Tag: Translator

I do not always write about bands that I particularly like, and this one of those times.  While they were quite popular at the time, none of the songs released by the band were very important in the grand scheme of music in my opinion.

The band formed in 1965 and by 1968 was no more, as they wanted solo careers.  We see how well that worked out for them with one exception.  The reunited for a couple of months in 1971, but not much came of it.  Their entire existence sort of reads like a soap opera, and we shall hit the high (this is quite a pun) parts of it during this piece.

Even though they are still remembered, they only had six songs to chart in the Top 10 in the US, and only two or three of those are remembered by more than real hardcore fans of them.  “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreaming” are about all there are known to most folks.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

In summer in that part of Arkansas it got extremely hot from the early part of June through late September.  In the early 1960s air conditioning was quite rare, at least in my part of the of the state.  Thus, we slept with the windows open.  We lived in an old two story house and slept upstairs.

With no air conditioning, fans were the only alternative.  We had an attic fan in the house, which because they are large and slow moving, make little noise.  Because of this, it was easy to hear the nighttime sounds.

First, please allow me to apologize for not posting Popular Culture Friday last.  I was occupied until late in the day and did not have enough time to write a quality piece for the series, and I would rather post nothing rather than a poor piece.  It shall return this coming Friday.

Actually, this is not about soap, but rather synthetic detergents, although we often call then “soap”.  In the companion piece to this one from last week, here, the terms are explained in detail.

There are a couple of reasons for using synthetic detergents over actual soap.  Part of it is economics, because both vegetable and animal fats, essential ingredients for soap, tend to be fairly high in cost.  Most detergents are based on petroleum, so when oil prices are low then can be cheaper to produce than soap.  When petroleum is high in cost, then detergents become less economically favorable.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Here is how we washed clothes back when I was little.  We had a wringer washer, and it was not automatic at all.  Actually, it could be a fairly dangerous piece of equipment, especially for older women with pendulous breasts.  I mean that as no insult at all, but they were sort of “grabby”.

However, for folks who liked to line dry their clothes, they were the best.  I shall try to include some pictures here, so here we go!

Before we start, here is an important public service message brought to you by Translator.  There is a fraudulent email going around asking that gmail users verify their accounts by the end to the month to avoid suspension.  This is a fraud!  If you get an email from [email protected], do not respond and delete it.

We take something as mundane as soap way too much for granted.  It is not an exaggeration to say that soap has saved more lives over its history than modern medicine has over its history.  Of course, soap has a much longer history than modern medicine, but soap is still essential as a medical adjunct.

The actual origin of soap is lost in prehistory.  I suspect that the first soap like materials were plant saponins, and we shall get to them in just a bit.  Before we get into the nuts and bolts of soap (and by extension detergents), it is important to understand just how these materials work.  At first it does not seem to make a whole lot of sense, but as we continue I promise one of those “Aha!” moments.  Ready to get going?  I am!

We had a really good time with Part I last week!  I very much appreciated all of the comments and suggestions that folks sent.  Now we are ready for Part II, and it gets even better!

This week we shall look at the bonus tracks that were included on the 1998 remastered CD, some of them previously unavailable except as bootlegs.  Some of them are quite good, by the way.  Of course, there are several stories to go along with them so we had better get started.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile of so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Ben Boggs was a nice guy, but had a lot of problems.  He lived in the rock house that Granddad built in the early 1950s whilst Granddad lived in the bus.  Ben had a very nice and understand wife, Johnnie, and two kids who are likely still living, so I will not say anything about them.  You know that I do not write about living folks from My Little Town without their express permission most of the time.

Ben was a World War II veteran, and had a leg shot off almost at the hip.  He did not have enough bone left for the technology at the time to offer him a prosthetic leg, so he used crutches, and those were made of aluminum when my memory began in 1962.  these memories are mostly from 1966 and later.

We hear a lot about trans fats in food and the negative health effects of them.  However, most folks without a background in chemistry do not really know what that means.  Tonight the object is to clear that up, and to point out sources that are high in them so they can be avoided.

Contrary to the opening statement, not all trans fats have deleterious health effects.  There are a couple that seem to be beneficial, but unfortunately they are sort of rare.  They are also some of the few trans fats that occur naturally.  By a huge margin, most trans fats consumed are artificially produced, and we shall get into that as well.

To understand the topic well, a chemistry lesson will first have to be given.  However, this IS Pique the Geek!

Odds and Sods was the third “canonical” compilation album released by  The Who, released 19740928, almost exactly 37 years ago today.  

In the US the record was released by MCA, and in the UK by Track.   There is some discrepancy as to how the record charted, some references saying #10 and #15 in the UK and US, respectively, whilst others indicate #10 and #8.

This is one of my favorite records, since it contains material not previously released, some of which is amongst their best.  It also marked the final release of material that I consider “classic” Who, since the next studio album, The Who by Numbers, was a considerable departure from their old sound, a trend already started by Quadrophenia, discussed here and here.

All of the material was previously unreleased, except “I’m the Face” which we shall discuss in a bit.  None of the material on the record was specifically recorded for it, but rather were studio tapes recorded months to years before it was compiled and released.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile of so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Yes, I know that this is sort of an odd title, but it occurs to me that I wrote about what she grew and how we preserved it, but not about how we ate it.

Perhaps this shall clear it up a bit.  We ate lots of fresh things from the garden, and for the most part, except for the turnips and the green beans, they were pretty good.  Notice that I never grow any of those in my garden, because just to grow things for historical reasons does not feed me.

Now we shall examine, in no particular order, how we ate what Ma grew.  I shall even include the green beans and turnips!

The recent results from CERN (the acronym for the original name for the outfit, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) about neutrinos being propagated faster than light speed has caught a lot of attention.  I am still not convinced that the data are correct, but 15,000 individual measurements at the high certainty that is claimed certainly gets one’s attention.

I am not prepared to say whether or not these results are valid as of yet.  The folks at CERN are begging other laboratories with comparable apparatus and expertise to verify (or to refute) the findings.  That is how science is supposed to work!

However, 15,000 individual determinations are a LOT of data!  Let us for the moment take the data at face value and assume that this is not a fluke nor a mistake, but an actual “violation” of the Special Theory of Relativity that indicates that no massive particle can exceed the speed of light, henceforth called c.  Ready to do some thought experiments?  I am!  Let us go!

First, please join with me in wishing Youngest Son a very happy 22nd birthday!

Now to the topic at hand, which is timely for me since it seems that I am getting one.  I had a scratchy throat at bedtime last night, but with the change in the weather here in the Bluegrass beginning yesterday, I just sort of did not pay attention to it. When I awakened this morning, it was a different story.

I had fever.  I am extremely sensitive to changes in body temperature, because my normal is around 97.7 degrees.  Thus, when I hit 99, I am SICK!  I also had the scratchy eyes and the runny nose.  As the day wore on, and I did not get better, I decided it was time to act.  I took aspirin for the fever, a gram of ascorbic acid and 50 mg of zinc to boost my immune system.