And behind door #2...

A NEW CAR!!!!!
Too bad you already selected the 12 year old beater behind door #1... :P

Seriously, though, I'm on the road. I actually bought this last Saturday, but it took a couple of days to get it all legal and on the road and such. It's a 95 saturn and conciderably more beat up than the one pictured. But it runs good, it's legal until Sept 07 and it's pretty easy on gas. And the best thing, since it cost less than $400 it didn't kill my budget for the planned diesel Mercedes with the BioD conversion. Meanwhile, it's still a saturn and very cool.

Hillary is IN!

Wow, I don't know how I feel about this. But Hilary is in. That's right, he ex first lady is running for president.
Pros;
based on the previous Clinton administration, I'm impressed with the prospects
First woman president, already trained for the job, interesting....
Not a replublican (we think)
Cons
Been cuddling up to Newt Gingritch
Definitely not Bill
Has shown some strange edges in her policies.
Prediction.
Will lose to Obama in the primaries making way for the first non-white president instead. If she's smart, she'll run as Obama's VP

Patches and pockets

So, I'm doing patches again for the LAFC, because that seemed to be very popular in previous years.

But I'm also doing private give-away patches in support of a basic principal of NAFAA, the order of protection for spotters: Audience, Venue, Performer. Coincidentally, it looks quite a bit like the alien vs predator logo. :) And I may not just give out patches, but some special surprises as well. Let me know if you want in on this....

Also, I want to plug my patch maker Bellz, he's good, fast and in need of more work. Join the AVP project, or come up with something for you or your group. partches are really popular and make people really happy for reasons I'll never understand. Call bellz at (323) 868-5969.

Incommunicado

I feel like I'm in some kind of cartoon. Screwy squirrel gets just out of mallot shot of my home and chews on a line that cuts my DSL and phone. I've been without the internet since Wednesday. I completely freaked out. I mean, not only was my business effectively shut down, but I had no tribe, email, porn, or TV (remember, i switched to torrents instead of cable). So, all I had was my goo-box (TV) for company... it sucked. But I'm back and getting my fix.

Less than 100 junk mails waiting. I must be livin clean.

Bio-white gas

Thu, January 4, 2007 - 2:10 AM

Okay, so I've been working with Silence to get a completely 'green' Biodeisel to provide to folks in the Fire conclave to burn on Burn Night. But in the process of learning about BioD, I theorized that something other than vegetable oil could be used as a base, making Bio-Lamp oil, Bio-kerosene, or even bio-white. After locating the shortest possibble molecules that might be used and looking at what the synthesis might result, I calculated that Ethyl Acetate would be the result of esterification of Ethanol and Acetone (the very shortest fatty acid). Well, sure enough, that's exactly how it's made. They take natural versions of ethanol and acetone and put them though the exactsame process as biodeisel to make EA. So, I ordered a bottle of it and ran it through the ringer:

test 1 - MSDS - flash point, reactivity, and product safety are all better than white gas. This is used as a food flavoring in small doses, so it should be reasonably safe for use.

test 2 - Combat fire sword, virgin wick, medium pour (about 125 ml) - Burn was whiter than white gas (which is bright yellow) for the most part, ignited immediately, was ready to go from the start, and even left trails on cool concrete (It's 58 degrees tonight). Towards end of burn, the flame got noticably orange-y. Subjective: flame temp felt noticably lower; strange smells while burning and on wick afterwards; wick noticabley cleaner than petrol burns would leave it; nail polish after smell.

test 3 - two batons, identical make, identical wicks, spun and stalled at same speeds, in sync with each other. One full soaked in white gas, the other full soaked in EA. One quick spin out. - Both lit immediately and held a strong flame. EA wick was always smaller and whiter than the white gas wick. White also burned louder than the EA. Several subjective tests showed the EA to be a "cooler" burn than the white gas. Alternately spinning and not spinning, the white gas went out first, but quickly followed by the EA wick. EA torch burned noticabley cleaner with much less soot. Afterburn picture confirms this.

Results: Ethyl acetate is a nearly complete substitute for white gas. It's made from green components making as environmentally stable as biodeisel. It burns cooler, but nearly as well as white gas with no real performace changes including 'back to the future' trails, fleshing, speed spinning, etc. The nail polish after scent is the only part that difficult to get around.

Remainder: EA is also a polar solvent. it's possible that it can suspend the elements necessary for colored flames. So, with the remaining 100ml of the bottle, I'll be testing it with the various colorants to see if it will take. Imagine a white gas burn with colored flames. :)

So, not only am I excited at finding a cool burning, cleaner version of white gas, but I'm feeling intellectually vindicated in actually applying chemical knowledge to locate the desired effect. It definitely has the feel of a "put up of shut up" moment (without the pressure of having someone actually say that). And I have come out on top. Wheeeee.. :)

Isn't it such a waste?

So, I sit here watching the Rose Bowl parade when an echo from the past rattled through my head. "So, why go through the effort and expense of building the Man, just to burn him a week later?" And that got me thinking. Rose bowl floats are built very rapidly for a single event, and have a workable lifespan of about 2 days. There's no question that some amount of artistry goes into each float.... but shall we talk about the waste?

According to the 2005 afterburn report, Burningman provided $437,937 in honoraria to artists, and the Man itself cost $136,304. Well, it's not so easy to get the numbers on the rose bowl art, but here's a couple of hints. ONE float, one small one, had over 6000 roses of a specific rare breed that cost $200 a dozen (from the KTLA newscast). That's $100,000 for that flower type alone on that float. It was also covered with another 5000 lesser roses, many carnations, and seeds. So, that ONE float most likely exceeded the entire budget for The Man. [the FTD float had 45,000 roses plus other flowers]

At almost 50 floats for the entire parade, That's $5 million in the base material cost of the float coverings, this doesn't include the recoupable costs of the float bases, nor the fuel costs, etc. That's just the flowers. Yeah, that's right TEN times the amount gifted to artists at BM. Another way to look at it comes from the offical Rose Parade site: "each float has more flowers than most florists will use in 5 years".

This also doesn't include the incredible amount of work put in by the float builders, the marching bands, the horse groomers and handlers, etc. One bowl parade could easily exceed the scope of the entire Bman event, but only last for 2.5 hours. And although it's probably the biggest and best known, keep in mind that the Rose bowl is only one of 32 bowl games held each year, many that have their own parades too.

Now, it's true a parade opens up a lot of emotions and wonder for the spectators, but I've seen some pretty earth shaking things at burningman too, and I know many people are much more deeply affected by the Bman event than any parade. So, from a strictly cost benefit analysis point of view, I'm thinking the Bman event is definitely the best bang for the buck. Suddenly, I'm feeling pretty good about burning the man each year (not that it really ever bothered me before). And I think the next time I hear some hippy whining about the waste of Bman, I'll cram a dozen roses up their ass and tie them to an art car...