OPEN THREAD 20191202

Open Thread 1 Minute

Basically, all legal free speech is allowed. We will assist the authorities in dealing with illegal speech. You are each other’s moderators. Have fun. And don’t forget to MAGA at nuclear levels.

Citizen U

Day 26 – IRON.

Published by Wolf Moon

Currently @wolfmoon1776 on WordPress.com sites and theqtree.com Reinstated as @WOLFM00N on Twitter, thanks to @elonmusk Also @WOLFM00N on Gab (YAY, GAB!), Truth Social, Gettr, Parler, Keybase, etc. Still @wolf_moon on Disqus.

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43 thoughts on “OPEN THREAD 20191202”

  1. There is a classification of civilizations into Stone (including “paleolithic” = old stone; “neolithic = new stone), Bronze, and Iron. Iron is the first element to give its name to a level of civilization.

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  2. You may be disappointed to learn that the Ferris Wheel is not a wheel of iron (ferrous), but was named after George Washington Gale Ferris, jr. — who designed and built a 264-foot version for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

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  3. The original name of the card game baccarat, when first introduced to France, was “chemin-de-fer”, which translates to “path of iron” — but is generally used to mean “railroad”. Baccarat, of course, is the favorite casino game of James Bond — at least in the original novels.

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  4. Iron melts at 2,507 F. By contrast, bronze melts at 1,981 F and aluminum melts at 1,220 F. There are vids on youtube where people melt aluminum cans and foil and make castings on their patio. They use vessels made of iron (often cut-off fire extinguishers) to melt the aluminum in. Melting iron is roughly as far beyond melting aluminum as melting aluminum is beyond making smores.

    My experiences with machining haven’t taken me there, yet, but I understand that machining cast iron involves breaking through a “crust” before things start behaving properly.

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  5. When iron is first smelted from its ore, it tends to have a variety of contaminants — chiefly carbon, which can be around 4%. In order to make such iron into steel, the carbon content needs to be reduced to 0.002% – 2.14%. In addition, various other substances can be mixed in, including vanadium, chromium, manganese, nickel, tungsten, and so on.

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  8. A quick-and-dirty method to heat-treat any sort of iron is to make it the shape you want, heat with a blowtorch until a magnet no longer sticks to it (iron loses its ability to be magnetic at about 1420 F), then drop in a (metal) bucket of used motor oil with bricks on the bottom. Two important points — drop into the oil because oil will catch fire if lowered gently; lined with bricks because you don’t want the bottom of your bucket to get too hot (or, worse yet, melt).

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      1. Might I be one of those being “trapped”?

        Consider……..

        Daniel 2:
        31 Thou, O king (Nebuchadnezzar), saw, and beheld a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
        32 This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
        33 His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay……..
        ——————–
        Gold Head = Babylonian Empire (Iraq) – 606 BC
        Silver Arms = Medo-Persian Empire (Iran) – 538 BC
        Brass Torso = Grecian Empire – 333 BC
        Legs of Iron = Roman Empire – 63 BC
        Feet of Iron mixed with Clay = ?

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  11. Iron is an important constituent to various biological processes — possibly the most immediate of which is transport of oxygen throughout the body in hemoglobin. It’s what causes most vertebrates’ blood to be red (when oxygenated).

    So, let’s drill down on that “most” — the only known vertebrates to lack hemoglobin are a family of fish known as the crocodile icefish (Channichthyidae) found only near Antarctica. Their blood is clear. Oxygen is transported in their blood plasma, which works because they live in oxygen-rich waters and their metabolism is slowed by the extreme cold.

    When you get to invertebrates, however, all bets are off. Perhaps the strangest case of the latter involves horseshoe crabs. They use hemocyanin — a protein based on copper — to transport oxygen in their blood, and their oxygenated blood is blue. They do not encapsulate their hemocyanin in blood cells, but let it circulate in their blood plasma.

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      1. Note that Spock in TOS has copper-based blood.

        Mind you, that little factoid always made me think that it would have been more straightforward for Sarek to have a kid with a horseshoe crab than with Amanda Grayson…….

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  14. One generally things of computers as silicon chips, copper wires, and such — but most computer data storage is maintained on “spinning rust”. Both hard and floppy disks record data in iron oxide mounted on aluminum, glass, ceramic, or plastic (for floppies) platters.

    The first commercial hard disk system, the IBM 350 disk storage, shipped in 1957 with a capacity of 3.75 megabytes on a stack of 50 platters that was roughly the same size as two refrigerators. In 1973, IBM released the “Winchester” disk drive, developed in San Jose. This “flew” the read/write heads above the disk based on air effects from spinning, and had a dedicated “landing zone” where the heads could go when not in use.

    The connection with Winchester in San Jose is another wild ride…. Smith and Wesson had formed a partnership in Norwich, Connecticut BEFORE they founded the Smith & Wesson Revolver Company that people know about. It lurched from product to product and investor to investor, eventually moving to New Haven and becoming the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, whose primary investor was a clothing manufacturer named Oliver Winchester. After another round of insolvency, it became the New Haven Arms Company in 1857.

    In 1866, after other investors attempted to squeeze him out, Winchester took over the whole shebang and called it the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Several successful firearms models followed — and, then, they hooked up with John Moses Browning and really struck it rich. Oliver Winchester died in December 1880, and his son and successor William Wirt Winchester died of tuberculosis four months later, leaving a widow in New Haven.

    Who promptly went mad. The company was still plugging along, but dainty flowers such as Sarah Winchester wouldn’t think of running it. So, instead, she was persuaded to “Go West” and landed in a partially-built farmhouse in San Jose. She then expanded the farmhouse, continuously, from 1884 to her death in 1922. Before the 1906 earthquake, it was seven stories high. Currently, it is only four stories, has about 161 rooms that include 40 bedrooms, two ballrooms, 47 fireplaces, 17 chimneys, two basements, three elevators, stairways that end at ceilings, doors that lead to two-story drops, and a variety of other quirky features.

    The “Winchester Mystery House” is a tourist attraction here, and it’s on Winchester Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in San Jose. And that’s what modern disk drives are named for…..

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  16. seriously….speaking of a man of iron, I’m really liking this one…

    …WH Counsel to PDJT, Pat Cipollone…

    WHITE HOUSE Won’t Participate In First Judiciary Impeachment Hearing

    article…

    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/472547-white-house-wont-participate-in-first-judiciary-impeachment-hearing

    12/01/2019

    yesterday, the WH informed the House Judiciary Committee that it will not participate in Wednesday’s inquiry hearing…

    WH Counsel to PDJT, Pat Cipollone, said the following in a letter to Dem Chairman, Nadler :

    excerpt..

    “We can not fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings.”

    and..

    “More importantly, an invitation to an academic discussion of law professors does not begin to provide the President with any semblance of fair process .”

    Cipollone further stated :

    “It is too late to cure the profound procedural deficiencies that have tainted this entire inquiry…Nevertheless, if you are serious about conducting a fair process….,and, in order to protect the rights and privileges of the President, we may consider participating in future Judiciary Committee proceedings if you afford the Administration the ability to do so meaningfully.”

    ….like allowing fact witnesses to be called ….such as those called for by Rep. Devin Nunes…

    …and denied by Adam Schiff.

    please read more, at the link.

    (compare and contrast Mr Cipollone to schiff…wow).

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  17. As Wolf mentions above, iron is pretty close to where the last bit of energy from both fission and fusion have been spent. Accordingly, there’s a lot of it around. As far as this planet is concerned, however, much of it sank into the primordial earth before things firmed up.

    Rotation of the earth’s core, which is mainly iron, generates the earth’s magnetic field. The earth’s magnetic field, in turn, keeps us from being irradiated to death by the radiation that constantly bombards our planet.

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  21. I am iron man!
    Has he lost his mind?
    Can he see or is he blind?
    Can he walk at all?
    Or if he moves will he fall?
    Is he alive or dead?
    Has he thoughts within his head?
    We’ll just pass him there.
    why should we even care?
    He was turned to steel.
    In the great magnetic field.
    Where he travelled time.
    For the future of mankind.

    Iron Man – Black Sabbath 1970

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