Cop Car's Beat

Find a Segway boring?

Attribution: I was led to the YouTube videos by Slashdot.org. This posting does not constitute an endorsement or advertisement for the Solo Wheel.

Grandmother Hall's comforter - plus a turkey photo

The first photo, below, shows the front of a comforter that (my mother told me) my paternal grandmother made from her (and Grandfather's?) wedding clothes. Over the years (about 100 of them, give or take - the wedding was in 1908), the batting had clumped and shifted and torn so badly that the comforter was unusable. As my sewing machine was clattering and skipping stitches (as opposed to its usual beautiful stitching), I knew that I wouldn't be using it for a while - until it had been serviced and, possibly, repaired. (I took the machine in for servicing, yesterday, and they said it would take about one week.) Thus, I started disassembling the comforter. My intention is to keep the front and back as intact as possible while making the comforter into a quilt.

The lighter pieces are from muslin. If you are familiar with old, old fabrics, you know that muslin had about the weave and heft of well-made cheese cloth. Thus, many of the lighter pieces have holes worn through by abrasion of cloth edges at the seams. The large, black squares are a hefty, highly textured material that is in good shape. The smaller, navy pieces are a plain weave; but, are a little tighter, heftier weave than the muslin and are almost all in good shape. (For those who wonder at the bits scattered over the surface of the quilt: they are tufts of thread. Grandmother had used two strands of yellow-ish tan and two strands of rusty red threads to tie knots - intended to keep the batting from shifting.)

The back of the comforter, below, is a twill woven of a fine-gauge yarn - wool, I think. The back is sewn from the gores of a skirt - alternating direction to provide uniform width. I suspect that, at some point in its life, the comforter spent time (perhaps years) folded at the foot of a bed - which would account for the bleached look of one end (which is the "foot" end). Originally, I believe that all of the panels were of the same, deep green. (Note the patch in the foreground.) One panel is badly spotted and has several holes (some of which had been patched on the inside), so I am pondering the adviseability of replacing the whole panel or of applying one large patch (probably on the inside, with top hand stitching around each of the holes - the way that Grandmother taught me to make a neat patch!)

Today, at the office, I was unable to work (computer problems that were not solved within a couple of hours); so, I dropped by a quilt store where the owner is having a going-out-of-business sale. (The owner, at age 87, has decided it is time to retire!) They had no woolen fabrics; but, I was able to pick up wool batting (photo, below) for the quilt that the comforter is to become.

Finally, because I know that one of my blog friends grooves on turkeys, a photo of our turkey family that has recently returned after an absence of several weeks. Originally, we had a mother and nine chicks (see Young Turkey Family). Now, the family is down to seven, total, and I can no longer tell the hen from the chicks. Unfortunately, one of the turkeys has a lame leg.

Cranebow

Mike Umscheid, a wonderfully talented photographer recently had a photo shoot at Bosque del Apache (Woods of the Apache), a bird-watching sanctuary that I frequented when I lived in Albuquerque, a drive of about 1.5 hours North of the bosque. As Umscheid's photos are copyrighted, I won't upload any of his photos; but, this is the link to his photo (taken earlier this evening) that he titles Cranebow. (I recommend clicking on the photo to fill the screen.) This photo is one of the more spectacular photos of a rainbow that I've seen posted, and has the added benefit of showing off a few sandhill cranes.

Oh, fudge! (Pet Peeve #5)

If I seem out of sorts to you for the next few days, there is a good reason. If you felt an earthquake a few hours ago, it was probably me beating my head against a stone wall.

Somehow, somewhen, I pulled a really stupid stunt. I deleted not only the file that I sought this morning, but the folder in which it had been saved - from the flashdrive on which I keep all of my volunteer reference stuff. For several days, a few hours each day, I had done on-line research to gather and cross-check information piece-by-piece on each of the 650 (approximately) cities and 105 counties in Kansas - information that included the county of each city, the county seat of each county, and ZIPs, and more. I had arranged the data in an easy-to-reference formatting in a multi-worksheet Excel™ file. Oh, woe is me. I am my own worst pet peeve!

Guess what I'll be doing in my spare time for the next few days.

 

4th Grader making good

Were NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity a human child, s/he would be a fourth grader in the USA. NASA posted a piece concerning Opportunity's 9th anniversary of landing on Mars. A photo, its caption, and excerpts from the posting are provided, below.

'Matijevic Hill' Panorama for Rover's Ninth Anniversary

As NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity neared the ninth anniversary of
its landing on Mars, the rover was working in the 'Matijevic Hill' area seen in
this view from Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam). Opportunity landed Jan.
24, 2004, PST (Jan. 25 UTC). The landing site was about 12 miles (19
kilometers), straight-line distance, or about 22 miles (35.5 kilometers)
driving-route distance, from this location on the western rim of Endeavour
Crater.

Matijevic Hill is an area within the "Cape York" segment of
Endeavour's rim where clay minerals have been detected from orbit. This view is
centered northwestward, toward the crest of Cape York. It extends more than 210
degrees from left to right. The field of view encompasses most of the terrain
traversed by Opportunity during a "walkabout" in October and November 2012 to
scout which features to spend time examining more intensely. Two of the features
investigated at Matijevic Hill are "Copper Cliff," the dark outcrop in the left
center of the image, and "Whitewater Lake," the bright outcrop on the far right.

Opportunity's Pancam took the component images for this mosaic during
the period from the mission's 3,137th Martian day, or sol, (Nov. 19, 2012)
through Sol 3150 (Dec. 3, 2012).

The image combines exposures taken
through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers
(near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). The view is
presented in approximate true color. This "natural color" is the rover team's
best estimate of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to
see it with their own eyes.

Image credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

 

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, one of the twin rovers that bounced to airbag-cushioned safe landings on Mars nine years ago this week, is currently examining veined rocks on the rim of an ancient crater. Opportunity has driven 22.03 miles (35.46 kilometers) since it landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 24, 2004, PST (Jan. 25, Universal Time). Its original assignment was to keep working for three months, drive about 2,000 feet (600 meters) and provide the tools for researchers to investigate whether the area's environment had ever been wet. It landed in a backyard-size bowl, Eagle Crater. During those first three months, it transmitted back to Earth evidence that water long ago soaked the ground and flowed across the surface.

....

Opportunity has operated on Mars 36 times longer than the three months planned
as its prime mission.

....

For more information about Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

2013-030 

 

Well done, NASA and JPL teams!

Good grief! They spent money on this study?

Any one of my readers, friends, family, acquaintances could have told the researchers the answer that the report in the following post from Slashdot.org found concerning scientists. Of course, we must be scientific and show that our answer is correct! Anyone want to place a bet on the answer to a similar question concerning politicians?

Male Scientists More Prone To Misconduct269

Posted by Soulskillon Wednesday January 23, @05:26PM
from the it's-a-guy-thing dept.

sciencehabit writes "Male scientists — especially at the upper echelons of the profession — are far more likely than women to commit misconduct. That's the bottom line of a new analysis by three microbiologists of wrongdoing in the life sciences in the United States. Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, Seattle; Joan Bennett of Rutgers University; and Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine combed through misconduct reports on 228 people released by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) over the last 19 years. They then compared the gender balance — or imbalance, in this case — against the mix of male and female senior scientists and trainees to gauge whether misconduct was more prevalent among men. A remarkable 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, or 63 out of 72 individuals. The number of women in that group was one-third of what one would expect based on female representation in the life sciences."

March of Dimes

A president's cause changed babies' lives forever

President Franklin Roosevelt's personal struggle with polio led him to create the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis at a time when polio was on the rise. Better known as the March of Dimes, the foundation established a polio patient aid program and funded research for vaccines developed by Jonas Salk, MD and Albert Sabin, MD. These vaccines effectively ended epidemic polio in the United States. from March of Dimes website

The "March of Dimes" began in 1938 as a fund-raising campaign for polio. People were asked to mail one dime directly to the White House to help fight the disease. In the first 3 days, the White House received 230,000 dimes. President Franklin D. Roo-sevelt, whose profile appears on the dime, was himself paralyzed by polio.

How well I remember when the March of Dimes supported polio research. It was surprising to me that they re-purposed the organization.

 

Global Great Backyard Bird Count 2013Feb

Bogie, at Bogieblog, has reminded me and her other blog readers that the time for the Great Backyard Bird Count is approaching. Thanks, Bogie!

Bogie provides information, not only on the GBBC, but on the Audubon Winter Bird Survey and Project Feeder Watch. I highly recommend that you go to her blog if you wish more information on any of the items. 

 

Rambling on Unemployment (Pet Peeve #4)

In Utopia, there are "just enough" rewarding jobs to fully employ the available workforce. In reality, over the past millenium, humanity has over-produced people while inventing new ways to keep people from "having to" work. Many times when a worker invents a better way (often defined as cheaper way) to accomplish tasking, they assure destruction of human jobs. But...it is human to wish to come up with better ways of doing things. Fortunately, in this context, humans keep coming up with more "wants" to be fulfilled; thus, we have whole industries based upon no real human need - employing many of the people who would otherwise be unemployed. This ramble is to lead into presentation of a posting on Slashdot.org.

 A Humanoid Robot Named "Baxter" Could Revive US Manufacturing224

Posted by samzenpuson Wednesday January 16, @09:57PM
from the no-lunch-breaks dept.

fangmcgee writes "Rethink Robotics invented a $22,000 humanoid robot named "Baxter" that could give cheap offshore labor a run for its money and return manufacturing jobs to U.S. soil. Artificial intelligence expert Rodney Brooks is the brain behind Baxter. From the article: 'Brooks’s company, Rethink Robotics, says the robot will spark a “renaissance” in American manufacturing by helping small companies compete against low-wage offshore labor. Baxter will do that by accelerating a trend of factory efficiency that’s eliminated more jobs in the U.S. than overseas competition has. Of the approximately 5.8 million manufacturing jobs the U.S. lost between 2000 and 2010, according to McKinsey Global Institute, two-thirds were lost because of higher productivity and only 20 percent moved to places like China, Mexico, or Thailand.'"

We really, really need to stop bellyaching about the unemployed and how society is "forced" to support them - or - we need to cut down on the supply of employable people. Given a choice, I would opt for the latter; but, as hostile as the various religions are to family planning, that isn't going to happen. I guess this qualifies as a pet peeve!

Addition of 1/23/2013:

This addition is just for Stu, although I shan't chide anyone who wishes to peek at another posting from Slashdot.org.

We've all been TP'd (Pet Peeve #3)

If you remember back to the mid-1960s (1965 to be exact), you may recall that there was a "paper shortage". I put that in quotes because no one ever convinced me that the shortage was due to anything other than the makers of paper products wished to make higher profits. If they squeezed the public by withholding product for a few months, they could raise prices and the consumer would be so happy to be able to obtain the product that they would not revolt.

Let's talk toilet paper (TP - or toilet tissue, TT, if you were raised to be more refined). Before the paper shortage of 1965, the standard roll of TP contained 500 5"X5" sheets. After the shortage, the size of the standard roll was about 450 sheets, as I recall (anyone else remember for sure?) Over the years, the number of sheets on a standard roll continued to dwindle. These days, there really is no such thing as a standard roll - each manufacturer seems to have a different idea as to what it is; but, I can assure you that I have seen rolls of toilet paper with fewer than 200 sheets on it.

Some time ago, I noticed that the size of a toilet paper sheet had been reduced. I don't know what the size was reduced to (I don't recall); but, that wasn't the last time. About a year ago, the size was reduced again. I commented at the time that, if the trend continued, we would be buying rolls of ribbon to wrap around our fingers!

In the past couple of years, I have switched to buying "Mega" rolls - in order to spend less time changing rolls in the bathrooms. Believe me, I have tried different brands; but, because I saved the wrapper from my latest purchase, that is what you will see in the photos, below.

The first photo shows that the width of the roll has decreased over time. The older roll of TP (on the left) is a bit wider than the newer roll. (Trust me on this: In this house, we will never be caught without TP in each bathroom. We have two of the older rolls that have been in the cabinet for a year or two. I kept them because I had every intention of complaining to the manufacturer about the, then-latest reduction in paper. At some point, I threw away the packaging to the older rolls; but, funny thing is, my complaint was before the latest reduction!)

Notice too that in the photo above, the right-hand roll appears to be larger - to contain more sheets. It does not. It contains fewer sheets. The manufacturer just wound the paper less tightly. BTW: Hunky Husband just walked by and thought that it was perspective that made the two rolls look different, one from the other - until I showed him the real rolls.

The photos below show parts of the front and back labeling on the package that I bought the other day. You'll note on the upper of the two photos that one (in this case "Mega") roll is equivalent to four standard rolls.

But, OMG, read (below) how many sheets are on each roll: 330 sheets. If I remember my goesintos, I infer that there are 82.5 sheets per roll. Can you believe that?!!!!

Oh...and while you are looking, note that each sheet is 4.27"x4".

Summary: Incredible shrinking sheets on incredibly shrinking rolls.

Pissing and moaning over: Let's go for Cute.

You are probably familiar with CYA (Cover Your Ass); but, did you ever see PYA (Protect Your Ass)? See below the fold a photo of a cute lapel button that HH brought home some years ago.