The Blizzard of Ought-Nine

The view of the back door, normally the exit of choice for the dogs..but not tonight!

The view at my feet, with the front storm door opened out to push away the very top layer of snow. We'd cleaned this area twice already, of snow at least the same height. I measured the snow just at my feet (beneath the door) at 6 inches, so that gives us our minimum of 18 inches of snow, plus the extra 2 inches cleared away by the door (x3), leaving us with a lower bound of 24 inches of snow.

As you can see, out the front door is still quite snowy. Even at 11 pm, it is still snowing (it began yesterday around 7 pm). That path was dug out by me at 10 am, and sort of cleared again around 2 pm, but was covered again by 3pm.

Last year, our "big snow" left enough for the dogs and boy to enjoy themselves. You might imagine that they were just as happy today, with higher snow to jump through and to lose the ball in. They love the snow, with a passion greater than their love of the tennis ball.

The wind is blowing, and the old side of the house isn't completely air-tight (and the furnace blower isn't working), so it's chilly over there. Not to worry: we know how to keep warm and the heat pump on the new side keeps us from freezing. As Kedgie can tell you, there's no place like home.

A little night music

The Tsar Bomba

The race to generate atomic bombs naturally led to the race to generate the largest bomb ever (although it almost should be written "Largest Bomb Evar!!11!" to truly capture the insanity of the concept).

In this one, the Soviets won. I'm not sure anyone would ever try to out-do their LBE, because the Tsar Bomba was a Big Bomb, at 50 megatons. In fact, they scaled down their proposed bomb from 100 megatons, and a good thing too: the blast from the Tsar Bomba nearly caught the plane that delivered the device, even after a 3 minute delay of detonation to allow the plane time to escape.  Note that the plane is not a high powered jet plane but a prop plane, so of course it needed more time. The device was dropped with a parachute and a 3 minute delay; there may also have been a proximity fuse to prevent it from detonating too soon. 

The fireball expanded rapidly, creating a shock wave that bounced off the ground (causing a flattened look to the lower part of the fireball in the later stages), and generating a cloud that rose 60+ kilometers into the sky. The fireball was strong enough to be seen a thousand kilometers away, and the explosion created a seismic wave that "rang" around the earth several times.  The energy released by the Tsar Bomba was nearly 4000 times greater than the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb.

It would have been useless as a weapon, as most of the energy released went upwards into the atmosphere, although atmospheric focusing could (and did, in this test) increase the local damage. Since the test was conducted over Novaya Zemlya, there were no civilian areas directly affected, but Finland did report some minor damage secondary to the shock waves traveling through the air and ground.

This bomb was supposedly the reason Andrei Sakharov became a peacenik, and refused to work on any further atomic weapons.

The Soviets also created the Tsar Kolokhol (the largest bell evar!) and the Tsar Pushka (largest howitzer evar!), although the "tsar" label was a western invention.  The Soviet nickname for this bomb was "Big Ivan".
Google Videos of the Tsar Bomba

Interesting article

For Brian:
Ezra Klein on health care costs

Odds and ends

I've been mellow since last Friday, despite rushing around all that day to go out of town -- yes, driving in end-of-week rush hour traffic in the rain -- because we had such a nice time. I'd looked around for restaurants near the hotel, and thought it would be nice to try a Turkish restaurant. The Cazbar, on Charles St., in downtown Baltimore, was a gem. We were shown to a nook with couches and a long low table; everyone sank onto a couch and leaned back with a sigh of relaxation. The music was fun. The food was fantastic -- not just good -- and we all loved the manti (Turkish version of meat wontons in sauce). D didn't want any of the baba ganoush, which just left more for the rest of us. The chicken was grilled and still juicy; the Adana turned out to be essentially a spicy hamburger mix that was flattened out onto a kabob, and grilled. Yummy! The rice was superb; I'd eat that alone. The salad had some fresh mint leaves, which is an excellent idea and I plan to use it myself as much as possible. Dessert was small pieces of baklava, intensely sweet and tasty.

Saturday, I was mysteriously led to the Inner Harbor and surprised with a cruise on one of the ships that goes out to the bridge (I-95); the package included a buffet lunch, and entertainment, plus some dancing. Even though it was cloudy and occasionally sprinkling (or even raining), the air was mild, so we went out on deck to enjoy the view.

We dined in our hotel room that night, on stuff I'd packed: fresh bagels, some cheeses -- smoked mozzarella, havarti, and jarlsberg -- plus olives, Ginger gold apples, crackers, and turkey pepperoni. I picked up a microwaveable Alfredo for D, and we also had some nuts, raisins, and chocolates for dessert. I forgot about the popcorn, though, and we never ate it.

Sunday, we met for some coffee and bagels before heading home. The sun was shining on the trees, showing their lovely colors.

Today, even in the dark rainy afternoon, I could see the brilliant reds and yellows of the trees. It's still beautiful weather to me.

This is an excellent commentary

Schroedinger's Rapist.

Major Updates Needed

Well, it has been a while since I last posted here! We've had a busy half-year.



I've committed acts of household surgery; to wit, removing and replacing a toilet. This was quite the Experience, and our new toilet works very well -- without any leaking. I know you weren't thinking that.

We did lose one of our elderly cats recently, but I was able to make sure her death was free of stress or pain. Her sister is still doing well, although I don't think she wants to join the upstairs crew: she stared at Herc and then got so mad at him for staring back that she didn't just hiss, she spat at him.


There's still work to do on the house, and so on, but nothing out of the ordinary.