Monday, December 31, 2018
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Sunday Shave of the Day
Used my favorite antique cutthroat, the Johan Engstrom frame back.
I'm continually impressed with the quality of Stirling's soap. Today it produced a cloud of silky cream that looked so good you could eat it. Great slickness on the hide, and the result was a beautiful shave - two passes and a bit of touchup, minimal blood, near perfect shave.
That Engstrom is so sharp that when I accidentally lightly touched it with my pinkie during the shave, it cut the darn finger. What an edge!
Trump just got the Red Chinese to allow import of our rice into their country. Let that sink in...
Next it'll be ice to Iceland.
China has opened the door to imports of rice from the United States for the first time ever in what analysts took to signal a warming of relations between the world’s two biggest economies after a frosty year marked by tensions and tit-for-tat tariffs.
“The permission for U.S. rice suggests an improving U.S. and China relationship,” said Cherry Zhang, an agriculture analyst with consultancy JCI. Zhang said she expected any imports would likely be ordered by state-owned companies.
This will be great for California rice growers, and probably everyone else in ag once the dam breaks and we can import there at will.
China has opened the door to imports of rice from the United States for the first time ever in what analysts took to signal a warming of relations between the world’s two biggest economies after a frosty year marked by tensions and tit-for-tat tariffs.
“The permission for U.S. rice suggests an improving U.S. and China relationship,” said Cherry Zhang, an agriculture analyst with consultancy JCI. Zhang said she expected any imports would likely be ordered by state-owned companies.
This will be great for California rice growers, and probably everyone else in ag once the dam breaks and we can import there at will.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, Nipton, California
The plant has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts (MW). It deploys 173,500 heliostats, each with two mirrors focusing solar energy on boilers located on three centralized solar power towers. The first unit of the system was connected to the electrical grid in September 2013 for an initial synchronisation test. The facility formally opened on February 13, 2014.
The bright spots of Ivanpah are clearly visible from above Las Vegas
Ginger neck beard has a complete mental breakdown over a customer wearing Trump gear, helps create amazing video, spawns multiple memes, and gets himself fired by his boss.
Childish very bad language warning.
Good line that will meme and therefore live forever.
Good line that will meme and therefore live forever.
Further, the now unemployable neck bearded mental toddler should hook up with Trigglypuff and create a new, soy based race of mental and emotional midgets.
Jökulhlaup at Mount Shasta in 2014
Looks like a lahar popped out from under one of the glaciers up on the peak.
This is quite interesting, and only about 60 miles from where I'm currently working.
U.S. Forest Service scientists say they believe the mudslide was triggered by water released from the Konwakiton Glacier, the fifth-largest of seven glaciers that sit high up on Mount Shasta, a 14,163-foot dormant volcano that towers over California’s northernmost counties.
At the time, the news reported it this way:
This is quite interesting, and only about 60 miles from where I'm currently working.
U.S. Forest Service scientists say they believe the mudslide was triggered by water released from the Konwakiton Glacier, the fifth-largest of seven glaciers that sit high up on Mount Shasta, a 14,163-foot dormant volcano that towers over California’s northernmost counties.
At the time, the news reported it this way:
U.S. Forest Service crews on Mount Shasta were dealing Monday with mud flowing from a melting glacier that covered two roads and a bridge in muck, logs and rocks and forced a mountain creek out of its banks.
Mount Shasta's Mud Creek -- pushed out of its channel by Saturday's mud flow-- was flowing instead Monday over one of two Forest Service roads that have been made impassable by the weekend surge of wet earth and debris, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Andrea Capps said.
Road crews worked Monday to clear the road of a thick layer of mud and unplug a bridge dammed by debris and mud, Capps said.
Saturday's mud flow happened when a tip broke off a glacier midway up Mount Shasta. Most of the mud, trees and rocks stayed within the channel of Mud Creek except when the mud flow hit bridges or other obstacles, Capp said.
Here's a video a local took of the mud flow coming down the creek. The sound of the boulders rumbling along is interesting.
Imagine what would happen if there was a real eruption in the spring, when the snow pack was heaviest?
Arctic & Antarctic Sea Ice Now At Historic HIGH Levels
LL mentions this article over at Virtual Mirage, and it links nicely with my discovery last week that Mount Shasta in Northern California has glaciers that have been increasing in size over the last few decades.
It is often claimed that modern day sea ice changes are “unprecedented”, alarming, and well outside the range of natural variability.
Yet scientists are increasingly finding that biomarker proxies used to reconstruct both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice conditions since the Early Holocene reveal that today’s sea ice changes are not only not unusual, there is more extensive Arctic and Antarctic sea ice during recent decades than there has been for nearly all of the last 10,000 years.
Ouch! If that's really true, then maybe we really do need to wonder about another impending Ice Age.
Check out that spike after 2009!
A comment there makes a good point
The internet is dishing some good thoughts about the New Year this morning
Nick Taleb has some good New Year's advice, I think:
File that one under the rule: "Keep it simple and do it often."
Mine? My rule is once a day, make someone smile. Could be anyone - the teller at the bank, the girl handing you your coffee at McDonald's - but just think of something that will brighten them up, then say it. Costs nothing. It gets easier to do once it becomes a habit.
He's trying to break a lifetime's habit of cursing, by replacing the curse with a prayer. Naturally, he has thoughts about that:
The Lord’s Prayer also has a hidden benefit. It has, at its core, one simple but profound request:
“Give. Us. This. Day.”
That’s it. That’s the real core of all prayers. That is the one request of the Lord without which nothing else matters. This day is what all our past, lost days flow towards and which all our future hoped-for days flow from. Without the gift of “This Day” the ones that have passed have no meaning and the ones that are to come have no potentiality. Both are but abstractions or, as the poet has it:
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Michael Grace