They also stop traffic, as needed.
Posted on 02/01/2012 3:44:24 PM PST by chrismac
They also stop traffic, as needed.
These threads, in general, are as if your six-year old mind packed up some items for your 46 year-old mind to take to camp.
"Why would I need that? What use will this be? I don't do that any more."
It helps to illustrate what you've lost along the way. This is a therapy thread, without being "therapeutic" in that clinically detached and somewhat inhuman way.
Boy
They used to see my freckles when they looked at me,
And waves of curly hair upon my head.
My eyes would just be squinting out, below my knitted brows,
Some even thought my hair a shade of red.
Sun-bleached, I guess it was, because later it turned muddy brown,
And no one called me “carrot top” again.
I liked to think about the way things worked,
Deducing that I had a furnace in my skin.
It was right there in my belly, it rumbled so sometimes,
And its warmth was quite apparent, I can say.
However cold my hands became, my belly was still warmer,
Thanks to all the fuel I sent its way.
My mother always swore that I could grow potatoes,
In darkened furrows when I held my skinny elbows out.
I liked potatoes, but they never quite took root,
Erosion from the frequent storms of baths, no doubt.
I don’t know about the other boys, but dirt was my companion,
My plaything for the little cars and men.
I built the roads they traveled on, and tunnels,
Road-building was less time-consuming then.
I still have marbles that I played with, then,
I haven’t lost them all quite yet.
And hopscotch was another thing I did,
And I could probably beat you at it, I bet!
You’ll notice I defined low maintenance,
Except for quantities of food and soap,
For clothing that I got from here and there,
And a corner where I hid to dream and hope.
I remember ice-cream that we worked to make,
And fevers that I sweated out at night,
My Dad’s rough hands that rubbed my itchy back,
And always knowing things would be alright.
These things that I remember comfort me,
They gather round my thoughts at end of day,
But just like then I am not ready for my bed,
I’m still alive inside here, come and play!
NicknamedBob . . . . . . . . . September 19, 2006
Bob is saying that we Undead folks have, to quote the sage Jimmy Buffett, “grown older but not up.”
Have a Guinness - with an egg, it’s a complete breakfast meal!
“Once upon a time” a good portion of US companies were run that way.
C-clamps...
Hehehehe. You forgot the magic word. ;o]
*sigh*
I buy you books and send you to school and all you do is bite the teacher. The magic word is CHOCOLATE, Nully - CHOCOLATE!! LOL!
How is chocolate going to hold a satellite dish on your eves?
With enough chocolate, I won’t care if I have a satellite dish or not! LOL!
Ah.
THIS IS WHY WE LOVE LOGICAL OLD PEOPLE
A farmer stopped by the local mechanics’ shop to have his truck
fixed. They couldn’t do it while he waited, so he said he didn’t live
far and would just walk home.
On the way home, he stopped at the hardware store and bought a bucket
and a gallon of paint. He then stopped by the feed store and picked
up a couple of chickens and a goose. However, struggling outside the
store, he now had a problem, how to carry all his purchases home.
While he was scratching his head, he was approached by a little old
lady who told him she was lost. She asked, ‘Can you tell me how to
get to 1603 Mockingbird Lane?’
The farmer said, ‘Well, as a matter of fact, my farm is very close to
that house. I would walk you there, but I can’t carry this lot.’
The old lady suggested, ‘Why don’t you put the can of paint in the
bucket, carry the bucket in one hand, put a chicken under each arm,
and carry the goose in your other hand?’
‘Why, thank you very much,’ he said and proceeded to walk the old girl home.
On the way, he said ‘Let’s take my short cut and go down this alley.
We’ll be there in no time.’
The little old lady looked him over cautiously and then said, ‘I am a
lonely widow without a husband to protect me. How do I know that when
we get in the alley you won’t hold me up against the wall, pull up my
skirt, and have your way with me?’
The farmer said, ‘Holy smokes, lady! I’m carrying a bucket, a gallon
of paint, two chickens, and a goose. How in the world could I
possibly hold you up against the wall and do that?’
The old lady replied, ‘Set the goose down, cover him with the bucket,
put the paint on top of the bucket, and I could hold the chickens.’
Hehehehehehe! Good one!
I’m abstaining from chocolate, sadly. We haven’t had any terrible digestive distresses from Kathleen, yet, and if skipping chocolate will keep them away, I can still have lemon cake.
C-clamps makes me think of “amber lamps,” of which I do not know the relevance.
And Bill’s Eagle Scout project has been fully built. Now he just has (sigh) more paperwork. Tom and Elen have gone ice skating with the Science Olympiad team. This is a nationwide event, although it seems to be run at a local-to-state level, in which students compete in a variety of events. Some are knowledge tests, like Genetics (which Tom and Elen are doing) and some are engineering-based, such as building towers or race cars.
I could abstain from chocolate, but then I’d have no excuse to rant and rave and scare the neighbors.
Yesterday afternoon, I got into a discussion with a couple of old ladies who said we needed the resident council because it meant almost $400 a quarter. I asked what they did with the money? “We have parties.”
So I asked why they didn’t use it for something like ride the tour train in Boulder City, or take a tour of the dam, or go to Laughlin for an overnight, or do a picnic up Lee Canyon on Mt. Charleston. I also said that the parties should be pot lucks so the money could be used for excursions.
For some reason, they got really mad at me. One told me she wasn’t going to argue with me, and set her wheelchair to “Race,” and away she went. The other one was so surprised that money could be used for something besides food that for the first time since I’ve been here, she had nothing to say.
The food they serve is full of carbs and sugar, and there are many, many diabetics here. :shaking head:
No wonder all they do is back-bite and gossip.
I'm interested in building a tower ...
... on the moon.
It would be built on the center of the near side, and would ascend toward Earth to a height of some sixty thousand miles.
The astute observer will note a mistake in the above paragraph. The tower will not be built on the moon and ascend into space as it is completed, but will be assembled at the Earth-moon LaGrangian point L-1 and slowly lowered to the surface of the moon.
In the meantime, a counterweight of assembled asteroid material will be extended further toward the Earth from the L-1 point so that when the attachment is made to the surface of the moon, some tension may be drawn on the "Beanstalk" cable by the gravitational attraction of Earth to this counterweight.
Having this tower will allow space cargo loads to be elevatored down to the surface of the moon, or shipments, and passengers from the moon brought up to the L-1 docking facility. Think of how much rocket fuel we'll be able to save!
However, my personal interest is in the restaurant franchise for that top layer oriented toward Earth at the far end of the tower. With Earth's feeble gravity (at that distance) pulling on it, the restaurant should have a "glass" floor, so that when you go there, you can gaze down, beyond your protective footwear, and see "The World At Your Feet", which will be the name of the restaurant.
I offer this as yet more evidence that my ambitions are modest.
Excellent!
My family traveled to Luna in one of the Venusian freighters. It had been modified for passenger service, so the outside of the hull was only lightly aluminized. It wasn’t intended for re-entry.
We docked at the lunar skystalk leading down to Nearside Station. Now that’s a City!
Every city on Venus has fancy restaurants. Absolutely none has anything to compare with “The World at Your Feet”. At the top of the lunar skystalk, where the gravity, light as it is, nudges you toward Earth, there is a restaurant where the floor is transparent, and there is nothing between you and the blue marble but nothing.
The tables are suspended from the ceiling, and everyone dons shoe coverings to walk across the “floor”. It’s insane, and crazy as hell, but it’s really a compelling adventure that no one should miss.
And no one does. That restaurant is huge! You’re billed for time on the floor, as well as for the overpriced food. We weren’t even there thirty minutes and Dad was going crazy about the cost. At least the food service was fast, incredibly fast. All you had to do was punch in your order, and the delivery service had it on its way to your table through the table connections. Whoosh! I had a Neptunian Milkshake that glowed blue like the planet, and the Wonder-Wart had an Erupting Volcano. Mom had to have an old Earth Mississippi Mudpie, what ever that was, and Dad settled for a Mercurian Hotfoot.
After our hurried meal, and all the necessary gawking through the floor, we were ushered out of the place as quickly as our food remnants and dishes were made to disappear from the table. Another group was sitting down at our former table before we even got to the door.
And then we prepared for the leisurely trip down-cable. A skystalk, or beanstalk, after the famous fairy tale, is little more than a railroad stretched out to as thin as it can be made. What’s impressive about it is its length, which has to be monumental because it goes from a gravity well to beyond the closest gravity null point.
Let me explain that a little better with an obvious example: the lunar skystalk. It was one of the first big construction projects on the moon. Everyone knows that Luna keeps one side facing Earth. The concept was a simple one: build a tower from the center of nearside, beyond the point where the pull of gravity is greater from Earth than from the moon.
How far is that? Well, the zero point is sixty-one thousand five hundred kilometers from the moon. Of course, to maintain tension on the cable, the counterweight, which includes “The World At Your Feet” restaurant, has to be even further along.
Building such a thing is a difficult task, but it’s rather similar to lowering a downpost from a Venusian City-sphere. On Venus, a city floating in the atmosphere lowers a long cable to a point on the surface of the planet.
From the L1 point in Earth space, where the pull of gravity from Earth is balanced by the pull from the moon, one sends the cable down to the lunar nearside, fastens it deeply into the lunar regolith, and then purposely lets the counterweight move toward Earth. With tension on the cable, you can now move cable elevators up and down the cable.
Here’s the problem; they can only move so fast. Our trip down to the moon is going to take five days.
Five days!
I agree with you. That is so ridiculous! Our trip from Venus probably averaged about 90,000 kilometers per hour coming here, and at that rate it would only take an additional hour to get to the surface.
But as my dad delicately put it, “Sweetheart, we don’t want to impact the surface. We’ll prefer to touch down lightly.”
So the lunar skystalk is going to lower us slowly and gently. That is its only reason for being, anyway. That and lifting lunar production into orbit. The amount of rocket fuel that’s been saved over the past few centuries could probably blast Luna off to Alpha Centauri!
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