Map of Population Density
Category: Need to Know
How to Get Cold Water in Death Valley
It gets hot in the Southwest of the United States in the summertime. I have lived here most of my life, and I am used to it. In San Diego, we get a break, because the ocean is close and it cools things down. No rain, though. We could use the rain.
Death Valley, not too far from here, is very hot. Temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit are common. There is a community for park staff and service personnel at Cow Creek just north of Furnace Creek – doesn’t the name give it away already – on the floor of Death Valley. They get their water piped in from a source spring a few miles away. The pipe is buried just a few inches below ground, and the water heats up as it travels to the community.
As a result, in the summer, the hot water that comes out of their faucets is scalding hot. To get “cool” water, they turn off their water heaters, which are usually stored inside where it’s air-conditioned or at least bearable. So the hot water, as it sits in the reservoir of the water heater, cools down to a tepid temperature which feels cold compared to the hot water from the direct supply.
And there you go: Hot water from the cold tap, cool water from the hot tap.
Plastic Bag
18 minutes well spent.
Ted Nugent on Wayne LaPierre
In Time Magazine of April 29, featuring the 100 most influential people, Ted Nugent described Wayne LaPierre. Above is the full piece, and the underlines in the article are mine.
Nugent claims the right to bear arms is God-given. Nugent may have a bigger megaphone than I do and better connections to his god, but let me claim right here that this right that he claims is God-given was revoked by the Easter Bunny yesterday when he appeared onto me and told me so. Trust me on that. It’s the truth.
The right to bear arms was given to us by a constitutional amendment as part of the Bill of Rights, adopted on December 15, 1791.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment “codified a pre-existing right” and that it “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home”but also stated that “the right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose”. They also clarified that many longstanding prohibitions and restrictions on firearms possession listed by the Court are consistent with the Second Amendment.
When the Second Amendment was adopted, the United States was an agrarian nation with 3,929,214 people. Its intended purpose was to allow us to protect our homes from thieves, bandits, Indians and slave uprisings. It says nothing about it being “sacred” as Nugent claims.
Nugent does and says whatever is good for him and him only, and values, convictions, character and integrity come later – if convenient to his current desired outcome. Nugent was a draft dodger who didn’t want to serve this “truly free and independent America” when it came calling on him. He lied and deceived grievously when it suited his objectives.
Yes, this is the guy holding up Wayne LaPierre and comparing him to Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Neckties and Buttons on Jacket Sleeves
Soldiers used wipe their snotty faces in their sleeves. The sleeves would be encrusted with mucus and (often) blood after just a day in the field, which made them look awful. The idea of putting buttons on the sleeves to prevent this is attributed to both Napoleon and Frederick the Great of Prussia. Since Frederick ruled fifty years before Napoleon, he was the more likely inventor.
Now, trying to figure out why modern men wear neckties was a lot more complicated, and there are many more theories about that, none convincing enough for me to regurgitate it here. In general, the first images of ties are seen on some Roman statues. However, the Croatians are credited mostly for the modern necktie.
Diameter of the Earth
The diameter of the Earth is 7,918 miles or 12,742 kilometers. To be completely accurate I must state that the Earth is not exactly round. It’s about 25 miles wider at the equator than from pole to pole.
The highest mountain on earth is Mt. Everest. It is 29,029 feet or 8,848 meters high.
How high would Mt. Everest be on that ball, if its height were exactly to scale? It would be 1.2 millimeters high. Can you picture 1.2 millimeters?
The left red line is about 1.2 millimeters wide. This is actually a little tricky, because the width and resolution of your screen can change this somewhat. But you get the idea. Pull out a metric ruler and you can see the smallest units are millimeters.
Anyway, it’s very small on that big blue man-high marble ball in front of you. If you rubbed your hand over Mt. Everest, since it is not an abrupt mountain, but a gradual increase over the width of the Himalayas, you might not even feel Mt. Everest.
You definitely would not feel the indentation of the Grand Canyon, since its depth is only about a fifth of the height of Mt. Everest. It would depend on the sensitivity of your hand.
The highest mountain in Earth is negligible when viewed from the scale of the entire globe.
As the Crow Flies
Hiking yesterday in the hills of Southern California, I saw murders of crows (see below for definition of term) surfing the updrafts and thought about the term “as the crow flies.” Why do we use that term? The crows I saw were circling like hawks. But I remembered seeing crows, hundreds, thousands of them, flying in straight lines over our house, every evening in winter and early spring, always in the same direction, straight as arrows, seemingly from one point to another, as if commuting to work.
American crows commonly sleep overnight in a tree in large dense flocks (they are called murders for some reason) during winter. Sometimes there are thousands of crows packed into just a few trees. This is called communal roosting. Crows fly to the roosts at nightfall. Most large cities have just a few large communal roost sites. Since they have to get to the roost site before dark, crows all across the city all fly in the same direction with their classic steady, purposeful straight-line flight that gave rise to the phrase “as the crow flies.”
There is speculation that hungry crows notice who ate well that day, and the next morning the hungry crows follow the well-fed crows to try to find better feeding sites.
San Diego Sprinter – Massive Incompetence
The 22 mile light rail line from Oceanside to Escondido that came on line exactly five years ago was held up as a great success in public transportation. The Escondido station is directly across the street from our office, and some of our employees who live along the line have been taking the train to work for years. The train relieves the overcrowded Highway 78 corridor and connects the cities of Escondido, San Marcos, Vista and Oceanside to the Amtrak station in Oceanside. You can ride the train from Escondido all the way to downtown Los Angeles and on from there.
Until now – that is.
The Sprinter was “closed down indefinitely” due to brakes wearing out faster than expected. Here is the article in the UT San Diego that describes the embarrassing fiasco.
People arrange their lives around public transportation. The train serves two major colleges, Palomar and California State University San Marcos. People find jobs near the train stations. People move to apartments close to access to the train.
The North County Transit District’s Sprinter line cost $477 million. This was way over budget and had many critics. Over five years, after lower than initially estimated subscription, ridership slowly increased. I was advocating for other lines, one from San Diego to Escondido and on to Temecula and Riverside, another heavy commuting corridor, all based on the apparent success of the Sprinter.
Now, during the week of the scheduled 5-year anniversary celebration the line is shut down “indefinitely.” Needless to say, they canceled the celebration.
To me, this undermines the public’s trust in public transportation. It just got harder to build another train line. Who will trust a train, when the service apparently can disappear overnight?
Could not the North County Transit District, over a five-year period, have had its maintenance department figure out that trains need brake jobs? The excuse that the brakes wore out faster than they thought does not hold up. They should have monitored this from the beginning, and had a program in place to periodically switch out brakes on 12 trains on a rotating schedule.
Overlooking something as fundamental as this just puts a spotlight on the utter incompetence of the North County Transit District.
The whole management should be replaced immediately. It is simply not acceptable for a train service to be suspended because of human oversight.
Out with the clowns!
The Most Dangerous Law…
…ever passed in the United States has been the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. As a consequence, the FDA has no control over the contents of those thousands of bright-colored bottles in the vitamin section of our supermarkets. And most of us have no idea that this is the case.
For example, I am a man over 50, so naturally it sounds good that I should take one of these tablets every day – conveniently available at my local Costco at a pretty good price. After all, the product is designed to support the heart and eye health.
But note the asterisk behind the statement on top. That refers to the caveat statement on the bottom of the bottle, which states:
This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Of course, this disclaimer is the ONLY requirement of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.
To understand the full impact of this, I need to put this into perspective. Let’s look at the back of this bottle:
After the passing of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, the vitamin companies, which, by the way, are often owned by Big Pharma companies, are the only ones that really know what’s in these bottles. There is no control, no oversight, no regulation. Just the consumer, enticed by marketing of statements that are wild guesses at best.
The female version of this specific product proclaims in large letters on the front:
Supports Breast & Bone Health*
with the asterisk, of course, to tell us that’s a statement made up by a marketing goober, to get females to buy the product. It is backed by nothing but the word of the manufacturer who also says it right there:
this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
I know people who forego conventional medicine in favor of supplements and holistic treatments. I wonder if they know that none of those are scrutinized by any oversight body. This is what happens when government does NOT regulate. We are on our own.
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act is the most dangerous law in the land.
Related articles
- WOW. This dangerous dietary supplement is still for sale. (doubtfulnews.com)
- Natural Does Not Mean Safe (slate.com)
- Are your supplements dangerous? (vitality2day.wordpress.com)
Market Value of Four Companies
For as long as I remember thinking, Exxon (now Exxon Mobil) was the most valuable company in the world. That changed this year.
Apple passed Exxon Mobil, and now Exxon Mobil is more than $80 billion behind Apple, surely never to catch up again. (Peak oil has passed, but that is another subject).
Say you had asked me at Christmas 1997 who the two most valuable tech companies would be at Christmas 2012, fifteen years in the future.
If my answer would have been that number 1 would be Apple, and number 2 would be a little company called Google that would not even be founded until September 4, 1998 in the Internet search engine business – you would have called me insane.
Microsoft was worth $164 billion at that time. Exxon $144 billion, Apple about $2.6 billion, and Google didn’t exist. Zero.
You might also notice that Apple is worth more than Microsoft and Google combined.
What a difference 15 years make.
More People at Our Table
The world population is growing by 80 million people a year. That’s about 219,000 a day.
How much is 219,000?
That’s about three full average football stadiums full of people.
That’s how many people we add daily to the world’s population.
Every one of these people come to the table to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. They need transportation, clothing, education, healthcare, shelter, security and iPhones.
219,000 More. Every. Day.
How Jeans are Made
I very much enjoyed watching this video on how jeans are made.
U.S. and World Statistics
When I grew up in the 1970s, it was common knowledge that the U.S. had 5% of the world’s population, but used 50% of the world’s energy resources.
This has changed. We still have 5% of the world’s population, but our share of energy consumption is now about 25% and still declining. This is not because we’re conserving more energy. It is because the emerging nations like China, India, Brazil and Russia are using an ever-increasing share, and that presses back the size of our slice in the total energy pie.
Here is another statistic:
Today the U.S. still has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. That surprises me, and I don’t know why.
- Do we breed more bad guys than other countries?
- Do we incarcerate more people for stuff you can get away with in other countries?
- Are our laws stricter?
- Perhaps we imprison people for minor stuff that other countries just chuckle about, like possession of marijuana?
I don’t have the answer.
We always pride ourself of being an angel of freedom around the world. Except that we take away the freedom of a disproportionate percentage of our own citizens by locking them up.
Chicken Sexing
While reading Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer, I learned about chicken sexing, a real-world issue I never even knew about.
As with most higher order animal species in the world, about 50% of all individuals are born male and the other female.
Female chickens are highly useful. We eat them as “chicken” and they lay the eggs we use for our omelettes. Male chickens are called cockerel or cocks when they are grown up. They crow in barnyards in the morning, they fertilize chickens, and they have pretty much no other use. But in chicken hatcheries they are treated like a byproduct, similar to sawdust in a furniture factory. Their meat is stringy, they don’t lay eggs, and they mess with the chickens and cause them stress. Not much different from human males.
In the global chicken industries, female chickens are chosen for long, productive lives. Males are eliminated as fast as possible. The problem is that it is virtually impossible to determine the sex of a chicken until it’s about four to six weeks old. Until then they are all identical yellow fluff balls. To get to six weeks, all the males have to be fed and housed at significant expense.
For millenia, this was a serious problem, driving up the overall cost of chickens and eggs. In the 1920s a group of Japanese veterinary scientists discovered a way to determine the sex of a chicken by examining the arrangements of folds, marks, bumps and spots just inside the cloaca of a one-day-old bird. This is completely unintelligible stuff for a uninitatated person. Eventually they revolutionized the global chicken industry and brought the cost of the product down signficantly by educating chicken sexers. The best were graduates of the two-year Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School. Their standards were so rigorous that only 5 to 10 percent of students received accreditation. Supposedly it takes over 17,000 chickens before one starts being able to tell. Now, there is an elite profession of chicken sexers that can process between 1000 and 1700 birds an hour. The males go down the left chute. The females the right one.
Now you may wonder what happens to the male chicks after they go down the left chute.
I do not know, and I don’t want to know.