Even as the post went up, A was fairly sure he had identified the Blue Rock of Death. The good news it is not radio-active, the bad news is that it had nothing what-so-ever to do with a higher-than-might-be-usual concentration of nitrogen (fish poop) in the bottom of the tank. The rock would react with any water & kill anything living in proximity, especially in a closed system like a fish tank.
Which begs the question: what gets into people? Why sell a rock stating it is for a fish tank when it could not be? Did the person who sold it know it would kill everything? Maybe they 1) got screwed themselves & thought the universe would be a happier place if they passed it on 2) are just stoopid & said "shiny rock - that would look good in water". Or did they just pick it up somewhere think that it would be perfect for someone else's fish tank?
The rock itself is almost certainly Azurite. It was identified by a Ph.Ded physicist with experience growing carbon nano-tubes & working with crystals in a quest for a tunable laser. He identified the specimen by Googling for a blue rock that kills fish. I do not know what he Googled exactly because he claims not to remember.
We (my physicist/farmer husband & me & the dogs & the cats) moved from sprawling Houston, TX to a small, but useless farm in Florida. Then the donkey moved in. He was lonely, so the goats came. & then some horses, some more dogs, chickens, cockatiels, more cats, new horses. You get the picture.
Showing posts with label puzzles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label puzzles. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Blue rock of death
A few weeks ago, V** arrived early enough that she overlapped with A before he left for campus. Or maybe he was late. That detail is fuzzy but this one is not--she wanted to ask him about the blue rock of death.
A few weeks before, she had been cruising a yard sale & found a shiny, turquoise-y, glassy-looking rock. The seller of the rock said it was for a a fish tank & V** said "I have a fish tank!" & she bought it. Because it was shiny. & turquoise. & looked like glass.
She went home & forgot it in the cab of the truck for a day or two. Then she brought it in, cleaned it off & put it in her freshwater tank. By morning all the fish were dead.
She was shocked, horrified & very upset. She was scooping the bodies when she saw a small, pitted, ugly thing at the bottom of the tank & asked herself "what the f*ck is that?" It was the blue rock of death, but its appearance had changed dramatically.
She dealt with the bodies, left the rock & went to work. When she got home, the plants were starting to look, well clear. Photosynthesis had clearly stopped & they were losing their green. She took the blue rock out, put it in a bag & I am sorry to say it is now sitting on my front step.
This is what we know: the bottom of the tank is certainly richer in nitrogen than any other part of the tank. Because it is sizable, she usually cleans it by pumping it out rather than transferring fish, scoping out water, etc. so it might be even higher than most other healthy fresh water tanks.
V** thought that the pitted surface might be something that had 'grown over' the rock, but A says not. he is pretty sure the change is to the surface itself.
We would know more but A keeps forgetting to borrow a Geiger counter (would you believe he has had reason to borrow one in the past? Well, he has).
So does anyone know what the blue rock of death might be? Does anyone have any questions about the blue rock of death? Does anyone want me to send them the blue rock so they can examine it more closely ? That would last one be ideal, actually.
A few weeks before, she had been cruising a yard sale & found a shiny, turquoise-y, glassy-looking rock. The seller of the rock said it was for a a fish tank & V** said "I have a fish tank!" & she bought it. Because it was shiny. & turquoise. & looked like glass.
She went home & forgot it in the cab of the truck for a day or two. Then she brought it in, cleaned it off & put it in her freshwater tank. By morning all the fish were dead.
She was shocked, horrified & very upset. She was scooping the bodies when she saw a small, pitted, ugly thing at the bottom of the tank & asked herself "what the f*ck is that?" It was the blue rock of death, but its appearance had changed dramatically.
This is what we know: the bottom of the tank is certainly richer in nitrogen than any other part of the tank. Because it is sizable, she usually cleans it by pumping it out rather than transferring fish, scoping out water, etc. so it might be even higher than most other healthy fresh water tanks.
V** thought that the pitted surface might be something that had 'grown over' the rock, but A says not. he is pretty sure the change is to the surface itself.
We would know more but A keeps forgetting to borrow a Geiger counter (would you believe he has had reason to borrow one in the past? Well, he has).
So does anyone know what the blue rock of death might be? Does anyone have any questions about the blue rock of death? Does anyone want me to send them the blue rock so they can examine it more closely ? That would last one be ideal, actually.
Friday, April 17, 2009
How is a used book sale like the stock market?
Our local library has two book sales a year & they are impressive. The next one begins tomorrow & I would not miss it for the world. A will be out of town but I still plan to face the crowds (& there are crowds, believe me). Typically, we will drive downtown just before lunchtime; the real hardcore booklovers will have been waiting for the doors to open & will be trickling away by then. Sure, it will be blisteringly hot, but we will be able to find a parking spot.
We go to at least one sale a year & may go more than once in the course of the sale, each day getting progressively better bargains. I have never once been & not run into at least one person I knew would be there at some point (either because they said so or because it was so patently clear they must go at some point) & at least one person I was not expecting to see (not because I think these people are idiots, but because they just have not passed thru my brain in quite some time).
Last year we ran into several good friends including C***** who had brought J***** with her. He was going through old VHS tapes; she was looking for old 33rpm records to use in art projects. I also ran into M*** L** who talked at length about the GED program she volunteers with at the county jail; she was at the sale buying books to loan to the prisoners to meet their GED requirements. I learned that haiku is very big in the prison (or was last Fall) & a number of her books dealt with the history & architecture of that style of poetry. S** & R***** had traveled from their new home in North Carolina to volunteer at the sale because they miss it so much but did not happen to be there on the day we went. I wonder who I will see this year.
ANSWER: The initial sale (of book or stock) is the only time the originators (the author, the publisher, the principal of the company) really benefit financially. After that, the buying & selling of used books/stocks profits the seller. There are exceptions. My favorite is when a company goes public & the principal stays on as an 'adviser'. If the stock does well, the shareholders might vote him a big fat bonus.
If you are asking yourself why then does a company care so much what its stock is worth you are asking the wrong question; the company does not care (sort of), but the guy who is hired or fired on shareholder say-so cares very much.
//On re-reading this I realize I inadvertently implied I think people who do not support their local libraries &/or go to library book sales are idiots. Let me clarify: I think they are willful idiots which is so much worse than just plain old born stoopid. Glad to have the chance to clear that up.
We go to at least one sale a year & may go more than once in the course of the sale, each day getting progressively better bargains. I have never once been & not run into at least one person I knew would be there at some point (either because they said so or because it was so patently clear they must go at some point) & at least one person I was not expecting to see (not because I think these people are idiots, but because they just have not passed thru my brain in quite some time).
Last year we ran into several good friends including C***** who had brought J***** with her. He was going through old VHS tapes; she was looking for old 33rpm records to use in art projects. I also ran into M*** L** who talked at length about the GED program she volunteers with at the county jail; she was at the sale buying books to loan to the prisoners to meet their GED requirements. I learned that haiku is very big in the prison (or was last Fall) & a number of her books dealt with the history & architecture of that style of poetry. S** & R***** had traveled from their new home in North Carolina to volunteer at the sale because they miss it so much but did not happen to be there on the day we went. I wonder who I will see this year.
ANSWER: The initial sale (of book or stock) is the only time the originators (the author, the publisher, the principal of the company) really benefit financially. After that, the buying & selling of used books/stocks profits the seller. There are exceptions. My favorite is when a company goes public & the principal stays on as an 'adviser'. If the stock does well, the shareholders might vote him a big fat bonus.
If you are asking yourself why then does a company care so much what its stock is worth you are asking the wrong question; the company does not care (sort of), but the guy who is hired or fired on shareholder say-so cares very much.
//On re-reading this I realize I inadvertently implied I think people who do not support their local libraries &/or go to library book sales are idiots. Let me clarify: I think they are willful idiots which is so much worse than just plain old born stoopid. Glad to have the chance to clear that up.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Equine cargo cult
I am a gynormous fan of the writer Nevil Shute. Not just On The Beach or A Town Like Alice; my favorite is definitely Round The Bend. I just love all those lists of airplane parts (oh fixed asset inventory, how I adore you). & I find cargo cults (& mummies) irresistible.
Cargo cults, for those who do not know are yet another example of man's interpreting as divine what he cannot explain through his experience. Specifically, when native (technologically immature) people were slammed right up against modern (technologically dependent) people, the natives saw the results of technology as miraculous. The most common example is the Pacific islanders of WWII. After seeing US troops clear drop sites & landing strips & line them with burning torches so supplies could be delivered with some accuracy, the natives would make similar clearings of their own & wait for manna.
What I did not realize until I took up Useless Ranching was that cargo cults are not limited to human beings. This is an excellent argument for the 'animals have souls' crowd & I would have clued them in earlier if I actually believed in souls, which I do not.
Our donkey, as I believe I have mentioned, is a clever bastard. Equal emphasis on clever & bastard. People go on about the nobility of horses. With very few exceptions, horses are idiots (so nobility just might be the right word). Donkeys are quite intelligent & not the least noble.
Bert (the donkey) likes puzzles. No really. He likes watching you do things & then he likes to undo them. This can be anything from the knot in your shoe laces to the latch keeping the gate closed. He is fascinated by the all things mechanical. He has stolen power drills, cell phones, all kinds of things of that ilk. He has never stolen the scoop I use to give him his food. He has tried to bump it out of my hands, spilling feed every where (he is a glutton, have I mentioned this? Well, he is), but the scoop itself holds not interest for him.
Not so the horses. If I pick up a bucket & put it down, they will kill each other trying to get their heads into what the donkey knows is an empty bucket. The donkey waits until I come out of the feed room with the full scoop. Then & only then does he behave as though it were dinner time. This usually means trying to muscle me around before I can pour the feed into a bucket that will be claimed by a horse, who may or may not be in a sharing mood. Pound for pound the donkey is stronger & pounds aside more clever by far, but he is always, above all things, lazy. He has no interest in expending energy fighting with a horse when he can steal from the barrel itself.
This brings us to equine cargo cults. The horses are not complete idiots, they know the feed is kept in the feedroom. They have seen me chuck out hay & refill the scoop from that magic den. But they accepted they cannot get into the feed room; the feed must come to them. Until the day the donkey opened the door latch.
Donkeys have a prehensile lip. You would be amazed how strong & limber it is (keep it clean, people). One day, Bert opened the feedroom door with it. This means he flipped a loop of metal from flush against the plate to 90degrees from the plate, leaned his weight on the door & pulled towards himself, sliding the locking pin back & opening the door. Then he went in & made a total pig of himself.
Captain, being a big Big horse could not have fit in there while the donkey was in there, but still managed to pull several bails of hay out & they had a grand time. Bert did this more than once (I thought I was forgetting to latch the door properly before I actually saw him do it). A has since made an addition to the locking mechanism: a latch that prevent the loop from moving up to that 90degree position, unless you can unclip it & lift it out, something a prehensile lip cannot do.
As soon as he saw this, Bert gave up. He knows what he cannot do. He then went on to accomplish other assinine feats, but I will save them for another day. Captain on the other hand could not be deterred. On any given day, he would stand at the feedroom for hours, hours & hours licking....wait for it....the hinges. He had seen Bert do this trick & open that door & dammit he was going to do it, too. It never worked but he never really gave up. You can argue that maybe the hinges had some quality he liked, a mineral taste maybe.Except he never licked the hinges before this & he never licked any of the other hinges, including those on the doors of the adjacent stalls.
As far as I am concerned that meets the definition of Cargo Cult. & I do not just mean Captain's behavior. The donkey is the modern person in this little tale & he is too close for my comfort: he would rather steal than work, he would rather work than wait & he would rather give up than pretend he could ever make it work again.
In rereading this, I realized I may have given the impression there are mummies in the Shute books. There are not, that I can recall. If you want mummies, let me recommend the works of H. H. Ryder (that's right, the King Solomon's Mines guy) or even better The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, which does for mummies what The Historian did for vampires. Well worth the pages.
Cargo cults, for those who do not know are yet another example of man's interpreting as divine what he cannot explain through his experience. Specifically, when native (technologically immature) people were slammed right up against modern (technologically dependent) people, the natives saw the results of technology as miraculous. The most common example is the Pacific islanders of WWII. After seeing US troops clear drop sites & landing strips & line them with burning torches so supplies could be delivered with some accuracy, the natives would make similar clearings of their own & wait for manna.
What I did not realize until I took up Useless Ranching was that cargo cults are not limited to human beings. This is an excellent argument for the 'animals have souls' crowd & I would have clued them in earlier if I actually believed in souls, which I do not.
Our donkey, as I believe I have mentioned, is a clever bastard. Equal emphasis on clever & bastard. People go on about the nobility of horses. With very few exceptions, horses are idiots (so nobility just might be the right word). Donkeys are quite intelligent & not the least noble.
Bert (the donkey) likes puzzles. No really. He likes watching you do things & then he likes to undo them. This can be anything from the knot in your shoe laces to the latch keeping the gate closed. He is fascinated by the all things mechanical. He has stolen power drills, cell phones, all kinds of things of that ilk. He has never stolen the scoop I use to give him his food. He has tried to bump it out of my hands, spilling feed every where (he is a glutton, have I mentioned this? Well, he is), but the scoop itself holds not interest for him.
Not so the horses. If I pick up a bucket & put it down, they will kill each other trying to get their heads into what the donkey knows is an empty bucket. The donkey waits until I come out of the feed room with the full scoop. Then & only then does he behave as though it were dinner time. This usually means trying to muscle me around before I can pour the feed into a bucket that will be claimed by a horse, who may or may not be in a sharing mood. Pound for pound the donkey is stronger & pounds aside more clever by far, but he is always, above all things, lazy. He has no interest in expending energy fighting with a horse when he can steal from the barrel itself.
This brings us to equine cargo cults. The horses are not complete idiots, they know the feed is kept in the feedroom. They have seen me chuck out hay & refill the scoop from that magic den. But they accepted they cannot get into the feed room; the feed must come to them. Until the day the donkey opened the door latch.
Donkeys have a prehensile lip. You would be amazed how strong & limber it is (keep it clean, people). One day, Bert opened the feedroom door with it. This means he flipped a loop of metal from flush against the plate to 90degrees from the plate, leaned his weight on the door & pulled towards himself, sliding the locking pin back & opening the door. Then he went in & made a total pig of himself.
Captain, being a big Big horse could not have fit in there while the donkey was in there, but still managed to pull several bails of hay out & they had a grand time. Bert did this more than once (I thought I was forgetting to latch the door properly before I actually saw him do it). A has since made an addition to the locking mechanism: a latch that prevent the loop from moving up to that 90degree position, unless you can unclip it & lift it out, something a prehensile lip cannot do.
As soon as he saw this, Bert gave up. He knows what he cannot do. He then went on to accomplish other assinine feats, but I will save them for another day. Captain on the other hand could not be deterred. On any given day, he would stand at the feedroom for hours, hours & hours licking....wait for it....the hinges. He had seen Bert do this trick & open that door & dammit he was going to do it, too. It never worked but he never really gave up. You can argue that maybe the hinges had some quality he liked, a mineral taste maybe.Except he never licked the hinges before this & he never licked any of the other hinges, including those on the doors of the adjacent stalls.
As far as I am concerned that meets the definition of Cargo Cult. & I do not just mean Captain's behavior. The donkey is the modern person in this little tale & he is too close for my comfort: he would rather steal than work, he would rather work than wait & he would rather give up than pretend he could ever make it work again.
In rereading this, I realized I may have given the impression there are mummies in the Shute books. There are not, that I can recall. If you want mummies, let me recommend the works of H. H. Ryder (that's right, the King Solomon's Mines guy) or even better The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, which does for mummies what The Historian did for vampires. Well worth the pages.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Mudscapades
After any deluge, the terrain in front of the barns is more like a tureen. It is the norm to have a clog or shoe or even a boot sucked right off your foot.
This can make driving up to the feed room to unload even more fun than usual. There are three concrete squares leading up to the feed room (so one back tire can stay out of the mud), but in the soft ground they shift wildly. It is not possible to stabilize them in the mud, I just hope they don't turn up on end & crush anyone (me, any animal, whomever).
I promised to share the missionaries&cannibals-style routine before & here it is:
I drive to the feed store & pay a lot of money for ~300lbs of feed. You would think this would be the hardest part, but it isn't.
I drive home & park in front of the closed emu yard gate.
I close the gate at the top of the driveway (which was open from when I left to go get feed).
I walk to the pasture, cutting through the backyard, opening & closing each gate as I go.
I feed the horses & goats as usual, but with some extras:
I lure Bert & Coco into one stall together (they always do this, but if I am lucky, Ashley goes in with them).
I shut Becca in her stall.
I feed Tiki in the open end stall.
I lure Black&Tan & Cinnamon-Girl, somewhere, anywhere, but usually Cinnamon-Girl goes into the feed room itself & refuses to come out. She knows whats coming.
I cut back through the back yard, opening & closing blah, blah, blah.
I open the emu gate to the front yard.
I wait for the emus to decide to leave (there are ways to lure them out, but they are their own headache. Sometimes I do it & sometimes I just wait).
I drive into the emu yard & close the gate behind me. Now the emus are in the front yard, shut out of their yard.
I open the emu gate to the pasture, drive through & close this same emu gate behind the truck.
I back the truck up to the feed room & this is where the mud comes in. If the ground is muddy, I back up carefully. I have been stuck out here before. The giant stepping stones often shift under the weight of the truck & sometimes there is the littlest bit of shimmy, but so far I have not backed into this particular barn.
I get out of the truck & open the feed room.
Remember the two goats in there? Well they come out. & jump into the bed of the truck. Or knock me down while I am carrying the feed bags. Or stick their heads into the barrel so the feed pours over them. They do all of this in rotation until all the feed is unloaded.
In the meantime Tiki has certainly finished eating. While not nearly so bad (or bold) as the goats or even the other horses, she is curious. & excitable. Remember the mud? Horses that run on mud behave much like the driver who does not know how to hydroplane. Also, 1200lbs can get quite a bit of momentum if she should say, kick her back legs up in the air & go sliding on just the front two.
Now, the variables: if it has rained, the doors may not latch shut. I can throw all my body weight against them, but if they are not fully latched, Bert will have worked his & Coco's (& Ashley's, if she went in with them) door open & is now accompanying the goats (now joined by Ashley). Coco's bullying Tiki, who is now pacing wildly at the edge of all this, making it hard to drive the goats away, as they have more sense then to try & run by an angry Paso who thinks they got her share (sidebar: I love the way Pasos are described as "lively". For anyone who is confused about the term, it means "psycho").
OKay, lets say the unloading is complete, all the feed is in the barrels, & the barrels are sealed (another challenge when Cinnamon-Girl jams her head in to scarf down as much as she can).
Now I need to get the truck back out. Everyone gets fed again. That's right, I reward them for their bad behavior. First Coco & Bert & hopefully Ashley go back in. Another handful of food puts Tiki in the open end stall. For the sake of peace, I give Becca another scoop, but she is usually the only one still where she ought to be. Then I broadcast some so Cinnamon-Girl & Black&Tan are kept busy while I open the pasture gate drive into the emu pen & close the pasture gate.
Then I pull out of the emu pen & go back (through the backyard, to the pasture) & let everyone out. Then I go collapse; the emus will put themselves back whenever & I will close that gate when I notice.
So next time someone asks "what are you doing today" & I say "I have to get feed this morning" do not assume that means I am free for lunch. Chances are pretty good I will need to go back to bed.
This can make driving up to the feed room to unload even more fun than usual. There are three concrete squares leading up to the feed room (so one back tire can stay out of the mud), but in the soft ground they shift wildly. It is not possible to stabilize them in the mud, I just hope they don't turn up on end & crush anyone (me, any animal, whomever).
I promised to share the missionaries&cannibals-style routine before & here it is:
I drive to the feed store & pay a lot of money for ~300lbs of feed. You would think this would be the hardest part, but it isn't.
I drive home & park in front of the closed emu yard gate.
I close the gate at the top of the driveway (which was open from when I left to go get feed).
I walk to the pasture, cutting through the backyard, opening & closing each gate as I go.
I feed the horses & goats as usual, but with some extras:
I lure Bert & Coco into one stall together (they always do this, but if I am lucky, Ashley goes in with them).
I shut Becca in her stall.
I feed Tiki in the open end stall.
I lure Black&Tan & Cinnamon-Girl, somewhere, anywhere, but usually Cinnamon-Girl goes into the feed room itself & refuses to come out. She knows whats coming.
I cut back through the back yard, opening & closing blah, blah, blah.
I open the emu gate to the front yard.
I wait for the emus to decide to leave (there are ways to lure them out, but they are their own headache. Sometimes I do it & sometimes I just wait).
I drive into the emu yard & close the gate behind me. Now the emus are in the front yard, shut out of their yard.
I open the emu gate to the pasture, drive through & close this same emu gate behind the truck.
I back the truck up to the feed room & this is where the mud comes in. If the ground is muddy, I back up carefully. I have been stuck out here before. The giant stepping stones often shift under the weight of the truck & sometimes there is the littlest bit of shimmy, but so far I have not backed into this particular barn.
I get out of the truck & open the feed room.
Remember the two goats in there? Well they come out. & jump into the bed of the truck. Or knock me down while I am carrying the feed bags. Or stick their heads into the barrel so the feed pours over them. They do all of this in rotation until all the feed is unloaded.
In the meantime Tiki has certainly finished eating. While not nearly so bad (or bold) as the goats or even the other horses, she is curious. & excitable. Remember the mud? Horses that run on mud behave much like the driver who does not know how to hydroplane. Also, 1200lbs can get quite a bit of momentum if she should say, kick her back legs up in the air & go sliding on just the front two.
Now, the variables: if it has rained, the doors may not latch shut. I can throw all my body weight against them, but if they are not fully latched, Bert will have worked his & Coco's (& Ashley's, if she went in with them) door open & is now accompanying the goats (now joined by Ashley). Coco's bullying Tiki, who is now pacing wildly at the edge of all this, making it hard to drive the goats away, as they have more sense then to try & run by an angry Paso who thinks they got her share (sidebar: I love the way Pasos are described as "lively". For anyone who is confused about the term, it means "psycho").
OKay, lets say the unloading is complete, all the feed is in the barrels, & the barrels are sealed (another challenge when Cinnamon-Girl jams her head in to scarf down as much as she can).
Now I need to get the truck back out. Everyone gets fed again. That's right, I reward them for their bad behavior. First Coco & Bert & hopefully Ashley go back in. Another handful of food puts Tiki in the open end stall. For the sake of peace, I give Becca another scoop, but she is usually the only one still where she ought to be. Then I broadcast some so Cinnamon-Girl & Black&Tan are kept busy while I open the pasture gate drive into the emu pen & close the pasture gate.
Then I pull out of the emu pen & go back (through the backyard, to the pasture) & let everyone out. Then I go collapse; the emus will put themselves back whenever & I will close that gate when I notice.
So next time someone asks "what are you doing today" & I say "I have to get feed this morning" do not assume that means I am free for lunch. Chances are pretty good I will need to go back to bed.
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