One year ago today: August 18, 2021, the already forgotten bribe.
Five years ago today: August 18, 2017, yard work.
Nine years ago today: August 18, 2013, 1¢ = 200 glasses.
Random years ago today: August 18, 2012, orange, melon, & such.
Observing birds and they are a lively bunch this morning. The whole area awoke at 6:00AM to the pounding of heavy machinery in the street. The cable crews were drawing cable through the piping installed y’day. Finally, at least one red cardinal has adapted to the feeder. They are one of three steady visitors, the others being titmice and our solo lady woodpecker. The new branch across the windows is not being used but it has stopped all accidental flights into the glass. Wait, what’s that sound. It’s Ms. Downey, the woodpecker. Today, I’m buying some of the most expensive suet, see if she likes it.
Each of the 800 plus villas has three bedrooms and three bathrooms. The complex contains over 40 hi-rise apartments, plus pools, and schools. But oddly, no clubs or movie theaters. That’s because it is in Saudi Arabia, some 12 miles south of Riyadh. Before you think this is a joke, there is an explanation. Around 1990 the area named “Al Iskan” was built to house personnel for a Saudi military base. But it turns out the nation could not produce the planned 30,000 skilled personnel. So they cancelled the base and declared the housing to be for the Bedouins. The desert people took one look and said up yours.
The place sat abandoned for years until the Gulf War, when suddenly there was a need for US style housing. It seems US housing in Riyadh had a habit of blowing up, so time to move. Alas, few combat soldiers saw Eskan as the inhabitants were mostly support staff. “Iskan” is Arabic for tranquility. The site attracted my attention when it was closed down last March. Some coalition forces tried to`move in, but without the influx of American dollars, it appears Eskan Village is again returning to rack and ruin. In unrelated news, today the Saudis sentenced a lady doctorate to 34 years in prison for tweeting that women should be allowed to drive.
I took another look at 3D printing. Except for prices coming down and reliability of the print heads, there’s little improvement. When I can type into the printer that I want a gear with 10 teeth that is 1 inch in diameter, that would be progress. Artemis, the much-heralded NASA booster, was rolled to the launch pad for a trip to the Moon later this month. I’m watching because rocket building has undergone a change from inherent quality to trust in testing to reveal problems, that is, from proactive to reactive design. The broadcast was marred by having Biden read a script of the Webb telescope designed to make it sound like he was right on top of the technology. He barely made it.
In other space news, a pretty wild experiment was launched. It’s a half-ton of metal designed to deflect the orbit of an asteroid. What’s novel is the method. This asteroid has a small moon orbiting it. The payload crashes into the moon and alters its orbit by a half millimeter. Enough to eventually change the trajectory of the asteroid. But not until sometime late next year. This reminded me of 67P,which kind of became a non-story for the Europeans, see below.
Haunted Hotel, Jefferson, TX
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This house got through my filters. It’s under $50k and in Tennessee. The catch is this is Memphis, a bad neighborhood, and one of those small houses. It has the same interior layout as my old mobile home, the trailer in the blog title. It’s also a one bedroom, but the blurb says a sofa-bed makes the listing legit. Who remembers we looked at these things in Everglades City (named for the absence of both things) at around twice this price back 15 years ago. A quick check shows that not one of them remains listed for sale today.
The 5G crew just could not win. I mentioned the brush pile. The bucket truck did not show up last week, so there was a double pile of heavy logs, twigs, vines, you saw the pictures. Well, the crew showed up again and it was either dig or move that pile. They chose to dig and four of them went at it on this second day of record hot weather this year. They finally got it done and were just patting the dirt down when you guessed it. The truck rounded the corner five and a half hours late and picked up all the wood. In about two minutes. Don’t look at me, I had no idea last week they would be in the area.
You don’t remember 67P, so here’s the tale. Back in 2004, the Europeans launched a satellite that in ten years landed on the comet 67P. This actually happened in 2014 but the real news was the unit was supposed to drill a sample and bring it back to Earth. The craft had a battery that lasted just two days and it was dropped from a mother craft in a now-familiar arrangement. There was touchdown and they detected water but at that point the story ends. The mother ship continued along for a few years and recorded a bunch of cliff-slides and shifting ice rocks. Not a word on the lander. We are told that part of the mission was cancelled and it is still up there. From the people who let 38 million primitives loose in their big cities to prey upon their unprotected citizens, so I suppose we can believe what they say.
Good luck trying to find any data, there’s nothing left on-line except a few crappy videos all saying the same thing. And saying it with that annoying millennial lady-boy lisp that makes you want to kick them in the face just to shut them up. Don’t fall for the click-bait that the Webb telescope has wonderful new pictures of the planets. The Webb works on infrared wavelengths emitted by stars, but not so much by planets.
ADDENDUM
Let’s do a quick round-up on what the world considers news these days. Based on hits. Okay, women are already complaining there are no good men in the Metaverse either. Facebook says it will ban pre-election political ads, but they mean only pro-Trump ones. Sales of Elvish keyboards are up. As leaks from the military begin to reveal horrific injuries from the vaccine, the CDC says if you give their agency even more money they promise to do better next time.
How about those UFO posts? Now, alien serial killers are stowaways on returning spacecraft. The latest man-in-the-moon photo has a “striking resemblance” to the Colossus of Rhodes, which nobody has seen in thousands of years. These websites reject scientific explanations as not being “as interesting” as alien life theories. Microplastics. They have now been discovered in human blood. What do the carriers have in common? Junk food. The more junk food, the higher the plastics count. Is it in the food supply?
