Distractions

The Book of Cannabis is well worth the read. What an amazing plant. Some takeaways:

Cannabis is an excellent pioneer plant for disturbed or barren ground. It thrives in maximum sunshine, photosynthesis never resting (other plants get enough sun and rest).

It is a good environmental remediator, easily extracting heavy metals from the soil. (Just don't burn that). As plants go, it is an opportunistic generalist (like us)

Studies have shown that smoking low percentage THC is better for people than high. It is probably best to wait for the brain is developed before partaking (too late for me).

The ingredient THC is only one of thousands of cannabinoids, and a variant THCD(?) or something, is the most powerful psychoactive component found in the plant. There are terpenes as well, aromatics. These are all filtered out for vaping, losing a lot of character. (You can tell I'm a flower enthusiast). 

The future of weed seems to fork between quality grown hemp with terrior (like wine), and concentrated product. Hashish you can get to about 30%, but chemists have ways to get liquids up to 100% and can also make synthetic cannabinoids.(Some very bad for the brain).

Humans are good at distilling things, poppies to heroin, coca leaves to crack, uranium ore to plutonium. It is a simultaneous blessing and curse. I myself am rooting for low THC grandpa weed, organically grown. You can still function and have a conversation on that stuff.

Speaking of which, I played with the computer to make molds. I won't show pics of the whole process, but basically I came up with forms I could make plaster molds from. Multiple parts.

I used Tinkercad, which is a children's program, making it perfect for me. 

I wanted the molds for the plaster out of silicone rubber as it gives great fidelity and separates clean. I had to make multiple negative forms to get the silicone rubber molds.

I 3 D printed the forms to cast the silicone rubber in, and realized a design flaw. No draft provided to remove the rubber. It was stuck in there.

My solution to this design flaw:

There you go. Doing it the old fashioned way with clay dams against the object would have taken less time, but it was a good problem solving and visual challenge. I'm sure I'll find some use for it.

It is too bad you can't 3 D print silicone rubber, because you could make cute squishies and stuff.

The Speed of Light

Antenna TV, a broadcast station, runs Johnny Carson reruns at 10pm. being an old guy I watch. Lately they've been doing 1988 episodes, the end of the Reagan era. You could easily substitute Trump for Reagan and all the jokes about corruption and senile in office still work.

There were a lot of jokes about the end of the world. That might just be USA kooks always want the end times since it didnt work out so keep trying to coax Jesus here.

I was reading some guy on the free market. He was describing a Newtonian market where everyone finds out at once, versus an Einstein market where information travels at the speed of light.

The speed of light is the fastest you can go, but it is still painfully slow. 

Human technology can do speed of light with lasers and radar, but still most communication goes through fiber. Fiber is nearly as fast as light, which on our cute little dust drop, is perfect. 

Satellites? If you don't have geostationary property, your satellites are doomed eventually. They will fall from the sky or fly away, below or above GSO.respectively. And they clutter the sky. Too much slop.

Forget about wormholes or warp drive, the only way we get to the stars is to figure how to locally make the speed of light faster, and that might involve the speed of dark, which can go as fast as it wants.

So that's what I think about lately. Mostly on walks.

 

Puppy Sitting

I foolishly agreed to babysit bro Chris' dogs while they were gone for the week.

Monday evening, a big storm came through and power went out. Power came back on Wednesday afternoon. Big straight line winds with trees knocked down everywhere. Most of the east part of town had no power. Most of the neighbor's houses had generators. Chris does not have a generator. I told him to get one.

For me it was a camp out, indoors. I'd charge my phone by driving around to get food. Fortunately I did not buy much in the way of groceries, because I had to toss their fridge contents out.

Still a weird and not so fun week. The dogs were fine, a bit needy. I know I was mean old uncle john who wouldn't let them do anything. But I pampered them with treats.

That storm. It was predicted to be a whopper and did not disappoint. EF0 and EF1 tornadoes in Chicago's south suburbs and straight line winds in the 70-80s when I watched on the porch. Illinois has had 250 tornados this year. Tornado Alley has moved east, and infrastructure in the new allley is not up to the task. 

There must be an American tradition that if Mother Nature puts on a show, some got to go out there to watch it. I am one of those fools.

Keep in mind, the United States of America has the worst weather in the world. The worst, not some of the worst, but THE WORST. That makes me kind of proud

Oh, one highlight. I took a cruise up to Michigan to score some weed. Much better quality than Illinois weed and a third cheaper. The border between Indiana and Michigan is riddled with dispensaries. I went to one in New Buffalo. I got an Oz., and a goodie bag as a first time customer.

King Of Budz

Anyway, if my brother asks me to puppy sit again, I will say no.

Did comets cause MAGA?

Currently, there are 12,000 cases of cyclosporiasis throughout the USA. Bobby Brainworms insists it is all under control and contained (within the boundaries of the USA, no doubt). Add to that the highest cases of measles in 20 years, and also the new joy of salmonella in a million eggs, listeria in soft cheeses, botulism in baby formula, and e. coli in frozen blueberries, all courtesy of your Explosive Diarrhea Forever President.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

I read a book titled Ripples of the Cosmic Ocean by Dagomar Degroot. An environmental history of Our Place in the Solar System. The book covers the usual facts about planets and a history of our discovering what we know. I was a little disappointed, as I was expecting to find out new information about the solar system, like the conditions of various regions within the atmosphere of our star. (The part outside of the solar corona and extending throughout the Solar System).

We have a picture of empty space around us, but our solar system is a busy place swarming with all sorts of things, and cooking and chilling in all sorts of interesting storms and eddies and currents and magnetic swirls within a solar atmosphere that extends way past Pluto.

It is similar to how we view ourselves on Earth, walking around on land or occasionally floating on ocean. We forget we are these funny little ape shaped bugs living at the very bottom of an ocean of air, razor thin as it appears from space, building intricate cake decorations resting on top of an icing of crust, with a beautiful layered chocolate cake of mantle covering a cream or caramel core of incandescent iron. Not just mere land sea and air, but party and parcel of a magnificently complex and terrifiying thing called our planet.

I was hoping to read about that. Alas, no. One thing caught my mind though, and I'll just quote it:

Across the newly formed United States, for example, congregations that adhered to traditional, evangelical Protestantism had dwindled, owing both to the fearsome toll of the Revolution and the steady tide of westward migration. Protestant ministers feared the obvious disinterest of the new federal government in promoting Protestantism, and perceived a steady decline in its prospects. They responded with the Second Great Awakening, a wave of impassioned preaching and conversion that, ironically, fractured Protestant congregations and provided  fertile ground for unorthodox beliefs. 

With the Awakening in full swing, in 1832 the Baptist preacher William Miller caused a sensation when he declared tha the Second Coming of Christ would occur on October 22, 1844. The timing could not have been better. The 1832 apparition of Biella's comet sparked widespread predictions of Earth's destruction when calculations by German astronomer Heinrich Olbers suggested that Earth would pass through the comet's poisonous tail. In early 1843 the shocking apparition of a comet bright enough to be seen during the day seemed to vindicate Miller's prediction that the world would end the following year. The comet's appearance encouraged a wave of apocalyptic millenariansim. When the comet faded and Christ did not make his scheduled return, the "Great Disappointment" that followed would lead a new denomination, the Adventists, to proclaim that a process would be set in motion that would culminate in the Second Coming.

This strange period took what was otherwise a dusty old Iron Age death cult and made it exciting again, with proper encroachment into secular and politcal spheres. All that nonsense about the Rapture, Flat Earth, etc. came from that, and is now part and parcel of the MAGA movement.

This is not to say that comets alone caused MAGA, racism is the primary cause. But still, funny how all that nonsense comes from quasi-informed superstition.

Best In Show

My sculpture, "Free To A Good Home" won the Dean Alan Olson purchase award at the Rockford Midwestern Biennial. It is now part of the museum's permanent collection.

This happened two weeks ago but I was either too busy or not inclined to post. The museum curator, Carrie Johnson, chose my piece. When it was announced and I waved my hand in the crowd to identify myself, right next to me was a fellow artist who gave me the dirtiest, most incredulous look,

I could tell he was thinking "She chose that piece of shit over my beautiful art?"

Yeah, she did.

Another turn around the sun.

69 dude! *deeedle eedle deet*

Be excellent to each other.

And

Party On.

Station.

I cleaned up my cast bronze, ground off the gates, sanded the rough spots, sand blasted the crap out of it, welded the two pieces together, put a brown patina on, and documented it.

And I didn't feel tired afterward. Pretty goddamn good birthday.

Retirement Anxiety

I got my last big paycheck from the college today. An old dread crept into my belly. How am I going to scrape by? This is a familiar fear ever since I quit real jobs. Oh, I'm so not better off than my Jurassic Boomer cohort. I worked and quit many times and so didn't earn a lot over my lifetime (or rather, built and spent some fortunes). I'm so much better off than Gen X folks, with nothing saved, or actually in debt. The thought of a limited income does not sit well with me, nor does spending what I've saved.

The future, always stating from grim and working up to optimistic, may work to my advantage if the world ends before my money does. That's a piss poor attitude, and contrary to my workadaddy nature. Or now workagramps. I got all my metal cast this past weekend.

I can't not stop making things. Especially metal things.

I need money I don't have for that. I need someone to pay me to make my things.

It is not enough to make just one thing, because I always have a postpartum depression after getting done. It is the process. The cycle from imagination to reality.