Category: Teaching

Last time we discussed the second side of the Jethro Tull album Aqualung, and a fine album that was.  It was critically and commercially well received, but many of the critics expressed the opinion that it was a concept album, with which Ian Anderson strongly disagreed.

There are various accounts of the reason behind Thick as a Brick, and Anderson has been quoted as saying that he wanted to record it to be a parody of “serious” concept albums.  However, in an interview he mentioned some bands that had yet to release a concept album before Thick as a Brick hit the stores.

My personal feeling after reading quite a bit about this is that Anderson did indeed want to write a parody of concept albums, probably because Aqualung was perceived to be one and Anderson had not intended it, and Anderson’s huge ego made him misremember certain facts about just what albums he was parodying.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

In these days of prepared just about everything, for many people what I like to call “old timey” cooking is just a distant memory, and for many others not even that.  Tuesday night I got the idea to write this because I plan, when The Little Girl goes to sleep, to show The Woman how to make chocolate syrup at home for a fraction of the cost of even the store brands.

It is easy, and the recipe can be increased to make as much as you want.  After thinking about that, I sort of randomly selected a few other things that used to be made from scratch that rarely are any more, or that simple are no longer eaten much.

I think that this will be sort of fun, and I suspect that many of you reading will have some recipes in your memories’ horde to share.  Let us start with chocolate syrup.

Last time we discussed oxygen as an element, including why we do not burst into flame in our 21% oxygen atmosphere.  Quantum mechanics can really be interesting.

This time we shall discuss some of the compounds of oxygen with other elements, and I emphasize SOME because oxygen forms hundreds of thousands if not millions of compounds.

Some of these compounds are essential industrial materials, some are essential for biological processes, and some of them can cause real problems when released into the atmosphere.  A few of them are quite toxic.  Let us look into them!

As many of you know, last Tuesday was The Girl’s (henceforth referred to as The Woman) 20th birthday.  We had originally planned to bake a cheesecake together Sunday past, but she had a better idea.  She asked me very sweetly, “Do you know what would make this cake really special for me?  If you cooked it by yourself since it is my birthday cake”.  Of course I agreed!

I got all kinds of suggestions from the community here Saturday before last, and I appreciate all of them.  I finally took the basic recipe from the Kraft site and modified it, and the result was wonderful!

I shall give you the recipe first, then a photographic gallery with my comments about how to do this.  It is not hard to make a cheesecake that does not dry out or get weepy, but it is easy to mess one up irretrievably!  You should read the entire piece before trying the recipe.

It has been a while since the last installment due to several reasons, all of them good.  Tonight we shall finish up Aqualung, one of their better efforts.

The link above has the history around the album, so tonight we shall just concentrate on the music.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Well, tonight is different because I have an update about Junior Jace Potter, the new kitten.  And I also have to announce that henceforth I shall not use the term The Girl for The Girl.  She told me Monday that since she was going to be 20 years old Tuesday I should henceforth refer to her as The Woman.

Back in June I wrote about her cat being killed and how we found a kitten to fill in for him.  Tonight is part update on how he is going and part recap of her birthday party from yesterday evening.

In the text are some pictures of the gifts that I gave her, and Saturday night at 7:30 on the Big Orange I am guest hosting What’s for Dinner? with step by step directions for making the cheesecake in the picture here, with lots of pictures of the process.

Oxygen is one of the most fascinating elements for many reasons.  Before we get to it, I first want to point out that the column of the periodic table that starts with nitrogen are called pnictogens, whislt the column starting with oxygen are called chalcogens.  The term pnictogen is recent, dating form the 1950s.  It comes from the Greek plural noun pnikta which means something on the order of “those that are suffocated” in reference to the fact that nitrogen will not support life.  The “gen” part is from the Greek gonos, “born” or “generated”.

Chalcogen comes from the ancient Greek chalkos, meaning “ore” and gonos, and in fact an extremely large number of metal ores contain oxygen or sulfur of both.  Selenium and tellurium are chalcogens that are often found in gold and silver ores.

Time before last we discussed nitrogen and molecular orbital diagrams for it.  If you are not hip to MO diagrams, I suggest you read that part of the link before you try to tackle the MO diagrams for oxygen.

Sorry to post late, but I got an emergency call from next door because The Little Girl had lost her bottle and The Girl was trying to get her to the bed so that she (The Girl) and I could visit.  I hope that everyone understands that important personal interactions are more important than blogging.  The Girl found her bottle, in an area that I suggested.  She and I make a good team.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I have written about Dad gardening before, so I hope that these are new stories.  I think that at least most of them will be.  Dad did not garden as long as my grandmum did, but when she got too feeble to garden effectively Dad, who was retired by then, took over the chore.

Dad did not do things an a small way.  He just about tripled the area that Ma gardened and moved the garden from the north side of the driveway to the south because there was more room.  He bought a rear tine tiller from the former Mrs. Translator’s father and broke the entire space with it.

Last time we talked about the unusual properties of elemental nitrogen mostly and how stable it is.  We only touched on a little of the fascinating and extremely complex chemistry of nitrogen, ONCE we can get it in a form other than the incredibly stable elemental form.

This time we shall remedy this, although entire graduate level texts have been written on the subject.  Tonight we shall take a brief survey of the impact that nitrogen has on living organisms, industry, and a few other areas.  We shall attempt to do this by looking at various oxidation states, and nitrogen has more than any other element.

The basic concept is that atoms can either donate or accept electrons from other atoms.  When an atom donates electrons, it is oxidized, and when it accepts electrons it is reduced.  Thus, chlorine bleach works because hypochlorite ion is a strong oxidizing agent and breaks up large, colored molecules to smaller, colorless ones.

Aqualung is the forth album by Tull and many people think that it is their best.  I favor Thick as a Brick, but it is still an excellent album.  Rumor has it that critical comments about Aqualung spawned Thick as a Brick, and we shall discuss that in a bit.

It was released on 19710319 on Island Records in the UK and Reprise in the US.  By this time Anderson had completely taken control of the band, and all of the songs are written by him except for the title track which was cowritten by his wife at the time, Jennie.  Anderson, along with Terry Ellis, produced it.

The band lineup was different than that of Benefit, with Jeffrey Hammond replacing replacing Glen Cornick on bass and Barriemore Barlow replacing Clive Bunker on drums.  Remember, Jethro Tull has had more personnel changes than many bands.  Otherwise the lineup was the same as on Benefit.

I took a week off from blogging last week for a number of reasons.  One was that I was having trouble getting my mind around topics.  Another was being in sort of a strange set of moods that have made concentration rather difficult.  Yet again, and probably the root cause of the other two is either spending large amounts of time with someone (no time to write) or no time at all (no motivation to write).  In any event, I think that I have some balance back.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Dad was sort of obsessive about the lawn.  We had a big yard, the front being the largest and the back second, with the sides being somewhat smaller but still large by most standards.  The problem was that we had lots of large trees.  In the front were two post oaks, a hackberry (that was hollow at the bottom), a mockernut hickory (one with really sweet nuts, unlike many mockernuts), and a papershell pecan.

The side on the south had a walnut tree that I planted, and the back had two large walnut trees.  The side on the north had a very tall pine and a redbud tree.  All of that shade made it sort of hard to grow grass.

I took a week off from blogging last week for a number of reasons.  One was that I was having trouble getting my mind around topics.  Another was being in sort of a strange set of moods that have made concentration rather difficult.  Yet again, and probably the root cause of the other two is either spending large amounts of time with someone (no time to write) or no time at all (no motivation to write).  In any event, I think that I have some balance back.

I got tired of writing about carbon so we shall move on to nitrogen.  With an atomic number (Z) of 7, it is the element after carbon.  Nitrogen is another of the few elements that ordinary people encounter on a daily basis, because it comprises around 78% of the atmosphere of the earth.

There are two stable isotopes of nitrogen, the very common ¹⁴N (99.64%), the rest being ¹⁵N.  Both of these isotopes are formed in larger stars by stellar nucleosynthesis.  Nitrogen is peculiar in that it is one of only five nucleides that are stable with both an odd number of protons and neutrons.  It is really unusual in that ¹⁴N is by far the most common isotope of nitrogen.