Fake News Friday: Jack Pine Joe writes Alexandria Cortets

 

Deer Miss Cortets:

I know you are smart becauz I heerd you graduated in the top 99% of your class. So u and me had a lot in common.

I juss want to point out that thinks are different here on the Menominee River in Michigan den dey are on the Patomac or the Hudzen rivers.

stop trying to turn us into Noo York city cuz we aint.

beer wagon benny went to Noo Hyork once. He todl me that that people der paid $6 for a stale donut. You should come to Michigan. You can buy a dozen, week old donuts at da IGa for sebenty-five cents and dey hab cinnamon on dem.

Yer good buddy,

Jack Pine Joe

Remnant: Reaction

The Governor of Michigan did not get as much prime-time exposure as she thought she deserved.

Domestic terrorists attacked major interstate natural gas and electrical transmission lines just north of Hartford, Connecticut at the Farmington River. At least one terrorist had paid close attention to the Sergeant when trained on “tamping”.

The explosive bundle had been deposited on the bed of the river beneath six feet of water.

Explosions are like electricity. Like electricity, the energy created by an explosion follows the lines of least resistance. The way to direct the force of an explosion to your intended target is to tamp earth around the explosive so the path of least resistance is through the intended target. The terrorists came to the conclusion that you cannot beat 6 feet of water for tamping and it is there, waiting to be used.

The result of that attack deprived Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massechuttes, Rhode Island and Northern Connecticut of most of their electrical generation capability.

Southern California interstate lines were also attacked near Blythe, Topock and Roach Lake. Economics dictated that the pipelines be packed into the existing road right-of-ways, not so much for property reasons but for the logistics involved in massive construction projects through mountainous terrain. The terrorists found the publications of the California Energy Commission extremely useful in identifying the routes of the power lines and natural gas pipelines. 

Late February is not peak power demand for California but every disruption hurt.

National media found it much more convenient to interview governors from the east and west coasts as opposed to the Governor of Michigan. Additionally, there was the matter of “production values”. The Governor of Michigan was notorious for sweating like a sinner in church and her makeup disintegrating and then migrating in massive, slab avalanches.

By nine in the morning Michigan’s governor signed an Executive Order shutting all industry in Michigan except for food production intended for local use, retail and gambling. Night-time illumination was made illegal as were the use of clothes driers and electric water heaters.

In round numbers, one third of Michigan’s power budget is used by power-intensive industries like foundries, steel mills and automobile plants. One third is used by less intensive industries like light assembly, insurance and retail. The remaining third is used “domestically” for heating and running house-holds.

With a simple stroke-of-the-pen, the Governor had “fixed” the problem.

While the Big-Three domestic automotive manufacturers understood the necessity, they also deduced that they were going to lose at least 4% of their annual sales to competitors whose factories were outside of Michigan. If the shutdown lasted more than a month, then the sales drop would be more like 10% and the companies would be totally shellacked in the stock market.

The Big-Three’s Boards-of-Directors had emergency meetings and the realestate divisions were authorized to execute options to secure sites in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and other states with better energy security than Michigan. It is all well and good to be socially responsible but not to the point where your enterprise becomes extinct.

One fall-out of the Governor’s heavy-handed edicts was that retail sales of food to individual households was curtailed. Domestic cooking is EXTREMELY energy inefficient. Much energy never hits the pan. Much energy is expended bringing the pan or oven up-to-heat. Industrial cooking is much more efficient than the typical pan of Mac-n-Cheese over the stove.

Compare that to industrial cooking. The oven, once at-heat, has a continuous flow of food through it. Very little heat is wasted as “over-head” compared to typical domestic cooking.

Additionally, the cost of energy is a very small part of domestic cooking so energy efficiency is not a design priority. However, the cost of energy can be the difference between profit-and-loss in a commercial concern. The heat wasted in an oven also adds cost during the summer as it increases air conditioning load. Energy efficiency is a VERY big deal in commercial food preparation equipment.

If Jarrell thought the emergency would reduce his work load he was sadly mistaken.

Next

Drama on a white background

 

Feeding frenzy in Congress

Me, watching them

Where deer fed in the pasture

Where they bedded down

The leaves are still damp. That is, they haven't re-frozen. We pushed them off their beds on our walk.

Remnant: Energy, the keystone resource

The attack was coordinated, devastating and extremely economical.

Weather balloons filled with natural gas (less easily traced than large quantities of helium) dragged an octopus of fine wires and cotton string into the high voltage lines feeding power from the power plants into the grid. 

The wires arced and charred the cotton lines. Photo-diodes at the base of the balloon sensed the first sign of arcing and detonated charges on the tops of the balloons allowing the trailing lines to drop into the power lines on the far side.

The transmission lines were spaced to prevent arcing at 100% humidity and a densely packed flock of geese flying through the wires...and a hundred percent factor of over-design. The design requirements never comprehended the possibility of terrorists deliberately creating shorts across the lines.

Hundreds of thousands of volts surging through the wires and carbonized string, first vaporizing them and then converting them to highly conductive plasma.

The blast of energy easily severed the transmission lines that carried the power from the plants and the plants dropped into emergency shutdown mode as thousands of megaWatts of power instantly had nowhere to go. Think of a Corvette accelerating at full throttle suddenly being thrown into Park.

In the space of 90 seconds, three nuclear power plants, six conventional plant and 50% of Michigan’s ability to generate electrical power were taken off-line. Some of it would come back on-line quickly. Some would take longer as transformer plates were warped in the emergency shutdown and full power could not be restored until those units were replaced.

Pre-Covid, there had been an 18 month waiting list for transformer rebuilds. The rebuild schedules were now listed as "open", meaning "we will get to it when we get to it".

Simultaneously, six pipelines feeding natural gas from Indiana and Ohio were severed with explosives. Compressed natural gas is like compressed air. It is a big spring that contains much energy.

The release of the gas created big craters and in a couple of cases, enormous fireballs.

A large portion of Port Huron, Michigan was obliterated when the pipelines feeding natural gas from Canada to the mid-west were severed.

30% of Michigan’s electrical generation was powered by natural gas. It did not shut down immediately. Michigan has depleted gas fields and natural gas is pumped into them year-round and tapped for the high use winter months.

Being the end of February, the fields were nearly tapped out. Nearly, but not completely.

The agents responsible for the actions that jeopardized 80% of Michigan's electrical generation capacity had done so for the glorious sum of $900 out-of-pocket expenses (not including travel costs).

The lines between Indiana, Ohio and Michigan would be up and running in a few weeks. The lines from Canada would take many months to repair because the damage extended to underwater portions of the lines.

The governor was awakened at 2:00 in the morning. She was not in a good mood. In retrospect the third gin-and-tonic had not been a great idea.

Her first media appearance was at 5:30 in the morning. She still had almost no hard information. Strength is drawn by strength. The less she knew the more emphatically she projected her message.

“These attacks were executed by right-wing terrorists acting on behalf of the former President of the United States” she declared with absolute certainty.

“Steps are being taken to track down these terrorists and bring them to justice.”

Except it wasn’t right-wing terrorists. And the people who executed the attacks were NOT happy that they had not been given credit. And they had far more than $900 in their war-chest.

Next

158 grain Semi-Wadcutter hollowpoint revisited

 

The Lucky Gunner has several pages where they tested various bullets in ballistic gel.

I noticed something interesting when I looked closely at the lead, 158 grain semi-wadcutter hollowpoints. The denim material had embossed the surface of the bullet.

This is a second mechanism that resists the bullet expanding.

When the denim embosses into the soft, lead surface it forms a mechanical interlock and the denim functions as a membrane-in-tension and holds the impact surface together.

That poses a dilemma. If the material is hard enough to resist embossing it is too strong to disrupt at "snubby" velocities. If it is soft enough to expand then it is vulnerable to the denim embossing the material around the hollowpoint and inhibiting expansions.

 

Jacketed bullets mitigate the problem by wrapping the jacket around the opening of the mouth thus presenting a smooth, hard copper/gilding metal surface to the denim. Then they mitigate against the reinforcing effect of the copper by scoring it so it is not capable of carrying the load as hoop stresses.

One ways to mitigate against the embossing effect is to decouple the denim from the lead surface with a "tear-away jersey".

If one were to fill the cavity with Permatex 81730, some material slumps out of the cavity and leaves a 0.050" (approximately) layer of soft, rubbery material.

This material is so soft that reloading the bullets into the case bruises it so it is best applied AFTER the hollowpoints are reloaded into the case.

Another way to decouple would be to cover the front of the bullet with a double layer of parafilm or some other poly/wax film. Nothing is slipperier than two layers of polyethylene film with oil/grease between them. 

It is an old tool-tryout trick. If the sheet metal is tearing on the prototype tools, put the sheet metal blank in a plastic trash bag. Spray the outside of the bag liberally with Pam or some other cooking spray and then put the wet bag inside of a second plastic trash bag. 

Obviously, the plastic film will not stay where it needs to be if you use grease or oil. But under high pressure and shear, wax acts almost exactly like grease.

Remnant: An act of kindness

The snow under Jarrell’s tires was cold enough to squeal. Jarrell figured somewhere between 0 and -5.

Dressing for the weather is a real challenge when you ride a bike. Depending on the wind direction, his forward speed either added twelve miles per hour to the wind or subtracted it. It wasn’t a matter of splitting the difference. The clothing set that was too hot and made him sweat when riding with the wind was bone-chillingly too cold when riding against the wind.

Jarrell had some collapsible panniers that he draped over his rack in the back. He always had enough shells and vests and wind-pants squirreled away in the panniers to drop down another twenty-degrees in temperature. And gloves. Riding a bike in below-freezing weather was brutal without high quality gloves and they were SOOO easy to lose.

Still, -5F is where riding a bike stopped being fun and became a gut-it-out-way to get from Point A-to-Point B.

Danno was still feeling under the weather so Jarrell parked the bike and Merle and he mosied on down to Elsie’s Pizza.

Leslie was surprised to see him. “I thought you had enough food for a couple of days?”

“Yup. We do. But I just couldn’t leave you” Jarrell said.

Unlike many men his age, he actually enjoyed flirting with women, especially when everybody knew it was just for “funsies”.

“You might as well find somewhere warm to hang out. It is going to be just like yesterday, there isn’t going to be any work for you until dark.” Leslie said.

“How long have you been here?” Jarrell asked.

“Since six” Leslie informed him.

“So you have been here about two hours, right?” Jarrell asked.

“Yeah” Leslie said.

“You have to be freezing your ass off!” Jarrell said.

“Well, I ain’t exactly toasty warm” Leslie admitted.

“Tell you what, I watched what you did all day yesterday. I think I can do that. Whaddya say I hold the clip-board for an hour and you go into Elsie’s and warm up?” Jarrell said.

Tempting, oh so very tempting.

“I will make a counter-offer” Leslie said. “I look over your shoulder for a half hour and watch to see how you do. Then, if I am satisfied with how you are doing I got into Elsie’s for half an hour.”

“Done!” Jarrell said.

Leslie only lasted another fifteen minutes. As good as his word, Jarrell had been watching Leslie and was able to put the check-marks into the appropriate boxes.

Leslie and Jarrell traded off the entire shift. One hour on, one hour off.

And. Just. Like. That.         Back. In. Management.

It was the fastest shift Leslie had ever worked. It flew by. She could talk to the folks inside making the crusts. She could use the can without worrying that she had volunteers bailing out.

Jarrell kept his eyes open and his mouth shut while he was in Elsie’s. Something was odd. He expected the pizza oven to be running continuously but more than half the time there was nothing in it.

Odd. Very, very odd.

Next

Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess

158 fig cuttings

Why stick +100 fig cuttings?

Because the United States has a large number of recent immigrants and second-generation from the mid-East. Because people have a sense of attachment and affiliation with ancestral foods. Because those people might be willing to pay MONEY for fig plants.

Will happen? Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't cost me much to get into the game.

One nice things about "small fruit" is they are much more precocious than apples or pears. The plants are less expensive, too.

Pro-tip #1

Don't pack your cuttings in to soak if they are dessicated. They swell up and are a bear to pull out of the container for counting and bundling.

Pro-tip #2

Some plant varieties have multiple names or synonyms.

For example, this variety of fig is know in various places as:

1. Hardy Chicago
2. Mt. Etna
   
3. Takoma Violet
4. Gino’s Black
5. Sal’
6. Maryland Berry
7. Marseilles Black
8. Zingarella
9. Rossi Dark
10. Keddie
11. Malta Black (multiple cultivars named 'Malta Black')
    
12. Black Greek (multiple 'Black Greek')
    
13. Spanish (multiple figs named 'Spanish')
    
14. Dark Portuguese
15. Salem Dark
16. Black Bethlehem
17. Papa John
18. St Rita, 
19. Danny’s Delight
20. Hardy Hartford
21. Mongibello
22. Macool
23. Kesarani
24. Sicilian Black
25. Lebanese Red (Bekaa)
26. Ginoso
27. Jersey Fig
28. Martini
    
29. Don Fortis
30. Hardy Pittsburgh
31. Abba
32. NJ Red
33. San Donato (Calabria)
34. Dominick’s 

The names span from the eastern end of the Mediterranean (Lebanese Red, Macool) to the west end (Spanish, Dark Portuguese)

In general, the more synonyms a variety carries, the broader it's range of adaptability and the greater the possibility that it will do well for you in your location.

As a practical matter, It is perfectly permissible to sell this variety as Macool or Lebanese Red (Bekaa Valley) which would automatically increase its appeal to the target market.

A belated Thank-you!

Replacement tips installed in the reusable, brass ferrules from vintage ski poles

A belated "Thank-you!" to Bailey at P-V-I.

As many of my readers know, Powder Valley Incorporated is Kansas' premier supplier of skiing related equipment.

Two of my nephews collect vintage ski poles and replacement tips have been very difficult to find.

One of my orders with Powder Valley had a discrepancy. Bailey was the model of professionalism and straightened out the discrepancy with no hassle.

And now my nephews have their replacement tips!

Thanks, Bailey!