GammaGlobulin

Also, I have noticed, sometimes you get a capon, when not clearly marked. This has not happened to me, so far. And, in the end, and in the cooking, a capon can still taste the same, according to some chefs.

Just to say, I have searched in all the same old places. And, almost in every case, the birds are tough. I once thought that free range chickens might be more delectable. But then, I learned that these birds can pick up and eat things that may not be desirable. Finding a tender chicken is not easy. One of the causes of rubbery chicken is overcooking the meat. Not all chicken is the same thickness. And so, not all chicken should be handled evenly. Probably, the worst is to have a rubbery chicken. Also, woody chicken can be a problem. If your chicken seems to be too woody, then avoid it. The severity of woody chicken increases as the chickens ages. Too much wood is not good for chickens. Should you find an overly woody chicken, then you can still solve the problem. Grab your meat mallet and go to town. https://greatist.com/eat/rubbery-chicken According to this article, in terms of tough chicken, there are no problems that cannot be solved using your meat mallet. No doubt.

One more thing.... The Webb launch gives us hope. The hope is that, if we can work together to achieve what we have, then, maybe, someday, we will have enough ingenuity to solve other problems, as well. Anytime humankind makes an advance, then solving poverty becomes something more achievable. One only needs the will. Still, it's always lonely at the top. Especially, when one is a child, alone, at the top of a garbage pile.

Speaking of becoming a farmer. Some guys love tomatoes. Particularly, need one mention.... When a tomato is well grown, and halved in two, the fragrance of a beautifully grown tomato is almost as good as having your nose in a muff. As a farmer, did you know that beautifully ripened oranges can be grown in winter, in Nebraska? Sometimes, after graduating from an Ivy school, one realizes that one doesn't know everything. Here is a video demonstrating this impossibility.... The impossibility that Ivy grads do not know everything. I found this video both quaint and interesting.... You might enjoy this video, too.

This is where you go wrong. You set yourself up as the judge and jury of a culture and a country which is not your own. You see it as your mission in life to correct minor failures wherever you see them in various countries you visit during your important lifetime. You are never truly satisfied, wherever you go, unless you can remake the new lands you visit in your own image, like a god. You are unable to understand that, no matter where you travel, every new land you visit will still never measure up to your great expectations. Reading your posts, I am often reminded of Miss Havisham. Go East, my son. Go to Belize, my son. There, you will find the land McAfee loved. And you will feel right at home. May you not end up like he, in Spain.

Also.... =Thank You= to the editor who helped me to shorten the overly-long topic of this post. Sometimes, topic titles become far too long. Thank you!

I would like to give a shout-out to both God and Newton for providing us with the Lagrange points necessary to make the Webb Observatory work properly.

France first proposed the Ariane project and it was officially agreed upon at the end of 1973 after discussions between France, Germany and the UK. Hats off to the French, in this case. AND, if you listen carefully, the official countdown to launch of the WEBB is in FRENCH! Flawless.

One of the things that none of us could ever have imagined in 1970, I assure you, is that......what we have just accomplished would be accomplished. By December 25th, 2021, we would have finally launched such a complex observatory into L2, . 50 years ago, actually launching something into equilibrium in a Lagrange point was pure science fiction. I can understand, fully, that this long-awaited achievement might not make much difference to some guys. But, even we in Thailand should take a moment to appreciate this great achievement, even if we mostly just care about peaches on the beaches.

You sound like a Belize type of guy. Bon voyage, my friend. Don't look back. You seem to have been on the fence for ages. Don't prolong your agony. Book a ticket for Belize City, and enjoy your new neighbors.

For our children, the successful launch of the Webb will mean much. Even more than peaches on the beaches. I had been worried that the French guys could not pull off the successful launch, but they did. I listened to the countdown in French, and then the Webb flew without a glitch. The French guys did a phenomenal job. Amazing. What does this mean for us in Thailand? Need you even ask? I have never walked on a beach in Thailand, not even one time. Maybe I do not know too much about suntanned women with string bikinis. Still, I do know something about peaches. Watching the tension and the cooperation between the guys in Guyana in the fishbowl, during launch, this provided me with a bit more hope than I had had, just before tuning into this major step forward for our next upcoming generation of young scientists. Because, it is truly necessary for our children to see major examples of international cooperation such as this. We do not launch major scientific projects for ourselves; because these major science experiments take 30 years. We get old and die before these pivotal experiments become fully online. We do these things for our children, strange as this might seem. But, not strange, really. Well, anyway, please check ignition, and may God's love be with you. Does anybody know? is it fission or fusion which creates heavier elements during reactions in our Sun and in other stars? I heard, somewhere, that we are made of stardust, Seems pretty unbelievable. Trump believes this. Joni Mitchell also believes this...

none of the above, unfortunately

As you are one of the fortunate to actually HAVE a real wife, then one can presume you are enjoying your life, nicely. In your case, absence may not necessarily make the heart grow fonder. Yet, a man should never be separated from his wife for overly long. May you be reunited soon, in spite of the virus, and, when this reunion finally takes place, may there be fireworks.

I am sorry, but I really cannot agree with your thinking. This view seems anything but the truth.

If you were to ask me my Dickensian Christmas dream, this year, then it would be to move into a beautiful library, such as that pictured above from the UK. There I would sit, read and contemplate, like a hermit, almost totally removed from all human contact, except for one cleaning lady. And, in my dream, this cleaning lady would arrive once each week. She would dust my books, and she might even dust me. There is something to be said for a beautiful library, a haven from this pandemic storm. The above photo I copied on this thread was taken from the NYT article..... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/realestate/why-do-people-keep-books.html Maybe you might enjoy this article, too. There is much comforting about being surrounded by books. However, as I do know, no amount of books can compensate for not having a good cleaning, once each week.

My Dear Friends, As years pass inexorably by, as they must, if you are like me, your wants and needs become ever simpler. You begin to bargain and make deals, and say, well, if I could just have a nice uninterrupted sleep for eight hours, then I would give up the drinking and womanizing, for example. Some of us refuse to give in. But then, we pay the price. We continue to demand what we demanded when we were young, which, for me, was three girls in a hot tub, each girl a different color, and everyone sloshed on Boone’s Farm Apple wine. Sometimes, especially during the holiday seasons, I feel like Marilyn Monroe, basically…SCRUMPTIOUS. At other times, I feel ennui and lack of fulfilment, and as if my last days are being wasted on Dionysian thoughts and pursuits. This year, Santa did not bring me what I really wanted. What I wanted was, in fact, a quiet library of my own, one in which I could sit peacefully reading out-of-date literature, with not a concern for the year 2022. Maybe I am being selfish in this wish. Just a dream. Oh Santa, Where Art Thou Now? My Santa, why hast thou forsaken me? ===== Not to worry, though, because.... One can always read under a palm tree, on the beach, and be happy as a clam. Just stay in that New York state of mind. Happy New Year, my good friends. I love you. Glob

So, which university is considered to be the Harvard of the north? Obviously, McGill. I have been there. I even studied there. The teachers there are amazing. On the down side, the food is not spectacular. The cuisine consists mostly of Inuit bannock fried bread and Canadian peameal bacon. When the St. Lawrence freezes in Quebec, it's a spectacular sight to look down on the ice from Chateau Frontenac. I was here.... 50 years ago. French was the lingua franca at that time.

Are you using the term waffle in the British sense? Or, the North American sense? Because, some say that you and I might be separated by a common language. Yet, I disagree that you and I are divided by much, other than that your English is better than mine, so true. More interesting, though, have you ever used the term wiffle-waffle? In Montreal, waffles are served with syrup made from maple trees.. The syrup is produced from a tree that looks like this..... O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love in all of us command. (Canada is a wonderful country with amazingly kind and considerate people.)

I did not mean that anyone at CalTech was narrow minded, or that students are not free to roam widely. However, please check out the enrollment. Undergrads.... 948 Total students..... 2,233 Academic staff 300 professorial Get a grip, please, consider that boutique, in this case, has nothing to do with fashion. In fact, CalTech is not as fashionable as you thought. Wow! And you thought I was the horse?

Sorry. The term boutique, in this case, as it applies to colleges or specialized tech schools, has nothing to do with Gucci fashion. I think that if you google it, you might find the term boutique as applied to CalTech. I DO know that I have seen this term applied to CalTech in the media, for very good reason. But, as i say, please do not take it from this horse's mouth. Or, you might contact the administrar's office at CalTech, and ask if they do not consider themselves a very specialized school, and even a boutique school. Sorry that I cannot inform you further. Because, as you know, it is almost impossible to change anyone's opinion through plain logic, or facts. In order to change opinion and beliefs, one must apply to emotions. Anyway, you can take from this horse that I have seen CalTech referred to as a boutique school, and accurately as such. (Please feel free to disagree.)

Sorry. By definition, CalTech is a boutique school with relatively few students, and one which serves a very narrow and well-defined purpose. CalTech is among the best. Probably the best that the USA has to offer, in fact. (Only my opinion. Please feel free to disagree.)

Are you referring to anyone we know?

Strangely enough, very many years ago, no one really cared about the snob appeal of prestige universities. Those were the days when most people just drove a Lincoln Continental, and almost no one sported an XK-E. Many years ago, almost anyone could attend an Ivy League school, even without good grades, and even if one were poor, and even if one had a criminal record.. As long as you had a heartbeat, unies like Cornell and Brown would be sure to take you. These days are different. These days, there are so many guys and girls from Asia who wish to attend an Ivy League school. Also, it seems that almost everybody is walking around with shirts and blouses emblazoned with the names of Harvard, Princeton, Penn State, and Ted Bundy, not to mention Columbia. Personally, I am not sure why they accepted me. But, I am very glad they did. For one thing, I never attended due to the so-called prestige factor. And, I never enrolled due to the Sot-Weed Factor, either. John Barth (pronounced "bart") taught at Penn State, as I recall, and not at Penn. Why did I attend? Maybe just for the beauty of it. In fact, there is great beauty in the sacred Ivy Halls of learning. There are now so many from Asia who seek to gain admittance to these hallowed halls. But, why? The University of Minnesota is a dynamite research institution. I really doubt that most Asian students, and certainly no American students, care very much about the beauty of the Ivy, nor the beauty of science, not to mention their disdain for reading books. I received a dynamite education at various schools, some Ivy, but, really, you would not know it if you knew me, or spoke to me for more than two minutes. I think that all Ivy schools are OK. But, I draw the line at Cornell. Something about either New York or the Cornell architecture turns me off. The buildings at Cornell seem sort of like a prison complex, minus the bars. Dartmouth is nice, though. During the winter months, you don't need a refrigerator. You can hang your beer from a sack outside your window, and it stays very cold. Most people soak up a lot of culture while attending an Ivy school. I did, as well. One thing surprises me is how few Ivy schools actually exist in the world, or in our solar system. Some say there are 9. And, some say there are 9 planets orbiting around the Sun. Actually, there are only 8 planets in our solar system, once we get rid of Pluto. And, there are 8 Ivy schools, in fact. However, I would say that the Ivy League should probably get rid of Cornell University, so that we could have a lucky 7. Also, I have always thought that Cornell never measured up to a university such as Brown. Maybe we should downgrade Brown, too, and just think of Brown as a minor body, like Eris or Makemake. Still, if education is the thing you love most, then I would encourage you to submit your application to an Ivy school. There is much to be said for tradition. Or, maybe you might prefer Bryn Mawr College. The women there are amazing, and also nice. Pretty sure that I will not be matriculating at Bryn Mawr any time soon. The women at Bryn Mawr are scary smart. Smart is fine with me. I know that there are those in Thailand who do not prefer smart women from Bryn Mawr. Glob Note: The guy who wrote Giles Goat Boy must have been one sick puppy.

University of Minnesota?

Not to mention the bulge. Do you remember the battle of the bulge? Back in the day....? I cannot say that I was never smitten with Plant, just as so many truly were, those days.... Even today, I am in love with Plant.