http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/japan-pm-seeks-overseas-fukushima-leak-20484958
At least the ones past the age of reproduction.
Watch for the ads appearing on Craigslist: Employment Opportunity! Temporary positions in exotic environment. Rapid advancement for team players. Apply now.
Posted in 2013, Adventure, America
Tagged employment opportunity, environment, Human Behavior, humor, Japan, Life, lifestyle, nuclear power plant leak, society, sociology, survival, technology
Three wooden toothpicks under the hatband forward of the feather leaning backward scares the hell out of them
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
During those upsy-downsey times when I was trying to squeeze out a living playing blackjack I picked my casino carefully. Only casinos offering the surrender option allows the player to throw out the blackjack books and stack the table and the odds in his own favor. It’s a cause for black looks and hatred from the other players, but deep suspicion on the part of casino security and pit bosses.
Surrender doesn’t exist in a lot of gambling joints. It allows players, once they see both their cards and one of the dealer cards, to take back half his bet and bow out of the hand. I’d spent a lot of time on the computer figuring out how to turn this into a slight, but significant bending back the fingers of the house advantage.
One day I was doing fairly well on third base at the Santa Ana Star Casino. I was wearing the high roller, and I always kept a few toothpicks in the hatband ahead of the feather for easy access during moments of contemplation.
My splitting 10s and not splitting aces at times, not at other times, doubling down sometimes, surrendering others, was working despite the fact it defied the traditions, superstitions and religions of blackjack.
I’d been there an hour or two when the pit boss came over standing beside me, watching. At one point he bent across the partition during a hand, close to my head. I thought he was smelling my high roller. But a few minutes later two security men came and stood with him, watching.
A couple of hands later two more security folks came and stood behind me watching the play. I didn’t change my strategy, kept getting as much money on the table as I could when the advantage was my way, surrendering when it wasn’t.
When the dealer finished the shoe the pit boss leaned over to me and said, “Would you mind taking your hat off please?”
I reached up and pulled it off, thinking he was admiring my high roller. He bent over and squinted, along with the four security guards. I handed him the hat and he showed it around, feather side up. They all squinted. Then one of the guards carefully took one of the toothpicks out of the band.
“They’re just toothpicks!” He handed it around so they all could confirm it.
He handed my high roller back to me and shrugged to the security men. “You can go.” Then he turned back to me. “Why do you keep toothpicks in your hatband?”
By this time I’d caught onto their suspicions and concerns. I was barely able to restrain myself, keep my humor dry. “Mojo.”
“What?”
“Mojo. Three toothpicks brings me paired 10s and more blackjacks.”
Sneering, he shrugged and walked away. Surrendered and never knew it.
Old Jules
Posted in 2000's, America, Gambling
Tagged blackjack, casino, culture, gambling, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, psychology, society, sociology, technology
Hi Readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
Amazing isn’t it? In all human history only one person has ever undeniably and inescapably predicted the future.
Predicted the tanks, machine guns, the mustard gas shells of WWI. Predicted the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, the Cold War of Mutually Assured Destruction. Predicted Agent Orange, DDT, sheep cloning, genetic engineering of agricultural products. Biological warfare. Thalidomide babies.
And who was it? Nostradamus? Nah. He never predicted anything anyone could understand.
The prophetess was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Married poet Percy Shelley even though he was married to another woman. Stayed married to him long enough so’s the wife #1 suicided, so she had him all to herself.
And in 1817 wrote the novel, Frankenstein. The book that understood what would happen when you turned human beings loose on something as dangerous as science.
Amazing. Predicted the Doctor Frankenstein hidden inside the human psyche would emerge when egomaniac academians piddle around in scientific laboratories.
Sarcastic Science
Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
In her complacent ministry of fear,
How we propose to get away from here
When she has made things so we have to go
Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
To some star off there, say, a half light-year
Through temperature of absolute zero?
Why wait for Science to supply the how
When any amateur can tell it now?
The way to go away should be the same
As fifty million years ago we came—
If anyone remembers how that was
I have a theory, but it hardly does.
Robert Frost
Amazing.
Old Jules
Tagged Books, culture, Education, History, Human Behavior, humor, philosophy, poems, science, society, sociology, technology
2013 Tooth Fairy with Radioactivity Sniffer Dog
Hi readers.
If you’re like me you probably wonder why the Tooth Fairy changed so much since we were kids. It was the Baby Tooth Survey did it. Here’s what happened:
When the Commandant of the National Tooth Fairy Regiment died of cancer in 1963 a lot of traitorous whining wimps in Missouri started crying about the fact the US Government was dropping hydrogen bombs on itself to pre-emptively protect itself in case someone else should drop nukes on Nevada and New Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Tooth_Survey
The Baby Tooth Survey was initiated by the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information in conjunction with Saint Louis University and the Washington University School of Dental Medicine as a means of determining the effects of nuclear fallout in the human anatomy by examining the levels of radioactive material absorbed into the deciduous teeth of children.
Founded by the husband and wife team of physicians Eric and Louise Reiss, along with other scientists such as Barry Commoner, the research focused on detecting the presence of strontium-90, a cancer-causing radioactive isotope created by the more than 400 atomic tests conducted above ground that is absorbed from water and dairy products into the bones and teeth given its chemical similarity to calcium. The team sent collection forms to schools in the St. Louis, Missouri area, hoping to gather 50,000 teeth each year.[1] Ultimately, the project collected over 300,000 teeth from children of various ages before the project was ended in 1970.
Preliminary results published by the team in the November 24, 1961, edition of the journal Science showed that levels of strontium 90 in children had risen steadily in children born in the 1950s, with those born later showing the most increased levels.[2] The results of a more comprehensive study of the elements found in the teeth collected showed that children born after 1963 had levels of strontium 90 in their baby teeth that was 50 times higher than that found in children born before the advent of large-scale atomic testing. The findings helped convince U.S. President John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, which ended the above-ground nuclear weapons testing that placed the greatest amounts of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere.[3]
After that things seemed to settle down okay for a while. Then came Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. Tooth Fairies were dying off like flies. Gums rotting away, skin peeling off them like overcoats.
Fact is, we almost lost the whole kaboodle of Tooth Fairies when the Japanese started dumping all the radioactivity they could scrape together and sending it into the atmosphere headed for Alaska, California, Washington and Oregon. Pumping water hotter than a two-dollar pistol into the Pacific Ocean.
Tooth Fairy recruitment programs went to zilch. Finding new Tooth Fairies to replace the ones getting the blind staggers was tougher than the Mother Church trying to find women willing to be nuns.
Luckily, the US Military and the National Academy of Multi-Layered Police Forces, comprising about half the US population, came to the rescue. Provided pistols to be held to the temples of potential Tooth Fairies who were trying to take French leave from the job. But to compensate, providing body armor and radioactivity sniffing dogs to help the ones still able bodied enough to slip into a bedroom at night and reach under a pillow for a tooth stay alive longer.
Saved again by the police and the US military and mercenary forces.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Current Issues, Education, Government, History, Human Behavior, Police, Science, US Army
Tagged baby teeth, Chernobyl, culture, dental, Education, environment, Health, History, Human Behavior, humor, Japan nuclear, military, nuclear, politics, psychology, science, society, sociology, technology, teeth, Tooth Fairy, tooth survey, US Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
During the 1950s wisdom used to bunch itself up and spread itself around at the local barber shops. That’s where I first learned God was going to destroy us the way He did the Tower of Babel and for the same reasons. The USSR had just put Sputnik 1 into orbit. Too damned high in the sky to be tolerated by God.
That barber shop was also where I first learned all this uproar about radiation was a damned Communist lie intended to scare everyone out of their wits. The proof of it was just around the corner of the square at the shoe store. They had a machine over there where you could put your foot in and they’d shine radiation on it so’s you could look right through your shoes at the bones of your feet.
Anyone dying from it? Anyone getting sick? Heck no!
That shoe store had it all over J.C. Penny Company because of that machine. We kids would go in there and they’d let us look at our feet anytime we wanted to. And when shoes were to be bought the salesman could look through the viewer on one side, mama look through it on the other, and the kid through the third. The salesman could then point with the pointer that the shoe wasn’t squeezing the toes, or was, etc. Everyone loved that machine.
But government interference ruined it, same as it ruins everything else. They made them take that machine out of there so nobody could look at his feet anymore.
Here’s what the sissie fuddyduddies say was the reason:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope
“Although most of the dose was directed at the feet, a substantial amount would scatter or leak in all directions. Shielding materials were sometimes displaced to improve image quality, to make the machine lighter, or out of carelessness, and this aggravated the leakage. The resulting whole-body dose may have been hazardous to the salesmen, who were chronically exposed, and to children, who are about twice as radiosensitive as adults.[7] Monitoring of American salespersons found dose rates at pelvis height of up to 95 R/week, with an average of 7.1 R/week.[5] (Up to ~50 mSv/yr, avg ~3.7 mSv/yr effective dose)[5] A 2007 paper suggested that even higher doses of 0.5 Sv/yr were plausible.[8] The most widely accepted model of radiation-induced cancer posits that the incidence of cancers due to ionizing radiation increases linearly with effective (i.e. whole-body) dose at a rate of 5.5% per Sv.[9]
“Years or decades may elapse between radiation exposure and a related occurrence of cancer, and no follow-up studies of customers can be performed for lack of records. Without such an epidemiological study, it is impossible to conclude whether this machine actually caused any harm to customers.[5] Three shoe salespersons have been identified with rare conditions that might be associated with their chronic occupational exposure: a severe radiation burn requiring amputation in 1950,[10] a case of dermatitis with ulceration in 1957,[11] and a case of basal cell carcinoma of the sole in 2004.[8]”
Those guys sharing their wisdom at the barber shops are mostly all dead now. I’m guessing if a person wants to get smart in Portales he has to go to a hair stylist. Can’t help wondering what they’re talking about in those places.
Old Jules
Posted in 1950's, America, Government, History, Human Behavior, Nature, Portales, Science, Senior Citizens
Tagged cancer, carcinoma, culture, Education, environment, Health, History, Human Behavior, humor, Nature, radiation, science, shoe fitting xray, society, sociology, sputnik, technology, xray
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Tom, the retired USAF colonel who occupied the office next to me in the bomb shelter of the old National Guard HQ in Santa Fe, NM, should have known a lot about radioactivity. He spent the entire Cuban Missile Crisis camped under the wing of his B-47 bomber. Had all kinds of tales about the flight maneuvers a pilot had to perform to drop a hydrogen bomb and come away in one piece.
The New Mexico Emergency Planning and Management Bureau [EMPAC] was all housed in that bomb shelter. Most of the section chiefs were retired colonels, except my humble self, and Louis, head of Radiation Control. When nothing was going on there’d always be a few of us gathered in one office or another telling and listening to interesting experiences in our varied pasts.
So when Tom found his travel schedule was going to coincide with the one-day-per-year the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb was detonated allowed visitors, we all envied him. He was gone a week travelling all over the State, and a few days after he returned several of us gathered in his office to hear all about it.
Naturally there’d been a nice dog and pony show at an old ranch house from the time a mile or so away, now converted to oversight center. Then, off to ground zero.
Tom described how it was all bare sand and soil, how they’d scraped away all the green glass that used to cover the spot. How visitors were warned not to pick up any of that green glass if they should find a piece.
So when his glance downward showed him a piece of that green glass peeking out of the sand near his foot, of course he had to tie his shoe. Slipped it into his pocket. Gave us all a sly smile when he pulled it out and held it in his palm.
Wow! A piece of green glass from the first nuclear detonation on earth! We all wanted to hold it. Passed it around, all except Louis. Our Rad Control section head. He stepped back a pace when his turn came to hold it.
“I’d like to put an instrument on that.” Louis had access to plenty of instruments, had more than a thousand of them spotted all over New Mexico. Part of the mission of his section was going around changing the batteries on those Geiger Counters regularly.
He was out the door and back while the rest of us waited in mild curiosity. The glass was back on Tom’s desk and Louis clicked the power switch. Didn’t actually have to get too near with the probe to peg the needle. Didn’t have to put on the headset to hear the buzz. We all heard it.
Louis had a straight shot at the doorway and he was first out. Followed closely by everyone but Tom. He just sat staring at that piece of green glass. Probably wondering what the hell to do with it.
I’ve always wanted to visit the Trinity Site, but I never got around to it. Even when I was living several years just up the road from it.
Old Jules
Posted in 1940's, 1990's, Adventure, America, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Gambling, Government, History, Human Behavior, Military, New Mexico, NM, Science
Tagged atomic bomb, civil defense, culture, Education, geiger counter, Human Behavior, humor, Manhattan Project, Nature, nuclear, nuclear weapon, psychology, radiation, radioactivity, science, society, sociology, technology, trinity site
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
A guy over in Rock Springs built this platform to fit into the hitch receiver out of scrap iron for me. Another guy threw in the junk toolbox and bolted it into the platform. Cost for the whole shooting match was too insignificant to believe.
And once I had it I could carry an el cheapo 2.5 ton floor jack to ease my concerns about future blowouts. But carrying that floor jack home in there showed me the hitch receiver doesn’t have the moxie to keep the thing straight and level. By the time I got home it was listing a few inches on the side the floor jack was riding.
I studied on it for a day trying to think of every possible solution. I had a set of tiedown turnbuckles and clamps from a roof rack carrier I knew someday I’d find a use for.
Voila!
Ran cables across the top of the bumper and attached them to the RV frame. Pulled that mama back up level with the bumper slicker than greased owl-scat.
One of the nice things about this thing is that I can trailer it, along with other containers when I want to pull a trailer, leave the trailer behind and put this into the hitch receiver when I want to slum and go spartan.
And always have a floor jack along to do the heavy lifting.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, America, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Survival, Transportation, Trucks, White Trash Repairs
Tagged cargo carrier, country life, floor jack, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, rv, senior citizens, survival, technology, tire changing
Hi readers. Thanks for the visit.
Every five-year-old knows you can create an electromagnetic field by wrapping a copper coil around a soft-iron rod and introducing a current. But along about my 67th-or-so tip around the sun I began wondering what would happen if you wrapped a copper rod with a soft-iron wire and introduced a permanent magnet to the wire. Surely, I figured, it would create a field of some sort, not necessarily an electric one, but something.
I tripped around the web trying to find out what people have found it does, didn’t find anything. Asked my more smart-alec friends, and they only shrugged.
Finally I decided if I want to know, I’d have to try it hands-on.
The front part of the rod is as described. The back part with the larger coil is iron, more likely steel wire with an anodized copper coating. Figured to try it both ways, the anamagnetic coating on the copper coated wire allowing it to simulate ‘insulation’ between the wraps of wire.
Well, friends and neighbors, I don’t know what all that damned thing does. Though I’m getting some fair indications of a couple of unlikely things it seems to do. Along with it seeming to attract one-hell-of-a-lot of a particular kind of bug.
But their ain’t any point for me to make any claims about it one way or the t’other. Some of you already know so much you’d already know it doesn’t do what it seems to. And others wouldn’t, but would know it doesn’t put any food on the table.
So instead of me telling you what I think it does, I’m going to suggest if you’re interested you give it a try. And listen really carefully with your eyes, ears, and complete attention to what goes on around you when you do it.
Meanwhile, this damned thing’s going with me, where ever I might go for a while. Hasn’t entirely satisfied me I know everything I want to know about it.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Nature, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Science, Senior Citizens, White Trash Repairs
Tagged culture, Education, environment, Life, lifestyle, Nature, science, society, sociology, technology
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
My friend Rich was telling me on the phone yesterday the “Hey! Looky over there!” technique for dealing with nuclear meltdowns is coming apart at the seams:
http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/07/22/38294/fukushima-nuclear-plant-leaking-radioactive-water/
“We are very sorry for causing concerns. We have made efforts not to cause any leak to the outside, but we might have failed to do so,” he said.
Ono said the radioactive elements detected in water samples are believed to largely come from initial leaks that have remained since earlier in the crisis. He said the leak has stayed near the plant inside the bay, and officials believe very little has spread further into the Pacific Ocean.
Marine biologists have warned that the radioactive water may be leaking continuously into the sea from the underground, citing high radioactivity in fish samples taken near the plant.
Most fish and seafood from along the Fukushima coast are barred from domestic markets and exports.”
Other articles are finally describing the levels of radioactivity in the steam one of the plants has been producing since the day one. Luckily for Japan the prevailing winds will mostly take that cesium and whatnot into US and Canadian waters and over Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. And the radioactive fish migrations down the California and Mexican coasts.
Got me thinking about the US love affair with Japan that’s been sneaking off to cheap motels and consumating itself in the back seats of limosines for the past half-century following their enthusiastic surrender.
Which got me thinking about love affairs in general, and how they tend to end. [So Long, and Thanks for all the Valentines https://sofarfromheaven.com/romance/] That’s the source for the ‘little Japanese’ thing.
A few years ago there was a big flap about whether one of the US presidents ought to apologize to Japan for dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasakaki. The logic being that Japan wasn’t quite ready to surrender yet, and that dropping those bombs forced them to quit fighting prematurely. I don’t know whether one of the US Chief Executives apologized, or didn’t.
But that’s the sort of thing happens all the time in love affairs when they begin going stale. Next thing you know something else will come along to stale things some more. Such as the Japanese sending cesium into the sky so’s the wind can take it to Seattle and Portland.
Japan, of course, could send us a lot of valentines or roses to make things better, maybe. Or maybe they could just admit what they’re doing and apologize. They could actually say, “Hey! Lookee over here! We shore could use a little help, advice and friendly ideas. From anyone who has some. We loves you Americans and everything else being equal, like you better not glowing in the dark.”
Or maybe it’s just time to lay aside that romance and tell the Japanese, “So long and thanks for all the valentines.”
Old Jules
Posted in 1940's, 2013, America, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships
Tagged culture, fukashima, Human Behavior, humor, Life, meltdown, nuclear, philosophy, politics, romance, society, sociology, technology
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I’ve been asking a lot of questions lately, learning a lot, some of which might be false, but I learned it anyway. Now that I’ve blown out enough tires on two different RVs to satisfy my curiosity I’m willing to try to apply some of it. Even though it robs my macho because of not knowing it before when I knew all manner of things.
First off, there’s the thing about tires. They ain’t as good as they used to be. Old guy behind the counter at the tire store and I conversed about it a while when we shared mutual memories of having bought junkyard tires and run them until they were down to the threads. Lots of them, and neither of us remembered much in the way of blowouts.
But now the DOT mandates they date those tires. And as a consequence, he opines they blow just about when the DOT predicted they would. The DOT gave the tire industry a leg up against criticism by providing them an “I told you so!” escape and they made great engineering use of it. Supposition, but possumly true.
Secondly, another old guy pointed out all the tires I’ve blown were right-rear dooleys. Beginning with inside ones. He opined that what I’m doing is running with that right rear wheel too near the pavement edge, maybe off it, forcing the inside-rear tire to carry all the weight. Which makes a hell of a lot of sense.
I’d been mulling over the fact every blowout I’ve had happened on highway RR479 north bound and wondering at the coincidence. It’s a fairly good Texas Ranch Road with a lot of hills and curves. Might just be I’ve been letting it drift, one wheel off the pavement instead of hugging the centerline.
Thirdly, I’ve also satisfied my curiosity about whether I’m interested in arm-wrestling lug nuts put on with impact drivers. Even with a 5 foot cheater, even with a T-bar after they’re loose, I was having to take breaks between lugs. And after I put them back on and tightened them, I’d stop a few miles down the road to check, they’d always be loose enough to require a little more tight with the bar. Half-dozen times between here and Kerrville. If an impact tool’s able to take care of just that problem of reality and confidence, it’s worth the price of admission.
[Debating with myself here, can’t recall whether 4th is spelled, Fourth, or Forth – what-the-hell]
Next: Careful examination of the half-inch drive corded hammer-drill suggests it might function as an impact tool, but it’s going to need a half-inch adapter between the drill-chuck and male socket whatchallit. If it works it’s going to be a lot cheaper than an off the shelf impact tool, and it doesn’t have a battery to go kerplunk.
Next: That trim above the right-rear wheel well [see pic] was destroyed when the tire blew. No way that piece of trim is going to jump out of the Universe at me to be replaced, so I’m going to have to find a way to innovate. Not entirely for aesthetics, but some places are pickypickypicky wanting to see pics of the rig before they’ll consider a person who wants to clean up their trash, mow their grass, listen to complaints of RV owners. In exchange for a pad with hookups, etc.
Last, I’ve been troubled because my ALT gauge doesn’t tell me squat about whether the alternator’s working or not. Couldn’t figure why. A guy on one of the vintage RV groups answered my question about it by telling me he had the same problem. Bought a cheap digital gadget plugs into the lighter socket. I got one yesterday and hot diggety damn. Yes, HOT diggety damn! You heard me right.
But I’ve digressed. The crux of it all is that, after having been provided all this new stuff to learn, I have to live long enough to use it, damn me if I don’t. Got myself a karmic debt on my Credit Card with an obligation I might carry spang into my next lifetime if I kick before using it.
So now, instead of just having to live long enough to pay back Keith and Rich for the lifesaving loans to get the RVs, instead of just having to outlive the damned cats, I’ve got to spend the remainder of my life changing blown tires and unscrewing pesky lug nuts.
Sheeze.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, America, Education, Government, History, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Politics, Senior Citizens, Spirituality, Texas, Transportation, Trucks
Tagged country life, DOT, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, Reflections, rv, senior citizens, survival, technology, texas, thoughts, tires
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
So Far From Heaven 