Monthly Archives: July 2012

Talking Our Way Into Oblivion – Hydrogen and Hot Air

Posted on July 9, 2012 by | 1 comment

I posted this back in December, 2011, which seems a lot longer ago today than it did then.  But lately I’ve been running the subjects of hydrogen generators around in my mind, nosing around through the search engines about it.  Which led me to remember old Bryce and wonder what ever became of him.

I asked Rich whether he’d ever heard from him and he was happy to report he hasn’t.

Probably it’s fortuitous.  I think if Rich had known how to get in touch with Bryce I’d probably have risked a non-stop two-hour report of what who said to whom at the local restaurant in hopes of bouncing some hydrogen generator ideas I’ve been toying with off him.  Picked his brain about how the company team he was part of handled the heat generated as a by-product.

But it’s more likely I’d never have gotten a word in edgewise to ask.  Bryce wasn’t into listening.  He’d donealready been-there-done-that on everything a person can squeeze into his life and couldn’t imagine whichever part of it was skimming around inside his skull didn’t need spraying across communication efforts.  Life, for Bryce, didn’t have any room for anything much about what hasn’t already happened, with him doing the reporting of it.  No point in anyone attempting to say anything during the process because he wasn’t about to listen to it anyway.  He was too busy thinking about what he was going to say next.

Nice guy, though.  Harmless if a person had a book handy to read while he was talking through his outpourings.

The only difference between Bryce and talk radio was that Bryce wasn’t trying to sell anything.  Well, that and the fact talk radio listeners say, “Ditto!” without interrupting.

Ditto, Bryce.

Old Jules 

December 30, 2011 by | 20 Comments | Edit

A few years ago my friend Rich asked me if I’d be interested in talking with an older guy in his late 70s who was experimenting with hydrogen generators for retrofitting onto his vehicle. I wasn’t looking into hydrogen generating, but I’m a curious sort of fellow. I didn’t require any persuading. I just told Rich to give Bryce my phone number. About a week later he called me.

Turned out Bryce had spent his career as chief mechanic for the Ford and General Motors Speed Teams, or Racing Teams, some such thing. He was part of the group that put together the hydrogen powered vehicle that established a record for the highest speed ever recorded for an internal combustion engine driven automobile.

Using what he learned from all that, Bryce had created a series of hydrogen generators for his own vehicle, trying to maximize efficiency and deal with other shortcomings with the system. He did it all from salvaged materials. Heck of an interesting guy the first few times we talked. I wish I’d taken notes and drawn sketches of what he told me.

At first during our acquaintance Bryce and I had conversations. Two people brainstorming things he was doing, and I was doing. But gradually the hydrogen generating conversational possibilities ran down. Bryce was calling me every day or so, telling me all manner of things I didn’t want to hear, such as what the waitress in the cafe where he took coffee and meals said to him, what he said back, what she said back. Or what other customers said to him and what he said back. Or his brother.

Bryce would call, ask how I was, not wait for an answer, and talk non-stop for an hour, two hours. I could put the phone down, go feed the chickens or make a cup of coffee and come back to the phone without him noticing. Sometimes I’d tie a bandanna around my head attaching the phone to my ear and read a book waiting for him to wind down.

This went on for months. I didn’t know what to do about it, except straight-on explaining to him that this wasn’t conversation and wasn’t a source of joy to me. I mentioned it to Rich, and it turned out Bryce was doing the same thing to him.

Finally, as gently as I could manage, I interrupted one of his monologues and explained the problem, as I viewed it. I told him I liked him, that I’d enjoy conversations with him, but that I didn’t want to hear the same stories over and over about people at the restaurant, his brother, etc. That if we were going to continue having communications there’d need to be exchanges and some level of concern as to the amount of interest the other person had in hearing it.

Despite my attempt to soften the words, Bryce got his feelers hurt badly by this. He never called again, which I preferred to the alternative of things continuing as they were.

Sometime a few months later Rich finally got his fill of it and tried the same tactic on Bryce, with the same result. He was more reluctant to do it than I’d been, because he felt sorrier for Bryce than I was willing to allow myself to indulge.

Bryce came up in conversation between us a couple of days ago. Turns out it’s been almost exactly a year since Rich has heard from him, and a few months more than that for me. We wondered aloud how he was doing.

But neither of us is willing to bite the bullet and call him to find out, on pain of maybe starting the whole mess again.

I began this post figuring on saying some things about hydrogen generators but drifted off into Bryce and his problems. Maybe some other time, the hydrogen generators.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Communication, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Transportation, Trucks

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Hurling Off Splinters and Chunks of our Lives Into the Parker Spiral

Posted on July 9, 2012 by | 2 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.  Old Sol jumped when I said “Frog!” a little while ago, so you can rest easy knowing I’ve got him headed for the horizon, rate of climb indicator showing him right on schedule.  I’m figuring his ETA’s going to be about what you’re expecting.

Back when I was a wealthy man [measured in how much time I figured was left between me and exiting the vehicle] I used to spend a lot more time and energy begging and cajoling Old Sol to behave himself.  I put up with all his yawning and complaining, because I had a lot of life I was needing to get rid of and that seemed as good a way to slough it off as anything else.

Not just that way, either.  I was fat with life, spent it like a drunken sailor hurling chunks and splinters of it off every which way, losing weight gradually until I was more comfortable carrying what was left of it around in earth gravity.  I’ve got a lot more of my life spinning around in the Parker Spiral not knowing whether it’s Abel or Mable or which way’s up than I have left around here to tip my hat to.

What’s left is comparable to trying to squeeze groceries, gasoline, cat food and necessaries into a monthly Social Security pension check, so I tend to be more conscious about what I spend it on than I used to do.  It ain’t as though there’s any of it I can afford to run off downstream without me having had a look at it.

So, once I’ve reminded Old Sol he’s got important people waiting on him, I try to get on with my other business and let him tend his own affairs.  Lately he’s been grumpy about that, running the thermometer up over a hundred degrees F, but he’s going to have to get used to it. 

I ain’t got time for Old Sol’s games, not like I thought I did back when I was fat and wealthy.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Senior Citizens, Texas

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Opposing Thumbs, Tools and the 21st Century

Posted on July 8, 2012 by | 8 comments

Hi readers.  You 21st Century people probably see this sort of thing every day, take it for granted.

If a person has a piece of land with too many trees on it the 21st Century’s figured out a way to get them off in a hurry.

All that old fashioned 20th Century stuff with chainsaws, backhoes, bulldozers and such seemed futuristic when compared to a double-blade axe and a span of oxen.  But opposing thumbs don’t sit still for inefficiency.

Enter:  The Tree Terminator.

He’ll run spang out of trees before he runs out of machine, I’m thinking.  But he’s got a rock rake he can put on it to pile up all the rocks exposed by the overgrazing cows, cutting out trees and general devilments of geology.  And once that’s done there’s probably an attachment to castrate goats and another to balance the check book.

The 21st Century don’t need no stinking badges.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships, Science, Texas

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Letting a Camel Get a Nose Under the Tent

Posted on July 7, 2012 by | 9 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Most of you who read here frequently know I’m a man who prefers insanity and what a lot of you might consider hardship to compromise of a lot of things you’d assign no value to.  The world I live in is a place with a rigid value structure teetering on the edge of an abyss I do my best to keep it from falling into.

Yesterday I was tending my own affairs when the newish neighbor up the hill drove down and offered me a Shiner Boch beer.  Which I considered a tasty gesture.  I bought a case of beer sometime last summer and was down to almost my last one in the fridge.  That Shiner pulled me a beer into the future.

A while back I’d offered, neighborly, if the neighbor ever needed anyone to lift the other end of something I’d be pleased to lift it.  I don’t mind being a help when someone needs something I can do.  Glad to do it, in fact.

So, as I sat there sipping that Shiner Boch he explained to me he’d fired a likely young man he had up there working for him.  Said he’d like me to come work up there helping him a while.  Offered me an hourly wage to do it.

Given my financial situation I was sorely tempted and tentatively accepted, fully aware of the dangers inherent in changing the nature of my relationship with a neighbor from helpful, casual acquaintance to one of employer/bought-and-paid-for-employee.  And asking myself how the hell I could charge a wage to do something I’d have done anyway for nothing if he’d asked.

You’ll probably consider it foolish, maybe melodramatic when I tell you the entire damned issue kept me awake a lot longer last night than it had any business doing.

The man has a lot of machinery up there, all of it different by one nuance or another, from anything I’ve operated before.  Never operated a track machine, which I’d like to learn to do.  Never operated any machine that wasn’t gasoline fueled.  So if I have an opportunity to learn I’d consider the learning a potential value to me sometime.

And the guy has a lot of experience as a mechanic, believes he might be able to get that old Ford F350 Gale gave me that’s still sitting up there quietly waiting, running.  [ Got me a new truck!, The New Truck Resurrection,  Another Bug on the Windshield of Life – The Tow Bar, Running the Obstacle Course – the F 350, Learning How to Not Be So Stupid].

If he managed doing it, there’d be a lot more value for me than any damned wage he’d be likely to pay.  If he tried, but didn’t succeed, no big deal.

It’s not a quid pro quo that way.  Just two folks, each one needing a helping hand, extending one each to the other.

No camels putting their noses under the tent.  Nobody bought and paid for.

As a person who’s seen and experienced the entire range of potentials for neighbors wanting to shoot or beat the bejesus out of one another, this seems to me a decent way of disarming it all.  If a person’s driving off a few miles to work for someone and everything begins as a clear exchange of dollar value for labor it’s safe.  Someone decides to lean harder than someone else is willing to be leaned on, they easily go their separate ways.  No harm done.

But two people essentially handcuffed to one another by proximity don’t need to be throwing that sort of temptations out to human frailties.

So, here in a little while I’m going to wander up there and see what he wants me to do in exchange for fixing that damned old Communist F350.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Trucks

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US Citizenry Herding the Future Into New Chutes

Posted on July 6, 2012 by | 5 comments

Climate change no longer tops US environment worries

The people who get on the telephone and pester other people to tell them what’s important and what isn’t have made a disturbing discovery.  Whereas the US public used to think global climate change was the daddy longlegs to fret about, they’ve switched horses.  Now they’re worrying about whether they’re going to have enough water to drink, along with a few other things.

Considering how well informed, literate, intelligent and prone the US public is to worry about what celebrity is fooling around on a spouse, or what dress some celebrity wore to some function, this represents a surprisingly practical and unlikely issue for the citizenry to choose for concern.

Not to say it’s timely.  Timely might have been better defined as back before the fish in all those major rivers downstream from cities discharging treated sewage into them developed worrisome ulcers on their skins.  And became scary to eat in other ways.

Timely would have been back when there weren’t houses over all the major aquifers built to demand future water until the mortgages were paid off in four decades.  Timely would certainly have included a population asking itself,

“Am I going to be able to eat [or even smoke] the grass I’m irrigating by robbing water from an aquifer with a 100,000 year recharge cycle?  Any chance this golf course would grow grain crops as a better use of non-renewable and as-yet uncontaminated water?”

But the telephone pesterers didn’t go a step further and ask the well-informed pestered what, precisely, they’re each doing to better the situation.  Maybe the next p0ll will do that.  The answers will involve writing letters to politicians and signing petitions, almost certainly.  Not flushing the commode once a day and keeping the showers short. 

Sure as hell not letting the lawn die and the golf clubs rust.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Country Life, Current Issues, Nature, Science, Survival

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Magnetic Fingers et al Preliminary Hypothesis

Posted on July 6, 2012 by | 2 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Flux Transfer Event Topology,

Old Sol – Fondling Mother Earth With Magnetic Fingers

I doubt anyone’s going to be edified by this, understand what I’m saying, or assign anything serious to it.  But I’m going to say it anyway. 

Those flux transfer events between earth and Old Sol and their 8 minute dayside intervals are manifesting themselves in a number of indirect, measurable ways a person in his right mind wouldn’t be inclined to attribute to them.   The 8 minute gap isn’t actually an 8 minute gap, but is filled in with flux transfer events targeted somehow to other solar system bodies.  Those show up as reflected energy detectable and measurable on darkside earth, distinguishable by the magnitudes and distances of the objects doing the reflecting.

The hypothesis, weak enough to begin, weakens further relative to the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ events sunside, spinward and anti-spinword, and the ‘hidden’ events the guy at University of Iowa detected.  But there’s a body of indications the passive events are actually the boundary zone where the reflective energy merges and influences the weakening dayside events.

It’s not my intention to persuade anyone to the accuracy of what I’ve said here.  The limited testing I’ve done to form the hypothesis has been almost entirely on darkside and twilight-zone data.  However, the data I’m using is probably only one of the ways these events are manifesting themselves and being recorded as unrelated phenomena.  Anyone with an interest and a smidgen of imagination can probably find other datasets equally measurable and testable.

And anyone not interested enough to do it probably is better qualified to judge whether there’s any validity to it.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Human Behavior, Relationships, Science

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Firecrackers Day Celebrations – Name Your Poison

Posted on July 3, 2012 by | 9 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

A while back I was talking on the phone with my bud, Rich, in North Carolina.  He’d just returned from a visit to the Georgia Guidestones and was telling me about them, and the general history of the area where they’re located.  One anecdote involved the local hero of the American Revolutionary War.

Seems there was a woman settler in the area famous enough for her contribution to be recognized as a hero and locally a focus of veneration.  She got a bunch of British soldiers drunk and murdered them while they slept.

I don’t doubt a few more dead enemy soldiers was a boon at the time, but I found myself wondering how the woman felt about it after the dust settled, say three, four decades later.  It ain’t as though your average British soldier was a lot different than the people he was fighting against at the time.  Just grunts, following orders, doing what they were told to do, same as soldiers everywhere.  Probably it’s possible to assemble a set of reasonings to appreciate the impact the event had on the outcome of the Revolution, but it’s less easy to bring up any admiration for the lady who did it.

In fact, I’d guess her neighbors and husband were careful not to offend her during her time around them later.  A person who’d do what she did is nobody to be trifled with.

But thinking about all that led me to consider the whole issue of the way we humans celebrate history.  Fairly bizarre, when you consider it carefully.  The British celebrate a guy who attempted to blow up Parliament, but was thwarted, for instance.  Lots of fireworks, but I wonder if they’re cheering the attempt to do it, or the failure of the effort?

For that matter, I wonder if they do much celebrating out on the Rez, shooting off fireworks and cheering the ethnic memory of, say, Custer’s Last Stand.  Or the slaughter of Fetterman’s troops during the Red Cloud uprising.  If they don’t, are they being sufficiently true to their own tribal histories?, I speculates.

Or, at least as grotesque, are the black citizens of the projects all over the US going to be cheering for the institution of slavery that brought their ancestors to this geography so’s to allow them to be here, not Africa?  Whatever the shortcomings of life in modern US ghettos, probably the average modern resident of their ancestral homelands would gladly change places.  Can I hear a few “Amens!” for the institution of slavery in this land concurrent with [gulp, sigh] remembering our noble founding fathers?  Their unselfish efforts and sacrifices along the avenue toward ‘freeing themselves’ from British oppression and tyranny?   

Is anyone in Georgia going to be singing, Marching Through Georgia tomorrow?  Cheering Sherman’s scorched earth burning of Atlanta, and churning across the state burning and looting the citizenry, civilian and military, all the way to Savannah?

Fact is, it all comes out of the same cauldron.  Sip a spoonful of it and you have to either like the overall taste, or focus on the flavor of the meat while ignoring the onions and garlic.  Here, and everywhere else.

For instance, the Japanese probably have enjoyed their post-WWII / pre-tsunami affluence, freedoms, non-involvement in military adventures.  They’d never have gotten any of that without Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Okinawa, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, Midway,  Tarawa, et al.  The destruction of the Japanese Empire.

But I’m betting they don’t have a day of celebration for it.

Probably somewhere in Georgia there’s a community of UK citizens visiting, or living out their lives.  Or folks who came here from the UK and became US Citizens.  Maybe tomorrow would be a good day for them to visit the Georgia Guidestones, wave a US flag around to acknowledge that history’s a different place for them now, than it used to be.  In any case, maybe they ought to be conscious of how much they drink and where they do their drinking.  Georgia still has woman patriots.

History’s not an overly hospitable environment without some selectivity and flexibility.  Going out tomorrow and killing a few Brits, Japanese, Yankees, whites, Mexicans, Spaniards, Germans, Vietnamese, Apache, Navajo, Lakota, maybe a few Russians for good measure would help everyone remember, better, what patriotism’s all about.  Or get’em drunk and cut their throats.

At least it wouldn’t be as boring as a parade.  An honest tribute to our ancestors, whomever they might have been, would help us make the same mistakes they did.  Which we will.

Old Jules

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who needs fireworks anyway, when you can have the real thing?

 

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Government, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Survival, YouTube

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Old Sol – Fondling Mother Earth With Magnetic Fingers

Posted on July 1, 2012 by | 5 comments

spaceweather.com

Me:  How’s the hammer hanging this morning, big guy?  You ready to rock and roll?  Ready to kick some serious ass of darkness?

Old Sol:  Depends on the part of the spectrum you’re referring to.  I imagine where you’re standing it’s the impression you’ll be left with.

Me:  Cool.  Hey, while I’m thinking about it, been intending to ask you about this a couple of days.  About all this sneaky pinching and feeling around on Mama Earth’s magnetic field every eight minutes . . .[Flux Transfer Event Topology]

Old Sol:  Hold on just a minute there, Bubba.  Just because you took so long noticing doesn’t mean I’ve been hiding anything.  Nothing illicit, surreptitious going on at all.

Me:  Okay.  Forget I said that part.  But We, and I think I speak for everyone on the planet in asking this.  We, I was going to say, are curious about a couple of things.  First, what are you getting back out of it?  Some sort of erotic feedback? 

Old Sol:  You need to get your mind out of the gutter.  First off, my relationship with your planet is strictly platonic.  Free exchange of hmmm, not ideas, exactly, but something that rhymes with ideas on a somewhat larger scale.

Me:  Yeah.  So you say.  But those little throbs every eight minutes don’t seem all that platonic to the disinterested observer.  Is this connection, this rubbing around against one another something you just do with Earth?  Or are you doing with the other objects you can reach, too? 

Old Sol:  Think about it before you start your holier than thou moralizing.  Do you think I can resist a magnetic field anywhere close enough for me to feel it?  I’ve been watching you long enough to know, when it comes to issues of resisting, you’ve got no more going for you than I have.

Me:  We’re not talking about me here.  Quit trying to dodge the issue.  You got your pulsing little fingers out there on Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus all the time, too?  And what’s with the eight-minute thing?

Old Sol:  Some are more satisfying than others, I’ll admit.  Those crustal magnetic fields don’t give me much of a lift, but they can be a nice quickie.  But there’s nothing like a good core magnetic field to wake up against on a cold morning.  I’m an old renaissance star in a lot of ways.  I can go either way, crustal, or core.   Either way’s fairly celestial on my end of things.  And nobody out there’s complaining, that I’ve heard.

Me:  Mama Earth know about all this?

Old Sol:  No.  And don’t you go telling her about it, either.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Communication, Relationships, Science

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