February 6th, 2018, Elon Musk demonstrated that launching objects into orbit had become a mundane commercial activity. To make it interesting, the object he put in orbit was a Tesla Roadster that has since traveled over a million miles and made four laps around the sun. Where is the Roadster now?
Gun season is over and I got nothing. There are two bonus days later in December, but I’m not optimistic. Deer get smarter as the season progresses.
My second time out, I saw two does, but didn’t have a shot. My hunting associate that day took a shot at a buck after I’d left. He hasn’t confirmed this, but it was probably a desperation shot because he wasn’t able to recover the deer.
My third time out wasn’t a serious effort on my part. I went primarily to hangout with my friend who owns the property. He is a teacher, so we don’t often get a chance to do a morning hunt.
After gun season last year, I invented this hunting hat from items I had laying around. The Walmart trapper hat hasn’t been worn for years. I have a few extra headlamps, and the foam had deteriorated from these headphones.
I made it because I had parts laying around, but it was actually handy when I used it this year.
Sound is important when hunting, but with the leaves down, if I am alert, the deer can be spotted on approach. Especially if I’m in a tree stand. Listening to audio books or a podcast helps me remain alert for the hours of sitting still.
When it’s raining, like it was on the third hunt, I put my hood up over the hat. That holds the hat in place, so when I turn my head to scan, the hat remains in place as my head pivots inside. This is helps reduce the motion observable by a deer.
WSJ: Automakers get into mining.
WSJ: Automakers get into mining.
When General Motors began outlining plans in 2020 to fully switch to electric vehicles, it didn’t account for one critical factor: Many of the battery minerals needed to fulfill its plans were still in the ground.
“I remember seeing a report from our raw-materials team at the time saying, ‘There is plenty of lithium out there. There is plenty of nickel’,” said Sham Kunjur, an industrial engineer now in charge of securing the raw materials for GM’s batteries. “We will buy them from the open market.”
GM executives soon came to discover how off the mark those projections were, and now Mr. Kunjur’s 40-person team is scouring the globe for these minerals.
“Why Magical Thinking isn’t Whimsical” or “No Shit, Sherlock” would also have been serviceable titles for this article.
If 3 million cars are sold in the US each year, and each car needed a 100 pounds of lithium for the battery, that’s 300 million pounds of lithium needed each year. That’s a shitload. Before we switch to electric cars, someone should be thinking this through.
Those cars also need a shitload of electricity. The US doesn’t have a lot of surplus generating capacity and we build a new nuclear power plant about every 10 years.
Not paying attention to the basic requirements prior to a big policy shift isn’t a clever way to induce technical advance. It’s a way to insure that the general population will live a life that is needlessly frustrating and expensive.
This isn’t my invention. One of my students told me that her dad built a system to use the heat from the central air conditioning heat pump to warm the water for their swimming pool.
If there is a product available for climbing over chain link fences, I can’t find it. Occasionally, I have to climb over a chain link fence, and I don’t mean the easy kind with a pipe at the top. Pointy shoes are out, and you’d think a ladder would work, but you need two of them. I could use two buckets, but empty buckets always get used for something.
I made a couple of fence cleats to step over the fence. This may not be the optimal solution, but they are small and hold my weight. If they hold up for the couple of times per year when I need to hop the fence, then I’ve got it made.
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