Wood stove radiator rig - with pressure cooker

So... I moved the stove further away from my Uncle Meat station and shortened the tube, as part of a family-enforced remodeling effort.

Results: it looks prettier, but it heats my side of the room quite a bit less.
So I did some experimenting with an old and malfunctioning pressure cooker I had lying around, and in the end... convection wouldn't quite cut it.

Tweak this, optimise that, nah. I need a pump and a radiator.
I actually did some experimenting with a miniature steam engine as a pump and a miniature Stirling engine as a motor for it, but they wouldn't quite cut it either.
So I got me a standard furnace pump. Some €25. It works perfectly and it's completely silent. It uses 44 watts of power (measured).

I stuck two tubes into the pot's lid. One, a standard 12 mm. copper tube, fit one of the holes perfectly.
The other hole is smaller, but a flexible sink tube fit that one just as well, with a nut on the inside too.

So, the pot looks like this:

The orange thing is the pump.
I tried to put it on the radiator itself, but even filling it and the tubes with water, it wouldn't pump at that distance. So there it is. Pumping away quietly and efficiently.

The stove:

The radiator side:

The tube from the pump goes in at the bottom, the return tube comes out the top.
The transparent tube at the top was basically used in experimenting, but it's good to have to adjust the water levels, vent air, etc. It's not really needed.

The tubes go around the room and actually help heating it:

The temperature at the pump:

At the radiator:

In the room:

Yes, I have three thermometers. They came as a pack of three for €7.50 (€2.50 each :·)
I didn't take actual pictures of them though, I generated the images. With real values.

The efficientometer is a nice touch... ;·)

The anti-Antichrist device.

Almost twenty years ago, I rented a house in a village, the name of which I choose not to remember.
I shared it with Julian and Adam. Now, Adam was known as the Antichrist.
Long before any of us had read Good Omens, a Neil Gaiman book in which there is another Antichrist named Adam.

It happened that, a few years before we moved into that house, he came to the shop from which I was running my ISP, which also sold mobile phones.
He didn't speak a word of Spanish then, so I was translating. He bought one, they told him his number would be 666-something.
So he started shouting, "Buahaha, 666, I am the Antichrist!".
Everyone was looking at him like he was crazy. I just smiled. I knew he was.
After that, we began calling him the Antichrist. It stuck. He often behaved...

... in the house in the village, more often than not, Adam would come, in the middle of the night or around dawn, eat all the food in the house, and go to sleep. We would then wake up and there would be nothing to eat.
We tried reasoning with him. It didn't work.

At that time, a friend of mine who had a restaurant, also had a tobacco-vending-machine, which he wanted to get rid of (he hated tobacco as his brother had just died of it). It was old, he couldn't sell it, asked me if I wanted it.
Light bulb. I took it to the house, emptied it, and was left with, basically, an iron cupboard with a lock on it.
It became known as the anti-Antichrist device.

Book review: The Mysterious Oyster.

Not your standard post-apocalyptic yarn.
Lots of sailboats, a few submarines, plenty of historical reference, and fractal pantheism.
Mildly disturbing on the spiritual-entertainment concept level, it still proposes some interesting possibilities, and will be certainly enjoyable to small-boat sailing buffs.

Note: the book isn't finished yet, but I really like the title so this is like... a placeholder thing :·)

The apostrophe catastrophe.

A.K.A. the Plague of Apostrophes, the rogue apostrophe pandemic, etc.

When I went to school, in the '60s and '70s, not many people misused the apostrophe.
At least not for long, 'cause if they did, not only did they get bad marks, but all sorts of general abuse.
They're simple rules, really*. It usually doesn't take the average child more than a couple of days - or corrections - to understand them.

It seems that starting with the '90s... they somehow became the 90's.
Now, the 90's what, exactly, I wonder.
The decade? The fad? The illiteracy?

This is so widespread - and getting worse - it makes my head spin.
They're everywhere. Not only on social networks, mind you, which is to be expected if not accepted. We all know the infinite-monkey theory - as applied to the internet.
They're on billboards. In newspapers. TV captions, shop signs, you name it.

Author Karin Winegar, in "Can't We Stop This Plague of Errant Apostrophes?" (March 25, 2019) reports seeing them (repeatedly) in the New York Times:

"I have even spotted this plague in the usually impeccable New York  Times: a headline in the Sunday, March 24, 2002 arts section (p29)  announced  to several  million readers  that there were "Bravo's in the  Hall."  And then there was "The cartoon's aren't..." (Sunday March 31,  2002 pg. 10 Week in Review. Shhh! We're Trying to Surf)."

What's worse, try correcting someone about it. Actually, don't. You won't like the results.
One case in point: on an online forum I use, they have a section, Documentation.
In there, they have "How-to's" (basically meaning tutorials). It's mentioned twice, just in the headers.
I wrote (privately) to an administrator, saying look, not trying to be a bother, I realise it's not a literary forum, and so on, I think those apostrophes don't look too good.

He replied saying "it's acceptable, they stay." Citing a Stackexchange post where the most literate user probably never made it past 3rd grade, which cited "as evidence" an entry in the "open" section of an online dictionary, "submitted from [sic] Nikolay Akakyevic [name changed] from Russian Federation on 25/12/2015"

* The rules are so simple regarding plurals, actually, there's only one rule: you never use an apostrophe to make a plural. Period.
There is supposed to be one exception (no, the one about abbreviations in not real). Plurals of lowercase letters - the (in)famous "mind your p's and q's".
The idea being that if they're capital letters, like Ps and Qs, it's clear enough. ps and qs "can be doubtful".
Oh well. Nobody writes that anyway - and with good reason. It's ugly.

"fanno schifo e puzzano"

Grillo: No alle auto francesi

Nuova polemica uscita del tragicomico genovese.

"Donald Duck... er... Trump vuole tariffare l'acciaio cinese? Bazzecole, quisquilie e pinzallacchere. Gli faccio vedere io!"

Invece di imporre tariffe e balzelli, Grillo propone infatti di bloccare completamente l'importazione delle automobili dalla Francia.

"Fanno schifo e puzzano" la sua principale giustificazione per la misura proposta.

Analisti politici vicini al cugino della zia di un cognato dell'amico del panettiere di Grillo affermano che si tratta di un primo passo in un piano diabolico-casereccio per uscire dalla UE, dall'Euro, e dai trattati di estradizione con Tonga.

Ma perché proprio le auto francesi?
Il fratello del panettiere, da noi intervistato, ci ha rivelato che anni fa, dalle parti di Rapallo, Grillo rimase intrappolato - sotto il sole cocente - per quasi mezz'ora nella Citroën DS  di un amico, che era andato "un attimo a comprare le sigarette" ma si era intrattenuto un po' più a lungo nel bar.

Le maniglie della DS si erano rivelate troppo complicate da aprire, e il comico rischiò di fare una tragica fine in un piazzale assolato della costa ligure.

"Comunque anch'io preferisco le Ferrari" ha aggiunto.

Tobacco health warnings and the nocebo effect

I'm not saying that tobacco is good for you. In fact I think it is very bad for you, but not quite in the ways commonly advertised.

And that making it one hundred times more damaging than it could be, may not be a good idea.

Lung cancer incidence in industrialised countries is around 0.06% of the population, whether tobacco-enhanced or not (1).

The placebo effect in nowaday's pharmaceutical tests is around 25% (and rising, it seems)(2).

So one may argue that if the nocebo effect affects 25% of the smokers' population in a country where smokers are a quarter of the population, it will affect 1 in 16 people, or six and a quarter percent. That's over 100 times the 0.06% of current lung cancer deaths.

And the industrialised nations average of smokers is well above 25% anyway.

I'm not saying these are accurate figures, or careful calculations. As a ballpark figure, however rough, it should give an idea of the size of the playing field. After careful consideration, I believe it does.

I may also add that there is a 68.9% chance that it is just as accurate as in 82.3% of Serious Scientific Studies, the accuracy of the figures and exactness of calculation of which I have come progressively and inexorably to doubt. So I guess I'm in good company.

Anyway, let's say I'm only half right. Then, putting health warning on tobacco products, and especially reinforcing the nocebo effect with subtle undertaker sneakiness and (as has been suggested) colourful graphical scariness, is killing 50 times more people (or 5000% more), than tobacco may do on its own.

And that's allowing that tobacco was a deciding factor in 100% of the lung cancer deaths.

So I also guess that those responsible for the law requiring to write "SMOKING CAUSES CANCER" on tobacco health warnings are also responsible for increasing lung cancer deaths 5000%.

Not a bad accomplishment for the Power of Stupidity, however monumental that may be.

(1) http://www.kidon.com/smoke/percentages.htm

(2) http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect

On top of that you could add:
- Why do people smoke?
- Cause it's addictive.
- Ok, but why do they start?
- Well, I guess a lot of them do because the warnings are so ludicrous that a fuck-you attitude becomes almost unavoidable...
-  Hmm...

Notas sobre la tauromaquia

A ver. Personalmente, no me gusta la tauromaquia. Pero menos aún la hipocresía.

Si no comes carne, te doy toda la razón, esto no es para ti.

Pero si la comes, considera:

Menos de la mitad del 1% de la población española es vegetariana o vegana.

Lo que quiere decir que más del 99% come carne.

En España se sacrifican más de dos millones de cabezas de vacuno al año (2.3 millones en 2011).

Unos 10'000 toros al año mueren en las corridas en vez que en el matadero. Menos de la mitad del 1%.

Se comen igual que los otros, pero llegan a vivir de promedio unos dos años más, ya que en matadero se matan por lo general con menos de dos años y en las corridas con cuatro. Y ni les cortan los huevos hasta después de morir, ni viven toda la vida entre rejas.

Si piensas que la corrida es particularmente fea, probablemente no tienes ni idea de lo que es un matadero, o una granja de ganado.

Son más feos aún. Y mucho. Y ya que van de más del 99% de las muertes, porque preocuparse tanto del 0.5%, digo yo...

Yo creo (de verdad) que si fuera un toro y me dieran la elección, elegiría morir en la plaza.

Lo mismo creo que la mayoría de la gente, a la pregunta "preferirías morir en batalla o en campo de exterminio?" elegiría lo primero. Aún sin considerar las condiciones de vida antes de morir, ni la duración.

Si comes carne de vacuno, el vacuno tiene que morir.

Tu eres cómplice de la muerte, porque pagas a alguien para matarle.

La corrida es simplemente un ritual de la muerte, si no quieres saber como muere lo que comes, bien (hasta un punto, pero vale) pero no hagas de tu ignorancia un pretexto para juzgar a los que a lo mejor sí lo saben, y se responsabilizan de ella.