Went for a walk this evening and came across a skunk. I don’t know for certain that this is the same one that was lurking around my house a little while back…. but the attitude was certainly the same. The tail looks quite different… looks largely stripped of fur; but the willingness to chase me around was there. Territorial little bugger.
A month back I showed some 8X10 cyanotype blueprints I cooked up using some off the shelf “sun print” paper. Since then, I’ve been tinkering with larger formats and more handmade stuff. I’ve gotten reasonably proficient at making 12X18 prints, using watercolor paper and special chemicals that are mixed and then painted onto the paper. It took a good long while to find a print shop that would even try to print off large format transparencies, but I’ve got the whole system up and running now. Here are some of the first “production run” (i.e. all the basic bugs worked out of the system). Larger prints may be possible in the future… the print shop is getting a larger printer, so large format transparencies should be possible. The only part I’m displeased with is the need to use watercolor paper (a whole bunch of different papers were tried, most were spectacular failures), since the result is a lot thicker and stiffer than old-school aerospace industry blueprints.
Since these are very much hand-made, each one would be different. Unlike stuff printed digitally, each would vary in terms of consistency and shading and whatnot. But as pure art I think they’re pretty spiffy.
Would there be interest in these, and others? How does $10 each plus shipping (rolled in a tube, I believe) sound?
UPDATE: Here is a collection of diagrams I’m thinking of doing as 12X18 cyanotype blueprints. I have a bunch more diagrams that I think would make fine blueprints, but at a wider aspect ratio…meaning longer paper than I can (currently) do.
“Bub” is a female cat with some differences:
1) Dwarfism (leading to short legs)
2) Polydactylism… 22 claws
3) “bug eyes”
4) A lower jaw substantially shorter than the upper jaw
5) No teeth
All that said, Bub is just about the cutest cat on YouTube just now:
[youtube L6M2VogNGHw]
[youtube uSGTM2IOWKc]
Now, with all THAT said, Bub represents a problem. Yes, she’s cute as hell. Yes, somewhat similar “Munchkin” cats are also cute as hell. But they are also deformed. Yeah, yeah, their dwarfs, and it would be the height of political incorrectness to point out that dwarf *humans* are deformed… but they are. So are humans with giantism, or six digits on each hand or a third eye. it’s not a moral judgement, just one of definition. And as with most deformities that take the subject away from the norm, the “Munchkin” anomaly of really short legs handicaps the cat. A cat with really short legs cannot run fast, cannot climb well, cannot jump. And this is what cats *do.* But far too many people want a handicapped pet because it’s “cute” and to hell with what’s actually best for the pet.
So in reading some of the comments on the Bub YouTube videos, I was not surprised to see someone suggest breeding Bub to make more just like her. I was gratified, however, with the response from Bub’s owner:
Currently California (Los Angeles, the Imperial Valley, San Diego, etc.) sucks a whole lot of water out of the Colorado River and other inland sources. This is of course insane given that California has a fairly extensive border with the PACIFIC FRIGGEN’ OCEAN. A few terawatts of nuclear power and some desalination plants would have fixed that right up. But nooooo, California is loaded with luddites who oppose nukes, so they have little choice but to drain the whole west dry.
But it seems like the French may have the answer:
Basically, the vaporators used by the moisture farmers of Tatooine.
Simply build a whole bunch of these along the coast and atop the major buildings in places like LA. With a capacity of at least 1,000 liters per day per turbine, California would need… I dunno, a billion of them? Lessee:
The Colorado River Aqueduct provides 1.5 cubic km of drinking water annually to SoCal = 47.5 cubic meters per second.
The San Diego Aqueduct provides 23.4 cubic meters per second of drinking water.
The All American Canal provides 740.6 cubic meters of irrigation water per second.
So, about 811.5 cubic meters per second, or 70,113,600,000 liters per day. The information provided suggests that the turbines can produce 1000 liters per day in a humid climate… assume that the San Angeles coast is appropriately humid. This means that only 70,113,600 of these turbines would be needed. Easy! At a cost of about 700 grand a pop, the project would run a measly $49,079,520,000,000.
Hmmm. Forty nine trillion dollars seems a bit much. Maybe I made a math error, I dunno. Too lazy to double-check my work. But economies of scale would reduce the cost per turbine, and the system could very likely be made more efficient. If the turbines dropped to 1% of the current price, and they increased output by ten times, the project would drop in cost by a factor of a thousand making it a government-trivial $49 billion.
By doing this, California would not only become “water independent,” they would also generate a hell of a lot of electricity, and the water currently being drained out of the Colorado could be used elsewhere in the drought-stricken west or allowed to simply flow on down the river. The dying ecosystem of the Gulf of California would probably appreciate *that.*
[youtube XFGAQrEUaeU]
[vimeo 44801709#]
The “Orphans in Space” DVD set contains a bunch of really rather odd old films about space, from the early part of the 20th century up to the 1980′s. The video of most interest to readers of this blog is a Martin-Marietta promotional video for the Zenith Star laser satellite, featuring snippets of a speech by President Reagan at the Martin Marietta facility (near Denver?) in front of a full-scale Zenith Star mockup.
The video was copied to DVD from a videotape, which is why the resolution is a bit low.
It makes me laugh. But I can see the lawyers getting all lawsuity here:
I’m working with a group of fellers many of y’all will have heard of on a particular project that should be of interest to a great many of you. Three points to whoever can accurately determine *what* that project is, based on this image:
UPDATE: So far, nobody has come close. Which is surprising… I figured this one would have been easier. So, ok… $15 worth of downloadables to whoever posts the correct answer first.
Hint: It’s relevant to your interests. I’m assuming, anyway…
Note: for those who signed up for the “Up-Ship.com” e-mailing list prior to today, the sale you were emailed about earlier (1/3 off stuff) is about over. For those not signed up, the sale is still about over, but you probably didn’t hear about it…
Since I’m a fantastically nice guy, the sale is HERE. Keep in mind, I’ll post sales like this off and on and give the mailing list a lot more leadtime on ’em, so… sign up!
Sale has ended.