How Cold Is It?

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The Difference Between Desire And Reality
The Difference Between Desire And Reality

 

I posed this question to Dave, who then sent the above picture of his thermostat on Sunday. He was back at Purdue by then. Here the grip of the arctic vortex has loosened some and it actually made it into the twenties today, but even this relative warm-up is not enough to stay the epidemic of broken water mains that is occurring around town. The lingering cold is causing these pipes to freeze. A real gusher of a fountain popped out of the middle of the street in front of work today. I’ve been running a steady drip on the basement sink to prevent its pipes from freezing and then bursting all over everywhere.

I may have been an unwitting vector in another cold related epidemic. Two Saint Louis children had to go to the emergency room for minor burns resulting from throwing pots of boiling water into the air. I posted a YouTube video of me doing this a few days ago. It is all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Apparently, I was not the only participant in this Internet meme, but since then I’ve stocked up on a whole host of other frozen science experiments that I can perform during the next arctic vortex. There is the frozen banana that can be used to hammer in nails. Lt. Dan told me about the fun he and his kids had had with frozen bubbles. Instead of popping the bubbles crack open like an eggshell.

The one thing that this cold weather is not good for is bicycling, but I have seen some hardy cyclists out on their bikes even in this awful weather. I don’t know if I’ve written about this story already, but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from it at work. It involves the last time that Anne and I went bicycling, which also happens to be the first time that I tried out my new Go Pro camera on the bike. We were riding in the park, when another couple asked us for directions. Noticing the camera, the husband asked me to do a stunt. My rather lame excuse was that I was still learning how to operate the camera.

The Whole World Was Watching

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Richard J Daley Welcomes the 1968 Democratic Convention
Yippie Democratic Convention Handbill
The Chicago Police Welcomes the 1968 Democratic Convention

Last week, Anne and I went to see “The 1968 Exhibit” at the Missouri History Museum. As its name implies this exhibit focuses upon the year 1968 in American history. One of the defining aspects of this watershed year was that year’s Presidential election and one of the pivotal events of that election was the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

In the months leading up to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, there was much chatter on the left, to put it in today’s parlance. The anti-war movement was seeking to make a major show of force, shut down the convention and drive home the message, to end the war now. While, the Chicago police found themselves in a jittery state after the rioting on the city’s West Side following the assassination of Martin Luther King earlier that year.

Aware of the threat from the left, the police braced for battle. And the battles came, first in Lincoln Park, when the police used tear gas to clear out protesters camping there, then even more brutally in Grant Park, a few nights later. Protesters chanted before the TV cameras, “The whole world is watching!”

Inside the convention hall there were other battles, over party rules, platform planks and over the competing candidates. The anti-war plank lost, along with the peace candidates George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy. Herbert Humphrey emerged the party’s nominee, but his campaign was fatally damaged by the violence in the streets and Richard Nixon eventually became president.

In Chicago, the anti-war movement, an irresistible force collided with Mayor Daley, an immovable object. Television cameras captured the resulting clashes as national theater. It was as if the Vietnam War was being acted out in some sort of fantasy role-playing version of the war, act tough, try to intimidate, win over the center with a show of force and draw the other side into acting every bit as monstrous as you said they were. 

Much of this post is just me paraphrasing the exhibit’s cue card, including its quote of Todd Gitlin from his book, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. Still it is a story that I thought was worth the retelling and like much of “The 1968 Exhibit” contained events that were then and remain so today, deeply moving to me. I hope that you the reader found this post useful. 

How Cold Is It?

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X-Country Skiing

X-Country Skiing

No, I don’t have cabin fever, why do you ask? Work was closed today, so I didn’t even have to pretend to be sick. I’ve already called the employee hotline and work will be open tomorrow. I’ve been off work for 17 days now and I am almost looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Maybe I do have a touch of cabin fever?

I did get the cross-country skis out and skied up and down the street a few times. Anne made be come back inside every 15 minutes, she was afraid that I would frostbite my nose off. I used my new Go Pro camera to take the above photo. Thanks again, Jay! Anne wasn’t willing to venture outside today, but she did get some exercise. She did the “7 Minute Workout”, which reminded me of the hitchhiker scene from the movie, Something About Mary. She’ll be off again tomorrow, so maybe she can work up to the “8 Minute Workout”?

Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the exercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7… Minute… Abs.

I did spend waste a large part of the day online, but I did come across a video where a Wisconsin man turns a pot full of boiling water into snow, simply by tossing it into the air. I had to try to repeat it. He had a temperature of -25 °F to work with, so I wasn’t sure if I could repeat the experiment with this afternoon’s -3 °F. As it turns out, I could, as the following video demonstrates. According to an online article on the subject, boiling water has a greater viscosity than room temperature water. This increased viscosity creates smaller water droplets, which freeze faster than the alternative. The lesson from this science experiment is that unless your temperature has a minus sign in front of it, then it is not really cold where you are. Sorry. And we’re not talking about wind chill here either. These are absolute temperatures. It was -8 °F here this morning.