Fog in the Notch

 It is so thick I can barely see the house across the street.  And it is raining.  Fall is coming, today I hear. 

Camp Lejeune water

    You must have heard the lawyers advertising for plaintiffs over the matter of Camp LeJeune’s water back in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.  The lawyers are taking up as much airtime as Mike Lindell, the pillow guy.  The lawyers all call the Camp Lejeune water “toxic” and cause of a lot of bad sounding illnesses.  I have not heard just what it was/is in that water.  “Toxic” is just enough word for poisonous.  I’d like to know what they found in the water and how much.  Modern chemistry is good enough to detect small amounts of anything just about anywhere.  Before I get very excited about such detections I want to know just how much was detected and what is the safe limit for what ever it is that got detected.  I have no heard that about the Camp Lejeune situation. 

Newsies don't know Cape Cod very well.

Those 50 immigrants that Texans flew up to plush Martha's Vineyard were relocated to "a Massachusetts National Guard base on Cape Cod".  That was probably Otis Air Force Base, where I did Air Force summer camp back in the early '60s.  I heard or read somewhere lately that Otis AFB has been renamed "Joint Base something-or-other".  I am so glad that we have bureaucrats and paper pushers with nothing better to do than rename Air Force Bases.  We could even save a little taxpayer's money by tracking those bureaucrats down and laying them all off. 

Aviation Week still pushing for green airliners.

There are three ways to go to make an airliner that is better for the climate than what we have flying today.  Airliners use and burn a LOT of fuel.  Just to fuel a single seat, single engine fighter plane for a long flight (Duluth Minnesota to Tyndall AFB Florida) took 10,000 gallons of jet fuel.  This is a full 18 wheeler semi trailer worth of fuel.  That’s just for a little fighter plane.  To fuel a four engine jet liner carrying a couple of hundred passengers across an ocean takes a lot more, probably something like 40,000 gallons, 4 full 18 wheeler semi trailers. 

  Aviation Week keeps mentioning “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (SAF).  What ever it is, Aviation Week claims it burns without CO2 emissions, and to work fine in existing jet engines.  I have no idea what SAF is, how it is made, what it might cost.  Googling turned up one post, which I wrote myself a couple of years ago. 

  Then there is hydrogen.  Burns good and clean, no CO2, just H2O (water).  Has to be cooled way way down so it liquefies, before you can get enough of it into an airliner to do any good.   The airliner needs special hydrogen tanks, fitted in somewhere.  The usual plan for fuel storage, filling up the wings with kerosene, probably won’t work for hydrogen.  The hydrogen keeps boiling off, requiring a cylindrical fuel tank that can take some pressure.  The wings cannot take any sort of pressure. 

  And finally there are batteries.  I am surprised that even theoretically possible batteries have enough power to lift themselves (let along an airliner) off the ground.  I am aware a one experimental battery powered aircraft project.  The aircraft is the size of a Cessna.  They got a lot of development work to grow that up to airliner size.

Butterflies.

 

Monarch butterfly gets caught in abandoned spider web.  I have a couple of very sizable webs hung off my eaves.  After a couple of days of steady rain the spiders, big ones, abandoned the webs, I have not seen the spiders in several days.  But the webs are still up and this big Monarch butterfly got caught in one.  He fluttered and flittered and yanked himself around for a long time.  He must have been successful, I just looked for him and he was gone.  Good luck butterfly.  You are gonna need it this time of year.

Feathers in their bonnets

 The British are doing a great procession bringing Queen Elizabeth's body to Edinburgh Cathedral.  The Scottish honor guard is  wearing feathers in their bonnets.  First time I have ever seen what the old cliche looks like in real life.

Spider Webbery.

A spider spinning a web needs something to anchor the web to.  In nature a tree branch with a fork in it, that yields two branches maybe a foot apart works well.  A lot of other spiders have to make do with less.  I see them jumping off my eaves, trailing a thread of silk.  The lucky ones land on my deck railing, the unlucky ones just get blown away. Even the lucky ones are not that lucky.  It is a good ten feet from my eaves to the deck railing.  I never see the spiders climbing back up to spin a second thread. They need two anchor threads to keep the web spread out.  I don’t think spiders can see from my eaves to my deck railing.  I think they are just casting themselves to the winds, hoping for the best.