the chance, but the later varieties just did not fair so well. Thus if the Phactors were to have Northern spies, it would take a quest to the Tree-Mendus fruit farm in Eau Claire, MI. They have over 200 varieties of apples under cultivation, quite amazing diversity, and you get tastes! The Phactors managed to beat the homecoming parade out of town, and then it drizzled on us all the way to Michigan. Hungry and hoping the rain would let up, the Phactors stopped for lunch in an Applebee's. But it didn't. Still you don't drive 4 hours to get your favorite apples and just give up. Perhaps you have gathered that most of the apples are U-pick, and nothing quite like a cold, drizzle to make it an adventure. The dear woman working the orchard outpost should get a medal for remaining cheerful doing a rather miserable job while someone else got to make the mulled cider by the barn's fireplace. Not to be deterred by the cold and rain, the Phactors picked apples, 4 half-bushels and fortunately northern spies are largish apples so you don't have to pick so many to fill a bag. Now here is the question. If you were picking some of these apples for friends, how much above the purchase price do they owe you for the transportation and picking in miserable weather? As the trip neared it's end the rain finally stopped. So checking the score, the Phactors are squashed up (from a field trip 2 weeks ago) and appled up for the fall and winter. Next up, what you do with this bounty.

Election politics in Lincolnland

As the election season heats up here in Lincolnland, citizens are getting the old GnOPe Rauner-round, promises bereft of any plans or details, as if the how such things will be done were unimportant. Now where is it written that somebody who has made a lot of money in business (He’s rich. Get over it.)  knows anything at all about how to run a government?  These local Trumpettes (There is also Overwhite, the milk magnate.) do have better hair, but apparently no realization that a state government doesn’t work anything at all like their businesses, although the state government can and may go bankrupt, and that’s something they have probably experienced.  Please wait until TPP manages to extract his retirement funds from the state’s coffers before doing anything rash. (Yes, the fight with the retirement bureaucracy continues.)  One recent Rauner-round promise was to improve the administrative efficiency of state universities. Now this is something that TPP knows quite a bit about, and it’s a double whammy, a rich businessman who wants to be a politician who wants to tell educational professionals how to run a university.  Sure.  It’s bad enough when professional politicians try to run universities, let alone an amateur politician.  What happens when administration is made more efficient, i.e., smaller, is that the necessary functions performed by said administrators get pushed off onto faculty as if they had nothing else to do. Been there, done that. TPP has no love of university administrators, but he doesn’t want their job as part of his. Most of the Rauner-round is standard GnOPe sound bites, almost, but not quite as tired, but every bit as defunct as trickle-down economics. Voters let the GnOPe try all of this out in Kansas, their noble experiment, and the data is now in and everyone can see just how well it all worked. In case you didn’t know, it failed miserably.  (“Far from giving Kansas a bright new future, Brownback plunged it into chaos.”  Details at 11.) No question Lincolnland is a poorly run state, but at times you have to consider carefully the alternative, and with the realization that things actually can get worse, TPP will just have to hold his nose, and vote for the incumbent; if you don’t you just may get the change you asked for, just not the change you wanted.  Or you could move to Kansas and just try it out for awhile.

Market Apartment Complex that obviously is not in the USA

Little by little markets, particularly farmers' markets, are working their way back into the thinking of people in the USA. But markets like you see all over Europe remain rare in the USA although some dandy ones still exist in some cities, e.g., the Reading Station Market in Philadelphia and the City Market in Kansas City. This is an amazing market apartment complex (in Rotterdam), and it makes so much logistical sense for urban living. How convenient! You won't need a great big huge fridge if you are buying fresh almost daily.  And you won't need a car to bring home a week's worth of groceries either.  Everything about this concept is smart except you don't see such ideas being put forth in the USA. Our country is not very good at acknowledging that just maybe somebody somewhere else has a good idea and has figured out how to do things better than the USA does. TPP would like to see a sky-light down the center and more "green" space below, a tree-lined promenade for example, but hard to argue with otherwise.

Fear of terrorists put to good use

Oh, boy, does TPP love Tom Tomorrow! One of the worst aspects of USA culture is its fear of what might happen, no matter how remote, or how unlikely they are to be harmed.  TT nails it.