I've been thinking about what it is to be lazy lately. The Republican nominees keep it in the news (laziness). People that don't have jobs MUST be lazy. What other possible explanation could there be? I saw a clip of Rick Santorum claiming his grandfather taught him that the key to a good life was hard work. "He worked in a coal mine until he was 70," Santorum said, standing relaxed on a stage in slick- soled shoes. I bet he shakes hands with hundreds of people a day. Has anybody felt a callous on any of his finger joints? I don't think standing around talking was what his coal-mining relations meant when they said that about working hard.
Now I can't speak for other unemployed people, but I'm pretty sure I'm not lazy. I wore through the finger of a pair of goat skin gloves last week. In the first four weeks of The Small Year I have shoveled a couple tons of silty sand, arranged a ton of large granite rip-rap, sawed down and hauled around multiple trees, dug roots, and pulled briars. I supervised a backhoe for three days. I've had fun with a sledge hammer breaking chunks of bricks and moving them in a wheel barrow. I moved 600 board feet of lumber, 30 sheets of corrugated steel, a big pile of fiber cement shingles and porcelain tile. I replaced the skylight in a roof and pressure washed 1500 square feet of concrete. And I bought and arranged the delivery of two 60 year old aircraft aluminum mobile homes to reuse and restore. (More about those another day.)
I also read all the job openings that are emailed to me from the automated searches I have set up. I'm not correctly qualified for any of them. I apply for the ones that I'm overqualified for, but I never hear back.
There's a trend now to romanticize the kind of life I'm living. I make all my own bread and jelly and I built my own tiny house. I'm ahead of the hipster curve. But I have to bake my bread on the front porch in a $45 toaster oven that I have to keep in a plastic bin under my front steps because there is no room for it in my house. I don't have a $2000 Thermador convection oven like I had in my house in Atlanta. I'm not avoiding store bought bread to mitigate my successful life that has removed me from the roots of survival. I'm doing it because I failed and now I'm reduced to this -- dividing the recipes on King Arthur Flour's website by 2/3 because if the loaf rises above the sides of the pan it will hit the electric elements in the top of my tiny oven.
I calculated how much it costs me to make my own bread. It's almost $2 a loaf. My dad makes money off investments and then uses it to buy bread direct at the Flowers Bakery that he drives by every day and gets it for $1.60 a loaf. I can't argue that my way is better. If I went to town to buy a loaf of bread it would cost me more like $5 a loaf because of the transportation cost, so it's still a good deal for me to make it, but if I had any kind of job making at least $10 an hour it would no longer be a cost savings to do stuff like bake and make jelly. A batch of mayhaw jelly represents over 20 hours of work. And you only get about 8 jars of jelly. And the jars and sugar come to $1.60 per jar. You have to do it because your time is really worthless and you have no other source of condiments or because it's your hobby. Both fine options. But let's be honest about which is which. I've done both the six-figure a year high tech job and the scraping by with my own muscles and sweat. Both are legitimate activities. But when somebody all educated and rich decides they want to do what the poor and uneducated have been doing forever because they think it's charming? Well, it's a bit insulting isn't it? You assume you can do their job? It's as bad as my old boss thinking I could do a secretary's job because, "It's not rocket science!" What an insult to secretaries! I AM a rocket scientist! It's not just because I'm GREAT at rocket science. (I'm not) It's because I'm NO GOOD at repetitive tasks with no big goals. You wouldn't ask a secretary to go out in the field to inspect sea walls and make a big spreadsheet to analyze them, why would you think I can keep track of other people's calendars and make their travel reservations? It's a completely different skill set!
I've actually seen people with a shovel that didn't know how to use it. "You know you can jump on it with both feet, right?" I've said. They're just poking at the dirt like they're serving ice cream or something. You gotta really put some force into it! Pine tree roots aren't going to move aside like the pralines in the ice cream. I approve of people learning these skills, I'm just not sure they know what they don't know. If I'm wrong about this then I'm just a giant baby, which is entirely possible. Maybe I thought building a house was really hard work because I'm a princess. Maybe to other people who also aren't conditioned to it it's not a daily struggle with dehydration, exhaustion, pain, and the nagging feeling that you aren't exactly sure how to do the next step.
This week there was an article on Slate titled Farmer Groupies and Chicken Coddlers. The author uses the term "unsettled DIYers" to describe people who try to live like me yet hold onto their modern views of animals as pets. You'll notice in my description of all my work there was no livestock involved. You know why? Because I'm not a naive romantic. I know how hard it is to kill a chicken. I'm not into it. My aunt raises chickens to eat. One year the day after Thanksgiving it was my job to keep my young niece in the house while my mama and aunt when out in the garden before dawn and slaughtered all the chickens. (It's easier to catch them when they're asleep) I felt like I had wasted my time trying to protect my niece by occupying her with pancakes when her beloved relatives came sauntering into the kitchen with their flannel nightgowns splattered in blood.
If I want to eat a rabbit I'll shoot a wild one. I haven't done it yet, but I also haven't bought any meat since that 12 pound turkey I got for $0.69/lb in December. (I still have some of it in my freezer) Unlike these modern-day farmer wannabes I'm not just playing at it. I'm poor. There is no way in hell I'm taking a sick chicken to the veterinarian. I can't even afford to go to the doctor myself. I don't have a garden either because the return on investment on a fence is so great. I did the math. It's cheaper to watch the sale ads online and buy groceries when they're marked down than to have a garden. Better to shoot animals that eat wild produce than fight with them over domesticated stuff.
One of the problems with working hard by yourself and trying to convey to others what it's like is that it's inconvenient to take your own picture. It breaks the flow of the job. I end up with a ton of pictures whenever I have to hire somebody to come do something and none of me doing the stuff I'm the most proud of. I have started editing video of the backhoe work done in January because I love watching heavy equipment work and maybe other people would like to see that too. I'll finish it if we ever get some bad weather to give me a break from working outside. Meanwhile here's something I did entirely on my phone while I was out in the yard, including upload. You'd think the iPhone would work with YouTube to deal with vertical videos better. I was just trying the automated options to put it on YouTube. Vimeo is still better, but it's a lot more steps to get the videos on there.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Northern Lights over Norwegian Lapland
Get ready for the weird Guardian UK sound effect at the beginning of this video. Then it's silent and beautiful.
Demographics by Personality
Google is consolidating their privacy policy and people are getting testy. I read a commentary on it that had a link to go see what Google thinks they know about you. This is the ad preferences they use to determine what ads you see. I don't know why this bothers people. I would much rather see ads relevant to my interests than 10 steps to a flat stomach.
I was reading through the list thinking Google's doing a pretty good job of targeting my ads, then I got to the demographic section and the scales fell from my eyes.
And people wonder why I'm such a misogynist. Well, I just don't have anything IN COMMON with women! Google knows!
For the record I do not care about Google's privacy policy. I find it convenient that all their stuff is well integrated and free. I know I don't get something for nothing. Also I am who I am and I'm not hiding it from Google or anybody else. It helps that I'm a recluse in the middle of nowhere. If I had to worry about real life people stalking me in a city I might do things differently.
The Defiant Marshmallow pointed out on Twitter that with this demographic setting I will always be up to date on the latest cures for erectile dysfunction. So I've got that going for me.
I was reading through the list thinking Google's doing a pretty good job of targeting my ads, then I got to the demographic section and the scales fell from my eyes.
For the record I do not care about Google's privacy policy. I find it convenient that all their stuff is well integrated and free. I know I don't get something for nothing. Also I am who I am and I'm not hiding it from Google or anybody else. It helps that I'm a recluse in the middle of nowhere. If I had to worry about real life people stalking me in a city I might do things differently.
The Defiant Marshmallow pointed out on Twitter that with this demographic setting I will always be up to date on the latest cures for erectile dysfunction. So I've got that going for me.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Space Weather and Slingshots
Today has been an interesting day to be a physicist because of the solar storm. I've been following links on Twitter all day to information about the coronal mass ejection and induced ground current and the promise of spectacular aurora tonight. If you live up North go look! Nothing to see here in the Deep South.
Dr. Ian O'Neill posted a story this afternoon about airlines diverting their polar routes. I asked him on Twitter if he found it interesting that the airline says the change is to reduce the risk they'll lose radio contact with the plane and don't mention the increased radiation to the passengers and crew. I sort of remember learning that it was the bad kind of radiation back in college, but they could have changed their mind since then. He sent me back this link to a great NOAA chart. Here's the relevant excerpt.
The first number column is Flux level of greater than or equal to 10 MeV particles (ions)*, the second is Number of events when flux level was met (number of storm days**) The *** note says *** High energy particle measurements (greater than 100 MeV) are a better indicator of radiation risk to passenger and crews. Pregnant women are particularly susceptible.
These units are confusing. Basically it's saying this measurement isn't really that good for judging harm to humans. They're measuring the less energetic particles or slower moving protons. Flux is just a complicated way of counting them. Dr. O'Neill confirmed my hunch that basically it's the protons that get you. The faster ones are worse and they aren't calculating a flux level for those, so it's hard to say how bad it really would be to fly in a plane over the North Pole right now. The radio interference is an easy call though. Go the long way.
A solar storm has many parts. It starts with a solar flare. The magnetic field lines in the corona of the sun sometimes get too close together and they have to rearrange themselves. (Like in Ghostbusters, when it comes to magnetism you can't cross the streams). This sudden rearrangement is a solar flare. First it shoots out x-rays at the speed of light. This is the stuff that interferes with the radio transmissions. If the spot on the sun is aimed at the earth those x-rays get here in about 8 minutes. (Remember not all the stuff the happens on the sun is headed our way. Most of it misses.) Next there is a blast of subatomic particles (protons, electrons, and heavy nuclei - sets of protons and neutrons with no electrons, typically it's the middle out of a Helium atom, also called an alpha particle) which get here later. That speed is not a constant, it can vary by the intensity of the solar flare. That's why this NOAA chart has the different ratings. It's like Joerg Sprave on the Slingshot Channel shooting different marbles into ballistic gel to see how deep they penetrate. It's the penetrating power of a particle that is a health concern. Think of a proton like a marble and an alpha particle (that heavy nuclei) like the rock. The marble goes deeper into the gel.
After the actual solar flare there can be another phenomenon, a coronal mass ejection. The corona is a plasma -- all the particles are free, not bound up in atoms with a set of protons, neutrons, and electrons. It's electrically neutral, so there are an even number to make atoms, but they aren't all arranged as hydrogen, helium, and so on. So when the magnetism of the corona rearranges itself (a solar flare) and kicks out a portion of the corona, it sends more subatomic particles flying. In the case of the coronal mass ejection yesterday they were going about 5 million miles per hour. That's slower than the second part of the solar flare, but still darn fast. It hit the atmosphere at 10 am my time.
So why is being bombarded by high energy protons especially bad for pregnant women? My understanding is that if a proton collides with the the exact right spot it could could cause a mutation in DNA. In a fetus the cells are rapidly replicating themselves, so it can magnify the damage. The faster the proton is going the more energy it has to do damage when it collides with something. (Subatomic particles are tiny. They can go right through you and come out the other side cleanly, like shooting a pellet gun through a chain link fence. Neutrons are notorious for doing this. Protons aren't quite as good at it. They have to be going pretty fast to get through your skin. Those heavy nuclei, they can't get through a piece of paper going their normal speed.) Of course the odds are extremely remote that a proton shot out of the sun would skitter along the magnetic field of the Earth to the hole at the North Pole, go through the outer layers of an airplane, through a woman's skin and tissue to collide precisely with an atom in her fetus and break the DNA. And then there is the remoteness that the resulting break would turn into a nasty tumor one day. But if you increase the number of particles and their speed (more intense radiation) then it's pretty obvious that the risk is increased. The same thing could happen in an adult and could cause them to get cancer, but fetuses are creating new cells much faster and could duplicate the damage rapidly. In 2006 scientists at Brookhaven National Labs announced that proton radiation is more dangerous than previously thought. I read this article after I wrote this paragraph, but it looks like I got it right. If you want to know more about the biological damage from protons and how they measured it, click that link. Here's another good one from 2009 describing an experiment to expose a faux astronaut to a beam of accelerated protons to simulate a solar flare.
I often have a hard time understanding the language of risk in medicine, but this one I get. I agree with O'Neill that a plane ride to view the aurora would be wonderful. I would totally do that. I don't care if I get irradiated. But if I was a pregnant woman? No way. Send me a link to the YouTube video after you land.
This post needs multimedia. Here's the slingshot video I mentioned.
Update: Here's a new article by O'Neill that gives great detail about aurora and the coronal mass ejection factors that affect it.
This article in IEEE Spectrum is really good too. Explains induced current in pipelines and other conductors and discusses some historical solar events.
Dr. Ian O'Neill posted a story this afternoon about airlines diverting their polar routes. I asked him on Twitter if he found it interesting that the airline says the change is to reduce the risk they'll lose radio contact with the plane and don't mention the increased radiation to the passengers and crew. I sort of remember learning that it was the bad kind of radiation back in college, but they could have changed their mind since then. He sent me back this link to a great NOAA chart. Here's the relevant excerpt.
The first number column is Flux level of greater than or equal to 10 MeV particles (ions)*, the second is Number of events when flux level was met (number of storm days**) The *** note says *** High energy particle measurements (greater than 100 MeV) are a better indicator of radiation risk to passenger and crews. Pregnant women are particularly susceptible.
These units are confusing. Basically it's saying this measurement isn't really that good for judging harm to humans. They're measuring the less energetic particles or slower moving protons. Flux is just a complicated way of counting them. Dr. O'Neill confirmed my hunch that basically it's the protons that get you. The faster ones are worse and they aren't calculating a flux level for those, so it's hard to say how bad it really would be to fly in a plane over the North Pole right now. The radio interference is an easy call though. Go the long way.
A solar storm has many parts. It starts with a solar flare. The magnetic field lines in the corona of the sun sometimes get too close together and they have to rearrange themselves. (Like in Ghostbusters, when it comes to magnetism you can't cross the streams). This sudden rearrangement is a solar flare. First it shoots out x-rays at the speed of light. This is the stuff that interferes with the radio transmissions. If the spot on the sun is aimed at the earth those x-rays get here in about 8 minutes. (Remember not all the stuff the happens on the sun is headed our way. Most of it misses.) Next there is a blast of subatomic particles (protons, electrons, and heavy nuclei - sets of protons and neutrons with no electrons, typically it's the middle out of a Helium atom, also called an alpha particle) which get here later. That speed is not a constant, it can vary by the intensity of the solar flare. That's why this NOAA chart has the different ratings. It's like Joerg Sprave on the Slingshot Channel shooting different marbles into ballistic gel to see how deep they penetrate. It's the penetrating power of a particle that is a health concern. Think of a proton like a marble and an alpha particle (that heavy nuclei) like the rock. The marble goes deeper into the gel.
After the actual solar flare there can be another phenomenon, a coronal mass ejection. The corona is a plasma -- all the particles are free, not bound up in atoms with a set of protons, neutrons, and electrons. It's electrically neutral, so there are an even number to make atoms, but they aren't all arranged as hydrogen, helium, and so on. So when the magnetism of the corona rearranges itself (a solar flare) and kicks out a portion of the corona, it sends more subatomic particles flying. In the case of the coronal mass ejection yesterday they were going about 5 million miles per hour. That's slower than the second part of the solar flare, but still darn fast. It hit the atmosphere at 10 am my time.
So why is being bombarded by high energy protons especially bad for pregnant women? My understanding is that if a proton collides with the the exact right spot it could could cause a mutation in DNA. In a fetus the cells are rapidly replicating themselves, so it can magnify the damage. The faster the proton is going the more energy it has to do damage when it collides with something. (Subatomic particles are tiny. They can go right through you and come out the other side cleanly, like shooting a pellet gun through a chain link fence. Neutrons are notorious for doing this. Protons aren't quite as good at it. They have to be going pretty fast to get through your skin. Those heavy nuclei, they can't get through a piece of paper going their normal speed.) Of course the odds are extremely remote that a proton shot out of the sun would skitter along the magnetic field of the Earth to the hole at the North Pole, go through the outer layers of an airplane, through a woman's skin and tissue to collide precisely with an atom in her fetus and break the DNA. And then there is the remoteness that the resulting break would turn into a nasty tumor one day. But if you increase the number of particles and their speed (more intense radiation) then it's pretty obvious that the risk is increased. The same thing could happen in an adult and could cause them to get cancer, but fetuses are creating new cells much faster and could duplicate the damage rapidly. In 2006 scientists at Brookhaven National Labs announced that proton radiation is more dangerous than previously thought. I read this article after I wrote this paragraph, but it looks like I got it right. If you want to know more about the biological damage from protons and how they measured it, click that link. Here's another good one from 2009 describing an experiment to expose a faux astronaut to a beam of accelerated protons to simulate a solar flare.
I often have a hard time understanding the language of risk in medicine, but this one I get. I agree with O'Neill that a plane ride to view the aurora would be wonderful. I would totally do that. I don't care if I get irradiated. But if I was a pregnant woman? No way. Send me a link to the YouTube video after you land.
This post needs multimedia. Here's the slingshot video I mentioned.
Update: Here's a new article by O'Neill that gives great detail about aurora and the coronal mass ejection factors that affect it.
This article in IEEE Spectrum is really good too. Explains induced current in pipelines and other conductors and discusses some historical solar events.
Earthquakes Induced by Fluid Injection, FAQ
Last August I wrote about the earthquake in Virginia and wondered if it had anything to do with crustal rebound or aquifer drawdown. That led me to learn about fracturing and deep well liquid injection related to the oil and gas industry. I'm still kind of weirded out by the idea that one commercial enterprise is allowed to do something in one spot that can affect entire regions. What's the point of having a government again?
The USGS just put a new Frequently Asked Question page on their website compiling all the fluid injection answers in one place. That will be handy for bloggers next time there's a weird earthquake. The answer to this question interested me particularly. They've had evidence since 1966 that that injecting wastewater into a deep well can cause an earthquake. My whole life they've known about this. They have evidence of all kinds of nasty things that can happen from drilling for oil and gas, like contaminating aquifers. But nobody thought maybe they should stop poking giant holes in the earth like some kind of voodoo doll?
The whole concept gives me a strange uneasy feeling. What are they doing about it?
That's it? They're assessing the hazard? Did it occur to anybody to just make them stop doing things that have vast unpleasant side effects? If the US had said, "Hold it right there!" in 1966 and invested in alternative energy research instead of letting the oil lobby run everything, imagine where we'd be now. They didn't even say "Figure out some other way to process the contaminated water." It was surface water right? Shoving it down into the crust of the earth kind of takes it out of the water cycle, no? Is that really a good idea? I mean, I am not delusional enough to think quantities like that are significant compared to the ocean, but it's just a nasty trend. I don't think it's ok for corporations to transfer geological resources like that. It seems wrong. We want this, we don't want that. Let's put this fossil fuel into the climate and take that water out. Who the hell do they think they are?!
I know some people get really worked up when a Democratic campaign manager in Arkansas comes home with his children to find his cat on the porch with his head bashed in and "LIBERAL" written in his fur with a marker. That's just one family and one cat. (And he wasn't even that liberal. They were just about the head to church.) With this injection business we're talking about something that could affect more than one STATE. It seems like more people would be mad at the oil companies about it. Even though I don't understand it I can recognize that the bulk of people only care about furry warm blooded things, and others not even those (the cat basher, for example). Apparently seeing the big picture and having an emotional connection to things like rocks and water makes me a genuine mutant. A worried mutant.
The USGS just put a new Frequently Asked Question page on their website compiling all the fluid injection answers in one place. That will be handy for bloggers next time there's a weird earthquake. The answer to this question interested me particularly. They've had evidence since 1966 that that injecting wastewater into a deep well can cause an earthquake. My whole life they've known about this. They have evidence of all kinds of nasty things that can happen from drilling for oil and gas, like contaminating aquifers. But nobody thought maybe they should stop poking giant holes in the earth like some kind of voodoo doll?
The whole concept gives me a strange uneasy feeling. What are they doing about it?
USGS supports both internal and external (university-based) research on the causes of induced earthquakes. This research has a focus on injection-induced earthquakes, both from wastewater disposal and from enhanced geothermal technologies. USGS and its university partners have also deployed seismometers at sites of known or possible injection-induced earthquakes in Arkansas, southern Colorado, Oklahoma and Ohio. The USGS is also providing advice to the Environmental Protection Agency about how to assess the earthquake hazard associated with wastewater injection activities at Class II disposal wells.
That's it? They're assessing the hazard? Did it occur to anybody to just make them stop doing things that have vast unpleasant side effects? If the US had said, "Hold it right there!" in 1966 and invested in alternative energy research instead of letting the oil lobby run everything, imagine where we'd be now. They didn't even say "Figure out some other way to process the contaminated water." It was surface water right? Shoving it down into the crust of the earth kind of takes it out of the water cycle, no? Is that really a good idea? I mean, I am not delusional enough to think quantities like that are significant compared to the ocean, but it's just a nasty trend. I don't think it's ok for corporations to transfer geological resources like that. It seems wrong. We want this, we don't want that. Let's put this fossil fuel into the climate and take that water out. Who the hell do they think they are?!I know some people get really worked up when a Democratic campaign manager in Arkansas comes home with his children to find his cat on the porch with his head bashed in and "LIBERAL" written in his fur with a marker. That's just one family and one cat. (And he wasn't even that liberal. They were just about the head to church.) With this injection business we're talking about something that could affect more than one STATE. It seems like more people would be mad at the oil companies about it. Even though I don't understand it I can recognize that the bulk of people only care about furry warm blooded things, and others not even those (the cat basher, for example). Apparently seeing the big picture and having an emotional connection to things like rocks and water makes me a genuine mutant. A worried mutant.
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