The Future is Now: Transparent Aluminum
Remember Star Trek IV: The Search for Whales? Remember Scotty giving away the secret to transparent aluminum? Here’s who he gave the secret to. Surmet Engineering.
(via)
Yup, it exists.
The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
Remember Star Trek IV: The Search for Whales? Remember Scotty giving away the secret to transparent aluminum? Here’s who he gave the secret to. Surmet Engineering.
(via)
Yup, it exists.
Who knew there were so many rosary counting patents! Here’s a partial list from 5 minutes perusal…
2781591
2768787
2721398
2992495
3042302
3319599
3374949
3549464
2721398
2768787
2781591
Find them all at the USPTO (make sure to “Select years” “1790 to present”). To view the images, you’ll need to get this plugin (yes, the USPTO uses weird, nonstandard image viewing software)
And those are just the ones filed before 1976 in the class 235:123 “BALL BUTTON OR PUSH BUTTON INDICATOR”
Jeesh. And I thought it was part of your penance to have to do the counting yourself.
My cousin wrote a letter to me and 50 friends recently. Here are some excerpts (bolding is mine):
As many of you are already aware, [we] were in a car accident a few weeks ago. We were hit by a young woman who ran a red light. We feel so blessed and are so thankful that we were not seriously hurt…
We received a copy of the police report in the mail and it confirmed what [we] had suspected. It noted that the other driver admitted to being distracted while talking on her cell phone, causing her to run the red light, and hit us as we proceeded through the intersection…
[Our oldest daughter], I might add, is outraged by the fact that the driver was on her cell phone and put us in such danger. She has already emailed our local congresswoman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, to ask for legislature to ban the use of cell phones while driving (or at least allowing only the use of hands-free devices).
But, for now, please consider avoiding using your cell phone while driving or, at the very least, minimize your use.
Here was my reply:
I’m so very happy that no one in the family was seriously injured! Thank you very much for writing about it.
I read some articles in the newspaper and did some followup research. It turns out that using a hands-free cell phone in a car is not safer than using a handset.
Making a hands-free cell phone law is like making a beer-only drinking and driving law. Everyone knows that it doesn’t matter whether you drink beer or wine or whiskey, the result is the same. You get drunk and are dangerous behind the wheel of a car. In exactly the same way, using a hands-free cell phone is just as dangerous as using a handset.
I hope you don’t feel I’m too long-winded about this but I think it’s important. Very important. Lives are on the line. The lives of my loved ones like YOU!
The problem isn’t that drivers are distracted holding the handset up to their ear. People are distracted by having a conversation with someone that isn’t in the car with them. I can understand that. When I am driving and on the cell phone, the other person will talk to me even if I’m in a dangerous intersection or an on-ramp, or in the rain. They can’t see what’s going on. But a passenger in the car will stay quiet and not bother the driver if they see something potentially dangerous.
As for using 1 hand, people in manual transmission cars are busy shifting with one hand all the time. And no one is calling for a ban on manual transmission cars. Every car has a radio with buttons and knobs that drivers are pushing all the time.
Please please please. Don’t ask for a hands-free cell phone law. It doesn’t protect ANYONE. If you want to protect people, demand that cell phones not be used AT ALL while driving!
Likewise, if you think that it’s too much to ask that people not use cell phones while driving, then you and I just have to accept the risks that go along with it.
Through all of this, I think the best advice for all of us isn’t to make any new laws but to do exactly what you suggested in your email, “please consider avoiding using your cell phone while driving or, at the very least, minimize your use.”
Every day over 100 people are killed in car crashes in America. That’s over 40,000 people every year! This doesn’t usually make the news for 2 reasons:
First, about the same number of have been dying in cars every year for the last 80 years. Yes, MILLIONS of people have been killed in car accidents. But it’s old news.
Second, on average, 1 person is killed for every 100 million miles driven. Put another way, on average you’d be in a fatal car accident if you drove round-trip from Nashville to San Francisco (a 3 day trip, non-stop) about 20 thousand times. That’s a LOT of driving! Driving is relatively safe compared to a lot of other things.
Sam, you wrote to your congresswoman asking “to ban the use of cell phones while driving (or at least allowing only the use of hands-free devices).” The problem with congress is that they listen to us! Your congresswoman wants to do the will of the people. It’s not her job to read traffic accident studies. She will listen to you. And if she does what you asked her to, she could easily make a law that might make you FEEL better, it won’t make you ACTUALLY SAFER. And I know that what you really want is to BE safer.
There are unintended consequence of making a hands-free cell phone law. It means the police will spend their time stopping cell phone users instead of real criminals. It means people will feel safer without being safer, which sounds downright criminal.
Here is a really good article from the New York Times that talks about this subject. I highly recommend you read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/13well.html
Fox News has a similar article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479186,00.html
MSNBC has a similar article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28609580/
The National Safety Council has lots of statistics and articles. Here’s a good article about it: 2008 Traffic Deaths Hit Record Low, Says National Safety Council
And here’s another article: Cell Phone Statistics
I am very glad that you and the family weren’t seriously injured. To help everyone, I would urge you to write a second letter to your congresswoman. Tell her what you’ve learned and how hands-free cell phones don’t help.
Please tell me what you think and what you’re going to do!
Lee
Last week I was babysitting Tommy. He’s a really good kid, smart, inquisitive, and as all 9 year-olds are, devious. This isn’t a “devious” story, maybe another time…
We had spent the entire morning indoors playing the card game Munchkin. It is kind of funny that he’d enjoy the game even though he has no idea what a role-playing game is, but I digress. So we had finished the game and he was diving into playing a game on my iPhone but, darnit, it was time to get a little sunshine.
I went onto the back porch for some air and came back in, leaving the door open. Then I found a balsa glider airplane that had been sitting on a shelf and started fixing it up, getting it ready to fly. I went out onto the porch, aiming to give it a toss (actually, I was trying to lure the kid outside… and it worked). As I stood there, he came out and we talked about how the plane might fly. He gave it a toss off the porch and it flew in a rather pleasing way. It ducked and bobbed a bit and then spiraled down the 3 stories to the yard below. We started to the front door to go out and find the plane. As he was running out the door, I told him to put some shoes on but he ignored me.
I stuck my head out the door and saw that he had almost made it around the corner. So I turned on my authoritative voice and called, “Come back here and put your shoes on.”
He stopped dead (wow, the voice works!), turned around with one shoulder sagging and asked, “But why?”
In a second I ran through 50 scenarios of him cutting his feet, stubbing his toes, losing traction, muddy footprints on the rug, washing his dirty feet… and simply hollered back, “Because I said so!”
He trudged back in (actually, he was pretty fast as trudges go), slipped on his sneakers and was off again to find the glider in the back yard.
:-)
Ok, forget what you know about making bread. Just forget it. Now read and do.
Reading this will take longer than it actually takes to make bread.
You’ll probably want to start with a single batch… just cut the recipe below in half to make 2 loaves… or quarter it for one loaf. The more bread you make in a sitting, the less cleanup there is. And refrigerated dough is easier to work with and tastes better because it ferments. But hey.
My four loaf recipe:
The types of flour, salt and yeast matter very little, young Skywalker. Really. Yes, really. Different ingredients make subtle differences but you’ll be so happy with how fricking easy it was to make this loaf, you can worry about that later. Try starting with All Purpose flour, Mortons salt and Instant Dry Yeast in a 1 lb bag.
Directions:
Really. Just mix together until it’s all wet. I use 1 hand in a big bowl because dough is terribly sticky. If you use a utensil, it’ll get stuck and gooped up (and you’ll have to wash it). If you use 2 hands, then both your hands will be covered with sticky goo!
Don’t knead it or roll it or anything. I’ve tried a couple ways of mixing the ingredients so they mix evenly. I mixed the water in with the yeast. Or poured the salt into the measuring cup or… or… forget all that! Here it is with a bit more detail, what I do and it comes out fantastic every time:
You now have 4 loaves worth of bread dough. Put some portion (3/4?) of the mix into a plastic container and throw in the fridge for bread later in the week.
With the rest, make bread!
I put flour on my hands and the baking sheet to keep the dough from sticking.
Here’s what I did this morning with the dough I had put in the fridge… Total work involved: 5 minutes. Total time from fridge to bread: 105 minutes
Cleanup for the first batch can take a few minutes. Sticky dough is a mess to clean up. The dough from the second batch, from the fridge is easier to handle. Cold dough isn’t nearly as blob-like.
I’ve been developing a feel for this for a while but I have to thank Charlotte’s gift to me of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. It validates what I’ve been doing and gave me some excellent tips.
Sometimes I play with the temperature. I think it makes the crust thicker and heartier. But I could be wrong. Instead of 425 for 50 minutes from a cold oven, I do this:
I’ve tried using steam and boiling water and spray bottles to get a better crust and I can’t tell the difference between a steamed loaf and a not-steamed loaf. So I don’t do it any more.
How much yeast to use: I have a recipe book that says stuff like “add 2 1/8 teaspoons yeast unless it’s Blahblah brand and then add 1 7/8 teaspoon”. Forget that. Yeast is flexible. It grows. It’s a bug that grows in your food and it farts a lot. The longer it’s in your dough, the more farting it’ll do, making your bread nice and fluffy. I haven’t ever gone wrong with 2 teaspoons or so of yeast for a batch. When I let it set for a while, I can use less yeast (hence, I use 3 tsp and not 4 in the recipe above) because it’s busy growing in my fridge. I should experiment more with varying yeast levels. Suffice to say that I can’t recall ever having too little yeast, though once when I added too much, the bread tasted a little funny.
Which bread flour to use: It doesn’t much matter. Really. Most recently I’ve been using Giusto’s Artisian Bread Flour in a 50 pound bag because… well, Restaurant Depot sells a 50 lb bag of the stuff for $18. I figured something that sounds like “Artisian Bread Flour” might be better than “All Purpose” for bread but… I haven’t noticed much differences between different flours. Recently I made some nice loaves out of whole grain and white spelt, they came out great. I’ve used mixes of cake flour and all purpose flour, they came out great. I’ve used mixes of whole wheat flour and all purpose flour, they came out great. I noticed that partial-whole-wheat bread has less crust and tastes different. I sometimes add wheat gluten but unless I add a lot, like 3 heaping tablespoons per cut, it doesn’t do anything. When I use that much, the finished bread is stiffer but I’ve gotten little tummy aches from such high concentrations.
Treasure Island bike rack design competition: design due March 13th
Join me!
$700 award for the best 3 designs that reference Treasure Island. And they’ll probably get installed on the island :-) http://www.sfbike.org/?treasureisland
You don’t have to build it, just design it. Hey, wanna work on it together?
Ping me.
More here:
I wrote this email to my city Supervisor today
Supervisor Campos,
I recently received an email from the San Francisco “Save our Firehouses” campaign (http://saveourfirehouses.com) They urged me to write to you.
I don’t know if the budget should be cut for fire houses. But I -do- know that unions usually have too much sway. Since the fire department is begging to not have their budget cut, and their campaign does not seem to be driven by fire fighting statistics, but firefighters saving cute dogs (http://saveourfirehouses.com/about.html), then I suspect their budget is a little too large.
Thank you and have a great day,
Lee C. Sonko
[address redacted]
The DNA Lounge is being attacked by the California Alcohol Beverage Control board. In response to JWZ’s post and Violet Blue’s article in the Chronicle, I wrote a letter to my supervisor, David Campos and a few other supervisors. It went a little like this:
Supervisor Campos, Mirkarimi, Dufty,
Could you please look into the matter of the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) attacking the DNA Lounge, a night club in the city.
I have been to the DNA Lounge on several occations and can say definitively that it is a very well run, well kept, clean, and eminently enjoyable place to spend an evening. The management does absolutely everything required of the city to run a good establishment.
The harshness of the penalties being sought against the club are entirely out-of-line with the offenses.
Business regulations exist for a good reason, to protect the public. It certainly appears in this case that the ABC is trying to wield their power inappropriately. They are not protecting the public but their egos.
Do not let the ABC bully you into thinking that they are right on this matter. They are not. They are just bullying because that is what bullies do.
Thank you,
Lee C. Sonko
[contact information redacted]PS. You can find out more about this issue here: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/02.html#13
My new band is called Ectotherm
Our debut album is titled “Do as the Romans”
Check out the cover:
Now it’s your turn.
The rules:
go to wikipedia, go to a random article. that is your band name.
go to random quotes and the last few words of the last quote on the first page is your album title.
go to flickr and explore the last seven days. the third picture is your album cover.
I’ll provide links:
I rode my bike to Extra Space Storage on Folsom. I had accidentally driven over the tail end of a moving truck’s ramp and I was going there to pay the guy to repair it. I wasn’t driving over because my car just the other night started sounding “bad”. Maybe a rear-right tie-rod is broken. Whenever I turn left or right, it makes this *thunk* like someone hit the side of the car with a baseball. :-(
So I’ve paid the guy and I’m getting ready to ride home and I find that I have a flat front tire on my bike. That is in addition to the slow leak on the rear tire I discovered the other day. Feh. So I walked to Box Dog Bikes but they were closed for renovations (they’ll open in a day or three, so said the guys there). So I walked to Valencia Cyclery and got a $5 patch kit. The thought of paying $40 for them to repair both my tires made me unhappy…
Feh.
But at least my dad called and told me that lonza was on its way to me shortly! Italian specialty meats will be my new avocation!