As reported in So far, so good - Part 1 Landscape, I had our landscaping company take down the last of our 4"x4" posts that had, for the past 17 years, provided support for bird feeders and bird nesting boxes, including our very successful bluebird nesting box. A single 4"x4" post was then installed at a bit of distance from a neighbor's newly planted crepe myrtle bushes - on the theory that, eventually, the one crepe myrtle bush that was nearest the old bluebird nesting place would grow to a size that would discourage bluebird nesting. You see, bluebirds (at least, eastern bluebirds) prefer to nest in a tree cavity or nesting box that is at least 50' removed from other trees and shrubs.
Our "resident" male bluebird signaled his approval of the new arrangement by sitting atop the new nesting box and checking out its interior.
Fence Improvement
A few days ago, the neighbor's awful, dilapidated fence that had, for years, featured prominently in photos that I took of birds at our nearest feeders or on our back porch, was showing that it was on its last legs - the wind had it leaning, first, toward our yard, then, toward theirs. We were wondering when it would take a last gasp and lay on the ground. Finally, we noted that our neighbor had actually dismantled most of the fence. Yay! He had never, in over two years living there, replaced even one board that had fallen off - and he had promised to replace the fence last November. It looks so much better!
Below is a photo from May 2016 at which time the fence was at its best - only one board had fallen, as far as the photo shows.
Super, Blue, Blood Moon 2018
When I first arose, this morning, just after the eclipse started, I could see nothing. It was cloudy. A bit later, I got this poor photo. (Did I tell you, Bogie, that I shake? Why else three moons?)
Still later, I arose once more and below is the best photo I could get as the lunar eclipse neared totality. Note that, by that time, I was viewing the moon through tree branches from trees that are across the street from us - behind the houses. Poor as my "moon shots" may be, at least I didn't have to take these photos through Hunky Husband's car's windshield. OTOH, I couldn't rest my camera on the glare shield. See Super Moon in Derby, Kansas, USA for the photos from November 2016. This time, I was shooting through a thin cloud layer - moderately high cirrus.
It is old news that industries and individual companies have been known to prevaricate about their product(s) and to produce "research results" to bolster their claims. From the Improbable Researchwebsite comes news of more "research results" concerning the effects of diesel fumes on humans (or, as was used in the research, monkeys). I note that the reason the latest "research results" appeared in the Improbable Research posting was to lament (in Volkswagen’s Ig Nobel Prize-winning research also used cartoon-watching monkeys) that a substantially similar research project had previously been awarded an Ig® Nobel prize. Here are several paragraphs from:
FRANKFURT — In 2014, as evidence mounted about the harmful effects of diesel exhaust on human health, scientists in an Albuquerque laboratory conducted an unusual experiment: Ten monkeys squatted in airtight chambers, watching cartoons for entertainment as they inhaled fumes from a diesel Volkswagen Beetle.
German automakers had financed the experiment in an attempt to prove that diesel vehicles with the latest technology were cleaner than the smoky models of old. But the American scientists conducting the test were unaware of one critical fact: The Beetle provided by Volkswagen had been rigged to produce pollution levels that were far less harmful in the lab than they were on the road.
The results were being deliberately manipulated.
....
Industries like food, chemicals and pharmaceuticals have a long history of supporting research that advances their political agendas. But the automakers’ group consistently promoted the industry’s claim that diesel was environmentally friendly — a claim now undercut by the Volkswagen scandal.
Margaret Douglas, the chairwoman of a panel that advises the Scottish public health system on pollution issues, compared the automakers’ behavior to the tobacco industry. Just as the tobacco companies promoted nicotine addiction, Ms. Douglas said, the carmakers lobbied for tax breaks that made European drivers dependent on diesel.
“There are a lot of parallels between the industries in the way they try to downplay the harm and encourage people to become addicted,” Ms. Douglas said.
....
In the 1990s, carmakers used their political clout to persuade European leaders that diesel helped fight climate change because it burns more efficiently than gasoline. As a result, almost all European countries now tax diesel at a lower rate than gasoline, making it cheaper at the pump.
The carmakers maintained that modern technology had solved diesel’s big downside: emissions of nitrogen oxides and fine soot particles that can contribute to asthma, heart attacks and cancer.
David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the British government, recalled being taken to a lab in the early 2000s where 10 diesel vehicles were running on rollers. The air was so clean that Mr. King, an asthmatic, could breathe freely.
What Mr. King did not know is that most European automakers had built their diesel cars to pass laboratory emissions tests and no more. On the road, according to recent studies by the governments of Britain, France and Germany, diesel cars by almost all European manufacturers spewed toxic gases in quantities far above those allowed by law.
“We were all misled by the car manufacturers,” Mr. King said in an interview.
I've not researched the reason for it, but I can relate from observation of fuel prices in our local area that diesel runs about $0.50/gallon higher than unleaded, regular gasoline in Kansas USA.
I was never lucky enough to see the XB-70 Valkyrie in flight; I was heartbroken that the plane was never produced - she was so beautiful! Dudette and Bogie (of Bogieblog) may recall seeing the surviving XB-70A #1 on display at Wright-Patterson AFB, at the then-called United States Air Force Museum in the summer of 1970. In 1971, the museum was moved across Patterson Field to sit on "privately owned" property.
The first photo shows the XB-70 while the second photo (because I'm a mother of two beauty queens!) shows Dudette & Bogie with a Lockheed P-38 Lightning. (I'll entertain the notion that I've misidentified the aircraft if anyone thinks they see something that I missed or if my eyes are deceiving me.)
The nail in the coffin was the jet’s exorbitant price tag and lack of mission flexibility—the B-70 couldn’t be adapted for the low level role. Let’s hope today’s shadowy Long Range Strike Bomber fares better.
The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was the largest and fastest bomber ever built by the United States, but the massive six-engine Mach 3.0-capable jet never entered production. Only one surviving prototype sits in a museum in Dayton, Ohio, even as the Boeing B-52 it was supposed to one day replace continues to soldier on.
The following video, produced by The National Museum of the US Air Force and added to YouTube last May, shows testing of the #1 test aircraft. It is just under 14 minutes long.
Published on Feb 5, 2011 On 8 June 1966, XB-70A #2 was in close formation with four other aircraft (an F-4, F-5, T-38, and F-104) for a photoshoot at the behest of General Electric, manufacturer of the engines of all five aircraft. With the photoshoot complete, the F-104 drifted into contact with the XB-70's right wing, flipped over, and rolling inverted, passed over the top of the Valkyrie, struck the vertical stabilizers and left wing and exploded, destroying the Valkyrie's rudders and damaging its left wing. With the loss of both rudders and damage to the wings, the Valkyrie entered an uncontrollable spin and crashed into the ground north of Barstow, California. NASA Chief Test Pilot Joe Walker (F-104 pilot) and Carl Cross (XB-70 co-pilot) were killed, while Al White (XB-70 pilot) ejected, sustaining serious injuries, including one arm being crushed as it was caught in the clamshell-like escape capsule as it closed around him just before ejection from the aircraft.
A few weeks ago, I posted A really old War Horse, the B-52 that engendered a comment string concerning the B-52 and the Russian TU-95 Bear. The following video was posted on YouTube last October and makes the argument for the retention of the B-52. The video is a bit over 17 minutes long with mention of Russian capability at about 14 minutes in. As the audio says at the end, "Why toss out something old, but reliable, that does the job?"
P.S. For anyone who doesn't know, the photo showing military people assembled on the wings of a B-52 is a rough re-enactment of a photo taken by The Little Airplane Company to demonstrate the strength of its new, cantilever-winged Monitor airplane.
Title/Object Name: Cessna Aircraft Company
Creator: Edgar B. Smith
Date Original: 1927
Physical Details: 8 x 10 inches
Description: Seventeen men stand on wing of prototype model of Cessna cabin monoplane. Stunt was to demonstrate strength of airplane without wing struts. Photograph taken August 1927.
Keywords: Wichita, aviation, people, business and industry.
The following photo from @Cessna on Twitter shows even more people crowded atop the wing.
Needless to say, the gimmick caught on. Before retiring from The Little Airplane Company, I saw a photo of a modern Cessna model with people standing atop the wing. Unfortunately, I cannot pull out the model from memory, so have been unable to find it.
When Bogie visited us over the year-end holidays, I opined that I had failed to get the china cabinet cleaned/dusted out, a chore to which I try to attend every year or two. It looked really bad. Just to prove that I got around to it (and I'm positive that Bogie doesn't care!) here's a photo. Everything has been dusted, polished, and/or brushed. Yay!
Do note at the extreme left of the top shelf, the darling bear (holding posies) that Bogie gifted to me several years ago. The equally darling bear (with golf clubs) that was gifted to her dad is at the extreme right of the top shelf. Unfortunately, you can't see him because he is dark. Well...since I mentioned them, I took close-ups of the two bears (which photos would have been improved by my getting out a step-ladder instead of settling for standing on a chair) and of a darling clay dinosaur that Dudette made when she was a really young girl.
“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Despite the widespread use of high-heeled footwear in both developing and modernized societies, we lack an understanding of this behavioral phenomenon at both proximate and distal levels of explanation.”
Prompting the development a new (experimentally-tested) hypothesis by David M. G. Lewis, Eric M. Russell, Laith Al-Shawaf, Vivian Ta, Zeynep Senveli, William Ickes and David M. Buss, presented in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, Nov. 2017.
“[…] we hypothesized that high heels influence women’s attractiveness via effects on their lumbar curvature. Independent studies that employed distinct methods, eliminated multiple confounds, and ruled out alternative explanations showed that when women wear high heels, their lumbar curvature increased and they were perceived as more attractive. Closer analysis revealed an even more precise pattern aligning with human evolved psychology: high-heeled footwear increased women’s attractiveness only when wearing heels altered their lumbar curvature to be closer to an evolutionarily optimal angle.”
Why I don't believe it: The hypothesis is centered on only one of the two sexes. As far as I could tell, the researchers didn't even consider why men wear/have worn high heels. According to a BBC posting, Why did men stop wearing high heels?:
....
"The high heel was worn for centuries throughout the near east as a form of riding footwear," says Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
Good horsemanship was essential to the fighting styles of Persia - the historical name for modern-day Iran.
"When the soldier stood up in his stirrups, the heel helped him to secure his stance so that he could shoot his bow and arrow more effectively," says Semmelhack.
At the end of the 16th Century, Persia's Shah Abbas I had the largest cavalry in the world. He was keen to forge links with rulers in Western Europe to help him defeat his great enemy, the Ottoman Empire.
So in 1599, Abbas sent the first Persian diplomatic mission to Europe - it called on the courts of Russia, Germany and Spain.
A wave of interest in all things Persian passed through Western Europe. Persian style shoes were enthusiastically adopted by aristocrats, who sought to give their appearance a virile, masculine edge that, it suddenly seemed, only heeled shoes could supply.
Image caption Louis XIV wearing his trademark heels in a 1701 portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud
As the wearing of heels filtered into the lower ranks of society, the aristocracy responded by dramatically increasing the height of their shoes - and the high heel was born.
In the muddy, rutted streets of 17th Century Europe, these new shoes had no utility value whatsoever - but that was the point.
"One of the best ways that status can be conveyed is through impracticality," says Semmelhack, adding that the upper classes have always used impractical, uncomfortable and luxurious clothing to announce their privileged status.
"They aren't in the fields working and they don't have to walk far."
When it comes to history's most notable shoe collectors, the Imelda Marcos of his day was arguably Louis XIV of France. For a great king, he was rather diminutively proportioned at only 5ft 4in (1.63m).
He supplemented his stature by a further 4in (10cm) with heels, often elaborately decorated with depictions of battle scenes.
....
Although Europeans were first attracted to heels because the Persian connection gave them a macho air, a craze in women's fashion for adopting elements of men's dress meant their use soon spread to women and children.
"In the 1630s you had women cutting their hair, adding epaulettes to their outfits," says Semmelhack.
"They would smoke pipes, they would wear hats that were very masculine. And this is why women adopted the heel - it was in an effort to masculinise their outfits."
From that time, Europe's upper classes followed a unisex shoe fashion until the end of the 17th Century, when things began to change again.
It is my hypothesis that, like some of the men of old, women took to wearing high heels to give them more stature (figuratively and literally) within the population. I know it gives me a crick in my neck to constantly be looking up to people who are much taller than am I. For whatever reason (some reasons make sense, others are nonsense), people equate height with greatness. Physical height is desirable. Never mind that it would be much easier to feed a human population that includes no one taller than five feet: We must have height!
I leave you with this titillating thought (you may go to the above BBC article to learn how they got from the above paragraphs to the following one):
Semmelhack, author of Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe, believes that [...an] association with pornography led to high heels being seen as an erotic adornment for women.
Our local public radio station, KMUW - operated as a service of Wichita State University - carried a broadcast that told of a world first in ice skating that occurred at the Olympics of 1998. If I had heard of it, before, or (perhaps) watched it, it had flitted from memory. I hope you enjoy this video as much as did I. In the radio program, they told how, the previous day, the skater had been helped to her place at the Olympic Village because she could not walk on her own. She was suffering from two injuries, one old and one new, following a preliminary event. Thus, she had been encouraged to withdraw before the finals. Because of her particular history with the Olympics, she refused to withdraw. What followed was another "defeat"; but, Surya Bonaly pulled off a world first. She later denied that it was her intent, but her performance was taken (by some - including me) as flipping the bird to the judges. *grinning*
More footage, some of it after she turned professional, of Surya Bonaly is below.
Published on Feb 25, 2017
This, from YouTube: "Surya's speed on the ice, her energy, her style, her height on the jumps and especially her backflips are something very special on her! A long time she was the only skater in the world who could land a backflip on one blade. She'll always be remembered as one of the greatest in the figure skating history!"
Rather than leading you through the whole series of one-minute (my terminology) postings delineating The Standard Model, by The Particle Adventure, I post one of the more interesting postings, below.
The naming of quarks...
...began when, in 1964, Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig suggested that hundreds of the particles known at the time could be explained as combinations of just three fundamental particles. Gell-Mann chose the name "quarks," pronounced "kworks," for these three particles, a nonsense word used by James Joyce in the novel Finnegan's Wake:
"Three quarks for Muster Mark!"
In order to make their calculations work, the quarks had to be assigned fractional electrical charges of 2/3 and -1/3. Such charges had never been observed before. Quarks are never observed by themselves, and so initially these quarks were regarded as mathematical fiction. Experiments have since convinced physicists that not only do quarks exist, but there are six of them, not three.
How did quarks get their silly names?
There are six flavors of quarks. "Flavors" just means different kinds. The two lightest are called up and down.
The third quark is called strange. It was named after the "strangely" long lifetime of the K particle, the first composite particle found to contain this quark.
The fourth quark type, the charm quark, was named on a whim. It was discovered in 1974 almost simultaneously at both the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The fifth and sixth quarks were sometimes called truth and beauty in the past, but even physicists thought that was too cute.
The bottom quark was first discovered at Fermi National Lab (Fermilab) in 1977, in a composite particle called Upsilon ().
The top quark was discovered last, also at Fermilab, in 1995. It is the most massive quark. It had been predicted for a long time but had never been observed successfully until then.
).
Recent Comments