Tag: Learning

Odds and Sods was the third “canonical” compilation album released by  The Who, released 19740928, almost exactly 37 years ago today.  

In the US the record was released by MCA, and in the UK by Track.   There is some discrepancy as to how the record charted, some references saying #10 and #15 in the UK and US, respectively, whilst others indicate #10 and #8.

This is one of my favorite records, since it contains material not previously released, some of which is amongst their best.  It also marked the final release of material that I consider “classic” Who, since the next studio album, The Who by Numbers, was a considerable departure from their old sound, a trend already started by Quadrophenia, discussed here and here.

All of the material was previously unreleased, except “I’m the Face” which we shall discuss in a bit.  None of the material on the record was specifically recorded for it, but rather were studio tapes recorded months to years before it was compiled and released.

The recent results from CERN (the acronym for the original name for the outfit, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) about neutrinos being propagated faster than light speed has caught a lot of attention.  I am still not convinced that the data are correct, but 15,000 individual measurements at the high certainty that is claimed certainly gets one’s attention.

I am not prepared to say whether or not these results are valid as of yet.  The folks at CERN are begging other laboratories with comparable apparatus and expertise to verify (or to refute) the findings.  That is how science is supposed to work!

However, 15,000 individual determinations are a LOT of data!  Let us for the moment take the data at face value and assume that this is not a fluke nor a mistake, but an actual “violation” of the Special Theory of Relativity that indicates that no massive particle can exceed the speed of light, henceforth called c.  Ready to do some thought experiments?  I am!  Let us go!

First, please join with me in wishing Youngest Son a very happy 22nd birthday!

Now to the topic at hand, which is timely for me since it seems that I am getting one.  I had a scratchy throat at bedtime last night, but with the change in the weather here in the Bluegrass beginning yesterday, I just sort of did not pay attention to it. When I awakened this morning, it was a different story.

I had fever.  I am extremely sensitive to changes in body temperature, because my normal is around 97.7 degrees.  Thus, when I hit 99, I am SICK!  I also had the scratchy eyes and the runny nose.  As the day wore on, and I did not get better, I decided it was time to act.  I took aspirin for the fever, a gram of ascorbic acid and 50 mg of zinc to boost my immune system.

This seems to be a topical topic (please forgive the confoundment of words) because of the controversial claims that the purported “Doctor Oz” gave last week about arsenic in apple juice.  I shall give a couple of links later about that, but shall first describe the element in a Geeky way.

Then I shall dismember “Dr. Oz’s” credibility.  Fair enough?

Before we get started, know that arsenic is all around us, at higher or lower concentrations, depending on where we live.  I shall get into that a bit as well.  The important thing to come away with from this post is that arsenic is almost (but not ALWAYS) a bad thing to ingest or to have for an injection.  On the other hand, it likely is allowing us to communicate via the Internet as we read and speak.

Are you ready to start?  I am!

Those of you that read this regular column know that I sometimes give space to what I do not like.  More often I write about things that I do like, but just to mix it up, now and then I have to be the author of a critical piece.

This is one of those.  The career of this hack has been rife with nothing but luck and I think that he has been more detrimental to musical art than he has contributed.  Why would I take on one of the most honored icons of pop music?  Because he is a shallow and an opportunistic person.  Can you say Tea Partier?  Sure you can.

His entire life is pretty much a lie.  We shall start with his name, and go further.  Ready?

Lots of pieces have been written about why Hurricane Irene did so much damage as a Category 1 storm as it skirted the Eastern seaboard.  The answer is deceptively simple, but does not fit in with what we have been taught about hurricanes.

Before we examine Irene specifically, let us look at what a hurricane really is.  A hurricane is a rather intense form of a tropical cyclone, and we shall use just the term cyclone in general for all of these kinds of storms.  There are other kinds of cyclones, but for this piece the unqualified term shall mean tropical cyclones, except at the beginning of the main text where the term cyclone itself is defined.

Before we get started, the only reference that I am going to make to the story of the day is the date in the title.  This has been covered ad naseum elsewhere, often with distortions to fit a particular political perspective.

We last discussed the first side of the seminal album, Quadrophenia, by The Who, entirely written by Peter Townshend.  Since that time I have done more extensive research, and found some interesting things that I hope will be illuminating for everyone.  They were for me.  Without too many details in the introduction, I can say with a good bit of confidence that this record almost dissolved the band.

Roger put Pete in hospital with punches, Kit was almost banned, and the fraud that the management was doing to the band was discovered.  That was part of the genesis for the song “How Many Friends Have I Really Got” that was part of The Who by Numbers some time later.  But there is more!

I have a frank correction to make, and then what is more like a clarification as to the original characters who were combined to make Jimmy.  I also have a stupid one to make, about the name of the album itself.  Shall we begin?

Sorry to be late tonight.  I was occupied earlier this afternoon than I had planned and got a late start.  However, I wanted to produce a quality piece even though it did not post exactly at 9:00.

This the last part in our three piece series on anesthetics.  We have covered general anesthetics of the inhalation type and of the IV type, and now will discuss local anesthetics.  The primary difference betwixt general and local anesthesia is that in general anesthesia the patient is generally unconscious or at least highly sedated, whilst in local anesthesia the awareness of the patient is generally not impaired, although sometime they are sedated by other agents.

The term “local” is not as descriptive as one might think.  While it is true that very small areas can be anesthetized, often much larger areas are.  By the way, it is likely that local anesthesia is much more ancient than general anesthesia, for reasons to be explained later.

I apologize for posting late tonight, but a very rare event happened.  The International Space Station made a transit directly overhead at posting time, and I did not want to miss it.  Besides, my lovely friend wanted to watch it with me.  It was a spectacular sight, and the ISS was not bad, either, LOL!

Second, I was going to add a new crosspost site that is run by our friend ninkasi23, but never figured out how to make it so.  I trust that she will email or call me to help me over my stupidity.

I was going to write about the compilation album, Meaty, Beaty, Big, and Bouncy this time but we have already discussed every song on that record.  However, I will make a comment about the title.

Most people think that the title was just sort of a dirty joke, but it actually was a description of the band members.  I think that Lambert came up with it, but I am not really sure.  Here is the meaning:

At the time, and still, Daltrey was pretty fit, so he was Meaty, meaning all muscle and no fat.  Moon, of course, kept the beat, so he was Beaty.  Entwistle, aka The Ox, was a really big guy, and of course Townshend was always leaping about the stage, so he was Bouncy.  Now you know, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

Last week we started this three part series with inhalation anesthetics, and here is a link.  This week we shall discuss injected anesthetics, and finally shall finish up the series next week with local ones.

We should once again stress the difference betwixt anesthetics and analgesics.  In general (this rule is not 100%, but darned close), anesthetics render the patient unconscious so that surgical procedures can be performed with no physical pain during the procedure.  In addition, many anesthetics cause muscle relaxation which makes surgical procedures less traumatic.

Analgesics, on the other hand, are not designed to render the patient unconscious, but rater to moderate the sensation of pain caused by many reasons.  A few analgesics can be used as anesthetics, but in general depress the medulla such that respiratory difficulties often result.