Archive for ed-lake.com
June 2023

Comments for Sunday, June 25, 2023, thru Fri., June 30, 2023:

June 29, 2023 - Yesterday, I listened to another very interesting podcast.  It was the June 27, 2023 episode of Astronomy Cast, one of my favorite podcasts.  The 36 minute episode was titled "Prepping for the Moon."  Astronomy Cast is hosted by Fraser Cain, who is publisher of the Universe Today web site, and Dr. Pamela Gay, who is a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute.

They talked about the 42 missions to the moon that are currently planned, specifically about the missions headed toward the south pole region of the moon.  The south pole region of the moon is of particular interest because there is water ice at the bottom of deep craters there, water ice that theoretically could be used as fuel for future spacecraft designed to explore the rest of the Solar System. 

Everyone knows that the same side of the moon always faces the earth, which means it rotates in space once per month.  We also know that the Earth's rotation is off by 23.45 degrees relative to its orbit around the sun.  That is why the sun is higher in the sky in summer and lower in winter. The rotation of the moon relative to the Sun, however, is just off by a few degrees.  Those few degrees prevent sunlight from ever reaching the bottoms of hundreds of deep craters around the moon's south pole.  That means that the ice that is at the bottoms of those craters has been there since the solar system was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

We know that there is ice at the bottoms of those craters because during one unmanned mission to the moon, part of the spacecraft was deliberately crashed into such a crater.  The crash caused a cloud of debris to raise out of the crater, and the main spacecraft sampled particles in that cloud, confirming that it contained water ice.

There are also plans to build a space station in orbit around the moon, a replacement for the current ISS International Space Station which will crash into the South Pacific Ocean sometime in January of 2031.

It's an extremely interesting episode of Astronomy Cast.  

June 26, 2023 - Yesterday, I listened to a very interesting podcast.  It was the May 22, 2023 episode of the What Next: Daily News and Analysis podcast titled "How the Next Pandemic Starts."  This is the description for the episode:
Bats have been linked to a “greatest hits” list of infectious diseases—not just COVID-19, but SARS, Marburg, and even ebola. And now, 1.8 billion people are living in “jump zones” where the next viral spillover may occur.
It's just 27 minutes long, but it's filled with a lot of information I didn't know before.  Reuter's reporter Ryan McNeill is interviewed on the show, and he says that about a quarter of all mammals on planet Earth are bats, and there are many many different species.  Bats are the only mammals that fly.  McNeill describes them as "flying petri dishes" that are constantly brewing new viruses and bacteria.  And in the past 20 years, humans have been moving closer and closer to the territories where bats are prolific, such as the jungles of southern China, Laos, India and Brazil.  According to an article McNeill wrote last month:
Viruses leap from bats to humans either by way of an intermediary host, such as a pig, chimpanzee or civet, or more directly through human contact with bat urine, feces, blood, or saliva.
It's a very interesting and informative podcast episode.  Too bad there is no text version, since a lot of it is worth quoting.

June 25, 2023 - I couldn't help but wonder about the liquor miniatures that were in the top box in my closet.  They were all wrapped in paper towels, and there was no outward sign of leakage or damage.  But were they all okay?  I wanted to know.  So, I unwrapped 16 bottles from the top of the top box and set them out as shown below.

more liquor miniatures

Except for the fact that they're all Scotch whiskeys, they're probably a pretty good indicator of the condition of the rest of the bottles in the collection.  NONE show any leakage damage, ALL the labels are intact, and the paper towel wrappings were all perfectly clean.  But, upon close inspection, not all of them were full.

From upper left to lower right, here are the names of the liquor brands and whether they were full or not:
1. Old Rarity Blended Scotch Whiskey  (1/2 full)
2. Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch Whiskey (full)
3. Grand Old Parr Scotch Whiskey (2/3rds full)
4. Pinwinnie Royale Scotch Whiskey (full)
5. Thorne's 12 year old Scotch (full)
6. Old Smuggler Blended Scotch Whiskey (90% full)
7. Vat 69 Gold Blended Scotch Whiskey (full)
8. Usher's Green Stripe Scotch Whiskey (90% full)
9. White Label - Dewar's Blended Scotch Whiskey (2/3rds full)
10. Logan Deluxe Scotch Whiskey (3/4ths full)
11. Something Special De Luxe Scotch Whiskey (empty)
12. Teacher's Scotch Whiskey (full)
13. Martin's V.V.O. Blended Scotch Whiskey (full)
14. Muirhead's Blended Scotch Whiskey (empty)
15. Lauder's Scotch (2/3rds full)
16. Seagram's 100 Pipers Scotch Whiskey (full)
The bottle of Pinwinnie Royale Scotch Whiskey is in a little purple velvet bag inside the box.  I didn't choose to take out only Scotch whiskeys.  They were just the first 16 bottles that I unwrapped from the top of the box.  (I think they're some of the bottles of Scotch I had on display on a shelf when I lived in Illinois, decades ago.)   After taking the picture, I pulled out and unwrapped 4 more bottles, to make it an even 20 sample.  The additional 4 were also Scotch whiskeys, and none were duplicates:
17. Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch Whiskey (2/3rds full)
18. King James  Scotch Whiskey (2/3rds full)
19. King George IV Blended Scotch whiskey (full)
20. King's Ransom Scotch Whiskey (full)
I then spent a few minutes looking around the Internet again to see where I might be able to sell them.  Some sites seem to indicate that the bottles are worth almost nothing.  Others seem to indicate the collection of 20 Scotch bottles might be worth $100 or more.  Looking for more information, I clicked on one site and was hit by a hacker.  My security software stopped them from doing any harm, but I still have to wonder if I'll get more of the same thing at other sites looking to buy miniatures. 

Late yesterday afternoon, I posted a message to Facebook along with the above picture, asking if anyone knew of a place to sell liquor miniatures.  I received no responses.

I also think I may be underestimating the number of bottles in my collection.  When I removed those 20 bottles from the top box, it seemed like I removed a lot less than 20 percent of the bottles.  And If I have 9 boxes, that suggests that I could have a lot more than 500 bottles in total. I definitely need to take a box by box inventory.

Comments for Sunday, June 18, 2023, thru Sat., June 24, 2023:

June 21, 2023 - I'm going to try to make this my last comment about my liquor miniature collection.  I'm mentioning it this one last time because it seems there is a physics lesson involved - somewhere.  I stored 9 boxes of liquor miniatures in the corner of a closet (actually a closet within a closet).  They sat there undisturbed for 13 years.  The oldest bottles were wrapped in pieces of newspaper, the newer ones were wrapped in paper towels.  There are 9 boxes of miniatures.  Because it was a storage closet, I placed flat, empty shipping cartons on top of those boxes, and I placed my empty suitcases and other stuff atop those cartons.

About a year ago, I noticed something was wrong, but I didn't have the time or ambition to dig through the closet full of junk to figure out what the problem was.  The air in the closet didn't smell right.

Finally, a few days ago, I decided to dig through the stuff in the closet to find out what the problem was.

What I found was that the cardboard box of miniatures that was in the farthest, lowest corner of the closet was stained and rotting.  The cardboard was falling apart.  I assumed that, because it was at the bottom of the stack of boxes, some of the bottles inside must have been crushed.  So, I dug out the box and opened it up.  I could find no broken bottles.  What I found was a mystery.  None of the bottles were broken, but more than a few of the fully-sealed bottles were less than full.  

whiskey miniatures

Above is a sample of the bottles from that box.  (You can click on the image to see a larger version.)  As you can see, the labels have come off of some of the bottles, the bottle of Dawson Scotch in the lower left, the bottle of Lauder Scotch just behind it, and the bottle of Mackenzie Scotch in the middle of the front row are the best examples.

What is more difficult to see is that the bottle of Dawson Scotch is less than half full, and the bottle of Lauder Scotch is 2/3rds full, even though both are still fully sealed.  The Mackenzie bottle seems full.  In the front row on the right, there are two bottles of Old Smuggler Scotch.  Neither one is as full as it should be.

What can also be seen (but just barely) is that some of the labels are stained because ink came off of the newspaper they were wrapped in.  There's a piece of newspaper wrapping on the far right side of the table.

Obviously, some liquor somehow got out of sealed liquor bottles.  I would not have thought that to be possible.  Now I wonder what caused the liquor to be forced out of the bottles.  You can't squeeze a glass bottle to get liquor out of it without breaking the bottle.  Somehow heat must have been generated, and some of the bottles may not have been upright.  Can you force liquor out of a sealed bottle by heating it when the bottle is on its side or upside down?  It seems so, but where did the heat come from?

I wonder if I can get a million dollar grant to study this physics problem.  Meanwhile, I'll wrap the bottles in paper towels when I store them away again.  And I won't bury them under stacks of other stuff.   

June 20, 2023 - I got a little history lesson yesterday.  I opened a couple of my boxes full of liquor miniatures and found that I'd used issues of the Chicago Today newspaper for packing material.  The issues were from March 19, 1974.  That means that most (if not all) of the liquor miniatures in my collection are from that time or earlier, nearly 50 years ago.  I was living in the Chicago area at that time, probably working for Sara Lee.

newspaper from 1974

I also found a picture I took of one box of miniatures when I changed apartments in August of 2010:

liquor miniatures

So, I've only been living in my current apartment for 13 years?  I thought it was at least 20 years.

I would assume that liquor miniatures from 50 years ago are worth more than a collection from recent times.  But that assumption probably isn't valid if there aren't multiple buyers collecting liquor miniatures anymore.  

June 18, 2023 - Yesterday, I donated about 120 pounds of books to my local library.  They were all large books, filled with pictures.  There must have been at least 8 books about seaplanes in the batch, and another 8 or 10 about WWII.  Evidently I acquired the books when I was writing or preparing to write "Clipper," my novel about a seaplane trip around the world during the first days of World War II.  I've got another 80 pounds of books that I plan to take to Goodwill this afternoon.  That batch contains a lot of books about gunboats on the Mississippi River during the Civil War.  I acquired those books when I was writing or preparing to write a screenplay titled "Rivers of Iron."  I may also have been thinking of writing a book on the subject.  The idea faded away about 20 years ago.

At one time I thought I might be able to sell my library of books, but there's no market for used books in this age of Kindle and iPods.

I also thought I might be able to sell my vinyl LP collection of records.  But, as I wrote in my May 30 comment, there is no market for records from the era of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.  The market today is for records by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and other artists from the 1960s and 1970s.  So, I'll keep those records.

And now I'm preparing try to find a market for liquor miniatures.  I've got a collection of about 500 of them.  I found a place that seems to be very interested in buying such collections.  The problem is that I don't have an inventory list.  I just have 8 boxes filled with miniatures wrapped in old newspapers and paper towels.  So, I'm going to have to create a spreadsheet listing of what is in each box.  Then I'll probably try to sell each box, one by one.  The web site that says they will buy them does not say how I will have to ship them.  They just say that, if they choose to buy a box full, they will send me a prepaid label along with their check paying for the miniatures.  I'm not sure how much each box weighs, but it must be at least 30 or 40 pounds.

I'm no longer planning to move to Virginia this fall, but it's still a good idea to clean out stuff in my apartments that I have no use for anymore.  I still have use for my collection of 2,600 movies and 263 TV shows on DVDs.  With no end in sight for the writers' strike, that collection is more precious to me than ever before.  I have zero interest in watching reruns of old late night talk shows.

Comments for Sunday, June 11, 2023, thru Sat., June 17, 2023:

June 15, 2023 - When I returned home from the gym this afternoon, I checked the Internet to see what crazy things Donald Trump might be up to.  What I found was an on-line Newsweek article titled "Pro-Trump Pastor Suggests Christians Should Be Suicide Bombers."

Wha!?!?  I long suspected that some Trump supporters might think of Trump as a God, and I even mentioned that in a recent comment, but I certainly didn't expect to see a pastor suggest that Trump supporters should be willing to MURDER and DIE for Trump!  Here's a quote from the article:
Regeneration Nashville pastor Kent Christmas has often spoken favorably of Trump, who is running his third presidential campaign and is the clear front-runner among a crowded field of GOP candidates. In last Sunday's sermon at his Pentecostal church in Tennessee, Christmas said the Muslim faith has become so successful because its followers are "willing to die for their beliefs."
The article includes a TikTok video of Pastor Kent Christmas making those statements.  The video is presented by Right Wing Watch, an organization which tries to keep track of all the lunatic beliefs and plans promoted by Right Wing extremists.   That video doesn't mention Trump, but a quick internet search finds another article titled "Right-Wing Pastor Asks God to Commit Mass Genocide for Donald Trump."  It's from two years ago and begins with this:
Right-wing preacher Kent Christmas of Regeneration Nashville proclaimed at a Let Freedom Ring rally on Independence Day that God is preparing to commit mass genocide against everyone in the United States who refuses to accept that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
There's probably more out there, but those two articles are enough to show the extreme beliefs of some Trump supporters.

June 13, 2023 - While driving home from the gym this afternoon, I finished listening to CD #6 in the 6 CD audio course titled "What Einstein Got Wrong."   

What Einstein Got Wrong

It's another audio book I "borrowed" from my local library years ago when you could "borrow" a book, burn it onto CDs, "return" the book, and listen to the CDs whenever time permitted.  Time finally permitted.

It's also like attending a college class, since it's presented like a college physics course of 12 lectures, 2 half-hour lectures per CD.  And like many college physics textbooks, it contains the opinions of the author as part of the course.  Unfortunately, since it's an audio book, there was no good way to underline or write down the problems I heard in the book, particularly since I was listening to it while driving.  Lecture #11, for example, mentions "wormholes" which allow transportation from one point in space to another instantly, which is far greater than the speed of light. 

Searching the internet, I was fortunately able to find a quote from Lecture #11 about wormholes:
A wormhole is like a portal that connects 2 points in space to each other. By traveling through a wormhole, one could—in principle—travel directly from one place to another.

It turns out that for something like a wormhole to be able to instantly transport something across space, it must also be able to function as a time machine. In fact, anything that is capable of moving from one place to another at a speed faster than the speed of light must also allow one to travel backward in time. So, the existence of wormholes also implies the existence of closed timelike curves
The book doesn't provide any reason to believe there is such a thing as a "wormhole," other than that some mathematicians have projected such things as possibilities.

There were other places in the book where things most scientists would consider to be wildly improbable are discussed as "possibilities" because they can be conjured up by mathematicians.   When I take a course in physics, I want things to be LOGICAL and I want them to be explained LOGICALLY.  So, I didn't particularly like this course, but it was worth taking it just to be reminded that there seems to be a need out there for my book about "Logical Relativity.'   

June 11, 2023 - I've been listening to podcasts again.  One of the best podcasts than analyzes recent news events is Political Gabfest.  Their June 9th episode is titled "Trump is Indicted - Again."  The episode clears up the question I had about the CNN headline that said Trump was "indicted on 7 counts."  That headline was in error, and I should have realized what the problem was, because the same error was made when Trump was indicted on 32 counts involving 2 different types of crimes in the Stormy Daniels payoff case.

On June 6, Trump was indicted on 37 counts involving 7 different types of crimes.  If you are arrested for robbing 4 banks and also for murdering 3 drug dealers, you are arrested on 7 counts involving 2 different types of crimes.  The problem is how to explain that in a 10-word news headline.

The case against Trump seems about as solid as a legal case can be.  They have him on tape admitting to committing some of the crimes.  The only "problem" is that, when convicted, he cannot be thrown in jail.  Because Trump is a former President, he's entitled to have Secret Service officers protecting him 24 hours per day for the rest of his life.  It's not practical to do that in a prison, so he'll probably end up under some form of "house arrest," possibly at mar a lago.

But, Trump knows how to delay going to trial, so any actual trial probably won't occur for a year or more.  Meanwhile, even if he is convicted, Trump plans to continue his run for President in 2024.

Last week I also listened to another truly fascinating podcast.  It was a RadioLab podcast from May 12 titled "The War on Our Shore."  It's about how we handled German prisoners of war during World War II, particularly right after the North Africa campaign.  Tens of thousands of German prisoners were transported to America and placed in newly constructed prisoners of war stockades, mostly in the South.  They were well fed and, due to the severe labor shortage at the time, they were sometimes allowed to work (under guard) outside of the prisons.  According to Wikipedia, "425,000 German prisoners lived in 700 camps throughout the United States during World War II."
 
The only problem was that some Americans didn't feel that German prisoners should be treated so well while American prisoners in German prison camps were treated so badly and often killed.  In other words, they wanted Americans to be more like Nazis when it came to how we treat prisoners of war.  It struck me as another example of right versus left politics - a fascinating example.

Comments for Thursday, June 1, 2023, thru Sat., June 10, 2023:

June 10, 2023 - Ah!  Yesterday's comment was wrong.  I quoted CNN correctly, but CNN's headline was wrong when it said:
Donald Trump indicted on 7 counts in classified documents probe
It appears that Trump was indicted on 37 counts, not 7.  The full text of the indictments in pdf format can be obtained HERE.  

Also, this morning I looked for that Google "street view" for June 6, which should have shown me in my car (see my June 6 comment).  Instead, I found that, as of this morning, Google's newest "street view" for the street outside my apartment is for "May 2023."  The previous view was from September 2022.

I'm not sure exactly what was going on, but it seems likely that the Google "street view" camera car wasn't recording when I saw it pass by.  It did its recording in May and the car was just on its way to somewhere else.
June 9, 2023 - Hmmm.  When I turned on my TV this morning to get the latest news, that news was:
Donald Trump indicted on 7 counts in classified documents probe
Wow!  Finally!   According to CNN:

Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on seven counts in the special counsel’s classified documents probe, a stunning development that marks the first time a former president has faced federal charges.

Trump is facing a charge under the Espionage Act, his attorney Jim Trusty said on CNN Thursday, as well as charges of obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements.

And according to CNBC:
Trump still faces two other criminal probes, as well: Smith’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol, and an inquiry in Georgia looking into whether he attempted to interfere with the presidential election in that state.
I just wish the writers' strike was over so that I could watch all the late night talk show hosts discuss this.  

June 6, 2023 - As I was driving to the gym yesterday afternoon, I stopped at an intersection near my apartment, preparing to turn from my street onto a busy main street.  As I waited for a break in the passing traffic, Google's "Street View" camera car passed by no more than 20 feet from me.  Here's what their camera car looks like.

Google street view camera car

This morning I checked to see if that "street view" of me was on-line.  It wasn't.  Google was still using the street view from July 2012.  I'm not sure how Google chooses which view to show when you enter a location, but they appear to have taken "street views" of that intersection in Sept. 2007, Sept. 2011, July 2012, Sept. 2013, Aug. 2015, July 2017, Oct. 2018, June 2019, and Sept. 2022. 

I wasn't in any of those.  Google usually blurs all faces and license plates that are in their "street views," but I'll  be checking every day to see if me and my car show up at that intersection in their June 2023 "street view."  In theory, if you ever see one of Google's "street view" camera cars, it means you will be on-line soon after.  How soon probably depends upon how long it takes humans to blur all the faces and license plates.

June 4, 2023 - Yesterday, I took a tour of Lynchburg, Virginia.  I did it with Google Maps.  I knew from previous searches that there was a Planet Fitness gym in Lynchburg, so I started there.  Google Maps showed me that it was in the middle of the River Ridge Shopping Mall.  (The gym I currently use is also in a shopping center.)  Then, again using Google Maps Street View, I looked at the shopping center from the outside.  Then I checked to see how far it was from the VA Clinic.  (It was about a 10 minute drive.) Then I checked out some local apartment complexes and the nearest Walmart.

I'll have to check it all out in person, of course, but touring Lynchburg via Google Maps gives me a good idea of what to look for and how far away things are from one another.  The plan is still for me to fly out and visit there sometime this month or next, and to move there in September or October.

Meanwhile, I'm still going through my personal library to see which books I should donate to my local library, which I should give to Goodwill, and which I should keep.  Yesterday, I took about 100 pounds of books to my local library.  Today I'll take about the same to Goodwill.

There wasn't a single novel among all the books I gave away.  Mostly the books were about physics and astronomy.  The books I have left to get rid of are mostly more of the same, with a few psychology books being the exceptions.  I have a shelf full of novels which I'll give away when I've read them, otherwise I'll take them with me when I move.

I don't know if anyone cares about any of this, but it's the only thing I have to write about this morning.  

June 1, 2023 - Hmm.  At 1 minute after midnight tonight, the writers' strike will begin its second month.  So, except for the NBC evening news, there isn't anything new on TV that is of interest to me. 

Fortunately, I have a very large collection of TV shows and movies on DVDs.  I just finished watching all 5 seasons of "News Radio", which originally aired from 1995 to 1999.  Next I'll probably watch some movies that I haven't seen in at least 10 years.  I might intermingle the movies with some TV shows I haven't seen in at least 10 years.  I've got season 1 of "Mork & Mindy," of which I've seen 2 episodes and never wanted to watch any more.  If I'm more in the mood for a cop show, I've got season 1 of "Silk Stalkings," which I haven't seen since December of 2011.  But the show that keeps popping into my mind is "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."  I last saw season 1 in June of 2011, and I've never watched season 2 on DVD at all.  I bought it for $4.99 at Goodwill in mid-2018.

Six nights a week, I download and watch an episode of Star Trek Voyager and an episode of Star Trek Enterprise from the Heroes & Icons TV channel.  Both are currently in season 4.
 
Even more difficult than trying to figure out what to watch on TV each night is thinking of something to write about on this web site.
 










© 2023 by Ed Lake
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