Saturday

After months of delaying, I finally started taking care of some little projects, projects that can hardly be said to matter in the grand scheme of things, but projects I've wanted to tackle and this week I finally did.

Epoxied Ax Handle

I glued my broken ax handle with epoxy. No, I do not suppose this will fix it, but I plan on putting an eight inch long screw down the axis of the handle. Will it hold? Will it hold for more than a dozen strokes? We shall see. I bought this ax years ago. There were some logs lying at the bottom of the hill in the backyard, on the verge of being in the swamp. It might be nice if they are cut up, but that area turns to mush in the winter, so it's not like it's going to make any difference. Still, it would be nice if they were cut up. I could do it with an ax. It would be slow going, but I'm not in any hurry, and I could use the exercise. So I bought an ax and chopped. I don't know how much I did, it was years ago, but I was a middle aged suburban home owner, I wasn't a 20 something lumberjack going at it ten hours a day. And the ax broke. Nuisance. Bought a replacement handle (back then you could buy them at Home Depot), fitted it up and went back to my sporadic chopping. And then it broke again.

I drove around with it in the trunk of my car for years. Eventually I remembered it while I was in the ACE Hardware store in St. Johns and I checked and they had a handle so I bought it. $8 I think. Turns out it was for a double bitted ax, not a single bit like mine, and it wasn't going to work. I still have it. Let me know if you need it, maybe I could ship it to you, though the shipping would probably be more that the original cost. But with inflation the way it is, that still might be a bargain compared to how much a new ax handle would cost, if you could find one.

Earlier this year we took out the plum tree in John's backyard in St, Johns. We have any number of power saws at our beck and call, but the boys wanted to use axes. Shit, I've got an ax, but it's busted, so we went to Home Depot to see if they had an ax handle. They didn't. They did have new axes with plastic handles for $35 and since we were on a mission from God, we didn't quibble, we bought it and carried on.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've still got this broken ax. I've got a new handle, but it won't work. There is an ACE Hardware not too far from here, but I don't relish calling them, even less driving over there. I guess I feel like I should just be able to go over there, they will have what I need and I can buy it and go on. That's the way it used to work, I didn't need to call ahead, I was confident that the store would have what I wanted. But then I was dealing with stuff that everyone dealt with, so of course they had what I needed. Now is 20 years and times have changed. You want an ax handle? It's kind of niche item. I did drive to the store once and it didn't work out so well, so I don't want a repeat. Logic does not apply here, feel me?

So now I have this great idea to try and fix it. Will it work? I think it might, for a bit anyway. It's an experiment in any case. The part that bothers me is that I broke the handle. I'm, not a lumberjack swinging an ax all day long. I'm just puttering about in my back yard. What the heck? Are ax handles that fragile? Was replacing them a daily occurrence with people who were really using them? Or was I just not in the swing of things? Inquiring minds want to know,

All this talk about axes reminds me that my dad had a double bitted ax. He bought some land in Renton (south of Seattle) and we would go out there occasionally and he would hack away at the brush. I'm not sure what the point was (I was pretty little), but now I wonder if it wasn't just a chance to get away from the corporate bullshit that was going on at Boeing.

Chopping through logs

We can't let this topic go without mentioning the scoutmaster who gave us a lesson on how to use a hatchet to cut through a six inch log. You strike one blow at 45 degrees, then move the log's diameter along the trunk and strike another blow, 45 degrees the other way, back towards your first blow. If you are lucky that will knock loose a chip. Stop and pull it off. No sense cutting through stuff that isn't holding the log together. Now you repeat this two more times, each time rotating your angle of attack 45 degrees around the axis of the log. It was a great lesson, and I used that wisdom whenever I have used an ax, but it's basically useless. The only reason I have ever swung an ax was for entertainment purposes.

Bent & Broken Spade Connectors

Okay, enough about axes. On to air conditioners. John bought a cheap room air conditioner. It worked fine for a while, but then it got dropped while it was being moved and it quit working. We figured it couldn't be too badly broken, there was no damage to the case. Some electrical component got jarred and just needs to be reconnected. Today I opened it up and found that the power cord connections had gotten ripped away from the switch. Shoot, this should be an easy fix, just slide the connectors back over the tabs protruding from the switch. Except. One of the tabs has been broken off. Okay, fine, order a new switch. Look on the web and the only thing I find is a used on for $60. I don't think so. Take the switch apart. Looks like we can drill a hole and use a screw to connect the power line to the switch. Just need to find the right electrical connector bits.

Since I am on a role I decided to tackle the drill bit packaging problem. I went a little crazy and bought too many drill bits a while back, so I decided to break up the smaller package and distribute them to my friends. It cost me almost nothing and if they use drill bits like I do, it should make them very happy. I've been stewing on how to package them for weeks. Small envelopes would have worked, but then I would have to buy envelopes, and they come in packages of a thousand. I don't need a thousand. I need five. I finally decided to use masking tape to tape them to a sheet of cardboard. Masking tape is cheap, cardboard is free. The only expense will be the postage which shouldn't be too much since the envelopes only weigh a couple of ounces.

Making An Ax Handle

DiResta Axe Handle
jimmydiresta
This guy is just nuts. The amount of work he puts into making an ax handle boggles my mind. I suppose it could have been done in a couple of hours, but you would need to be really good at using the tools, especially that band saw. I've never seen anyone use a bandsaw like that, well, except for maybe 'Uncle' Steve Blady. We stopped by to see him at his furniture factory when we went 'home' to Grand Rapids to visit Gramma (or maybe it was just someone from Gramma's generation. Gramma may have already passed away by then). He cut a couple of model pieces of furniture out of some scraps of wood he had lying around. It didn't take him but a few seconds. As I recall, one was a four legged chair and the other was a four legged table with four, stout, curvy legs. I hung onto them for a long time. A bunch of model furniture would have been cool, but I never did anything about that. They never rose to the level of display, they were just something I had. I think that was pert near 60 years ago. I don't know what happened to them, but I clearly remember 'Uncle' Steve whipping them out on his bandsaw. Funny how the mind works.

On my ax handle, I tried drilling it for the lag screw with a 12 inch long, quarter inch diameter drill bit. It went in about eight inches before it just quit. It's like it has run into a steel bar, it just won't drill anymore. I suspect it got overheated, lost it's temper, and lost it's edge. Osmany is bringing the long 5/16" diameter drill bit home tonight, so we can try that one tomorrow. We don't do anything quickly around here. Median time to project completion averages right around a year, and that's only the projects that get completed.

I need the larger drill bit because the lag screw I've got just won't go in more than about four inches. It's a lumber construction screw, designed to be machine driven into softwood, not hardwood like an ax handle. I only got as far as I did with a liberal application of wax. Unfortunately, it was from a scented candle, so now that whole corner of the garage smells like sweet essence of whatever it is.

P.S. I'm glad to see Jimmy still has all his fingers. Uncle Steve still had all of his.

Video via Jack.

Update five hours later. Video suggestion from California Bob:

Styx - Too Much Time On My Hands
STYX

Ax Repair

Repaired ax with drill and bit
Tape on drill bit is depth gauge

The quarter inch diameter drill bit wasn't big enough. I could only get the screw to go in about halfway. Osmany brought the 5/16" drill bit and that did the trick. Screw went in solid all the way. Took the ax out in the back yard and gave an old log a couple of dozen whacks. Did not seem to faze the ax, so for right now I'm calling it fixed. Whether it will hold up in heavy use remains to be seen. 

Hillman 5/16-in x 8-in Bronze Ceramic Truss Exterior Wood Screw

This is the screw I used. It cost almost $4 at Lowes. I like it because the body is the same diameter all the way down, you don't need to use two different size drill bits.

Previous posts about this repair here and here.

Benson, Arizona

Drove 30 miles down Interstate-10 to Benson, Arizona, this morning for breakfast.

Dead scorpion on the garage floor. Too much carburetor cleaner.

Nash Metropolitan outside Reb's Cafe. Truly Nolen is a pest control company. Iaman tells me that Truly has restored hundreds of cars and has them on display all over.

Steam Engine outside Reb's Cafe. At first I thought it was a tractor, but closer inspection reveals that there is no connection between the engine and the wheels. There are gears, jackshafts, chains and pulleys for fat cables. There is also a big cam that turns about the same speed as the engine. It looks to be for a trip hammer, but no hammer in evidence.

Reb's Cafe where we ate. Good food, good service, low prices. Stack of funny books on every table.

Stopped at the ACE Hardware Store where I saw this $100 ax. I can't imagine spending that much on an ax, but I then don't use one all day long, or even every day. Actually, I probably haven't picked up my ax in years.

Nothing says bulldozer like giant wrenches.

Psycho gnomes for your magic mushroom garden.

They take water seriously around here. That's a water meter attached to the fire hydrant. The hose is connected to a pipe stand for filling water trucks, for construction purposes I imagine. I don't think the fire department has to pay for the water they use.

Direct TV transmission station. Four (count 'em, four, great big, fancy satellite antennas.

Click to embiggenate.

The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek - Netflix Series

The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Very creepy, very frustrating. We've got a stalker who surreptitiously makes video recordings of people and then sends them those recordings along with bits of a nursery rhyme. Once they are well on edge, our stalker sneaks in, kills them and then slips away, often just seconds before our hero cops appear. Bodies start piling up, and then they start hitting closer to home, so now we're super motivated to find this scum bag, and find them we do.

The climax was a bit irritating. Our big and strong hero Hess has finally tracked down the villain, a slightly built woman, but he doesn't have a positive ID yet, so she's just a suspect. But she ain't waiting for the handcuffs, she  makes a surprise attack on our boy with an ax, doesn't connect with the ax, but manages to knock him to the ground. While he's on the ground she manages to give him a big ax whack in his leg. There is a tussle and he manages to get back on his feet and runs away to the bog. Who knows how people's brains react under stress, but I can tell you from the comfort of my armchair that was the wrong thing to do. He should have dealt with this woman here and now. Of course he doesn't have his gun because he's been suspended. Of course he has, dramatic cop shows, you know.

6 episodes under an hour each.

Season 1 post here.

The Old Guard

The Old Guard | Official Trailer | Netflix
An action packed but very silly movie. Charlize Theron plays an immortal tough girl leading a gang of three immortal tough guys in a battle for truth, justice and something or other. There are some good fight scenes, one between Charlize and the new girl in the back of a DC-3 while in flight. Charlize has another good one with the head of the bad guy's security force in a glassed in skybridge. There are also a couple of good gunfights and a couple of grisly massacres.

The bad guy is Merrick, the youngest CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Where have we heard that before? His company is named Merrick, which looks a whole lot like Merck which is a real drug outfit. Is someone in Hollywood pissed at Merck? Or is this a case of 'any publicity is good publicity', but in this case they didn't even spell the name right. Who knows what goes through the heads of marketing guys?

Spoilers follow. Merrick meets his comeuppance when Andy hits him in the neck with an her special ax of oblivion and then Nile tackles him and they fall out through what was a plate glass window a minute ago but is now just a big hole. Right . They fall 15 stories and land on top of a car. Both are crushed dead, but Merrick stays dead and Nile recovers in a few seconds and they all ride off into the sunset happy and satisfied that they killed, killed, killed the bad guy.

Wikipedia article

Fantasy Fireplace

I have two gas fireplaces in my house. In our previous house we had two wood burning fireplaces. Word burning fireplaces are a pain. You get to deal with wood: buy, haul, split, stack, protect from the rain, carry it into the house. Starting the fire is fun, and watching the wood burn is enjoyable. But then you get to deal with the ashes, shovel them out of the fireplace, carry them outside and dispose of them. Wood burning fireplaces are a big pain. Of course if you have a truck, or even just a trailer you can drive out to the national forest and cut your own wood for free. That is if you can afford the gasoline, which as we all now know depends on the whims of the gods of gasoline prices.

We only used one of the fireplaces in the old house. When we built the new house, we opted for a gas fireplace. Did not want the hassle of a wood burner. And when we finished the basement, we opted for another gas fireplace. Of course at this point putting in a wood burner would have entailed some major structural changes.

But every now and then, when the economic news looks particularly grim (Natural Gas prices up a gazillion percent!), I think that maybe a wood burner might have been a good idea.


This leads to thinking about living off the land and building a cabin in the woods using nothing but an ax and my bare hands. (Yeah, right, like that's gonna happen. That's why the title is what it is.) So if you're going to build a cabin in the woods, you are going to need a fireplace made of rocks. Given what we know about fireplaces, would it be worthwhile to try and design a better fireplace made of rocks? I like to think it would.

First of all, the fireplace would be in the center of the room instead of in one wall. Once a fireplace gets warm, it is going to radiate heat in all directions. No sense radiating heat to the outside. Second of all, build a channel to conduct outside air to the fire, so you are not pulling heated air out of the room. Third, build the fireplace over a big pit, with a door to the outside so you don't have to clean out the ash but once a year. I suppose the biggest improvement would be putting doors on the fireplace so as to make it more like an stove, but making doors out of stone that could be easily moved might be a bit of a trick. Might could use a couple of ancient Egyptian stone masons.

Update December 2016 replaced missing image.

Mechanical Meditation

California Bob found this quite fun:
Car Dismantler Powerhand VRS (Vehicle Recycling System)
Powerhand

Powerhand is based in Scotland.

Uniberp replies with a link to a TikTok video:

This guy gets metal the old fashioned way, he chops up electronics with an ax.

Sometimes he does a live stream, which I have found mesmerizing for a few minutes until I start to feel vicarious exhaustion and hopelessness.

I enjoyed watching these guys digging a road in Turkey:

Caterpillar D7g Bulldozer And Excavator Removes Giant Block Rock~Dev Kaya Çıkartma Operasyonu
GREYDER MEHMET
These guys are pulling a bulldozer out of the mud.
Amazing Expertly Technique Skills SHANTUI BULLDOZER Falling Into The Water Help Heavy Crean Success
Construction Cambodia
I am amazed by how thin those cables are. They don't look to be more than 3/4 of an inch thick and they are lifting that multi-ton bulldozer. It is Cambodia, so maybe they are working a little closer to the edge. Shoot, we probably have guys here doing the same kind of sketchy looking things. A 30 ton load will break a 3/4" steel cable. This bulldozer, a Shantui DH17, weighs about 9 tons, so they should be okay. A 3 to 1 ration is not the normal safety factor of 10 to 1, but at least they are not on the hairy edge.

Multifunction Folded Spade

Could be a handy tool for camping. I wonder about the saw edge though. Anything that can cut steel is going to be slow going in wood. Still, it would be a lot better than nothing. Is there any curve to the blade? I couldn't really tell. Flat would be better for cutting, but not so good for shoveling. You best carry a sharpening stone for the combination knife / ax edge. And what about that music? From Don.

Amerimacka - The Cosmic Game

Amerimacka - The Cosmic Game
Thievery Corporation

I really like the horns that play early on then again at the 4 minute mark.

I'm thinking that everything we have built are all devices to expand the reach of the most savage animals on the planet. Humans, shoot, all living things are almost infinitely complex. No matter how much we have learned about the human body, we have only scratched the surface. Everything we have figured out is like a cheat code to get us past some obstacle. Someday, maybe, we will understand it all, but I suspect it will be more than one person can comprehend. We might need a hive mind to be able to really understand it all. Some people might be okay with being a member of hive mind, but I suspect most people won't be. Or maybe I overestimate the desire for independent thought.

I've been hearing the argument about capitalism versus socialism since forever. It occurs to me that the big problem with capitalism is that it makes no provision for anyone but the winners. As we develop new technologies, all those who learned a trade under the old ways will find themselves out of a job. Some of the new kids will learn the new ways and be incorporated into the capitalist hive, but because they are more productive, the hive won't need as many of them, so all the excluded are going to be pushed out to the edges. Problem lately is that productivity has been improving faster so we have new waves of technology constantly rolling over the landscape. These wave went from 10,000 years (think fire and ax) to 1,000 years (stone buildings) to 100 years (sailing ships) to ten years (rockets and satellites) to one year (smart phones) to monthly (I can barely keep up) to daily (I'm swamped) to hourly (we're all swept away).

All this talk getting rid of billionaires isn't helping. Take a billion dollars from one person and distribute it to ten million people and each person gets $100, which might buy a tank of gas and, if you're lucky, a six pack of beer. And a week later, where are you? Howling for another billionaire. You would need 50 billionaires to get everyone $100 a week for a year. That ain't gonna work.

We've seen that welfare doesn't really work. Giving money to the poor has just given us a permanent underclass. The biggest problem is that it is very difficult to organize a group of people into a productive operation. The problem is not that we have a shortage of organizers. We have plenty of organizers doing non-productive things, like running scam calling centers, or defrauding the government. To build a productive organization you need an idea that is a least plausible, and someone who is willing to take the gamble that it will pay off. It might work out and it might not, but someone has to be willing to try.

But all this fussing about jobs and housing and war is just avoiding the elephant in the room - the umpteen zillion old folks on social security and Medicare. All I can see is that inflation is going to continue to increase. I suspect it might be ten years before the rate starts going up monthly. About then the rate will start going up exponentially and within months we'll be using trillion dollar bank notes to buy groceries. That's when people will start using the Chinese Yen or Crypto-bit strings.

Hachet Dream

Ax juggling
Daniel Archuletta

This dream happened yesterday and when I woke up I remembered it in detail, but as time went by most of that detail faded into oblivion. However, the core of the story stuck with me, so I'm going to relate it here and then maybe I can quit thinking about it.

I am outside amongst a large gathering of people, like a music festival, or a campground. It's a party atmosphere and everyone seems to be having a good time, or at least no one is making trouble. A group of guys are fooling around and one of them tosses a hachet in the air. It goes up at least 30 feet, but instead of it going straight up and coming straight down (like it would if he was showing off to his chums how talented / stupid he is) it follows an arc and comes down about 30 feet away. When it lands it hits a young girl in the back of the thigh. It lands blade first and is stuck in her thigh. It is oriented lengthwise, i.e. the blade its parallel to the long axis of the leg. I pick her up and tell the concerned audience that I am taking her to the emergency room. She is lying prone in my arms, the same position she was on the ground. One woman pipes up and says 'shouldn't we give her some antibiotics?'. I repeat that I am taking her to the emergency room.

Burn The Universities

University Hall Burns

Handwaving Freakoutery is not happy with the way the college students have been saddled with debt. He blames all of us for the disaster that has befallen the zillions who got loans to go to college. He's mostly right.

Universities also help maintain Western Civilization, teaching things like art, literature and history, things that are important if you want to maintain your civilization. But those topics are more of a hobby and don't necessarily tie into making a living, which is what the vast majority of college students are interested in, or will be, as soon as their funding runs out.

Is our economy functioning well? It is, mostly. There is a large, and possibly growing, underclass, and things may not be going so well for them. 'A rising tide lifts all boats' is a phrase I have heard on occasion, but it only really helps those who have boats. What we really need is a boat shop that is producing 'rowboats' for everyone, where a 'rowboat' is something that allows you to float on the rising tide of inflation. Problem is, all the talent and all the investment is being directed at building ocean liners and space ships and fancy stuff, fancy stuff that promises to bring ever greater rewards. Building rowboats for the poor is not such an attractive business proposition.

The Model T Ford was such a rowboat, as were mobile homes. Now we have smartphones which almost everyone has and will surely give you a leg up on surviving in this world.

So we are seeing colossal blunders all around us, but we are also seeing phenomenal successes. We have promoters promoting the most ridiculous nonsense, but since the the world seems to be awash with a zillion times as much money as sense, they are finding followers, followers who are contributing / investing in whatever the promoter is promoting. Cowabunga.

P.S. Mizzou, the University of Missouri alumni magazine has a fine story about the fire that destroyed their Academic Hall in 1892 (picture at top). Steam, electric and gas lighting and broken ax handles all play a part.

P.P.S. Just came across this:

Policy Violence

Fascism by Ayelet Shaked

Ayelet Shaked - Fascism (click CC for subtitles)
When I first saw this (without the translation), I thought it might really be an ad for perfume, which made me wonder just how tone deaf the manufacturer must be. Then I read a bit. Seem Ayelet (eyelet?), a member of the Israeli parliament, has gotten tired of being branded as a fascist by the left, so she is striking back. Naturally, it has caused a firestorm in Israel (or a tempest in a teapot from my vantage point), but I have to give her credit for sticking her neck out. Here's hoping she doesn't get the ax.

Jerry Miculek Shoots the M-1 Garand

Comrad Misfit put up a video of Mr. Jerry making a very difficult shot, well, difficult for the likes of you and me. He makes it look easy. He is an impressive shooter, but even more impressive is that he is an old geezer who seems to have successfully adapted to our brave new net.     I'm looking at some of his other stuff and I see this video. I like semi-automatic rifles because they deliver the most firepower you can get without a license, and I like the 30-06 because it is the most powerful cartridge you can get for under a buck. So I really like the M-1 Garand because it combines these two elements: the most bang for the buck. Never mind that I haven't shot more than a dozen rounds of this, and a Garand at $400 is too rich for my blood, if I was going to war it would still be my weapon of choice. (Yeah, in your dreams grandpa.)     The clip business is interesting. Tam put up a post about clips versus magazines a while back, (this might be it, or maybe this) and until then I hadn't really thought about it. I had always been of the schoolboy opinion that magazines where the one true way. Shoot until empty, drop the empty magazine and slap a full one into the gun and resume shooting. Problem with magazines is you have to load them, one bullet at a time, by hand, which is slow and annoying. Plus you have to have magazines to load, they cost money to buy and they have some non-negligible weight you have to carry. Clips are better in almost every way. The ammo comes preloaded in clips (at least it does if you are the federal government and are buying ammo by the trainload), the clips have negligible cost and weight and are entirely disposable. I don't know, but I suspect that clips might be slightly harder and slower to get into the gun, and they disrupt your sight line, which could be a critical moment in combat. Plus if you are an arms manufacturer, you don't get to charge for the magazines.      I call him Mr. Jerry because even though I heard him say his name on the video I still can't figure out how to pronounce it. Mukluk? Mis-a-lek? Mik-a-lux? Missile-ax?

Alcohol

There's something wrong with me, at least I think there is. That might be the whole problem right there: I think I am sick, therefor I am. I have numerous minor maladies, but in spite of a steady diet of doctors and witches I don't have any explanation for while I feel like crap so much of the time. Maybe it was my white bread upbringing, maybe it's the mind control aerosols that the government is using jet airliners to spray into the atmosphere. Maybe it's allergies. Maybe it's bad luck. Maybe there's nothing wrong me except that I am bored and my mind just magnifies any little ache or pain until it becomes incapacitating.
    On the other hand whatever-it-is might be the reason I am not an alcoholic. There were times when alcohol was a substantial part of my diet, but eventually I would get an attack of whatever-it-is and I would feel so bad that I didn't care if I got another drink. So maybe it's some kind of survival mechanism.
    I recently finished reading Nemesis by Jo Nesbo, a Norwegian murder mystery. The hero, Harry Hole (Harry Hole? You're kidding, right? Unfortunately, no.), like all good storybook detectives has a drinking problem. My problem was that he didn't seem to have any problem turning his drinking off and on. From what I know about alcohol, that is virtually impossible, at least not without serious consequences, like the shakes. Seems I might be wrong about that:

High-functioning alcoholics also may not be physically addicted to alcohol, abstaining for days or weeks without suffering withdrawal symptoms.

    We've been watching Hell On Wheels and drinking whiskey seems to be everyone's main occupation. The whiskey has a brown tint, like good bourbon or scotch, but that's just artistic license. The labels say, plain as day, "Corn Whiskey", which you used to be able to buy at the liquor store, and it's clear as glass. The brown tint in good whiskey comes from aging it in charred oak barrels. Back in 1870, when they were building the railroad, whiskey was lucky if it got aged two weeks, and that was only because it took that long to haul it to the end of the railroad.
    Whiskey can substitute for food, at least for a while. It is not a good substitute, but it does provide calories and it can keep you going. Your body metabolizes alcohol into sugar, which can then be used to provide energy. You have the side effect of being drunk all the time, but evidently some people adapt. They're what we call functional alcoholics. Drink all day long but never appear drunk. Charge on regardless.
    Flight with Denzel Washington was about such a person. He is flying under the radar, so to speak, until there is a crisis and he heroically saves a planeload of people. But now he is under the media spotlight and all his sins are revealed. He isn't the only one.
    I tried to find some kind of estimate of how many alcoholics there are in the USA, or anywhere for that matter, and could not find any that were worth quoting. Things "like half of everyone has too much to drink at least once in their life" doesn't really tell me anything useful.
    So back in the 1800's everyone drank whiskey all the time. It was a good source of calories, didn't spoil, and disinfected everything it came in contact with. Whiskey probably saved a lot of lives. But by 1900 it was getting out of hand, and Carrie Nation and her ax swinging sisterhood was determined to put a stop to it, which is how we got prohibition.

Trees

The Amazon basin leads the world in tree density: dark green represents 1 million or more trees per square kilometer. There are fewer trees in the lighter shades of green. The buff color has very few trees, and darkest brown represents areas with no trees. Crowther, et al./Nature

I'm reading Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury out loud while Osmany cooks breakfast.  Tom and Doug are discussing the rites of summer and Tom mentions that there are five billion trees in the world. That sounds a little low to me, after all there are seven billion people in the wold, and they are mostly concentrated in urban areas. Trees cover vast swatches of most of the continents and they are probably as dense on the ground as people are in cities, so the number of trees has got to be much higher, right?

Google turns up a story on NPR that gives some different, larger numbers.

There was one estimate based on satellite images: about 400 billion trees worldwide, or 61 trees for every person.
But there were doubts about that number because another recent estimate, based on ground-truthed measurements, found 390 billion trees in the Amazon basin alone.

Thomas Crowther and crew spent a couple of years digging up information. When they had added it all up it came to around three trillion trees. Okay, that's good. It's good to have trees. But how does this compare with the good old days? No so good:

Crowther says their work suggests that, compared with the days before human civilization, the world has lost roughly half its trees. And the gross number of trees lost each year because of humans is now about 15 billion.

If that 15 billion trees per year was a constant, then it would have taken us just over 200 years to cut down three trillion trees and a like amount of time to cut down the the remaining trees. It's not a constant of course. People have been cutting down trees every since some dude came up with the stone ax. We've been cutting down more and more trees every year ever since. We might be approaching peak tree cutting time. If we keep it up trees might become kind of scarce, which means it's going to be harder to find enough trees to cut down so we might not be able to fill our god given quota.

Silent Running Trailer

Reminds me of Silent Running, the goofy Science Fiction movie with Bruce Dern as the custodian of the last remaining forest, which is in a spaceship in orbit around earth because there is no room on earth for any trees because of all the people.

Update April 30 (the next day). Corrected a mathematical error.

Garage Door Snafu

Garage Door Mechanism

Getting rid of stuff. Noticed some stuff up on some tall shelves in the garage. By standing on a step stool and using an ax handle I was able to reach it and push it off the end. Looks like old plastic parts I took off of a car that I no longer have. But there's also a long aluminum pole up there. Not sure what to do with it just yet, so I left it.

Press the button to open the garage door and it does, almost all the way, but something goes squawk at the very end. That stupid pole has managed to get in between the leading edge of the door and the door frame around the side door. That was enough to upset the finely balanced mechanism and the cable jumped off of the drum at the end of the torsion shaft. Now everything is out of whack and the door makes horrible squawking noises when it is moved.

Torsion Spring, Tube, Drum & Cable

I was able to fix it, though it took some doing. First lower the door all the way, or as far as it will go. There is a thin steel cable that runs along the edge of the door that translates the force of the torsion spring into a counter balancing lift on the door. It had escaped past the weatherstripping on the outside, so I tucked it back in. Next I wind up the torsion spring maybe one more turn, just enough to relieve the tension on this cable so I can get it off of the axle and back on the drum. 3/8"square drive extensions (from my mechanic's tools work) work okay, but after a half turn, I need more force. One slip at this point and things will go flying.

Winding the torsion spring
Beware the Force. If it's with you, great. But be careful. If you aren't watching it will whack you upside the head.

I looked around for something better and finally found a couple of pieces of 3/8" threaded rod about 3 feet long. I was a little dubious at first because these rods can be bent fairly easily. Not to worry. They worked fine. Three foot long rods can be bent fairly easily, but a six inch long rod, not so much, and that's where all the force is. If it's 100 pounds at six inches, it's only 50 pounds at one foot and 25 at two feet. Having a three foot long rod to wind the torsion spring made it easy.

When I got the spring wound tight enough the end of the rod was sticking out in space, so I stuck a piece of 2 by 4 about a foot long between the door and the end of the rod. The tension on the spring was enough to hold the block of wood securely, even with a three foot long lever. Now I can move the cable back onto the drum. Used a bungee cord to pull sideways on the cable to keep it in place as we let off the tension on the spring and the tension returns to the cable.

Thought I had it fixed, but when I tried it, the cable popped off the drum at the other end. So I fixed that. Then it popped off the first drum again. Okay fine, fix both of them before we move the door. That did it and it seems to be fixed.

Wood Chopper

This gal makes short videos of herself splitting firewood with an ax. That's all she does, nothing fancy. I enjoy watching her, but I didn't realize just how popular she is - on stage for Pete's sake!

Hip Joint

Iaman had surgery a couple of weeks ago to replace one of his hip joints with an artificial one. The surgery went well and he went home the next day.
    Hip joint surgery is a big deal. It's major surgery. Any time you go in for surgery there is a risk that you are not going to come out of it. Doctors have a pretty good idea of what they are doing, but people are complicated and it's entirely possible that something weird will happen and they won't be able to cope with it. The odds of something bad happening are pretty low, but they are not zero.
    My father had trouble with his artificial hip. He went in the hospital and spent the next six months in there or in rehab before he passed away. He was old.
    My father-in-law went in for surgery to replace one of his hip joints a couple of years ago. He survived the surgery fine, but then he lapsed into a coma for a week or so. They suspect he had a small stroke. He woke up and seems to be mostly there, but he has trouble walking, so he's in rehab. He's about the same age as my father was.
    All this is to show that Iaman's going in for surgery was fraught with terror, kind of like taking your first flight in a plane. Everyone tells you it's safe but there was that news report last week about the plane that fell out of the sky and everyone on board died. What if the same thing happens to your flight? I mean it might.

    Iaman survived and went home and he's flying high until the anesthetic wears off a couple of days later. By now he's started taking morphine so he's feeling no pain. A few days later he steps down to Oxycodone. He lives in a retirement community and he knows several people there who have had the same operation and they tell him things like the recovery was no big deal. They quit the Oxy after a couple of days and were just taking Tylenol. They're big fat liars. That might be the way the remember it, but that's because they were high on Oxy.
    After a few days of Oxy, Iaman tries cutting back. It doesn't work so well. He's supposed to take a pill every six hours. If he skips one, 30 mintues later everyone knows he's skpped his pill. Grimacing, he relents and takes his medicine.
    This surgery has about the same impact on your body as if somebody broke your leg with an ax. It's gonna hurt, and it's gonna hurt bad for a while. That's why the doc gave him a case of narcotics the week before. He's gonna need them.

Velocity, Detour, Part 2

Grumman EA-6B Prowler

Rocky Humbert found a story by the New York Times that contains a brief description of the damage that the Prowler aircraft suffered when it cut the gondola cable in Italy 11 years ago. Thanks, Rocky! The story also contains a place for a picture, but there is no picture, only a description of what the picture shows, and the aircraft is not in it. I imagine the military has a bunch of photos, but no telling where they are. (This picture is of a similar aircraft, not the one involved in this incident).

So we have a report that there was damage to the aircraft, so maybe it did happen as they say and it wasn't the North Koreans or the Mafia. That airplane wing must be made out of some pretty tough stuff. Well, it is a military aircraft, they do have have hardpoints on the wings to carry things like bombs and stuff, and it has folding wings so, okay, the wing was tough enough to hang on until the cable broke. Still, I wonder about just how the cable broke. It's going to be under considerable tension. I imagine the cable itself weighs a few tons, and then we have the gondola hanging from it, which adds more tension. Now we strike the cable with an aircraft wing traveling 500 MPH, which is like 750 FPS (feet per second). The cable must have parted almost instantaneously. If it had held on for more than a couple of milliseconds, the airplane would have slewed around and probably crashed. I don't think the cable was cut so much as it just snapped. Hitting the cable must have increased the tension on the cable to the point that it failed.

Of course, I could be all wet. There may be an internal structure in the wing that acted like an ax blade and severed the cable.

Update January 2017 replaced missing picture.