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Finished Book Goal
The Read 52 books goal is done over a couple months early. The last couple years, I read over 21,000 pages and at this point have read 18,027. Guess this means selecting shorter books helped me hit the number easier. It also means I should get in another 3,000 pages before the end of the year…
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God Lives 9 Light Years Away
This passage comes from the book Big Bang. [George] Gamow was infamous for his limericks and his sometimes offbeat application of physics. On one occasion, he argued God lived 9.5 light years from the Earth. This estimate  relied on the fact that in 1904, at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, churches across Russia had…
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Blue Blood
One of the many times at the beach as a teen, I recall a horseshoe crab and something blue on the sand near it. Years later I learned their blood is blue. Our blood is red due to hemoglobin which contains iron. Iron binds with oxygen to make rust. Rust is red. So our blood…
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50 Experiences of Racially Mixed people
I found 50 Experiences of Racially Mixed people (PDF) interesting. That Americans consider race to be a singular identity makes sense. Claiming to be biracial or multiracial makes no sense in that paradigm. The experiences listed were very familiar. Number 28, “You have been mistaken for another person of mixed heritage who does not resemble you,” brought…
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Trickle Down Economics
Today the United States Government went into a partial shutdown. Also, I happened to have lunch with employees of the Georgia State Archives. (The past couple weeks I have worked on helping with working out the kinks of their move to the Board of Regents information technology infrastructure.) The restaurant where we ate appeared to…
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Resolution Progress 2013: Third Quarter
Read 52 books. Today, at 3/4 through the year, I should be at 39 books read. I am at 48. (Got to 39 books on Jul 25, 2013.) Just current four I am reading will complete the goal for the year. Of course, I will keep reading because that is what I do. Post 180 blog entries. Today…
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Constitution Day
Apparently September 17th is Constitution Day. This is the day in 1787 when the document was signed. (July 4th is for the Declaration of Independence.) Schools receiving Federal funding are supposed to spend part of the day teaching about the Constitution. I wonder how many people have a copy of it? If you have an…
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Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009
Additional thinking about Compiled List of Challenged Books 2008-2012 made me copy Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009 and do the same markup as indicated below. Those I have already read are in bold. That appears to be fourteen. Those already on my to-read list are in underlined. That appears to be eight. Those I just have no interest or failed…
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Compiled List of Challenged Books 2008-2012
Comments on my Banned Books Week 2013 post yesterday via Facebook made me wonder which of the books recently challenged according the American Library Association’s data I have actually read or plan on reading. So I compiled the 2008-2102 top 10 challenged books for 2008 through 2012 (five years) and sorted and de-duplicated the list.…