The Machinery of Night

Friday, March 25, 2011

Posted 8:18 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Rems and Roentgens and Rads, Oh My!

Cane Fire, Mar 2011

When I started reading about Japan's nuclear problems, all the numbers were in sieverts. What the hell is a sievert? (My spell checker doesn't know either.) When I was learning this stuff, we had curies, roentgens, rems, and rads, and that was good enough for us. None of your fancy-schmancy European "sieverts".

Anyhow, if you are old and confused like I am, this will explain it to you, though you may still remain confused, not to mention old. (I graciously link to this even though the author stole(*) my title for one of his subheads. Though since mine is better I'm using it anyway.)

The article also has this useful bit of information:

We usually confuse the amount of heat in something, and the temperature. In ordinary life, the difference doesn’t matter — materials are enough alike we don’t care. But not always, even so — a cake in a metal pan at 350 will brown more where it’s in contact with the metal than it will in a glass pan.

I was just telling someone the other day that I kind of wish I had taken home ec in high school; then I would know this stuff. (We were talking about why you used certain ingredients in cooking -- why milk rather than water, or oil rather than butter, and what eggs are for.) Instead I took physics and calculus.

Martin's talk of X-rays reminds me of an upper-level undergraduate lab I took, in which we were supposed to design our own experiments. They wouldn't let us play with the campus reactor (no, really), so instead we did something involving X-raying turkey slices. I forget what exactly the point was, but it involved putting slices of Buddig dried turkey into a table-top X-ray machine the size of a medium pizza. I don't remember wearing any protective gear. We used to pipette acids and mercury by mouth in high school, too. Those were the days when men were men, and so were the women, if they wanted to do science.

Oh, the photo? That's a cane fire, and totally not a nuclear bomb going off in central Maui. They stopped burning the cane while it was so dry, and have recently started again. These look cool at night. Then it really does look like a bomb.

* Pre-emptively, I mean, taking it out of my head before this was published. Because FF doesn't always go up on Friday.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii, Mar 2011

Friday, March 18, 2011

Posted 10:01 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: It Made the Sky Look Red Like a Nuclear Ray

Sunset from home, Mar 17 2011

Sunset, in the general direction of Japan. Coincidence?

I was going to write something about the nuclear hysteria gripping the news media, but this pretty much covers it. (Short version: When I was born we'd been nuking the hell out of the desert for more than a decade, and the radiation only made me taller and stronger. And the extra digits come in handy.)

I tire of taking pictures from the same vantage point. So when it looked like we were going to have a nice sunset on the 17th, I prepared to go down to the highway, where there are no pesky trees, and I can get a good view. But the sun just sank into a mass of gray clouds, so I figured to hell with it. And then we got this.

After the light was gone it occurred to me that I didn't even think to get out my film camera, and that made me sad. What I need is some extra limbs, so I can shoot with both cameras at the same time. But you never get a break like that when you need it.

I was pretty sure that I'd used this title before, but I couldn't find it.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii, Mar 2011

Friday, March 11, 2011

Posted 9:43 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Tsunami Edition

I was very popular the night of the tsunami. Everybody I work with either called or turned up. I stopped work for about half an hour around the estimated tsunami time, and made everything safe, just in case we lost power. But when nothing happened I just went back to work.

This tsunami wasn't as big a nothing as our last one. Apparently there was water up to a quarter mile inland in Kahului. Someone found a big sea turtle washed up on the road.

Anyhow, here is a lovely non-tsunami photo. This was taken on Tuesday morning (I think) after days of rain. There's a bit of a rainbow on the right. Sometimes I wake up early in the morning, after a few hours' sleep and look outside. If there's a good picture I snap it, and go back to bed. I think I broke out the AE-1 for this one. Can't get good rainbow pictures without a polarizer.

Morning Rainbow, March 2011

I was really getting tired of looking at the close-up of the strawberry every time I brought up the blog. Especially after Niles said it looked like a diseased tongue.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii, Mar 2011

Friday, March 04, 2011

Posted 9:09 PM by Angie Schultz