Listening: "Building Great Sentences". Reading: "The Dreaming Void". Coming soon? Web.

Yeah, this long time lurker, very infrequent poster is going through a fit of nostalgia.  His diaries about fun ways to insert math and science into play time with his children were fascinating.

NY Times:

By [Dr. Nancy L. Segal's] definition, virtual twins are unrelated children born within nine months of each other who enter a family, through birth or adoption, in the first year of life. Since 1991, Dr. Segal has been studying 137 such sets of siblings, whose average age difference is three months.

As scientific subjects, virtual twins provide a rich pool of material for researchers tackling the nature-versus-nurture question. In Dr. Segal’s studies, as in so many involving biological twins, it seems that nature is winning.

Raised together essentially from birth, or at least since infancy, virtual twins may be genetic strangers, but they share an environment from an early point in life.

...

Several major twin studies over the last 20 years, particularly those following twins raised by different families, have provided what scientists say is clear evidence that genetics play a greater role than environment in intelligence and a range of personality traits. Dr. Segal’s research, believed to be the first to examine virtual twins as a subset of the twin population, has bolstered the prevailing view through another lens.

...

Dr. Segal has found that identical twins were the most alike in their thinking, fraternal twins somewhat less so, and virtual twins strikingly different. When it comes to intelligence, for example, her research has found that only 25 percent of the differences between twins — virtual, fraternal or identical — can be accounted for by their environment, 75 percent by genetics.

I started inviting people over for Sunday evening. I started planning what I'd have. Eggplant "caviar", maybe some stuffed mushrooms, then just some cheese and meats with bread, some dessert stuffs. Something besides popcorn to eat during the movie if we should have a movie. I was going to make some mozzarella balls wrapped in prosciutto, but then I thought that I can get from the grocery store this thing with is essentially mozzarella and prosciutto rolled together, so why not just stick with that? I think I still need more. Oh, and this ham inside a pineapple thing. Might switch diced prosciutto for the ham. I'm on a prosciutto kick.

Ride Distance: 33 miles. (estimated from GPS readings. I forgot my spedometer!)
Total Distance for the past 16 weeks: 735.1 miles

Very pretty ride. Saw a lot of nice countryside, if you like high tension power lines and teeny-tiny horse farms.

But I also had something happen 3 times today that I've never had happen before while riding..

Also inside: an update on cigars and sons.

Are boring. 

Odds and ends to end the week.

if only every week were only 3 days long...with 5 day weekends.  i could deal with 8 days weeks.  shut up.

Exactly 5 months ago I was kicked out of my job, replaced by a bunch of very jovial Indian guys. Reflections on this and

- Life in unemployment.

What I have done the last month:

- Barcelona
- Races.
- PROMS.
- Questions for the Republicans.

And plans for the next year:

- Sheffield, Mexico, Barcelona and Andalusia, Tuscany, Lanzarote, China and Australia.

So here is an odd way to meet someone new, even if to just have some conversation about physics and math and wine and cheese.