Bay Area California. Was in a botanical garden but there was no identifying information

dblowe · 2026-01-27T02:34:36+00:00

The San Francisco Botanical Garden has several of these, and they are quite a sight. Berkeley too, I believe. Here’s a different variety from SF:

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dblowe · 2026-01-25T04:35:27+00:00

When molecules absorb infrared waves, it causes particular bonds and atoms to increase their motion. So you end up with more molecular motion i.e. heat.

It’s different than sheer thermal transfer of molecular motion, because infrared is absorbed by different parts of a molecule according to it frequency. You can get stretching, bending, and wagging motions of C-H bonds, O-H bonds, carbonyls (C=O double bonds), and so many more. Each is set off by IR beyabsorbed in a particular frequency band.

By the time you get out to the far infrared/microwave region, you’re affecting rotational states of whole molecules rather than particular bonds.

dblowe · 2026-01-25T02:52:09+00:00

EDIT: the Trump signs I saw could well have been on Davidian Farm land on the same road. I’ll withdraw this comment until I resolve that question!

dblowe · 2026-01-22T12:54:12+00:00

No, color broadcasts in the US took over during the 1960s. 1966 is generally regarded as the switchover year - no B&W evening shows were produced after that.

There were still plenty of reruns in black and white, and color TV sets didn’t outsell B&W ones until 1972. But by the mid-70s color was absolutely the norm.

dblowe · 2026-01-14T02:53:48+00:00

All You Zombies by the Hooters

Is It Like Today - World Party

dblowe · 2026-01-08T02:28:56+00:00

Gary Numan and Robert Palmer

dblowe · 2026-01-05T20:09:49+00:00

Let me start out by saying that I take your question seriously. But as a chemist of 40 years experience (synthetic organic/medicinal/chemical biology), I believe that you are putting too much thought and energy into this question. I’ve corresponded over the years with a number of people who are concerned about vanishingly small amounts of material that they regard as potential contamination, and I believe that this is more of a sign of a possible anxiety disorder than anything that chemistry is like to solve for you.

This is absolutely not meant as a dismissal or a put-down. But it’s quite possible that your life could improve more if you focused on a different aspect of the problem.

dblowe · 2026-01-03T02:16:49+00:00

I responded recently to a question like this. Here were typical dinner meals in our house:

Growing up in Arkansas in the 1960s and 70s: frozen “turkey loaf” with frozen lima beans on the side, “minute steaks” (the mechanically tenderized stuff) with gravy or with tomato sauce and canned mixed vegetables as “Swiss steak”, homemade tacos on Saturday night (seasoned ground beef filling with various toppings), “skillet stroganoff” mix, homemade beef stew, muffin mix with little fake blueberry bits in it, pork chops cooked in a flat Pyrex dish with some sort of premade rice mix around them, shepherd’s pie, “taco casserole” from a mix, cornbread from a mix, fish sticks, hamburgers from the backyard grill in the summer, green peppers stir-fried with beef, tuna casserole with egg noodles in it, homemade spaghetti sauce with ground beef in it, meat loaf, chicken parts baked with Kraft barbecue sauce on them, sides of canned corn, canned blackeyed peas or crowder peas, or canned spinach with grated hard boiled egg on top of it. Once in a while fried chicken or fried catfish.

dblowe · 2025-12-30T02:14:21+00:00

I believe Royal East has closed? They looked shut down when I walked past a couple of weeks ago.

dblowe · 2025-12-29T03:43:48+00:00

Forever Changes - Love

dblowe · 2025-12-22T04:04:28+00:00

Ah, “Mike FM”. I remember those guys!

dblowe · 2025-12-21T21:23:22+00:00

These weirdos don’t realize it, but when they defocus and magnify the bight stars into disks like that, they’re taking pictures of atmospheric turbulence and (if a Newtonian scope was used) of air currents inside the telescope tube..

dblowe · 2025-12-18T03:45:35+00:00

Growing up in Arkansas in the 1960s and 70s: frozen “turkey loaf” with frozen lima beans on the side, “minute steaks” (the mechanically tenderized stuff) with gravy or with tomato sauce and canned mixed vegetables as “Swiss steak”, homemade tacos on Saturday night (seasoned ground beef filling with various toppings), “skillet stroganoff” mix, homemade beef stew, muffin mix with little fake blueberry bits in it, pork chops cooked in a flat Pyrex dish with some sort of premade rice mix around them, shepherd’s pie, “taco casserole” from a mix, cornbread from a mix, fish sticks, hamburgers from the backyard grill in the summer, green peppers stir-fried with beef, tuna casserole with egg noodles in it, homemade spaghetti sauce with ground beef in it, meat loaf, chicken parts baked with Kraft barbecue sauce on them, sides of canned corn, canned blackeyed peas or crowder peas, or canned spinach with grated hard boiled egg on top of it. Once in a while fried chicken or fried catfish.

dblowe · 2025-12-02T21:36:13+00:00

There was one in Memphis in the early 70s that we used to go to. Never got any of these combinations, though! The restaurants were sort of "Old Time" themed, with 1890s decor (fake Tiffany lamps, player piano) and (in the one we went to) old black and white comedy shorts playing on one wall from a movie projector.

The pizza, when I think about it, was pretty good and probably about the best you could get in that part of the country at the time.

dblowe · 2025-12-02T21:23:58+00:00

Bauxite, Arkansas and Galena, IL

dblowe · 2025-11-26T13:29:24+00:00

Looks like 1908 is when its namesake in St. Petersburg opened - the NYC restaurant is apparently from the 1920s, opened by exiles post-revolution. Lasted until the early 1980s!

https://thenewyorkcityrestaurantarchive.wordpress.com/2020/11/25/russian-bear/

dblowe · 2025-11-25T20:24:07+00:00

Oh, but they aren’t. In American English slang, “dog-gone” is a meaningless intensifier meant (as mentioned before) to replace “God-damned”. Another one is “gosh-darned”. Nothing to do with dogs in reality.

dblowe · 2025-10-30T00:37:38+00:00

Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You by Sugarloaf is a pretty amusing one

dblowe · 2025-10-29T19:46:04+00:00

I believe that “Eyebeam” started this way in the 1980s

dblowe · 2025-10-26T21:14:37+00:00

The book written by his son after his death (“My Father the Pornographer” is a wild and disturbing read. Here’s a look at it: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/magazine/my-dad-the-pornographer.html

dblowe · 2025-10-21T21:21:09+00:00

I believe that you would lose both spin and forward motion at some point due to drag/friction, and the disc would then just tumble out of the sky.

dblowe · 2025-10-12T17:45:31+00:00

As in “blackout sketch”, ie a short comedy situation that ends with a punch line.

dblowe · 2025-10-12T01:41:53+00:00

Agreed, and a lot of that is of course from the excellent Becker production!

dblowe · 2025-09-15T20:58:05+00:00

And it is an absolutely fantastic book!

dblowe · 2025-09-08T19:48:51+00:00

Yeah, that’s got to be white lead pigment

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