More Superfluous Dictum

Because the weather here in Southern California has mimicked that of summer recently, it feels as if we are in the dog days of August.  Thus a temperament of ennui and lethargy has draped itself across our prefrontal cortex.  In other words, I can think of nothing on which to bloviate this week.  (Well, there’s always space stuff; but I think you need a week off.) Bound by my contract insubstantial that exists tacitly on my end but forcibly on my readers’ (unless of course they have added my name to their spam filter… “Hey, I didn’t even think about that.  Just imagine the amount of time I could have devoted to some profitable endeavor!)

So, I have retreated to that time honored maxim, “If you can’t laugh at yourself, you have to make fun of other people.”  That’s right, we’re going to take a little tour of the recent news offerings and see if we can amuse ourselves at the expense of others.

The Donald has the political world on its heels.  There seems to be no talk of policy from the other Republican contenders. Their sole focus seems to be, “How do we dump Trump?” I think that’s enough keystrokes devoted to this issue. Wouldn’t it be great if he did the rest of his campaign en voce Donald Duck?  He’d still probably win.

On February 18, 2016, CBS correspondent Scott Pelley interviewed Hillary Clinton yielding the following exchange:

PELLEY:  You talk about leveling with the American people. Have you always told the truth?

CLINTON: I've always tried to. Always. Always.

PELLEY: Some people are gonna call that wiggle room that you just gave yourself.

CLINTON: Well, no, I've always tried --

PELLEY: I mean, Jimmy Carter said, "I will never lie to you."

CLINTON: Well, but, you know, you're asking me to say, "Have I ever?" I don't believe I ever have. I don't believe I ever have. I don't believe I ever will. I'm gonna do the best I can to level with the American people.

And I thought I was the world’s best fudge maker!  (It really is very good.)  With such veracity, can we expect full disclosure on the subject of Area 51?

On February 23, 2016, Reuter’s News Service reported that a California woman was discovered dead in a laundry chute at the D Casino in Las Vegas (NV).  A spokesperson for the Clark County Coroner’s Office stated she had not died of natural causes.  Go figure.  This is a reminder folks to pay your gambling markers.

It seems we are once again under attack by nature.  The new threat is from the Zika virus, transmitted by mosquito bite.  Wait, it seems that once contracted, it can be transmitted through sexual activity.  The Center for Disease Control has confirmed fourteen such cases.  Insert your own joke here about stingers.  Oh, you might want to return those tickets for Brazil.  Whoops!  Carnival was two weeks ago, wasn’t it?  If you need more information, just Google “Zika”.  I’m going to Target to buy some DEET. 

Well, I can feel my Clozapine is starting to wear off so it’s time to start drinking.  I’ll type to you next week.

Water, Pt 2

Last week we last saw our intrepid hero engaged in a search for the origin of our water…

So now that science has turned away from the population of comets resident in the Kuiper Belt (also the neighborhood in which Pluto resides… way, way out there past Neptune) as being the source for our Earthly water supply, in which direction should we turn our search?

Well, divining the answer will seem something of a shell game.  If you do not know what a shell game is, watch a W.C. Fields movie.  If you do not know who W.C. Fields is, crawl back into your mother’s womb and bake a while longer.  You can catch up with us when you have learned something.

Yes, the ol’ shell game: we have lifted one of the shells, that representing Kuiper belt icy comets, and didn’t find a pea.  Perhaps, more correctly, we found a pea that did not meet our heavy water criteria.  So now we have two shells left: water that formed or was present at the very creation of our solar system; and a newly suspected source, ice bearing asteroids from the Oort cloud. “What is the Oort cloud?” you ask. The Oort cloud is a spherically shaped collection of long-term bodies: asteroids, comets, planetesimals (like Pluto); and maybe even a dark star, twin to our energy producing Sun (I know this sets your imagination reeling, but we’ll have to wait for another blog post to address this mind bender).  While the asteroids observed that seem to have their origin in the Oort cloud have a hydrogen/deuterium ratio closer to that found in earth water than comets, there are still differences waiting to be accounted for.  There is something under the Oort cloud shell, but we’re not sure if it is a pea, or a kernel of corn. (This writing is suddenly making me hungry… Mexican for lunch?).

This leaves us with the hypothesis that our water was here all along, that it was in the material that eventually accreted into our solar system.  Substantial proof of this is present in rocks retrieved by Apollo astronauts (those are the ones that went the Moon, kiddies).  Hold on to your hand bar because if you are not familiar with the origin of the Moon, this roller coaster ride is going to blow your mind.

It is generally accepted by planetary scientists that our Moon was created in a collision between a newly forming Earth and a wandering planet (about the size of Mars) that has been named Theia.  Now I’ve warned you before about naming dogs/planets that follow you home.  Why would we name a planet that no longer exists?  It’s just going to make it that much harder when to let Theia go when some new, competing hypothesis causes us to eschew her from the textbooks.   But I digress.  The collision resulted in a debris belt bound to Earth by gravity which eventually accreted into our Moon.  For our discussion of where did water come from, it is significant that the water in rocks from the Moon are essentially identical in their Hydrogen/Deuterium isotope found in our oceans.  This is as close as were going to get today in stating definitively from whence our water came.  But at this juncture, it seems that our peas are home-grown.  Thanks, Del Monte.

And then there is the question, “Where does our water go?”  Well that is more easily addressed.  Our water goes nowhere.  It is, at the current time (that means about 4.6 billion years} a closed system.  While water may change states; frozen, liquid, gaseous; it does not leave the planet.  Rising and ebbing ocean levels over time are a function of global temperature fluctuations caused by variances in solar energy output of the Sun, not man made greenhouse gasses. As temperatures fall, water is stored in the ice caps.  When temperature rise, the ice melts and ocean levels rise.

“Then, Dale” you ask, “is it not necessary to conserve water?”  Actually, it is necessary.  From an ecological survival perspective, it is probably the most imminent of concerns.  As the human population continues to expand we use water in ways that can render it non-potable (by introducing dangerous chemicals into the supply as a result of agricultural and industrial processes).  Far more critical than global warming concerns (as we have pointed out in many previous posts), usable water must be protected.

So, yes children, turn off the water while you brush your teeth.  

Water, Pt. 1

I am not sure where this little thought journey will lead us.  But as politics seems to be dominating the broadcast news media and I do not like to handle newspapers (they get my hands dirty) we will explore the nature of water.  I was exposed to a public service announcement this week (I don’t remember where) that asked us to turn off our faucets while brushing our teeth.  The narrative voice intimated that this practice would save as much water as some people of the world are allotted for a two-week period (by natural circumstance of location and weather cycles, not government control). And this got me to thinking about the nature of terrestrial water; where it comes from and where it goes.

For a long time, most astronomers put forth the hypothesis that water came to our planet from space aboard comets, those dirty little ice balls that engross us so.  In their eccentric orbits around the sun, some of these flying igloos would collide with the newly formed planet and over time this occurred often enough to create the oceans and subsequent system of evaporation and precipitation we now call weather.   But I recently viewed a documentary that offered evidence that this is false.  It seems that we are now able to analyze the chemical makeup of celestial water (that water in residence on said comets)  and have found that water hitchhiking around the solar systems on these ice balls contains a different concentration of heavy water than that we find here on earth.  I know what you’re thinking, “But Dale, all water is heavy if you have a big enough bucket.” Sorry, that’s not the kind of “heavy water” we are talking about.

Water is a very simple molecule made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms (ergo H₂O). This is universal.  If the molecule is made of some other mixture of atoms, it is not water.  It is probably the tears my dear departed mother cries from her heavenly perch whenever she sees me writing one of these missives.  But H₂O is H₂O.  However, children, not all water is created equal.  Although it is probably considered politically incorrect to point this out, some hydrogen atoms are a little chubby.  Where a normal hydrogen atom contains only one proton and no neutrons, there is an exception known as deuterium where the oddball (known as an isotope) atom does contain a neutron which makes it twice as heavy.  There are a naturally occurring number of water molecules on earth that are made from deuterium, known as heavy water, or ²H₂O. The ratio of regular water to heavy water here on earth is constant across all water supplies.

With the recent advances in technology that allow us to analyze the chemical makeup of water locked up in the core of comets, we have learned that the ratio of heavy water is different than that occurring on Earth.  Therefore, the most commonly held vehicle for the transportation of water to earth is not the once suspected extraterrestrial collisions with comets.  See, once you demote a planet, you can change anything you want, as long as the science supports it.

This post is getting a little long for such technical content, so rather than boring you to death (or at least an ante-Starbucks stupor) I will pause here and answer the question of the ages next week.

What?  “What is the question of the ages?”  Well if you haven’t figured it out yet, just imagine how surprised you'll be when we answer it next week! 

Bad news, bad!

Possible fatal mountain lion attack in Vista.

Ominous tidings, these!

That was the headline to a web story I encountered (Feb. 3, 2016) while perusing the events of the day.  The story was reported on my ATT/Yahoo! home page.   The teaser linked back to a story reported by the local FOX station.  Their headline read, Owner believes mountain lion to blame in dog’s death.  Quite a difference, hmm?  I know people in Vista.  I was a bit concerned at first blush.  It would distress me considerably to think a friend or acquaintance had become puma poop.

http://fox5sandiego.com/2016/02/03/possible-fatal-mountain-lion-attack-in-vista/

Now I am not anti-dog.  I believe that among God’s creatures dogs perform their assigned role very well for the most part.  But I will admit that I would not have clicked to read the whole story had I first read that the victim was of the genus canine (or is it phylum… I only got through biology because one of the football coaches taught the class.  That same scenario played out in driver’s ed as well, but with a different coach.  The driver’s ed coach also taught math, so he probably figured the odds of me killing someone in a fiery crash before he gave me a passing grade).  But I digress.

Afraid of me? IDTS

Back to the focus of this story; the so named journalist who penned the teaser headline should be stripped of their English language privileges.  Yet we see this kind of stuff all the time.  But nobody invokes the tradition of journalistic integrity to change anything.  Everybody is just looking for hit count.  Those of us from a law enforcement background have all worked with someone who was punished, sometimes to dismissal or prosecution for “padding” information in an arrest report.  I am not suggesting they shouldn’t have.  But how often do you hear of journalists that have been fired for misleading reporting?

Then there is the press relations nerd over at Fish & Game: …if you see a mountain lion, remember the animal is more afraid of you than you are of it.  The best advice is to take off your jacket, wave it above your head and make loud noises.  Ninety-nine times out of 100, it will run away.  Earlier in the story, this person quoted a statistic that there were 6,000 mountain lions (I sure would have had a lot fewer keystrokes invested in this post if he had called it by its proper name, cougar… or better yet it’s Spanish and rightful name, puma) in California.  Let’s see, that’s one percent of 6,000, or sixty.  So I am betting that this particular cat is not one of the sixty ill-mannered ones. And this is Southern California; how often am I going to be wearing a jacket?

And I challenge the statement that they are more afraid of us than we are of them.  I think they look at us and just figure we’re just not worth the trouble, what with all the family pets in the offing.