Tag Archives: science

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

Posted on June 8, 2012 by | 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?
 
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It’s the thought that counts, I reckons.
Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, Relationships, Science, Survival

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So How About Them Radioactive Tuna?

Posted on June 8, 2012 by | 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

5 Comments

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 by | 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.

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Science

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Talking the Walk – Higgs Boson and ‘Science’

Posted on June 6, 2012 by | 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

9 Comments

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

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Old Sol: “They don’t know nuthin about chickens”

Posted on June 4, 2012 by | 7 comments

http://spaceweather.com/

“‘CH’ STANDS FOR … CHICKEN? A big dark hole in the sun’s atmosphere, a ‘coronal hole’, is turning toward Earth spewing solar wind. According to NASA’s official rubber chicken, it looks an awful lot like a bird.

“Coronal holes are places where the sun’s magnetic field opens up and allows the solar wind to escape. A chicken-shaped stream of solar wind flowing from this coronal hole will reach Earth on June 5th – 7th, possibly stirring geomagnetic storms. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.”

Me:  “Morning big guy.  Having yourself a little snack up there, are you?  Something to start the morning off right?”

Old Sol:  “You people really piss me off sometimes.  This isn’t a chicken, doesn’t look anything like a chicken.  It’s a belch building up.  Feels more like a tumor the size of a grapefruit stuck in my gullet than some damned chicken.”

Me:  “Wasn’t me, amigo.  It’s those NASA guys.  They know about as much about chickens as they know about anything else going on with you.  More maybe, even though none of them could name the breed of chicken it most nearly resembles.”

Old Sol:  “Then why do they keep talking all this weak BS?  And what breed of chicken are we talking about?”

Me:  “Looks to me as though it might pass itself off as a Buff Crested Polish rooster if it had more tail-feathers.  But the reason they do it is the same reason we do pretty much everything else.  We human beings don’t feel good about ourselves if we don’t already know everything.  Species self-esteem thing, I reckons.”

Old Sol:  “Sometimes I’d rather just hang back, not even come out and have to face all you tiny damned crawlies.  Never can tell what you’re going to come up with next.”

Me:  “Yeah, right.  But keep in mind nobody down here has a Buff Crested Polish rooster tattooed on his face.  You getting your stuff together?  You’ve got a long day ahead.  Not long before we’ll be expecting great things from you, same as yesterday.”

Old Sol:  “Yeah.  Just give me a few minutes here.  Warm up the engine.  Do a few things on my backside where I’ve got some privacy.  I’ll be along.”

Old Jules

 

 

7 Comments

Posted in America, Astronomy, Chickens, Free-ranging-chickens, Nature, Outdoors, Solitude, Spirituality

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Old Sol’s Bumper-Stickers

Posted on June 3, 2012 by | 2 comments

Me:  “Hey!  Up and at’em guy!  Rise and shine.”

Old Sol:  “Sheeze!  Hush you mouf, boy.  I’m sleeping in this morning.  Got a heluva headache.”

Me:  “Little too much partying, did we?  Get your lazy butt up over the horizon.  You’ve got a tight agenda today.”

Old Sol:  “Hell, I’ve got things going on you don’t even know about.  Didn’t any sooner get this Venus drama out of the way and got Mercury coming up.  And that ain’t the half of it.  Same old same old.  And I’ve got all this magnetic field crap to deal with.  Look at this damned coronal hole if you think you’ve got problems.”

Me:  “Look here, big guy.  I know it ain’t easy, but you’ve got a job to do.  If you can’t handle it, someone’s going to start talking to Alpha Centauri.  We’re already farming out everything important this side of the planet.  If you don’t want to be out-sourced you might start doing some gratitude affirmations you’ve still got a job at all.”

Old Sol: “Are you threatening me?  You?  I’ll tell you what, bubba.  You guys just try passing all that mess off to Alpha Centauri.  That sissified bastard couldn’t do half of what I do.  And you’d be in for a loooong dry spell, meanwhile.”

Me:  “It ain’t my call.  It’s the multi-nationals.  Just get on up and maybe we can both keep our jobs.”

Old Sol:  “Yeah, yeah yeah.  But look at that damned coronal hole, would you?  I need an aspirin.”

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Human Behavior, Relationships, Science, Senior Citizens, Texas

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Black Eye for Conventional Wisdom

Posted on May 29, 2012 by | 5 comments

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

Back when  I was a real smart cookie I knew all manner of things needed doing to straighten out this country and this world.  I used to sit around with others whom I allowed to be real smart cookies, too, telling one another how stupid everyone who disagreed with us.  They thought they were real smart cookies, too, which proved how stupid they were.

During that general time period Their Majesties, Gerald Ford, then Jimmy Carter, were telling us we needed to turn down the thermostats, drive slower, become energy independent as a nation.  Find alternatives to the conventional energy sources.  I think my group of real smart cookies agreed with this, though I don’t recall anyone liking it much.

But one thing we did agree on.  Nuclear energy needed to be developed and used a lot more than was happening at the time.  Seemed the only thing that might fill the bill until something else was developed.  Gradually we got so hardened in our opinions about it we made excuses and apologized anytime anything happened suggesting we might re-examine our opinions and debate points.

Along came Three Mile Island, and naturally we didn’t need to know much about it to agree among ourselves it was just a shrill scare thing.  Hanoi Jane Fonda came out with a movie named “The China Syndrome” and a lot of monkey wrenches got thrown into the mix, people opposed to more nuclear plants. 

Then that plant in the Ukraine went sour.  Spewed all manner of radioactive crap into the sky for a longish while.  We real smart cookies saw that as an indictment, not of nuclear power, but rather of Soviet technical, engineering and construction skills.  Another indictment of Communism.

Somewhere back there I quit thinking about all that, didn’t bother knowing so much about it as I became less smart with the years.  I sort of lost track of the whole issue, had no idea whether they were still building, not building, using, not using nuclear power plants.

About a year ago my friend, Rich, started telling me about a tsunami hit Japan, did all manner of damage.  Some included nukes on the Japanese coast.  I suppose I didn’t think a lot about it.  Just another disaster somewhere for people to tell one another about while they waited for the coffee to perk.

But Rich kept updating me and the Japan nuclear part of the tsunami and earthquake began swelling into something trying to rattle how smart I used to be.  Japan was letting a lot of ugly into the Pacific and into the sky.  “Man, they need to do something about that crap!” I declared to Rich.  “I feed my cats a lot of fish that might be coming out of the north Pacific.”

“Would you rather feed them fish out of the Gulf of Mexico?  Fish coming out of there are loaded with carcino-whatchallits from the emulsifiers they used from the BP oil spill.”

I thought about that a while and decided I didn’t need to track down an instrument to measure the gamma radiation in the cat food.  Trade a headache for an upset stomach, more-or-less.

But at least I don’t have to have all the answers anymore, don’t have to know what anyone ought to do about anything.  Takes a lot of weight off, me not having to do anything but concern myself about what to feed the cats and chickens.

Old Jules

 

5 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Country Life, Current Issues, Emergency Preparedness, Government, Politics, Science, Survival

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Current Brush Dam Project

Posted on May 18, 2012 by | 2 comments

When I began this a person couldn’t tell there was an oak tree without standing off at a distance because it was so choked with cedars.

A gully was being cut down to bedrock in the swale.  I’ve got a lot more cedar in the immediate area I’ll be clearing, but I’m figuring before I put anymore on the dam I’ll stand atop what’s there and cross cut as deep as the chainsaw bar will reach to compact it as much as possible before adding more material.

Incidently, once I got most of the cedar cleared from around that oak I found this great, long, straight one.  It’s a keeper, though I don’t know what for.  Assuming I can get it loose and untangled from the upper parts of the oak without having to cut it.

There’s a watershed of maybe fifteen acres with a lot of slope draining into this spot.  My thought is I’ll bring the dam roughly six feet high after compacting, then thicken it with whatever cedar’s left in the immediate area.  Afterward I’ll move upgrade and create a series of brush berms across the grade to slow down concentration times.

Lots of work left to do on it, but watching that dam grow’s a smiler for me.  Someday I’m going to try to figure out what makes me tick.  This whole sudden new joy of doing all this came out of nowhere.  Gale’s up there laid up, doesn’t have a clue I’m doing most of it on his property, though I describe most of it to him.  He shrugs and tries to seem encouraging, but I doubt he can picture what’s going on here.

Meanwhile, me just down here working my arse off for the hell of doing it, not a clue why.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Country Life, Outdoors, Science, Texas

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They Ought to Add ‘Barbara Allen’ to the Controlled Substance List

Posted on May 18, 2012 by | 5 comments

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

I’m really glad I don’t have free will.  If I’d had free will I’d almost certainly have screwed things up something awful.  I can’t see any way a person making a lifetime of deliberate, conscious choices could have made the necessary ones to allow me to eventually become me.  If I’d had to find my way through that maze all by myself there’s no guessing what I’d have become, what would have become of me.

I’m a firm believer the Universe gave us scorpions, black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders and similar poisonous orthropods to train a man to shake out his trousers and boots before he puts them on.  But he no sooner learns it than he begins to forget slowly, and eventually he’s pulling on his britches or boots same as if the Universe hadn’t blessed us with Brother Scorpion.

But if the timing is good, if the Universe is feeling generous, and if the asteroid Pallas is 85 days since a conjunction with Old Sol and 293 days since an opposition, sometimes the Universe will cut us a break.  A man can slip on his britches, pull up his galluses, feel something crawling up his leg under the cloth, dance around slapping his pants, and shake out a regular big bug carcass instead of the various alternatives.

But I’ve digressed. 

Yesterday I borrowed Little Red and headed to town feeling good, but worn down to a small frazzle from cutting big cedars with my expensively repaired chainsaw, dragging them over piece-by-piece to construct a tasteful aspiring beaver dam.  Made all the feedstore, thrift store, grocery store and dollar store stops grinning like a possum, joking with the store clerks.  Bought a can of Chinese boot wax and asked the clerk whether he could tell it from Shinola, which brought a blank look.

Even bought two packages of this for a buck each at Dollar Tree.  I’ve never seen the stuff before, but my thigh was itching something fierce from that non-black widow earlier.  I was feeling a strong urge to find a restroom and drop my pants for a looksee.

As a backup, in case whatever was going on down there was as full of drama as it felt, I picked up a tube of this, too, at a buck.

But I’ve digressed again.

On the way out of Dodge I swung by the Boys Ranch Thrift Store, second to the last stop.  Not much of interest there except a shopping cart full of hardback books with a sign, “Free Books”.  I nosed around, popped open an anthology, A Treasure of the Familiar.  It opened to “Barbara Allen“, which I haven’t thought of in half-a-century.  Walked out singing to myself, trying to remember the words to “Barbara Allen“, putting the first few stanza together.  Sang it a mile down the road to the dog-catcher thrift store, debating with myself whether to go inside, or just head home.

In the parking lot a joyful sight grabbed me.

The finest off-road vehicle I’ve ever owned was a 1986 Montero.  Thousands of giddy miles up and down mountains, desert and canyons in my old Montero.  That truck would squeeze between any two trees the Universe could invent, climb anything, go through hip-deep water.  But when you got it stuck, it was for-sure, lead-pipe cinch, STUCK.

So I left that place singing “Barbara Allen” at the top of my lungs, pretending Little Red was my old Montero, remembering and flying low to the ground.

Stopped in to drop off a few bags of feed at Gale’s, needing to lift something to bring myself down, but even after unloading a few hundred pounds of sacks, still singing, still flying.

Middling good day, it was.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Thrift Stores, Trucks

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Salt Cedar Latillas for Erosion Control

Posted on May 14, 2012 by | 2 comments

During the toughest times of the post-Y2K years the blessing I appreciated most, but enjoyed least was cutting salt cedar in the bosques, trimming it,and selling it as latillas off some busy intersection in Albuquerque.  The best bosques weren’t accessible by vehicle, were loaded with ticks, and all the bosques on the Rio Grande are home to more rattlesnakes than live in the rest of New Mexico combined.

But when nothing else was working, when they’d cut off the utilities because I couldn’t pay the bills, I’d hitch up Old Faithful, the pickup bed trailer, load the chainsaw and loppers, and head for the bottomlands for a couple of days.

The work was grueling.  Bundling them and pissanting them back to the trailer took forever and assured a person would have a dozen ticks fighting over every inch of skin, and avoiding Brother Rattler required lightning reflexes along with a wary eye.

Once I had a full trailer-load I’d bundle them, pack them down and find a busy street corner where I’d sell them for $10 per bundle.  Usually took all day, but I’d try to get back to Grants in time to reach the city offices, pay the utilities and have the power turned back on first thing the next day.

It’s a lot easier in Texas, though I doubt there’s any market for them.  Never heard of anyone in Texas using latillas.  But salt cedar’s as water-hogging, damaging, invasive and pervasive here as in New Mexico.  Grows in the grader ditch between here and the State Ranch Road 385.

I can get a truckload of it in half-hour or so, and in a lot of ways I think it might be better than juniper for erosion control.  In that particular length of driveway between Gale’s front gate and his house the last runoff bypassed some of the earlier work and cut some new channels.  The salt cedar’s easier to obtain in this instance than juniper, so I’m shoring it up with salt cedar.

I’ve built four more rock and brush dams downstream from the first one in the creek to the east, hopefully to catch whatever washes out of the main one, come next runoff event.

Hmmm an aside.  A digression.  A parenthetical remark:

The new neighbor up the hill’s got him a spanking new machine to back up his track loader dozer and his rubber-tired backhoe/frontend loader. 

It’s a lopper of the magnum variety mounted on a Bobcat with tracks over the tires.  Air conditioned, everything computerized, even got a rock rake with it.  Only $57K.

I reckons I’ll just stick with my $8 thrift store Chinese repair job loppers.

Meanwhile, on a more exciting note.

I was telling my friend Rich on the phone about weirdness and anomalies I was getting on barycentric calculations for Old Sol positions.  While we were talking he went to the US Naval Observatory site and pulled up the ‘Read Me’ file for the MICA software. 

Rich, generous, amazing friend that he is, spang right-then-and-there ordered a copy for me.

Turns out they discovered an error for multiple calculations that didn’t exist for single calculations.  They’ve released a new version, 2.2.2, with the errors corrected, along with some other improvements I’d grumbled to myself it needed but suffered silently.

Only trouble I’ve found with it is that it won’t allow me to import my hundred-or-so custom locations.  I’m having to feed them in individually, longitude, latitude, elevations, each freaking one!  The Location Manager’s designed so I can’t even copy and paste them.

And when I luckily installed it on the old machine first, just in case, it over-wrote my old location manager.  Freaking erased it spang off the damned computer.

Damned pointee-headed astronomer bastards.  Rot in hell.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Country Life, Nature, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Science, Senior Citizens, Survival, Texas

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