Christ is Risen

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Christ is risen indeed.

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What's in a flower?

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Specifically hydrangea flowers. In this post I pointed out that anthocyanin (a family of plant pigments) appears blue at high pH, red at low pH and is responsible for the wide variety of colours in hydrangea flowers. Ilona pointed out that , "in hydrangeas you lower the ph for blue flowers (more acid) and raise it for pink (more alkaline)." I did a bit of checking and found that this is the case . At lower soil pH hydrangea flowers do appear blue and at higher soil pH they appear red. But soil pH is not the only thing that affects the colour of hydrangea flowers. It appears that pH inside the plant cell has an affect as well: Sepal Color Variation of Hydrangea macrophylla and Vacuolar pH Measured with a Proton-Selective Microelectrode Anthocyanin changes its color depending on pH (Goto 1987, Brouillard 1988, Goto and Kondo 1991). In strong acidic conditions it shows red, in neutral, purple and in alkaline, blue. But generally the vacuolar pH of plant cells is weakly aci
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Raï: Algerian blues and protest music

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This all started because I wanted to find out what "cheb" meant. As I was poking around the internet I discovered several musicians with "cheb" in their names. I realised that it had to be an assumed title. Eventually I discovered that it means young in Arabic but I also discovered that it meant much more than just that. Many cultures around the world have a tradition of social and political commentary through music. I was born in a place where politicians were weary of the popular musicians. One wrong move and they would be flayed by a skillful lyric. I actually remember singing songs that had been banned because they were critical of the government. The fact that as a six or seven year old I knew the words to the banned songs shows the power of those songs. I'm sure that many of you are familiar with Sting's collaboration with Cheb Mami in 1999 that gave us Desert Rose (YouTube video). For most of North America that was our first exposure to the Algerian f
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Rise Up In The Darkness

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The teenager who joked with me over physics and algebra homework tonight was 6 months old the morning of September 11, 2001. He spent that day like many other 6 month olds spend their days, exploring his world and being saved from his own curiosity by mom. That morning after I got tired of hauling him back from the edge of the bed he was intent on crawling over I took him downstairs to safer level terrain. I turned on the television to check the news like I did every morning back then. At first I was horrified by what I saw. One smoldering tower. Not long after, while all the reporters and newscasters were struggling to make sense of what they were seeing, one plane, another tower, and I was pissed. At that point I understood what was happening. Why did people think, and still think, that kind of wretchedness served their cause? I didn't care what the cause was. These were arrogant fools. But the news kept coming about just how wretched humanity had been to itself that day. The
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