Author Archives: Old Jules

Old Sol: “John B Stetson’s Gone Solar”

Posted on June 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

Me:  This overcast is protecting you this morning.  I can’t tell what you’re doing up there.  You doing your stretches, getting a move on?

Old Sol:  I tell you, I welcome those mornings when I’m blessed with a little something between me and you guys.  There’s a guy named John B. Stetson been prying, taking pictures, nosing into my affairs something awful.

Me:  Yeah, I saw something about him:

http://spaceweather.com/

“In Falmouth, Maine, amateur astronomer John Stetson photographed the ongoing activity around sunspot AR1499.  “These solar active regions are producing M-class and C-class flares that are easy to see through my H-alpha telescope,” says Stetson.

“NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of more M-class flare today, although this is probably an underestimate considering the rapid pace of development of magnetic fields near AR1499. Stay tuned.”

Old John Stetson’s probably just trying to drum up hat bidness.  Nothing directed at you, personally.  I can’t think what my nose would look like if it weren’t for John Stetson and his hats.  That horizon’s forming itself up fairly well.  I assume you’re ready to get some work done?

Old Sol:  Could you cut me some slack here?  Of course I am.  When haven’t I?  But I’ll tell you for a fact I’m getting sick of all this sophisticated surveillance equipment you’re getting down there.  It ain’t all just to sell hats, either.  Reporters forever poking around, digging up secrets.  But at least I got that chicken around behind me now.

Me:  Yeah, I’m relieved about that, too.  So are the chickens.  They saw it as a sign, began to get all worked up about it.  Nobody around here besides me has any fondness for Buff Crested Polish roosters.

Old Sol:  You guys are a caution.  Anyway, yeah, I’m right up here where I’m supposed to be.  Go do something else.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Astronomy, Science, Solitude, Surveillance, Texas

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Honoring the Oceans in the Hen House

Posted on June 9, 2012 | 2 comments

Me:  Why so quiet there Ms. Australorp?  Thinking of giving up on those chalk eggs?

Her:  No.  I’m just feeling a little reflective and sad.  I spent yesterday honoring the oceans.

Me:  You WHAT?  You spent yesterday wearing down those chalk eggs, same as every other day for the past couple of weeks. Honoring the oceans?  I need to pull those eggs out from under you.  A few days out chasing grasshoppers will help you regain perspective.

Her:  No.  Really.  I was thinking about all that radioactivity in the North Pacific.  Thinking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  All those poor turtles and plankton.

Me:  Thinking of signing some petitions?  Thinking of voting for someone who knows what to do about that garbage in the ocean vortices?  Those two roosters caged over there know as much about what to do about it all as any human being.

Her:  I know.  Still, I feel sad about it.  I think an empty, meaningless gesture or two might help me feel better.  Maybe a rally and a few petitions after these eggs hatch.

Me:  Rest your mind on that one, babe.  I’m pulling those eggs.  The golf ball, too.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Nature, Solitude, Survival

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Pavement on the Road to Hell

Posted on June 8, 2012 | 12 comments

So.  The  guy who drove this for the summer camp for kids provided more info.

1]  That FalVay living under there is dead.  Probably the big AC inside was Freon 12, which caused it to be useless maybe a decade ago.

2]  They traded up to a bigger bus.

3]  On ‘short’ trips it gets 4-5 miles to a gallon.

4]  It’s got a 2-speed rear-end.  ‘Overdrive’ of the old style.

5]  Engine’s good, sound, ran better on leaded gasoline, but it’s okay.

I concludes:

The car-dealer got this thing free and called it a trade-in.  He’s got nothing in it except an inspection sticker and some touch-up paint.  It’s been sitting on that lot most of a month with a price-tag of $1998,

But I’m guessing after it sits there a while longer a person would want to be careful not to offer him $500 unless he wanted to find himself living in it.

But with gas prices being what they are a few hundred miles to New Mexico could pass itself off as a black hole for money.

Gonna just have to watch and listen on this one.

Meanwhile, couscous turns out to be high priced enough to fight its way out of my diet.

There are some llama-critters down where I turn off the highway I stop and talk to when they’re close to the fence.  Those animals have the prettiest faces, particularly eyes, of any creature on the planet.  If I could afford to get married again, there’s one of them congenial enough I think I might ask.  Never talks back, always just walks over and stares lovingly, admiringly at me while I talk to her. 

It’s been a good many years since I’ve run across a woman did that.  Longer still since one managed to keep it up over the long haul.  Turns out I sort of miss it.

Got a feeling, though, this llama has staying power.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Transportation, Trucks

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Er. . . Um – Physicists Explain Baby Black Holes to One Another

Posted on June 8, 2012 | 11 comments

Pre-Large Hadron Collider, CERN

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=56569

Chroot:   The type of matter is not relevent at all. All you need to do is to put enough matter into a small enough space that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Viola, you have a black hole.  – Warren

Aki:  Aren’t they presently creating baby black holes in labs right now?
 
J20QU3: I wouldnt of thought so, they may be trying but even for a baby black hole u need a huge mass first.
 
Da Willem:  You only need a huge mass density. But the problem (or I guess we should count ourselves lucky) with baby black holes, is that they evaporate very fast.
 
NANOTEC:   they are creating very very small blackholes, the size of a few protons. the part that is tough, is the sustainability. the minuature black holes created evaporate very very quickly as well. from what i guess, CERN(when finished) will help out with this part of the process.
 
Chronos:  There is reason to believe you need at least a planck mass to form a black hole [whose schwarzchild radius would be a planck length]. The limit may, however, be lower if certain higher dimensional theories are correct. In that case the Large Hadron Collider at CERN may be able to produce them. At present, none have yet been created of any size in colliders, so far as anyone knows. If the planck mass limit [~10E19 Gev] holds, we will never create one.
 
NANOTECH:  How could we benefit from creating these black holes at CERN?
 
Nereid:  I too am curious to know why NanoTech thinks mini-black holes have been created in colliders – AFAIK, there’s nothing in the data from any collisions that even hints at such production. Further, if they could be made in colliders, there’d be plenty of them formed from UHE cosmic ray collisions with N or O nuclei (in the air) – again, no hints of such in all the CR data.Mini-BHs would evaporate through Hawking radiation – at least that’s the theory. As no one has observed a mini-BH, this theory has not yet been directly tested (although it is consistent with a large body of indirect experimental and observational data).
 
Grogs:  You’re probably right about today’s nukes not having the ‘oomph’ to create a black hole. I hadn’t really thrown any numbers into the calculation. Focusing them precisely enough (smaller than the radius of an atom ) would probably be a huge problem too. It would probably still be easier than dragging 3 SM’s of material together, but it’s many, many years down the road, if it’s possible at all.For the sake of comparison (to the 1019 GeV number Chronos mentioned), what energies are the latest and greatest supercolliders producing?
 
————-
 
It’s the thought that counts, I reckons.
Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Relationships, Science, Survival

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So How About Them Radioactive Tuna?

Posted on June 8, 2012 | 5 comments

Me:  Soooo.  How you cat-folks feeling about some canned cat food this morning?  Can I hear some ‘Amens’ on that?

Invader cat:  Amen!  Amen!  Amen!

Naiad:  Hold that thought a minute.  Any idea what they put in those big bags of Purina food?  Where they get it?  That sort of thing?

Me:  No idea at all.  I just thought you guys would want a dose of something out of a can.

Invader cat:  Amen!  Amen!  Amen!

Naiad:    I’m not so sure.  Got any liver and bacon flavor?

Me:  Probably some of that in here somewhere.  But the cans on top are salmon, tuna and chicken and tuna.  Below, is seafood supper.  I’d rather not dig down in the package if it’s okay.

Naiad:  I’m not all that hungry  Might go out and catch a mouse and just settle for that.  I heard you grumbling and muttering about that radioactive bunch of tuna they caught out of San Diego the other day. 

Me:  Yeah, they did.  But it was just ceisum 134 and 137.  Not dangerous levels yet.

Naiad:  So you figure they just threw them away?  Or ground them up into fish meal to feed to pigs?  Maybe put them into cans of food of one sort or another?

Me:  I don’t know.  I don’t think there’s any routine testing anyway.  The article said, “The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.

“Now that scientists know that bluefin tuna can transport radiation, they also want to track the movements of other migratory species including sea turtles, sharks and seabirds.”

I reckons they’ll be checking it out, directly.

Naiad:  You go ahead and feed the rest of these guys whatever you want to.  I’m going hunting.

Invader cat:  Amen!  Amen!  Amen!

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Country Life, Nature, Wildlife

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Earlier Versions of MICA Software if you can use them

Posted on June 6, 2012 | 3 comments

Over the years this compulsive project of mine chasing what isn’t happening and when it isn’t has led me into ownership of several versions I ceased using after upgrades were released.   Salt Cedar Latillas for Erosion Control

 Even the earliest versions are better than the next-best off-the-shelf software intended to do what it does.

So I’ve got three versions of the CDs and 120 page hardback handbooks lying around drawing dust.  They’d serve for most folks who aren’t being fanatic about the kinds of issues I’m fanatic about.

If any of you readers are into what’s going on in the sky in a way that might allow you to benefit from owning a not-quite-up-to-date version, these are available for the cost of postage getting them to you.

Feel free to email me at josephusminimus@hotmail.com if you’d savor a copy.

Old Jules

An easy-to-use astronomical almanac from the U.S. Naval Observatory

About MICA

MICA, the Multiyear Interactive Computer Almanac, is a software system that provides high-precision astronomical data in tabular form for a wide variety of celestial objects. The program computes many of the astronomical quantities tabulated in the The Astronomical Almanac. However, MICA can compute this information for specific locations and flexible times, thus eliminating the need for table look-ups and additional hand calculations.

Designed primarily for professional applications, MICA is intended for intermediate-to-advanced users. Basic knowledge of astronomical terminology and positional astronomy is assumed.

MICA provides essential data for use in

Astronomy and astrophysics Space science Geodesy and surveying
Geophysics Meteorology Environmental science
Operations planning Accident reconstruction and litigation Illumination engineering
Architecture Photography  

MICA was first released in 1993 for MS-DOS and Apple Macintosh systems. MICA 2.0 was updated for Windows and modern Apple Macintosh systems and released in August 2005. MICA 2.0 provided all the data available in earlier versions of the software and included several new features. The current version of MICA is 2.2.2, which was released in January 2012.

Features

MICA can perform the following types of computations:

  • Precise positions for the Sun, Moon, major planets, Pluto, selected asteroids, selected bright stars, and cataloged objects (e.g. stars, quasars, galaxies, etc.) using external catalogs provided with the program. Up to ten different position types are available (depending on which object was chosen).
  • Various astronomical time and reference system quantities (e.g. sidereal time, nutation and obliquity, equation of the equinoxes, Earth Rotation Angle, calendar/Julian date conversions, and delta T).
  • Twilight, rise, set, and transit times for major solar system bodies, selected bright stars, selected asteroids, and cataloged objects.
  • Physical ephemerides useful for making observations of the Sun, Moon, major planets, and Pluto. Both illumination and rotation parameters are available for all listed bodies, except for the Sun.
  • Low-precision topocentric data describing the configuration of the Sun, Moon, major planets, Pluto, and selected asteroids at specified times and locations. MICA also includes a sky map option as an aid in locating the objects.
  • Visibility information for solar and lunar eclipses, as well as transits of Mercury and Venus.
  • Four different types of positions of Jupiter and the Galilean Satellites and offsets of the satellites from Jupiter.
  • Dates and circumstances of various astronomical phenomena (solstices and equinoxes, apsides of Earth and the Moon, moon phases, conjunctions, oppositions, and greatest elongations of Mercury and Venus). A phenomena search feature is also available, which generates a table similar to the ‘Diary of Phenomena’ contained in section A of The Astronomical Almanac.

New features and changes in MICA 2.2/2.2.1/2.2.2 include

  • Earth Rotation Angle (ERA) and the equation of the origins.
  • Apside times (perigee/apogee of the Moon, perihelion/aphelion of Earth) as a stand alone computation or within the Phenomena Search function.
  • The DeltaT.val file has been updated with new data. The date with the first predicted value for this file is 2455745.0 (2011 July 2 12:00).
  • Computations of future eclipses and transits now allow the user to set their own value of delta T.
  • Configurations of major solar system bodies and asteroids, lunar eclipses, and all phenomena calculations now include “Zone” as a time system option.
  • Magnitudes have been added to the positional information provided for solar system bodies and catalog stars.
  • The International Astronomical Union (IAU) 2000B nutation model was replaced with the 2000K nutation model described in USNO Circular 181, Nutation Series Evaluation in NOVAS 3.0 (Kaplan 2009).
  • Lunar distance has been added to the “Phases of the Moon” output table.
  • Physical ephemeris algorithms have been updated to account for the aberration of the Sun due to the planet’s motion.
  • Physical ephemeris calculations have been updated with data from the “Report of the IAU/IAG Working Group on cartographic coordinates and rotational elements: 2006.”
  • The ‘Planet’ column header in the solar conjunctions output has been renamed to ‘Object’ to cover both planets and asteroids.

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Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Science

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Talking the Walk – Part 2 – Leading a Cow to Water

Posted on June 6, 2012 | 1 comment

http://www.rt.com/news/monsanto-brazil-seed-soy-908/

Monsanto is also the world’s largest manufacturer of synthetic bovine growth hormone, injected into cows in order to stimulate greater milk production. The widespread pressure by the company to use the chemical and the subsequent measures taken by Monsanto to suppress information regarding the potential health risks sparked uproar among American farmers.

When dairy producers that did not use Monsanto’s products began labeling their products as “Hormone Free” or “Organic”, Monsanto slapped them with a lawsuit as recently as 2008, claiming the labels amounted to negative advertising against hormone-produced milk.

Director of corporate communications for Monsanto, Phil Angell, summed up Monsanto’s take on the issue in a report by food author Michael Pollan for New York Times Magazine in 1998: “Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is FDA’s job.”

http://rt.com/usa/news/white-house-monsanto-peer-991/

Michael Taylor, a former attorney for the US Department of Agriculture and lobbyist for Monsanto, was recently appointed to a federal role as the deputy commissioner for foods at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Since then, the FDA shot down requests from consumer protection groups to label genetically modified products as such. With a White House-Monsanto connection already established with the appointment of Taylor, PEER and others are interested in what other ties could exist between the two.

Heck, readers.  There ought to be something a verbose man such as myself could think of to say about all this.  I’d do it, too, if I could think of something.

Maybe I could point out those pointee-heads working three shifts in the Monsanto laboratories would call themselves ‘scientists’ if someone asked what they are.  Same as the folks over at CERN.

Or maybe I could just ask the reasonable question:  “Do you honestly believe one of the two breeds of foxes guarding the hen house is going to leave more feathers lying around when the dust settles?”

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Animals, Government, Nature, Politics, Science

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Talking the Walk – Higgs Boson and ‘Science’

Posted on June 6, 2012 | 9 comments

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/9307672/CERN-director-says-LHC-will-find-God-Particle-by-end-of-the-year.html

“Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of CERN where the LHC is based, said he was confident that by the end of the year it will be possible to say whether the Higgs Boson, the particle which is responsible for giving mass to the universe, exists.

“The theoretical particle, nicknamed the God Particle due to its central role it has in explaining modern physics, has never been detected and scientists have been working for decades to prove its existence.

“Scientists hope that high energy collisions of particles in the 17 mile underground tunnel at CERN will finally allow them to create the conditions to allow them to spot the elusive Higgs Boson.

“Dr Heuer, who was speaking at the Hay Festival, said the LHC is scheduled to be closed down at the end of this year for up to two years in order to carry out upgrades that will increase its power and allow it to continue with more experiments.”

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

Those guys over at CERN need to think of something else to call themselves.  They’re inadvertently allowing their use of language to act as a confession booth.  “. . . scientists have been working for decades to prove its existence,” says just about everything needs saying about the difference between science and engineering.  Or whatever it is they think they’re doing.  “Got me a theory, now I’m going to PROVE it,”  ain’t science.  But the difference is too subtle to penetrate the ice surface those folks are skating on.

For several years now they’ve been bragging about creating ‘baby black holes’ that ‘dissolve’ [they say the little guys dissolve because they don’t know what the hell happened to them – spang lost track of them].  There’s a body of opinion among outcasts and heretics from the ‘science’ religion that some of what’s going on stands a shot at creating black holes that don’t do any vanishing.  Black holes, or something else nobody anticipated. 

At CERN, though, they’re got things to prove and they’re not going to let anything stand in the way of proving it.  When a physicist somewhere raises his hand to suggest they mightn’t know what the hell’s going to come out of this or that, they shout him down.  “There’s an extremely LOW probability of it.”

Back before they detonated the A-bomb at the Trinity Site a group of the physicists there expressed similar concerns.  “We oughtn’t do this.  There’s a minute chance it will set fire the atmosphere of the planet.”

“Why hell, the probabilities for that are low.  How the hell can we know whether it will without TRYING it?”

So guess what!  Trinity didn’t set fire to the atmosphere.  All manner of other great things grew out of it, though.  Hiroshima, Nagasaki.  The Cold War.  Mutually Assured Destruction.  ICBMs.  Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and a lot of potential today for more drama in the North Pacific centered around Japan.  Countless people born deformed downwind from the low-probabilities that became high-probabilities with Chernobyl.  Arms races all over the world and weapons of mass destruction used as an excuse to invade any country with something worth stealing.

As nearly as I can figure, those Higgs Boson particles [or something rhyming with them] are out there doing their thing all by their lonesome selves without needing permission from physicists.  They do what they do without needing some airhead calling them God particles, Higgs Boson particles, or anything else.

The people at CERN are doing something they’re calling ‘science’, throwing up their hands calling it the innocent pursuit of knowledge, wanting to prove things.  Hopefully one of the things time will prove is they were right about those baby black holes dissolving instead of going into orbit around the sun.

Hopefully they’ll prove the human species wouldn’t have been better served hanging them upside down from lamp posts when they had the chance.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Education, Human Behavior, Los Alamos, Science, Survival

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Clean Underwear and Couscous – One Dose Addictions

Posted on June 5, 2012 | 4 comments

Clean Underwear and Hard Times

Hi readers.  Thanks for the visit.

It’s been almost a year since that old Kenmore dropped into my life. 

I hate to think I’m becoming addicted to modern conveniences, but here’s my back yard today.  It’s been and is still a blessing I have to stop and take a deep breath when allow myself to appreciate it fully, the gestalt, I mean.

I never found a wringer, so there are tricks to it I’ve gradually learned, and will gladly unlearn sometime if I ever locate a wringer at the right price.

In some ways that qualifies as a blessing associated with the whole hauling-water experience.  A person finds himself experimenting with all manner approaches to personal cleanliness honing down the amount of water required.  For instance, it’s actually about 1/3 gallon less water than the pump-up insecticide sprayer to shower using one-gallon orange juice jugs left out in the sun.  Just pouring enough to wet down, scrub down, and rinse.

I’d actually be about a gallon cheaper if I cut my hair, which I’ve considered because the water required to rinse shampoo out afterward.  But my hair hasn’t been cut since Y2K and I hate to bust into a winning streak taking chances of that sort.

But I wanted to tell you about couscous.  I’d never heard of the stuff, but at the HEB store they offered a package coupon deal including it.  Bought a bag of farm raised fish filets imported Vietnam, got all manner of other things free.

Got out my magnifying glass to make sure it didn’t have MSG in it, then eventually made myself fix it.  Herbal chicken couscous.  Doctored it up with ginger and curry, chopped some onion into it, added chopped jalapeno.

Sheeeeeeeze that stuff’s good.

Instant addiction.  Next time I’m in town I’m going to see what it costs.  If it’s reasonable I think I might find myself chowing down on couscous a couple of times a week.

Old dog, new tricks, instant addiction.

So it goes.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Thrift Stores

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Controlling Complications with Simpler Opinions

Posted on June 5, 2012 | 3 comments

“However, we must not save humanity from the future right now. It is simply too soon for such a drastic measure. We should wait a while first. We can always save humanity from the future later.”
 
 
 Me:  “So, what to do today.  Any suggestions, Ms. Shiva?”
 
Shiva:  “You might consider doing something about that damned well.  You’ve been hauling water eighteen months now. “
 
Me:  “That would have been an operable approach fifteen, sixteen months ago.  Right now I’m holding it in abeyance.  That future took an exit back at mile marker 2011.5, roughly.”
 
Shiva:  “Okay.  I suppose that makes sense.  No point dragging anything off the shelf to fill in the gaps of what you aren’t going to be doing today.  Plenty of other, more immediate stuff not to do.”
 
Me:  “I’ve got some fairly complicated near-certainties I’ll be plugging away at if I can’t find some reason not to.  But the reason needs to be something that holds up under scrutiny.  Something I probably might have done, needed doing.  Not just a rabbit I pulled out of a hat to use as an excuse not to follow the mandates of my compulsions, my daily complication rituals.  Damn I have a hard time not making myself do that some days.”
 
Shiva:  “You’re definitely showing signs of breaking down under the strain.”
 
Me:  “Yeah, I know.   I’ve got all this crap to do and don’t even know how much time I have to get it done.  Hell, I could die just about any time from now until some other time.  If I had a better idea when I’m going to kick I could plan better.”
 
Shiva:  “We cats would feel better about that, too.  If you’re going to outlast us we’re all agreed the chances would be improved if you could keep a clear head about things.  It’s a concern to all of us.”
 
Me:  “Okay.  I’ll think about it.  Maybe I’ll spend the day planning.”
 
 Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Animals, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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