Larry Scheckel

My publisher urges me to blog every three days about the book, Murder in a Small Town: The Kyson Rice Case. Release date is May 1. We are having a Book Launch gathering at Taphouse Twenty on May 1 from 5-7 pm. Kyson would be six years old and in First Grade. His story needs to be told. Domestic and child abuse should not be happening, but sadly, it is.

The police work on this case was first rate, detailed and methodical at every step. Here the Tomah Police nd Monroe County Sheriff’s Department work together to apprehend the suspect Marcus Anderson on Superior Avenue in Tomah the day of the murder.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-in-a-small-town-larry-scheckel/1147103010?ean=9798992238303

To pre-order your kindle ebook, click this link:

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Small-Town-Kyson-Rice-ebook/dp/B0DWPX9VR7/

This house, left side, was the scene of a vicious murder in 2019. A three-year-old boy beaten mercilessly by a convicted felon with a long rap sheet. There were warning signed ignored. The book, Murder in a Small Town: The Kyson Rice Case, details this horrific crime. To pre-order, go to this link for paperback.

Releasing on May 1, 2025!

This crime was one that shocked us all with its sheer brutality right here in the community where we live. I was compelled to document the story because of its far-reaching impact.

This is a story of how a small city, well-trained police force apprehended the perpetrator, secured the crime scene, thoroughly assessed, and meticulously investigated the crime. It’s an inside look at how that city police force worked together with a county police force and investigators, who question the killer and his relatives, friends, and contacts. It’s also the story of an ambulance crew and a hospital trauma unit laboring feverishly to restore life.

It’s an account of an award-winning District Attorney and an award-winning Assistant District Attorney who skillfully weaved together a prosecution that guaranteed a killer will never again walk freely, or buy, use, and sell drugs, and, to employ the informal colloquial term, never again “beat the crap” out of little kids.

It’s a narrative of a mother who lost her only child and is not likely to have another, and of brutality, loss, shame, and families torn apart.

It’s the story of an eight-day trial that cost tons of money, but in the words of the sentencing judge, “money well spent, and worth every penny.” And finally, it is about our society that won by putting away a criminal who was totally bereft of feelings and empathy.

To pre-order in paperback, go to this Barnes & Noble link:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-in-a-small-town-larry-scheckel/1147103010?ean=9798992238303

To pre-order your kindle ebook, click this link:

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Small-Town-Kyson-Rice-ebook/dp/B0DWPX9VR7/

Yes, scientists enjoy telling and hearing jokes just like the rest of us. In January 2016, Scientific American published an article entitled, A Scientific Theory of Humor. The article talked about how people, including scientists, use humor to diffuse difficult situations, soften criticism, mask nervousness, and cope with failure. 

Humor also serves the role in both platonic and romantic social interactions, as it helps us break the ice, gain social acceptance, and initiate romantic overtures. Both men and women tend to seek mates who have a good sense of humor, and we perceive funny people as smarter, more attractive, and more personable.

Given that humor is such a powerful tool for social success, it’s not surprising that scientists have sought to determine the perfect formula for being funny. One key ingredient can be found in a 200 year-old theory proposed by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

In a nutshell, Schopenhauer suggested that humor derives from an incongruous outcome of an event for which there is a very specific expectation. It is the violation of the specific expectation that creates humor. Consider this pun: “When the clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.”  The notion of a clock eating is incongruous with our knowledge of the world.

            Jokes sometimes run in series or have a certain lifespan, such as blond jokes, elephant jokes, refrigerator jokes, Jeffery Dahmer jokes, and O.J. Simpson jokes. Ethnic jokes have lost favor. Here are some groaners that deal with science.

            A neutron walks into a bar and asks the bartender, “How much for a beer?” The bartender looks at him, and says, “For you, no charge.”

Two atoms bump into each other. One says, “I think I lost an electron!” The other asks, “Are you sure?”, to which the first replies, “I’m positive.”

What did the Nuclear Physicist have for lunch? Fission Chips.

What do you get if you drop a piano down a mine shaft?  A flat minor

Why did the germ cross the microscope? To get to the other slide.

Two blood cells meet and fall in love. Alas, it was all in vein.

Why can’t you trust atoms? They make up everything.

What did one tectonic plate say after bumping into another? Sorry, my fault.

 How much room do fungi need to grow? As mushroom as possible.

Why don’t aliens visit our solar system? They checked the reviews and saw only one star.

Why don’t magnets have mates? Because they’re polar opposites.

Which runs faster, hot or cold? Hot, because you can catch a cold.

What are the essential elements of humor? Sulfur, Argon, Calcium, and Samarium (SArCaSm).

What do you do with a sick chemist? If you can’t helium, and you can’t curium, then you might as well barium.

What is the quickest way to determine the sex of a chromosome? Pull down its genes.

Do you know what makes my day? The rotation of the Earth.

Do you know the name Pavlov?  It rings a bell.

Sources: Scientific American, psychologicalscience.org 

Send questions and comments to: lscheckel@charter.net.

  That great big plane is the Airbus 380, the largest passenger jet plane in the world. A double-decker, offering extraordinary comfort and stability, private flat-bed suites, lounge and cocktail bar, and a personal mini-bar at each seat. Some had shower spas on board. An escalator takes you from the first-floor deck up to the second-floor deck. The A380 maximum one-class capacity is 868 people.

Some 300 A380s were built, half sold to the Dubai-based Emirates. Airbus thought they could compete with the Boeing 747. The Boeing 747 was unveiled in September 1968, long before the A380 came on the market. The A380 came late to the party. Boeing was flying over 800 747s before the A380 lifted off the runway. The last Boeing 747 rolled out of the Boeing factory in December 2022. There’s lots of Boeing 747s flying today, both passenger and freighters.

The A380 was in production for 12 years, but there were problems from the git-go. The Airbus 380 had structural troubles. The plane is huge, and the airframe developed cracks more frequently than other aircraft. The A380 needed to be inspected frequently, driving up maintenance costs. The wingspan was 50 feet wider than the Boeing 747, so wide that most airports did not have ramp space for such a large plane. It would not fit into the normal gates.

The A380 has four engines, but the technology has evolved with a new generation of super-efficient, twin-engine planes such as Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners and Airbus’s own A350. Fuel is the biggest operating cost for an airliner, and four engines are thirstier than two engines. The A380 takes on 85,000 gallons of petrol. Those tanker trucks we see on the Interstate hold about 10,000 gallons of something.

Before these new twin-engines planes came along, twin engine planes were not allowed to fly over oceans. A plane could not be more than 60 minutes from a diversion airport. Ocean-hopping required four engines. Twins are more efficient and easier to fill up with passengers. There’s only a handful of high density, long-distance routes for an A380 to operate at a profit.

Airbus had trouble filling up planes. A half-full A380 is about the same number of passengers as a full Boeing 777, but costs twice as much to fly. Those smaller, but full, planes pilfered all the sales from the A380. German Lufthansa sold six A380 back to Airbus, claiming they were unprofitable. Australian Qantas cancelled its last A380 and announced they will switch to Boeing 777X. France retired all ten A380s and went with A220s and A300s.

Airbus is a joint France and Great Britain venture, heavily subsidized by their governments. The R&D (Research and Development) for the A380 was paid by European “launch subsidies.”  These monies must be paid back if the plane reaches a certain level of commercial success. If the A380 isn’t successful, and it wasn’t, the money does not have to be paid back. It wasn’t, so Airbus plowed their dough into the A350, which made them tons of money. The EU taxpayers picked up the tab.

The last A380 rolled out of the factory in Toulouse, France in September 2020. The headline in a newspaper read, “The Last A380 Just Rolled Off Airbus’ Production Line. It May Never Fly A Single Passenger.” As of November 2024, half of the A380s are scrapped, in storage, or in maintenance.

Today, Airbus has been very successful with their A320, A330/A340, and A350 series of planes.

They are competing nicely with Boeing’s 777 and 787. Both are wide body, twin-engine, over-the-oceans aircraft.

One Airbus executive boasted, “We are going to build something bigger than the 747, no matter what the market projections say.” Well, Airbus lost their shirt on that one. They also lost another shirt on the SST (Super Sonic Transport) Concorde. A British official said, “Why should Airbus be concerned when the taxpayers are bailing you out.”

Sources: forbes.com, www.airbus.com, http://www.cnn.com

When the frontal lobe of the brain developed an estimated 100,000 years ago, it signaled a quantum leap in human adaptation and development. The function of the frontal lobe allows us to grasp the consequences of our actions, to choose between good and bad decisions, to curb unacceptable social responses, and to filter differences and similarities between events and actions.

The frontal lobe is used to retain long-term memories. It enables us to recall events that happened months or decades ago. The frontal lobe is crucial for verbal and math skills. One could call the frontal lobe the CEO of the brain, because that is where the organizing and planning takes place. It’s the part of the brain that allows us to think about our place in the universe. Scientists say that the frontal lobe is what separates man from beast.

It is a different matter when we ask these questions: Where does each individual receive their own intelligence? How much of our intelligence has been shaped by our genetics (nature) and how much by our experiences and the way we were brought up (nurture)?

This nature versus nurture question has been going on since the days of John Locke and René Descartes in the 1600s. Many scientists reach their conclusions by studying identical twins that have been separated at birth. These identical twins had the same genes (nature) but were reared in different families (nurture).

The Minnesota Twin Registry was started in 1983 to catalog and interview all identical and fraternal twins born between 1936 and 1955. Lately, they have added twins born from 1961 to 1964. It is a huge longitudinal study following these twins over many years, using questionnaires to probe their personality, interests, marital status, leadership abilities, finances, and substance abuse, to name a few.

The Twin study has shown that identical twins raised apart show remarkable similarities in lifestyles, interests, attitudes, chosen professions, IQ, and just about every other facet of living. Their conclusion is that genetics accounts for about half of what we are as humans.

The Minnesota Twin Family Study also concludes that environment does make an important contribution to intelligence differences throughout life, and especially in early childhood. Specifically, deprivation in early childhood can stunt the development of intelligence just as it can stunt physical growth.

An IQ test determines a person’s general problem-solving ability and concept comprehension. An IQ test consists of memory recall, spatial, logic, and math abilities. Students in the U.S.  take the SAT or ACT. These tests are not billed as IQ tests but are considered one of the best indicators of success in college. That’s why admissions people look primarily at ACT/SAT scores and class rank in determining who gets into colleges and universities.

            Keep in mind that being “smart” or having a high IQ is just one aspect of a person’s being. An IQ test does not measure creativity, empathy, kindness, or even motivation. Talent cannot be measured accurately by IQ tests, especially in the areas of music, art, dance, writing, social skills, or people skills.