Happy Holidays!

I’ll be taking a week (or so) off–until after the New Year–to play with my son (visiting from Kuwait), rework my website, and work on writing projects with a deadline. I may drop in on you-all as you enjoy your holidays, but mostly I’ll be regenerating.

I wish you a wonderful season, safe and filled with family.

See you shortly!

---

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, Technology in Education featured blogger, and IMS tech expert. She is the editor of a K-6 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-6 Digital Citizenship curriculum, creator of technology training books for middle school and ebooks on technology in education. Currently, she’s editing a thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

Follow me.

What is an American?

America’s changing, and not just Friday’s credit downgrade. President Obama is now the only President to reside over a lowered credit rating. That’s a legacy.

It’s the face of America I’m interested in here. Look at these statistics from Pew Research:

I could draw conclusions, but that’s not what this post is about. I’ll let you  read the data and make up your own mind.

I Got An Invite to Google+

Thank you, Therese!

I'm sold

I am having so much fun organizing my Google+ circles. I couldn’t get into Facebook because I’m not one of those who exposes my life to the world. Google+ understands me. Anything I post goes only to those I want it to.

For example, I have a split personality. I’m part writer, part geek, and part attached to my military kids. Google+ lets me send tech tips to my tech friends, WIP updates to my writer friends and discuss patriotic stuff with my military folk. No one has to wade through posts and links they aren’t interested in anymore.

Book Review: Bunyoro, An African Kingdom

Bunyoro: An African Kingdom

by John Beattie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Man’s path from paleo-history is a fascinating study. Since our records of that era is confined to rocks and natural artifacts, those like me who want to understand what man was like in that time must extrapolate from more recent but similar groups of primitive people (I used the word ‘primitive’ in the anthropologic sense meaning the basis for derived forms rather than crude or preliterate).

Sunday Stats: American Well-being Index

Gallup and Healthways have surveyed more than 1 million Americans as part the Well-Being Index, a daily measure of Americans’ health and wellbeing that began in January 2008. The surveys tell a story of economic devastation, increasing health problems, and American resiliency.

Read more at GALLUP.com.

Geek Redefined

Which Geek are you?

Book Review: Tree Where Man Was Born

The Tree Where Man Was Born

by Peter Matthiessen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I bought this book before I knew who Peter Matthiessen was, namely, one of the greatest nature writers of all time. Because of the book’s title, I thought the author would tie present day East Africa to a by-gone era when man was primitive and evolving and nature ruled. I read the first one-hundred fifty pages and put it down for five years before returning to it. At that time, I was lost in my passion for the life and times of early man and not so interested in anything that rhymed with ‘present day’.

Sunday Stats: Is America Too Politically Correct?

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of Adults believe America today has become too politically correct, while just 23% say the country is not politically correct enough. Eleven percent (11%) say the balance is about right.

What do you think? Me, when they start removing the American flag from a veteran’s monument over some PC issue–yeah, we’ve gone too far.

Sunday Statistics: Is Torture Justified

A recent Pew Research Center survey asked 742 U.S. adults whether the use of torture against suspected terrorists can be justified.

The overall results (leaving out the popular rarely justified category to keep this simple. Full results here.):

• Can often be justified: 15%
• Can sometimes be justified: 34%
• Can never be justified: 25%

Here’s more detail:

Book Review: The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior

The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior: An Autobiography

by Tepilit Ole Saitoti

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read Tepilit Ole Saitoti’s The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior because I was so impressed with several books I read on the life of pygmies. The Maasai is another proud race that is disappearing, trampled by the march of so-called civilization. How other people live in the arms of nature while I’m snug and hidden in my man-made home with my store-bought food amazes me.

Book Review: The Forest People

The Forest People

by Colin M. Turnbull

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I just finished a wonderful book, Colin Turnbull’s The Forest People. Turnbull lived ‘a while’ (pygmies don’t measure time with a watch or a calendar) with African pygmies to understand their life, culture, and beliefs. As he relays events of his visit, he doesn’t lecture, or present the material as an ethnography. It’s more like a biography of a tribe. As such, I get to wander through their lives, see what they do, how they do it, what’s important to them, without any judgment or conclusions other than my own.

Sunday Stats: MSNBC Poll on Arizona’s Immigration Law

Do you support Arizona’s tough new law on illegal immigration?

In July, Arizona will begin enforcing a new law that requires law enforcement officers to check someone’s immigration status if they have reason to suspect that he or she is in the country illegally. Do you think this is a good idea?

Hold on. MSNBC misrepresented what the law says. I know because I read SB 1070 (which is colloquially called the Arizona Immigration Law). Here’s what it should have posted:

Take a Stand or Shut Up (and sing)

Most anti-Arizona Immigration Law pundits say something like this:

Now that Arizona has toughened illegal immigration laws, will the border crossings stop? Not until we look at the business end of immigration… If you seriously want to stop illegal border crossing, you have to hit where it hurts: the wallet. There are two reasons that Americans let illegals cross over in the first place: we don’t want to spend $25 on tomatoes, and we don’t want to get caught growing our own pot or making our own drug factories because that’s illegal and highly enforced.

Sunday Stats: A YouTube of Where People Fly

Where Do Scientists Intersect With Geeks and Nerds?

Only a scientist/geek/nerd could come up with a diagram on dorkiness.

http://www.greatwhitesnark.com/2010/03/25/difference-between-nerd-dork-and-geek-explained-in-a-venn-diagram/

Overall, an acquired taste.

Who Would Guess ‘Metamaterials’ Would Be My Most-Viewed Post

As a grad student, I research a lot of stuff. Most of it is related to my work on AI’s, but along the yellow brick road that leads to my personal Oz, I peek into anything that catches my interest. Plus, I’m around like-minded individuals who love pulling threads.

As a result, I’ve posted on everything from mind reading to DNA computers to science humor.

But the post that has by far the most hits to date is on metamaterials. Since I first stumbled onto these man-made pieces of matter, I’ve chatted seven times about them and their uses (like an invisibility cloak). Shockingly, lots of people out there in the world share my passion. Take a look at my quarter numbers:

End of the Week Laugher #6: xkcd Comics

Watch this from the guys at xkcd comics and their animators. Click to go to the video:

Want more? Here are the rest:

• End of the Week Laugher #5
• End of the Week Laugher #4
• End of the Week Laugher #3
• End of the Week Laugher #2
• End of the Week Laugher #1

Sunday Stats: Government Requires Consent of the Governed–in America

Only 21 percent of Americans say that Washington operates with the consent of the governed,

Thar’s Oil in Dem Dar (American) Hills

With the focus on the Middle East, it’s easy to forget that America has a lot of oil on our own land. Alaska, Texas, California–and now North Dakota. Called the Bakken Shale deposit, it’s not new, but advancements in technology have made it more accessible than ever before. In fact, there’s a boom going on one hundred miles south of Canada. Unemployment is 4.3%.

The question is, can we ever keep ahead of our oil requirements?

Sunday Statistics: Religious Freedom

Americans take religious freedom for granted. This is not true with the rest of the world. Only Japan and Brazil have less social hostilities and less government restrictions inspired by religion. Read on: