09:22 – We’re under a blizzard warning for tonight. Well, a blizzard by our standards. Temperatures in the 20’s (~ -5C), with winds of 25 MPH (40 KPH), and two to four inches (5 to 10 cm) of snow.
We got a lot done yesterday on the biology kits. We now have 60 sets of the solids–thirteen of them–packaged, labeled, and bagged into subassemblies. We also started making up 100 sets of tube subassemblies. Those are six glass test tubes individually packaged inside 50 mL polypropylene centrifuge tubes (for shipping protection), with six 15 mL polypropylene centrifuge tubes, all inside a quart ziplock bag. I’ve made up all six of the stains included in the kit–Eosin Y, Gram’s Iodine, Hucker’s Crystal Violet, Methylene Blue, Safranin O, and Sudan III–and today we’ll bottle and label 60 sets of those.
11:47 – I’ve often complained that one can’t buy real chemistry sets nowadays. The kinds of chemistry sets I grew up with have been extinct for close to 40 years. Until now.
John Farrell Kuhns of H.M.S. Beagle is now offering a real chemistry set, the kind I drooled over back in the 1960’s. The hand-built H.M.S. Beagle Master Chemistry Set echoes a bygone era, when millions of boys hoped to find something just like this under the Christmas tree.
We will gladly take your blizzard up here, sir. We have had virtually nothing all winter so far and the ski areas are hurting. And by virtually nothing I mean that we have had a bunch of your two to four inches but that’s about it. Last winter we got slammed here, and the snow in our “back forty” was up to my waist into April, when it began raining and did not stop until September, and gave us two historic-level floods.
Algore is not returning my calls.
Interesting chemistry set. Of course, to own one here in Texas, I’d need to get a permit from the state police. I’m hoping to get that changed in the next legislative session in 2013. (Yeah, our legislature can only meet for 140 days every other year. A feature, not a bug. As has been observed, “No Man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” or the Texas version: “No Man’s wife or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”)
I spotted two chemicals (well, elements) that I didn’t get to work with until high school and are lots of fun to handle. Not quite up to Derek Lowe’s standards for avoiding, but when I messed with them, I made sure that my lab buddies and I were the only ones in the lab. (Even in AP chemistry, not everyone wants to be around highly reactive chemicals.)
Here’s a puzzlement:
They are replacing the telephone poles in our neighborhood and I’ve notice the replacements flare out by about 9 inches or a foot in diameter for a couple feet along the length of the bottom.
Why would that be?
What are the poles made of? Sounds like a Stobie pole, which are wider at the base than the top:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stobie_pole
They are replacing poles (wooden) in a couple places here in Tiny Town, but the poles lying by the side of the road, are not flared anywhere along their length. Not sure why they insist on using wood around here. Shortly after my dad passed in 2004, they replaced all the poles around the Tiny House neighborhood. Nearly every single one has since started leaning, some by over 10 degrees. Maybe the flaring is a new technique to stop the leaning.
South Australia is the home of the Stobie pole, which is basically two steel strips separated by concrete and held together by bolts. Resists *everything*. Surprisingly, it’s comparatively kind to cars that hit them.
Sure enough, the fire a few nights back burned an abandoned wood pallet factory to the ground. It was only 3 blocks away, and still had some old inventory in it. Building is a total loss and burned for 3 hours. All the fire department could do was keep it from spreading. By the time they got to the scene, it was too late to save the building.
Tiny Town is a sad case of a place that has suffered the complete collapse of industry. That pallet factory served the many other factories in town, including a large Chrysler forge shop, a piano factory, 2 steel mills, half-a-dozen foundries, many cabinet makers including Hoosier Kitchen Cabinet whose old restored products are now worth into the tens of thousands. Nothing remains but 1 of the steel mills, which now operates with 30 employees, compared to its peak of 240, running shifts around the clock.
Chrysler built a brand-new plant, completed just a year before they cut that factory loose from the corporation. It was sold to a consortium formed by former management, but folded operations completely within just a few years. That plant has just been bought by an operation that is going to manufacture wind turbines. Ostensibly 250 jobs coming this summer. Hopefully among those is someone who needs Tiny House.
I am listening to Duncan Browne, a Brit who came late to the folk scene–he was brilliant, but about 10 years too late.
He was classically-trained on guitar and piano, but got into the pop scene when he met Andrew Loog Oldham, who signed him to do an album in 1968, when it still was not clear that folk was really and truly dead. I remember getting that album at the radio station, but we had just killed the folk show on the station (university station) for lack of new material to play.
I had completely forgotten about Browne, until my son sent me a link to a Fleet Foxes cover of a haunting Browne song, “My Only Son”. Here’s Browne’s version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9KZ6I1fObM
Browne’s music is very McCartneyesque, but with strong classical overtones. His classical-influenced guitar suits his music, and is a joy to listen to. Browne died in 1993 from cancer at age 46. He had gone on to define a genre known as “Metro” in the late ‘70’s. His song “Journey” was a major European hit in the 1972, but never made a splash in the US. A biography is here:
http://www.insyncnet.com/duncan/
IMO “Journey” is up there with anything Crosby, Stills, and Nash did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS1bvFmwtsA
His self-titled album, released in 1973, is one of those like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, or Crosby, Stills, and Nash, that I would have laid on the floor with my head between the speakers, getting lost in the music.
Any indications that insurance fraud may be involved?
“They are replacing the telephone poles in our neighborhood and I’ve notice the replacements flare out by about 9 inches or a foot in diameter for a couple feet along the length of the bottom.
Why would that be?”
Basically, for the same reason a knife has a handle. That big bulb underground won’t cut through wet or weak soil under stress or applied force (gravity, wind, tension on wires, whatever), whereas something narrower would. Keeps the posts upright and up straight longer, so it cuts down on maintenance issues. Some of the same reason people set posts in concrete in the post-hole.
My understanding is that the building was completely abandoned by the former owner, was taken by the city in back taxes, and not insured.
I live across the street from a guy who used to be on the fire department and did most of the investigative work into the cause of the fires. He told me that almost all fires are set (about 90%), but unless they can attach it to a person — which is almost never — then they are instructed to report it officially as ’cause undetermined’. Cigarette smoking is the highest official cause of fires around here. It also gets a pass as ‘accidental’. So those properties that are insured almost always get sent to the insurance company for payout. Even if they catch the perpetrator with criminal intent, — as long as that person is not the policyholder — the insurance company is obligated to pay.
Well, if current events are any indication, the wind turbine company will go under in a couple of years. (ref. Solyndra, et.al.)
Earworm alert.
This has taken over my head, and I thought I’d spread the joy.
Chorus:
“Mama’s little baby loves short’nin’ short’nin’,
Mama’s little baby needs short’nin’ bread.
Mama’s little baby loves short’nin’ short’nin’,
Mama’s little baby needs short’nin’ bread.
Three little chillen lying in bed,
Two were sick and the other most dead.
Send for the doctor, the doctor said
Feed those chillen on short’nin’ bread
Chorus
When those chillen, sick in bed,
Heard that talk about short’nin’ bread,
Popped up well to dance and sing,
Skipped around and cut the pigeon wing.
(That’s like “buck and wing, or tap, dancing)
Chorus
… and so forth.
Go forth, my children, and Google the words and tune.
You will be assimilated.
Mama’s little baby needs short’nin’ bread.
I’m tempted to post the lyrics from Mandy but don’t want to wake the 800 pound gorilla.
Chuck wrote:
“So those properties that are insured almost always get sent to the insurance company for payout. Even if they catch the perpetrator with criminal intent, — as long as that person is not the policyholder — the insurance company is obligated to pay.”
I went to a Computer Measurement Group of Australia conference back in ’88 and at the main dinner of the conference the after dinner speaker was someone who worked in the insurance industry, who told us of some of the extreme attempts at fraud against insurers. It may not sound that interesting but he was well received, and I hung on every word. He was well worth it.
I also read in a motoring magazine put out by a drivers organisation that also had an insurance arm a story of a couple who tried to claim insurance on their home when it burned down. The problem was that the neighbours saw this couple moving lots of furniture and other stuff out of the house the day before the fire. The insurer refused to pay and the couple withdrew their claim. How stupid can you get?
Thanks Don. That makes sense, though for a wooden pole 40 feet high I don’t see how such flaring can make a whole lot of difference.
Maybe it’s just to make the pole heavier on one end so it hangs straight and is easier to set in a vertical position?
Nah, they would just attach cables higher on the pole to do that.
I suspect it’s a natural flare, and you should be asking Mother Nature.
I have a natural flare, though I usually spell it “flair”. But of course, I’m so bright that it’s a natural “flare”, too.
(Ego problem? Me? Not at all. My ego’s in great shape. No problem here.)
Is your ego as big as this guy’s?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy-LQH8N6Ug