Photo found here, via Reddit (credit unknown). YouTube has a variety of videos of these guys. And a hat tiip to Dan for a Snopes link with additional location info and links to more photos.
الثلاثاء، 21 سبتمبر 2010
Dam goats
Photo found here, via Reddit (credit unknown). YouTube has a variety of videos of these guys. And a hat tiip to Dan for a Snopes link with additional location info and links to more photos.
Roof goats
The sight is familiar to anyone from Wisconsin. Al Johnson's restaurant in Sister Bay, Door County (the "thumb" sticking into Lake Michigan is a classic vacation destination) has goats on the roof. I've eaten there several times and enjoyed the outstanding Scandinavian cuisine.
But I was disappointed to read this week that the restaurant sued another restaurant last year after discovering that the other one had also been using goats on their roof to attract customers.
Another restaurant in Sister Bay? No. Was it in Door County? No. In Wisconsin?? No. The other establishment (a market, not a restaurant) was 750 miles away - in Georgia forcryingoutloud.
Last year, he discovered that Tiger Mountain Market in Rabun County, Ga., had been grazing goats on its grass roof since 2007. Putting goats on the roof wasn't illegal. The violation, Al Johnson's alleged in a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, was that Tiger Mountain used the animals to woo business.The rest of the story is at The Wall Street Journal. I fully understand the importance of copyright and trademark rights, but this case appears to me to be particularly small-minded. Our family will be vacationing in Door County again, but my dining plans will be to explore some other restaurants.
The suit declared: "Notwithstanding Al Johnson's Restaurant's prior, continuous and extensive use of the Goats on the Roof Trade Dress"—a type of trademark—"defendant Tiger Mountain Market opened a grocery store and gift shop in buildings with grass on the roofs and allows goats to climb on the roofs of its buildings."
Al Johnson's "demanded that Defendant cease and desist such conduct, but Defendant has willfully continued to offer food services from buildings with goats on the roof," the suit continued. Danny Benson, the offending market's owner, says that "legally we could fight it, because it is ridiculous...
Photo credit monkey.biz.
Hammock Tensegrity Innovations
David WV and John MacEntyre Allen lead the deployment of tensegrity structures for campers. MacEntyre is inventor and retailer of the MOLLE-based Molly Mac Pack, a human-carryable rig based around a double sided M.O.L.L.E. panel, with shouder straps, hip belt and webbing--as MacEntyre says, "a backpack without the pack." WV has long experience with tensegrities. He describes them as a wound-up spring. he wrote, "Think of a tensegrity as a big spring, because that's what it is. I'm guessing that the tighter you wind it, the more force it takes to make it move (but also the bigger the "Sproingg!" when it breaks.) Thank goodness for spectra. I once made tensegrities using 8' bamboo poles and nylon rope. When rolled down the mountain they would pick up speed and start to bounce. Very impressive." WV also made some cellular tensegrity kites using arrow blanks and 60 lb test spectra rope.Hammock Morphology
The design focus in an N strut stand to support N hammocks, with a shade tarp over the top and a stove in the center. The structure would be back-carryable, meaning that some of the tendons would be detachable. The design is based on the 3 strut tensegrity tripod. The design is based on the following ratios:
A) Three struts and nine tendons (i.e. - the top and
bottom faces are triangles) The strut/tendon ratio = 1/0.68125
B) Four struts and twelve tendons (i.e. - the top and bottom faces are squares) The strut/tendon ratio = 1/0.6436
C) Five struts and fifteen tendons (i.e. - the top and
bottom faces are pentagons) The strut/tendon ratio = 1/0.60843
With a sufficiently wide base, it should be stable and still allow enough free space to hang the hammock.
Hammock Materials
Struts: steel pipe, as sold for chain link fence, and aluminum poles in 10' length. They are also trying bamboo, and military surplus synthetic sectional segmented antenna poles that are 11.5 feet long and weigh 6.4 lbs each, or carbon fiber (ultra lightweight, just 3 lb., but expensive, about $300 per pound). Aluminum: For example, texastowers.com offers 12' drawn aluminum tubing. In the prototype below the struts are 123". Sectional: WV wasn't sure the sectional rails would support a hammock, but they seem to be OK with his 150 lbs. weight, with no struts bending, not strain at the joints. MacEntyre raised a model on 1 7/8" diameter struts, multi-faceted and not round. Their unions were crimped, and reinforced with an outer sleeve.
Tendons: Amsteel, or whoopee slings. Or Spectra rope. Spectra is ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibers yield very high strength and cut resistant ropes that can stand-in for steel cables at one tenth their weight.
Fittings: The end fittings have been a challenge. They have used carabiners at the pole ends for mechanical advantage.
Tools: 2-ton "come along" (hand operated ratchet lever winch). The tendons may be fitted with winches ( like a spanish windlass) for tightening.
Attachment to the ground: when there is a small base, some models need to be staked to the ground. Without staking, there is instability when the load shifts. In other words, for a 3-strut hammock stand, all three occupants would need to board and de-board at the same time.
Misc: the shade structure would drain if the struts were asymmetric.
Stacking Two Tensegrity Modules
If I stacked one on top of another, connecting the struts of the top tensegrity to the midpoints of the top tendons on the bottom tensegrity, then both would need to be under considerably more tension to handle the weight of hammocks without deforming. One reason to try this would be to make the base wide enough that it wouldn't need staking at all. There are probably a number of reasons not to try this, but we won't know what they are until we do. Of course, if we use longer struts the base of a single tensegrity could be big enough to make staking unnecessary.
Connecting The Shade Tarp
While the shade is not essential to the tensegrity, it is important as this stand is likely to be deployed in an area without trees, hence the need for shade. MacEntyre is considering a three cornered tarp, quadrilateral on one side and triangular on the other... use bungie to connect the "ridgeline" reinforcement points of the tarp to "my" hammock's stuts, bungie the triangle side's corner to the opposite strut, with the line you describe running down to a single stake, and guy the quadrilateral side's corners down to stakes in the ground. Each additional hammocker does exactly the same thing with an identical tarp. If you are the only hammocker on the stand, keep a line from the top of a strut to the ground, with a bungee prussic on it to pull the tarp, pull the triangle side down through the middle of the tensegrity stand and guy it to a stake in the ground directly beneath the top of the opposite strut.
Hammock Tensegrity Videos
MacEntyre video tour of two 3-strut tensegrity stands with multiple hammocks, uploaded 4 September 2010 to MollyMacPack's YouTube channel.
Assembling a Tensegrity Hammock Stand
The struts are 123" long, tendons are 7/64 amsteel. There was a lot of calculating and then trial and error tweaking to arrive at the lengths of the tendons and how to connect them, but now that's out of the way, and it's not difficult to assemble.
Contact:
MacEntyre (at) Yahoo (dot) com
Molly Mac Gear will have a tensegrity stand product soon, complete with segmented aluminum struts, color coded tendons, and a modular tarp
Links:
الاثنين، 20 سبتمبر 2010
Are you paying too much for marijuana?
The Price of Weed is a new website that crowdsources the street value of marijuana. Their blog indicates that they will be expanding coverage to Europe soon.
Addendum: Discussion thread at Metafilter.
"Ice patch archaeology"
I've previously written posts both here and at Neatorama about the treasure trove of organic artifacts that are being revealed by melting, retreating glaciers. The report above comes from Reuters (via Huffington Post).
Hunting sticks, bows and arrows, and a 3,400-year-old leather shoe are some of the discoveries thawing out in Norway's Jotunheimen mountains. In one area, the Juvfonna ice field, 600 artifacts have turned up simultaneously, making the job very difficult for Piloe and his team, as feathers, wool, and leather can turn to dust within days if not collected and stored in a freezer.The video below discusses the situation in Oppland (central Norway).
The far-right wins parliamentary seats in Sweden
The Sweden Democrats (SD), which has described growth of the country's Muslim minority as the biggest foreign threat since the Second World War, won 20 seats in Sunday's parliamentary elections, leaving the two main blocs without a majority...Further details, and a brief news-summary video at the Al Jazeera link.
Many Swedes expressed disappointment that the Sweden Democrats won seats in the legislature. More than 6,000 protesters gathered in central Stockholm on Monday. Thousands of others, dressed in black clothes as an expression of mourning, marched in silence in Gothenburg...
The party says immigration is draining the welfare system and wants to cut asylum and immigration by relatives of people already living in Sweden by 90 per cent.
Immigrants make up 14 per cent of the country's population of 9.4 million. The largest groups of non-European immigrants in the last decade have been Iraqis and Somalis...
Sunspot
Photo: BBSO/Ciel et Espace Photos
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