S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 6

Fall Eqinox

Next Sunday (the 22nd) at 12:44 PM UTC (5:44 AM Pacific time) is the fall (or autumnal) equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. This is when the sun is over the Equator and the daylight all over the globe is right around 12 hours. It also marks the beginning of autumn. The tilt of the Earth is pointing sideways to the sun. 

When I was a kid they would say during the summer, the axis of the Earth points toward the sun, and in the winter, it points away. I thought the axis changed, like a wobbling top. But then I couldn't figure out how the axis always pointed at the North Star. It took me years to understand how that happens as the Earth orbits the sun the axis stays the same but the orientation of the axis to the sun changes as the Earth orbits it. I often took things way too literally when I was a kid.

Also, when I was a kid growing up in Idaho, I couldn't understand why winter didn't start until late December (the winter solstice) when it usually started snow in early November. But we were at about 5,000 feet elevation where we lived (the Snake River Plain). 

And as always, time passes and we fly by another milestone.

At least I'm not writing about cars this week!

Black Wheels

We talked about why tires are black. Now we'll discuss black wheels:

It seems to me that black wheels on cars are the current popular style. I see them a lot on newer vehicles and in car ads. I drove by a car dealership the other day and there were five or six vehicles on their lot all in a row and all with black wheels. Maybe the car manufactures are trying to push them on us. I don't know.

In fact, my new car (well, it's over a year old now) came with black wheels:

At first I was thinking "I could live with them" even though I prefer more... blingy wheels. Then I lived with them. They got dirty if you looked at them wrong and they were hard to clean. And, as I said, I just didn't like the look of them. 
So when it was time to take off my winter tires, I left them on the black wheels and installed a set of BBS wheels which are much more pretty and don't get dirty as easily and are easier to clean.

I like the look so much more than the black wheels. I kept the winter tires on the black wheels to use when keeping a car clean is less important.

I don't know why black wheels are so popular, at least with automakers. I remembered being baffled by the large wheel phenomenon (which, to an extent, is still happening), too. 

What do you think of black wheels? Do you care? Or are they just mostly ugly? Let me know in the comments below.

Why is the Michelin Man White?

Has it ever bothered you that the Michelin Man is white and tires are black? Why is that?

The Michelin tire company was started in 1889 in France. Tires were (and are) made of rubber. But rubber is white. So tires were white. So the Michelin Man was probably made white for that reason. 

And Michelin is now running ads in the US with cartoon white tires on cars. Which I find kind of funny.

Tires stayed white until 1910 when the Goodrich tire company in the U.S. started putting carbon black into tire formulations. Carbon black acts as a catalyst during the vulcanization process, which turns soft rubber into the more durable and elastic substance we use in automotive tires and elsewhere. It not only prevents the rubber's deterioration by stabilizing dozens of chemical bonds, but it increases the material's tensile strength, or the maximum amount of stress it can bear before breaking. This is obviously a boon for tires, which face constant strain. There is still carbon black in modern tires.

What is carbon black? It is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil. The biggest use of carbon black in the world is tires. It is used as a pigment and reinforcing phase in automobile tires. Carbon black also helps conduct heat away from the tread and belt area of the tire, reducing thermal damage and increasing tire life.

Why is the Michelin Man still white after over 120 years of black tires? Well, you'd have to ask the company. But a black Michelin Man just would look strange, these days.

What do you think? Should the Michelin Man be black? Or are you okay with white? Let me know in the comments below.

The Huskies Start Play this Weekend

Saturday, the University of Washington Huskies start their play for the 2024 season. They play Weber State (an FCS team out of Utah) first. The game will be Saturday at 8pm PDT on the Big10 Network. That's a very late game.

I have no idea how good my favorite team will be this season. 

Last year we went 14-1, undefeated until losing the national championship game to the very good Michigan team. We even beat the hated Oregon twice.

But then our amazing coach left for Alabama. Jerk.

So the school hired Jedd Fisch out of the University of Arizona. He had turned that school around in three years. 

The Huskies lost a lot of players and only two starters stayed. But a transfer quarterback, Will Rogers, stayed even after the old coach left. 

I've only seen this iteration of the Huskies play in the spring game which was at the end of spring camp. They looked okay. So we'll have to see how they play against Weber State. I'm having flashbacks to the time we lost to Montana (an FCS team) under coach Jimmy Lake. He was fired before the end of the season.

Years ago, when the Huskies weren't very good, I came up with my criteria for a good season:

1) Win at least 8 games

2) Beat Oregon

3) Beat Washington State

4) Go to a good bowl game and win it.

The move to the Big10 has sort of messed up that Washington State game. Could be in the future we won't play WSU (we are this year). Also, they went from being a big fish in a medium-sized pond to being a medium-sized fish in a gargantuan pond. I think that's part of the reason our Weber State game is so late (11pm Eastern Time).

And they will have to travel more. Their first away game they play Rutgers... in New Jersey. Other far-away places they will play this year are Iowa City, Iowa, Bloomington, Indiana, and University Park, Pennsylvania. Those will make the trip to Eugene, Oregon to play the Ducks seem like a breeze.  

Another thing I'm not happy about is that the Apple Cup game against Washington State (which is now a non-conference game) is going to be exclusively on Peacock. So I'm going to have to subscribe to that streaming service. At least for a month.

When the AP top 25 pre-season poll came out, the Huskies weren't even on it. Oregon was number three, though. It would be great if we could beat Oregon on the last regular season game. Ex-coach at Vanderbilt and Louisiana State, Gerry DiNardo, says the Huskies could go 5-0 to start their season. That might get us back in the AP top 25.

Are there any college football teams you're looking forward to watching this year. Let me know in the comments below.

Umbrellas

Where I grew up in Idaho it rarely rained. And when it did, it didn't last long. There was very little reason to be outside in the rain. You'd just wait until it stopped raining.
Now snow was another matter. We lived at about 5,000 feet elevation and it snowed all winter starting about the end of October well into April. 
But, anyway, you had no need for an umbrella.
Then I moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington (Go Dawgs!). And you had to walk between classes in the incessant rain. And walking to the bus stop. And waiting for the bus. And walking from the bus stop to where you lived. You needed an umbrella or you got soaked. 
These days a lot of Seattle and environ natives don't bother with umbrellas. They just dress for wet weather. But that didn't seem to be the case when I lived there in the early 1980s.
And I literally had to ask someone where to buy an umbrella. They looked at me as if I were nuts. Like, how could I not know that. 
So I bought an umbrella at Sears.
When I went back to college in the early 90s, I don't remember people, including me, using umbrellas. 
I still have an umbrella, even though I live now where we get 8 inches of rain a year. But I use it if I go to the West/wet side of the state.
Do you own/use an umbrella. Why or why not? Let me know in the comments below.

Counting

About four years ago I posted on this very blog that I can't count more than four things in one glance and without going "one, two, three, four, five..."

And I wonder about other people, do they have similar problems?

Then I read about the the Piraha Tribe of the Amazon. They have three numbers: one, two, and many.

So anything bigger than two is just "many." Which would, I think, make a civilization very difficult. 

They apparently don't have zero either.  But that's okay, neither did the Egyptians, the Romans, and the medieval Europeans until they learned it from the Muslims. 

Anyway, I felt a little better about my difficulty counting because Pirahas have similar problems. Here's about 200 people who don't even know "four" exists.

Do you have trouble counting quickly numbers that are too big? How many can you count at a quick glance? Let me know in the comments below.

Reoccurring Dreams

I find it interesting that I keep having this reoccurring dream.

It goes something like this: in order to earn my college degree I have to pass a certain math class. But I don't know or understand the math. In some dreams I'm faced with the test and I completely do not understand it. (At least I'm not naked.) 

Then I'll wake up and be relieved, knowing that I have my degree (since 1994) and I don't have to take any math classes again. 

I have taken a lot of math classes in college: a year of calculus and one class of deferential equations. I took a fluid dynamics class that had me doing differential equations in my sleep, literally. Don't ask me to do differential equations now, though.

But I still have this dream/nightmare. It's almost as bad as the dreams I have about being back in the corporate world.

Do you have reoccurring dreams? Do they upset you? Let me know in the comments below.

I Don't Watch Reality Shows

Welcome to August!
I have never watched reality and talent contest shows. Unless you count Jeopardy as a reality show. I have watched some clips, such as this one because I thought the woman had amazing talent. Oh, and this one, because the woman's story was so uplifting yet tragic (watch to the end).

But I've never watched The Bachelor or The Bachelorette or Survivor or... pretty much anything else.  Haven't watched The Voice or American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance.

Why? Mostly because I don't care. I don't want to see people humiliate themselves on television, I guess. 

When I was a kid, there was a show called The Gong Show. It featured people trying to win... pretty much nothing if I remember correctly. Some of the acts were pretty good. Some were just awful (and would get the eponymous gong). People would do horrible things just to be on TV. And I guess that soured me on the whole reality show craze. And, in a lot of cases, they are manipulating people to get ratings. Reminds me of this clip from The Simpsons.

How do you feel about reality show and talent contest shows? Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

Lily's Eyes

LilyAbout four years ago I wrote a blog post about eyes. And I said sometimes I can see through sideways our cat Lily's cornea. And I wished I could catch that on camera.

I recently took a picture of Lily where that is true... a little. It wasn't my intention to take such a picture. I just took one for Caturday on social media. 

Later I was looking at the picture close up, and I noticed in her right eye, I could see through the cornea. Not a lot, but some. Here's a closeup of that eye:

Isn't that cool? You can see the right side of her eye from the left. You can also see the reflection of the window she's looking out.

Have you seen that before on a cat. I think human corneas are too flat to do that.

Let me know in the comments below.

Trailers and Previews

I was watching Shōgun on FX, DVR'ing it and then watching it at my convenience. FX is part of the Fox networks of channels (now owned by Disney) so Shōgun ads were shown on lots of channels, not just FX. And when an ad would come on, I'd mute the TV and put my hand up so I couldn't see it. I didn't want any spoilers.

By the way, Shōgun was excellent and, as far as I know, is available to stream on Hulu. I could have done without the one scene in the first episode that graphically shows one of my nightmare ways of dying. I found it quite disturbing.

So, I thought I'd do a blog post about how much I hate (and yet, love) movie trailers and previews. But I already did. That was almost ten years ago. Yes, this blog has been around that long. In fact, the first post on this blog was September 19, 2012.

So now I've not blogged about trailers and previews. What should I do now?

I guess I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Let me know what you think about trailers and previews in the comments below.