The Art of Cheetos
January 21, 2021A few months ago I read about a Cheeto snack that looked like the gorilla Harambe and sold for some amazing sum on-line. Maybe.
After conducting extensive research (buying and eating a lot of Cheetos), I found some treasures that will surely bring me a fortune.
January 15, 1919
January 15, 2021
There are bocci courts and a little league ball field there now, but on warm summer days they say you still detect the aroma of molasses in the air. It seems to be an idyllic setting along the banks of the Charles River at Boston’s North End, but on January 15, 1919, it was a different story.
That was the day of the Great Molasses Flood when a giant tank containing nearly 2.5 million gallons of molasses ruptured and flooded the streets of the North End. Estimates are the the flood reached a velocity of 35 miles per hour. Twenty-one people were killed in the accident and one hundred and fifty injured. Buildings were crushed by the flood and people and animals were engulfed and trapped. The problem became worse as temperatures cooled that evening and the molasses thickened.
The problems, it seems, had to do with a constellation of causes: sub-standard steel in the tank, damaged or imperfect rivets holding the tank together, mild temperatures on the Boston afternoon, and a larger than normal volume of molasses in the tank.
I love molasses and can’t get enough, but in 1919 a molasses flood was the stuff of nightmares.
Something to consider
January 12, 2021
My sister-in-law told me they were considering getting solar panels for their roof. I looked at the overcast January sky and did not comment. But as I was reading my emails, Matt Ridley’s blog post looked to be related to the topic.
“If you judge by the images used to illustrate reports about energy, ” he writes,”the world now runs mainly on wind and solar power. It comes as a shock to look up the numbers. In 2019 wind and solar between them supplied just 1.5 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Hydro supplied 2.6 percent, nuclear 1.7 percent, and all the rest — 94 percent — came from burning things: coal, oil, gas, wood, and biofuels.”
Read the entire article here, while I go look up what molten-salt fusion is.
Lumbering along
January 11, 2021I awoke this morning to the sound of chainsaws and wood chippers. They were taking down the venerable silver maple in a neighbor’s back yard. The skill and delicacy with which the crane operator fiddled the large branches from between two houses and out into the street was impressive.
I found it interesting that, as I drank my coffee while reading the blogs and listening to the work going on next door, I came across this film that depicted logging operations in Maine from the last century. I took a peek at it and wound up watching the whole thing. Tim Sample narrated – ayuh.
Gunsmoke and Knitting 