Habanero peppers are hot and their oils can cause a burning sensation. Do not let these oils contact sensitive body areas such as the eyes or nose. Also use impermeable cooking surfaces. I did not wear gloves while chopping the peppers but will the next time as I had 1 finger that had a mild burning sensation on and off for about 24 hours.

Ingredients

• 6 habanero peppers
• 2 roasted jalepeno peppers
• 2 tomatillos
• garlic
• onion
• carrots
• tomatoes
• dried cranberries
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• olive oil
• vinegar
• water

All ingredients should be diced or minced. Save the peppers for last.

Process

In a heavy skillet with olive oil, saute the garlic, onions, and carrots. Next, add the tomatillos, tomatoes, cranberries, brown sugar, vinegar, and some water. I wanted a paste-like consistency and therefore minimized both the vinegar and water. When everything is mixed and heated well, add the peppers. Stir until well heated.

Transfer the mixture to a food processor or blender and puree. Add water to aid the puree and reach the desired consistency.

Eat directly, mixed with a mild salsa, or blended in about a 2/1 ratio with heavy cream. Makes a great chicken marinade, spicy salsa, or pasta sauce. Enjoy!

Spaniard’s Advantages

Disease

The invasion of the new world was led by a wave of sickness and disease. Old Worlders were generally resistant to these but New Worlders had never been exposed to them and were decimated. Even conservative estimates place the deaths from newly introduced diseases above 65%.

Transportation and Mobility

Spain had ocean-going ships, the wheel, and horses. New Worlders had none of these. The most important of these in the establishment of military superiority was the horse. In a battlefield, the horse provided speed, power, height, and opened a whole new set of tactics.

Armor and Weaponry

The Spaniards had steel armor which native weapons were mostly unable to pierce. They also used sharpened steel blades that rendered all native armors ineffective. On the open battlefield their kill ratio was something like 2000 to 1, very impressive.

Information Transmission and Retrieval

Spaniards had the written word and books, even though many were illiterate. The Incas had quipu i.e. talking knots, which only a few highly trained could decipher.

Tactics

Simple really, they had horses and therefore all of the additional tactics that come with having cavalry. A great advantage.

Worldview

The Spanirds had a much better understanding of the larger world and where they stood in it than New Worlders. New Worlders started out unaware of the dimensions of the world, how large the enemy forces could be, and the full extent of the world’s resources.

Additionally, the Spaniards already had success in defeating the Aztec empire and they knew exactly what they wanted and what they were willing to do to get it. The Incas had no real knowledge of the world beyond their empire. They had no idea who the Spaniards were nor what their motives were. The Incas initially thought the Spaniards were marauders who would soon leave and not amoral conquerors with no regard for those they conquered.

ET Invades

Wave of Disease

Our world-wide population would be quickly decimated by novel diseases. From the moment the first ETs interacted with us, multiple diseases would be unleashed upon earth. Earth’s current population is about 7 billion, if 65% were killed by disease that would mean more than 4.5 billion people would die within a short time. Imagine the effects.

Political structures, economies, and social structures are either destroyed or severely impacted. The impact of this wave cannot be overstated.

Horse

My fevered mind created a horse for ET, only based upon technology and not biology. Directed Wavefront Travel (pulse) allowed ET to travel short distances at extremely high velocity with high impact forces enveloping them through their travel path.

Armor and Weaponry

ET uses an energy-based body armor (decel suit) that decelerates all momentum based weapons. This renders all projectile and impact weapons useless and also greatly decreases damage taken from explosive impact waves. As a weapon, ET uses a nano-machine deconstructor (nan) keyed to human genetic markers. Nan can kill quickly or slowly dependent upon their programming. Most nan have a 2 hour half-life, though some are thought to have a 24 hour half-life.

Ad Hoc Intel

ET wears a skull cap that provides ad hoc mesh networking for its wearer. This allows ET to have full situational awareness via locally deployed monitoring nano-systems as well as tightly integrated communications with other wearers. Additionally, the skull cap seems to provide some command and control to nans and other nano-systems.

The monitoring systems are known to use at least the following methods: all wavelengths (light, sound, electro-magentic) are monitored for anomalies, chemical detection, pheromone detection, energy detection, and force detection.

Unda Units

Although other tactics have been witnessed, the tactic that has proven devastating to earth forces involves ET’s unda units. Unda units use pulse to breach our perimeters and stun our forces, then they deploy nans prior to pulsing out. Nans have also been directly deployed using pulse but ET seems to take pleasure in personally deploying their nans.

Galaxyview

Unbeknown to Earth, the ET invaders had been given dominion over earth by the their emperor the Great Nova named Conflagration. They had as resource a thousand planets, the populations of which were desirous for the glory of empire.

Results

Let’s just say those of us still living try our best to learn the languages and serve our masters well. We have suffered every insult imaginable and know that within a few more generations our planet will be depleted. Maybe then, maybe then…

Once that is done, I knock off as many of my daily tasks as I can. Usually, that means I am running a little behind on my daily task list (who isn’t?). So for my clients, a big thank you for your patience in any delays in addressing your tickets. For my family a big thank you for dealing with my earlier than normal wake up hours and very unruly schedule. To my friends, I’ll catch up with you next week.

Meaning of literacy

I am using the term literacy to encompass a wide range of ideas on learning, education, workplace skills, soft skills, computer skills, and general increase in knowledge and skills. I will focus mainly on adult literacy but will also include some thoughts on children.

What gives me the authority?

I have been involved in adult literacy education for nearly 15 years but I am not a professional educator. I started tutoring adults with Milwaukee Achiever Literacy Services in 1996.  In 2004, I joined their board of directors and then was Board Chairman from 2006-2010.

During that time, I have devoted many personal hours to thinking about not only adult literacy but how our community could most effectively benefit from, pay for, and deliver literacy. Still being on the board but no longer chairman allows me the opportunity to consolidate and communicate my thoughts on the big picture of literacy.

Is literacy important?

Yes! It is extremely important and in a future article I will review a variety of statistics that show just how critical literacy is for the success of every community and ALL of its members.

Community

My understanding of how literacy fits into a community comes from the greater Milwaukee, WI area. I am certain that many of the ideas presented will have a wider applicability but the details will always be based upon and derived from the Milwaukee area.

Series

One reason that it has been difficult for me to write on this topic is that there is so much information and every topic seems interconnected with every other topic. I will attempt to start the series with simple overviews of the various topics. Next, I will try to demonstrated the connections between them.

It is entirely possible that in the course of writing my thoughts, the thoughts themselves will evolve. Hopefully by the end of the series, a coherent picture of how we can improve our community’s literacy will emerge.

I will attempt to do one article post per week but there will certainly be some weeks when that is not possible.

Time to get started!

The idea of digital books on an electronic reader is great but the books are often encumbered and the electronic readers are not even close to the ideal. Will we ever get there? I think eventually the readers will approach the ideal but I am not as certain about the digital content.

Why am I concerned about the content? Well, think of the things you can and cannot do with a paper book. Then think about how you would be able to accomplish the same things with digital content while preventing lender abuse. It gets complex quickly and typically involves some type of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Once you involve DRM, questions arise over who owns the digital book. Do you own the book you purchased or did you just purchase a set of viewing rights? Also with DRM, there is a required communication between the reader device and the rights management software. This then involves issues of privacy and censorship.

As an aide to determining the future of our digital books, I suggest you visit EFF’s Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers.

To me a digital book is nothing more than a rights managed HTML page with a few annotation features. All this on an expensive single use reader, that still has many usability issues. No, I have no intention of purchasing an electronic reader in the near future.

I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.”

— Richard Feynman

I think that sums it up quite well.

1. Discussion of recent State of Wisconsin bills proposed by a joint legislative committee I participated on.
2. Various aspects of a Case Management web application I am working on in cakePHP.
3. Discussion of a Twitter application, I am developing.

Based upon documents that have been leaked into the public domain, ACTA is expected to cover for more than just counterfeit products. In fact, one of the focuses seems to be upon copyright and intellectual property to the point of targeting “Internet distribution and information technology”. This is definitely something that should be publicly negotiated to involve the full range of philosophies on these issues.

Instead, it seems we need to be concerned about our privacy rights and civil liberties. The original hope of negotiation supporters was to seal the deal in 2008. Fortunately that has not happened. Now your opinion about the benefits or drawbacks of such a treaty may differ than mine. In fact, I urge you to look into the details and make up your own mind.

Oh, wait. You can’t. AND THAT IS THE POINT!

Please urge your elected representative to push for transparency on this issue.

References:

• http://www.eff.org/cases/eff-and-public-knowledge-v-ustr
• http://www.eff.org/issues/acta
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

Too many sighs to share,
too many reasons to sigh.

Exasperated sighs
of errant child,
a drivers’ mistake
and mis-sent email.
The sigh finds relief.

And pleasure speaks;
joy in bed,
a friendly hug,
the team wins.
Multifaceted sighs abound.

Consider please,
your own repertoire of sighs.

Inspired by a barista.