A chemical rendering attempt

Kindred to the “AuBOOK” of 7 years ago (which no longer works despite all the AI-ness that Microsoft is pushing) is this depiction of CAS 1343-93-7 or “12-Tungstophosphoric acid”:

This screenshot was taken around 2010/2011 on what was then the current version of Firefox. The interface has changed aplenty since then, including where they put the tabs, the DNS name highlighting (gone now), the status bar (now gone), the menu bar (hidden by default), the Windows interface itself (titlebars now larger).

As to the substance itself, you can look @ it yourself on Common Chemistry. I don’t have access to ACS’s journal offering to see what the publication is like. To someone not familiar with high molecular mass organo?-metallic substances, it looks… disorganized… in this representation.

The shame of MIchigan

I was trying to look up a hashtag I saw on a sticker on a roadsign and ended up with Michigan’s Department of Corrections (prison system) “Most Wanted” list. Most prison agencias have these, where they list people who’ve escaped or disappeared on parole/probation. I noticed immediately that these are old. Most of the images look like newspaper scans or really old “xerox” copies.

For example, DAVID L COSSEY. Not to mention the most likely reason he hasn’t been found/returned is that he was born 82 year ago and is probably dead. (I’m assuming people who commit a number of felonies like his have less than average life expectancy.)

The most recent person on the list is ROBERT H BOOKER, in 1996. He was imprisoned for “Breaking & Entering – A Coin Telephone”. He was given an indeterminate sentence of 2 to 4 years. The upper limit is from MCL 750.503 and the lower from the judge, I suppose.

As well as being excessive, it is peculiarly harsh. Breaking and “entering” (how do you “enter” a payphone?) a coin operated telephone is automatically a felony (MCL 750.356b) when it would otherwise (MCL 750.356) be a misdemeanor, assuming there was less than 100.00 USD (since raised to 200.00 USD) in the box to be stolen.

A Canal Stockholder’s Outburst

In cerebration, a typing of this sometimes cited but not yet online that I can find (although the recent severe decline in search engine quality makes it hard to tell).

This is from pages 67 and 68 of “A Treasury of Railroad Folklore” by Botkin and Harlow, copyright 1953 and renewed since. As this is supposed to be a verbatim reprint of something from at least 1830, it is long out of copyright.

The piece is introduced with a “cut” of a kind of rail road car with a horse on a treadmill propelling it. There are maybe 9 people sitting on it and board across the side calling it the FLYING DUTCHMAN.

“I see what will be the effect of it; it will set the whole world a-gadding. Twenty miles an hour, sir! Why, you will not be able to keep an apprentice boy at his work; every Saturday evening he must take a trip to Ohio to spend the Sabbath with his sweetheart. Grave, plodding citizens will be flying about like comets. All local attachments will be at an end. It will encourage flightiness of intellect. Veracious people will turn in to the most immeasurable liars; all their conceptions will be exaggerated by their magnificent notions of distance. ‘Only a hundred miles off? Tut, nonsense, I’ll step across, madam, and bring your fan!’ ‘Pray, sir, will you dine with me today at my little box at Allegheny?’ ‘Why, indeed, I don’t know. I shall be in town until twelve. Well, I shall be there; but you must let me off in time for the theatre.’ And then, sir, there will be barrels of pork and cargoes of flour, and chaldrons of coal, and even lead and whisky and such-like sober things, that have always been used to sober traveling, whisking away like a set of sky-rockets. It will upset all the gravity of the nation. If two gentlemen have an affair of honor, they have only to steal off to the Rocky Mountains, and there no jurisdiction can touch them. And then, sir, think of flying for debt! A set of bailiffs mounted on Bombshells would not overtake an absconded debtor, only give him a fair start. Upon the whole, sir, it is a pestilential, topsy-turvy, harum-scarum whirligig. Give me the old solemn, straightforward, regular Dutch canal – three miles an hour for express and two for ordinary journeys, with a yoke of oxen for a heavy load. I go for beasts of burden; it is more primitive and scriptural, and suits a moral and religious people better. None of your hop-skip-and-jump whimsies for me!”

Am not sure if whisky was considered a sober thing, or was similar to “whisking” later in the same sentence. The single footnote:

This appeared, with variations, in several newspapers, one of the earliest to print it being the Western Sun of Vincennes, Indiana, July 24, 1830.

OHio and INdiana touch each other, but Vincennes is on the other side of Indiana. From there to the closest part of OhiO – using inter state high ways – is at least 3 hours. A straight line is about 150 miles, or 7½ hours (~⅓ day) @ 20 mph, 50 hours (2+ days) @ 3 mph and 75 hours (3+ days) @ 2 mph.

OF COURSE am watching the e l e c t i o n. It is proper to watch election returns roll in in your countrij. And – in others too!

(You are not wrong if you do not.)

Slow, modern Heptameron story twelve XII

There came to mind, when it was enjoyably wandering, my road test. Since many people have to do this, I will share mine for your entertainment I hope, and also if you want to compare it to yours.

The Confuzing Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker

Many years ago I ran across a transcription of “The Entertaining Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker”, it is still here http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1715-exilius.html

“Exilius; or, The Banish’d Roman”, which you can see in the title page? of here, is really several stories run together, somewhat like the “Metamorphosis” that Ovid wrote. Stories I through VI (6) at least are one long tale of someone meeting someone else, hearing their story, going to tell some one else, finding another person, who tells their story, and so on. Lots of mistaken identity, but in the end everything (I think — I’m not good at reading these things) works out the way it should to the author, according to the taste of the time: virtue is rewarded and sin punished.

In going through the interminable paeans to virtue (spelled “vertue” most of the time), I ran across in “The Continuation of the History of JEMELLA.” where she meets a woman who refused an arranged marriage and instead tried to elope with someone. He father kicks her out and her lover rejects her. She ends up on a ship that wrecks and is then rescued and kept by a sea monster. Jemella’s reflection:

In this I could not but again admire the exact Justice of Heaven, in thus punishing her Lewdness and Disobedience to her Parents. She that refus’d the honest Espousals provided by her Father, became Wife to a Monster; she that disgrac’d herself and her Friends by unlawful Lust, was a Prostitute to a Fish[.]

I have not, in a decade at least, forgotten the phrase “prostitute to a fish”. Some words probably never occurred that way before, and are unlikely to again unless in imitation.

Musique in my head now

Mostly for @musingsofanoldfart who I think follows me, these 2 songs have been stuck in my head lately, and I recommend them to people who like “oldies” / “classic rock”:

Lake Shore Drive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBmIJZcAkhs

The “In” Crowd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB-DndAgbuE

Gutenbergery 5: Confined spaces of the Early Modern Era

At last continuing this series, but with something not humorous in itself. In the book “The danger of premature interment etc” (the entire title page is the title, so I truncated it with “etc”) we really get 4 things: stories of premature burial with proposed methods of seeing if someone is REALLY dead, stories of dead people being embalmed/buried in general, condemnation of burying people inside of churches, and “ever burning lamps” of the ancients.

In many “new(er)” fields, it is common to see how old they can really be traced, not so much to prove their antiquity and justify them that way, but to show that the field has been here all along and is now becoming a subject in its own right.

Ukraine idea – you’ll never get rid of it…

Some time ago now, the “Cock Carl” (alias Tosha) was published about. The best account and video I’ve found is here https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/u4gubr/this_is_carl_his_elderly_owner_couldnt_bare_leave/ (sorry it’s on that site). Essentially it is the property of an old woman who evacuated when Russia invaded and took the bird with her. You can hear it crow in the little film.

I could imagine, during or after the war, the Ukrainian ag people letting him breed as many (carefully chosen) hens as he wants and specifically distributing the hatching eggs and new chickens throughout the country to “small holders” (European term) and local governments with a municipal flock, maybe some exterior sales. Every cock crowing – especially near the border – would be interpretable as “I’m still here!! You didn’t win anything! You’ll never kill me!! You will never escape hearing this! We will live forever!!“

Medial S memory – a Ru??ian ambassador

Back in college, I think, I was browzing what must have been a full text archive of late pre (United States) independence, or possibly post-war. At any rate, between 1750 and 1800 I’m sure. I feel like it was Ben Franklin’s “Pennsylvania Gazette”, but can’t be sure since I’ve lost the attribution.

Anyway, it was about the Polish ambassador (at the time, this may not have been a real Polishman but representative of some puppet state) who attempted to be received by the Osmanic Empire (Turkey) but was kicked out of the royal court and imprisoned “notwithſtanding all that M. Nepleuf, the Ruſſian Ambaſſador” did.

I found it amusing that the typesetting of the time made “Russian” look more like “Ruffian” than the real word.