Review of Man-Eaters

We've been reading Man-Eaters by Chelsea Cain, Kate Niemczyk, and Lia Miternique since it came out in September of last year. At first, 'we' was my partner and I. The eight year-old unschooling kid here who reads just about everything that passes through the house self-selected out. It wasn't because the book is about menstruation, we talk about that frequently. It turns out she didn't feel the story was moving along fast enough at first. One of her key care-abouts for a book is adventure. So, issue number 1 didn't quite meet her bar.

When she picked up issue 7 though, after watching her 6 year-old brother peruse it, she was sold! Consequently, she and I have been re-reading the series for the last couple of weeks. And I'm here to tell you, it rocks!

Not only is there adventure in the later issues, there's also mystery! No one might be who they initially seem to be. There are layers here. The story revolves around an outbreak of pantherism that may have started in the main character, Maud's, middle school. In the world that's so adeptly, and entertainingly built in only 7 short issues, it's an indisputable historical fact that sometime during Maude's parents' formative years some females turned into werepanthers after having their first period. To prevent further outbreaks, period preventing hormones were added to the water supply while an industry grew up around providing hormone free products for males. Something has gone amok though, and therein lies the rub for our main character, her friends, and her panther policing parents.

One of my favorite parts of the story is that Maud's parents are both incredibly lovable. Her dad an anything-but-hardened homicide detective, and her mother, a werepanther investigator, are divorced, but still pretty good around each other and incredible with Maud. It's a lot of fun watching the family dynamic morph from what appears-to-be to what actually-may-be.

Ironic, yet all too true jokes about the patriarchy are scattered through the world Maude lives in. A few of the comic's eight issues are dedicated to flushing these out with excerpts from manuals on menstruation and other documents, games, and classroom materials concerning menstruation and its avoidance. It's sad that these examples aren't too far, (maybe not actually far at all?), from the world we live in. I've spent a lot of my time reading this book laughing, only to realize that, "Oh God, the absurd thing is upsettingly mostly true".

The kid and I are having a great time reading, talking about the story, and talking about the world Maud, and we live in. We haven't had this much fun with a comic book since we both read Doom Patrol, another book I'd highly recommend.

So, in closing, if you haven't picked up this book yet, it's more than worth it! It's a fun story with mystery, and just recently, (and not a moment too soon some around here would say), adventure. It makes me think about and question the world my kid and I are living in. It gently brings into focus things that need to change, and wow do a lot of things need to change!

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Copasetic Flow

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