Big Stick Physics

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Enjoying retirement

March 12, 2024 / / 0 Comments

 I decided to retire a month before the end of the school year.  That was four years earlier than I’d planned, but the principal wanted me to go and the money worked out.  Because this scenario wasn’t anticipated, I had only prepared for retirement in a broad sense.

Once retired, I looked for more thoughts on the topic.  The Wall Street Journal has a Retirement Rookies column that could be useful if I wanted to retire in Costa Rica or manage a non-profit.  More pragmatic wisdom came from retired friends.  Here they are.

Do at least one productive activity per day.

Pete added the “at least” later, because I was limiting myself to just one.  Writing it down in a daily planner would be a good idea, but I lack consistency.

Everything doesn’t have to be done today.

Pace yourself and don’t get anxious.  

If you aren’t interested in an activity or pursuit when you were working, you won’t be interested in it when you are retired.

That is much like saying that you won’t be a different person.  While working, there may not be time or energy to pursue some interests.  That’s different than not being interested.  If you always wanted to spend a month abroad, now you have the time.  If you never wanted to travel, you still won’t want to.

I have always loved dogs, but living alone and traveling extensively, never had one.  I’ve had Sparky for a year, and he’s been splendid.

If there is something you have always talked about doing, either do it or forget it.

I bought a camper to take long trips to visit family who don’t live nearby.  I haven’t taken a trip like that, and I’m getting close to the point where I either do it or forget it.  Retired friends and I take a half-dozen short trips per year.  I enjoy that.  This year, I either take the long trip or admit I’m never going to.

There are improvements to my house that I’ve always wanted.  I want a concrete driveway.  It is not as practical now because if I don’t want to plow the driveway, I can just stay home.  I either start calling for quotes or forget it.

There are a couple of corollaries that I have adopted.

Say yes to everything.

If friends or family invite me to something or need my help, my default is to say yes.  It may or may not work out, but it might.  All I risk is time.

A friend invited me to join his group playing Warhammer every couple of weeks.  That isn’t a particular interest of mine, but they are a great group of guys and it expands my circle.  Another friend invited me to join his group for a trip to Pennsylvania to ride ATV’s.  I went, it was fraught with peril, but I didn’t embarrass myself and met a good group of guys.  I doubt that I will do that again, but I can if I want, and my friend knows that I’m capable.

My nephew asked me to  extract him from Fargo, so I went.

Even if it isn’t fun, it keeps me engaged with other people and experiences.

Call or get together with retired friends on any pretext.

Most of us don’t call many people because we don’t want to interrupt their day.  Texting is less intrusive.  Retired people are different.  We are busy, but what we are doing can usually wait.  If a call isn’t convenient, the retiree will say so and call back later.

Texting is less social than calling which is less social than visiting.

If you were wondering about something in which your friend has expertise, call your friend.  If you rent a piece of construction equipment, invite people over to help.  That’s just more entertaining.

WSJ: Cheating Crisis on Campus

January 9, 2024 / / 0 Comments

WSJ: Cheating on Campus

WSJ: Cheating on Campus

“When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year,” wrote the student who sits on Harvard’s honor council, which adjudicates peer academic-integrity violations. “When the president of their university is found responsible for the same types of infractions, the fellows of the Corporation ‘unanimously stand in support of’ her,” as the body declared in a Dec. 12 statement.

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Sparky Watches TV

December 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the TV show, Alone.   Sparky likes it too.  He doesn’t usually care much about TV, but in the later seasons, there are enough bears, wolves and other large animals to get his attention.  They usually play up the sounds of cougars, wolves and bears.  That always get his attention.

When I’m going to be out for a long time, I like to leave something on TV for Sparky.  Not that he watches much, but it gives him some ambient sound and he can watch if he wants.

I’ve tried Youtube videos for dogs.  There are a bunch of these.

Remember the Veterans.

November 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

My dad was a waist gunner in a B-24 Liberator during World War II.  He is the one we think of on Veteran’s Day, but other family members served.  Uncle Pete was in the Navy, Uncle Nick was an officer, but I don’t recall which branch.  My brother Chris was in the Air Force for the Vietnam War, and brother-in-law John was in the Army.  Nephew Dusty was also in the Army.  Mom would want me to mention that she volunteered for the USO, so really, she should get something.  Remember the people who served, and listen to their stories while you can.

My dad tells some of his story:

Early in my teaching career, Ohio passed a law requiring every school to dedicate an hour to a Veteran’s Day activity.  I started out cynical, so assumed that Normandy would get a couple of guys from the VFW to speak at an assembly. 

I know how kids are at an assembly.  They would be quiet, but not listening.  It’s hard to blame them when little thought is given to providing a quality presentation.  My students held me in some esteem, so I thought that they might be interested if there is a personal connection. 

My dad wouldn’t come in to talk to my students, but he did agree to be interviewed.  He hadn’t talked to my siblings or me about his time in WW II, so we were eager to hear his story.  I recorded the interview with  one of those gigantic cameras that held a VHS tape.  Digital video cameras were just getting affordable. It was my intention to interview him again the following year, but he passed away that summer.

This video, a few dozen photos and his service diary are all we have of his time at war.

October 15, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Washington Post: Leave leaves

This article leans to heavy on the word “experts”, but people who read a column called “Climate Solutions” probably still work for the greater good as defined by experts.

To best support wildlife and soil health, experts say leaves should be left where they fall.

The soil may be healthy, but it won’t support grass growth.  Leaves block sunlight and acidify the soil.  Your lawn will resemble a forest floor, with no grass, mostly dirt with sparse vegetation.

“The fallen leaf layer is actually really important wildlife habitat,” said David Mizejewski, a naturalist with the National Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit conservation organization. “All sorts of creatures rely on that for their survival as a place where they can find food and cover, and in many cases even complete their life cycle.”

Who wants a wildlife habitat for a lawn?  Squirrels in the trees are great, chipmunks are okay, but they seem to be up to something.  Mice and voles are vermin who can live in the wood with the raccoons, coyotes, opossums and the rest of the wildlife menagerie.

Bagging up your leaves and sending them to a landfill “is by far the worst thing” to do, Mizejewski said. In 2018, landfills received about 10.5 million tons of yard trimmings, which includes leaves, or just over 7 percent of all waste thrown away, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

This does make sense.  It always seemed unreasonable to put organic waste like leaves and grass clippings in plastic bags to be buried in a landfill.

While a light scattering of leaves on a lawn could also be beneficial to your grass, too thick of a layer could smother the turf, experts said. Mizejewski added that the fallen foliage might also harbor pests, such as ticks, so it’s important to follow best practices to protect yourself.

Still, he and other experts said removing all the leaves isn’t the answer.

“You don’t have to keep them on your lawn where they fall, but what we want you to do is keep them on property,” he said. “Don’t get rid of them.”

Ticks are a big problem here because there is so much forest. 

Any lot size above a half-acre or so, has room for a mulch box.  Grass clippings and leaves will break down by next year.  Bagging yard waste makes no sense.  It doesn’t make much sense for the city to send a truck around to vacuum up leaves in the Fall.

Don’t give away your carbon.  I mulch my grass and the errant leaves early in the season.  When the trees start dropping in earnest, I blow the leaves into the woods.  The ticks and voles can go nuts as long as they stay over there.

It’s National Coffee Day. Time to get on the bus.

September 29, 2023 / / 1 Comment

USAToday: National Coffee Day

Coffee is a wonderful thing, I wish I’d known about it sooner.

My mother had many wonderful attributes, but cooking wasn’t one of them.  She had her own way of doing things.  She thought it would be a good idea to make a pot of coffee, then pour it into a pan and leave it simmering on the stove.  This was decades before Keurigs, microwave ovens or Mr. Coffee.  Did the percolator coffee maker keep coffee warm?  Don’t know.

On rare occasions, the coffee boiled off in the pan.  Burned coffee has a horrible smell in the same way that burned popcorn does.  This ruined coffee for me and some of my siblings.

About the time I turned 55 years old, it occurred to me that walking around school with a can of diet Mountain Dew seemed juvenile.  Adults drink coffee.

I developed a protocol to get over my aversion.  I stopped drinking any caffeinated beverages, except bottles of Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino.  Those are like chocolate milk, so I had only one per day for about a week.  That was to get my over the dislike for mocha.  After that, it was two weeks of Starbucks Iced Coffee.  This was to get my brain to associate mocha with caffeine.

After that, I went to black coffee.  Becoming a coffee snob has no appeal, so I get Aldi coffee and make it in a Keurig.

The benefits of coffee are significant.  About 20% of coffee drinks are compelled to take a dump after the first cup of the day.  I’m one of those lucky people.  I like the predictability of it. 

Big Cereal convinced us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  If I had breakfast, I was hungry around lunch time.  If I skip breakfast, I’m hungry around lunch time.  Why bother?   Having coffee in the morning means skipping breakfast is automatic.

Coffee gives a boost to initiative and clarity of mind.  When you get over about 50 years old, less appetite and more energy makes coffee worth the effort.

Science Alert: China considers Moon bases in lava tubes.

September 29, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Science Alert: China interested in Moon caves

On the Moon, astronauts will need protection from a different set of hazards. They’ll have to contend with cosmic and solar radiation, meteorites, wild temperature swings, and even impact ejecta.  The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has found hundreds of lunar ‘skylights,’ locations where a lava tube’s ceiling has collapsed, making a natural opening into the tube.

The International Space Station is only about 300 miles high.  That gives the ISS some protection from cosmic rays.  Cosmic rays are positively charged particles moving at relativistic velocities.  Alpha radiation consists of some of the same positively charged particles, and is the type of radiation that Putin has used to assassinate opponents.  He used polonium which emits alpha radiation.  Those particles are big and slow, and can be stopped with a piece of paper.  When a person ingests polonium, the radiation attacks the person from the inside, with nothing stopping the particles.

Cosmic rays are moving at nearly the speed of light.  Shielding with lead, as one might use to block Superman’s vision, doesn’t work because the particles hit lead atoms and knock them free.  Those heavier atoms would act like shrapnel.

Hydrogen atoms are good for shielding from cosmic rays, so water, ice or plastic works, but you need a lot of it, on the order of several meters.   A lunar lava tube would provide meters of rock and would be excellent shielding.

On the Moon, astronauts will have to contend with the temperature swings. Earth’s natural satellite is a world of temperature extremes. One side of the Moon is in direct sunlight for half of the time, and surface temperatures reach as high as 127 degrees Celsius (260 °F.) The side that’s shrouded in darkness sinks as low as -173 °C (-280 °F.)

The Moon is a world of temperature extremes only on the surface.  Apollo astronauts did experiments with thermal conduction on the surface of the Moon.  Go down half a meter, and the temperature is a constant temperature of about -4 °F.  It gets colder than that in Ohio.

Because the Moon has no atmosphere, heat is not conducted through convection, but only from radiation from the lunar surface to the -450 °F of space and through conduction through Moon rock.  A lava tube on the Moon be -4 °F.  An enclosure that is insulated from the floor of the cave would lose very little heat. 

China’s future plan, after successful exploration, is a crewed base. It would be a long-term underground research base in one of the lunar lava tubes, with a support center for energy and communication at the tube’s entrance. The terrain would be landscaped, and the base would include both residential and research facilities inside the tube.

This is likely to be every nation’s plan.  China has 30 million people living in caves, so maybe the idea doesn’t seem as novel to them.

WSJ: Rescuing Men from Rage

September 23, 2023 / / 0 Comments

WSJ: Rescuing Men from Rage

WSJ: Rescuing Men from Rage

Why are so many young men so angry online?

This article isn’t likely to suggest anything that will actually help men.

Men are trailing women in college and in the workplace, fewer of their relationships are leading to marriage and many men feel masculinity is under attack.

Men are trailing women everywhere, and if a man complains, then the typical response is something along the line of “Fuck you, you built the patriarchy, so if you aren’t happy with it, go die.”

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AP News: First new nuke plant is going online.

August 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

AP: First New Nuke Plant

ATLANTA (AP) — The first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades is sending electricity reliably to the grid, but the cost of the Georgia power plant could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power as a path to a carbon-free future.

The federal government is nudging us toward an all-electric future.  Gas stoves and wood stoves are being regulated to extinction and gas hot water heaters will be next.  Wealthy people are given a $7500 incentive to buy electric cars with conventional cars to eventually banned.  This is happening while the electric grid is getting less reliable.  Wind and solar power are being subsidized while they are known to be intermittent, fair weather electrical generators.  

If the federal government wasn’t actively trying to make our lives less secure and comfortable, we’d be building a new nuclear power plant every two years, like China is.

The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but are now on track to cost their owners $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion.

That sounds expensive, but two years ago, the federal government spent $2 trillion on a Covid stimulus package, and we’ve got nothing to show for it.  Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan was going to cost $30 billion per year, and again, we’d have nothing to show for it.  Instead, build a new nuclear power plant every year so Americans could have cheap and abundant electricity.  Nuclear power plants are one of the safest ways to generate electricity and produce no carbon dioxide (if you care about that sort of thing).

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