Spasms of Accommodation

Puttin' Out Fires

2012-05-15T12:38:00.000-04:00

I forgot to put this video on my blog. It's old news now. The stumps burned for 6 days but they are out now and the wiregrass is green already.

Not Qualified to Rate the Internet

2012-05-09T17:36:00.001-04:00

I have reached a new low. Last August I applied for a job as an internet rater for Lionbridge. It sounded like a good gig for me. Stay home, look at the internet all day, form opinions, get paid! It's what I was doing already, only for money!

I got an email a few weeks ago saying they had openings. There was an Excel spreadsheet attached asking how many friends I had on different social networking sites. I returned that and got an email with non-disclosure agreements and explanation that the job is for 10 hours a week at $13.50/hr as a 1099 contractor. I'd have to pay self-employment tax on all of it. It was a terrible contract. I never would have signed it back in the '90s when I made almost 5 times that much as a 1099 contractor. Required to use Firefox. Gross. But whatever, times have changed, so I agreed to it and sent it back. Next step is a 5 day, two part test. They send you a 160 page set of Guidelines to study and use to take the test. Most people take 8 to 10 hours to take this test. I read the questions on the first part, read the guidelines, studied it closely. Took my iPad to bed with the PDF of the Guidelines on it and read the whole thing through. Next day went through the questions again and turned in my answers. I passed. I got to go to the next part.

I kind of consistently flunked the sample test every time I took it. But they showed the right answers and I tried to get my head around their logic. I watched some training videos with a man leading a webinar. I started to realize that all of this was designed by and for a very low common denominator. They use Wikipedia as the last word in all research. He said stuff that was just wrong, like, "Dali, the famous architect, has a museum in Florida that would be internationally vital." What? Dali wasn't an architect, not ever, not even. He was an artist. He didn't DESIGN the museum. It's just where some rich woman bought a lot of his work and hung it on the wall in the same place. I realized that I was up against the same old rocket scientist problem.

Rocket scientists are not just rocket scientists because they're GREAT at rocket science. It's because they can't do the stuff that's supposed to be so easy that just any dope can do it.

Even my step-sister in South Carolina sent me the Huffington Post article that is being relinked all over the place saying there are 5,057 janitors with PhDs. I'd like to know the SUBJECT of their PhD. They give PhDs in some pretty useless shit. Janitoring is pretty good work for an intellectual, though. I used to be the janitor when I shared a common lobby, bathrooms and kitchen space with a mechanical engineering firm. Since I was the only woman I decided it was easier to have it be my job to wipe their piss off the floor instead of just moaning about it every day. I got a break on my rent to clean the office once a week, plus whenever the filth bothered me. It was fine because I could use the cleaners that don't have chemicals I don't like. I'm good at cleaning. I notice dirt and want it gone. But I couldn't be a normal janitor that has to use terrible toxic cleaners.

What's a bad job for an intellectual is one where the people in charge are less competent than you and your job is to tell them they're wrong. I'm not thinking of just myself here, but one of my friends with a PhD in usability research who has been let go from some of the same companies I have. He even got an "insubordination" reason on one termination the day after he told the CEO of an internet startup, "You know what? Barbara was right." It's the Intellectual Dilemma, as illustrated below.

I kind of like the original article better than the HuffPo one. It has a table of how many people in different jobs have college degrees. I think I am better suited to be a carpenter (7% have degrees) than a customer service rep (22% have degrees). I've lost a job as a customer service rep. But I'm living in a house I carpentered. I think that says something. Kind of says the same thing I said two blogs ago, it's not HAVING a degree that matters as much as WHAT degree and from WHERE. And how well can you compromise your standards to keep your job?

Only YOU can prevent wildfires!

2012-05-08T21:54:00.005-04:00

So you know these PSAs for the US Forest Service with Sam Elliot doing the tag line at the end? Whenever I find myself trying to put out a wildfire that line just plays over and over in my head. Only YOU... WHACK! WHACK! can prevent... WHACK WHACK wildfires!

It's quite motivational, even if it is ironic (the ads imply people start fires, not put them out.) It's like Sam Elliot is personally encouraging me to stop this fire from burning all the way to Florida.

But yesterday the fire was too much. "Only You" was not going to rake out a fire almost a mile around. The Georgia Forestry Commission had to come with machinery and plow a line around the fire to contain it.

We had some big thunderstorms on Sunday and about 1/4" of rain. Monday afternoon about 5:00 pm lightning struck a full grown longleaf pine tree, maybe 80 feet tall or better. It started a fire at the base of the tree and started the top of the tree burning in the middle. I believe this tree had red heart disease, a fungal condition that makes them have a soft center. Red cockaded woodpeckers depend on this for ease of nest cavity excavation. So we don't think of it as a problem. But it was yesterday.

Looks like a soft chewy center that burned well

The decapitated tree that started the fire.

The strike went into the ground here. Often this happens and no fire occurs.
Not sure if this one was from the fire up high dropping fiery cinders on the ground
or if this was a second source.

Here's the top of the tree after if fell. Some of it is lodged in nearby trees.

Here you can see the inside of the tree up high and the corresponding chunks on the ground that came out

The tree on fire was about half a mile from the ancestral home where I was putting the wheels back on the farm truck. I heard the strike, but didn't know it was on our place. I had a little visit with my mama and my old college roommate called my cell phone. I only talk to her about once every 6 months so we just chatted away until my phone was at 20% battery level. Then I told her I had to go and I headed home. I saw smoke as I turned the corner onto the highway. It could be from somewhere else. Lots of people burn stuff around here. But when I got into my driveway I could see flames. I was shaking with adrenaline when I called my mother on my dying cell phone and asked her to call the Forest Service and then get in the truck and go see what was happening on her side of the fire.

I rushed into the house and took off the nylon field britches I was wearing and put on heavy cotton jeans. I put on a full brimmed hat, socks and hiking shoes, slapped on my safety glasses and went to get gloves and a rake. While I was getting ready I called more people to see if anybody could come help me. My aunt Jano said she'd come. I was still shaking, but by the time I got all geared up I was pretty calm. I started putting out fire at about 6:30. "Only YOU can prevent wildfires."

After I was red faced and breathless my aunt got here. First thing she said was, "We need to call the Forestry Service." I explained that Mama should have done that and my phone battery was dead, but she should call them to be sure they were coming. I hooked hoses together to cool a very hot line of fire that was heading towards my shed. While I was hosing the fire I heard a loud WHOOMP and saw my power transformer pole lurch violently. Crap. No power, no pump, no more water. Jano finished on the phone and headed off with her rake across the burned firelane to the other side of the fire to see if she could stop it crossing the next fire lane.

Looking up the power line right of way from my transformer up towards the road.

Snag down on the power lines. We like dead trees in the woods for the woodpeckers.
Often the power company cuts them when they are close to the lines.
It's been a few years since they cleared my right of way.

That tree is STILL on fire. I don't mean in this picture,
I mean as I'm writing this over 24 hours after I took this picture.
It's not on the power lines anymore though.

I put down the hose and ran in the house and turned off the computers and switched off the beeping uninterruptible power supply on my network equipment and shut down my main computer. I grabbed my phone charger out of the wall, snatched all the plugs out of the UPS running my computers and plugged in the phone charger and phone. Then I raced back outside to commence whacking fire with the rake. "Only YOU can prevent wildfires."

The way that works is to get on the already burned side of the fire and whack out the advancing line with the flat side of the rake. Glowing pine straw was warming up my pants and shoes. The briars were tugging at the rake. I was breathing too much hot smoke. Pine smoke has a distinct smell. It's kind of a good smell. I'm not going to say it's good for you, but I'm pretty sure it's got antibiotic properties. At any rate it's not nearly as bad for you as a house on fire with who knows what kind of nasty chemical byproducts. Also, I fully endorse New Balance Country Walkers all leather waterproof shoes for this kind of emergency.

I was putting out a little 20 foot line of fire by my driveway for a second time when the Forestry Commission truck got here. It is a big impressive truck.

I showed him where he could park to unload his machine, a bulldozer fitted with a V shaped blade and a disc plow behind. He asked me what I wanted him to do. He said they had instructions to never plow here. There was a very strongly worded letter on the wall of his office from my uncle to that effect. I told him that since my uncle died about 5 years ago he could disregard that. Nobody is left but us old ladies and our bulldozer doesn't run anymore. So he got on the machine and started turning native groundcover into bare dirt in a 8 foot wide path all the way around that fire.

Georgia Forestry Service bulldozer and disc plow

Was woods, now it's dirt.

I put the last of the fire out behind my shed. Then I was able to relax enough to go in the house and see if I had enough charge on the phone to call the power company and take some pictures. Indeed I did.

The Forestry Service man finished and loaded up about the time the power company man got here. It was getting pretty dark. He had to use a flashlight to see to cut the tree off the power lines with a chainsaw. When he cut it the wires sprang back up in the air. Seemed dangerous to me. All of it was highly mechanized. Men come with a lot of machinery. Since I was too filthy to go in my house I stood in the woods with my camera with night mode. I couldn't take a shower until they got my power on to make the pump and water heater work. The power company truck has a remote controlled spotlight on the front bumper that can shine all the way down the power line so the man up in the cherry picker can see if he's pulled the wire tight enough. That was so cool. I want one!

They spliced in some new sections of wire with some cool chinese finger puzzle sort of butt splices where all they have to do is jam the thing in there. No crimping! They had a motorized bollard on the back of the truck to pull a rope through a pulley on the pole that pulled the wire up from the ground to the man in the cherry picker. It was fun to watch them work from a safe distance. I had a head lamp on my head with a red LED for astronomy. I kept that on so they would know where I was and not run over me. After they got it hooked back up and disentangled themselves from their safety harnesses they were ready to go. I followed their trucks up to road to close the gate behind them. They went to the other side of the highway to pull a shotgun breaker to reenergize my wires.

As I walked back to the house I stopped to see if the plow had cut my phone line. Without my DSL I'm kind of lost. I didn't see any cables, but I did see a little snake. He had a head no bigger than his body, and he was proportioned all wrong. He ended far too abruptly. There should have been more than 6" to that little snake. He had dirt stuck to the termination of his body and seemed unconcerned about being tailless. He wiggled away in the light of my LED flashlight. I didn't have any more camera batteries to take his picture. I hoped he wasn't a snake at all. We have legless lizards that can lose a tail and grow a new one no problem. I needed to confirm with my field guide to be sure, but I hoped that's what he was. Today with my phone charged up and my field guide in hand I found the cut-off piece of him and decided he was indeed an Eastern Glass Lizard. He'll be fine.

All the plants and animals will probably be fine. There were lots of gopher holes out there for animals to duck into to escape the fire. Birds have time to build new nests and start a new clutch of eggs. That ground cover evolved in fire. Wiregrass and bracken fern will be green again in a week. I bet I can get new fiddleheads to eat! I saw deer tracks in the freshly plowed dirt this morning.

A lot of the trees and bushes weren't burned up, just the leaves had been turned this color.
It was like the woods had been digitally post processed to look like "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou."

15 acres burned in total. The fire started a quarter mile from my house and came straight towards it. If I had been home I would have smelled smoke sooner and caught it when it was much smaller. But at least I was close! What if I'd been out of town? Lightning has started two fires near my house in 5 years and I have been here to put it out both times. I consider that very fortunate.

I used my Logger app on my iPhone to map the line the Forestry guy plowed.
Plugged it into Google Earth and made it a polygon to calculate the area.
(Copy and paste in a website for that.) I got 15.2 acres.
Mark from the Forestry Commission came back today to measure it for his report.
His Garmin GPSII told him 16 acres.

That fire burned an hour and a half before I found it. There was smoke all over the highway and nobody driving by called 911. I guess Georgia has trained people to expect smoke from prescribed fires. Too bad they don't realize that nobody in their right mind would intentionally set their woods on fire in peak bird nesting season in the middle of a drought. Mark from the Forestry Commission says motorists only call if they see flames. That would have happened soon enough.

Lady Longleaf Lesson: Charge your phone every night!

How Important Is Your Background?

2012-05-06T20:25:00.000-04:00

Scott Thompson, the CEO of Yahoo is in trouble for lying on his resumé. He said he has a degree in computer science but it's really accounting. The first few articles I looked at left out what I think is even more important -- what school? I looked it up and found he went to Stonehill College. "Stonehill is a selective Catholic college located near Boston on a beautiful 375-acre campus in Easton, Massachusetts."

Yeah, I'm not thinking that's actually an accredited engineering school. Bragging you're an engineer from a liberal arts school is kind of like bragging about your culinary skills from being a line cook at Waffle House. His college does let some of their students go to Notre Dame for the last few years and then they call themselves engineers. That's really not the same thing. You can't have an engineering culture in a school that outsources engineering.

"And that’s really the background that I have and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part thing of being an engineer is you think that way." Thomson goes on to say, "And we love hiring very bright engineers because we're asking them to do what they do best."

This is as close as I got to Catholicism at Georgia Tech. That's the top of my head at the bottom. We had a steady stream of evangelists on campus telling us knowledge was evil. We just laughed and went to math class where we knew true suffering.

Just for the record I don't have an engineering degree either and I brag about thinking like an engineer all the time. But I was an engineering major for three years and then changed my major to something HARDER, at a real engineering school. I met some of the smartest people I will ever encounter in my life. I miss that most of all.

One of the co-founders of Waffle House actually went to Georgia Tech. So did Jimmy Carter before he got accepted into the Naval Academy. Dr. Clough, the head of the Smithsonian, went to Tech and he was a bona-fide civil engineer before he got into administration. I used a paper with him as a co-author in my Coastal Geology class. My major professor, Dr. Patronis, also taught Gil Amelio, CEO Emeritus of National Semiconductor and Apple. I knew these but I looked them up to double check.

I scanned down the list in Wikipedia and saw a name of somebody I knew personally when I was 18 years old. As a sensitive person that rattled me. I was a little sister in the fraternity of J. Paul Raines, the CEO of GameStop! I worked on the Ramblin' Reck with him! GameStop turned me down for a technical writer job last year in Austin! Those bastards! Don't they KNOW WHO I AM?!

Actually I can't even look at LinkedIn for that reason. So many of my old friends from Tech are executives at big important companies now. Hell, my old lab partner OWNS Baker Audio now, the first company I worked for as a contractor after I graduated. I used to get A's on lab reports and he got B's. (To be fair he taught me how to work an oscilloscope, I was just good at the write up.) The only reason I got that first job at all was because Joe was still in school. It took him two years longer to graduate than me. By the time he got out I'd moved on to another contracting gig and he took the next opportunity to come up at Baker Audio. And now he owns it. And I haven't worked in anything related to audio and acoustics, my major course of study, since 1990.

So what's the point? Career success may have less to do with your educational background and more to do with ambition and the ability to get along with others and not be a highly sensitive hermit who can't tolerate stupid people.

Did I mention I knew J. Paul because he was my fraternity brother? That's a great way to learn to get along with people and work as a team. That background was probably as important in making him a CEO as his industrial engineering classes. Unfortunately there are no skills to be gleaned by a girl hanging around a fraternity. I already knew how to get along with guys. I had a brother and two male cousins. It's girls I couldn't fathom. I really wish somebody, like my aunts who were all in sororities at that other school in Georgia, had told me what they were. They could have prepared me for rush and talked my dad into paying for me to join. I was just looking at it practically. The 5 tiny sororities didn't build Ramblin Recks, they didn't have band parties, the houses weren't big enough for you to live there. I just didn't see the point. The 30+ fraternities had big houses like dorms, and kitchens that served meals and they threw big fun parties and welded up elaborate contraptions for the Ramblin Reck parade at Homecoming. I wanted to do THAT!

I mostly wrote this up today because one of my readers told me yesterday that he gets angry when he reads complaints that people can't get good technical employees when I can't get a job. He's concerned about there not being enough women in the STEM fields. I'm just useless for that I'm afraid. I researched this whole thing berating myself for not doing a better job of planning and implementing a career the way all these other people did. I had the same opportunities they did, the same classes for chrissakes! And now they are WAY up at the top of the career ladder. This is how I think. It doesn't occur to me that all the people in that list of important Georgia Tech alumni are men and I'm not one. I just don't think about being a woman as anything special. It's possible that's my main problem. But I have so many other flaws I have a hard time blaming the one I can't do anything about. THAT is how an engineer thinks.

(After I finished this I had to go find a picture to break this up. In 2010 I shot a bunch of pictures of my college newspaper to put on Facebook to tease my friends that used to write movie reviews for me. This cartoon seemed to fit the topic. After I pasted it in I thought, "Wonder what ever happened to Ergun Akleman? He was SO TALENTED!" so I googled him. FOR FUCK'S SAKE, Ergun! He's a goddam professor at Texas A&M. Professional cartoonist, of course, because, look, and thanks to his PhD from Georgia Tech he's also a computer graphics researcher. I have to get in bed and weep now.)

Scaleyback

2012-04-21T12:05:00.000-04:00

I got some good pictures of an Eastern Fence Lizard (Sceloporus undulatus) yesterday. We call them scaleybacks, but based on searching the internet for that name I think that might just be something my family made up.

There's a photography lesson in here if you're interested. Compare these two pictures (Not retouched or adjusted, straight out of the camera).

The first one is the camera on auto everything. I just aimed at the lizard on the tree. The camera chose 1/60 sec exposure with aperture 6.9. The second one I turned on the flash and aimed at a bright spot on the tree and set the exposure by holding down the shutter button. Then I reframed the shot and pushed the button all the way down to take the picture. The camera chose an aperture of 7.7. That means the little opening that lets light in is smaller. It also makes the depth of field longer. More of the picture will be in focus. (I think 1/160 sec is the standard shutter speed with the flash and nothing changes that.) Messing with the aperture is the only way to manipulate the exposure with fill flash on full auto. The flash from the camera location makes the underside of his throat extra bright but shadows still come from the direction of the sun off to the left. This trick is good for subjects that are fleet of foot because you don't have time to fool around with the manual settings. He could be gone in a second. You can't look away from a lizard long enough to find the buttons to push to do any extra stuff. Hard enough to just find the menu to turn on the flash before he gets away.

Wet Birds

2012-04-17T16:17:00.001-04:00

All these neat birds just showed up at my birdbath at the same time. Wet birds are so funny lookin'!

In order of appearance:

Summer Tanager
Eastern Bluebird
Pine Warbler
Rufous Sided Towhee
Tufted Titmouse

How many of these birds are male?
How many are female?
How many are ambiguous?

First answer in the comments wins at the internet.

(Sorry that slideshow is Flash. Here's a plain link to the Picasa album)

Wet Birds

Leave me alone little chiggers!

2012-04-16T19:52:00.000-04:00

@RojSmith sent me this link on Twitter. This song was the first he ever heard of chiggers. That's adorable. I had to make a poem.

Oh, British Isles with your meager diversity
How do you ever learn to cope with strife and adversity?
With no gators, no chiggers, and no giant fangy snakes?
At best you get a fright from an ill-tempered drake.
"Hey! I saw a lizard!" Well, bully for you.
I can't open my door without seeing two.
Wasps fill my extension cord holes in a concerted attack
Armadillos dig holes and won't put the dirt back.
Everything around me is a threat or annoying
The woods are chaos. The greenness is cloying.
Without mowers and fortitude our existence would be futile
Because nature in the South is vigorous and brutal.

Aliens vs. Chiggers

2012-04-16T14:16:00.003-04:00

I fell asleep early but then the hydrocortisone wore off. In a haze of sleep I felt around in the tray by my pillow for the tube of ointment and rubbed some on my elbow, my forearm, my knuckle. I managed to get the top back on the tube before lying still again in the dark under my thin covers.

I woke again in a sweat, kicking around for a cool spot. I knocked something off the loft and heard it crack apart on the floor. I was resigned to just let it go when I heard a voice. “Should we lower the partition of privacy around her? Is she disturbing the others?” but no answer came. The speaker got distracted and wandered off.

Glossy white robots were sleeping in their white mesh chairs while tall creatures that resembled them, only fleshier, stood in white coats around carts of computers. It was like an office on moving day, either before or after the cubicle walls had been taken out. I couldn’t tell if they were coming or going. Could’ve been both. They looked like they didn’t really want to stay if they did just get here. They were worried.

“It seems to be affecting everybody. The itching, then the bumps appear. Then they stop itching after just a day, then another appears. But it’s not like a pox. They should all come at once and then fade together,” said one man to nobody in particular.

The others were tending to people on gurneys who all seemed to be just waking up, like me. They were confused and acting like typical loud Americans. A lot of them were finding out about the partition of privacy, which apparently was activated from the gurney itself, making a wall of darkness and quiet so the person inside could watch videos and nobody would care.

The random arrangement of the large white room grated on my sensibilities. There were no aisles, no rows. How could they get anything done like this? I got up and went over to the pensive man at the computer. I was relieved to see I was wearing a compatible white outfit. Just the same it was clear I was neither a robot or one of these aliens as I was easily a foot and a half shorter. I felt kind of rough and ruddy compared to these pale, smooth skinned creatures. Still, I was curious and wanted to know what was going on. “Hello,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, hello,” he said. “It just itches SO MUCH! Please, can you tell us what it is?”

“I wish I could,” I said. “It could be anything. Tell the whole story and let me see what I can figure out. When did you get here?”

“Just a few days ago,” he said. “We started exploring away from your civilization. We took samples of the plants and rocks and water. We observed the wild creatures for a while. After a day of that we moved to a small installation of human living quarters and collected some specimens. They didn’t do anything interesting to watch in the field. They stayed in such a limited area we thought we could easily observe them here without disturbing them. It appeared all they needed was the invisible electromagnetic signals and these devices to stimulate their eyes and ears. But then the itching....”

He turned back to the computer that had completed a task. It flashed up some results I assumed were negative based on his crestfallen expression. “Anyway we did a search to find a creature of intelligence who shared our symptoms in the hopes we could find out what this is. Please, what is it?!”

“Chiggers,” I said. “Setting aside the astronomical odds, you are, in fact, delicious. Apparently. You got them from the woods.”

“What? Where are they? We’re being EATEN? But we designed countermeasures for all pathogens!” He exclaimed.

“Apparently chiggers punched a hole in your defenses,” I pointed out obviously. “Chiggers are not bacteria or viruses. They are animals, with legs and everything. They are insidious in a whole different way than the microbes. They are too small for me to see with my eyes. And mine are likely able to focus much more closely than that multiple lens system you’ve got going on there. You’re going to have to use some of this technology to get a look at them. Have you got something like that?”

“Yes, of course. Let me retune the ship’s monitoring system. How big am I looking for?” he asked.

I snatched a hair out of my head and held it out. “Try from this size, up to about 10 times that size. 8 legs. Looks like a ghost crab.” He couldn’t care less what a ghost crab looks like. He stopped scratching at an unnameable joint to yank a drawer out of the cart and hold it out to me. I dropped the hair in. He jammed it back it the machine and twiddled around with some controls.

“You have to try not to scratch,” I told him. “It doesn’t help. It makes it itch worse.”

He ignored me but his focus on his search took his mind off scratching for a minute. He found chiggers. “Let’s go!” he exclaimed and grabbed the handle to the cart and ran off through the higgledy-piggledy mess of white office furniture and hospital drama set pieces. We went through a door to another room full of samples they’d collected. There was a big door open to the woods. There was a ramp down to the ground. I couldn’t help laughing. A ramp. There’s always a ramp. “It’s not funny!” he said miserably.

“Sorry,” I said. “Inside joke.”

He’d pulled the cart up to a bin containing a bunch of bracken fern dug up and wrapped in wet spanish moss. “Oh no, seriously? You poor bastards.” I said. “You didn’t stand a chance.” The cart beamed a bright light on the moss and a little pair of forceps and scissors reached out and snatched a piece of moss and disappeared inside the machine. As it started making noise my desperate itchy friend backed away from the samples and consulted a heat map on the screen to find an area to stand that was less intensely colored than the rest. Waiting made him want to scratch.

“You guys must have skin as thin as a middle aged woman. If their tiny mouth parts can reach through to the meat they inject an enzyme into your flesh. It dissolves the meat into a liquid that they suck up through a straw made of your own hardened tissue. The longer they sit there feeding the longer it takes to heal and the more it itches.” He was horrified. I could see the tension building in his... whatever they call that.... He leaned into the handle of the cart and spoke into it. “Clear the ground! All hands report to stations! Raise the ramp! Seal the ship!” he announced. All his people started scrambling to follow his instructions.

The computer cart went “Bing!” and we turned to look at it. There was a wireframe model of a chigger on the screen, rotating like an ad for a new car. It looked exactly like a ghost crab. The itchy stranger jabbed at it with his... appendage. Figures appeared at the intersections of the lines, and he fiddled with this and that and hit something that seemed to run a lot of macros. As judgmental as I was of their interior design sensibilities they were really efficient in their use of software.

“Let’s go!” he said again. We took off for the far side of the field lab and into a windowless room with noisy machinery not even aligned with the walls. That is so hard to deal with. He reached down to the bottom of a thing that looked like a white Coke machine and pulled out the trough where the cans drop. It was full of what looked like vermiculite. We ran back to the field lab. He asked his computer cart if the ship was sealed. Confirmed. He flung the tray of vermiculite stuff into the air. It came apart like a million tiny drone helicopters. “That should capture all the chiggers,” he said.

“Chiggercide!” I exclaimed, delighted.

He was already back at the computer. Doing that thing with the few choice decisions then a lot of other stuff happens. “Let’s go to the infirmary,” he said. He was making an effort not to run and not to scratch. He walked fast. We came to another room with another white vending machine in it. It dispensed a white tube. “Hydrocortisone?” I asked, hopefully.

“It’s a topical pain reliever, yes,” he said, “Specially formulated for the nefarious work of this foul beast.” He took off his white coat and started rubbing that elbow thing with cream. And then his knuckle, and his head stalk, and every other red welt with a ball of puss on it. He handed me the tube and I treated my own arms.

“Well now,” he said, finally able to relax a bit. “What kind of countermeasures can we come up with for these? Let me consult with my people. Please, come back to the main room and wait for me.” We went back into the hall of white Herman Miller Aeron chairs and I sat down next to a shiny plastic robot with her head down and her hands on her knees. She woke up with a start and looked at me. “Oh!” she said.

“Hi,” I answered.

“I’m sorry, I was startled by the nanobots. I’m being cleaned of foreign organisms,” she said. “What are these? What are they looking for? You’re the one we found to help the soft-bodies. Are they ok now?”

“I think they will be fine. They had chigger bites. And they kept getting more from messing around with the plants from the woods. They just have to heal,” I explained.

“Oh, that’s good. They were so distressed. I am programmed to feel itchy when I have a dry joint, but a little lubricating oil and the sensation is relieved. I felt so sorry for the soft bodies. They couldn’t get any relief,” she said. This was a very empathetic robot.

“There is no torment like it,” I stated matter-of-factly.

“I think they’re done with me now. They found some chiggers clinging to my less glossy parts. They were unable to get a purchase on my main outer coverings. That is useful,” she said hopefully.

We carried on a pleasant conversation, discussing ways to design a moveable frame that would have no part capable of providing traction to chiggers, ticks, or other unseen riders. The robots were supposed to do field work without carrying any species from one location to another. They were aware of the risk of invasive exotics. That’s why they were collecting specimens. They were studying ecology with actual control groups. It sounded like a giant endeavor. I couldn’t really wrap my head around it. Applying technology to things with free will is complicated.

My original friend and his trusty cart rolled up to us soon. He handed me a locket on a chain. “Here. Wear this. It contains nanobots that will search and destroy any chiggers that get on your skin or clothes. There are a few kinds. The monitors form invisible rings around your wrists, ankles and other key points. If any chigger crosses the line the attack bots come out of the pendant to deal with them. Before you take off your clothes or shower you must squeeze the pendant to call the nanobots home so they won’t be washed away with the chiggers.”

“Thank you!” I said, “That’s fantastic!”

“Unfortunately our lack of preparation for the small scale creatures of your planet has made us rethink our exploration. We’re going to keep the plant samples we have and go back to our quarantined orbit to study this. We’re going to put back the people for now. When we have redesigned our countermeasures and have new field robots we may come back for more research,” my friend explained.

“Well it was nice to meet you! I’m glad I could help with the chiggers. These nanobots are going to make all of my dreams come true. Let me know if you need a consultant. I’m always looking for work,” I said.

“You too,” he said. “Thanks,” and he and his cart took off for the field lab again.

I rubbed some more ointment on a new itch as my robot friend escorted me back to one of the hospital props they had scattered all over the big room. I curled up on my side with my head on the pillow, trying not to scratch, wondering if my nanobots would last until the aliens came back the next time.

I woke up again early in the morning. My hydrocortisone had worn off. I drew a bath and added a packet of colloidal oatmeal and a few drops of lavender oil. As I soaked in the soothing waters I contemplated how I keep getting all these chigger bites on my arms. What have I been picking up that is covered in chiggers? I wish I had some technology to deal with this.

-- Author's Note --

This is my first short story about alien abduction. I actually had two dreams last night. This one with the good aliens who had the technology to stop the curse of chiggers, and another one with bad aliens who weaponized chiggers and used them to defeat all their enemies. I choose to repress that second version.

Auxiliary Spigot for my Outdoor Shower

2012-04-15T17:57:00.000-04:00

Wink

2012-04-09T13:40:00.000-04:00

Extreme Foul and Incredibly Gross

2012-04-09T12:19:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend tearing out cabinets from the Slab Spartan. I want very much to get the floor out of that thing because it is nasty. I think it was parked somewhere very damp for a long time. The people of low standards who owned it just kept using it, patching up the floor enough to not just fall right through when they went to get another can of beer. There were dozens and dozens of those pull tabs on the floor, under the linoleum, everywhere. The modern kind of pull tabs that are meant to stay attached to the can, a special invention for that sole purpose. I don't understand. Why did they pull those off? Why did they throw them on the floor? They didn't want to be told what to do by The Man? It's really pretty weird. I've also found a dozen .22 bullets, 2 buckshot cartridges, 2 wheat pennies, an articulating plastic toy wolf, a German five cent piece, and a Pink Floyd Animals CD. Can anybody identify this wrought iron spoon shaped thing?

The floor in the Spartan is a patched together disaster of boards from old pallets, scraps of plywood, and disintegrating particleboard. I hate peed-on particleboard. It is my mission in life to ban it from my property. The horror of what I cleaned up in my shed after it was abandoned for 20 years is far greater than what I face in the Spartan, so I know I have the strength. Just the same, repressing revulsion takes conscious effort. The unfortunate side effect is terrible nightmares about filth and horror.

While I was taking out cabinets I wantonly destroyed two fiberglass mouse nests in blatant protest of the fertility festival going on in the rest of the world. Rabbits reproduce quickly, but I prefer mice as a symbol of fertility. My sentiments toward them are more in line with my views on human reproduction. I have never hated a rabbit for eating my leather driving gloves right out of my glove compartment.

Fiddleheads

2012-04-08T13:33:00.000-04:00

Friday I was walking along the path I mowed through the woods to my dried-up pond and saw fern fiddleheads. Most of the bracken fern is full grown already, but because I mowed that path it had to start over. I decided I should pick the sprouts and eat them. There's only a split second of time between rhizomes and full grown ferns and I missed the first instant. I'd been meaning to try fiddleheads ever since I caught some Asian women in my woods picking them. Nobody locally considers them food. My research says they might even be poisonous. It's possible the woman picking them had them confused with a similar looking fern back home. But maybe not, maybe they knew something. I had sort of romanticized the memory in my head and convinced myself that they would cure "woman's troubles." I thought maybe I'd eat the fiddleheads and like magic, all the windows in my house would be clean.

Alas, that didn't happen. They made the water I cooked them in a lovely shade of green. They had a nice texture, like very tender asparagus, and almost no flavor. I put butter on them so they mostly tasted like butter, and that's always good.

After I made my video just now I wondered if I documented the original inspiring event at the time. Seems like something I would do. I searched this blog and my tumblr blog from before I had this one but found nothing. So I searched my email. Good old Gmail. I found this account of that day, 3/18/08.

I forgot the keys to the work truck this morning so I had to come back home to get them. To my surprise I see a car parked there. What the?! Nice shiny Acura. I'm jealous. So I pull up and open the locked gate and go in the driveway. I see two people in shiny visors and particle masks with plastic grocery bags tiptoeing through my woods. I took a picture of their license plate and then went to chase them away. They didn't see me as they were focused on the ground. I had to walk through the briars and bushes to get their attention. The first one I approached off her particle mask and waved her hands. She was an Asian woman, didn't speak English. She motioned to the other one. She comes over and I explain this is private property and they aren't allowed to be here. She said "Oh, we ahh picking (holds up bracken fern fiddleheads). Good foh women!"

"I'm sure, but you can't pick them here. I'm not insured against you getting snake bit!"

"Solly, solly, we go." And they walked slowly towards the gate, looking at the ground. Whenever they saw a fern sprout they'd bend over and pick it and put it in their bag.

I told them to try the Apalachicola National Forest.

Now I'm sort of sorry I was so mean. Maybe I should have made them show me how to prepare these fiddleheads! What exactly do they do "for women"?

Maybe I should start locking the door to my house when I leave. I'll come home and there will be a crew of Asian women with osteoporosis and cramps in here crowded around Mr. Induction stir frying all the new growth in my woods.

Black Racer

2012-04-08T12:38:00.000-04:00

This looked so much better on my phone and computer. But I'm doing a Small Year. I can't rationalize paying for Vimeo Plus so I can have more HD videos.

How The Blue Man Group is like my spinster aunt

2012-04-04T16:24:00.006-04:00

"Free ladder!" I said out loud to myself when I spied this run-over aluminum ladder in the right of way by my mailbox. I climbed across the ditch and picked it up and left it in the firelane that runs perpendicular to my driveway. Then I went on to see my dad to return his pressure washer. He told me there was a new scrap metal recycling place in town. I went by it on my way home, convenient location, and decided to take them that ladder the next day along with whatever else I could find that would be worth money.

I went up the driveway in my car and got the ladder and brought it back to the shed hanging out the back. I cut it into pieces that would fit in my car with my reciprocating saw. I pulled all the pieces of plastic off it. Cut the steel rivets and removed the rubber and steel feet. Then I went through my collection of brass faucets and copper pipe, cutting the brass from the copper. I cut the steel junction boxes off all the house wire I recovered from the burned down house and loaded up the car. It took me most of the day. It was hard to let go of this stuff. The copper flashing I pulled out of the roots around the old slab was so pretty to me. The copper wire had a lovely color. I stripped the insulation off the 1/2" thick cable that I pulled out of the slab when I put up the mini-shed and thought of all the neat things that could be made from that. I was unable to stop myself from saving the handles to the sink faucet that was on my wall mounted shelf sink when I got it used from the salvage yard. I can put them on a drawer one day. But the burned up faucets from the fire and the extremely heavy but out of fashion faucet from my house in Atlanta, I could let them all go.

Well my dad would be proud. I got $276 for that stuff. I was glad I took it in when I did because starting this summer there's a new law in Georgia making it illegal to buy burned copper. I'm sure they didn't mean to punish people cleaning up burned down houses like me. I assume it has to do with the practice of burning insulation off copper wire instead of cutting it off like I did. That releases chlorine gas and is really bad. I hope they don't have a rush of people coming to the emergency room with gashes from trying to use a knife to strip wire. I used a bench vise and thick leather gloves. Most people won't bother with that.

The next day I told my aunt that I got a lot of money for my scrap metal and she got mad at me. "You sold all your art supplies?! Why! You could have just left them in the woods out of your way! You could make a lot more money selling it as art than as scrap!" I wish that were true. She is confused by the presence of art at my house.

I have this really cool three-legged sea turtle and his jelly fish meal behind my Spartan on the old house slab. He's made of some scrap pipe, wire and flashing, plus some silver plated serving trays and brass light fixtures, all stuff I saved cleaning up the burned down house. What my aunt is forgetting is that I didn't make that turtle. All I did was recognize what an artist could do with that old copper and brass.

My friend Ronnie made that turtle. My contribution was just putting him up on those concrete blocks and propping his head up with a deer antler so it's easier for me to use the leaf blower on him. Ronnie only made this copper thing for me because I asked him to make if for me special. He usually works with steel. I save him all the interesting steel things I find, including the compressor out of the refrigerator I disassembled yesterday.

Sunday I read Penn Jillette's story about getting The Blue Man Group on Celebrity Apprentice. I've never seen celebrity apprentice, so I was glad he explained it.

The Celebrity Apprentice is all about watching people argue and lie while they covet money and success. Those are the artistic ideas. Donald Trump scowls and passes judgment and we all suck up and rat out to win more time on TV and get money for our charities.

No wonder he says he didn't watch the episode. Penn Jillette has an amazing ability to participate in reprehensible stuff without getting any of it on him. I admire the hell out of him for that.

Anyway, the story is about art. But Celebrity Apprentice is about money. Penn decides to ask his friends The Blue Man Group to give some money to his charity.

After weeks of sitting on "boardroom" sets pretending to do business, I really wanted something beautiful.

"Can you deliver the money in a fun way?" I asked them.

That was the problem. In the Blue Man world, money doesn't exist. For the Blue Man money means nothing. The values that they've established in their art don't include avarice. The Blue Men donate tons of money out of the blue make-up, but in it, well, they're not above money, but they're beside it. It doesn't exist. They asked me to give them some time to think of something beautiful. A couple days later they sent me a video of them filling a balloon with tens of thousands of dollars in tens and blowing it up with a leaf blower. It was beautiful and it delivered money, without the Blue Men having to respect it. It was so beautiful.

Penn describes the scene as it played out with a parade in the park. You really should read the whole story. It culminates with the final tally in the boardroom with Donald Trump and Clay Aiken, who was furious that the attempt at art had compromised his goal of getting the most money.

Clay said that the Blue Man Group's money that Clay wanted to go to our TV charity had ended up going to some homeless people. Trump joined him, disgusted by the idea that some of the Blue Man Group's money might have gone to people who needed it instead of the people Donald Trump would get credit for giving it to who needed it. Trying to explain to Donald Trump that beauty and art can be more important than money is like trying to explain to Donald Trump that beauty and art can be more important than money.

Now I'll be honest with you. The idea of loud leaf blowers and money blowing around and people scrambling to grab it makes me squirm. I would not like that. But I get what it is about it that made Penn cry. But that last sentence in that block quote? That is art to me. We all have our art form. Blue Man Group and Teller are silent and use props. Penn Jillette uses words, and he uses them well.

My art form is dwellings, repurposed objects, things that had a job and now have a different job. I'm a painter, but the kind that's really good at cutting in, not making five swipes of a sable brush look like a bird. My talent is looking at something and seeing the potential. I hope I can strike a balance between my dad and my aunt, between Donald Trump and the Blue Man Group. Selling art is so much harder than making art. But they make it so easy to sell scrap metal.

Hard to be pretty

2012-04-03T12:41:00.007-04:00

There's a Daily Mail article making the rounds on the internet today. Samantha Brick is explaining how hard it is to be pretty because men are always buying her things and women hate her. The article is full of pictures of her to "reinforce" her point.

I don't get it. None of that stuff has ever happened to me. I guess I'm not as pretty as Samantha Brick. But I have it on good authority from a small sampling of men who happened to be online this morning that she's kinda funny looking. (That's why I put "reinforce" in quotation marks. It's like the pictures are there just to make us realize she's not that pretty at all, which makes the article seem weird and a bit off.)

So I have a couple of other hypotheses. How you are treated is not as much about how you look as how you act. If you wear nail polish and a dress and do girly things like use an exercise machine to keep slim instead of dragging General Motors refrigerators out of aluminum trailers by yourself men will treat you like a lady.

If you work in offices with insecure women they might get jealous. If you work only with engineers they don't act like that at all. The women engineers are cool, and the men engineers are way too shy to ever do anything as overt as buy you a drink.

I've kind of always had a hard time enjoying spending time in public. Nobody ever tries to be friendly to me. When I was in my early 20s and went to bars with my college friends nobody ever tried to pick me up. I figured I was emitting that go-away vibe that came from spending all that time at Georgia Tech. Nobody wants to talk to you because they are afraid you'll say "thermodynamically irreversible" at them. There was a TV show back in the 90s where they did an experiment with a girl wearing different wigs, blonde and brown. It showed how men treated the woman differently at a bar. When she was blonde they stared at her but that was it. With brown hair they went up and talked to her. I once got a red Cher wig at the costume shop and wore it out to the bars with my friends. Random men just came right to me! "I just love red-heads! I just had to say Hi!" they would say. Then walk away. It was bizarre. It got hot and I took the wig off as the night wore on. My real red-headed friend Patrick stuck it down his shirt and let the ends peek out. He didn't have as much luck with the red chest hair, but it was sure funny to me.

A few years later I actually dyed my hair brown and went to the bar to test that out. I got hit on A LOT. It was quite gross. A guy who rode to the bar on his bicycle because he had a DUI tried to get me to give him a ride home. He volunteered all this information, like having a DUI wouldn't make me think he was reprehensible. He was also rather fat and sloppy. I decided that with blonde hair, looking exactly like Princess Di, men felt like I was out of their league and they would leave me alone. Of course it could also be any number of other factors, like I am clearly having a bad time. Who wants to talk to somebody that grumpy? It's just that most people in bars talk about the most asinine and crass stuff. They tell racist jokes and expect you to bow to peer pressure. They get mad at you if you talk about something like how to convert a bathtub enclosure into a subwoofer. They just want to gossip about other people and complain about their diet.

I think I have qualities only appreciated by a very few people. I got this in an email this morning from my artist friend who is doing a commissioned piece for a marketing firm (a graphic logo of an implausibly shaped character turned into wood, pipe, and paint):

I don't care how much they're physically more attractive or whatever, the dippy yuppy asian chick from the marketing firm and the derpy yuppy white chick from their customer are both losing 30/10 attractive points over you for being too stupid to realize you can make something that looks bad look good with good knowledge of how to work materials and knowledge of material science. Meanwhile you're debating the merits of having someone help you drive aircraft rivets vs using pop rivets and scrapping vs repurposing old refrigerators. Those two bimbos would be lucky to hang a wind chime without having it catch fire.

I think the men buying Samantha Brick bottles of champagne would find it adorable if her IKEA bookshelf collapsed under the weight of her framed pictures of herself.

Anyway, Samantha Brick, congratulations on having people give you special treatment. Too bad about women being jealous of you. I'm glad you have it all figured out, because I sure don't.

*Update* Wed April 4 I guess a lot of people weren't just puzzled by Samantha Brick's kind of naive interpretation of her own lot in life like me, they were downright incensed. She published a follow up.

While I've been shocked and hurt by the global condemnation, I have just this to say: my detractors have simply proved my point. Their level of anger only underlines that no one in this world is more reviled than a pretty woman.

With even more pictures of herself. Seriously, what are all these pictures doing there? The one of her in a purple dress and her husband all in camo holding a gun?! WTF? Her own publisher is mocking her. I hope this is a lesson to other women who are way too into pictures of themselves. I know a few. Just like I don't flaunt that I'm an atheist you might want to keep it a secret that you are in love with pictures of yourself. It's great you don't want to be a hypocrite and you want to be true to your personality, but it is really going to make people uncomfortable. I understand I'm unusual. I don't like pictures of ANY people, especially myself. I watch cop TV shows. In every episode they pick up a framed picture off a shelf at a crime scene and pick out which of the victim's relatives killed them. That's why I have two pictures of people in my house and one dog, and they are all dead already.

Yesterday some people asked me, "Who is Samantha Black?" So I googled her and found her website. Each tab has a different picture of her with a description of herself in the third person. She was a TV producer in the UK responsible for people like Russell Brand, then that business flopped around 2007 so she married a French carpenter and left London for France to try to be the blonde Peter Mayle.

She is clearly struggling to find herself. She is clinging to the simple explanation that everybody hates her because she's pretty because it leaves intact the part of her personality she values most. She isn't really a master of subtlety and nuance -- Russell Brand. The difference between appearing easy and appearing pretty is lost on her. She has relied on social reinforcement of her value for so long she doesn't know how to deal with the loss of it. I kind of applaud her attempt to regain the melodrama she craves by writing this story. She may have given herself the kick she needed to withdraw from her old community in media. Hopefully she will spin herself a cocoon of delusion there in France with a small community of her husband's dirty-old-man friends leering at her daily to make her feel good about herself through old age. France is a great place to look easy at eighty.

Lindy West at Jezebel also got the feeling that the Daily Mail was messing with Samantha Black. She accuses them point blank of trolling. I think she's right and I feel bad for any additional traffic I might have given their site.

English is a Protist?

2012-04-01T16:20:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading David Mitchell's column in the Guardian and clicked a link to another story that caught my eye. The corrections and clarifications column editor on… grammar and spelling

We all know English is the vampire amoeba that never sleeps. That is, our reasoning brains know this; just as they know all languages absorb and mutate over time.

After stepping over the bad metaphor in the first sentence I got stuck on the second one and had to read it three times before I figured out what "that" refers to. (The wide-awake make-believe single-celled organism. I'm pretty sure nothing in Kingdom Protista ever sleeps. Ironically, though, sleeping sickness is caused by a kinetoplastid flagellate.)

I think the message here is that someone who knows the grammar rules can still be a bad writer. I almost stopped reading at the first paragraph but I pressed on. It got worse.

When we watch a word lose the precision of meaning we were taught... perspective can fly out of the window and emotion rush in, often under the banner of Defending Civilised Values as We Were Taught Them at an Impressionable Age. Possibly by someone rather given – breakfast table? schoolroom? – to fulminations of a superior sort.

I think she's talking about my mama. My mama taught me to rewrite an awkward sentence. She also taught me not to pile on the unusual punctuation. You can use it here and there when things are getting boring, but if you try that shit in every long sentence you look like an ass.

Where we do aim to correct spelling errors in online pages is in headlines, or the names of people, places and organisations. We don't pretend to have the resources for micro-fixing every their and they're, or it's and its, or led and lead.

Really? That's depressing as hell. The Guardian doesn't have the resources? Why are they hiring writers who don't type that correctly themselves? Proofreading your own typing is allowed. So is correcting it after you publish. I do it all the time. I was kind of hoping that my ability to put apostrophes in the right place might turn into something like a paying gig. I guess that skill is about as useful as lamp lighting. In this ruined world you can be a terrible writer who isn't even willing to fix the most embarrassing homonyms and be an Associate Editor at The Guardian.

I wish I had just stopped reading after the David Mitchell story. Here's my favorite part.

With greater demands on their time and physique, it's no surprise that the sportspeople of today can seem one-dimensional – and I don't just mean they're thinner.

That's a beautiful sentence. See how he used the dash and the em dash correctly? And "they're" is not "their" or "there"? He even got "it's" right. And it's a great joke! The Guardian does apparently allow a columnist to get things right themselves, they just won't help an incompetent improve.

I suppose the lesson for me is to aspire to be more like David Mitchell than Leslie Plommer. Easy.

Lottery

2012-03-30T15:47:00.001-04:00

Look what's happening at the convenience store across the road from my place today.

WTF? I puzzled over it a while then realized there must be a big lottery jackpot that you can get in Georgia but not Florida? I do not get what's fun about the lottery.

Ashes and Dust

2012-03-30T10:40:00.003-04:00

Wednesday morning I got up early while the woods were wet with dew and the wind was still.

I made a cup of tea then went out in the yard and set my brush pile on fire.

I sat in my folding chair with my tea and photographed mosquitoes while I watched the fire burn down.

When it burned down enough to get close to it I used my pitchfork to throw the ends back in the middle.

It was done in half an hour.

Thursday afternoon I noticed the pile of ashes looked funny.

This morning I was on the lookout.

That turkey was heading straight for my fire place.

He gives it a little scratch to test the quality.

Yes this is fine.

And he gets right in there and shakes around.

Here's the shape he made in the dust by the fire.

This must be like the shampoo.

Then he gets up and moves over a bit.

Conditioner.

Rub it in good.

Here's the mess he made right in the middle of the cold ashes.

Feeling refreshed.

He gave a final shake as he headed up my driveway

Surrounding himself in a cloud.

More of the view from my East window.

This is who lives in the burrow by the stump.

The aptly named Stump Gopher.

Who I believe is Driveway Gopher with new digs.

This is the warning sign I painted for delivery men who drive too fast.

I hope Johnny Hart doesn't mind that I used his art.

Here's the hole of the juvenile gopher right on the other side of the driveway.

I like having tortoises I can see from my windows.

If I go outside to take their picture they scoot back down their hole.

It makes a funny noise.

I wish I could record it.

Make it my ringtone.

Leave me alone.

Time of Peak Activity

2012-03-25T11:58:00.001-04:00

From @grrlscientist Mystery Bird, adult Barred Eagle Owl at nap time. Click that link for a beautiful picture of a juvenile owl and a discussion of owl eye color. Apparently owl eye color doesn't correlate to the time of day they're active, but is it related to where they live? These dark eyed owls are tropical where the light is more intense.

And speaking of time of peak activity, yesterday was the Reason Rally in Washington, DC where non-believers showed themselves in public. There's a good summary on Discovery News.

THE GIST

An estimated 10,000 people rallied in Washington D.C. to celebrate the rejection of the idea of God.

The fastest growing 'religious' group is campaigning for a bigger place in public life.

Deep-seated fear of discrimination leads many Americans with no religious affiliation not to acknowledge themselves as atheists.

I support their effort in every way. I am a straight up atheist here on my blog, but that's not the same as real life. Nobody near me reads my blog. I don't pay that much attention to my analytics, but last time I checked only 25 people in Georgia read my blog in a month. More people in Germany read my blog than in my home state. Some Christian members of my family found out I'm an atheist because they read it here. And now mostly I never hear from them. (Although that could also be because they asked me if I voted for Obama and I said I did.) My cousin whose creationist beliefs prompted me to make the evolution video called to invite me over for bible study last week. I told her I was busy that night. Why didn't I just tell her I am an atheist and I'd rather eat figs filled with live ants than go to bible study? Well it's very awkward! If I told her I'm a non-believer she might just try even harder to SAVE me. That's not what I want at all. Also it seems impolite.

Basically I feel like I need to check off one of the remarks in the Discovery article. I am afraid of discrimination in my community if people knew I was an atheist. I'm afraid my property would be vandalized. So I keep a profile so low nobody even knows I'm back here. All they see is woods. Being an atheist is a big part of why I had to become a hermit when I left Austin. You can be an atheist in Austin. Hell, you can fill the Paramount theater with atheists and tape a comedy CD. But in my immediate vicinity there are 5 churches, 4 auto title loan outlets, 2 places to buy gas and lottery tickets, a giant furniture store, a bridal boutique, and a denture clinic (and I'm not cherry picking. That's every single thing). These are not my people.

I have three atheist relatives here and they aren't out either, as far as I know. I think everybody assumes we're Episcopalian because my great-grandfather was an Episcopal priest. On Facebook I have my religion as Misanthropalian because it's not just that I don't believe in God, I really don't like people. Look at what I'm surrounded by. Why would I have a high regard for people? The reason all those title loan places are here charging 300% interest for a loan is because Florida has a law limiting the charges to 30% a year. So they just don't bother to set up shop in Florida. They come right across the line into Georgia and start extorting poor people. I despise people that consider this a good business. And people that would take out that kind of loan? I can't imagine we have a lot in common. I feel disconnected from people here in several ethical areas. It reinforces my revulsion for religion in fact. Because I would bet the full value of my car that all the people making and receiving those loans are believers.

Kenneth K posted a link to a YouTube video of scenes from the Reason Rally in the comments on the Discovery News article. I'm not embedding it because it activates all my worst symptoms of being a highly sensitive person, introvert, and misanthrope. Crowds are bad enough, but crowds having arguments? No no no no no. Two of my subscribers were there, Darron and Zoe. Maybe they'll give us a first hand account in the comments.

I want to give credit to some of my believer friends who are perfectly alright with me being an atheist. It can be done. I got a lovely email from my college roommate from the hospital when her father first showed symptoms of the cancer that quickly killed him.

We are in pre-op for a brain biopsy. No sinus issues or vertigo but
doc says more likely a tumor. We won't have diagnosis for up to 2
weeks following this biopsy. Wish us luck since I know you are not the
praying type.

That she could respect my lack of belief in a moment like that really touched me. My hope for the world is that one day we can all get along this way.

Haterphernalia List Topper

2012-03-21T12:43:00.004-04:00

I made up "haterphernalia" a few years ago and snapped up the URL haterphernalia.com. I thought there should be a special word for accessories that spread hateful propaganda when I saw a bumper sticker on a truck that was an anti-forest/pro-logging message. I thought I'd start a gallery of these hideous things, then I never did. If this is how the year is going to go maybe I should get back on this project. But it would be contrary to my intention if Paula Smith, the owner of Stickatude.com, got more traffic to her site because I put her "cute" stickers in a slideshow of things I despise.

“Don’t Re-Nig in 2012,” reads the sticker — a not-too-subtle play on a word that invokes one of the most repulsive racial epithets to attack the country’s first black president. Yet, Smith sees absolutely nothing wrong with it....

Would there be any positive outcome from horrifying thinking people with the incomprehensible taste of people proud of their lack of critical thought? (This sticker isn't just blatantly racist, if you give it a moment's thought it doesn't even make any sense. If it is a play on "renege" then it's actually a PRO Obama sticker.) Does anybody qualified in PR want my URL? Throw it up on Tumblr and take a poll on which is the most horrible?

UPDATE: Haterphernalia is a non-partisan word. A sticker that said something mean about a Republican issue would make the list too, I just can't think of an example of one.

Read the Fine Print

2012-03-20T10:42:00.000-04:00

I am working on this big project to restore two Spartan trailers. When I see trash bags on sale I buy them. I got a bag of Hefty bags and opened them when I was pulling the carpet out of one of the trailers. There was a thick dust of some kind of powdered carpet be-stinking product mixed in with the regular dust, rat feces, .22 bullets, and candy wrappers. I crammed the carpet pad in these bags and swept up the smelly dirt and shook that in there, too, tied it up and took it to the dump. The next day I started collecting the insulation from under the floor, so I shook out another bag and smelled that Carpet Fresh again. I looked carefully at the box to see if there was some smell added, but it didn't say anything. I figured I got some Carpet Fresh from the floor in the box of bags. Two weeks later after the box got wet and I took the bags out and used one again they still smelled like that. I finally became convinced it was the ACTUAL garbage bags that had a smell. So I went back to the store and saw these Glad bags on sale. Next to them was a box labeled "Now with Febreze scent!" So I stayed away from those and got these.

Well I'll be damned if these don't have a strong and offensive perfumed smell too! What the hell?! It's a TRASH BAG! I went back to Walgreens and asked to exchange them for some that didn't activate my negative reaction to artificial scents. They found these that say specifically that they are UNSCENTED.

Is this one of the signs of the fall of civilization? The tipping point on the slide into Idiocracy? The introductory scenes for The Incredible Shrinking Woman? Where the least common denominator is that EVERYTHING has an artificial smell? Where you have to assume things have unnecessary additives and if you want the least ingredients possible you have to be smarter than the average consumer to pick that item out of the lineup? I'm just grateful these options exist for me.

But for how long? When do I start hoarding the products that don't activate my chemical sensitivities, fearing they will be discontinued? Should I just start making my own soap from pine sap, wood ash, and fat rendered from the flesh of my enemies?

"Corporations are people, my friend," says Mitt Romney. So I put it to you, Mitt, what is WRONG with people?! Here's Proctor and Gamble ahead of the curve to serve the depressed citizens of America.....

P&G also makes Cheer. I need to go look at the store to see if they have Cheer with More Spirit! And a white bottle called free spirit Cheer.

Rockets Aren't Rocks

2012-03-15T14:10:00.001-04:00

I love the solid rocket booster videos from the shuttle launches. You probably thought you were done with me posting those 30 minute long things on here. No such luck. Today Phil Plait led me to an edited down best-of reel. Only some of the cameras have sound so they must have played sound from one over video from another to get this compilation. (Thanks to Skywalker Ranch for sound mixing.) They also made up this mph number in the upper right calculated from instrument data.

Phil was apparently as transfixed by watching these flashing numbers as me. He was watching on the ascent.

I was also interested in watching the numbers flashing past: on the upper left is elapsed time, and on the upper right is the air speed as calculated using on board instruments. Watch as the speed increases… and then the increase increases! In other words, the acceleration of the whole system increases quite a bit with time. That’s because the thrust from the rockets — the force they apply to the stack — is roughly constant, but as they burn fuel, the mass decreases. Since force = mass × acceleration (F = ma, with a hat tip to Isaac Newton!), as the mass drops, the acceleration must increase.

But I couldn't take my eyes off the numbers on the way down. I was trying to figure out where the SRB stopped going up and started coming down. Unlike the simple physics problem in high school where you throw a rock straight up, it stops, and falls back down, this never goes to v = 0. This takes college physics. I remember this from Classical Mechanics.

It stands to reason that these rocket motors are going to keep going up for a while after they detach. Of course the air speed immediately starts to decrease when the source of upward acceleration detaches, but it's not going STRAIGHT up. It's just going to make an arc where only the portion of the velocity vector perpendicular to the earth goes to zero, the vector tangent to the earth is still quite large. My gut tells me that the point where it stops continuing up and starts heading down is where the change in air speed is minimized. Around 3:46 in the video the air speed drops to around 2556 mph for a few seconds, then it begins to increases again. Still outside the atmosphere the SRB picks up speed from gravitational acceleration. Then it hits the atmosphere and very obligingly lets friction slow it down to just about what my terrible math memory remembers as terminal velocity for our atmosphere, 275 mph. It takes the whole atmosphere to get there, too, which points out that there is only just enough of that stuff up there. The thinness of our atmosphere really weirds me out if I think about it too hard, like I feel when I try to pick up trash around my driveway with cars whizzing by on the highway.

It's funny that I can remember Dr. Stanford standing at the blackboard working out that terminal velocity problem, and I can remember the answer, but I sure couldn't recreate any of those equations from memory. Just knowing I understood it once makes me appreciate this video more, though, so it was time well spent.

Reuse: Cute Kitchenette

2012-03-12T20:05:00.001-04:00

A Small Year Reuse Project: The Cute Kitchenette

This Dwyer Products Sink/Stove/Refrigerator unit was in one of the Spartan trailers I bought. It wasn't original -- there was another sink, stove, and refrigerator in there already. It had "FSU" and an inventory number written in Magic Marker on the cover for the refrigerator compressor. I assume it was in graduate student housing or something and got liquidated during a renovation. I think it was maybe made in the 1960s or 70s. It was a Freon 12 refrigerator and Freon 12 was phased out by the early 1990s. Dwyer still makes industrial furnishings. Most stuff like this sells for over $1300 new, but with stainless steel tops instead of this neat old enameled steel.

My friend Steve helped me pry the kitchenette out of the door of the Spartan and lift it into the farm truck. It was 25 1/2" wide and the door is 24" wide. Whoever put it in there had already cut the frame and bent back the aluminum to get an extra inch. To get the knobs and handles through required a Superbar.

We took it out of the truck in my shed and I commenced trying to clean it. First I took the top off and wheelbarrowed it over to my outdoor shower near the hose and scrubbed it with Bon Ami. The trick to this kind of work is you have to scrub HARD for a LONG TIME. There are not naturally spots in enameled products. If you can't feel a nick in the finish keep scrubbing and every spot will go away.

After I got the top clean I went back to the shed and scrubbed the gray left side. That came clean nicely too.

Then I opened the refrigerator and my heart sank. The entire bottom of it was brown and crunchy looking. I thought it was completely rusted through. I poked at it with a putty knife and a big piece flaked off. I decided it was probably just a spilled Pepsi, based on the empty can under the sink. I allowed as how I better suck it up and see how much damage was under the filth. The top cleaned up so nice! I couldn't stand to waste that cute sink and drainboard. The cabinet itself seemed very high quality.

So I went looking for the sponge that has a Scotchbrite pad on one side and filled up my bucket with warm water and got to work on the covering of roach egg cases, mildew, and ancient pool of Pepsi. Pepsi is a very corrosive material so I was pretty worried. This was really a high quality item though. It scrubbed up great! I couldn't get to the all the roach eggs between the freezer thing and the top though.

I decided to test the refrigerator the next day and if it didn't work then I could take that part out and finish cleaning it. Sure enough, it didn't work. I messed around bypassing all the switches and thermostats and it just wouldn't do anything. The battery was dead in my multimeter so my troubleshooting was not that great, but I pretty much wanted it not to work. With the shelf brackets ruined by rust I couldn't really see how I could make it a passable refrigerator again anyway. I took the compressor and freezer out and finished cleaning up all the rest of the disgusting animal refuse.

After I finished dismantling it as much as I could I went to Home Depot and got an 8' piece of 1" aluminum angle stock for $13. The stainless steel acorn nuts that held the shelf brackets in place were nice. I used them again to hold the aluminum after I cut it and drilled it using the old brackets for a template. I used scraps of tongue and groove pine paneling from my house to make wood shelves. It's very fat pine so it should release resinous vapors and completely mask that old refrigerator smell.

When I finished working on it I took pictures and put it on Craigslist. Then Steve came and got it in his larger-than-mine car so I could try to sell it at his yard sale Saturday. I marked it down every half hour, starting a $100 and ending at $50. Nobody bought it. At the end of the day we carried it onto Steve's front porch. I decided I could put it back in the shed and save it for my laundry room that I might build one day. But then somebody emailed me Sunday night from the Craigslist ad and said they wanted it. Steve sold it for me this morning for $50 cash!

Moral of the story: Good quality stuff is usually worth scrubbing with Bon Ami. Don't be dissuaded by filth. You might not get rich off it, but it beats paying a junkyard to take it.

Reminders App Tip for iOS 5.1

2012-03-11T14:35:00.001-04:00

After I updated my iPhone 4S to iOS 5.1 the Reminders App was all messed up. When I started the app I just got the Completed list and that was it. Everything was gone and I couldn't find a + symbol anywhere. There was no list for adding reminders. It was very frustrating. I looked in Settings for a way to fix it and didn't see anything. I searched the forums and couldn't find any mention of this problem.

Last night I finally figured it out. They added iCloud Syncing for Reminders. So I looked in the iCloud menu of Settings and found that Reminders was Off. I turned it on and all of a sudden all my reminders were back and I had two lists and could add stuff again.

Screen shot simulating the original state.
When I first upgraded there was only the
one dot at the bottom and no second
screen available with a swipe.
I turned Reminders Off again in iCloud
to make this screenshot but the original
problem stayed fixed.

So if your Reminders don't work, go look in Settings under iCloud and turn it on. If you don't actually want to sync over the air turn it off again. Should stay fixed.

The Wave Equation

2012-03-09T09:16:00.000-05:00

There's a lovely audio slideshow on the Guardian Science website that attempts to explain the wave equation. It's done by Ian Stewart, who gives it a good dumbing down. But it still sounds complicated to me. And I spent some of my best and brightest years studying this equation in all its realms, from Physics of Music to Optics, Electromagnetism, Geology and Oceanography.

I remember when I changed my major from Industrial Engineering to Physics my grandfather asked me, "What IS Physics?" I didn't have the presence of mind to explain it as well as Ian Stewart. I said something like, "Everything is physics, Granddaddy. Like this..." And picked up a book and dropped it on the sofa. "Gravity is physics." He said, "Oh, I see," and went back to reading those incomprehensible columns of figures in the Wall Street Journal.

I like this wave equation inspired explanation. Physics is the analysis of where things are and when. It's useful for predicting where they will be later if you do different things to them. Things can be ordinary objects like strings, thin membranes, and rocks; or less solid things like water and air; or really esoteric things such as light, radio signals, and atomic scale particles. The same calculus works for all of them.