I love it when my brain works

Ok, I'm all recovered from yesterday's bike store hunt and ready to debunk myths. Today we're going to talk about chemtrails.

Chemtrails are jet contrails that people believe contain nasty chemicals to prolong the contrail's longevity and promote cloud formation for a top-secret government project to slow global warming. I initially had a problem with the idea because I didn't think the government would keep its mouth shut if it thought it was doing something good for the environment, even if it was using nasty chemicals to do it. Now I have actual facts: right here it says that high, thin clouds, like jet contrails, act like a blanket and keep the earth warm. The cooling clouds are low, thick ones. Therefore, if chemtrails are a secret government experiment, they are going about it all wrong.

Which would be consistent with government, but give them a little credit. Either they're competent enough to keep a secret, or they're too stupid to make the right kind of cloud. One or the other.

blogging the Washington Post

Remember the polypropylene threads you can have put in your face? Today I learned that this blog is listed second in the "who's blogging about this" box to the right of the article. I decided to find out what was in Liposuction News, which is listed first, third, fourth, fifth, etc., and it led me to an article about sculpting your tummy fat to look like 'six-pack abs.'

Actual quote from a man with very expensive new muscles:
"It's unbelievable," he said. "I feel like I'm looking at one of those gladiator costumes, with those plastic chest plates, or a Batman costume."

Actual quote from my husband:
"Do you think they jiggle when he runs?"

Other things I learned today:
- I get the ever-unpopular rage reaction from yellow engine coolant fumes.
- To put new grips on your mountain bike handlebars, most people use hairspray as a lubricant that dries tacky. If you don't want hairspray anywhere near your bike because it'll make you sick, it turns out that you can use plain water, and it works fine.
- Anyone who doesn't understand why I keep mentioning the polypropylene in the thread-lift article should read this.

crashing and generosity

Today I learned that if you crash your nifty new mountain bike when you aren't practically stopped, but you still aren't going that fast, you can break a brake lever, and pair of brake levers costs roughly $30. (So you know, I bruised my hip, but crashing really doesn't hurt like you'd expect.)

Also, I learned that H&R Block will generously allow people to pay $6 for help filling out a 1040EZ tax form (pdf), which has a grand total of ten lines on it. Because, y'know, this is America.

something I'd never have thought of

It says here that if your dog gets sprayed by a skunk while you're out pheasant hunting, you can get the smell off with beer.

all about crossing the border

A couple days ago the Mexican government said they were going to pass out maps to people attempting to cross the border so fewer people would die in the attempt. Today they decided not to pass out maps because they would show the Minutemen where illegal immigrants are likely to be. It was my impression that the Minutemen weren't actually likely to shoot anybody, so either I'm completely wrong, or Mexico has just stated its immigration policy. ("Vote for me! I'll get you a whopping 40% chance of getting across the border safely and undetected!"* **)

In other news, some smugglers built a very nice half-mile tunnel under the border near San Diego, and the Mexican military is accidentally invading us less than they did in 2002. Just so you know.


* based on estimates of 500,000 successful illegal entries to 900,000 apprehensions per year
** Yes, I'm a physicist, and I've heard the spherical cow joke.

how many famous agricultural chemists are there?

Remember how they taught us in school that George Washington Carver thought up 300 uses for the peanut? Now that peanuts are a recognized threat in schools across the country, I thought I'd list a few things you can make from peanuts (pdf):

Axle Grease
Dehydrated Milk flakes
Insecticide
Insulation (Peanut Husks)
Mock Veal Cutlet
Nitroglycerin
Peanut Relish (2 kinds)
and my favorite: Oil, Emulsified with Mercury

famous relatives and neat maps

It says here that Boris Karloff was related to Anna Leonowens of The King and I fame, who was apparently a fairly good actress herself, in that her married name was actually Owens, and Mr. Owens was a clerk, not a major.

Also, the Mexican government is passing out maps that show how far you can walk in a day in the desert and where the water is. I don't intend to cross the border illegally, but I want one, too.

In other news, most of my stuff is out of the back yard and wearable again, so yay!

stuff you find on the internet

And the winner is, for best spelling mistake we've seen in bad fan fiction so far:

"You are a gluten for punishment Ben!"

things that make you go 'ewwww!'

You don't want to think about polypropylene threads embedded in your face or diet pills with yucky side effects while you eat breakfast.

I don't know why I even read the 'health' section of the paper.

scary televangelist

Pat Robertson sells a diet shake mix that you can make into pancakes.

Sunday

Today I learned that being fat is good for the economy (but not for the health insurance industry), sunscreen is evil (I knew it), smoke particles get into your brain, and the CDC knows less about mold mycotoxins and remediation than I do.

I'm pretty sure the reason I'm a bad news magnet today is that the immune system booster shot my doctor sent me doesn't agree with me. What tipped me off: my horrible attitude, or the fact that all my stuff is hanging in the back yard? Tune in next week to find out! (Not really.)

In other news, I learned how to braise a rump roast, and it's pretty good, so things are looking up.

bunnies and laundry detergent

Today I learned:

1. If there isn't any car exhaust near me, I can do way more than I expect. I went on my first solo mountain bike ride this morning, and I meant to go around the 5-mile 'bunny loop' (like the bunny slope) at Fantasy Island twice. I only stopped at three times because I have stuff to do this afternoon.

2. Since I live in a non-moldy area of the country, laundry detergent has become my greatest nemesis. A lot of my clothing and all of my bedding are currently hanging in the back yard getting the fragrance-free Seventh Generation detergent residue out, and I got a reaction from walking through it. Also, the only bad moment I had on the trail this morning was when a fast guy passed me and left a scented-Tide contrail. (It was still better than perfumy contrails and car exhaust.)

3. If you go around the bunny loop, aka the bunny trail, three times, you will be stuck with 'Here Comes Peter Cottontail' running through your head for the rest of the day.

crucial information

I'm sure I learned something disappointing from this article about clueless people, but much more importantly, today I learned how to get detergent residue out of fuzzy clothing: you hang it up in the wind for three days.

'Scuse me while I go string clothesline.

another acronym

Today I learned that SPD stands for 'Shimano Pedaling Dynamics,' as in the very common type of clipless bike pedals. It can also stand for a painful condition during pregnancy, or if you're watching Power Rangers, it stands for Space Patrol Delta.

A little more random information at this point probably won't fill up your brain, so I will leave you with a quote from The Tick, who is on an hour before Power Rangers SPD (which I have never seen). When asked while swimming how the shark-infested waters were, our impervious hero replied, "A little sharky, but ok once you get used to it."

supposed to be working

I'm trying to clear off my desk. I got volunteered to edit something, I need to order something online for a friend who doesn't tolerate computers, and I only have the checkbook halfway balanced. At this point I made the mistake of opening my email.

I got another one about a free $500 gift card to Best Buy, but this one is from... get ready for it... earwax@swith.org. With an address like that, you know they're reliable.

when javelina get in the newspaper

Today I learned, theoretically, how to identify javelina tracks. They're about 1 3/4 inches long and are pointy at the tip and vaguely heart-shaped. If you're not from around here, a javelina is not a pig (that seems to be very important somehow), and the only one I've seen looked like a cross between a little gray pig (sorry) and a barrel cactus.

In other news, I learned that we do, indeed, live in the biggest small town in the world. We have a population of between 500,000 and 750,000 people, depending on who you ask, but the local Fox affiliate on the news tonight covered the opening of a Benihana restaurant. To be fair, a chain moving to town does have economic implications, but then the news ladies did the end-of-segment-stilted-chit-chat, discussing how they were going to make sure to try it out. I could be on the news around here, except for the cosmetics allergies and the sarcasm.

tapioca and road dirt

Today I learned that you can make noodley things with tapioca flour the same way you can with water chestnut flour. Use a 3:1 ratio of flour to water, and since it's a dilatant material, it's faster to just break off hunks of dough (if you do it fast enough) instead of forming 'galls.' If you aren't fast enough, the dough you're holding flows down over your fingers.

I also learned that it only takes about fifty feet to get road dirt all over your lovely, brand-new orange tires. Life is hard.

ice in Tucson and movies

Today I learned that they close the road to the top of Mount Lemmon if there is ice on it. Didja hear that? We got ice in Tucson.

In honor of the Golden Globes (or whatever award show we're on now), you get my review of The Chronicles of Riddick, which I just saw even though it came out in 2004. I'm not going to tell you the plot or anything; I'm going to tell you what's in it.

It's got magic, laser guns, the evil theocracy, the lone hero with superpowers, the band of people trekking across a hostile landscape (with, I kid you not, those hydration-backpack things), bounty hunters, the escape-proof prison, medievaly-Roman armor, and an ending that doesn't quite have a Shakespearean body count, but it wasn't bad. It was everything you could ask for if you wanted to see Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Waterworld, Daredevil, Beastmaster, Escape from Alcatraz, and who knows what else all jammed up together. You could play movie-plot bingo with this one.

It was, I must say, highly entertaining.

football

My husband is watching a football game. Here are the reasons you shouldn't watch football with me:

1. I spend more time figuring out how they draw the yellow first-down line on the field than I do following the action.
2. I didn't pay enough attention to know there was an actual ball involved until I was in the sixth grade.
3. My attention had wandered (again), but then something on the tv caught my eye. At first I thought I was looking at a rubber duck, but it turned out to be a penalty flag.
4. It just dawned on me that I have no idea who's playing.

I think that sums it up right there.

early morning discoveries

If I leave the grocery store parking lot at 7:41 am on a Sunday morning and make all the lights except one out of the ten or twelve between here and there, I can have the car unloaded at 8:02 am, setting a personal record. You understand that if I ate conventional food, I could be home in roughly three minutes because there's a Safeway three-quarters of a mile from here.

In other news, my husband was given a new biking jersey, and I don't know where it was kept, but I've only washed it once, and it doesn't smell like anything. I still get a little polyester reaction, but not too badly. I've decided to take this as a sign that I'm getting better, as opposed to just being less allergic to that papery kind of polyester.

new webpage and warning: nasty food description

If you look over at the links to the right, you will see that I now have a homepage and an email address, if you should ever find the need to tell me anything.

It might help if someone had told me something interesting today, because all I learned was how to make chewy, white, vaguely cat-turd-shaped noodle-things out of water chestnut flour. You mix in just enough water that you can pack the flour into 'galls of dough.' Then you throw them in boiling water, where they sit on the bottom of the pot for a while, looking unappetizing. At some point in the cooking process they start to float, and when you decide they're done, you fish them out and eat them. They look a little better by then.

Did I ruin your appetite yet?

html and bikes

Today I finished learning enough html to put together a webpage. It'll show up shortly.

I also learned what my soon-to-be-neglected road bike looks like when you buy tires on sale.

bad news and spam

Today I learned that Dupont-supplied bottled water will kill you, people throwing rocks at the devil got trampled because somebody tripped over luggage, and some little boy 2 million years ago got pecked to death by a bird.

I'm sick, so I have a free pass to not think about the news. Thus I will attempt to direct your attention away from it by telling you about an email I got today. It offers me, personally, a free $500 gift card for Best Buy. You can imagine how impressed I was (not very), but the best part was the subject line, which, in a surprising new direction for marketing, was '"Electronics" desexualization'.

a little blue bike

In a break with tradition, I will now report that:

Yesterday I learned that you can occasionally find exactly the used product you want by simply running a Google search on it. I was looking for an unusual size of this one mountain bike, used, and I've been checking ebay, craigslist, and every set of classifieds I could find for probably two weeks. If I'd tried the Google search at the start, my bike would probably already be here. (It's coming from Wisconsin.)

I also learned that sudden success after two weeks of frustration made everything I wrote last night read like "I got a bike! Did I mention I got a bike?" so count yourselves lucky that I didn't post any of it.

new traffic patterns

It is the snowbirds making all the extra traffic.

Now if they would just stay on the golf courses instead of making perfume contrails all over the trailheads in the national park, I'd be happy.

That's not true. I'd be happy if they all gave up golf and went fragrance-free, but there's only so much you can ask.

stuff you'll probably never need to know

1. If you need to sleep in your car, put your feet up on something. It apparently makes all the difference to have your feet high enough.

2. The 28th Annual Tucson Quilt Fiesta is this weekend. I don't think that's what's causing all the traffic. I think it's the snowbirds.

3. Vince Vaughn is reportedly 6'5". Most actors are taller than you think, but he towers over people.

4. Mountain bikers whine about various suspension forks, but if you read the reviews of some of the bikes that come with those forks, nobody has anything bad to say about them. I recognize this is probably a blame-the-fork-instead-of-the-bike problem, but it isn't helping me make a bike decision.

things to worry about

I'm a nerd. I have the whole 'believe no one, and trust nothing' do-your-own-research complex. The result is that when someone sent me an email about Codex Alimentarius threatening our access to vitamins, minerals, and supplements with links to this one site that kept linking to itself instead of anybody else, it made me kind of nervous, but it sounded decently researched, and I wanted to understand why people were upset. I looked into it and wrote down what I learned. Then I put my rough draft aside until after lunch.

This afternoon, my bullshit detector went off when I re-read the draft of my post. My own post. So I went to Snopes, where I found that people have been freaking out about this Codex Alimentarius group for a while, with varying amounts of reason.

Here's what I have so far:
Codex Alimentarius is a UN commission trying to put together guidelines for food and dietary supplements. They want to classify supplements as drugs and would love to be able to force their rules on all UN member nations, but here are the teeth: if a supplement manufacturer from non-compliant country has a problem selling to a compliant country, the compliant people win. Inside the US it would have no effect unless we wanted it to, and geez, people, this is the US, and how often do we let the UN tell us what to do?

According to this undated but post July 12, 2005 editorial from Metagenics, a well-known supplement company, we should be more worried about the "EU [Food Supplements] Directive that has placed extreme limitations on the types and quantities of vitamins and minerals that can be sold in EU countries." However, I haven't found any confirmation of that, so I'll send you to this nice pdf from the American Herbal Products Association, which sounds downright mellow compared to everybody else.

The upshot here is that we just have to keep an eye on our Congresspeople, who are rightly concerned about supplements like ephedra and penis enlargement pills, and make sure they don't do anything stupid, but you have to watch them anyway, so that's not new, is it?

Superbowl and moon landing hoax

The Superbowl is on Sunday February 5. Kickoff is around 6:25 pm EST, so that's 4:25 in Tucson. Now I will remember to avoid the grocery store that weekend until after kickoff.

I was talking to a photographer the other day who mentioned that the pictures the astronauts took on the moon were so good that they seemed pretty fishy. Also, there was some discussion of multiple light sources, and without looking at the pictures, I can't say anything one way or the other, but there are multiple websites (here's just one) debunking all these things. Here I thought I had the inside scoop straight from a photographer. We physics nerds take all the fun out of everything.

Do, or do not. There is no try. --Yoda

I won't ask anything of you unless I think it's really important, so here goes:

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is looking at using herbicides on state lands in seventeen states, most of them in the West, to reduce wildfire risk and keep invasive weeds from spreading. These are excellent goals, but they are discussing widespread aerial spraying, which is going to make some of us sick people really, really sick. We tend to live near BLM lands because they don't spray. BLM has several options to choose from, and if we give them enough input, they may well choose a safer option.

The deadline for input is Monday, so here's a petition you can quickly sign (I suppose you have to be a US citizen). Writing a letter would be better, but with the Monday deadline, whatever works.

I never mentioned the time the subdivision sprayed herbicide next to the sidewalks along the washes near my house. I had to leave in rather a hurry, and I couldn't go back for a week. Believe me, I tried going back sooner. Maybe Yoda would chew me out, but trying didn't work for #%&$.

laundry balls/disks

Since I'm currently trying hard not to develop a sensitivity to borax, my current detergent, today I investigated laundry balls and disks. I'd never heard of them, but rumor has it that they somehow isolate dirt so it can be rinsed away, just like detergent does, but without a detergent. Yeah, I know, those hydrophobic/dirt-philic molecules we learned about in class don't just pop in out of thin, uh, plastic.

I didn't research any farther than The Straight Dope, which reports that laundry disks work probably by the same principle as whacking your clothes on rocks.

Rocks worked fine for thousands of years, so I have no problem with that. Rocks are cheap.

boring, exciting, and unusual

If you're driving through LA, some people say you should really take 210 and 57 to avoid the 405 and I-5. Not that I'll be driving through LA soon, but I'm taking notes so I can go visit Patrick when I can travel again.

In other news, I went mountain biking for the first time ever today, not counting a couple easy rides with my sister fifteen years ago. We rented bikes and went to Fantasy Island, and I learned that you can ride down some freaking scary looking hills without too much trouble. If you get enough momentum, getting back up the other side isn't too bad, but that's where I crashed if I was going to. The trick here is to crash when you're practically stopped. All I have to show for four crashes is a tiny scrape on one calf and two little bruises. I had a really, really good time. Even better than the $129 biking shoes for $30.

And speaking of my sister, I forgot to report an unusual occurrence yesterday. She wished me a happy birthday, and I replied 'you, too.' We're twins, and her daughter was born on our birthday last year. We'll have to teach her to say 'you, too' also, but sometime after she learns to talk.

important information

US postage stamps go up to 39 cents on Sunday, January 8. If I mail seven letters between now and then, I don't have to buy any 2 cent stamps.

Also, TMI stands for 'too much information.' And POS can stand for 'point of service,' but I learned it as 'piece of sh-t.' Was that TMI?

shrinkage and gloating

Today I went to the bike store, which actually means I went to three bike stores. At the second one, they were busily rearranging the entire store to improve shoppability, which actually meant moving items like clothes with electronic tags to the basement. They had kept components down there before, but since they didn't always keep staff down there and lots of components fit in people's pockets, they lost $40,000 since they last did inventory. I'd be moving the clothes down there, too.

They also put the clearance stuff down there, and with a coupon, I got a pair of $129 mountain bike shoes for $30. A deal like that is great if you don't have trouble going in stores, but if you do, you can't shut up about it for hours.

pollen and trailheads

Today I tried hiking near the top of Mt. Lemmon to see if I could get out of the pollen in town. The trailhead I wanted, General Hitchcock, was closed, so I went up to the Green Mountain Trailhead at about 7000 ft. The pollen was a lot better (but not perfect), so mission mostly accomplished.

The trail went over a pretty steep ridge to start, then to an unmarked junction, and then ironed out and was fine. I turned around after about two miles because I wasn't sure how well I was going to make it back over that last ridge before the car. On the way back, I met a couple of confused hikers at the unmarked junction, so I showed them my map and pointed them the right direction.

Then I went out to the parking lot and wondered where the heck my car was. There weren't any holes in the guard rail, so it didn't roll, I paid my fee so it shouldn't have been towed.... Hey, this isn't the trailhead, I thought, this is some vista where the signs are different and the parking lot is bigger.

I knew from the position of a marked trail junction that I was less than half a mile from my car, so I went back up the trail to the unmarked junction, took the really, really steep trail (thinking that it looked more like I'd expected it to), saw another, smaller unmarked trail junction, and ended up at my car in a huge cloud of diesel exhaust, which could explain why I had so much trouble going over the ridge in the first place. It wasn't that bad until I got into the exhaust.

So today I learned that people inclined to brain fog should really have their (deceased) dogs with them to give them funny looks when they take the wrong trail. She was good at that.

hats and fashion

Today I read an article about how to avoid hat head that made me realize how far I have come from the rest of the Western world, in that no one I know worries about hat head. Wanna know how an EI uses a hat?

1. To keep the sun off. We don't tolerate sunscreen, so particularly for people who don't tolerate any indoor living situation, your hat is your hairstyle.
2. If it's cold. Not as much of an issue if you live indoors, but even in Tucson it gets cold at night, so again with the hat being your hairstyle.
3. To keep gunk out of your hair. Lots of us (not the men) have very long hair because we can cut it easily ourselves, but it acts like a sponge for all kinds of perfume and other chemicals we may come in contact with. Tuck it up under a hat while you're in town and you'll be able to live with it better until you can wash it again.

So there you go: your hat is part of your head, or you're just going to wash your hair anyway, plus you can't support one of those puffy, squishable hairdos using egg whites and aloe vera gel, so why worry?