jamespburke.com is James Patrick Burke's personal website. Playful educator, culinary explorer, and lifelong learner. B.Sc. Computer Science, Ph.D. Mathematics Education.
My pool is finally about to be opened for the year. Even though this is something I do every year, it sometimes takes me a while to remember what I do each year to make pool-opening happen. I’m going to use this post to record some information I know I’m going to want to reference sometime in the future. And maybe you’ll find it useful as well. If you already know a lot about pools, maybe go…
The Rule Of Protein Grams Times Ten In a recent conversation with my sister, she mentioned to me that a useful rule of thumb for finding if a food was truly helpful to a high-protein diet is to look at the label, take the number of grams of protein in one serving of the food, multiply it by ten, and compare it to the calories per serving. \[\boxed{\text{grams of protein} \ast 10 \ge…
…And this isn’t one of them You wouldn’t think summer is a stressful time for a teacher, and I’m not looking for anyone to feel sorry for me for anything. But, I can tell you I’ve had some summers that I really regretted how I spent my time. Some of that was out of my hands. I’ve spent time recovering from things. You can’t help when it’s a health-related thing (specific injuries or maladies I…
My daughter got married today. Well, it’s yesterday now. A small crowd of her’s and her husband’s close family were there, in a field, in a state park, under a pavilion and a tent. She has found a wonderful partner from a family who are a very nice bunch of people. It was a wonderful time, and they planned every detail of the event, which came off without a serious hitch. We’d worried about the…
This is my version of microblogging right now: a series of random thought-dumps in one single journal. What am I thinking? What have I been up to? Diet I’ve been eating fewer calories, and I returned to what’s worked for me before: calorie counting and macro tracking. This has felt like the least onerous diet in my personal history of dieting and the secret is: figuring out a healthy combination…
Unable to focus myself to the point of writing full, high-quality reviews, but in the interest of doing more journaling about the media I consume, I’m starting to post “miniviews.” “Miniviews” is a word I’m adopting to signal somewhere between a good effort reviewing and a drive-by microblog. In other words, managing expectations. Enjoy. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Disclosure: I like schlocky horror. I…
What does it mean to live in a free society? If “freedom isn’t free,” what price does it demand of us, if any? “Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.” (Heschel, 1963) Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel spoke from his personal experience when he made this statement about life in a free society. Heschel escaped Nazi…
People are noting that in the television show Star City, which is a spinoff of For All Mankind, some details are different between the two. They have re-shot a moon scene with a new actor, for example, that was a significant reveal in the first series, but not in the spinoff. So the moment plays a little differently. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten significantly less patient with and accepting…
Yesterday, I tried a new method of cooking burgers after a few years of only making smash burgers. My opinion has been that flattening burgers prioritizes browned bits over thickness, producing better flavor. For people who wanted thicker burgers, my advice has been to just layer multiple smash burgers. You could even put cheese between them, so that’s an additional win for cheeseburger lovers.…
It’s teacher appreciation week, which means that teachers all over (as seen in places like the Reddit teacher forum) are discussing what their districts do to appreciate them. I’ll let you check that out yourself. Teachers are feeling underappreciated in many places, and nobody really knows what to do to correct that, or the fact that public education is facing a crisis of funding cuts,…