Steampunk'd...

From the comic strip Wondermark...

Not the way it's usually done, but cool nonetheless..
Later,
MiddleMan

Retro Monday... Purple Prose and Violet Rays

This is a late post in honor of the Lord of Tech, Nikola Tesla, who's birthday was only a few weeks ago.

That's him at left behind a very reserved-seeming Samuel Clemens. (More on this gentleman another time.)

I know the usual thing to do in this situation is to make fun of the silly tech pawned of as his "secret discoveries", but I want to make something clear...

Without him we might not have:

AC power transmission.

Efficient electric motors.

And he invented the radio. (Sorry, Marconi.)

So when people go on about his manias, "death rays", ioncraft, or his beliefs in eugenics; it just serves to dilute all the wonders this man brought to us.

But, even I have to wonder what people were thinking about when portable tesla coils were used in the creation of Voilet Rays. More here.

Now aside from this old set I found on Ebay, I bet you're thinking no one still looks to buy these things for anything other than a curiousity, right?

Wrong. (Why do I do this to myself? I know where this is going...)

http://www.electroherbalism.com/Bioelectronics/Tesla/VioletRay.htm

http://www.beautifulonraw.com/Holistic_Device_Violet_Ray.html

Of course Cacye had to be involved in this: http://www.cayce.com/vray.htm

Sigh...

It could be worse, they could be selling useless orgone gener...

http://www.orgoneenergy.org/orgone-energy-generators

THAT IS IT! I'm building a rocket to Mars! See you all later!

Goodbye and goodnight,

MiddleMan

How Green is Your...

Chlorophyll...

Suck in some air around you. Go ahead, get a lungful or two.

Practically all of the oxygen you're breathing in has been created as a waste product by plants using chlorophyll in photosynthesis to create food. Chlorophyll is nature's own solar power collector.

So really, something so natural and necessary to your life, you wouldn't be surprised to find out it can do more amazing things, right?

During the fifties people discovered chorophyll's power to deoderize everything. From bad breath, to foot odor, even the rest of your body; there was a powder, soap or foam to make use of chlorophyll's amazing properties.

That is until "The Journal of the American Medical Association" made note of the fact that mountain goats lived excusively on a chlorophyll-rich diet.

You ever smell a goat? Ever get close enough for a whiff of billy-goat breath?

Needless to say, after that, the fad disappeared.

Or did it?

NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.

What the...? "...chlorophyll is chemically similar in composition to that of human blood, except that the central atom in chlorophyll is magnesium,..."

Are they nuts? Chlorophyll is an electron donator; Hemoglobin is a oxygen transporter! They don't even work the same!

For crying out loud...

Woo-woo science - 1; my faith in humanity - 0

Later...

MiddleMan

Monday, Much todo...

Had a lot to do today, but I had some time to do some thinking about things...

The serial story is coming along OK. It's not my best stuff, but it could be a lot worse. And I'm having fun.

I was listening to a past Skeptiod episode that struck a cord with me about am essay regarding religion and modern science that has been rolling around in my head, but I want to put some more effort into it before I write on it.

I want to keep Mondays mostly retro tech (or as close as I can). Today's tech is something that made me go "Hunh?" on my daily commute here. This is something I hadn't seen in over twenty years!

Also, I need to take more time in planning these out, or do them in advance when the muse hits me. Work has been crazy, and as much as it's given me some good stories, it really saps my creativity.

That's about it, getting tired and I'm going to cut this short. More to come tomorrow.

Later...

MiddleMan

What size sheet do you wear? A4, or Legal...?

A quick post today.

I was doing laundry yesterday before we went out and I got into a discussion with a couple of ladies in the building. One of them talked about how tried she was to do laundry, and she wished that they made clothes that you wear once, then throw them away.

Cue the all-knowing nerd-boy.

At that point I had to tell her about paper clothes.

Something from a much more innocent time, where the rampant consumerist culture wasn't something that would doom future generations. Where recycling was only for tin cans, and fashion changed a quickly as people changed their... Well, uh, clothing.

So something like this is a novelty and not something that we use today, right?

Well, ever been stuck in the hospital? Ever got those paper slippers in the appropriately-shaped Kleenex box? That's not the only thing hospitals use made to be cheap and disposable.

Later,

MiddleMan