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Tim
Tim
6 years ago

Update to the mead question.  I went ahead and bottled the mead and after bottle conditioning I’ll tell ya how it went.  This is my first attempt at mead, so I was just going for a plain mead to have a starting point and wasn’t sure what I was looking for.  The bit that was left after bottling 6 grolsch bottles and a soda bottle to test carbonation levels seemed a bit off, but after a few days it seems to mellow out.  Hopefully, it will have time to age before I drink it all.

Same day I racked a double cherry cider that I put through two cycles of NW cherries that were on sale.  The third racking I topped it off with some of the apple juice I reserved and off it went again bubbling away.  Probably will bottle that in a week or so.

Excellent book list.  I have read a few of them.  The Art of the Peaceful Warrior really changed my viewpoint on life in my early 20’s.  The Celestine Prophecy was very good I think I listened to that one as an audio book.  The view that children should not be spoken down to really stuck with me as a father now.  I have heard of all the others, but sadly have not read them.

Anyway, great show.

Thanks for all you do.

Michael Floyd
Michael Floyd
6 years ago

If you want a goofy car I give you the BMW Issetta:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta

With the front entrance this qualifies as goofiest car in my mind. I still actually saw a few of these antiques when I lived in Germany through the eighties and nineties…

It’s not easy to miss it when you see it. LOL

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Ariana M
6 years ago

Best quote of the day today… “I had never blackened a fish before… at least not on purpose…”

Yep, right there with you Jack…

T
T
6 years ago

That Robin is ugly, indeed.  I wonder if the 3 wheel design was to take advantage of the laws favoring motorcycles (including 3 wheelers).

In my mind, a couple of the worst abominations sold in the good old USofA were the AMC Pacer, and the Renault Le Car.  I had the distinct unpleasure of working on both when I was bending wrenches for a living.

The Le Car was a hard to work on soup can.  The spare tire was mounted above the engine, the muffler was in the left wheel well, and you had to strip off the intake and exhaust system to get to the starter.  I did get one up to an indicated 85 mph in my official test though.  Not so wise in those days.

The Pacer was the ugliest of AMC ugly and a real crappy fish bowl all-around.  My neighbor had one in high school (the chick-magnet yellow one).  The thing that frightened me the most was that the hood hinged from the front, and the latches didn’t really work.  We’d meet a semi at 60 mph on a two-lane and the hood would lift up to about the roof line.  You couldn’t see a thing until it settled back down a bit later.

Honorable mention for a real POS has to go to the Yugo.  Absolute junk on a good day!  One of my co-mechanics thought he’d power shift one on a test drive one day and he broke the entire top out of the tranny going into third.  The boss just shook his head…

dvdchris
dvdchris
6 years ago

Good advice except for the microphone. A condenser mic is totally not the microphone a beginning podcaster should use. They are good for studios in a quiet environment in a treated room, as they will pick up every bit of room noise (and next room noise, and airplanes, and your computer fan, etc etc etc ) in addition to your voice. Beginning podcasters need a dynamic mic, which are far better at rejecting ambient noise.

The Audio-Technica ATR2100 or Samson Q2U are great beginning USB dynamic mics that will get somebody started and are usable even after you add equipment, since they are XLR as well as USB.

Greg
Greg
6 years ago

Books for 15 year olds.

I wish I had read and heeded this book when I was 15.

Bachelor Pad Economics: The Financial Advice Bible for Men

Written for guys, it is candid, blunt, honest and everything else Oprah isn’t, and will give you the road map you need to provide direction and purpose in your life. Guaranteed to prove more useful than a college degree, “Bachelor Pad Economics” is well worth the money to buy and the time to listen to.

It is written towards young men but applies to young women as well. The chapters on investing, education, etc are priceless. I shared the book with my daughters, one chapter was a little uncomfortable to share with your daughter as opposed to your son but the other chapters make it worth it.

 

John Adam
6 years ago

The ugliest recently produced car could go to the Fiat Multipla.

It only took them 6 years to give it a face lift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Multipla

Alex Shrugged
6 years ago

Books for 15 year olds:

“The Wave” by Todd Strasser.

A fictional story based on a classroom experiment that occurred in Palo Alto California, in 1969, a teacher decides to explain the Nazi takeover of Germany prior to World War II by conducting a social experiment with his own students. That experiment came to a halt when it became apparent that normal high school students could actually be turned into fascists fairly easily. (FYI, my perception of Palo Alto is “Liberal Loony Central” of California, so no one was expecting this.)

The point is that the human mind can be manipulated in ways that are frightening.

A book on the same subject for adults (and within range for a 15 year old) is:

“The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements” by Eric Hoffer.

NOT recommended for a 15 year old:

For more information on the Nazi takeover of Germany and how otherwise sophisticated people could be manipulated into fascism, read:

“In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin”, by Erik Larson.

It starts off a little slow as FDR tries to find an ambassador to Germany and finally selects a tweedy little professor in Chicago. It gets a lot better from there. No emaciated dead bodies, but it is a little racy. (The ambassador ‘s daughter was a real party girl.) I mention this book only for completeness sake.

Alex Shrugged

John
John
6 years ago

I have to challenge you on your analysis of the micro air conditioner. You talked about the differential heat going into the water vapor as if the water vapor was now hotter due to the evaporation. In reality the water vapor is what is blown into your room as cooler air. The process of changing water from liquid to vapor uses energy and ties that energy up in the molecules of vapor, it does not increase the temperature, but actually lowers the temperature. This is a standard process of changing state. Just like water freezing releases energy. I agree this “air conditioner” won’t work very well due to it’s size and low power. A real air conditioner exhausts hot air because it uses a compressor to provide the change in temperature of a refrigerant sealed inside. It compresses a gas to a liquid which then evaporates. The compressing process produces heat in one area and the evaporation absorbs heat from the air in another place. There are come very small real air conditioners recently introduced that use actual refrigerant but too new to know if they provide much cooling.

Nick in MNG
6 years ago

re: Older kid / teen reading suggestion

If the kid has a serious bent towards science or just really likes space, Robert Zubrin’s “The Case For Mars” might be worth trying. It’s largely written for the (educated) layman, and the occasional equations and math shown in the book aren’t necessary to understand the core concepts. Jack isn’t the only one that laments much of the newer generations’ waning interest in space exploration… this was one of the books that inspired me, and maybe it can do it for others. Heck, if a teenager can get through “The Illuminatus Trilogy”, he/she should be able to have the patience for this book 😉

FNORD