“Port Meadow is absolutely beautiful and a wonderful place to swim. We often swim in a different spot from other open water swimming groups in order to create a more relaxed environment – especially for our beginners. We do special beginners swims on Saturdays, to ease new members into the practise slowly and very carefully.
Safety is paramount, so I’ll walk them in to the water and they can immerse themselves as much as they want. We never allow anyone to jump or dive into cold water – the shock can cause a swimmer to gulp for air and subsequently ingest water; it’s always a gentle process.” — Ellie
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“…Hot cocoa and hot chocolate are terms that we often used interchangeably. Technically, hot cocoa and hot chocolate are as different as milk chocolate and bittersweet chocolate. Hot cocoa is made with cocoa powder, the way my mother made it when I was a kid. Hot chocolate is made from melting chocolate bars into cream…”
The Full English Breakfast, or “fry-up,” originated in the Victorian era (1830s–1900s) as a hearty meal for the rural gentry and emerging industrial working class in Britain. It combined affordable, energy-dense ingredients—butter-fried eggs, back bacon, sausages, fried bread, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, and black pudding—designed to fuel long days of manual labor or fox-hunting. By the Edwardian period it had become a symbol of British identity and was served in hotels and boarding houses to travelers.
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In the United States, the fry-up arrived on college campuses primarily after World War II via two routes: British faculty and students at elite universities (Oxford-Cambridge exchanges, Rhodes Scholars) and the 1960s–70s “British Invasion” cultural wave. Dining halls at places like Yale, Harvard, and certain Ivy League-adjacent schools began offering weekend “English breakfasts” as novelty brunches. The tradition stuck hardest at boarding schools and liberal-arts colleges with strong Anglophile traditions (e.g., Choate, St. Paul’s, Middlebury, Kenyon).
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By the 1980s–90s, beans on toast and proper rashers of back bacon became hangover cures at off-campus houses, cementing the fry-up as a once-a-semester ritual rather than daily fare.
January 25th Joint Meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FERC: Docket No. AD06-6-000. Given the close coupling of electric and natural gas supply with respect to power reliability, the mind boggles at the hostility of the Biden Administration to natural gas anywhere on earth. Natural gas is critical to generation plant black start capabilities and hospitals, among others.
A selection of the presentations:
“Long Term Reliability Assessment” – Presented by Mark Lauby, Senior Vice President and Chief Engineer, NERC
“Grid Reliability Overview & Updates” – Presented by David Ortiz, Director of the Office of Electric Reliability
“Status of Standards and Implementation for Cold Weather Preparedness and Applicability to Nuclear Plants” – Presented by David Huff, Electrical Engineer, Office of Electric Reliability
“Gas-Electric Coordination Since Winter Storm Uri” – Presented by Heather Polzin, Reliability Enforcement Counsel, Office of Enforcement
“Overview of Power Reactor Activities” – Presented by Andrea Kock, Deputy Office Director for Engineering, NRR
“Grid Reliability Updates” – Presented by Jason Paige, Chief, Long-Term Operations and Modernization Branch, Division of Engineering and External Hazards, NRR
“Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about groaning and saying it is ‘dreadful’ and they are nearly always worrying about some awful thing or other happening because of the snow. But the children? They are out in it, throwing snowballs, building snowmen, sliding down slopes on toboggans—having a marvelous time.” — C.S. Lewis (‘That Hideous Strength – A Modern Fairy Tale for Grownups, 1945)
1 pound dried split peas, rinsed and picked over 1 ham hock, ham bone, or 1 pound diced ham 1 onion, chopped 2 carrots, chopped 2 celery stalks, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 8 cups chicken or vegetable broth 2 bay leaves Salt and pepper to taste Optional: thyme, parsley, or other herbs for flavor
Instructions:
Prepare the ingredients: Rinse the split peas under cold water and pick out any debris. Chop the onion, carrots, and celery. Mince the garlic.
Sauté aromatic vegetables: In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat some olive oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, carrots, celery, and garlic. Sauté until softened, about 5-7 minutes.
Add split peas and broth: Add the rinsed split peas to the pot, along with the ham hock, ham bone, or diced ham. Pour in the chicken or vegetable broth. Add bay leaves and any other herbs you’re using.
Simmer the soup: Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat to low. Let it simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the split peas are tender and the soup has thickened, about 1 to 1.5 hours. If using a ham hock or bone, remove it from the soup once the meat is falling off the bone; shred the meat and return it to the pot.
Season to taste: Taste the soup and season with salt and pepper as needed. Adjust any other seasonings to your liking.
Serve: Remove the bay leaves before serving. Ladle the soup into bowls and enjoy hot. Optionally, you can garnish with chopped fresh parsley or a drizzle of olive oil.
Tips:
You can customize the soup by adding other vegetables like potatoes or leeks. For a vegetarian version, omit the ham and use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. Split pea soup tends to thicken as it sits, so you may need to add more broth or water when reheating leftovers.
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
