Sunday, December 8, 2013

Bits to clear out

I think that reading a good book is not intended to commit the book to memory. Good thing I am willing to take that position since the books I read are clearly not in my memory.  In fact, I don't really know what is in my memory.  I don't even know how to find out.  Piece by piece, sure.  Go ahead: ask me if I ever had a parrot and I instantly can search all my memory.  It feels as though I quickly relive my life and check for a parrot.  Nope, no parrot.  Dog, yes.  Cat, yes.  Goldfish, I think so.  I am confident that I had a baby turtle or two.


Like a lot of people, I try to augment my memory with photo albums on paper and in digital form.  Likewise a hard disk and file cabinet.  But eventually, I will cease being in this form and changing form will necessitate a stop in the paper and digital flow of marks and bits.  But in the meantime, I still have small snippets laying around that I want to clear out.  Here are some:


1) Say you walk into your main drugstore and go back to the pharmacy counter.  You hand in your prescription but you find you can't leave because you are blocked by a flock of geese.  Could happen. From a Tweet by the Daily Beast:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheets/2013/11/02/weird-cheat-sheet.html


2) Lynn showed me a Facebook post that showed a new design for a wind tower.  It has no external propeller of the type we are used to.  It is build to accept a windstream from any direction.  I was told by the MREA (Midwest Renewable Energy Association) that wind power had been written off as inadequate until towers and turbines were built higher, where strong winds blow.  I know a little of the book "Power Hungry" by Robert Bryce and his warning that many modern uses of energy require strong power, what I might think of as high-calorie energy but good wind power seems like it is moving toward a real contribution that matters.

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-sheerwind-invelox-turbine-power.html


3) Lynn and I were impressed by a picture of Moroccan goats high in a tree where they were said to have climbed by themselves.  I guess many views of the picture expressed strong doubts as to the truth of the picture.  Was it manipulated by Photoshop?  Google has some pictures of "tree climbing goats" labeled "hoax" and some not so labeled.  One picture shows a man near a tree with goats in it and the accompanying text from tourists states a suspicion that the goats were lifted into the tree to attract tourists and their buses.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elsa11/5093899289/


I realize that in the big picture, geese in the drugstore and goats in trees might not be very important.  Still, interesting maybe and different.



--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety


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