Actually, there are probably 29% of Americans whom, if George Bush were to out himself as the Antichrist and bring about the seven plagues, would continue to vote for him believing that this would usher in the second coming and they being confident of their membership in the "elect."
Okay....well, I'm not actually that cynical, at least not yet.
While I agree with your assertion that we are better off without soda and, corn syrup and all of the other refined (or artificial ) sugars, and am currently drinking a very fine iced tea ( Sumatra BOP, Kyu Aro Estate), its a mistake to think that our ancestors drank a lot of water. The truth is poor sanitation and hygiene quickly contaminated all but the most rural water sources. How did our ancestors avoid all the bugs that can live in such water? Well, a lot of them didn't, others had a higher comparative resistance, and alcohol. Fermentation is a great way to preserve all manners of food, from kimchee to beer. In the US Johnny Appleseed didn't become a folk hero because of "an apple a day.....(a 1930s marketing campaign) but because apple trees (especially those grown from seed) mean cider and cider (the orginal fermented hard cider) is a source of "safe" drinking water. A pioneer doesn't have to worry about getting sick from bad water, and can get buzzed at the same time. And a good time was had by all....;)
This is the thing that always cracked me up about the "post the ten commandments in every possible corner" sect. I mean, the Old Testament is just that, the old one, and the New Testament is supposed to be "The Law 2.0" (Okay maybe convenant when Adam in Eden is Law v1.0, covenant out of Eden is 2.0, convenant with Noah 3.0, Moses 4.0 . This was a stable build, the various prophets did release upgrades and service packs, before we get the whole new God's Law 5.0: Jesus Christ Edition [If it waS ubuntu would it be Jumpin Jesus 5.0]...;) So I digress, but anyways, the 10 commandments is the old set of rules, the new rules are the Beatitudes. The first time I hear someone saying we should post "Blessed are the merciful" in a court room , "blessed are the poor" on wall street or "blessed are the peacemakers" at the Pentagon, I'll know I've met a true Christian. Poor lonely guy, I'll probably slap him on the back and buy him some coffee.
Amen to the Chemex. I got my wife one of these for Christmas and we love it. One thing we found that makes a big difference is allowing the coffee to bloom. That's the step with the chemex where you lightly dampen the beans in the hot water before actually starting to pour water through. Over a few minutes the grounds foam and bubble, giving off carbon dioxide (I'm told). This step has a big impact on the fullness of the flavor. Another plus to the chemex is the ability to brew with just off boiling water, which is far hotter than the water in more electric drips. I've also been told that drip brewed coffee has less cholesterol than pressed or percolated coffee (which is also good, but too much mess). We also use fresh beans from a local roastery. Next step, a burr grinder. And to think, we're really tea drinkers. Coffee is just an occasional treat.
Just because it's not for profit doesn't mean its government run. I should know, I work for one of America's better known 501c3's. Compare us to a for profit home builder. Their mission is to make money, not houses. They build the cheapest, least durable houses they can build and still sell at the highest price possible. They don't care if your slab cracks, so long as it is after your 18 month homeowner's warranty. Compare that to my mission. I'm bound by charter, contract and our board of director's to build more houses, that are better built and more affordable each year. My salary is partly based on my ability to do this. Why not run health care like this? The balance sheet has to come to zero every year (though this doesn't preclude long-term investments), and you have to justify executive salaries and perks. Imagine a health care industry driven not by the need to satisfy investor but the need to make people healthy.
For the record, Lexington Habitat for Humanity is recognized for being one of the most energy efficient home builders in the state, known for its ability to build in infill lots while still maintaining the architectural character of historic neighborhoods, our ability to reduce waste and increase recycling of materials on the job site, and always building to exceed the current building code requirements. And the mortage on a three bedroom, super energy efficient home (0% interest, 15 year forgivable loan) is around $300/month.
That's not the only way they get you. Ever notice how the store brand products invariably have much brighter and, lets face it, much uglier color schemes on the packaging. Its not because the margins are so thin on those generic brands that they can't afford to design better packaging. Stores want anyone who is able to afford (or thinks they deserve to be able to afford) the more expensive name brands to be sunconsciously turned off by the garish packinging, and maybe a little embaressed to be seen with it in their cart. That way they wring the most money they can out of the higher priced name brands, but can still capture that smaller margin on folks who have no choice to buy the store brands. My shopping trips are always funny because I seem to ignore the middle shelves ina grocery store altogether. Staples are always store brands of the bottom shelf, while flavorings and key ingredients will tend to be the imports or other top shelf stuff that has proven itself to be worth every penny over the store brand or the heavily advertised national brand.
Free form essays...ugh. I'm sure this teacher must have read "The Artist's Way." Anyone who has ever had one of these assignments, "Write anything, absoluteley anything, oh but it must be at least half a page," knows nothing but total crap comes out, just random stream of consciouness drivel, nothing serious, just pick a thread and pull on it. But since the assignment is so mind-numbingly boring, you try to pick something interesting. I'm not sayin that what this kid chose to write about was interesting, but I could see if he was trapped in the classroom with this blank piece of paper, especially after everything at VT has been in the news, that his random thoughts just might turn to something like this.
Its' pretty much been the rule in theatre since Aristotle that whenever a generation's plays weren't all that good, the theatre makes up for it by upping the "Spectacle." For Greeks this meant truly elaborate machines to provide the Deus ex machina. The Romans would flood entire Coliseums to stage naval battles scenes. Medieval tropes would enroll entire towns into recreating imaginative (and often bawdy) scenes in hell. Good theatre, comedy or tragedy really doesn't need more than actors with strong voices, a bit of light, and a good, well written story. When good theatre is lacking, you tend to get Spiderman: the musical.But like that awful, plotless action movie, people will still pay to see it, if just for the effects. And make no doubt, the wire work for a show like Spiderman will be awesome.
Cincy and Covington have neighborhoods much like Chevy Chase, its just that you haven't found them yet. And when you do you probably won't be able to live there. Chevy Chase is home to poor students and artists in rental properties, and rich folks who bought old bungalows that were rentals and have fixed them up with granite countertops and new cedar siding. I'm guessing you are one of the former. Sure, everyone who lives in 40502 is a democrat and that certainly helps the livabilty of the place, but it isn't really a neighborhood for working class people. You just can't find a house for less than $150,00 unless the floor is falling in. Heck, as the area continues to gentrify (think Starbucks and Cold Stone there on Ashland at High) more and more of the students are getting pushed out to the burbs, like all those new apartments out Tates Creek Pike. While the pre 1950s neighborhoods are really dense and well-designed; in architecture, traffic flow, and general good vibes, Lexington has terrible sprawl. The lack of any real geographic restrictions, like a river or mountain means there is nothing to slow the spread of ugly vinyl sided McMansions. Think of everything beyond Man O War Bvld and in the Hamburg area which has gone from rolling Bluegrass horse farm to urban mega-shopping center sprawl in less than five years. As for the bikeability, the bike lanes on Euclid at least exist, but chances are some student running late to class is using it as a passing lane or turn lane.
That all being said, I'm not dissing Lexington. Of any city in Kentcuky, its in a dead heat with Paducah for liveability, and is actually considered on of the finest places in the world to live. Ranked somewhere between Osaka and Milan in the last survey I saw.
For the ubiquitous theme park fireworks and laser show of course. If you haven't seen lasers used as an entertainment medium, I strongly suggest you find your way to Canada or Germany for an "audience scanning" laser show. it's not quite lsd and not quite 3d holograms, but it is definitely somewhere between the two. US laser shows are okay, but they are pansies when it come to keeping people's retinas intact and won't let you do anything cool. Gotta go abroad to find a government where adults are allowed to take balanced risks in pursuit of happiness, or at least really cool beam effects!
When I told a former professor of mine that I was going to work for Habitat for Humanity he related to me that sometime in the 70s he had worked with Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat, to experiment with using shotcrete over inflatable forms. He said that the fist one or two they didn't quite have the mix a setting times right and deflated the forms too early. He said overnight the whole thing sort of collapsed into a slump and to this day resemble giant concrete turds in the middle of Americus GA.
You could always limit that supply by setting yourself up in a niche market, so to speak. The national syndicated columnists may end up going the way of the dodo, but local columnists will probably be around for as long as local papers are. I'm thinking of the people who evolved out of the old local gossip columnist, the ones who can write about boring local stuff like high school graduations, ribbon cuttings, road construction projects and petty bickering in a city council and somehow make it all seem important, maybe even interesting. With a dash of local muckraking too, I suppose. As long as people like to hear about themselves, this sort of thing is likely to be around, and possibly even a way to make a living.
A while back I worked as a field service technician for SeaWorld (ohio). We has a SpectraPhysics 171 Argon Laser that was located on a floating stage set in the middle of a small lake. Keeping these things humming required a lot more cooling than a cpu. The PSU needed 440 VAC, and needed 6-8 gallons per minute which cooled the transistor bank in the power supply as well as the tube itself. Landside this was provided with city water, but on the floating set we did just as the above poster suggested and built a huge closed loop heat exchange with the lake as our heat sink. Of course, even with more typical water supplies we still used a proteus valve to kill power to the unit if the flow ever slowed or stopped.
As an aside, if you ever want to see three people really jump in a crammed laser booth, it will happen when a water leak springs up at a soldered joint just inside that power supply and just above the lunch box sized transformer in the bottom of the unit, also real close to where the three phase power ties in. That resulting bang will really get your heart pumping !
I work with appliances and can tell you that any US toploader would allow a small enough child to do this. Set the dial properly, pull out the knob and as soon as you close the door the machine will go into spin cycle. Front loaders have latches that I think would make it difficult to fully close from the the inside. I have a hard time figuring how a 6 year old would fit in a washer, although I was a pretty clever at that age. A three, four, or smaller five year old would would fit easily. As for the poster below who commented on the load being out of balance, I'm not so sure. I bet to fit you sort of have to curl yourself in around the agitator, which would mostly balance out the load. I do have a few doubts. An old 50s or 60s washer, the ones made mostly out of car parts and pulleys tend to have small baskets. Newer machines are less steel and more plastic, and while the baskets are huge and the spin is faster, I'm not sure they are stong enough.
"...soft limestone was quarried on the damp south side of the Giza Plateau. This was then dissolved in large, Nile-fed pools until it became a watery slurry. Lime from fireplace ash and salt were mixed in with it. The water evaporated, leaving a moist, clay-like mixture. This wet "concrete" would have been carried to the site and packed into wooden moulds where it would set hard in a few days..."
Anyone who has ever made soap would tell you that fireplace ashes are a good source of lye, but I'm not sure what you would have to burn to find lime in the ashes. Unless, of course that paragraph was trying to describe how to make slaked lime, which is an ingredient in mortar.
To make slaked lime you start with ground or powdered limestone, which is then baked in a kiln. Primitive lime kilns were nothing more than a pile of pulverized limestone covered in brush and branches which was then covered with a thick coating of mud. The branches were then set on fire, baking the limestone and then mud acting quite a bit like a brick oven or kiln. After the fires have cooled, you would have quicklime (calcium oxide), some really caustic stuff, but when water is added or it is left exposed to the air, you get slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), which although not as good as portland cement, does make a good mortar, and so I'm guessing could be used in this cement/concrete.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is the article is wrong, but how exactly it is wrong I'm not sure.
On a recent trip to Denver my flight was canceled. (actually, we sat on the tarmac in Lexington for 2 hours while they tried to find a mechanic. Then they cancelled the flight. Of course our checked bags took rode on a later flight for which there were no seats. We turned in our boarding passes at the gate and they issued us tickets for the first flight out in the am. Of course I would miss the first morning of meetings I was supposed to attend, but my presentation wasn't until the afternoon. I arrive at the airport at 5am the next day to find out the flight is cancelled (again). They wanted me to wait four hours for the next flight, but the look I gave the gate agent must have changed their minds, instead they put me in a cab for the two hour drive to Cinncinnati, where I of course was flagged for extra security screenings because I: was traveling without baggage? had changed my flight plans at the last minute? didn't have my original boarding pass? This was only adding to my displeasure until I got to the security screening. I immediately get diverted to the full strip search line, where there are two people ahead of me in line. The other lines all have dozens in wait. So even though my screening took at least twice as long, I still made it through about five minutes ahead of the people who arrived at the check point the same time as me. Same story on my return trip. Giant lines for the standard screening in Denver, but the SSSS on my boarding pass might have said VIP, the trick was being relaxed, laughing it off and carrying absolutely no metal, and no carry-ons but ticket, id, cash, phone and a good thick book. Oh, by the way, the return flight had a connection in Cinncinnati again. The puddle jumper we were supposed to get on there also had mechanical problems. We sat in the terminal for three hours and even had all of our bags unloaded from the plane and loaded onto a coach bus for the ride before they cleared us for takeoff, unloaded and reloaded our bags and finally let us board.
I think you misinterpreted me, or I was unclear (I'd have to go back and read my original post and that's too much like work). I'm not doing this as a survivalist thing. I spent the better part of my college summers teaching wilderness survival and medicine. I plan to have a comfortable home and workshop to retreat to. The idea is to just putter around in my spare time (if retirement still exists by the time I get around to it) and see how far I can get building these tools. That doesn't mean I won't go back to my electric lights at night, I just won't use electric light on anything to do with this hobby/project/personal challenge. As far as flint knapping, I'm a fair hand, though its been a few years. And while I'm not in SoCal, I am in central kentucky and we do have fantastic weather, a good mix of many minerals and some of the finest limestone in the world (its what makes the bourbon smooth and the horses fast). It also makes the DEA choppers a little easier to deal with. my family's been runnin' shine of one sort or another for a long time. It sounds trite, but ever heard "Copperhead Road?" I'll have tons of advantages over ancient man, not being concerned with food, shelter, safety and pissed of spirits are biggies, but of course access to Google probably trumps all. In fact these days I'm beginning to think the "one object you would take if you were stranded on a desert island...." would be a solar powered pc with a mirror of wikipedia on it. Screw my trustry hatchet !
How about 3000+ hand carved pumpkins
on
Halloween Roundup
·
· Score: 1
As is Kenova, West Virginia, the armpit of Huntington, which is itself the armpit of West Virginia (and its not even in the coal fields) wasn't scary enough, just add a 125 year old Victorian and 3000 or so carved pumpkins.
You've basically described my plan to keep myself busy post-retirement. I'd like to start with nothing but some land and some flint and see how far I could get, creating stone tools, creating rope, digging and refining tools for copper and iron implements, cutting and dressing millstones, creating a waterwheel and using it to power a sawmill, etc etc. Basically building furniture and implements along the way as they would have been made with each period's technology. My end goal is to be able to build a small house and create basic but refined furniture all using hammers, saws et al. completely of my own manufacture.
As a former MBC (taught some two dozen or so at one time) and another Eagle Scout who refuses to support the BSA I can tell you that there is a lot of room to play with the make, add, alter clause. Most requirement are intentionally vague, and so many of them have options (do all of 7a and two of 7b,c,d,e,fg.....) that a merit badge mostly consists of what a counselour is willing to sign off on.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if they still use blue cards? I worked at a camp and would occasionally have 30 or more students in each of 3 Environmental Sciences classes, plus generally 4 or five other badges I offered that week (Env Sci. did take two weeks, 1 hour each day plus your oberservations). At the end of the week I'd have a stack of two hundred of these things that all needed to be completed sometime after the Friday night campfire (last chance to turn in your observations and essay) and before the busses left Saturday morning. The completed badges weren't to bad. Make sure all the info was correct, sign in three places, but partial took five minutes apiece indicating what parts were completed and what remained.
I was lucky to be working for a High Adventure Camp, and while we did award huge numbers of badges just based on having 600 kids a week, we were adamant about not being a "merit badge factory", so I gave out partials all the time. Our focus was on the good stuff. On a good week I'd be integrating plant and tree identification with rappelling lessons, wilderness survival and wilderness medicine, 25 miles of hiking, 20 or so on mountain bikes, 10 or fifteen in a canoe, all with a seamless monologue of modern and historical forestry practices, old sea shanties, knot and ropework, glacial geology, ecology, you name it. We had our stuff polished to perfection, more performance than lecture. If it wasn't for the living 4 months in a canvas tent with no bug mesh and only earning $800 total for the summer I'd go back to those days in a heartbeat, heck, I'd even take the tent!
Agreed! On one of my first visits to Wikipedia, I came across a very small spelling error in the article. And not a British English vs American English thing, just a letter transposition. I fixed it using the way that seemed obvious at the time. (clicked on the edit tab and edited it). It got reverted almost immediately and I got some terse note saying something to the extent of "You're a new user, you know nothing about how this site works, go away." So, I did.
You mean Laser Video. It's here, its just not there yet. I worked for a while for one of those "Pink Floyd" laser light show companies, actually one of the biggest in the world, and we were all trying to make laser video a reality five years ago, even a decade ago. Laser video would have higher brightness and no distortion, even if projected onto angled or curved surfaces, and incredible colors if:
we could get the scan rate higher. The optics just hum drawing those lines (laser video isn't vector scanned like most entertainment laser applications). The beam from a laser big enough to do outdoor video might be 1/16th of an inch or bigger before it even leaves the projector head. So even a mirror just 1/8th wide is needed to scan the beam. And that mirror has to move stop and redraw thousands of times a second. One mirror rotating for horizontal refresh, one galvonmeter for vertical drawing (this is the part that gets really sticky on a big screen) and an AOM for the color changes (a custom grown crystal that will vibrate at different frequencies when in the presence of an RF signal, thus blanking the beam (turning it off and on) and diffracting it (picking the color).
Also, if we could get the color right. Solid state lasers are helping here quite a bit, though the blue lines could still use more brightness. But until the big solid state lasers come down in price, a lot of the pros (and I don't mean the guy who did the lasers at your rave) are still dependent on their ancient SpectraPhyscics 171. Three phase power, a fire hydrant's worth of water, a drain, two men to carry the exciter, two to carry the head, two to carry the projector, and thats just one laser. Our small shows had three (one for full color graphics, two for beams in the air). Mosat guys are now using sold state yags for their beam effects. The solid state full colors are pricey. I believe the laser show at Hershey Park is using a full color solid state laser, I don't know who else, its been a few years.
That being said, laser video is starting to show up in more and more places, and it is looking really good. Just don't expect to be putting one in your living room any time soon. Aside from the cost, lasers are heavily regulated in the US. One bright enough to replace your tv is going to require a whole host of permits from the CDRH (Center for Devices and Radiological Health) and your state, plus don't even think about doing your own laser display outside, the FAA's paperwork will make your head spin.
PS, apologies to all the laser jocks if I got something horribly wrong, its been a few years for me, its late, I have a screaming infant and I'm doing this all off the top of my head.
I'm in the same boat. Say I quit my job, sell off all the junk and buy a few acres near Tupper Lake. Then I build my small, energy efficient off grid hermit shack and live off the land. But how the heck do I pay my property taxes for the next 30-40 years. Surely there is a way to live completely independently of anyone and everything. Well, except for my wife, but she's the one putting these crazy ideas in my head anyways. 'Course that makes it more love shack than hermit shack.....
I can't remember which University, but it was either in Virginia or the Carolina's and I was touring the theatre department's scene shop. Thats the place where they take a bunch of pale faced, black clad high school drama club girls who have decided they want to become actresses and first teach them how to build the stage sets they hope to be performing on. In all the shops I visited major injuries were pretty rare, but this one did have a hole punched in a cinder block wall about fifteen or twenty feet behind the table saw. It was old apparently, so no one knew the exact story, but the shop manager said the lore was it was a 6 by 6 getting resawn and luckily no one was standing behind it.
That being said, I feel safer around my table saw than my circular saw any day.
I can second this. My wife and I can sit out on the porch for a few hours. I'll emerge with a bite, maybe two while my wife will be covered.
When I was in my teens I took a job as a camp counselor / trail guide in the Adirondacks Mountains. (paradise for biting insects black flies start up in April, the mosquitos join then in June, in July there's the deerflies (though the black flies are slacking off now), and in August some weird thing that looks like a housefly but with two stripes on its face. Those guys are fast, leave not a raised bump but an 1/8th inch scab, even through thick hiking socks or thin denim).
Anyways, part of the contract with this job was that they supplied you with a free mosquito net to sleep under. Well, my first year at this job someone forgot to order them for the staff. It took almost two weeks for them to arrive, and we were all sleeping in canvas tent...no zippers, no screens. We were meat every night, just covered in hundreds of bites. The nets did finally arrive, but since then, unless I sit just perfectly still, the mosquitos largely leave me alone.
In future years at this job I continued to be mosquite resistant, but other members of the staff noticed something similar. The first week or two, while we were setting the place up, clearing trails and all that, before campers arrived, most staff would keep themselves slathered in DEET. Two weeks in and the kids would arrive. The mosquitos would swarm the kids and leave the rest of us alone. We didn't know if it was because we were drinking the local water, sweaty and dirty or because the kids were sweaty, overweight and stuffing themselves full of candy and soda from the camp trading post. Most of us swore off any refined sugar or corn syrup as mosquite attracting madness, and instead chewed on wood sorrel and balsam needles.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, there are probably 29% of Americans whom, if George Bush were to out himself as the Antichrist and bring about the seven plagues, would continue to vote for him believing that this would usher in the second coming and they being confident of their membership in the "elect."
Okay....well, I'm not actually that cynical, at least not yet.
While I agree with your assertion that we are better off without soda and, corn syrup and all of the other refined (or artificial ) sugars, and am currently drinking a very fine iced tea ( Sumatra BOP, Kyu Aro Estate), its a mistake to think that our ancestors drank a lot of water. The truth is poor sanitation and hygiene quickly contaminated all but the most rural water sources. How did our ancestors avoid all the bugs that can live in such water? Well, a lot of them didn't, others had a higher comparative resistance, and alcohol. Fermentation is a great way to preserve all manners of food, from kimchee to beer. In the US Johnny Appleseed didn't become a folk hero because of "an apple a day.....(a 1930s marketing campaign) but because apple trees (especially those grown from seed) mean cider and cider (the orginal fermented hard cider) is a source of "safe" drinking water. A pioneer doesn't have to worry about getting sick from bad water, and can get buzzed at the same time. And a good time was had by all....;)
This is the thing that always cracked me up about the "post the ten commandments in every possible corner" sect. I mean, the Old Testament is just that, the old one, and the New Testament is supposed to be "The Law 2.0" (Okay maybe convenant when Adam in Eden is Law v1.0, covenant out of Eden is 2.0, convenant with Noah 3.0, Moses 4.0 . This was a stable build, the various prophets did release upgrades and service packs, before we get the whole new God's Law 5.0: Jesus Christ Edition [If it waS ubuntu would it be Jumpin Jesus 5.0]...;) So I digress, but anyways, the 10 commandments is the old set of rules, the new rules are the Beatitudes. The first time I hear someone saying we should post "Blessed are the merciful" in a court room , "blessed are the poor" on wall street or "blessed are the peacemakers" at the Pentagon, I'll know I've met a true Christian. Poor lonely guy, I'll probably slap him on the back and buy him some coffee.
Amen to the Chemex. I got my wife one of these for Christmas and we love it. One thing we found that makes a big difference is allowing the coffee to bloom. That's the step with the chemex where you lightly dampen the beans in the hot water before actually starting to pour water through. Over a few minutes the grounds foam and bubble, giving off carbon dioxide (I'm told). This step has a big impact on the fullness of the flavor. Another plus to the chemex is the ability to brew with just off boiling water, which is far hotter than the water in more electric drips. I've also been told that drip brewed coffee has less cholesterol than pressed or percolated coffee (which is also good, but too much mess). We also use fresh beans from a local roastery. Next step, a burr grinder. And to think, we're really tea drinkers. Coffee is just an occasional treat.
For the record, Lexington Habitat for Humanity is recognized for being one of the most energy efficient home builders in the state, known for its ability to build in infill lots while still maintaining the architectural character of historic neighborhoods, our ability to reduce waste and increase recycling of materials on the job site, and always building to exceed the current building code requirements. And the mortage on a three bedroom, super energy efficient home (0% interest, 15 year forgivable loan) is around $300/month.
That's not the only way they get you. Ever notice how the store brand products invariably have much brighter and, lets face it, much uglier color schemes on the packaging. Its not because the margins are so thin on those generic brands that they can't afford to design better packaging. Stores want anyone who is able to afford (or thinks they deserve to be able to afford) the more expensive name brands to be sunconsciously turned off by the garish packinging, and maybe a little embaressed to be seen with it in their cart. That way they wring the most money they can out of the higher priced name brands, but can still capture that smaller margin on folks who have no choice to buy the store brands. My shopping trips are always funny because I seem to ignore the middle shelves ina grocery store altogether. Staples are always store brands of the bottom shelf, while flavorings and key ingredients will tend to be the imports or other top shelf stuff that has proven itself to be worth every penny over the store brand or the heavily advertised national brand.
Free form essays...ugh. I'm sure this teacher must have read "The Artist's Way." Anyone who has ever had one of these assignments, "Write anything, absoluteley anything, oh but it must be at least half a page," knows nothing but total crap comes out, just random stream of consciouness drivel, nothing serious, just pick a thread and pull on it. But since the assignment is so mind-numbingly boring, you try to pick something interesting. I'm not sayin that what this kid chose to write about was interesting, but I could see if he was trapped in the classroom with this blank piece of paper, especially after everything at VT has been in the news, that his random thoughts just might turn to something like this.
Its' pretty much been the rule in theatre since Aristotle that whenever a generation's plays weren't all that good, the theatre makes up for it by upping the "Spectacle." For Greeks this meant truly elaborate machines to provide the Deus ex machina. The Romans would flood entire Coliseums to stage naval battles scenes. Medieval tropes would enroll entire towns into recreating imaginative (and often bawdy) scenes in hell. Good theatre, comedy or tragedy really doesn't need more than actors with strong voices, a bit of light, and a good, well written story. When good theatre is lacking, you tend to get Spiderman: the musical.But like that awful, plotless action movie, people will still pay to see it, if just for the effects. And make no doubt, the wire work for a show like Spiderman will be awesome.
That all being said, I'm not dissing Lexington. Of any city in Kentcuky, its in a dead heat with Paducah for liveability, and is actually considered on of the finest places in the world to live. Ranked somewhere between Osaka and Milan in the last survey I saw.
For the ubiquitous theme park fireworks and laser show of course. If you haven't seen lasers used as an entertainment medium, I strongly suggest you find your way to Canada or Germany for an "audience scanning" laser show. it's not quite lsd and not quite 3d holograms, but it is definitely somewhere between the two. US laser shows are okay, but they are pansies when it come to keeping people's retinas intact and won't let you do anything cool. Gotta go abroad to find a government where adults are allowed to take balanced risks in pursuit of happiness, or at least really cool beam effects!
When I told a former professor of mine that I was going to work for Habitat for Humanity he related to me that sometime in the 70s he had worked with Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat, to experiment with using shotcrete over inflatable forms. He said that the fist one or two they didn't quite have the mix a setting times right and deflated the forms too early. He said overnight the whole thing sort of collapsed into a slump and to this day resemble giant concrete turds in the middle of Americus GA.
You could always limit that supply by setting yourself up in a niche market, so to speak. The national syndicated columnists may end up going the way of the dodo, but local columnists will probably be around for as long as local papers are. I'm thinking of the people who evolved out of the old local gossip columnist, the ones who can write about boring local stuff like high school graduations, ribbon cuttings, road construction projects and petty bickering in a city council and somehow make it all seem important, maybe even interesting. With a dash of local muckraking too, I suppose. As long as people like to hear about themselves, this sort of thing is likely to be around, and possibly even a way to make a living.
As an aside, if you ever want to see three people really jump in a crammed laser booth, it will happen when a water leak springs up at a soldered joint just inside that power supply and just above the lunch box sized transformer in the bottom of the unit, also real close to where the three phase power ties in. That resulting bang will really get your heart pumping !
I work with appliances and can tell you that any US toploader would allow a small enough child to do this. Set the dial properly, pull out the knob and as soon as you close the door the machine will go into spin cycle. Front loaders have latches that I think would make it difficult to fully close from the the inside. I have a hard time figuring how a 6 year old would fit in a washer, although I was a pretty clever at that age. A three, four, or smaller five year old would would fit easily. As for the poster below who commented on the load being out of balance, I'm not so sure. I bet to fit you sort of have to curl yourself in around the agitator, which would mostly balance out the load. I do have a few doubts. An old 50s or 60s washer, the ones made mostly out of car parts and pulleys tend to have small baskets. Newer machines are less steel and more plastic, and while the baskets are huge and the spin is faster, I'm not sure they are stong enough.
Anyone who has ever made soap would tell you that fireplace ashes are a good source of lye, but I'm not sure what you would have to burn to find lime in the ashes. Unless, of course that paragraph was trying to describe how to make slaked lime, which is an ingredient in mortar.
To make slaked lime you start with ground or powdered limestone, which is then baked in a kiln. Primitive lime kilns were nothing more than a pile of pulverized limestone covered in brush and branches which was then covered with a thick coating of mud. The branches were then set on fire, baking the limestone and then mud acting quite a bit like a brick oven or kiln. After the fires have cooled, you would have quicklime (calcium oxide), some really caustic stuff, but when water is added or it is left exposed to the air, you get slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), which although not as good as portland cement, does make a good mortar, and so I'm guessing could be used in this cement/concrete.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is the article is wrong, but how exactly it is wrong I'm not sure.
On a recent trip to Denver my flight was canceled. (actually, we sat on the tarmac in Lexington for 2 hours while they tried to find a mechanic. Then they cancelled the flight. Of course our checked bags took rode on a later flight for which there were no seats. We turned in our boarding passes at the gate and they issued us tickets for the first flight out in the am. Of course I would miss the first morning of meetings I was supposed to attend, but my presentation wasn't until the afternoon. I arrive at the airport at 5am the next day to find out the flight is cancelled (again). They wanted me to wait four hours for the next flight, but the look I gave the gate agent must have changed their minds, instead they put me in a cab for the two hour drive to Cinncinnati, where I of course was flagged for extra security screenings because I: was traveling without baggage? had changed my flight plans at the last minute? didn't have my original boarding pass? This was only adding to my displeasure until I got to the security screening. I immediately get diverted to the full strip search line, where there are two people ahead of me in line. The other lines all have dozens in wait. So even though my screening took at least twice as long, I still made it through about five minutes ahead of the people who arrived at the check point the same time as me. Same story on my return trip. Giant lines for the standard screening in Denver, but the SSSS on my boarding pass might have said VIP, the trick was being relaxed, laughing it off and carrying absolutely no metal, and no carry-ons but ticket, id, cash, phone and a good thick book. Oh, by the way, the return flight had a connection in Cinncinnati again. The puddle jumper we were supposed to get on there also had mechanical problems. We sat in the terminal for three hours and even had all of our bags unloaded from the plane and loaded onto a coach bus for the ride before they cleared us for takeoff, unloaded and reloaded our bags and finally let us board.
I think you misinterpreted me, or I was unclear (I'd have to go back and read my original post and that's too much like work). I'm not doing this as a survivalist thing. I spent the better part of my college summers teaching wilderness survival and medicine. I plan to have a comfortable home and workshop to retreat to. The idea is to just putter around in my spare time (if retirement still exists by the time I get around to it) and see how far I can get building these tools. That doesn't mean I won't go back to my electric lights at night, I just won't use electric light on anything to do with this hobby/project/personal challenge. As far as flint knapping, I'm a fair hand, though its been a few years. And while I'm not in SoCal, I am in central kentucky and we do have fantastic weather, a good mix of many minerals and some of the finest limestone in the world (its what makes the bourbon smooth and the horses fast). It also makes the DEA choppers a little easier to deal with. my family's been runnin' shine of one sort or another for a long time. It sounds trite, but ever heard "Copperhead Road?" I'll have tons of advantages over ancient man, not being concerned with food, shelter, safety and pissed of spirits are biggies, but of course access to Google probably trumps all. In fact these days I'm beginning to think the "one object you would take if you were stranded on a desert island...." would be a solar powered pc with a mirror of wikipedia on it. Screw my trustry hatchet !
As is Kenova, West Virginia, the armpit of Huntington, which is itself the armpit of West Virginia (and its not even in the coal fields) wasn't scary enough, just add a 125 year old Victorian and 3000 or so carved pumpkins.
Check it out: http://www.wvpics.com/Pumpkin%20House.htm
You've basically described my plan to keep myself busy post-retirement. I'd like to start with nothing but some land and some flint and see how far I could get, creating stone tools, creating rope, digging and refining tools for copper and iron implements, cutting and dressing millstones, creating a waterwheel and using it to power a sawmill, etc etc. Basically building furniture and implements along the way as they would have been made with each period's technology. My end goal is to be able to build a small house and create basic but refined furniture all using hammers, saws et al. completely of my own manufacture.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if they still use blue cards? I worked at a camp and would occasionally have 30 or more students in each of 3 Environmental Sciences classes, plus generally 4 or five other badges I offered that week (Env Sci. did take two weeks, 1 hour each day plus your oberservations). At the end of the week I'd have a stack of two hundred of these things that all needed to be completed sometime after the Friday night campfire (last chance to turn in your observations and essay) and before the busses left Saturday morning. The completed badges weren't to bad. Make sure all the info was correct, sign in three places, but partial took five minutes apiece indicating what parts were completed and what remained.
I was lucky to be working for a High Adventure Camp, and while we did award huge numbers of badges just based on having 600 kids a week, we were adamant about not being a "merit badge factory", so I gave out partials all the time. Our focus was on the good stuff. On a good week I'd be integrating plant and tree identification with rappelling lessons, wilderness survival and wilderness medicine, 25 miles of hiking, 20 or so on mountain bikes, 10 or fifteen in a canoe, all with a seamless monologue of modern and historical forestry practices, old sea shanties, knot and ropework, glacial geology, ecology, you name it. We had our stuff polished to perfection, more performance than lecture. If it wasn't for the living 4 months in a canvas tent with no bug mesh and only earning $800 total for the summer I'd go back to those days in a heartbeat, heck, I'd even take the tent!
Agreed! On one of my first visits to Wikipedia, I came across a very small spelling error in the article. And not a British English vs American English thing, just a letter transposition. I fixed it using the way that seemed obvious at the time. (clicked on the edit tab and edited it). It got reverted almost immediately and I got some terse note saying something to the extent of "You're a new user, you know nothing about how this site works, go away." So, I did.
we could get the scan rate higher. The optics just hum drawing those lines (laser video isn't vector scanned like most entertainment laser applications). The beam from a laser big enough to do outdoor video might be 1/16th of an inch or bigger before it even leaves the projector head. So even a mirror just 1/8th wide is needed to scan the beam. And that mirror has to move stop and redraw thousands of times a second. One mirror rotating for horizontal refresh, one galvonmeter for vertical drawing (this is the part that gets really sticky on a big screen) and an AOM for the color changes (a custom grown crystal that will vibrate at different frequencies when in the presence of an RF signal, thus blanking the beam (turning it off and on) and diffracting it (picking the color).
Also, if we could get the color right. Solid state lasers are helping here quite a bit, though the blue lines could still use more brightness. But until the big solid state lasers come down in price, a lot of the pros (and I don't mean the guy who did the lasers at your rave) are still dependent on their ancient SpectraPhyscics 171. Three phase power, a fire hydrant's worth of water, a drain, two men to carry the exciter, two to carry the head, two to carry the projector, and thats just one laser. Our small shows had three (one for full color graphics, two for beams in the air). Mosat guys are now using sold state yags for their beam effects. The solid state full colors are pricey. I believe the laser show at Hershey Park is using a full color solid state laser, I don't know who else, its been a few years.
That being said, laser video is starting to show up in more and more places, and it is looking really good. Just don't expect to be putting one in your living room any time soon. Aside from the cost, lasers are heavily regulated in the US. One bright enough to replace your tv is going to require a whole host of permits from the CDRH (Center for Devices and Radiological Health) and your state, plus don't even think about doing your own laser display outside, the FAA's paperwork will make your head spin.
PS, apologies to all the laser jocks if I got something horribly wrong, its been a few years for me, its late, I have a screaming infant and I'm doing this all off the top of my head.
I'm in the same boat. Say I quit my job, sell off all the junk and buy a few acres near Tupper Lake. Then I build my small, energy efficient off grid hermit shack and live off the land. But how the heck do I pay my property taxes for the next 30-40 years. Surely there is a way to live completely independently of anyone and everything. Well, except for my wife, but she's the one putting these crazy ideas in my head anyways. 'Course that makes it more love shack than hermit shack.....
I can't remember which University, but it was either in Virginia or the Carolina's and I was touring the theatre department's scene shop. Thats the place where they take a bunch of pale faced, black clad high school drama club girls who have decided they want to become actresses and first teach them how to build the stage sets they hope to be performing on. In all the shops I visited major injuries were pretty rare, but this one did have a hole punched in a cinder block wall about fifteen or twenty feet behind the table saw. It was old apparently, so no one knew the exact story, but the shop manager said the lore was it was a 6 by 6 getting resawn and luckily no one was standing behind it.
That being said, I feel safer around my table saw than my circular saw any day.
I can second this. My wife and I can sit out on the porch for a few hours. I'll emerge with a bite, maybe two while my wife will be covered.
When I was in my teens I took a job as a camp counselor / trail guide in the Adirondacks Mountains. (paradise for biting insects black flies start up in April, the mosquitos join then in June, in July there's the deerflies (though the black flies are slacking off now), and in August some weird thing that looks like a housefly but with two stripes on its face. Those guys are fast, leave not a raised bump but an 1/8th inch scab, even through thick hiking socks or thin denim).
Anyways, part of the contract with this job was that they supplied you with a free mosquito net to sleep under. Well, my first year at this job someone forgot to order them for the staff. It took almost two weeks for them to arrive, and we were all sleeping in canvas tent...no zippers, no screens. We were meat every night, just covered in hundreds of bites. The nets did finally arrive, but since then, unless I sit just perfectly still, the mosquitos largely leave me alone.
In future years at this job I continued to be mosquite resistant, but other members of the staff noticed something similar. The first week or two, while we were setting the place up, clearing trails and all that, before campers arrived, most staff would keep themselves slathered in DEET. Two weeks in and the kids would arrive. The mosquitos would swarm the kids and leave the rest of us alone. We didn't know if it was because we were drinking the local water, sweaty and dirty or because the kids were sweaty, overweight and stuffing themselves full of candy and soda from the camp trading post. Most of us swore off any refined sugar or corn syrup as mosquite attracting madness, and instead chewed on wood sorrel and balsam needles.