Rules Of The Road

1. Drive at least the speed limit.


2. If there is no car in front of you within 100 ft, you are too slow.


3. If you are the front car in a line of cars in a lane, you are too slow.


4. If you are in the left lane, go faster than the cars in the right lane (unless you plan to turn left within a ¼ mile).


5. Never run red lights or stop signs. You may get away with it, but if you don’t, punishment is swift and severe – and worse, you will “punish” others for your misdeed.


6. The exit ramp and the center lane (of a 3 or 5 lane road) are for deceleration. Don’t decelerate until you are in these lanes.


7. If you are in line at a traffic light, when the light turns green keep close to the car in front of you until you are well through the intersection.


8. Use turn signals.


9. Never turn right from the left lane, nor turn left from the right lane.


10. Don't talk on the phone while driving. Doing so may cause you to spill your coffee or smudge your mascara.

What are your driving rules or pet peeves? Let me know and I'll add them on. We need more rules!

Blue Ribbons at Birmingham

This past weekend we attended the Birmingham Orchid Show at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. We entered five orchids in flower and had four of the five awarded ribbons - two first place and two second place ribbons. Orchid shows are a bit like dog shows (only with orchids - duh) and there are dozens of awards handed out. Probably 25%-50% of all plants entered in any given show get some kind of ribbon or award. Among the plants we entered was one that is rare in the US, a Habeneria medusae (pictured above), with a slim hope of it winning an American Orchid Society award. The AOS awards go to plants that are compared against existing precedence of the same species or hybrid from across the US. The medusae didn't win an AOS award, but it did win a blue ribbon for its category and it caused quite a stir at the show simply because few attendees had seen one prior to this specimen.

Our society was one of about fifteen to put up an exhibit (photo right). Yes, the exhibits are judged too and our society exhibit won first place for its category (there are three categories) and an additional special award presented by Orchid Digest for the exhibit at the show that best meets the criteria of the Orchid Digest. Like I said, many awards are presented.

Shopping Cart Crime

Deb and I stopped at Sam's yesterday. We didn't need much, but they have this really good aged Canadian white cheddar that we always keep around the house. Anyway, we'd picked up the cheese and had one or two other items in the basket. We then started looking for a block of Mozzarella cheese to use in an eggplant Parmesan we were planning to make. We left our cart behind while we strolled down a couple of aisles looking for the Mozzarella. When we came back for our cart, it was gone! Where could it be?? We were only gone for a minute. We asked a nearby employee if she'd seen the thief. No luck. "They do that all the time." she said. It was a minor mystery at first and then Deb noticed our cheddar cheese and other items on a shelf. Someone had emptied our cart and took it! That's when I got pissed. I mean, it's one thing to accidentally take off with someone else's cart and then get embarrassed when you realize it's not yours and just leave it wherever. This, however, was obvious, deliberate hijacking of another shopper's cart. Inexcusable! We started staring down every customer that passed near us, all the while holding our items awkwardly in our hands so everyone could see we were cartless, hoping against hope to detect some sign of guilt in the lowlife who stole ours. I actually felt violated. What kind of shopper would do such a thing. I bet this wouldn't have happened at Costco. Oh, I wonder where our poor cart is now!

Shooting Stars From The Rocket Park

The Space and Rocket Center held an educational event for their members last Saturday night. The USSRC contacted our current VBAS president, Michael, to ask if we would support telescope observing after their indoor activities. This is the sort of thing we love to do anyway, so Michael, James, and I agreed to meet there with our telescopes. Michael always invites me to these public outreach events because he loves my telescope so much (it's barely visible in the photo on the lower right under the Mercury rocket). My scope is a homemade 10" Newtonian with a 7ft square wooden tube. It produces sharp images and people viewing through it feel that they're really looking through something substantial. James had his 8" Schmidt-Cass and Michael carried the society's 14" LX200.

John Dobson, one of the most avid amateur astronomers and designer of the Dobsonian mount, a variation of which I use on my scope, said that the value of a telescope should be measured by the number of people who've looked through it. I love that. It's helped push me to seek opportunities to share my love of the skies with others. There's a wide wide universe out there and most people keep staring at their shoes.

We each settled on a different subject to view as the parents and their kids started pouring out after the indoor activities. Michael showed them Jupiter, with its four Galilean moons all on the same side of the planet that night. James had Albireo, a beautiful double star with one icy blue star and the other a golden yellow. I was on M13, the Hercules cluster. It's a globular cluster with several hundred thousand stars and is about 25,000 light years away. Albireo is about 400 light years away, and Jupiter is less than 20 light minutes away. Yeah, it's a big universe and all of these objects are in our Milky Way galaxy (although M13 is out of the galactic plane). The kids and parents both had lots of questions. Even the employees, mostly college students, had a great time. I heard several "awesome!"s and "fantastic!"s when they would take a look.

This was the first time that I took my telescope to the Space and Rocket Center and it was great fun to view the night skies from among these historic rockets. We even saw a satellite pass overhead - one that may have been launched by one of the types of rockets on display at the park.

On the Indecision of Squirrels

I had to go downtown to Lewter's Hardware Saturday morning to get parts for modifing our new gas grill from propane to natural gas. We live part way up Monte Sano about two miles from town. As I drove down Bankhead Parkway I turned a corner and up ahead was a squirrel about a third of the way across the road. He could easily have made it across if he'd just kept moving. But when he became aware of me, he went into a huge fit of indecision. He darted back-and-forth a couple of times and finally decided he could make it. He did, thank goodness. I slowed down a bit, but I don't brake hard for animals ever since I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting a Labrador retriever and wrecked my clutch. I could've bought a litter of replacement pups for what that cost.

I continued toward town, and you know, there were two more squirrels who darted out in front of me before I got to the hardware store. Each time one darted out, it could easily have made it across the road or turned back and made it. But it seemed like on first spotting my car, they each went into the same fit of indecision - going back and forth trying to make a decision, but not committing either way until it really became a matter of life or death. They all escaped alive. I was thankful for that, but was curious why so many squirrels were trying to cross the road. Oh well, maybe it's just the cooler weather that's got 'em scampering.

This morning I made a trip down to Home Depot for a different project. This time I counted three dead squirrels by the time I got to Five-Points. These three weren't as lucky as their brethren the day before, and maybe even one or two of them were the same squirrels I saw yesterday. Who knows?

I started thinking about the evolutionary implication of the phenomenon. Cars have only been around for the better part of a hundred years. Road kill from cars certainly puts a a new stress on populations of squirrels (among other critters). Is it severe enough to selectively remove enough of the squirrels with genes that contribute to "decision deficit disorder" to ultimately select out that behavior? Could humans be playing a part in selectively breeding for squirrels with sharp decision making skills? One day, perhaps hundreds of years from now, highly decisive squirrels may dominate the population. What would we have wrought?

Ninja Dream

I awoke this morning to a rather stressful dream, the level of which I rarely have. In my dream, I was in a room with a shirtless oriental ninja type and his prisoner. I was just there, watching. The prisoner was in a chair, while the ninja paced a few feet away at a table. He was obviously angry. I should state right here that I didn't recognize the ninja nor the prisoner as anyone identifiable in real life, and the prisoner's face was never in focus. His anonymity bothered me, but in the dream I was relieved to find that it wasn't my face or the face of someone I know.

The room was not too dark and had walls that were made of bamboo or wood. The ninja picked up a large knife from the table and threw it at the chest of the prisoner. The knife plunged into his chest a few inches and the prisoner writhed in pain. The ninja went over to him and pulled the knife out. The prisoner was relieved and didn't seem to be too damaged. The ninja repeatedely threw and extracted the knife. He yelled at the prisoner each time he extracted the blade. I never could figure out what the yelling was about, nor why he was doing this. I was puzzled how the ninja could throw the knife as to avoid a fatal wound, and marveled at the skill. After a few repetitions, I started pleading for him to stop. With each attack, my pleas were louder, more insistant. But I was powerless to act. The ninja finally started yelling at me and I demurred.

He went back over to the table and picked out a large, thin bladed knife. His throw thrust the knife into the man's chest so hard that the it went through and stuck out of his back. Still, the knife seemed to have avoided the heart and major organs. This time when the ninja walked over to the prisoner, he didn't pull out the knife. Instead, he reached around and grabbed the bloody blade between his thumb and forefinger and sorta wiggled it, which reinforced the actuality of it. I started pleading for him to remove the knife from the man's chest, but he just smiled at me and wouldn't do it. Again and again I pleaded, all to no avail. I finally realized consciousness and decided that I'd had anough of this dream and forced myself awake. It was 6:23am.

Family Portrait

This past weekend my Mom, aunt, and sister blew into town unexpectedly for the weekend. My Mom is a Katrina Survivor and has moved four times since that dreadful storm two years ago. Now she's facing her fifth move. She's currently renting a house two doors down from my sister and the landlords just informed her that they want to sell the house. They think they have a captive buyer, but it's the wrong house for Mom to buy. While I still think she's better off renting, the insecurity of renting a house has her on the market to buy again. That was the excuse whe needed to come for a visit.

She set up an appointment to look at a retirement community here in Huntsville, and it was a great opportunity for her, aunt Harriet, and my sister Donna to organize an impromptu family reunion. The visit to Redstone Village, "Huntsville's first true lifecare community", was impressive. This is the kind of place you check into, and are driven out in a box. They have three levels of living space - independent apartment living, assisted living, and full-time care living. I've talked to two residents and both really like it. I know my Mom would fit in very well, but I really think she's too young at 72. Besides, their pricing model is a real stretch for her.

After the tour of the Village we invited everyone, including my brother and his family, over to our house for grilled chicken and other goodies. That's when our younger niece, Haley, got really excited because we were all together and exclaimed "I love my family!!", by which she meant that she loves having an extended family with aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmothers and such. Yep, it's great that we could all get together.

Neofinetia falcata x Rhynchostylis coelestis

This vandaceous cross is an intergeneric orchid hybrid commonly known as Neostylis Lou Sneary. Neofinetia falcata is a species native to Japan and we collect them. They are rather slow growing, even among orchids. This particular plant is a hybrid between two genera. The other species in the cross is Rhynchostylis coelestis, a species native to Thailand. The Rhynchostylis tend grow faster and produce more and larger flowers than the Neofinetia. The combination produces a larger plant with very Neofinetia-like flowers, only a bit larger and with a bit more color (Neofinetias are usually pure white).

Undercover Mosques

I found this BBC 4 production a few months ago and recommend everyone view it. It speaks for itself. There are six parts on YouTube. With the current trend in Western societies to bend unjustifiably to Islamic sensitivities, it's rather surprising that this made it through production and to final airing.

Defending The Indefensible

Whoopi Goldberg used her first day on the daytime chat show "The View" Tuesday to defend football star Michael Vick in his dogfighting case. Goldberg said that "from where he comes from" in the South, dogfighting isn't that unusual. "It's like cockfighting in Puerto Rico," she said. "There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of the country." (Quote from BreitBart.Com).

1. "In the South, dogfighting isn't that unusual". Uh, yeah, it is unusual.

2. "It's like cockfighting in Puerto Rico". Right, it IS like cockfighting.

It is unfathomable that a woman whose recent ancesters were forced into slave labor would defend the enslavement of animals forced into raw fighting like gladiators for human entertainment. It would be ironic if it weren't so sad. Of course, she may have taken this position out of a desire to stand out in the crowd on the show. If so, it shows a serious lack of judgment on which topics to pick a contrarian view. Either way, it's indefensible to come down on the side of promoting such cruelty to fellow mammals simply to entertain oneself. Let's hope it was a lack of thinking rather than a healthy dose of it that brought her to that position.

The photo is one I found showing a dogfight in Afghanistan. I also found photos taken in East Asia and the US. It seems Ms. Goldberg is right in that the practice is widespread. Could social acceptence of such practice contribute to higher levels of other forms of violence?

Oh, and cockfighting isn't very nice either.

Fun With Math

Here's a nice trick for helping you calculate your gas mileage. Since it's easier for most people to multiply rather than divide, this technique transforms the problem into one of remembering a simple table and performing one multiplication. It can therefore be performed quickly in your head, without pencil and paper.

The technique is to memorize a handful of numbers that divide 100, then mutliply the appropriate number by the "number of hundreds" of miles you drove since the last fill-up.

Steps:

1. When you fill up your gas tank, note the number of gallons of fuel. Let's call that 'f'.
2. Check your odometer to note the number of miles travelled since your last fill-up. Call that 'm'.
3. Look up the number of times f divides 100, or compute (100/f). Call this number N. This is the key step and I'll give more information about it later. Think of this value as "miles per gallon per hundred miles".
4. Now multiply 'N' by ('m'/100). That's your mileage in miles per gallon.


Wow, this looks hard. But it's actually easier than dividing m/f directly. Here are the techniques that make it easy:

1. Remember a few key divisions of 100, those that result in numbers that are typical of the number of gallons you normally purchase when you fill up your tank. For example, 100/8 = 12.5. I often put between 10 and 15 gallons of fuel into my tank. Here's the table I use:

15 divides 100 6 times (remember 15 gals -> 6)
14 divides 100 7.1 times (remember 14 gals -> 7+)
13 divides 100 7.7 times (remember 13 gals -> 8-)
12.5 divides 100 8 times (remember 12.5 gals -> 8)
11.1 divides 100 9 times (remember 11.1 gals -> 9)
10 divides 100 10 times (you better know this already!)

I've memorized these divisions of 100 and a few more that are convenient.

2. It's very simple to divide a large number by 100; just move the decimal two places to the left. For example, 345/100 = 3.45


Sample Problem
Today I filled up my tank with 12.5 gallons. The odometer read 269. You could divide 269 by 12.5 directly, or you can use this method:

Step by Step Answer
1. I know that 12.5 goes into 100 8 times. I note the number 8.
2. 269 is about 270, so I round up to 270 and move the decimal two places to the left to divide by 100 and get 2.7.
3. I multiply 8 x 2.7 to get 21.6 mpg.

Even the last multiplication can be made easier by breaking it into parts:

8 x 2.7 = (8 x 2) + (8 x .7)
= 16 + 5.6
= 21.6 mpg Hmmm, mileage not too good...

The Second Coming

Alabamians have been waiting for the second coming of their savior for quite some time. Maybe the time is nigh. No, it’s not Jesus Christ they expect to see coming round the corner soon – it’s the second coming of The Bear that has them enthralled at the moment. And the fans of Bama football now believe he just may be back in the form of Nick Saban. Alabamians seem to practice Sunday religion as a warmup to the real test of faith, the faith that Alabama will reign supreme once again under the leadership of a bigger-than-life football coach. Several coaches have stood for the test. The fans have chewed on them, found some more flavorful than others, but eventually spit them all out.

Last night’s match-up with Western Carolina was a prophetic lucky break in scheduling that occurred before Saban’s move to Bama. However, that shameful victory over a grossly outmatched opponent may be sufficient tonic to seal the fans to their new messiah long enough for him to really make a difference. Success at football seems to hinge as much on an indefinable form of faith as it does on raw talent. I don’t know of a winning team that doesn’t have that ‘je-ne-sais-quois’ magical ingredient that can’t be defined or captured, but everyone recognizes when present. Of course, Saban’s real test will come in November against a powerful Auburn team. If he pulls that one off, allegiance will be sealed – at least until next season.

Being a savior has its price, however, and Saban must behave himself and perform successfully year after year under the scrutiny of the intense fandom and the ghost of The Bear himself, against whom every Alabama coach will always be measured.

He could be the true savior, but then again, his name does rhyme with Satan…