Holton Secret Lab
Marci Holton, who with her husband Bill run Holton Secret Lab over in Helix, e-mailed the other day.
“We have posted a new video to YouTube as of late last night. I actually uploaded it on Sunday but then YouTube was not happy with my music so yesterday I had to find music that they approved…..oh well. I hope you enjoy the video, it is my first attempt and I had fun. It runs about 8 minutes long. I am already working on a large video to run at the shows this year.”
If you want to check it out, just go over to YouTube and search for “Holton Secret Lab.” It should pop right up. Marcy’s blog is also fun to check out. You can link to it here.
I’ve made a couple of visits out to the Holton’s place and it’s always been a hoot. Here’s a couple living out where the deer probably outnumber the people with an awesome auto shop that turns out eye-popping hot rods, custom cars and restorations that look like they just rolled off the factory floor.
Right now Bill is working on a 1928 Dodge Coupe to which he’s added a V-12 Jaguar engine “that (was) just sitting in the corner.” According to Marcy’s blog, Bill fired it up the other night “and it was LOUD.” However, it seems the original carburetors are a bear to work with, which means that Bill is now “in the process of building a tunnel ram manifold so he can put a trustworthy American Edlebrock on it…What would the Brits say? Stay tuned.”
This is the sort of stuff we used to fantasize about back when we were motor-infatuated teens listing to Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys. In fact, now got the song “She’s Real Fine, My 409″ stuck in my head. Thanks a lot guys.
Nuclear Tourism (Part II)
So the National Park Service, at the direction of Congress, is studying four Manhattan Project sites for inclusion as a unit in the national park system.
(You can link to the NPS Web site dealing with this issue here.)
The sites being looked at are Hanford Site (motto: “Sixty-five years old and still hot!”); Los Alamos, N.M.; Oak Ridge, Tenn. and Dayton, Ohio.
Having lived in New Mexico and in Washington state , I can understand the significance of Los Alamos (that’s where the brain trust led by Oppenheimer did the R&D) and Hanford (B Reactor and center for plutonium production). And although I’ve never visited Oak Ridge, I know that’s where the huge uranium processing facility was built to produce U-235 (that being one of the two fissionable materials needed for the bomb.)
But Dayton? What the heck happened in Dayton?
It was about then that a press release crossed my desk about a public meeting in Richland to take comments on this proposal. (I confess I failed to do a brief on it. It got buried by other work and the deadline passed.) But it did give me a number to call which put me in touch with a nice guy in the faceless NPS bureaucracy which let me ask, “Why Dayton?”
It turns out Dayton does have a connection to the Manhattan Project. “It’s where they manufactured the triggers,” he explained. It was where the “Dayton Project” was located (well, duh!) which was aimed at “the research and development of polonium refinement and industrial production of polonium for atomic bomb triggers.” (Source: Wikipedia)
But unlike Hanford, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, just about everything associated with the Manhattan Project in Dayton has pretty much vanished in the intervening years. So, again, why was Dayton singled out?
“Well, you know how Congress works,” my guy said with a laugh. Apparently, when the proposal was making its way through process, somebody saw a chance to earn points with the voters in Dayton by getting the city included on the list.
Well, to quote Elmer Fudd, “Oh, those wascally Waytonians!”
Holiday Decoration Police Needed
So I’m driving to work this morning in the winter pre-dawn dark and I see them glowing in the gloom.
Christmas lights. Still up, still on, violating all the laws of God, man and nature.
It’s bad enough that we have holiday creep which has crammed Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas into what cartoonist Tim Rickard calls “Thanksweenmas” (“It’s the headless Turkey Claus!”) I’ve accepted the fact that it’s too late to do anything about that. But I believe it’s still possible to do something about holiday decoration hangover.
There is nothing sadder than Christmas lights still up in mid-January, unless its Christmas lights still up in February. The only thing worse is seeing an apple-cheeked Santa figure or happy Frosty the Snowman cutout still forlornly adorning somebody’s window far past its expiration date.
That’s why we need the Holiday Decoration Police. This would be a roving squad that would go into action sometime around Jan. 5 to make the streets safe for post-New Year’s depression. If necessary, they would be authorized to use force to take down any tardy, glistening reminders of Xmas and pack them safely into boxes where they need to remain until next year.
Ah heck, who am I kidding? Given the ongoing holiday creep, they would no sooner finish getting the last light down when it would be time to start putting them up again. So Happy Thanksweenmas! Just leave the darn things up until the Christmas season starts again, which next year should be about August.
I’m feeling very evolutionary today
“Women’s suspicion that men are Neanderthals less likely than ever” the headline read.
The article was about the Y (as in “guy”) chromosome and the fact that it has been found evolving faster than the rest of the genetic code.
“It’s an almost ongoing churning of gene reconstruction,” said Dr. David Page of the prestigious Whitehead Institute in Cambridge. “It’s like a house that’s constantly being rebuilt.”
Well, guys can relate to that. We’re constantly rebuilding things, which is why we invented tools. Yes, it was far back in the dim mists of time that a guy picked up a rock and, prompted by his ever-evolving Y chromosome, realized it could be used as a hammer. He then promptly smacked his thumb with it trying to hang a picture on the cave wall and invented “the ouch! G-d–m it!” dance which, in turn, led to the invention of “hysterical laughter” by all the women who were watching.
But enough of that. It’s nice to know that all these years us guys have had an “evolutionary powerhouse” (to quote the article) as part of our makeup. This is especially gratifying considering that until recently the lowly Y chromosome “was considered the Rodney Dangerfield of genetics, especially because it had fewer genes than others.”
I can hear my Y chromosomes chuckling even now. In fact, I’m a little worried. All those years of harassment and teasing by the other genes have probably left those Y chromosomes with a mighty big chip on their shoulders. I’m wondering if we’re not going to see the genetic equivalent of that Charles Atlas comic which was a staple of the back pages of comics for many years.
You know the one. It’s where the wimpy Y chromosome gets sand kicked in his face by a big, muscle-bound beach-bully chromosome and, after going home enrolls in the Charles Atlas chromosome-building course and in just a few short months develops a manly chromosome physique, goes back to the gene beach and punches out that lousy beach bully chromosome.
Of course, that might not happen. Another possibility is that after discovering it is an evolutionary powerhouse, the Y chromosomes will remember the words of thier gentle, wise Uncle Ben Chromosome who counseled that “with great power comes great responsibility.” So instead of wailing on the beach bully chromosome, they will adopt a secret identity and only use their awesome abilities when evil threatens or they want to impress a chick.
They will also use their newfound evolutionary awesomeness to invent improved versions the Beer Hat, the potato gun and motorized bar stools.
Y chromosomes. Ya gotta love ‘em.
Welcome to the jungle
Let’s file this one under the heading of “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
I’m working my way through a lecture series titled “The United States in the Middle East: 1914 to 9/11″ by Prof. Salim Yaqub of the University of California at Santa Barbara.
(Shameless plug here, I bought this from The Teaching Company, a concern that was founded by someone who is making money after realizing there are lots of us out there who want to catch up on all those lectures we dozed through or blew off in college.)
(I was going to say I hate this person. But what I really hate is the fact I didn’t think up this idea first.)
Anyway, under the “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry” heading is this bit:
“A fourth-grade mathematics primer published in the 1980s contained the following word problems:
“The Mujaheen are on the Path of God in an attack on a convoy of the interventionist Russians and Communists. After most of the enemy are killed, 500 boxes of shells are seized as booty. If, in every box, there are 820 shells, how many shells are seized as booty?”
“Here’s another one.
“The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 500 meters per second. If one Russian is at a distance of 3,200 meters from a Mujaheen, and the Mujanheen aims at the Russian’s forehead, calculate how many seconds it will take until the bullet hits the Russian in the forehead.”
“So that’s a fourth-grade primer.
“Due to the shortage of school materials the textbook from which these questions were drawn remained in use long after the Soviets had withdrawn from the country. Indeed, it had been in use as late as the year 2000.”
The future, which is happening now
So here we are in 2010 and there STILL aren’t any flying cars.
We’re kind of shy on personal rocket backpacks as well, despite James Bond using one to escape bad guys once.
And what about interstellar flight to interstellar colonies? Or for that matter scheduled Pan Am flights to the moon? (Complete with stewardesses using Velcro-bottomed slippers to anchor themselves to the floor.)
One thing that was supposed to still be widespread was smoking, complete with self-igniting cigarettes and presumably a quick and easy cure for lung cancer.
But while a dwindling number of people continue to puff, the idea they would be banished into alleyways or outside back doors like pariahs wasn’t something anyone saw coming.
OK, so what future stuff DO we have?
Well, there’s personal communicators, aka “cell phones.” Videophones (technically available, but do you know anyone who has one?) A space station. Lasers (in places you never expected to see them). Cameras everywhere watching everyone (just not the way Orwell envisioned things). Electric cars (sort of). Life-saving medical technology and procedures which are now routine, but unfortunately at costs that threaten to impoverish people (at least in the U.S.) Genetic modification. A robot vacuum cleaner (sort of). Flat-screen TVs (and getting flatter).
Oh yeah! I almost forgot electric books! (A friend got a Kindle for Christmas.)
On the flip side, one future thing we’re likely never to see will be flying bar tables.
It was the science fiction writer Larry Niven who explained why this idea wouldn’t work.
In one of his short stories, the narrator is been invited into a bar by another character and notices that the tables seemed to be designed to hover, but are all solidly grounded.
His companion explains that when the place opened up, the tables did indeed hover. But since people drink in bars, and when they drink they get silly, it wasn’t long before fights were breaking out because somebody would fly over another patron and dump their drink on their head or start swooping around on an impromptu joyride.
The owners tried to fix the tables in place at different altitudes, but people figured out how to hack the controls and the next thing you know folks were playing bumper cars with their tables. So, ultimately, the tables wound up being nailed to the floor.
Having been in more than one bar, I think Niven hit this one on the head. As the French say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Dubious phrase of the year?
OK, I know this latest terrorist incident is very serious, but it has introduced a new candidate for unfortunate word linkage.
And that is “Powerful underwear bomb.”
What’s next? “Suicide skivvies”?
Lists, lists, we’ve got lists
This January is turning into a double whammy time for lists.
Not only is it the end of another year, it’s the end of the first decade of the 21st Century.
So not only are there the usual “top 10″ or “top 20″ lists for 2009, but there’s a bumper crop of “top this” or “top that” for the past 10 years (2000-2009).
One of the more amusing ones was in today’s New York Daily News (you can link to it here). But be warned, it contains “handerpants.”
I love my friends/I hate my friends
So it’s Christmas card season. I’m mostly OK with that. I have to do something to acknowledge the holidays as well as renew acquaintences with people I have pretty much forgotten about during the past 11 months.
Of course one problem I have (and this is sexual in nature) is that I am a guy. This means that I usually put off shopping for Christmas cards until December when I am in a store buying something really vital (like beer) and while distracted by bright, shiny Xmas objects a random brain cell fires off the message, “Hey, maybe you should try to grab some Xmas cards!”
Of course I immediately lose that thought when I see a display of stuff which has “AS ADVERTISED ON TV!” over it and have to go and check THAT out. So I don’t think about Xmas cards again until my sister sends me a really clever card that reminds me I need to get busy with the Christmas card thing, but by then all the really clever ones are gone and I’m forced into the bargain rack at Shopko or Kmart.
So this year the bargain card du jour was a cute kitten sitting in a cranberry wreath ( although frankly said kitten looked a bit Photoshopped) but, hey, I wasn’t complaining.
Of course I couldn’t just send this cloying cute card out without injecting a bit of my own humor into it. So the heartfelt Christmas message I inscribed on each was, “CUTE KITTEN AT CENTER OF XMAS PHOTO SHOOT ROYALTY DISPUTE MURDER! CLAIMS PISTOL WAS PLACED UNDER PAW AFTER WILD NIGHT OF SEX AND DRUGS! `THE DOG DID IT!’ KITTY CLAIMS AT BAIL HEARING!”
This bit went over fairly well, but also caused an unexpected moral dilemma.
This was due to a recently-arrived card from my friends Bill and Joanna who live way over in New Mexico.
Their card bears the following message:
“Thanks for the cute X-mas cat card…Bill & I just got back from Rome, Italy – amazing trip! And we also got to see Pompeii!”
Now while I love Bill and Joanna, I also now hate them.
This has to do with them being in sunny Italy the past few weeks drinking wine, eating cheese and generally hanging out while the rest of us have had to deal with work, arctic cold, snow, ice and cars turning into 2,000-pound hockey pucks at random moments during our morning commute.
Fortunately, I have resolved how to deal with this.
It involves both revenge and holiday cheer.
I am going to send them a fruitcake.
It’s Here! It’s Here!
The high point of the Holiday Season has arrived!
Yes, it’s Dave Barry’s Annual Christmas Gift Guide. And you can view it here.
This year’s edition is up to Mr. Barry’s high standards, which because he lives in Miami are defined as “sea level.” Despite that, Dave and his plucky crew have delivered a host of holiday gift selections which, if nothing else, help confirm Southern Florida’s status as narcotics capital U.S.A.
But one thing that’s missing from the list is a rare, precious substance that I think the Wise Men would have given baby Jesus had it been available back then.
We’re talking trans fat.
Think about it. Just about everything you pick up at the store these days (or at least most of the junk I buy that masquerades as food) proudly proclaims “CONTAINS NO TRANS FAT!” This is pasted on stuff which I suspect is fried in pure lard before packaging. In fact, I wouldn’t bat an eye if I saw a barrel of salt pork sitting on a shelf which had “ZERO TRANS FAT!” in foot-high letters, along with “LOW SODIUM (SORT OF)!”
So I’ve concluded that trans fat must be an incredibly valuable substance along the lines of gold, frankincense and myrrh and should, therefore, make a perfect Christmas gift. Man, I just can’t wait to see the look on the faces of my friends and family when they open up their Xmas packages this year. Yum!
