The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

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Dave
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The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Dave »

Oho! The Bent One left some surprises behind!

http://wapsisquare.com/comic/the-cool-aunt/
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by lake_wrangler »

Poor Bud... forced to be the 18-year-old-looking adult in a room of fifteen year olds...
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Atomic »

Tina's model has changed a bit. Didn't recognize her.
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by lake_wrangler »

Atomic wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:11 pm Tina's model has changed a bit. Didn't recognize her.
Well, she is not suffering from Wapsicus Pinupitis, at the present time... ;)

Honestly, at first I thought it was Berdine. Thus convinced, I thought Bud was Poseidon's niece (I forget her name). But the subject of the conversation made it clear it was Bud, and it made little sense that it would be Berdine talking with her. Then I wondered: "Is that Tina?" I checked the tags, and sure enough, it was. Then I looked at the comic again, and noticed the choker and the spirally eyes.

I guess that's what you get, when you have a B&W comic with a cast of dozens... They all have a bit of a family resemblance...
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by FreeFlier »

I noticed the choker right away.


Take note, this doesn't happen often.

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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

I noticed the eyes
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Opus the Poet »

Blowing stuff up is fabulous fun if Mythbusters has taught us anything. "When in doubt, C4" "There are few problems that can't be solved with the suitable application of high explosives."
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by FreeFlier »

Opus the Poet wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:23 pm Blowing stuff up is fabulous fun if Mythbusters has taught us anything. "When in doubt, C4" "There are few problems that can't be solved with the suitable application of high explosives."
And "it's amazing how many things can be made to explode."


Some of the idiot legislators in this state wrote a bill to make it a felony to "possess materials which can be used to cause an explosion."

I went to testify on that one, and made the point that each and every person in this room would be subject to immediate arrest, since each and every person present was in possession of materials that could be used to cause an explosion.

One of the sponsors was foolish enough to claim "I'm not!" . . . "I can go into your home and find everything I need to blow it up. I presume that you have electricity and running water, and that's all I need."

After I finished my piece and was headed back to my seat, the next witness murmured "Stick around, I want to talk to you . . ."

My immediate reaction was 'I know what you are . . .' Sure enough, he introduced himself as Sergeant X of the big county Bomb Squad . . . "I don't know the previous witness, but he know what he's talking about, and he said pretty much what I was going to say, so I'll add . . ."

After the testimony, the committee chair put the bill to a vote, and it died in committee.

And the sergeant was satisfied with my explanation of why I knew what I knew (among other things, industrial safety courses that included lessons about how to not blow yourself up by accident).

--FreeFlier
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

Opus the Poet wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:23 pm Blowing stuff up is fabulous fun if Mythbusters has taught us anything. "When in doubt, C4" "There are few problems that can't be solved with the suitable application of high explosives."
My e-mail .sig used to be "The quantity of explosives required is directly proportional to the square of the size of the social problem."
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Atomic »

From somewhere, I remember a movie(?) where the good guy was running from a bunch of bad guys. Passing through a kitchen, he quickly dumped some flour and coffee creamer powder into a blender. Continuing his run with the blender, he grabbed some tea candles as well. He found a room, turned on the light, and noticed the floor lamp came on. Switch off, plug in blender, light candles on nearby table. Go hide in closet.

Sure enough, Bad Guys (tm) enter room, flip on lights -- blender goes Whirrrr, dust cloud erupts, candles ignite, --- whoosh! (Or Voomp depending on your onomatopoeia setting)

Begin fight scene with blinded/burning Bad Guys vs unscathed Good Guy.
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Warrl »

"Everything can be an explosive" is less true than "everything can be a weapon"... but still, lots of things can be explosives.
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Typeminer »

Opus the Poet wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:23 pm "When in doubt, C4."
After the heart attack, my brother was satisfied that the cardiologists were absolutely sure of what they were doing.

Obviously, because they used nitroglycerin. :mrgreen:
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

Atomic wrote: Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:44 am From somewhere, I remember a movie(?) where the good guy was running from a bunch of bad guys. Passing through a kitchen, he quickly dumped some flour and coffee creamer powder into a blender. Continuing his run with the blender, he grabbed some tea candles as well. He found a room, turned on the light, and noticed the floor lamp came on. Switch off, plug in blender, light candles on nearby table. Go hide in closet.

Sure enough, Bad Guys (tm) enter room, flip on lights -- blender goes Whirrrr, dust cloud erupts, candles ignite, --- whoosh! (Or Voomp depending on your onomatopoeia setting)

Begin fight scene with blinded/burning Bad Guys vs unscathed Good Guy.
McGyver?
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Warrl »

FreeFlier wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:59 pm And the sergeant was satisfied with my explanation of why I knew what I knew (among other things, industrial safety courses that included lessons about how to not blow yourself up by accident).
He would have been less happy with my answer... "oh, I'm just an ordinary guy who actually remembers some stuff he learned in grade-school and junior-high science, and has seen a few very-small accidental dust explosions... one from hay dust when I was growing up on a farm, another a side effect of computer keypunch machines, and one a packet of instant oatmeal... and those dust explosions, hearing the term 'fuel-air bomb', and a moment's thought..."

Lemme go look at my spice rack a moment... I'm guessing the salt might just not burn since it's inorganic rock dust, and while the basil and oregano leaves and the black pepper might do the job they aren't ground finely enough to be a really good explosive... but the curry powder, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, paprika, and cinnamon are all dried plant material ground exceeding small.

Of course, there's still either a fair amount of experimenting, or a dose of luck, needed to have the expanding and thinning cloud of dust get to the ignition device while it's still dense enough but not too dense...

Making a fuel-air bomb from water and electricity doesn't have exactly the same problem, but it does have a slight problem - getting the ignition device inside the container quickly and reliably, while being a safe distance away... (Note: deliberately leaving out a detail or two of the process... of course everyone who remembers their grade-school and junior-high science can probably fill in those details.)
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by FreeFlier »

Experience is a lovely thing . . . it enables you to recognize a mistake when you're about to make it again.

I've had an embarrassing number of issues with gasoline vapor . . . once with propane . . . acetylene . . . witness to a sawdust explosion . . .

And while I haven't seen grain dust, sugar dust, flour, or coal dust explode, those are all industrial problems . . .

Water heaters can explode, too, and usually do by accident . . .

There are three different classes of explosion from automobiles . . .

And of course there's always ammonium nitrate.


BTW, no blaster I've ever spoken to has ever seen red dynamite . . . it's white or cream-colored, with brown or black printing on it.

And TNT is very rarely used commercially because of the expense and noxious fumes.

--FreeFlier
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

I understand that most construction blasting is done with ANFO these days.
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by FreeFlier »

Much blasting is done with ANFO, in large part because it's cheap, but in many cases ANFO is too slow or bulky, so other things are used instead.

Dynamite has been a specialty explosive since about 1976 (when DuPont quit making it), and in most cases water gels are used instead, because they're much safer. The three big safety improvements are: Water gels are less sensitive (though this prevents propagation shots: each hole must be primed); water gels will burn without detonating, which can be important; water gels become less sensitive as they age, until finally they won't detonate at all. (Dynamite, and many other explosives, become more sensitive until they may finally detonate spontaneously.)


My father was a blaster, and he attended a seminar where the person giving it went around the room asking each person the biggest shot he'd ever fired . . . one man smiled and said "come back to me."

When they did, he said "three and a half million pounds of ANFO."

There was a stunned silence, and somebody quietly said "You could move a mountain with that!"

"We did."

It turned out that he was a head blaster at an iron mine in the Mesabi Range, and they'd been opening a new section that had a mountain on it. They could either do a series of smaller shots, which would have taken weeks (partly because they only fired shots at 1000 Sunday morning) or do one really large shot . . .

IIRC, the smallest drill that outfit used for shot holes was 18" (45cm) in diameter!

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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

A friend {the late Hank Reinhardt, founder of Museum Replicas Ltd, which produced swords and other such weapons, all of them accurate replicas of historical weapons} was an engineer, and at one time he worked for several years for an insurance company, doing appraisals of potential clients.

One time he was touring a large industrial farm, and they came to the fuel rack that they maintained for tractors and other diesel-powered equipment.

Hank observed that the ground around the pumps was pretty heavily contaminated with diesel.

He also observed a pallet of paper sacks sitting near it.

And that some of the sacks {as well as he could tell from a hundred feet or more away} also had dark stains on them.

He asked the manager type who was giving him the tour if those were, as he suspected, bags of fertiliser.

They were.

"Okay." Hank later reported that he said, "I believe I've seen enough. Let's head back to your office" {which was a mile or more away "and discuss my findings and the assessment I'll be submitting..."
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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by FreeFlier »

It actually doesn't make that much difference . . . AN is bad enough on its own.

There have been enough large-scale disasters in the last hundred years to show that . . . Texas City, Brest, St Nazaire, Oppua, West (TX) . . .

I don't count Halifax NS, Black Tom NJ, or Roseburg OR because conventional explosives were involved in those.

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Re: The Cool Aunt 2021-01-18

Post by Atomic »

There was a sugar company whose factory occupied two very large, tall buildings, each about aircraft hangar size, connected by an underground conveyor belt. The belt transported raw sugar from the processing building to the bagging building. Needless to say, there was sugar powder everywhere, and careful people made sure the conveyor tunnel was well ventilated. Then one day, various food safety types demanded the conveyor be covered in it's tunnel. Something about spider webs and other critters that might get into the mix. Yessir, right-0, three bags full -- the belt was covered, and life went on.

Alas, one of the bearings on the belt needed attention sooner than expected and got hot. Very hot. Ignition hot! And that lovely form fitting belt cover (which wasn't ventilated the way the outer tunnel was) made a lovely concentrated fuel-air bomb with blew out the walls is both lovely buildings at either end. Think of a double ended carbide cannon. Boom! Many injuries, big fire.
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