Thomas Paine Day

Portrait of Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the United States, was born on January 29, 1736 (at least, as it was reckoned at the time; going by today’s calendars it would have been February 9, 1737). In any case, Paine was one of the main driving forces behind American independence from Britain, as detailed in his famous pamphlet [Common Sense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense(pamphlet)_. He’s also popularly remembered as a freethinker. Celebrate his sort-of birthday by thinking independently!

Image credit: Auguste Millière [Public domain]


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Author: Joe Kissell

Helping you protect your rights during a custody dispute

Getting a divorce can make anyone’s world spin. Whether it is a contested divorce or not, the process itself can cause many changes and concerns. And for Texas parents getting a divorce, this means determining a custody arrangement that benefits and child. It can be difficult to work through custody matters, often causing it to be a difficult and contentious divorce issue.

While some divorcing parents seek primary custody of their child, it is possible to seeking joint or shared custody. In the eyes of the law, Texas parents are viewed as having equal rights to their children, and at Katie L. Lewis, P.C. Family Law, we understand this and fight for this for our clients.

Whether you are a working parent or a stay-at-home parent, our law firm not only helps you navigate post-divorce life but also helps you develop a plan to help address any custody concerns. If you are asserting your right as a father, this may look like illustrating that you can provide adequate care and are capable of being involved in the child’s life. Our attorneys take the time to protect the rights of our clients while also ensuring that the best interests of the child are also met.

To learn more, check out our law firm’s fathers’ rights website. Whether you are considering divorce, are going through the process or are dealing with post-divorce issues, it is vital to explore your rights and options. This will also help ensure that the rights and best interests of the child are best served.


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Author: On behalf of Katie L. Lewis of Katie L. Lewis, P.C. Family Law

The view from our new President’s chambers

I don’t know exactly where the President of the Family Division’s chambers are located, but it must be a lofty perch. From it, the President evidently has a clear view of all he (or she) surveys. Accordingly, it has become a tradition that they should provide us lesser mortals with a picture of all that is wrong with the family justice system (and a pathway to how we should put it right), and our new President Sir Andrew McFarlane is continuing that tradition.

Unfortunately, our new President’s first View from his perch was published on a site behind a paywall, at least until that fact was pointed out (it now also appears on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website). Hopefully, this was just an oversight from a man new to the system, and all future Views will be free to, err… view.

So, what does the View contain?

Well, actually not a lot that is new. Much of what he wrote about refers to the ‘workload challenge’ faced by the family justice system as a result of the increase in children cases over the last few years, a topic that Sir Andrew already dealt with in more detail (as he says in the View) in his speech to the Association of Lawyers for Children Conference 2018 back in November, that I commented upon here in this post.

In a nutshell Sir Andrew is fearful that the stress of the workload, “in a system which is already sparely manned in terms of lawyers, court staff and judges”, will “risk the burn‐out of key and valued individuals”. His solution to this, or at least part of his solution, is to allow some corners to be cut, and some time limits to be exceeded.

Think of that for a moment. I find it quite remarkable that the man at the very top of the family justice system is advocating the cutting of corners. Surely, such a situation would have been unthinkable only a few short years ago? I’m not saying that Sir Andrew is wrong to make such a suggestion, just that the fact that he has is an indication of just what a state the system has found itself in. That state, of course, is not just due to the increase in children cases. It is also a result of years of under-funding by the government, and of the swinging legal aid cuts, that have (as was entirely foreseeable) burdened the system with a mass of litigants in person, who require extra judicial resources to deal with.

Of course, Sir Andrew is not talking of corner-cutting that will cause unsound outcomes, or that will adversely affect the welfare of children caught up in the family justice system. He makes a few suggestions of the sort of thing he has in mind, including setting the earliest and latest times that courts are expected to sit (how does this fit with the extended court hours pilot announced by HM Courts & Tribunals Service and the Ministry of Justice last November?); agreeing the latest time in the evening, and the earliest time in the morning, when it is acceptable to send an email to another lawyer in a case or to the court; and reducing the components to be  expected in a ‘Position  Statement’  to the minimum required, for example simply one side of A4, using bullet points. Quite what effect these things will have upon the workload of those involved in the family justice system, we will have to wait and see.

Otherwise, the View has little else to say. Sir Andrew does mention a couple of other news items of which we are already aware, such as the expansion of the Financial Remedies Court pilot, which he says is working well, and which he is confident  “will be a successful and popular development”, and also the guidance he issued in December regarding the anonymisation of family law judgments involving children, that he hopes will be applied by all Family Courts.

And that, really, was about it. Not that I’m complaining. Indeed, it is refreshing to have a President who is (for the moment at least) a little less proactive. Busy family law professionals have enough to do to keep up with new developments as it is – perhaps Sir Andrew is purposely giving them less to think about, in order to reduce the risk of burn-out!

The full text of the View can be found here.

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Author: John Bolch

The Discovery of Radium

Portrait of Marie Curie and Pierre Curie

Marie Curie’s miracle cure

One of the central paradoxes of scientific research and technological development is that while every new discovery brings previously unknown possibilities to light, these discoveries can also have negative effects that may not be readily apparent. For example, certain medicines may provide exciting new treatment options, but it’s only later that their side effects come to light. One of the most glaring examples of this was the thalidomide scandal in the late 1950s, when thousands of women took this drug to combat morning sickness during pregnancy, and it was later found to cause birth defects. Similarly, in the 19th century, opium was thought of as a cure-all before its highly addictive nature was fully understood.

Along the same lines, Marie Sklodowska Curie’s discovery of the element radium in 1898 at first seemed to lead the way to a variety of novel medical treatments, but as the properties of radioactive materials became better known, radium’s health benefits came to seem more limited. Once added to everything from toothpaste to face cream, radium’s reputation went from cutting edge to dangerous within a few short decades.

The Element of Surprise

Marie Curie’s eventual discovery of radium was first set into motion by the research of French physicist Henri Becquerel, who noticed that materials containing uranium produced rays that fogged photographic plates. Looking into this phenomenon further, Marie Curie found that not only uranium, but also the element thorium, caused these effects regardless of their physical state (for example, dry or wet, crushed or solid), and from this deduced that the rays were part of the elements’ atomic makeup. She coined the word “radioactivity” to describe this property of these two elements, and along with other scientists of the time, opened the way to a new understanding that the atom was not the smallest unit of matter, but that even smaller particles (notably electrons) existed within it.

Building on this information, and on her observation that two uranium-containing compounds, pitchblende and chalcolite, produced much more radiation than uranium alone, Marie Curie speculated that there were other, as yet unknown, elements in these compounds. After extensive experimentation, aided by her husband Pierre Curie, Marie Curie was able to identify two new elements in pitchblende, which she called polonium (after her native Poland), and radium (after the Latin word for “ray”). Although the process of isolating radium involved processing a ton of pitchblende in order to obtain just a fraction of a gram of radium, even with similar levels of effort, the Curies found that it was impossible to isolate polonium. Later on, when the principle of radioactive decay was developed, scientists realized that the short half-life of polonium—138 days—was the reason for this problem.

Radium Reign

With the help of industrial partners who could produce radium much more quickly in their processing facilities than it was possible to do in the lab, the Curies began to develop new uses for this marvelous material. However, the Curies never became rich because of their discovery, but as a service to the scientific community and the rest of the world, freely shared their method of obtaining radium. One of the first uses of radium was as an anti-cancer treatment, owing to its observed ability to damage tissue. The resulting treatment, known as Curietherapy in France, and radiumtherapy elsewhere, is still used in some instances to treat cancer today.

However, as with any health fad, there are those who take it too far, usually for financial gain. Because radium was seen as providing health benefits in one area, its use was expanded to other areas for which there was no proven benefit. This was especially the case in the 1920s, when advertising campaigns for face creams with names such as Tho-Radia and Radior claimed that “the amazing Energy of Radium has proved a boon to the human skin.” What purchasers of these products didn’t realize was that the “glow” they were seeking was not necessarily the kind they would actually receive.

Losing Its Glow

In fact, the luminescent property of radium was precisely what made it attractive to manufacturers of clocks, watches, and other technical instruments, for whom its glow-in-the-dark ability was commercially advantageous. However, the use of radium-based paints for such applications was eventually found to be extremely dangerous, after many workers exposed to the paint died from the effects of radiation.

The growing awareness of radium’s toxicity made it seem less and less suited to general use, and when Marie Curie died in 1934, it was speculated that her exposure to radiation played a part in her death. Scientists now know that radium damages bone marrow particularly, because the body treats it as calcium, depositing it in the bones and providing it easy access to the marrow.

Although the benefits of radium fall far short of what it was once believed it could do, with careful handling radium still proves useful in medical treatment and scientific research. In addition, the story of its discovery is inspiring and laid the groundwork for many other important advances in science (If you’re ever in Paris, I highly recommend a visit to the Musée Curie, where you can see the actual office and lab used by Marie Curie in her later experiments). But the next time you hear something being praised as a miracle cure-all, remember that the truth may be more complicated than it seems.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on January 30, 2008.

Image credit: Photographer unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


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Author: Morgen Jahnke

Data Privacy Day

Data privacy icon

Since 2008, January 28 of each year has been Data Privacy Day, an occasion for learning about the numerous threats to the privacy of your personal data and what you can do about them. It so happens I’ve written an entire book on this topic: Take Control of Your Online Privacy. It tells you who’s after your personal data and why, what you should (and shouldn’t) worry about, and what concrete, practical steps you can take to protect yourself without withdrawing entirely from the online world. I hope you’ll check it out!

Image credit: PICOL- PIctorial COmmunication Language [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons


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Author: Joe Kissell

Sandboarding

People sandboarding

Dry surfing or hot snowboarding?

It was in a high school English class that I first ran across Emerson’s famous quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” Something about that struck a chord with me, and ever since, I have tried to nurture a healthy appreciation for paradox if not outright contradiction. For example, as I may have mentioned, sports are not among my top thousand or so favorite things in life. So I was chagrined to discover how many of the suggestions I received for topics to include on Interesting Thing of the Day were sports-related. Someone would very excitedly come up to me and say, “Hey! You’ve got to write about this cool piece of tennis trivia,” or “There’s this really amazing baseball story your readers would love to hear,” and I’d kind of grin and nod and pretend to make a mental note, all the while thinking there could hardly be anything less interesting to write about than sports. However, when my son Ben suggested an article on sandboarding, I had to admit that did sound sort of interesting—and at least I didn’t have to participate in it. So in the noble spirit of contradiction, I set out to discover what I could about this sport.

Getting Board with Sand

Sandboarding resembles snowboarding as seen through amber glasses. The general idea is the same; participants strap a short board to their feet and slide down a hill, only in this case the surface is sand rather than snow. Sandboarders sometimes say the experience is more like surfing than snowboarding, an impression undoubtedly enhanced by the lack of heavy clothing. As in snowboarding, the sport is sometimes recreational, sometimes competitive; some participants focus mainly on speed, others on acrobatics and tricks. But one of the biggest differences is that sand dunes don’t have lifts; to get to the top for a run, you must hike or take a four-wheel-drive vehicle (euphemistically known as a “chair lift”)—and a friend to drive it back down the hill. Unlike snow-covered mountains, sand dunes are constantly changing size and shape due to shifting winds, making fixed installations of lift equipment impossible.

The sandboards themselves are superficially very similar to snowboards, which is to say they’re about the same size and shape, and use similar bindings. However, since sand is much more abrasive, and with much higher friction than snow, some modifications are necessary to keep the boards running smoothly and to keep them from getting chewed up rapidly. The bottom surface of most sandboards is covered with a tougher, more slippery material than wood—often Formica or ABS plastic, though stainless steel is sometimes used as well. The choice of material must be matched to both the type of sand on which it will be used and the intended effect (lighter materials for acrobatics, slipperier ones for speed). Some riders wax their boards to reduce friction further and prolong the life of the board, but even under the best conditions sandboards wear out even more quickly than snowboards.

The Sand(boards) of Time

I initially assumed that sandboarding was a recent invention, a simple snowboarding knock-off. This is only approximately correct, however. On the one hand, sandboards have appropriated snowboard technology, and attracted snowboard riders, only in the last few decades. But there is evidence that ancient Egyptians were sliding down sand dunes on pieces of wood or pottery 3,000 years ago. Modern, upright sandboarding is believed to have been invented in Brazil in the 1940s. In recent years, though, advances in materials and techniques have led to much faster speeds and longer jumps than ever imagined before—professional sandboarders routinely reach speeds in excess of 60 mph (100 kph) and jump distances of 50 feet (15m) or more.

Sandboarding can be done anywhere there are sand dunes—which is a surprisingly large number of places. Certainly the deserts of Africa, Australia, and California are natural choices, but suitable sand dunes can be found all over the world—from Chile to the Athabasca sand dunes in Saskatchewan, Canada, from China to North Wales. The international sandboarding championships are held annually in Nurnberg, Germany, attracting as many as 50,000 fans. Florence, Oregon is the proud home of the world’s first sandboarding park, called Sand Master Park.

I should perhaps mention that, as sports go, the ones that involve standing on a board and moving very fast are among the last I’d personally be inclined to try. Whether the surface is water, snow, concrete, or sand, that whole mode of movement just doesn’t appeal to me. I do like the idea of sandboarding, especially the fact that it’s not as commercialized as snowboarding. But I think I’ll start out with sand tobogganing—or maybe just hold out for the 3D force-feedback sandboarding computer game, undoubtedly coming soon.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on July 15, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on February 13, 2005.

Image credit: CVN 75 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


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Author: Joe Kissell

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Child survivors of Auschwitz

During World War II, six million Jews (and millions of others) died at the hands of the Nazis. Perhaps the most notorious of the concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was the last one to be liberated—on January 27, 1945. In recognition of that event, the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 declared January 27 to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I used to think that racism in general, and anti-Semitism in particular, were on a rapid and irrevocable decline, but sadly that has turned out not to be the case. What happened before—and worse—could happen again unless we get our collective acts together, stop being awful to other human beings, and stop tolerating those who are.

Image credit: Alexander Voronzow and others in his group, ordered by Mikhael Oschurkow, head of the photography unit [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


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Author: Joe Kissell

The Hurdy-Gurdy

A musician playing the hurdy-gurdy

Violin, bagpipes, and kazoo combined

In 1996, I bought an album I knew next to nothing about, by an artist I had never heard of before, on the strength of the album being issued on Peter Gabriel’s excellent Real World record label. The album was Big City Secrets by Joseph Arthur, and from the very first track I knew that I had made a good purchase. However, I really sat up and listened when I got to track 3, “Mikel K.” In the background of the song there was a really odd-sounding instrument. It sounded a bit like a violin (or a folk-style fiddle) played with a never-ending bow, and had a bagpipe-like drone note in the background. As if that wasn’t enough sonic complexity for one instrument, there was also a rhythmic buzzing sound, slightly reminiscent of a kazoo. What in the world was it? A quick check of the liner notes revealed only one instrument that I hadn’t heard of before—a hurdy-gurdy.

Don’t They Usually Come with a Monkey?

The first image that popped into my head was of a kind of barrel organ, where a handle is turned to drive bellows which force air through organ pipes, and which is also usually accompanied by some kind of simian assistant. I was so fascinated by the sound that I did some research, and found that my misconception was a common one. The hurdy-gurdy (or vielle à roue, as it is known in France) is played by turning a handle, but the resemblance to a barrel organ ends there. The body of the instrument can be box-shaped or with a rounded back like a lute, and many examples are beautifully decorated with inlaid wood. The handle turns a wheel covered in rosin, which vibrates the strings; the hurdy-gurdy functions like a violin with an endless bow, so that there is no pause in the sound at the end of a bow stroke. Instead of sounding notes using the fingers, the musician presses sliding, un-sprung keys which make contact with the strings and shorten them to make a sound of the required pitch. The drone comes from one or more strings which do not get pressed by the keys, and therefore sound the same notes continuously. The final part of the puzzle is the moveable bridge, or chien (French for dog), which supports one of the drone strings and can be manipulated by a skilled player so that it vibrates against the body of the hurdy-gurdy during playing, making a rhythmic buzzing noise. The whole ensemble has a driving, continuous sound, with its own percussion produced by the chien; it is impossible not to tap your feet along with the music.

The Golden Age of the Hurdy-Gurdy

It should therefore come as no surprise that the heyday of the hurdy-gurdy was in the medieval period, when it was used to accompany dancing. However, between the 14th and 16th centuries, the complexity and range of the popular music of the day increased beyond the capabilities of the instrument, and it fell out of favour with professional musicians, while remaining a firm favourite in rural areas with folk musicians. There was a bit of a hurdy-gurdy revival in the 17th to 18th centuries, as the instrument was improved and much new music was written for it. Oddly, this was partly due to its former association with the rural peasantry. The French court of Louis XIV started a fashion for what might be called “peasant chic”: the King was fascinated by his own idea of the simple, rural life (of course, this was a somewhat rose-tinted view, ignoring all the harsh, unsanitary, and downright unpleasant aspects of peasant life), and the hurdy-gurdy fitted in with this fashion perfectly. Eventually, the fashion changed, and by the French Revolution, the hurdy-gurdy had been returned to the rural working people. Today the peculiar sound of the instrument has a great affinity for all kinds of modern music, as I discovered. It makes an interesting acoustic counterpoint to largely electronic music, and the Celtic/Middle-Eastern feel of the sound complements world and folk music equally well. In my opinion, there are few pieces of music that aren’t improved by the addition of a hurdy-gurdy—but perhaps I’m a bit biased.

The Sad and Seedy Side

The hurdy-gurdy also has a dark side to its history, which can be traced back to Hessen, Germany in the 1800s. Poverty was rife in rural areas because of increasing family sizes and the division of inherited land, so farmers started to make brooms and fly whisks in the winter which they then sold in the summer as pedlars. Initially, they sold their goods locally, but their trade soon spread to other areas of Europe, and as far as Britain and Russia. Being shrewd folk, they realised that brooms are not the most fascinating of household commodities, and that they would gather more of a crowd of potential purchasers if some form of entertainment was included. This took the form of pretty young “hurdy-gurdy girls” who danced and played music. Inevitably, the girls became more of a draw than the brooms, and before long, young girls were being persuaded by “soul-merchants” to leave their homes and families to play and dance in seedy music halls for sailors, miners, and other groups of men bereft of female company. The girls performed as far afield as gold-rush California, Cuba, and Australia. Some were drawn into prostitution, and while a lucky few became rich from their trade, most led miserable lives and returned home poor and ill. For many years, the trade was a public secret, with officials turning a blind eye (or even profiting from it) but eventually it changed from public secret to public scandal, and was finally outlawed in 1865 by a government edict.

Hurdy-Gurdy Gurus

So who is the Jimi Hendrix of the hurdy-gurdy scene? My vote would go to Nigel Eaton. His father, Chris, also makes the instruments, which must be handy if he has a Pete Townsend moment at a gig, and smashes up his hurdy-gurdy. Nigel has formed numerous groups centered around the hurdy-gurdy, including Blowzabella and Ancient Beatbox, as well as playing as a session musician with performers as diverse as Led Zeppelin and Joseph Arthur. In fact, this is where I came in—Nigel Eaton was playing on the Joseph Arthur track I mentioned at the start of this article. Like the rosined wheel of the hurdy-gurdy, I have come full circle.

Guest author Jackie Chappell is a biologist at the University of Birmingham (UK).

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on July 1, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on September 22, 2004.

Image credit: Sander van der Wel [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons


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Author: Jackie Chappell

National Seed Swap Day

RFGN seed swap at the Reading Farmers' Market. 17th March 2018

A seed swap is an event where—see if you can follow this intricate description—people swap seeds. That is to say, gardeners bring excess or unusual seeds to a central location and trade them for others—perhaps to obtain new heirloom plants, to try new things, or just for garden-variety (see what I did there?) diversity. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have anywhere to put a garden, but if I did, I’m sure I’d find seed swaps delightful. Washington Gardener Magazine started National Seed Swap Day in 2006, and it has been held the last Saturday in January ever since.

Image credit: Karen Blakeman [Public domain], via Flickr


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Author: Joe Kissell

Family Mediation Week Day 5: Planning For The Future

Day 5 of Family Mediation Week’s theme is “A Ray of Sunshine; What a Relief”

Today is the last day of Family Mediation Week.

Once again there is a lot of very helpful information, including videos, blogs and articles available from the Family Mediation Week website (http://www.familymediationweek.org.uk/).

These look towards the end of the process and people being able to move on.

For example, there is a video by Bill Hewlett recording how relieved children feel that they have been listened to, they no longer feel they are caught in the middle and they can go on and enjoy the rest of their childhood.

There are also articles about the importance of everyone looking after themselves, mentally and physically, as they go through the process of separation and moving on.

This is accompanied by another piece focusing on the future and having a clear plan in order to make the best of life.

Mediation is all about helping families to find fair solutions which work for everyone.

Mediation requires commitment and effort by everyone concerned, the couple and the Mediator or Mediators, it is not necessarily an easy process but if it does result in fair, workable solutions the gains are enormous.

Mediation is just one of several ways of resolving issues when families separate. As such, it should always be considered.

Legal advice is vital no matter what process a couple choose to follow.

Legal advice can support and assist the Mediation process so couples can make proper informed decisions.

Family Mediation Week has been an enormous success, the material produced is of first class quality and at Stowe Family Law we are committed to helping our clients identify the process which will work best for them and their families. Stowe Family Law is able to offer mediation services in a number of our offices so if you are interested in hearing more get in touch.

You can read our previous Mediation Week posts here:

The post Family Mediation Week Day 5: Planning For The Future appeared first on Stowe Family Law.


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Author: Graham Coy