For my first frivolous purchase, this boot dryer is great. When I tell Sparky we are going out for a walk, I turn it on. By the time Sparky and I have our jackets on, the boots are warm. Putting on warm boots is like putting on a sweatshirt that just came out of the dryer.
After the walk, the boots get a dried for 10 minutes.
It’s a good thing I ordered early. Sparky would have lost all faith in my judgement. The pet bed warmer I got for Sparky is completely ineffective. I’d have better luck keeping Sparky warm by reciting bawdy limericks all night.
It has an Amazon rating of 4 1/2 stars with 7000 votes. People are idiots or something. The instructions recommend placing it under a couch cushion all night to test it. The area gets about as warm as placing your hand under a couch cushion all night. That isn’t convenient or comfortable, but it also isn’t very effective. This pad uses 4 Watts of electricity.
I bought it on reviews, and not the specifications, so my bad.
Instead, I bought him this heating pad that I didn’t know still existed. It’s a Sunbeam old-style heating pad. Old-style means that it just has a low-medium-high switch. My heating pad is the modern variety that turns itself off after some length of time. That is supposed to be a safety feature that i find very inconvenient.
On high, it uses 50 Watts, and is for when you really need heat. For Sparky, it goes under the mat cover and is mildly warm on low. Both pads are made about the same, and cost about $17.
I’m going to get a bigger one for myself, and throw the modern heating pad away.
Mysterious drones over New Jersey
More than three weeks after dozens of mysterious drones began popping up in the New Jersey night sky, the public has still been offered no clear insight on what the phenomenon could be.
This is a huge story that reveals that corporate media and the federal government have failed. Finding the whole story is difficult, so I’ll pull from a few reports.
With the normal stupid stuff going on, it’s easy to lose track of the impressive work being done. SpaceX routinely launches satellites into orbit and occasionally demonstrates an impressive new capability, but the big picture isn’t addressed very often.
The Artemis III project is planning to get people back to the moon in two years. NASA is leading the project along with the space agencies of Europe, Italy, Germany, Japan, Canada, Israel and Dubai.
Humans haven’t walked on the Moon in over fifty years, and this time, we won’t be landing in an expedient contraption. SpaceX is building the lunar lander. The photo above shows the SpaceX HLS with other objects to show the scale. Notice the tiny Apollo Lunar Module on the right.
Euronews: Fire station burns down.
Germans are known for being smart and industrious, and not questioning their leaders. This leads them to getting too swept up in ill-advised causes.
A fire alarm system wasn’t installed in the building because experts did not consider it necessary.
A new fire station in Germany that was destroyed in a fire, causing millions of euros in damage, did not have a fire alarm system.
Germany has building codes. Someone made the decision to exempt this new fire station from customary procedures. Nobody objected.
Buried in the news report:
The fire broke out on an emergency vehicle belonging to the fire department, which contained lithium-ion batteries and an external power connection.
Lithium batteries burn very hot and are difficult to put out. When an electric car burns, fire fighters don’t extinguish the burning battery, but keep the fire contained. Why did the fire department need an electric vehicle? Because Germans are suppressing the smart part of their brains, and embracing the EV cult.
Here is respected physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder, explaining “Why I’m embarrassed to be German”.
Prior to our trip to East Harbor State Park, I charged up the batteries for the RC cars.
As the LiPo battery for the Land Rover was charging, I heard a short, sharp, sound., like a ruler hitting a desk. It wasn’t very loud, and sounded like the crack from the discharge of a Van Der Graaff generator.
This kind of thing.
I went to check on the charging battery, and found that it looked inflated. That’s real bad. I turned off the charger, gingerly took the battery outside, and threw it in the yard where it couldn’t damage anything if it exploded or ignited. Which, it apparently did at some point during the night.
It appears that since several batteries were going to be charged, the charger was set for a 4S battery, instead of a 3S. The battery that was being charged had a high enough voltage that the charger didn’t recognized the problem.
WaPo: First lunar lava cave has been found.
WaPo: First lunar lava cave has been found.
My prior post about China looking at lunar lava caves referenced an article that didn’t have any new information about lunar lava caves. This recent WaPo article announces the first direct evidence of a lunar lava cave. There are a few similar news reports all based on this Radar evidence of cave conduit science article. This science article has less fluff and more interesting information. That link may not remain active, so I will post an interesting diagram from the article.
SpaceNews: China interested in lava tubes.
China, and anyone interested in a Moon base, should be interested in lava tubes. If NASA does wake up, it’s likely to roll over and go back to sleep. Fortunately, Elon Musk needs a Moon base to get to Mars.
The movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, got a lot right. The surface of the Moon is an obnoxious place to live. The surface temperature goes from about -200o F to 200o F. Gamma rays bombard the surface, but cosmic rays are a bigger problem. Cosmic rays hitting the Earth produce the Northern Lights as their energy dissipates in the atmosphere and are deflected by our magnetic field. Those subatomic particles moving at nearly the speed of light, are not easily screened
WSJ: Quest for electric planes.
WSJ: Quest for electric planes.
Why must we entertain and finance blatantly stupid ideas? Nothing is going to make Greta Thunberg happy, so let’s stop trying. No government money or mandates should encourage the dumb ideas.
RCS: Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear
It’s interesting to watch a country intentionally destroy itself. Germany presents itself as a technically-minded country with high-quality manufacturing, not a country that makes uninformed and impetuous decisions.
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