Okay, does hot water boil faster than cold water? Yes, you think – but what about the energy released when cold water is heated, hmmmm?
We’ll get to this in a second.
The other day I decided I should cull a few old things from the Closet of Mysteries, things that need to be scanned and sorted and posted, perhaps around 2017. Looked in one box. Realized there were a few things on the shelves that I really didn’t need. For that matter, not all of the Big Little Books mean anything, in sentimental terms; could probably boil them down to Space Ghost and Matt Mason.
You know how these things start, and how they end:
It’s like all my shelves suffered projectile vomiting. But a purge was necessary. I hate to do it, but prune I must for a better tomorrow. Must come to terms with the fact that I will never read some books again, nor will I consult them. I have two books about the construction of particular New York buildings, for example; one is a sober, plodding tale about Worldwide Plaza, a sober plodding SOM structure. The top is nice. The story of the building’s construction made for a PBS TV show, which was fascinating. I seem to remember that the construction foreman was Colorful and Italian, the developer stressed and froglike, the architect a quiet intellectual, and the project ill-timed. Hit the market when the market was tanking, but by 2007 it sold for $1.74 billion. In 2009 it sold for $600 million.
The other book was much livelier: it described the construction of 1540 Broadway, which used to be one of my favorites. Title of the book says it all: High Rise: How 1,000 Men and Women Worked Around the Clock for Five Years and Lost $200 Million Building a Skyscraper. Pictures make it look blockier than it seemed in the initial renderings, which knocked me out when I first saw them . . .
. . . I should scan the cover before I donate the book. Should scan the construction pictures, too. Now it seems blocky with a silly little pinky of a spire, but the colors were unique at the time.
Also decided to part with “Apple,” a book about the middle years of the company. It ends as Jobs unveils the iMac, and in the last few pages the author drops the reportorial mask to sum up what he’d learned. This was written in 1998:
. . . in my opinion, Apple’s future remains a limited one over the long term, no matter what (Jobs) does. Indeed, the sheer spectacle of his iMac launch was sad in a way, for it underscored how much had been lost over the years. As much as he tried emulate the excitement the excitement of the first Macintosh launch, this was not a product that was destined to change an industry, as the Mac had done. At best, it stood to breathe more life into a sick and tired company.
That it did; for the first half year they sold one every 15 seconds of every minute of every hour of every day, as the press release put it. The translucent plastic was so influential as a piece of industrial design it ended up on George Foreman grills.
The real question for Apple is whether it has any real future at all, anymore . . . The odds aren;t good taht (Jobs) can do more than slow the fall, perhaps giving Apple a few more years before it is either gogled up by a bigger company or finally runs out of customers.”
Digital Daily says:
The latest domestic sales data from NPD shows Apple on pace to sell between 4.1 million and 4.3 million Macs in the December quarter. Which would make for another record breaker in an ever-lengthening string of them. After all, Apple’s U.S. Mac sales are up 20 percent year-over-year for the first two months of the current quarter. And with international sales growing faster than domestic, the company will likely see between 22 percent and 28 percent year-over-year growth.
The author still works for the WSJ but doesn’t seem to be covering technology anymore.
Ah well: that was conventional wisdom in 1998, unless you were a True Believer, Facing Forward, Excelsior! (Should have brought Stan Lee back to do the ads.)
I skimmed the book to see whether I’d ever want to read about the Copland OS disaster or the Newton problems, and decided yes, I did. But no! NO! It has to go. It has to make room.
In the end, here’s the room:
As for the items that require scanning for the website, the stack is now two feet tall. After that, I burn them. Kidding: back to the antique store. Released into the wild, to reassemble in someone else’s collection.
Ordinary day; cold. Snow day again, no school. Three days now until Winter Break, so child is stoked, as we said in the 70s, for a fortnight of doing nothing, aka total ziptitude. (My neologism. Use it as you please.) (I am also the author of Nadaism, a philosophy of protesting the absurdity of action by doing nothing. I don’t follow it myself, but am willing to be the leader of any group that professes it, if the money’s good.)
I’ve told my wife: nothing for Christmas. Please, no books. Let me complete the Stuff Management Project and get everything archived before anything else comes into the house. It’s not just the books and the flotsam, it’s the annual archive of ephemera that weighs me down, and the horrible suspicion that my daughter, upon discovering the hidden store of things I’ve set aside, the little scraps that detail the quotidian elements of her childhood, will strike her as a bunch of junk, and out it goes. I’m projecting, here: I’m assembling the stuff I wish I’d discovered. It all ties in to the record of her life on the videos and the Bleats, the tangible cross-referenced with the passing mention. Does it matter? I don’t know. She’s into all these things now which will fade and pass in a year, and those will probably hold more meaning – and a small amount of meaning, at that. But: my wife noted the other day that she had constructed in her room her own version of the Closet of Mysteries – all these items, these things, arrayed and assembled to indicate her interests. I find this less an indication of my influence on her than my own inability to outgrow the childish need to collect and display. Maybe. It’s interesting when people see the Closet; there’s a momentary pause to drink it all in, and make sense of it all. The only way it makes any sort of sense is to have each item described, its reason for collection explained . . .
. . . but that’s a 2011 lileks.com project. With video!
As for the question posed at the top of the Bleat, well, here comes the science: hot water boils faster! Duh. But the other day we were driving around, discussing her upcoming science project for class, and I remembered an hour of the Diner where I brought up the hot-cold-boiling issue, and it made for an hour of peppery radio. So 13 years later, that one hour resurfaces, and leads to the Project. The terms of assignment dictated that you had to break it down to “Control” and “Experiment,” which drove me nuts: it’s “constant” and “variable.”
DAD THAT’S NOT WHAT IT SAYS.
I know, I know, but, those are the two things it always comes down to, and – oh, ink the poster. It’s bedtime.
Pass it along, if you wish
97 Responses to Stuff Management
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as far as Stuff management goes… I have delegated the SMD parts bin and the solder vac to develop a methodology and procedure document, create a training schedule while allowing all components and manuals to continue their normal duties, and establish task forces to create order and harmony, while not losing any essential functions or strategic duplications.
frankly, Needs Further Improvement.
I am beginning to think I will need to get a consultant, perhaps a new printer to the shed ‘puter, because management is lost on this Stuff.
The author wasn’t wrong about Apple. Had Apple stayed on the same course, they’d have gone under. What saved the company was the iPod, and then giving up on the “going our own way” architecture and building Intel based PCs.
Also, Jerry Ray must be using a completely different version of Windows 7 than I am.
Just thinking that I have been a Mac user for about as long as there have been Macs and I have never owned or even used an iMac. Seems odd now that I think about it. Powermacs or Ibooks is all I have ever had.
Also have two PC netbooks for abuse and a PC desktop for security camera control. Agree with above, tools not religion. Of course I am also the wrong kind of white person.
@bgbear: “wrong kind of white person”
son, y’all dont say that at the campfire tonight, heah?
You know, Joe Sixpack, go buy your PC and have fun with it. It works just fine most of the time. Windows 7 is a vast improvement over most of the previous OS. The machines pretty much work as advertised. The problem is, who are you to judge why someone buys something or another? What difference to your life does it really make? If someone wants to go out and spend more for something and has the means to do it, why can’t they do it for their own satisfaction? What you think and say has no bearing on the situation. And yes, I do buy Mac products and find they have a longer life span, are generally better built, and work well beyond my expectations. They are pretty intuitive devices. AN yes, I do find your comments grating, much to your satisfaction. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.
Al Federber vs. Joe Sixpack.
I’m glad that all of these arguments are beneath me!
“Beneath me” meaning over my head.
One of my fears is that someday I will understand the differences argued here well enough to spend time participating in the arguments…
Cheers of the Season!
Frog
@Ben: “cold water doesn’t boil.”
Reminds me of the perfect answer to the question, “If you could have dinner with any person from history, living or dead, who would it be?”
The answer is, of course, “The living one.”
IIRC you can boil cool water in a chamber with reduced pressure.
@Al Federber vs. Joe Sixpack.
Not fair to Al, who shows occasionable glimmers of reasonableness. Joe EssPee is more in a class with sometimes commenter “areader”. A reflexively nasty bombthrower.
Oooh, I know a good one–Lileks vs Keillor!
(just kidding)
More random thoughts:
1) I use a Mac for most of my computing needs, except at work where I need Quickbooks (the Mac version is an abomination) and specialized digital radiographic software not written for a Mac. I do use Win 7 in Parallels on my Mac for Quicken Home (again, the Mac version makes me scream).
2) Kirk, most definitely. Picard is a wus!
3) The proper form for a scientific publication starts with an abstract. You then need to state your hypothesis, design your experiment, show your materials and methods, display your findings, discuss your findings, then derive some conclusion. Experimental design typically has a control group and an experimental group. In order to make the experiment more valid, you need to isolate out as many variables as possible so you are only testing for one characteristic at a time. The control group holds the tested characteristic at a constant, the experimental group has the characteristic changed to show how the variation affects the subject.
@Joe Broderick: It’s been a quiet week in Jasperwood. Walked down to the Pretty Good Gazebo, stopping to turn on the water feature, Lake Pleaseturnon. …
@Natalie
Thank you, but it’s the writer in me coming out, and since boorish behavior seems to be exponentially rising on teh intertoobz these days, I do what I can to stem it … or at the very least ridicule it.
By the way, for those who don’t believe I make my living with words, just click my name. *G*
Actually, the abstract can only be written after you have done the bulk of the publication. It actually is written after the rest of the paper has been put together. It just gives a brief synopsis of your experiment and findings.
@hpoulter: It’s true that Al can display a civilized side. It was just the best thing I could come up with at the moment.
Apologies, Al–hpoulter’s right. You may be a skunk in the garden party at times, but you’re no Joe Sixpack.
Just to add to the confusion. Perhaps “boiling” means “bubbles forming and rising to the surface.” Then it is at least plausible that with high heat, the lower layer of cold water could get to boiling before the entire potful (thermocline effect?) and generate bubbles beneath the cooler layer which then percolate up. Meanwhile, in the warmer water, no layers would form because the temp differential never becomes great enough.
Then: If a pot of hot water is confined in a freezer, much vapor would enter the low-humidty environment, increasing the thermoconductivity of the air, speeding the cooling even after the water temp had been reduced to “cold,” whatever that meant when the experiment measured the freezing time of “cold” water.
And how did the homing pigeons (well, Gertrude, anyway) in Wild, Wild West find the train, wherever it happened to be?
In other words, in a world with many potential variables, the real fun is in inventing possible explanations, not in debunking them.
Mr. Lileks:
I propose that you auction off your Closet of Shame/Mystery detritus to your loyal readers. I for one would bid aggressively for any one of your cast off architectural books if it was inscribed by you, for example, with “From My Closet of Mysteries to Yours, Your Buddy, James Lileks.” There’s got to be a market for your stuff. You just have to get past the creepy factor.
Love the old radios. If you need to sell them,orwant to get ridof them, please contact me. I collect them, even though my collection is running amok, what my wife sez!!
Yes the space bar on my keyboard is crapping out.
Why, oh why, would anyone want freeze boiled water???
Lance Lawson v. Mister Tink
OK OK, I’ll go back to playing with my MCM miniature furniture collection
(the bumblebee story arises from a misunderstanding of scaling – a bee the size of a badger could not fly,
While it is certainly true that bumblebees above or below a certain size wouldn’t work, the story I heard about the origin of “Bumblebees shouldn’t fly!” is that a physicist at a dinner party did some calculations on a napkin and couldn’t make a bumblebee wing generate enough lift for the bumblebee’s weight. As they later found out, the fundamental mistake was treating the bee’s wing as a static airfoil–when they did determine exactly how bees fly, they found a crucial part of the lift comes from tiny vortices generated by the wing’s flapping.
Ah. Wikipedia tells me that the origin of the “Bumblebees shouldn’t fly!” is shrouded in mystery, and notes the physicist-at-a-dinner-party story as one possibility.
My Windows machines are for work, which is very important to me. My Apple machine (iPad) is for play, which is also very important to me. It’s not a matter of which is better, it’s a matter of what is needed when it is needed. Some of you might use your Macs for work and your Windows to play WoW, and that’s cool, too.
Kirk v. Picard? Why isn’t Janeway ever included in the argument? She could take either of them, and I do mean it both ways.
And as far as stuff collection is concerned, do your heirs a favor and cash it out before you do. Spoken by one who just disposed of an estate composed mostly of “sentimental value.”
@Mike H: I hope the old Bakelite radios are working and well-restored.
that, says my ’24 Philco and ’23 Atwater Kent and approx ’30 RCA Victor, is the hard part.
slapping tubes in them is the easy part.
Giants or Dodgers?
Cowboys or Redskins?
Cal Bears or Stanford?
Ohio or Michigan?
Hopefully my speeling has impraved since the coffee kicked in…
Oh darn.
red wire or blue wire?
@bgbear: LOL.
anybody up for some Murdoch Headline Time fun? it’s one of those afternoons, and there is plenty of fodder for the backstab-and-wink tablod headline all around us.
f’r instance:
Vikes Play At ‘The Bank’
While Parents Cry Homelessness
This wire has a little star.
This wire has a little car.
My, what a lot of wires there are!
Love the mile high baseboard (even though it’s covered with paint)!
I’m still a PC diehard (mostly because I build my own desktop systems,) but I’ve pretty much gotten over the whole Mac vs. PC thing by now. For a few months earlier this year my job involved testing of iPhone apps, which is mostly doable on a PC if you know how to deploy to a device, but did also spend some time on a Mac as well. In the relatively short time I was on one, I was never really quite able to get used to it, but I think it’s more a matter of it being different than of one being better or worse than the other.
I decided several years ago to stop being a fanboy and to actually try some of the alternatives for these things, which means that even though there was a time I said I’d never do so I now own both Apple and Sony products. Now I just need to start drinking Pepsi and reading DC comics…
@swschrad: Don’t know if this qualifies, but I saw a great headline a few weeks ago, from a news outlet on Cape Cod:
“Missing Baby Found in Sandwich”
That one just stopped me in my tracks.
I absolutely LOVE that radio-is it vintage or repoduction? And where can I find one??? And is that some sort of clock or another radio on the shelf under it?
@LaLaWojo: I counted 4 bakelite radios.
@GardenStater: those big ol’ pickle planks, they really overwhelm the meat, don’t they?
oops, 3 radios and a file box. but maybe there are little radios in the file box
http://www.antiqueradio.org/welcome.htm is a good site to start looking at/for old radios and old radio collectors. so is http://www.theoldradiofixerupperguy.com/
To make a pot of water boil fastest, leave the kitchen and sit down at the computer to read Bleats.
You know what would be a neat experiment for school age children like Nat? The Monty Hall problem (similar to “Let’s Make a Deal”). It has several interesting components:
1) Basic math most people will understand.
2) A survey component, since a child could do the game on multiple people to see what they actually do vs. what they ought to do.
3) A history component, since it was first popularly published in Parade and is associated with a popular game show (that is back on the Game Show Network?!).
4) A graphical component, where the child diagrams the different options/outcomes.
5) A psychology component, where a child could talk about limits to rational decision making. (IOW, the rules are simple but people still consistently take the wrong strategy.)
Though boiling water is a lot more straight forward and I still argue with my parents over whether I should fill the coffee pot with cold water or hot water to get the best tasting coffee.
If we keep tuning into the Bleat on a regular basis, and save the snaps you post of each room, wall and area of your house, would we wind up with an entire tour of your home??
@bgbear: “IIRC you can boil cool water in a chamber with reduced pressure.”
Yes, you’re right, there is the pressure factor. For the sake of this context, I’m assuming normal Earth pressures, since I don’t find myself trying to boil water in a near-vacuum very often. Except for that one time I tried to make ramen while floating in space, but that might’ve been a dream.
@Ben: normal Earth pressures at what altitude? there is a reason they have “Above 5000 feet” instructions on cake mixes, for instance.
Here, at about 6300′ above sea level, water boils at 209 degrees.
Thanks Will, I wasn’t sure what the high-elevation boiling point is but I was pretty sure it doesn’t qualify as “cool water.” I live at almost exactly 5000′ (the official elevation here is 4982′, but the city isn’t exactly flat so I don’t know my precise elevation here), and we still have to wait a while for water to get hot enough to boil.
@Joe Sixpack:
“All Apples are above $1000.”
Except the ones priced below that.
Bad day at the center, Joe?
To the guy that couldn’t figure out how to use OS X, maybe computers aren’t for you.
I use computers every day. Have done so for nearly a quarter-century. I know a bad interface when I see one, and I was looking at one on that Apple. Nonsensical, unlabelled icons. A deeply hidden off button. Simply getting the window you want is a struggle. The other day, James was all excited about an app that actually allowed him to move a file from one folder to another. Yikes.
I was at a Sears the other day, and saw that the “high end” Foreman grills do indeed use translucent plastic for the bun warmers, though the main shell remains opaque.
“deeply hidden off button” Huh? All you do is….
Oh you sly dog, you almost got me sucked in didn’t you. Well, I’m not gonna go there…