One year ago today: July 3, 2015, Serenity coffee, Okeechobee.
Five years ago today: July 3, 2011, the pickle jar mystery.
Nine years ago today: July 3, 2007, a read-only post.
Random years ago today: July 3, 2004, Titan, moon of Saturn.
MORNING
This morning you get a treat for being good. Here are some items you can look up on your own, but I won’t provide the links. Some of these you probably have encountered, others, you wondered about.
Texas sharpshooter fallacy – happens when you ignore differences and emphasize similarities.
Littlewood’s Law – believers expect a “miracle” to happen to them once every 35 days.
Clustering illusion – seeing patterns in random events that occur close to each other.
Survivorship bias – thinking if you can do it, anybody can.
Confirmation bias – to only recall information that supports your personal notions.
Postdiction – seeing historical confirmation after the event occurs, like reading Nostradamus.
Anthropic principle – believing the universe is compatible with those who view it, a.k.a. religion.
After a steak breakfast, wishing Liz was here, I got back under my air conditioner and watched a documentary on the Belgian Congo. I remember it was called that when I was a kid, I remember hearing news on the radio of the rebels. If there was one bunch that had good reason to throw out the white man, it was the Congolese. Never denigrate Hitler before you learn what the Belgians did. As is pointed out, the only difference between the Jews and the Congolese is the Congolese don’t own the world’s newspapers.
Make sure you don’t confuse the Belgians with Germans. No way. When I was growing up, it was regularly pointed out the Belgians were crude, uncivilized, German wannabes. They had a permanent inferiority complex about that. They were the cancer of Europe, but there is another distinction that should be made. The Congo originally belonged only to King Leopold, and not to the country of Belgium. They could claim they were unaware of how the king got all his money, but the whole affair has been hushed up enough they don’t have to. Similar to how some people in Miami have so much moola.
Now, Leopold was eventually exposed by British journalists, who knew what to look for because it was exactly the way England operated before it became anti-slavery the day it realized if it didn’t, the USA was going to industrialize and dominate the Empire. Many suspect the true motive behind the British championing of such causes was to cut off the supply of labor to the Americans. But, that yet other segment of history.
Moscow State University.
NOON
Ah, silver is doing what it is supposed to. It broke $20 and $21 per ounce in Hong Kong today, when the Americans are closed for the holiday and unable to put their spin on the market without playing their hand. This [price] is nowhere near my sell-point, but at least the graphs are pointing the right direction. I celebrated with Chinese food, and my fortune says “Soon you will be sitting on top of the world.” With my luck, that means a trip to the Yukon. My lucky numbers are 5, 8, and 0. As for my lotto numbers, tell you what, I’ll go buy a single ticket with those.
All other news today is paled by that silver activity, but some guy did get run over up the road from here. I saw the commotion, not the accident. The picture is called a “compression donut”. I was busy researching iron plumbing pipe, such as I have in the new place, or at least what I take to be iron. JZ says to make any renovations with PVC, so I’m interesting in what is involved coupling the two materials. I can tell you the iron pipe prices are frightening, as in up to $400 for a P-trap. This is not galvanized pipe, this is black iron.
I know that my ex’s father and I replaced a cast iron pipe section in 1991, we used a couple of rubber couplings secured with radiator clamps. The piping in the new place is a model of economy, using diagonal pipe runs and a minimum of fittings. My plans include a dishwasher, garburetor, and laundry. You can’t really retire meaningfully without those as far as I’m concerned. The latest plan is to remove the oak flooring and get all this work done “indoors”, shifting around the new sheets of ¾” subfloor to provide handy living space meanwhile. Stick around and I’ll get you a photo of how that works.
K.P. Sreekumar: Mathematics, 2002. Doesn’t that name just roll off your tongue? KP, as his friends liked to call him, and his enemies, too, no doubt, was part of the team that calculated the total surface area of an Indian elephant. Here, you can do it yourself with this formula: S=−8.245+6.807H+7.073FFC. Where H is the height at shoulder and FFC is the circumference of the forefoot pad. We’ll presume they used tame elephants.
It is unknown if this effort helped the country’s space program.
NIGHT
Here’s a photo of what I mean concerning the subfloor. I’m pointing at two sheets of the material, one has the good side down, but they are the same product. If these were not there, you’d see down through the bare joists to the ground beneath the structure. This is how I plan to proceed with the major part of the renovation, which at this point appears to be the flooring and the plumbing.
Plan B did not work directly, since that is where were began to meet all the con artists trying to unload uninhabitable dumps on us. Remember Punta Gorda? Remember Winter Haven? Thus, the concept mutated into buying something that could be lived in while it was being upgraded. This produced no better results until I changed the game plan which resulted in the place I bought.
This modified Plan B was the strategy in place when I took over. As you see in the photo, this is solid and adequate flooring, It is also clean and once in place will add to the strength of the framework. It even looks okay if I don’t choose to finish the floors immediately. There, aren’t you proud of me?
ADDENDUM
Just to spite UltimateGuitar and Songsterr (who’s “new” Android format won’t play right on older Windows), here are the chords to “Bang On The Drum”. D and G, then the chorus is E-F#m-E-C-A. Every guitar jerk on the entire Internet got it wrong. There is no B chord in the song. Oh, and if there are any 6ths or 9ths or anything diminished, go do that yourself. I’m a bass player.
Some trivia. You’ve heard the urban legend that if you live near power transmission lines, you’ll get cancer. Nonsense. It is a result of a Swedish study that showed there were increases in over 800 ailments, including leukemia, by people who lived closest to the lines. The legend arose because the study was 25 years long but the results gave the impression it all happened at once.
In fact, the study was so long that it didn’t matter. The number of people that got the illnesses near the power lines was so low that they were fewer than by chance alone. The study would be more accurate to say the power lines cured the ailments and been just as valid.
Last Laugh
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