Sunday rerun: Crabshell batteries

 Listen, I know that California is not going to allow the sale of gas-powered cars after 2035, at which point I will be 84, and not even being mentioned as a host for any game show or a lead part on a soap opera. I probably won't be driving anyway, and if I can't buy a new internal combustion car, I'll get a beater somewhere and drive it around.

And in other news, science has figured out that they can make batteries out of old crab shells. (The ones filled with crabmeat are way too expensive).

And one of my great cultural shortcomings is a total lack of familiarity with the show "Sponge Bob," beyond the name. Apparently it involves sea creatures running around doing things we all do, but the cartoon that I most relate to is "Top Cat," and I don't want to start a new show.

So I can't draw the connection between this dream of crab batteries and Sponge Bob, but it seems that the fact is, the journal called "Matter" (I guess I should subscribe, but it doesn't matter), they write that researchers claim to have made a biodegradable battery with something found in crab and lobster shells - a great use for empty crustaceans!

In any battery, there has to be an electrolyte between the two terminals at either end. That's how they work: they send ions racing between the positive and negative terminals, and that's how they make electricity to power your phone or flashlight or whatever.

Regular "conventional" batteries - known as lead or lithium batteries  - have been the standards for years, but they come with issues. We will need to make great batteries to run electric cars, but the traditional electrolytes have problems:

•  Recycling them is a gigantic hassle
•  Electrolytes are not biodegradable, so they will be around   forever
•  They can explode or start fires.
•  There are problems with the mining process we use to get lithium out of the ground. 

So how do crabs and lobsters fit in? They have a material in their exoskeletons called chitin. That's what makes the shells hard and tough. With chitin, science can make a derivative called chitosan. Combine chitosan with zinc, and you have a new electrolyte that can run your Walkman for 400 hours.

Or your cell phone, or your game machine.

And what's more, this gunk will break down in five months, leaving just the zinc, which can be recycled and used again!

“In the future, I hope all components in batteries are biodegradable,” says lead author Liangbing Hu, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Materials Innovation. “Not only the material itself but also the fabrication process of biomaterials.”

This sounds like something to make us hopeful. And don't worry about your crab platter becoming even more expensive...we can also extract that precious chitin from fungi and squid.

So, maybe soon we will be driving to the seafood restaurant and already have the scent of Old Bay Seasoning in the car!

 

 

 

Rerun Saturday Picture Show from 2021

 

Merry Christmas from our hearth to yours! 

Freshly roasted on a open fire...tell Jack Frost to come on in and nip at my nose!

How the library improvised a tree!

If you don't have a tree handy, just easel your way on down the Christmas road...

Christmas tins once held cookies! Tasty treats you can't forget...But don't reach in for a snickerdoodle, and come away with Mabel's sewing set!

More than just a pickup, this is a parade float!

If your inlaws and outlaws are dragging you, claiming that your house just ain't posh enough, feel free to send them this picture and ask them if they think you might have overdone it this year...

To a cat, a Christmas tree is more than just a beautiful decoration: it's a challenge!

This apartment combines the best of classic old days and new.

Baltimore's Washington Monument predates the obelisk in Washington. And it gets decorated every year!

 

Rerun: Complaint Dept.

  I'm not extremely fond of the NextDoor app; I see it as the whine aisle of the internet. Now, if you want to have your neighbors keep an eye out for your missing feline or Ferrari, it's great, and if you lost that recipe for Chex Mix* that Jack's first wife told you about, it's the place to go.

But...even though Joe Citizen speaking his mind while standing on a soap box is a fundamental part of our society, it's not good for society when Joe spreads misinformation, or just pure dumb stuff, as with the person I saw howling because her daughter got a $45 parking ticket just because she parked in the fire lane at a townhouse complex while attending an overnight sleepover.

She was mad as a hornet, probably because there were no fires that night. Maybe Irate Mom should have thought about what would have happened had someone knocked over a Yankee Candle during the evening, causing a fire.

It happens.  We wish it didn't, but it does, and when it does, we want firefighters and their apparatus to have unfettered access to the house.

And if they can't get there, well, just go on NextDoor and talk about it. 

* chex mix recipe 

Ingredients

• 3 cups Corn Chex™ cereal
• 3 cups Rice Chex™ cereal
• 3 cups Wheat Chex™ cereal
• 1 cup mixed nuts
• 1 cup bite-size pretzels
• 1 cup garlic-flavor bite-size bagel chips or regular-size bagel chips, broken into 1-inch pieces
• 6 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt
• 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder

Preparation

1. In large microwavable bowl, mix cereals, nuts, pretzels and bagel chips; set aside. In small microwavable bowl, microwave butter uncovered on High about 40 seconds or until melted. Stir in seasonings. Pour over cereal mixture; stir until evenly coated.
2. Microwave uncovered on High 5 to 6 minutes, thoroughly stirring every 2 minutes. Spread on paper towels to cool. Store in airtight container.

 

Perhaps you'll have a few minutes to spend in a happy memory on this Christmas. This is the text of Truman Capote's short story "A Christmas Memory," and it always takes me to a happy place to read it, so I thought I'd share it with you. If you're too busy today, save the link to read it later, and Merry Christmas to you!

 https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/a-christmas-memory-by-truman-capote-short-story

 

 

Wednesday reruns: All About That Song

 Rerun Week saunters on...this one is from 2009...

 It's Guest Editor day - because I got this information about one of my favorite carols from a friend online, so I thought I'd pass it along...while you read what Pat sent to me, click on this link and you can see/hear the 12 Days of Christmas on YouTube!

There is one Christmas Carol that has always baffled me.

What in the world do leaping lords, French hens,

swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?

This week, I found out.

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were

not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone

during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.

It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning

plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

-The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

-Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

-Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.

-The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

-The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

-The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

-Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

-The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

-Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

-The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.

-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

-The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

Again, this is all new to me - hope you liked it!

Tuesday Rerun: Longtime mystery solved

I've been a fan of "A Christmas Carol" since I was a tiny little tim myself (and that's been a while). But I have always wondered about something...something at the very end of the story, where now-giddy Scrooge is running around his bedroom and hollers out at a little boy passing by in the snow.

He asks the boy if he knows the poulterer's shop around the corner with the big prize turkey hanging in the window, and when the lad says he should hope he did, Scrooge tells him to go buy it.

In the original story:

“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.

“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.”

“Walk-ER!” exclaimed the boy. 

I've wondered ever since what "Walk-ER!" meant. I used the closed captioning on the tv when I watch the 1951 version of the story, and that says the kid says "What cor?" and on my second-favorite version, "Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol," the closed captioner typed "Wha cur?" and none of that makes sense. The dictionary says a cur is a poorly-behaved mongrel, and up until that Christmas morning, Scrooge was too cheap to keep a pet around, so that wasn't it.

The little turkey-fetcher, from the movie

Recently, though, someone invented Google, and it finally dawned on me to look it up! And the Oxford English Dictionary, a walloping hearty meatloaf of a book if ever there was such a thing, defines it for us:

"WALKER" "More fully, Hookey Walker.  An exclamation expressive of incredulity,  as in 'That is all Walker.'

and then Eric Partridge, in his book "A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949) p 403, says "Hooky Walker! A phrase signifying that something either is not true or will not occur."

Digging into the matter more deeply (what else do I have to do all day?) it turns out that "John Walker" was the name of an untrustworthy spy in literature of the 1830s, a bad guy with a hooked nose. So, saying "Hooky Walker!" became a way to damn something as untrue, and that was shortened to just using "Walker!"

Now, with that mystery out of the way, I can spend some time figuring out why people will spend money for coffee at BigBucks when they can make it at home better, for less.

RERUN: Santa Jimi

  

In December, 1969, Jimi Hendrix continued to defy other guitarists, who to this day are unable to duplicate what he could do on an electric guitar, and spelling purists who insisted his name was "Jimmy.".  He accomplished the latter by naming his new band, which was to replace The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Band of Gypsys.  The more conventional spelling would be Gypsies, of course, but then, Jimi never did anything the conventional way.

He had hired veteran drummer Buddy Miles to slam the skins, and Billy Cox (not to be confused with the old Dodger third baseman) to play bass. Cox and Jimi had become friends while serving in the US Army together in 1961 at Fort Campbell, KY.

Jimi and the band were booked for the holidays of '69-'70 at the Fillmore East, the legendary rock concert hall in New York.  There were new songs ready for the band - most notably "Machine Gun" - but Jimi wanted to do something special. 

While rehearsing for the shows at Baggy's Studios in Manhattan, the band wove together the melodies (melodys?) of The Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, and Auld Lang Syne.  Someone wisely hit the "record" button, and we are left with these holiday treasures to enjoy, 43 years later.  At the concerts on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, The Little Drummer Boy and Auld Lang Syne wound up as parts of medleys with other songs.

If you'd like to hear this tripartite medley, YouTube is standing by.  Just go here and enjoy! 

The album of the concerts was released in March of 1970, the last to come out during Hendrix's life, which ended that September.  


We don't have any way to know which direction his career might have taken, but it's good to hear his music again.