Tag Archives: Education

Two Big Events in One Day!

Posted on December 9, 2011 by | 8 comments

Wow.  I must be living right.

First, at the Hospice Thrift Store in Kerrville I found these gloves with no fingertips for $1.50.  When it’s cold in this cabin I go to 18 layers of longjohns and sweatsuits, Sorel snowboots and innovative headgear.  But my fingers stiffen until I can only use the computer with a lot of mistakes.

I’m thinking those gloves are going to fix that one.

But on arriving back home and tuning the computer to this frequency I found to my delight that Michael had explained the solution to another one I’ve been scratching my head over longer than I care to admit.

Thank you Michael.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Education, Kerrville, Thrift Stores

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Simultaneity of Events – Needing some ideas

Posted on December 9, 2011 by | 21 comments

Some of you readers are a lot smarter than I am, and I happen to be stuck.  I’d be obliged if any of you can wrap your minds around this problem and tell me how to do it. 

One of the projects I work on daily involves series regularly scheduled ‘events’ happening across the world.  Every day they’re conducted at the same locations and at repeated intervals, several hundred times each day for each location. 

I know the precise geographic coordinates for the locations and the local times of the events.  But one part of the experiment requires examination and comparisons of simultanious events, say, from a location in Australia, another in NY, another in Rhode Island, to keep it simple.

But two events happening, say, in Rhode Island and New York at the ‘same time’ by the clock are actually several minutes apart.  They occupy the same time zone, but events in Rhode Island at 3PM aren’t the same events as those happening in NY at 3PM. 

But even without taking DST into the equation, events in Australia might be 15 hours and 30 minutes later by the clock to be simultaneous with New York, or Rhode Island, and only one of the two.  The event in one would be simultaneous with Australia several minutes earlier, or later, than the other.

I can calculate minute-by-minute sidereal times for each of the locations, but establishing a baseline for the relationships in terms of simulataneity eludes me.  I do all this on a spreadsheet.  I know nothing about programming computers.

I’d welcome any suggestions.  Particularly if it involves something automatic and repeatable.  It’s probably something simple, even stupid, but I’d like to get past trying to figure out how to do it and get around to actually doing it.

Gracias, Old Jules

I’ve got to get going.  I’ll be back online sometime later today.

21 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Education

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Time Lapse Video of Old Sol’s Moods, Etc.

Posted on December 9, 2011 by | 10 comments

Thanks for coming by for a read.

WordPress is behaving as though it gets paid by the hour this morning.  Everything’s taking forever to load.  Besides, the blog never gets much traffic Fridays anyway.  So I’m going to try the patience of those of you who do visit by indulging in a post I promised my friend Rich in North Carolina and a couple of others I’d put up.  

I’ve got a goodly bit on the plate elsewhere today and mightn’t be around the cabin much, but if WordPress goes on salary and I’m back I might put something else up later.

Some of you expressed an interest.

 

Then there’s this:

 

Sunsounds run through different frequencies and filters

 

Black hole – NASA – The comments are worth reading for a smile  – Guy wants to know why the camera doesn’t get sucked into the black hole.

 

Then there’s this:

 

The Spitzer telescope examination of the galactic center

Almost forgot this:

New all-sky map shows the magnetic fields of the Milky Way with the highest precision http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/institute/news_archives/news1112_fara/news1112_fara-en.html

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy

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Other Good Folks and Adventures Practical People Hate

Posted on December 8, 2011 by | 14 comments

Adventure wears a lot of disguises.  In garage laboratories, in pens behind their homes, in backyards, they’re out there enduring the smiles and shrugs of the non-adventurous.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/jlnlabs/

Dear new explorers and experimenters,

You are WELCOME in the JLN Labs Group-List dedicated to the search of Free-Energy solutions and new generation of space-propulsion systems.

 

A Tesla adventure:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/usa-tesla/?yguid=320352404

For discussion of Nikola Tesla history, inventions, and coil design and construction techniques. The physics of Tesla’s varied patents, and ideas are especially welcome, even if they generate some heated discussions.

This list is for the dissemination and discussion of all things TESLA. Since Tesla was a man of wide and varied talents, other physical phenomena discussions are possible.

Or this:

http://tesladownunder.com/

http://tesladownunder.com/MTSparkler600.jpghttp://tesladownunder.com/MOJacobsFireinside.jpg

Outdoorsy, but too old or infirm to carry a pack?  Pack goats:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/packgoat/?yguid=320352404

All about Pack Goats group

 All About Packgoats is a collection of interesting and insightful people who share an interest in hiking and packing with goats. With experience ranging from veteran packgoat professional to weekend hiking enthusiast, the answers to your packgoat questions can be found here.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Gravity-Antigravity/?yguid=320352404

This discussion group is devoted to the study of gravity and the physics of gravity and the interaction thereof. This forum is intended to allow all views and concepts to be entertained and evaluated by all, regardless of how traditional and fundamental or non-traditional and non-fundamental the ideas might be. Whenever possible, material submitted for discussion should include supporting data when available.

Or this:

In the Sandia mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, there’s  about an acre of house and museum built by a man with his own idea of adventure.  It’s called Tinkertown.  Above the entrance there’s a sign, “HERE’S WHAT I DID WHILE YOU WATCHED TELEVISION”.

He adventured through life creating thousands of Rube Goldberg mechanical animations just to see if he could do it.

If he couldn’t create that animation, or make a Cadillac with the outer-surface covered by pennies, he wasn’t half the man he thought he was.

And then, of course, there’s Ed Leedskalnin. http://coralcastle.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Coral_Castle_1.jpg/250px-

“We wonder what was the inspiration that could cause a man to spend 28 years to carve a Coral Castle from the ground up using nothing but home made tools. An homage to unrequited love? Perhaps to illustrate ancient sciences that defy gravity? Or maybe just sheer, raw human determination? The Coral Castle is an everlasting mystery to those who explore it.”

Or The Perfect Man Shrine, middle of desert nowhere, Columbus, New Mexico:

The Perfect Man Shrine, Columbus, New Mexico

Human lives don’t last long.  There are plenty of candidates who consider themselves wise and willing to tell us how we ought to spend ours.

The people who built it are dead, or too old to maintain it.

But maybe when we close our eyes that last time we’d consider it well spent if we just did something, sometime while we were stumbling through it.

I’d bet not one of the people above ever voiced the lament, “I’m SO bored!”

Old Jules

14 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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Adventure, Imagination and Keeping the Juices Flowing

Posted on December 8, 2011 by | 14 comments

My old friend Keith stopped into the blog  a few days ago and commented on one of the posts.  By doing so he reminded me I haven’t said much about a subject dear to my heart:  Outrageous adventure.

Crazy Lost Gold Mine-ism

Wilderness Threats

Fiddle-Footed Naggings and Songs of the Highway

When Keith and I were searching together we were both in our early 50s, both involved in careers, both plenty old enough to know we weren’t going to find that lost gold mine, though I, particularly figured we would.  [I still held by the statement from my neophyte search early in the 1980s, “If I can’t find that mine I’m not half the man I think I am.”]

Keith and I plotted, planned and trekked into more canyons than either of us can remember and, while we didn’t find that lost gold mine we saw places not many human beings have ever seen, certainly not many in a longish time.  We systematically explored promising locations from the Zuni Mountains, to Santa Rita Mesa, to Pelona on the south side of the Plains of San Augustin, to the Gallinas.

I don’t know how Keith thinks about all this these days, but I know how I think about it.  I wouldn’t subtract one mile, one minute, one canyon of it from my life, though we never found what we were looking for.

Not from that, not from Y2K, not from flying a Cessna 140 all over the sky for a number of years, and not from this current adventure of survival that’s my life today, for that matter.

It seems to me people have become too ‘smart’ and ‘wise’ with the debunking culture to allow themselves a piece of outrageous risk with minimal prospects for any returns.   It’s been that way for a considerable while.  I believe it’s robbed a lot of people of experiencing a side of life that once a particular sort of individual demanded of himself.

An old man who wasn't afraid of adventure

When I say it’s been going on a long while I mean it.  During the early 1950s my granddad and step-dad became the laughingstocks of Portales, Dora, Garrison and Causey, New Mexico, by injecting a piece of it into their lives.  They bought a WWII jeep, equipment, and joined thousands of other similar men searching for uranium.  Probably the last ‘rush’ in US history.

They were gone several months, didn’t find a thing, and when they returned they endured the jeers and snide laughs of everyone around them.  But both men cherished the memories of that time as long as they lived.  They had something the stay-at-home sneerers would never have because they were too smart, too dedicated to the other side of human existence to allow it into their lives.

And the venom they expressed for anyone else doing it provides a hint they probably wished they had.

Old Jules

14 Comments

Posted in 1950's, 2011, Adventure, America

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Anachronistic Perceptions and Temporal Priorities

Posted on December 5, 2011 by | 6 comments

Morning readers.  I appreciate you coming by this morning.

The building pictured is on the corner of the plaza in Mesilla, New Mexico.  I don’t recall at the moment what connection it has to Billy the Kid, other than the fact he hung around Mesilla.  I do know the building was the center-piece for a lot more resounding events than some half-baked kid with a pistol could ever have added to, or taken away from.

That building, in 1860, was the County building where Jacob Snively, former Secretary of War for the Texas Republic, and his partners filed the mining claim for their gold strike at Pinos Altos, New Mexico.  They attempted secrecy, but the word leaked out quickly.  They headed back to the Gila, camped after dark, and woke in the morning surrounded by a booming mining camp sprung up during the night, home of a major gold rush.

Not much later the same building became the headquarters for Colonel Baylor and the first wave of Texan Confederate invaders of the western territories.  The primary Government building for the Confederate Territory of Arizona. 

Baylor recruited from there and volunteer recruits from Mesilla and Pinos Altos comprised the overwhelming part of the force of Sherrod Hunter for his invasion and occupation of Tucson.   One of Snively’s partners, Jack Swilling, commanded the Confederate troops at Picacho Pass, westernmost battle of the Civil War.  Swilling eventually became the founder of Phoenix, Arizona.

Jack Swilling

There it sits today, that building, proclaiming itself to be something involved with a tiny man with a big pistol, but it has a lot more to say if anyone was listening.

Old Jules

 

6 Comments

Posted in History, NM

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Blind Chickens, Talking Diamonds and Greedy Galaxies

Posted on December 4, 2011 by | 18 comments

I’m aware some of you readers keep chickens.  If you’re having problems with blindness among them you might be interested in joining http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_Ranging_Chickens/ where there’s an interesting discussion going on about the problem.  This was the beginning post for the thread:

Blind Rooster
Posted: Sat Dec 3, 2011 5:47 am (PST)
Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with this. Monday afternoon, I noticed two hens on the wrong side of the fence, so went to retrieve them, and find the rest of their little band. Found all but one rooster. Couldn’t find him in any of the “regular” places, but they do have lots of room to roam. Figured I’d check again before bedtime, as he’s usually the first one in. Didn’t show up. Put everyone else in, and went hunting, for feathers if nothing else:(. Well, I found him by the fence, but inside. Just sitting there. He let me pick him up without protest, but he’s always been laid-back. Still, I knew something was wrong. Put him in a different coop, with shelves instead of bar roosts. The next day he was down on the floor, walking around, but bumping into the screening for the duck section, and sitting in corners/nests. Realized his vision was at least partially gone. Blocked him in, and started antibiotics, since I had no idea what else to do. That night he was back up on the shelf, so he must have some vision, I guess. Wasn’t eating or drinking that I could see, just walked over everything. Brought him into the Hospital Unit (a carrier in my bathrooom :). He began to drink, and finally eat. He crows (oh, swell) but his cue seems to be noise rather than light. Put him outside yesterday (in a big crate) afternoon for some sun, but he just sat there. Some of the other chickens did come scratch around him, but he seemed oblivious.
His eyes look odd, not whiteish, but the center (behind the cornea and inside the iris, where it should be black) looks “solid”, if that makes any sense.

Any thoughts?

Free_Ranging_Chickens@yahoogroups.com

Meanwhile, you readers involved in clandestine, extra-marital relationships might be well-advised to remove your diamond jewelry before checking into some seedy motel. 

In the quantum world, diamonds can communicate with each other

December 2, 2011 By Joel N. Shurkin

The vibrational states of two spatially separated, millimeter-sized diamonds are entangled at room temperature by scattering a pair of strong pump pulses (green). The generated motional entanglement is verified by observing nonclassical correlations in the inelastically scattered light. Credit: Dr. Lee and colleagues, Image Copyright Science|AAAS  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-quantum-world-diamonds.html

Elsewhere in the news, the 99% movement has suffered a disturbing setback with the discovery we live in a greedy galaxy, gobbling up smaller galaxies.  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-beast-tails.html

Barred Spiral Milky Way. Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA

The Milky Way galaxy continues to devour its small neighbouring dwarf galaxies and the evidence is spread out across the sky.

Government and Wall Street Cray computers working on the problem tentatively estimate the 99 percenters are actually 0.000000000000001 percenters galaxy-wide.  Political and financial-industry hired-guns are working three shifts to prepare television documentaries and PR campaigns to assist in correcting the error.

In a related story, multi-national corporations and Wall Street banks have hired a team of astrophysicists and astronomers to study black holes in an effort to develop more thorough strategies and techniques to solidify and expand their holdings.  Additionally, the illustration on the right suggests black holes might also provide improved methods in the use of pepper-spray.

“An optical image of the sky showing the location of the black hole, Cygnus X-1. (Right) An artist’s conception of the black hole system, showing the black hole drawing material towards it from a massive, blue companion star. This material forms a disk and jets that emit radiation. Credit: Optical: DSS; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

“Black holes are among the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity. A black hole is thought to be point-like in dimension, but it is surrounded by an imaginary surface, or “edge,” of finite size (its “event horizon”) within which anything that ventures becomes lost forever to the rest of the universe.”  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-black-hole-unmasked.html

The overall optimism derived from these stories was something I wanted to share with you readers to lift whatever waning spirits you might experiencing his crisp, rainy morning.

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2011, Animals, Astronomy, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Politics, Poultry

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Old Sol’s Party-Animal Mood Swings Bring Mixed-Reactions

Posted on December 4, 2011 by | 8 comments

Old Sol was practicing his quickdraw:

http://spaceweather.com/submissions/pics/a/Alexandra-Hart-2011-12-03-11-22-20–

Alexandra Hart 
Image taken: Dec. 3, 2011
Location: Cheshire, UK 
 
Details: This prominence lifted off within 10 minutes, very spectacular! Taken with a Coronado PST and DMK41

 http://spaceweather.com/

ERUPTING FILAMENT: Today, with little warning, a magnetic filament rapidly erupted on the sun. Between 10:30 and 11:30 UT, observers in Europe watched tendrils of hot plasma rocket away from the sun’s NW limb. Debris from the explosion is not expected to hit Earth. Images: #1, #2, #3.

Astrophysicists aren’t certain what he was shooting at, but several noted deer season recently opened.  Others speculate Alpha Centauri was throwing bottles or tin-cans in the air for him.

With no flares of significance in days, the sun is strangely quiet. Nevertheless, the view remains dynamic. Rogerio Marcon of Campinas, Brasil, took this picture of the local starscape on Dec. 2nd.   Using a telescope tuned to the red glow of solar hydrogen, Marco captured 20 billion sq. km of seething plasma and magnetic filaments; also included in the field is the dark core of sunspot 1364 (lower right). It doesn’t look very quiet. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of M-class solar flares in the next 24 hours.  http://spaceweather.com/

Some astrophysicists noted 20 billion sq. km of seething plasma and magnetic filaments could be considered a middling lot, everything else being equal.

PHD candidates from UC Berkeley and MIT have gone on record with a theory there’s some kind of celebration going on up there.  NASA space cadets believe otherwise, but refuse to elaborate except to darkly hint Old Sol’s expressing his displeasure about agency budget cuts.

Israel and the CIA aren’t saying what’s causing it, but are planning airstrikes on unnamed Central Asian targets in retaliation.

Old Jules

 

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy

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December 2, 2011 – Good Prospect for Nothing Happening

Posted on December 2, 2011 by | 1 comment

Looks as though everything’s going to be okay.  Human beings have been doing a pretty good job of wrapping things up, getting things that needed doing out of the way so’s it’s going to be a quiet one.

Here and there all over the planet the people assigned to keep Old Sol happy, praying Him up mornings and praying him down evenings seem to have gotten the situation well in hand for now.  Not much danger of anything falling on our heads out of the sky or jumping up out of the earth to surprise anyone.

The Emergency Box that’s caused so much trouble in the past is now securely locked away from the kinds of people who’ve been sneaking around doing monkey-tricks with it.  In the US the government’s been cooperating in a world-wide effort to quiet things down. 

One of the things they decided to do that might help is shut gradually down the US Post Office, which ought to give a strong shove in the right direction away from anything more happening.  And not a moment too soon, either.

Those people have been creating headaches for the citizenry all the way back to Ben Franklin.  If it wasn’t electric bills it was jury-duty summons postcards, registered-return-receipt letters from people trying to make things happen and shiny envelopes telling us we won a sweepstake.  Or delivering some magazine about golf, or pictures of houses and kitchens and clothes.  No end to it.

Generally speaking the newspapers all over the place telling people what happened somewhere are getting their comeuppance, too.  All those little daily and weekly papers struggling to tell people who died and what the local rich people are doing with their private lives are sinking into the woodwork.  Good riddance, says I. 

Especially the part about jury-duty summons post cards and electric bills.

That Emergency Box might find itself completely detached and rusting away if we can keep at it.  Without juries they’ll be able to just lock people up who need it without all the fanfare.

Everything’s going to be okay today provided nobody went to sleep at the wheel while praying up Old Sol.

Old Jules

1 Comment

Posted in 2011, Country Life, History

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Outsmarted by a Dead Tree

Posted on December 1, 2011 by | 12 comments

Tree Numero Uno didn’t agree to my offer to let it go down without a fight.  The trunk broke but the uppidy part refused to answer the demands of modern physics.

I’m not the sort of man to sit still for anything defying science and gravity.

I got my digging bar and proceeded to put forward reasoned arguments as to why that tree needed to obey the law.

The top part of the trunk moved over on the stump every time I applied pressure to the bar.

I cut the trunk at an angle so the trunk couldn’t slip back this way when it fell and get in the way of the path I was leaving to get the cut wood out.  But now, by cunning Communist refusal to do what’s right there are several tons of potential energy trapped in the upper trunk.  If I use the bar to pry it further this way that upper trunk’s going to snap out of there like a catapult and knock the bejesus out of everything downrange.

But if I leave it standing it’s going to pick its own time to come down.  And it’s already demonstrated a lousy set of values and ideals enough create a suspicion I’ll be under it when it does.

Maybe I was actually supposed to go to Kerrville today.

Old Jules

4:04 PM edit:  I got it down, but with more style and panache than I consider tasteful under the circumstances.  No broken bones, no serious injuries, nothing destroyed I can’t live without.  On the other hand, there’s still a lot more tree left propped up on dead branches 10-15 feet in the air, so there might be another dance left in the old dame yet.  Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Current Issues, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, White Trash Repairs

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