End Of Oil

There have been many books written over the past forty years about the consequences of over population and the resultant scarcity of resources. The oil scare in the 70s was followed by relatively inexpensive oil in the 80s and 90s, but we are now seeing a return to expensive oil, and the consequences of those price increases. If the authors are correct, many of us will not be retiring in the manner which we have been expecting.

You can read an amazing article about this here if you are willing to pay $12. Clearly, it would be better to just subscribe to the magazine for a year ($28) and get all of the articles for “free” instead.

If you cannot afford to purchase the article, please contact me here.

Understanding the Financial Crisis

There have been a number of great discussions about the origins of the financial crisis on the NPR show “Fresh Air”. The most recent such is by Gillian Tett. This show is well worth listening to

Vote Early and Often

My friend, Rob Nagler, has come up with a creative approach to help kids get regular exercise, by encouraging them, and rewarding them, to bike to school. Check out his concept at freiker.org. And then vote for his product at ChangeMakers.

Amazing 3D Surfaces

If you’re “lucky” enough to be running under Windows, you can download a program that displays Seifert Surfaces. You don’t need to know what they are. Just download the program and run it. Be prepared to be puzzled and to feel your brain grumble a little. Note that the 3D image can be rotated with the mouse.

Click Here for Seifert Surface Viewer!

Summer In Vermont

A few days ago, the peepers were almost uncountable in the pond (see picture).  Over the weekend, Spring seemed to take a stutter-step (see second picture).

Spring Comes Roaring In

I saw a wild turkey within about 10 feet of the house on Wednesday. Thursday morning, the pond was virtually covered with ice.  I went out after lunch to wrestle with some tree limbs that had fallen during the winter, and to convince some diagonal trees that life in the horizontical is much preferred.  It was 60 with nice sun, almost perfect weather.    No bugs yet.  By mid afternoon, I realized that the pond ice was almost gone, so I put the waterfall pump back in the pond, and started it going.  As I went to bed, I heard the first of the spring peepers.  From ice to peepers in 12 hours.  I guess winter’s over here.

Rodney’s Tongue is Rough

So, as soon as the stitches were removed, Rodney made it his principle task to lick the fur off of his belly, and then lick the skin off, too.  I tried two varieties of  “yuck”, evil tasting goops that you lather on around the wounds, to try to keep a cat from licking.  Neither worked.  I tried a salve, hoping that it would reduce the itching, and he would stop licking.  He actually enjoyed eating the salve right out of the container.  I tried a small tee shirt, with leg holes cut in it; that lasted about 12 hours.

Now we’re onto a soft E Collar, which is working (he can no longer lick his belly), but he is fairly annoyed.  And annoying.  He licks and scratches at the collar all of the time, which is loud enough to wake me up at night.  He looks ridiculous, and the other cat, Oni, seems well aware that Rodney is now absurd. The collar makes it difficult for him to walk, because he keeps stepping on the thing.  And it can focus sounds, when it is bent forwards, and this seems to make him freak out a lot when the birds squawk.

So.  Rodney’s better.  But not perfect yet.  Another few weeks.  Sound familiar?

Rodey Doing Well

Rodney had his superficial stitches removed on Monday; the ones holding his abdominal wall together remain, under his skin, unseen. He continues to have a good appetite, is enjoying the warming weather, and continues to be a pain in the neck for the other cat, Oni. In short, he appears to be doing well!

3D Printing for everyone

I just stumbled across a new web site, ShapeWays.  I gather that one can create a computer model of a 3D object, upload it to the ShapeWays site, and then pay to have it “printed” and shipped to you.  Even more interesting, you can make your models available to others, so that anyone can order the objects that you design.  You pay a flat rate per cubic centimeter of printed material.

3D printers create solid objects from 3D models.  It is possible to create objects that could not be made by casting or by sculpting, or with traditional machining operations.  This is because you can “print” something inside something else, or interlocked with something else.  If you take a look at some of the examples, below, you will understand.

What have people used this new facility for?  Many are just interesting 3D objects, such as those created by Bathsheba, but others have created parts for cars (wheels, chassis, etc), some figures (faces, chests, legs), robot parts, and even an iPod rest.

Here are some of the more interesting shapes that I found:

Vorodo, by Bathsheba

Soap Dish

Interlocked Rings

Worm Hole

Flexible Whale

Dodeca Hydrex

Rolling Star

Virus

Holey

Pendant

Working 3 Speed Transmission

Rodney, Saturday

Rodney spent most of Tuesday meowing, and spent the whole night in bed with me, neither of which are “normal” behaviors.  Wednesday he was not as vocal, was eating, and was sleeping in a variety of places, which seemed more reasonable.   He seemed more engaged with what was going on around the house.

I had 5 separate meds to give him, two of which were so voluminous that I had to give them in two separate doses.  That meant 7 separate medication events, which took something like 2 hours to complete, during which I was interrupted every 15 minutes or so.  The meds had been prepared by a regular pharmacy, and were totally unpalatable to him, so I arranged to get them prepared by a specialty compounding place, to be picked up on Saturday.

By Friday, he was a bit sluggish, and I took him in for a pre-scheduled checkup.   I was nervous, thinking that Rodney was declining.  The doctor did some blood tests, and showed me that his red cell count was up (good) and his blood protein was up (good).  His temperature was high normal.   The vet also looked at a slide and determined that there were very few young white cells, which indicated that there were no new infections.  He declared that Rodney was doing quite well.  He pointed out that continued improvement would depend on Rodney’s eating a high protein diet, and he supplied some special cat food for that purpose.  The session took 2 hours at the vets, plus an hour each way; I arrived home wiped out.

Rodney came home, at a mouthful of food, and went to sleep on my chest.  In the evening, he crawled up to lie next to me. His nictitating membranes were mostly closed, indicating extreme exhaustion.  He slept near me all night, sneezing a few times, and making noises as if he was sniffling.  In the morning, he just lay there.  I rubbed food on his nose, and he licked it, but was uninterested in eating.  We won’t increase blood protein through fasting.  Sigh.

I called the vets, hauled him back in, and he’s there for the weekend.  His heart and lungs seem to be fine, the incision is fine, and his hydration is OK, as is his temperature.  They have no idea what is going on, but will try to give him saline and an appetite stimulant.  We will see how things are on Monday.

So, I now have brand new meds, no cat, and no idea what meds will be required when/if he returns to me on Monday.  I’m relieved that I don’t have to worry about making mistakes this weekend, but worried about what is happening, since none of the vets really has a clue at the moment.

I’m exhausted again.