Saturday October 11, 2008 6:40 am Edmonton

It is -5 C with a high forecast of +8 C. Sunrise 7:54 Sunset 18:47 Hours of daylight: 10:53.
See current Lethbridge forecast here. See current Lethbridge news here.

This page last updated on: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 5:52 AM

A. Morning Musings

Most of the chores that we were planning to handle on this trip have been taken care of. We have plans to visit some relatives this afternoon, but overall it is a free day. I am not sure if I will be able to fit in an Earth Cache trip, but will keep my options open.

Learning Category	Planned Activities for Today	Time
Literature	Continue slow reading "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie	2 hr
Geocaching	Look at Edmonton Earth Cache #2	1 hr
Science	View some web sites on geology	1 hr
History	Continue reading The People's Railway by Donald MacKay	1 hr

B. Actual Learning Activities

7:30 am

This morning started innocently enough. I was reviewing the Earth Cache information for GC19JJW which describes the geologic information in a number of Edmonton buildings in the central downtown area. One of the buildings uses something called "true slate". I decided to see if I could find more information on this, so I typed "true slate" into google. Yes, I did find more information on slate roofs, particularly in Scotland and Wales, and information on old buildings, but then I came across a book review called True Enough which is not about geology, but about the information that is now available to us via a variety of means, including the Internet. Here are two reviews:

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/10/06/review-true-enough-by-farhad-manjoo/

http://www.slate.com/id/2186607/entry/2186608/

I then tried google again, this time using "true slate geology". Here is the first hit:

http://geology.about.com/b/2008/07/31/all-about-slate.htm

One can follow the links on this site to learn more about shale, slate, phyllite and schist.

I also pursued some links to a site that describes the difference between a mesa and a butte.

http://www.scienceclarified.com/landforms/Faults-to-Mountains/Mesa-and-Butte.html

I recall seeing a number of geocache sites near Milk River and Coutts near the Alberta/Montana border with names that included the word butte. I also remember seeing a number of Mesas on our drive last week in the Choteau region of Montana. All of the above is a result of looking at the information for an Earth Cache in downtown Edmonton. Who wuda thunk it? I now know more about shale and slate as well as mesas and buttes. A good morning.

Here are 2 photos of the heavy frost this morning:

8:40 am

	Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Book Two	chapter 14 My tenth birthday
Characters	Saleem Sinai: the narrator Padma Sinai: Saleem's wife
Quotes	"... the worst of everything; the age when property gives a man rank, when wealth is equated with virtue, when passion becomes the sole bond between men and women, when falsehood brings success ..." [p. 194] sound familiar? "A little humility at this point ... does not, I feel, come amiss." [p. 194] a little humility is always a good idea. "... so badly impaired his vision that he was unable, afterwards, to distinguish between Indians and foreign tourists, a handicap which greatly affected his earning power as a beggar." [p. 197' cute
Summary	"I am coming to the fantastic heart of my own story, and must write in plain unveiled fashion, about the midnight children." [p. 195] "... during the first hour of August 15th, 1947 - btween midnight and one a.m. - no less than one thousand and one children were born within the frontiers of the infant sovereign state of India. ... What made the event noteworthy ... was the nature of these children, every one of whom was, endowed with features, talents or faculties which can only be described as miraculous." [p. 195]

9:00 PM

	Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Book Two	chapter 15 At the Pioneer Cafe
Characters	Saleem Sinai: the narrator Padma Sinai: Saleem's wife Amina Sinai: Saleem's mother Nadir Khan: Amina's first husband Shiva Winkie: the boy born at the same time as Saleem (actually Amina's & Ahmed's son by birth - but they were switched in the hospital)
Quotes	" 'Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.' " [p. 211] Better than most psychology textbooks. "It's a dangerous business to try and impose one's view of things on others." [p. 212] okay. "... if you're a little uncertain of my reliability, well, a little uncertainty is no bad thing. Cocksure men do terrible deeds. Women, too." [p. 212] Fair enough. "For what reason you're rich and I'm poor? Where's the reason in starving, man? God knows how many millions of damn fools living in this country, man, and you think their's a purpose! Man, I'll tell you - you got to get what you can, do what you can with it, and then you got to die." [p. 220] This makes sense to me, when you are poor.
Summary	Saleem hides in his mother's car so he can spy on her and find out who she is meeting. It turns out to be her first husband, Nadir Khan, now known as Nadir Qasim. Saleem & Shiva begin to compete for control of the midnight children.

Books on the Go Today

Home