Hot enough to fry an egg . . .

Monday it was hot enough in London, Ontario, Canada, to fry an egg. I thought of using the hood of my car but, I didn't. I'm curious but not that curious. I used my wife's car.

I considered going to the wrecker's in order to find a flat, black painted car panel but it was too far to drive. I don't have that kind of spare change.


The phrase may be, "It's hot enough to fry an egg . . . " but truth is that it is the sun that does the work. Air temperature alone will not do it. Eggs need a temperature of 158 degrees Fahrenheit to cook.

When I was a boy we used to go swimming at Point Pelee and it was a long walk from the parking lot to the beach. The sand felt hot enough to cook an egg, it sure played havoc with our feet, but a egg would have been safe. I'm sure the sand didn't hit the magic 158 degree temperature.

Hot sidewalks won't do it either. Even if you could find a sidewalk that hit 158 degrees, the raw egg sitting on the concrete would quickly lower the sidewalk surface temperature. Sidewalks are out.

But cooking an egg on a clear-sky, hot summer day is possible. Check the picture. A fried egg. I accepted sunny side up. I wasn't going to push the moment. It was fried around 1 p.m. daylight saving time in London, Ontario, Canada, on August 17th, 2009, while some of my neighbours watched.

Frying an egg under the hot sun may be possible but there are some tricks involved. We are not talking cheating here but physics. If you are going to get this to work you need to think like a scientist and a magician. Consider why this is a still picture and not a YouTube video. A little banter while you cook will help folk from noticing the little things -- the very important things.

As further proof that cooking an egg is possible -- difficult but possible -- I submit this link to a site where a fellow examined the temperature of the hood of a black-painted car sitting in full summer sun. He got a reading of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

Or check out this story from Las Vegas, Nevada. The reporter for the Review-Journal in the American desert city recorded a temperature of 190 degrees Fahrenheit on a black SUV driver's door and a couple of vehicles had dashboards hitting 179 degrees Fahrenheit when parked full in the sun.

This little bit of fun does have a serious side. Don't ever leave children or pets inside a parked car. Folks have have fried eggs inside cars. Don't fry your loved ones. This is not a joke. The Dallas Morning News took the temperature of a car, and not a black one, left in the mid-day sun with its windows rolled up. The air temperature inside that car hit almost 140 degrees Fahrenheit. We may live in Canada, not in Texas, but our summer sun must still be respected.

And if you like to sunbath think of my egg and then think of basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Sunny side up is fine for eggs but not so good for people. I know; I've had treatments for sun damaged skin.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Addendum: Just learned from my wife that the children at the summer camp where she works were kept inside today as there was a heat advisory in effect. Guess I picked a good day to write my first weather story. And it wasn't even a slow news day.

More red is redder than less red...

Lamp: illusion

Some months ago, I wrote the post below the line. If you have read this post already, link over to this site — Mighty Optical Illusions. It is dedicated to illusions and is quite entertaining. Be warned: the lamp illusion is not for young kids.
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When I was studying at Ryerson my art criticism professor liked to say, "More red is redder than less red." What he meant was that in any painting a very large area of red paint has a completely different appearance from the identical colour applied to only a small patch of canvas and surrounded by an other colour or colours. Even if the paint was applied sequentially and all paint from the same tube, the two different sized coloured patches would look different.

He said this rule held for modern works by artists such as Piet Mondrian as well as for paintings by old masters. At the time, we were studying the abstract expressionist art of Hans Hofmann, Mr. Push-Pull on the picture plane, and the author of "Search for the Real and Other Essays." I followed all the arguments but I wasn't always convinced. Today, I stumbled upon this, and now I'm convinced. My professor was right.

Optical Illusion: blue and green are same colour

O.K. That's all I can show you. I am not into stealing another person's blog. If your interest is peaked visit: Richard Wiseman blog.

p.s. I took the image into Photoshop and read the colours with the densitometer and they were identical. I then cropped a square of pure colour from each and placed the squares side by side and they matched.

If you have a comment, I'm all ears.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Addendum: someone sent me a comment with a link to the following optical illusion created by Professor Edward Adelson of M.I.T. Again, if you want to know more click the Optical Illusion link.

Optical Illusion: square A and square B are the same tint of grey

...and for today, "That's all folks!"

Cheers,
Rockinon!

Spaceship Earth and Finite Resources

I read in the New York Times that the Ford Motor Company is using boron in the new Ford Fiesta, entering the North American market in 2010. Adding boron to steel makes it stronger so Ford will use boron strengthened steel extensively in their new model. One result will be greater protection for drivers and passengers in the event of a collision. Another result will be an increase in the use of boron.

Crediting Wikipedia, the NYT wrote that "...boron is relatively rare, representing only 0.001 percent of the Earth's crust. The worldwide deposits are estimated as 10 million tons... ." They continue, "Nearly all boron ore is extracted for refinement into boric acid for antiseptic, insecticide and flame retardant, or borax for detergents, cosmetics and enamel glazes...," with nearly three-quarters coming from Turkey.

Reading the above paragraph made me gasp. The worldwide deposits are only estimated to be 10 million tons? Can that be true? Boron, of Twenty Mule Team Borax fame, is found mostly in Turkey today and we have but 10 million tons of the stuff? True? Possibly.

Trying to write about his makes me aware of how little I understand terms such as: reserves, reserve base, depletion allowance. The bottom line seems to be that according to the United States government, "At current levels of consumption, world resources are adequate for the foreseeable future."

In the USGS report we learn the reserve base for boron is 410,000 (something) while the world's production of boron was an average 4465 (something). Does this mean the world's reserve base will be exhausted in less than 92 years?

No, it doesn't. There will be lots more boron discovered in the intervening years. But, we may discover more uses for boron, like in hardening steel. It is proving to be a remarkably handy mineral. It is used in fiberglass production, the manufacture of soaps and detergents, agriculture, steel making and numerous other applications and products. More uses would throw the current levels of consumption figures into the dumpster.

My point? Boron appears to be in somewhat limited supply. The supply rooms of Spaceship Earth are not brimming with the stuff. Whether it will last another century, or another three centuries, I am sure there are those who can see a future without easily attainable boron. The strip mines will be closed.

At this time, the recycling of boron is insignificant. We mine it, we use it, we deplete it.

Addendum: I was chatting with someone who wanted to argue about my concerns. The experts say our boron will last centuries, relax, I was told. Ah yes, when I was a boy fish, like cod, were a renewable resource and would never run out. We had an infinite supply. In the future the oceans of the world would feed the world. Today the list of threatened, or essentially eliminated global fish stocks, grows longer by the year. The infinite supply of cod is gone, and it took just decades. They just don't make infinite supplies like they once did. ;-)

Cheers,
Rockinon

Aviator Sunglasses Do Not Have to be Expensive

Roots: Distortion Free

The sun is not just hard on our skin, it's also tough on our eyes. For this reason, the glasses we wear should protect us from UVA, which penetrates the skin more deeply than UVB and thus may contribute more to the development of skin cancers, and from UVB, the radiation that causes sunburns.

Most people protect their eyes with sunglasses. Personally, I don't like them. I like my colours bright, clean and untinted. For that reason, I made sure my bifocals block both types of UV radiation. It is not the tint that provides the protection but the UVA and UVB filtering properties of the lenses.

Because sunglasses provide important protection for our eyes, it's important to get the word out. Despite what Anita Sharma of Sun Media says, better quality sunglasses will not "have you reaching deeper into your pocket."

Foster Grant: Total UV Protection

• Sunglasses don't have to be expensive. I found Foster Grant glasses, left, with 100% protection from UVA and UVB, $12.97.
  
• I found Roots distortion free, 100% UV protection, sunglasses at $30.
  
• I found fashionable, full-protection Aviator sunglasses from Alfred Sung for $24.95
• Dockers Aviator sunglasses, available at the Bay in Canada, are priced at $28.
  
• I saw Foster Grant Baby sunglasses with full UV protection and a wraparound design providing additional protection at only $5.97. I bought them. I have a grandchild on the way.
  

David Yurman: Aviators

For highend, very expensive and great fashion, go with the $910 David Yurman cable arm Aviator sunglasses worn by Kate Moss or buy the $525 Robert Marc Aviators noticed on Nicole Kidman. But believe me, you don't have to spend more than $100 for good fitting, protective sunglasses, despite what Sun Media says.



And now a little about Aviator glasses. I started wearing Bausch & Lomb Ray-Ban Aviator glasses back in high school in the '60s. At that time the frames were gold filled rather than gold plated. The difference? Gold filling resulted in a thicker layer of gold than gold plating. It made for more durable frames. I never did wear them out.

In 1937, some seven decades ago, when Bausch & Lomb brought out the metal framed, large lensed style, eye protection was, even then, a main goal. The glasses soon gained a following among pilots in the United States Airforce, but when General Douglas MacArthur was photographed wearing them, they gained important recognition.

But it was Hollywood that made Aviators cool. Think Men in Black, Blues Brothers or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Who can forget Tom Cruise in Top Gun wearing his Ray-Ban's? The late Michael Jackson wore them.

And, so did I, for forty years. One thing I learned in that time was that Aviators are not "always sexy, smart, in style" — well, maybe they were but I sure wasn't. Don't be too quick to part with $650 for David Yurman Phantom Aviator glasses, not unless you're Tom Cruise, then go for it. On you, Tom, all will be cool.

Addendum: from Best Health Magazine, Summer 2009, and featured by Sympatico

How good are most sunglasses?

The good news: Most sunglasses do provide enough UV protection, says Stephen Dain, director of the optics and radiometry laboratory at Australia’s University of New South Wales. “We test about 2,000 pairs a year, and failure to meet standards is less than one percent.”

Ralph Chou, an associate professor in the school of optometry at the University of Waterloo points out that all too often, "...sunglasses have been marketed as fashion items rather than eye protection.”

What you get for the price

So does price matter? Sunglasses with hefty price tags aren’t necessarily better than the $20 variety. “UV protection costs only pennies so you can get it at any price,” says Chou.

I checked The Dollar Store and sure enough I found sunglasses offering full protection for a buck. (I've read lab tests of these of cheap glasses and the lab results confirm that the cheap sunglasses can offer full UV protection.)

Are there any problems with the cheapies? According to Chou, “...inexpensive lenses may have marginal optical quality. This won’t do any damage, but the distortion can cause headaches or dizziness that can leave you feeling miserable.”

A Note to Sun Media and Quebecor

Hire some editors to go over copy looking for errors. You can't run good quality and bad quality in the same paper and not understand that you are sowing distrust of all you publish when you so willing publish so much chainwide shallow, error prone, filler.

Made in India Pickles - a growing presence

The following is an old post. It has been updated but it is still old. A new post on this topic can be found here -- Pickles: Not made in Ontario. In early 2016, I got a call from a budding journalist about this seven-year-old post. In preparing to chat with this young student, I did some more digging. The passing of time has shown the problem is not as simple as India-can-make-it-for-less. This is a bigger story, a better story, and I will have to put together another post to update this. I tried to update the old post but I think it best to leave it as it is. Let's leave a clear "paper" trail.
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Let's be clear, this is not a blanket rant against international trade. But, there are products — like pickles — being imported in quantity into Ontario, where the importing seems at the very least unnecessary and at the very worst damaging to Ontario's farm economy.

Pickles are not expensive. How much is saved by buying pickles offshore and in turn closing local processing plants which support local growers and employ Ontario workers?

Over the weekend (written spring 2009) my wife bought a jar of President's Choice pickles from Canada's family-owned grocery store chain: Loblaws. Turning over the jar I was surprised to see that Galen Weston's company had outsourced his store brand of Zesty Garlic pickles to India.

A quick check of the Web revealed that outsourcing pickle production to India is not restricted to Loblaw's house brands. I found a number of examples of pickles from India being marketed in North America. For instance, Steinfeld's Kosher pickles, the label claims 'Quality Since 1922', were being made in India in 2009. (Since writing this piece, this post has been hit by folk all over the world. This is not something that just concerns North Americans.)

I learned from the web that in the American northwest an Oregon pickle processing plant closed, throwing 88 people out of work and hurting the local growers who were suppliers to the plant. The Nalley pickles shamelessly continued to brag they were the "Great Taste of the Northwest" despite having moved production to India.


Update: This weekend, early August 2009, I picked up a jar of Strub's. It was a new kind of Strub's for me, one that I had never encountered before. Intrigued, I picked up the large bottle and turned it in my hand: Made in India.


The outsourcing of our North American pickle production can be traced to the advantages of scale; the Indian plants are huge. Plus, the Indian plants pay only about $80 a ton for their cukes, while in North America Strub's reportedly must pay about $900 for Ontario-grown baby dill-sized pickles. For this reason not even Strub's can resist the pull of outsourcing, although their core product line is still being produced in Brantford, Ontario. [Since writing this, this has changed.]

When I left home decades ago, one of the first products to go into my fridge after beer was a jar of Strub's pickles. Even today when I make a hamburger, it's two strips of thin-sliced Strub's that I lay across the grilled paddy.

Back in the spring, I bragged how Strub Brothers was one of the few companies in Canada still making traditional, barrel-fermented kosher pickles. Their pickled banana peppers were special, relying on hot banana pepper varieties for their heat rather than the simple addition of capsicum to sweet banana pepper varieties.

The southern Ontario producer still had a great product line going back eight decades. Their Full Sour Kosher Dills were first made by Sophie Strub in 1929. These were the pickles you would have found in my fridge back in the '70s. I imagine Sophie Strub would be surprised to see the family name on pickles made in India. On the other hand, I'm sure Sophie understood business and would grasp the pressures bringing Indian pickles to the North America market.

We have lost so many of the canning and processing plants for Ontario-grown fruits and vegetables that it is more than sad; it is frightening. Those plants were once so common throughout southern Ontario. We've lost plants, lost employment, lost farms, lost farmland.

When I first wrote this post, Strubs still supported about 30 Ontario cucumber growers using hundreds of field workers to handpick the cucumbers — Ontario was one of the last handpicked growing regions left in North America. The grading station, located south of Tillsonburg was a source of local employment and the Strub's processing plant in Brantford employed another 120 local workers during peak season.

Yesterday I picked up some Strub's pickles in a local store, they were produced by Whyte Pickles in Quebec. (Someone commented that Quebec is still part of Canada. I agree. My point, poorly made, is that Whyte Pickles have stepped in and kept the Strub's brand in Canada and from the picture I ran it is clear the the Whyte Knight didn't show up a moment too soon.)

It is too late for an Ontario peach war (my last can of peaches came from South Africa) or an apple battle (would you believe China) and now the battle for the Ontario pickle seems to have been lost.

Addendum:

A comment drew my attention to the closure of all Bick's production in Canada. Bick's was started in Ontario in the middle of the Second World War. Today, it is owned by the American food giant J. W. Smucker and all production has been moved to the States. I blogged on this loss. See the link.

And today, June 2012, I've learned that Strubs pickles are not made by the Strub clan and haven't been for a few years. The present owners of the Strub brand may be forced to halt production. If the Strub name survives it may end up as part of a Quebec pickle business. Read more here: Pickles not made in Canada.

Clearly, the battle is being lost. Canada is losing jobs everywhere. The folk in Ontario can't even make a pickle. The work is shifting to Quebec or Ohio or even India. Very sad and very frightening.

Cheers,
Rockinon

You Say Tomato, I Say Disaster in the NYT

This summer has been a disaster for tomato growers in the American northeast. Tomato blight has slashed production, wiping out entire fields. NYT Op-Ed contributor Dan Barber takes an excellent, in-depth look at the problem and what it says about modern agricultural methods.

Cheers,
Rockinon

They killed the Saturn experience.

I drove a Ford Mustang for years, not one Mustang but a string of them. I had a minor battle to buy my first, a navy blue Mustang II. My wife and I had seen a full page ad for Mustang IIs starting at $3799 if you ordered your car direct from the factory. (I may be off slightly on the price. Hey, it was more than three decades ago.) Also, they would give you a minimum of $100 for your trade-in, just drive it onto their lot.

My wife and I went immediately to the Ford dealer. We wanted a dark blue Mustang with camel interior and the folding back seat option. That's it, or so we thought. The salesperson thought differently.

He insisted on going over every option. And we insisted on saying no to every option. Until we came to, or should I say didn't come to, the optional folding rear seat. We insisted we wanted it and the salesperson insisted there was no such option. We couldn't have it — not in a coupe. We had to move up to a hatchback in order to get the folding seat but this sent the price soaring.

I pulled out a Ford Mustang II brochure clearly showing a coupe with an optional folding rear seat. Together we tore into the dealer's Mustang II binder. I found the folding seat; it was optional and available for less than $300. We had our car, an economical little four banger brought in on budget.

It was a good little car, much better than the VW beetle we trade-in. The VW was not seven-years-old but was dying fast. The floor had rusted through in a number of places. We had to move the battery because of a hole in the floor and we were using jumper cables to connect it to the car. We were happy to get a hundred dollars on the trade and we even got our jumper cables back.

We bought our next Mustang from an out-of-town dealer famous for a no-haggle approach. I had gone to a dealer in the city and asked how much they would like for a car on display. A million dollars, the salesperson replied. I started for the door. The salesperson blocked my way. We talked briefly. He made it clear that they didn't give out prices as you would just go to another dealer and compare prices. I left.

I drove my bought-out-of-town Mustang until the clutch failed. I was on my way home and the clutch packed it in right in front of a Ford dealer. The staff came out and pushed the car into a service bay, I walked into the dealer showroom and drove out with a new car.

I would have kept buying Fords except all the dealers wanted to haggle far too much. Even the out-of-town dealer changed his policy. No dealer was willing to offer a firm price without a meeting with the sales manager, take it or leave it. I left it.

I saw a Pontiac Grand AM with a fair price scrawled in white paint across its windshield. I called the dealer and chatted with a salesman who was quite happy to sell me the car for the advertised price. I bought the car over the phone.

I didn't own a string of Pontiacs. GM knew how to turn away a customer like me. I don't haggle. Tell me the price and if it's fair you may have a sale. GM had begun an ad campaign for their latest gimmick — 0% financing.

They ran full page ads proclaiming 0% interest, zero, nothing, nada, zilch and at the bottom of the page GM asked, “Is that clear?” Well, no.

Look at the ad on the right. You pay either 0% interest for five years or you can receive up to $4000 in rebates, but not both. The fine print in most 0% ads, and it is fine — I needed a magnifying glass to read it — states that by selecting 0% financing you are foregoing discounts and incentives “which will result in higher effective interest rates.”

I tried to buy a Pontiac with true 0% financing. No deal. This was not something on which the salesperson, or even the manager, was allowed to haggle. When I told him that I thought the almost hidden fine print was possibly illegal, he replied there was no fine print in their ads and no effectively higher interest rate. I pointed to an ad pinned to the wall and told him to read the fine print himself. He refused. Later the manager also told me that I was wrong and he too refused to waste his time, his way of putting it, by reading the fine print at the bottom of the displayed GM ad.

The fine print:
I left. I went to Saturn.

I have owned two Saturns. The last one, a four-door Ion, cost only $247 per month. Saturn offered 0% financing and calculated the payment by taking the price of the car on the floor, plus freight, dealer prep and taxes, and simply dividing the price by the months in the loan. There was no effectively higher interest rate. Pay cash and the price of the car was the same.

Recently GM has announced it is cutting Saturn loose. The GM that rises from the ashes of bankruptcy will not include the Saturn, Hummer, Pontiac and Saab brands. GM is now busy dumping those marques. Last week, I got a letter from GM telling me that I could get a jump on the close-out deals as I was a longtime Saturn customer. I could get a great price and 0% financing.

I went to the dealer and I almost bought a Saturn Astra. It's a nice car — essentially, a re-branded Opel. When it came to the price I learned there were two. Once price for those taking the zero percent financing option and another for those opting for bank financing. I was assured that the monthly payments would be about the same no matter which route I took. I took neither. The Saturn salesperson was apologetic. This was not the Saturn sales experience for which the little car that couldn't was famous. This was the failed GM experience.

I may be wrong but it seems to me that the new GM may be a lot like the old GM and may be already working its diminished butt off on the road to fail again.

I may wait a year for a Ford Fiesta or maybe a Toyota Prius or Honda hybrid but I doubt that I will be buying another GM. I'm angry with them. They killed the Saturn experience.

Addendum:

I googled "0% scam" and found "The Zero-Percent Financing Scam" by Joseph Ganem. He has a calculator that compares the claimed 0% rate with the rate offered by banks for car purchases. I checked it out and it appears to work. Take a look and have fun. It is an eye-opener.