Dan from Madison

Subdivision Wildlife

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My posts about cougars here and at  LITGM drew a lot of traffic. It seems as though it is a subject of interest to a lot of people (a new cougar link dump soon to come). Gerry’s post here about coyotes also drew some links and clicks. The common thread is the encroachment of wildlife in typical non wildlife domains. I am not talking about “urban sprawl”, or people moving into areas where there is already wildlife established. I am referring to animals encroaching back into populated areas. This photo below was taken on the way to work this morning. Before bashing my photography skills, some background. Just outside of my house is this four lane highway. A deer was running down the median in the center, right next to my car. I changed lanes to the right lane and slowed down, all the while getting my camera out. When the deer randomly decided to cross the road I was ready and was able to slow down and snap this admittedly crappy photo with the one free hand I had (the other on the wheel). You can see the  deer in the left lane here. It was a very large doe. She crossed the street, looked back at me and went into someone else’s yard. Click photo to enlarge.

Car deer accidents cost insurance companies (and, in the end, us) millions upon millions of dollars. This is a very good pdf put out by the Wisconsin DOT that gives a lot of good information about car deer crashes.

What is funny (or not funny) about this is that outside of extending the hunting seasons I don’t see any way that this problem will go down or go away – and I think it is getting worse. I see deer alongside the road (dead and alive)  almost every day that I drive to work. When I was a kid it was a BIG deal to see a deer in the wild.

The deer has very few natural predators around here any more. The only ones I can think of are wolves (only in Northern Wisconsin), and coyotes if they hunt in a pack. We also have the random cougar that comes by on occasion. One other predator of deer is winter. I hate to do this to myself, but I am wishing for a bitterly cold winter to kill off a bunch of the deer. I would rather suffer through a few months of bone chilling cold than risk my safety or the safety of my family due to a car-deer crash.

Cross posted at LITGM.

Could You Explain That To Me, In English?

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I am looking forward to reading some books about the collapse of Wall Street. I am praying that Michael Lewis writes one. I was very happy to find this article written by him. If you are interested in the subject, I would make it required reading for this weekend. It is somewhat lengthy, but very entertaining. You will understand the title of this post if you read the article.

Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors. His book Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street is an easy read if you want to start to understand some of the nonsense that went on in financial circles in the ’80s and ’90s.

Cross posted at LITGM.

Cold, Kryptonite, and Ice Cube

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Over the last few years I have whipped myself into pretty decent shape for an almost forty something. From my heaviest point, I have lost somewhere between twenty and twenty five percent of my body weight, and in the meantime transformed what is left into solid muscle. Out of curiosity I should book an appointment with a trainer for an hour and on top of getting some more tips, I should get measured for a body fat percentage. But enough of that.

Where I am going with the description of my physical condition is that cold weather is absolutely my kryptonite now. I also shaved my head in the meantime, so any temps below, say, 50 F  require coat, skullcap and gloves. Before, when I was heavier and had hair, 50 F  was no issue in a t-shirt for me.

As I type this in my office, I have a small portable heater running under my desk. The winters here in the upper Midwest are very tough on me. Our winter is just beginning, and I am already suffering – the real cold stuff is yet to come. But so it goes.

On occasion, some interesting individuals come into my store from the UW. Well, I get people in the store from the UW all the time, but these individuals from a certain department are different. They work on the Ice Cube project. From their website, here is what the project is involved in:

The IceCube Neutrino Detector is a neutrino telescope currently under construction at the South Pole. Like its predecessor, the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), IceCube is being constructed in deep Antarctic ice by deploying thousands of spherical optical sensors (photomultiplier tubes, or PMTs) at depths between 1,450 and 2,450 meters. The sensors are deployed on “strings” of sixty modules each, into holes in the ice melted using a hot water drill.
The main goal of the experiment is to detect neutrinos in the high energy range, spanning from 1011eV to about 1021 eV. The neutrinos are not detected themselves. Instead, the rare instance of a collision between a neutrino and an atom within the ice is used to deduce the kinematical parameters of the incoming neutrino. Current estimates predict the detection of about one thousand such events per day in the fully constructed IceCube detector. Due to the high density of the ice, almost all detected products of the initial collision will be muons. Therefore the experiment is most sensitive to the flux of muon neutrinos through its volume. Most of these neutrinos will come from “cascades” in Earth’s atmosphere caused by cosmic rays, but some unknown fraction may come from astronomical sources. To distinguish these two sources statistically, the direction and angle of the incoming neutrino is estimated from its collision by-products. One can generally say, that a neutrino coming from above “down” into the detector is most likely stemming from an atmospheric shower, and a neutrino traveling “up” from below is more likely from a different source.
The sources of those neutrinos coming “up” from below could be black holes, gamma ray bursters, or supernova remnants. The data that IceCube will collect will also contribute to our understanding of cosmic rays, supersymmetry, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS), and other aspects of nuclear and particle physics.

Uh, yea. Maybe some of my readers with a more scientific background can decipher what they are after. I sure can’t make heads or tails of it.

You should hear the questions the Ice Cube guys  ask  us  about simple parts.   We usually stand there and stare at them like they have an arm growing out of their head.

 This is a pump for a fuel oil furnace. There are millions of them all across the United States. There are several of these in the Antarctic right now that are in use that were purchased from me, having been modified by the Ice Cube team. They have to pretty much buy all standard items for use down there and modify them since there really isn’t any industry that creates items for use in that environment.

Speaking of that environment, I would last about three minutes down there. Seven degrees F is the recorded HIGH for the South Pole. This article appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal yesterday and literally sent shivers down my spine. I didn’t know the conditions that these scientists put themselves through. Their lips and fingers crack, they get nosebleeds, snow blindness, etc. In the article, it is stated that the participants in the program have to go through a rigorous physical and seminars explaining to them what will happen to their bodies as they dry out in the worlds largest desert – the Antarctic.

They repair their cracked skin with superglue. Superglue!

It might be cold down there, but it would be hell for me.

Cross posted at LITGM.

Freon?

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The Russian Navy has had another horrible accident aboard a submarine.   Some 20 sailors have died  and many others were “poisoned”.   It is very difficult from the article to tell why.   From the article:

The deaths were caused by a Freon gas leak that occurred when the fire-control system was activated yesterday, according to a preliminary investigation by the Russian Prosecutor’s Office, Vesti reported, citing Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Prosecutor’s investigative committee.

Huh?   I don’t know a lot about submarine construction, but I do know a lot about “Freon”.   Freon is a trade name used by the DuPont corporation for refrigerants.   There are many different types of refrigerants, and “Freon” doesn’t describe which one.   Most refrigerants that are commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning  applications are non flammable and very low in toxicity.   I can see how people in the sub would suffer greatly if a large refrigerant leak occurred, as there is only so far refrigerant can go in such a small space.   But you would think a modern sub would have some sort of way to replace their air with stored oxygen.

Lastly, modern refrigerants operate under pressure, and are closed systems.   How did a faulty fire control system rupture a refrigerant line?  

It may be a poor translation of an article originally in Russian (too bad I don’t have it or Tatyana or John Jay could take a look at it) or just the Russian news service providing scarce details provided them by the Russian Navy.   Any way you slice it, the article makes little to  no sense.

I feel for the families of the Russian sailors and wish them the best.   I also hope that the Russian navy starts to maintain their sub fleet a little better so I don’t have to keep reading about their sailors losing their lives.

Please, Please Stick to the Teleprompter

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Wow, only a few days being the president elect and Obama already lost Indiana (and maybe a few other states) for the next election for bashing on one of his most vehement, politically active,  supercharged frothing at the mouth opponents of this day…Nancy Reagan.

Geez, I figured they would have to raise taxes or introduce some sort of silly gun ban FIRST to get the conservatives riled up.

I would assume that Obama’s handlers are asking him to stick to the prepared scripts for a while here.   I heard that Obama did call Nancy Reagan to apologize.   I am sure she was extremely nice to him and made time for the President elect even though she is recovering from a broken pelvis suffered in a recent fall.

Dan Quayle indeed.