An American has weighed in on the proper way to make tea. The great Anglo-American War will commence shortly.

…Michelle Francl, a chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania with a new book on tea, has suggested techniques for making a perfect brew that are unfamiliar to many Brits.

She advised that adding a dash of salt could help the tea to taste less bitter. She went further, recommending a squeeze of lemon, which helps to remove the “scum” that can sit on the surface of the water. She is also a fan of vigorous dunking and squeezing of the tea bag.

She’s a scientist. She can’t be wrong.

Francl seems to be serious about her tea advice. In her new book, “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea,” she documents tea-making practices that date back more than 1,000 years. She advises using short mugs, with less surface area, to help keep the tea warm, and she says warming up the cup beforehand is important as it increases the amount of caffeine and antioxidants released.

Throwing caution to the wind, Francl bravely weighs in on the Great Milk Debate and concludes that it’s better to use warm milk and to pour milk in after the tea. This, she says, will reduce the chances of it curdling.

Of course, we recognize that that is the perspective of a radical professor at a liberal arts school. We have to consult the US Embassy for the more conservative, diplomatic method of making tea.

My wife will be relieved that she has been following the recommended American protocol in making all that tea that she drinks.

Don’t tell anyone, but in addition to being a socialist, atheist, DEI-loving liberal, I also have an electric kettle in my office. I know, my list of offenses is already long enough.

Right now, I’m trying to herd 8 students taking an independent writing class into two regular meeting times, that is, I’ll run two review sessions per week with four students (ideally) in each one. It ought to be a trivial scheduling exercise, right? Except nothing is working so far. I had some of them send me their schedule, and the problem became obvious. They’re working too hard!

Most of them have collegiate athletics in there, with nearly daily practice times. Some are taking two lab courses. Some are double majors, or at least working on a minor on top of their biology degree. I’m looking at these solidly packed calendars and wondering how I’m going to fit my class in. Madness grows.

At the very least, I’m feeling exhausted looking at all that they’re cramming in, and feeling guilty that we charge them lots of money to work this hard.

Mondays are going to suck all semester long. For every Monday, I have to put together a shiny new lecture, and I have to assemble a set of thought-provoking, sophisticated questions to accompany that lecture, which students will think about during the talk and discuss afterwards. That was my day, and then I had to prepare for tomorrow’s class, which is not ready yet, but will be by 9am. Wednesday will be easier, because I’ll have done all the prep work to get that discussion going.

At least now I’m home and tired and ready to take a shower and then read in bed before succumbing to fatigue. I’ve more or less front-loaded every week with lots of work so I can coast through to the weekend…except that my writing class is going to produce lots of stuff I’ll have to grade, and I’m not sure where I’ll wedge that in yet.

I still can’t believe I get no sabbatical next year, and that I probably have 4-7 years go on my sentence, before I can retire. Maybe I’ll drop dead sooner and surprise everyone.

The idea below is a bit misleading. Most spiders don’t favor garages — garages aren’t great environments for most flying insects. Orb weavers don’t care much for buildings, for instance.

Yes, I’m being overly pedantic.

They incinerated Uhura and Scotty!

Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry and science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke’s ashes were on board a private US lunar lander that, after a failed moonshot, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Friday and burned-up on the way down. The intention had been to leave the ashes, among those from around 70 individuals including actors James Doohan (aka Scotty) and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), on the moon’s surface following a successful landing. Rodenberry’s ashes have previously been a part of other space missions.

Don’t worry — they were pre-incinerated. It was a PR stunt in the first place. Celestis, the company playing this game, launches one gram of cremains from a person willing to pay the price of $13,000 to splat a little bit of ash on the Moon (Bonus! Send 3 grams for only $26,000!). One of the bonuses of this grift is that they can launch bits of individuals in multiple expensive missions, like Gene Rodenberry’s. The poor guy’s ashes seem to be a staple to send in tiny doses to outer space.

Although to put the whole enterprise into the proper context of dignity and reverence, also lost on this failed mission was a sample of a powdered soft drink. Yes, a tiny bit of Arthur C. Clarke was mixed with a bit of Kool-Aid, set on fire, and spewed into the atmosphere. Breathe deep!

I hope it was cherry flavored author, that’s my favorite.

On my walk to work this morning, I noticed these odd patterns in the snow and ice over the sidewalk. At first glance, I thought bird tracks or traces of squirrels rushing through the snow…but no, that makes no sense. They are variable in size and length and follow short meandering pathways, like this:

What’s your explanation? I don’t think it’s Cthulhu cultists leaving ritual markings around my house. My tentative explanation is that it’s an effect of salt — that we scatter salt on our sidewalk, which then generates the meandering scribbles as the sun rises and the warmth causes differential melt patterns in response to the local salt concentration.

Alternatively, I did initially try reading the markings. I couldn’t make sense of them, but maybe if I try harder the meaning will emerg…ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. Iä! Iä!

Morris weather:

-23°C (-8°F), -36°C (-32°F) with windchill

It’s been this way all weekend. I lost all feeling in my fingers in the few minutes walking from the garage to my front door when I took off my gloves and was fumbling with my keys. Those dang metal keys are dangerous in this weather.

It’s hard to explain this to the people who actively avoid thinking, but the problem is global warming.

Stupid wiggily jet stream, letting all that cold air freeze me.

I know it’s MLK day, and that this is a day off for my university, and it’s also the day of the meaningless Republican caucuses in Iowa (bugger Iowa, I don’t care what that state does,) but it’s also the day before classes resume. That means I must now stop slacking. I have to focus, get my act together, and go in to work and get prepared for another long semester. How do I feel about that?

Can I do both, screaming and staring?

This semester is also going to be a huge change. I’m not teaching any labs at all, which feels a bit strange, and I also have only one hour of classroom time every day, at precisely 1:00. That’s it! You might be thinking that sounds pretty slack, too, except that two of my classes are writing classes, which entail a massive amount of grading, and the third, my eco-devo class, is going to involve a heck of a lot of reading. I promise, I won’t be sleeping in until noon and closing up shop and going home mid-afternoon. I’ve got the first 3 weeks queued up and ready to fire into the brains of the students, while I try to get ready for the next few weeks.

I’m thinking I should get both models. I can spend the first half of the term staring into the void, but I’m sure I’ll be screaming in the last half.