Cure for Knotweed

Saturday I spent three hours walking in the Westfield River learning about invasive and edible plants. Seems like the best cure for Japanese knotweed, which is overrunning stream banks and road sides in much of New England is (are) goats. They love to eat it. A stretch of river that was covered with knotweed is now covered with a very diverse and robust assortment of native plants as a result of goat browsing and careful replanting of the native species after the goats were removed.

Foodbank Fundraiser

Sunday, Jean and I did a charity ride for the Western MA Food Bank. We feel very strongly that no one in this country should go hungry or have to decide between feeding their families or paying the utility bill. We pledged $500 and if any of you out there would like to help us reach that goal, please let me know. Any amount is appreciated $5, $10, $15, etc. If you would like to help, please send me a comment with your email address, an email (if you have my address) or message on facebook ( if we are friends) for details. We'll need the checks by October 20th since we will need to get them in by the 25th.

General Relativity Musing

Einstein, and most others who have followed, talk ( actually write) about masses ( including energy) as curving space time. I wonder if it might be more appropriate to say they alter the density of  space time. The correct general relativity solution to bending of light around masses shows twice the deflection that simply taking into account the energy (mass) of the light interacting with a Newtonian gravitational field would yield. I think this makes sense if spacetime density is increased rather than just space. I'll have to think about how to take this thought and use it to make a calculation.

More on SAT review

After further review I have lowered my opinion of the SAT review book I've been using several notches. Some glaring errors in a probability practice section and using the opening of a beribboned gift as an analogy for the solution of algebra problems and  introducing special pyramids to address rate problems all have caused me to almost give up on it.

Fall Fruit and Flowers

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are being overrun with fruit. Our apple tree, while not as productive as least year is doing pretty well for what has been a poor year for most local orchards. You'll need to enlarge the photo to spot all the apples. 

The pear tree is fruiting its little heart out. The results are misshapen but tasty.

 There are also some late blooming flowers, including our hydrangea which has responded to being trimmed back by growing even larger than its pre-trim oversizedness.

A few lilies refuse to accept the end of summer.

Barn Basement

Project report; all non-carpenters are excused. The barn east wall had drifted out a bit and the foundation drifted in some over the last 85 years or so. This led to the greater part of the east wall being about 2/12 inches east of the where the bottom of its studs are. Any further drift would put a lot of torque around the base of the studs and might pull them off the plate leading to a collapse. To forestall this I placed additional 2"x4"'s leading from the first floor joists STRAIGHT down to the plate to take the load without any torque and I added some diagonal bracing to prevent further drift. I also added a steel I beam to reinforce an undersized ten foot long 4" x 8" which was sagging pretty badly over the lower door. This header , holding up 8 long floor joists, ten feet of wall, a ten foot wide swath of 15 foot long loft and a similar width of roof is supported by all of one 2"x4" post at each end. Pretty sadly under-designed, but still very much standing. With the beam in place and resting on temporary columns the opening is now dead straight and level - something of a surprise to me. When I am done, the steel beam will take most of the load and be supported by two additional 2x 4s at each end. I'm currently waiting for some fittings to attach the joists to the steel beam.

John Fry for Board of Education

For those of you who still reside in Bernards Township, great news: John Fry is running for the board of ed. Please vote for him for the sake of any of the faculty you liked and for the students.

If you know Mr. Fry then I  don't need to tell you anything. If you don't know him, let me tell you that he is intelligent, thoughtful, kind, hardworking, perceptive, and many more good things. I usually describe my feelings about John with this: " John Fry is who I want to be when I finally grow up."

SAT Tutoring

I am also trying to help my student prepare for the math portion of the SAT. Therefore I have been doing some of the practice problems in a review book. While some are simply annoying attempts to trap you into making careless errors ( something I am expert at) and many others are just routine algebra or geometry, I find that several of them are really geared to making one think. Perhaps there is some hope.

Autumn is fruit time

It is autumn and our two large apple trees are looking pretty productive. I'll eat some I can grab. Neighbors will collect the majority of the apples and make cider.

Jean has been busy collecting pears from our small but very full tree. She's canning them, freezing them, and giving them away in great numbers. They are very misshapen but also very tasty. We'll probably get over 100 pounds total. If you want some come and get them.

Kinda business as usual

Been busy again: A long ride around our section of the Connecticut River Valley on Saturday. I followed the route of a local bike club's fund raising ride. I was not an official participant because the club refunded my registration fee because of some glitch in the on line registration. However I did get to be passed by lots of very fast and some not so fast folks on the ride. I also stopped by to see what the post ride party was like. There were 900 cyclists there. Not bad for a club from a town of 30,000.

Sunday I attacked the barn basement putting up more supports and braces to try to make sure it still will be standing in fifty years. Monday the barn counterattacked. At least that's what it felt like as I was trying to install a ten foot steel I beam over the basement door. I finally got it in place, but not before collecting more bruises than a hot Saturday night in a mining town saloon usually sees. Today was spent trying to find some parts I need, jacking the beam into the correct position and installing most of the remaining braces in the barn basement, so it was almost a rest day.  

I need to quit stalling and refurbish the positive crankcase vent ( PCV) system on my wife's car. I did the timing belt earlier this month and was very encouraged about being able to maintain such a complex beast. Now, looking over the job, seeing that the manual describes this job on the non turbo engine which doesn't have the banjo fittings that circulate water to keep oil seeping past the turbo seals from congealing, etc., as pretty tough,  I am not feeling nearly as confident. Wish me luck when I work up the courage to try.

More on Math Tutoring

I find the text the student I am tutoring is using seems to pursue the subject in pretty much the wrong way. While it does offer some derivations, explanations, and applications, the emphasis is on procedures that will yield the right answer to some pretty arcane questions. Being able to find the roots of polynomials or the three forms of equations to describe a translated and amplified parabola are not skills that most people will need, so knowing how to do these things is of very little value. On the other hand, being able to figure how a dependent value responds to changes in an independent value can be very useful in many walks of life, but the emphasis should be on the overall logical approach not specific techniques. providing software that helps find the answers makes things even worse.  We must recognize the difference between being told how to get answers to examples and learning to solve problems and teach accordingly.

Tutoring

I have start tutoring a student in Pre-Calculus. Since I don't have the text I am largely guessing what I'll have to be teaching. I find myself deriving equations that I haven't thought about in years. At about 3 AM this morning I found my self coming up with an alternate derivation of the quadratic equation.

Last week I wasted a couple of hours deriving trig relations for added angles. I don't look any of this up because I keep telling the student that while I am not sure he will find the equations for translated parabolas of any use in later life, figuring out the logic behind the procedures is valuable exercise for developing analytical thinking, and I need to get some of that exercise for myself.

Catskills and Vermont

While it is really nice here, I need to get out to some higher hills when I can.  We just got back from 2 and 1/2 days in Southern Vermont. Jean kayaked on Lake St Catherine and I got to bike ride on some of my favorite roads. The scenery is beautiful and there are many very attractive old buildings. Jean loved the Lake (it's more than 5 miles end to end.) We hope be going back soon.

Last week we were in the Catskills with our friends the Rapps. We went to a farmers market and town garage sale in the town of Andes. They make some outstanding cheese there. We also did a bit of hiking in a spot called Kelly's Hollow. Some us found the going somewhat trying (see the photo)

Did some cycling in the Catskills including some on a steep road over a shoulder Bellayre Mountain.

Drought

 I finished putting gutters on the front of the house about a month ago. Since then our rainfall rate dropped from about 2" per week to more like 1" per month. I hope I didn't hurt the farmers too badly.

I don't think the gutters affect the appearance of the house too much, although this may change when I take the gutters down for the winter and leave only the brackets up.