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[quote="WmZiggy"]Physics 101. No one - absolutely no one - is going to live a life without a footprint even if you delude yourself and call it "green" or move into a cave and eat raw food, or stupid below stupid, pay a carbon tax so you feel better.

In ND all of our in-State electric comes from Basin Electric which burns lignite coal mined in ND. Basin electric scrubs it's emissions, one of the first and only in the nation. Almost all ND wind generated electric goes to Florida. Among my choices, I'd rather plug into Basin, although I am switching to a natural gas heating system after 34 years of electric heat (costs going up thanks to BO, plus you have to pay for those 1 million dollar per wind generating heads).

When I was stationed at the South Pole in 2005 I visited with a scientist whose sole job was to take a 300 yr history of mercury in the atmosphere. He did this every day. He would take a 6 ft x 3" dia. PVC tube and drive it into the snow pack to get his sample]

Don't mistake my comments I'm with your scientist buddy "we are still here."

I kind of chuckled when you mentioned mercury. When I was a kid and a thermometer broke it was treat for us kids to get the mercury and play with it all day. If you did that today. Every Gov't agency would be on you.
DCC for child endangerment, EPA for toxic material, Homeland Security for dangerous substance, and poison control center. If I remember correctly my mother showed us how to clean pennies off and then rub the mercury on to have silver pennies so I guess the treasury dept would be there also.

Oh, how I know. We used to play with mercury in chemistry class, high school and college. When I was a little kid, I had a chemistry set with 50 vials of chemicals, to include mercury. Growing up in Kansas City there used to be a science shop on the Country Club Plaza called Griffen's Science Shop. It was like walking into a shop featured in a Harry Potter movie. If it was chemical, you could buy it, and the laboratory glassware had to be seen to be believed. Those days are gone. When our son was little I looked for a chemistry set for him - no longer commercially available anywhere. I suppose some kid blew his eye out mixing chemicals and lawsuits removed them from the market.

One more thought:

One of the things I love about SS is my first encounter in the 1950's. My uncle had an ER10 in his shop and it left a deep impression on me. Thank God that a lawsuit or some fabricated societal safety concern has not removed them from the market place.

I sometimes wonder (given today's emphasis on safety to the point kids are "bubble babies") how we survived the 50's/60's growing -up. We didn't have car seats or seat belts, we didn't wear bicycle helmets, we played with cherry bombs, made our own gun powder, poured our own lead shot, and fooled around in wood shop and high school laboratory. Times are changed.

WmZiggy wrote:One more thought:

One of the things I love about SS is my first encounter in the 1950's. My uncle had an ER10 in his shop and it left a deep impression on me. Thank God that a lawsuit or some fabricated societal safety concern has not removed them from the market place.

I sometimes wonder (given today's emphasis on safety to the point kids are "bubble babies") how we survived the 50's/60's growing -up. We didn't have car seats or seat belts, we didn't wear bicycle helmets, we played with cherry bombs, made our own gun powder, poured our own lead shot, and fooled around in wood shop and high school laboratory. Times are changed.

Don't even go there. When I was a kid you could buy carbide to make acetylene gas (very explosive) by pound for pennies, gun powder, black powder.

We built more missiles, bombs, noise makers, cannons then most people can imagine. We were able to have home made rockets fly out of sight, cannons that shoot potatoes 100's yards and bombs that made craters.

Yet none of us were ever killed, arrested or became terrorist. Imagine that!

We also built soapbox racers, go carts, jet bikes, rocket cars and managed to live. Although I did go to the hospital when I unloaded off a bike going down hill, propelled off a ramp, with a sling shot accelerator.
Needless to say I was going faster than I could think and when that happens on a bike things go bad real quick.

Lots of xrays and cleaning of road rash but no real injury.

We jumped out of three story high structures with bed sheets as parachutes, launched flying machines off barn roofs, cut down trees to build forts and tree houses and generally figured out how to build most anything we wanted.

Between us we kept the family doctor in business. Somebody was always getting a stitch or two for something.

My present MD is fascinated with Xrays of my feet. He said he never saw so many fractures, all healed on their own

If kids did that today the parents would be locked up and the children taken by child protection depts.

Ed in Tampa wrote:Don't even go there. When I was a kid you could buy carbide to make acetylene gas (very explosive) by pound for pennies, gun powder, black powder.

We built more missiles, bombs, noise makers, cannons then most people can imagine. We were able to have home made rockets fly out of sight, cannons that shoot potatoes 100's yards and bombs that made craters.

Yet none of us were ever killed, arrested or became terrorist. Imagine that!

We also built soapbox racers, go carts, jet bikes, rocket cars and managed to live. Although I did go to the hospital when I unloaded off a bike going down hill, propelled off a ramp, with a sling shot accelerator.
Needless to say I was going faster than I could think and when that happens on a bike things go bad real quick.

Lots of xrays and cleaning of road rash but no real injury.

We jumped out of three story high structures with bed sheets as parachutes, launched flying machines off barn roofs, cut down trees to build forts and tree houses and generally figured out how to build most anything we wanted.

Between us we kept the family doctor in business. Somebody was always getting a stitch or two for something.

My present MD is fascinated with Xrays of my feet. He said he never saw so many fractures, all healed on their own

If kids did that today the parents would be locked up and the children taken by child protection depts.

DIITO Ed!!!! Just as many stories, as a kid!!! BB gun wars, and still have both eyes!!!! I think we are better for it too!!!!

Ed in Tampa wrote:Don't even go there. When I was a kid you could buy carbide to make acetylene gas (very explosive) by pound for pennies, gun powder, black powder.

We built more missiles, bombs, noise makers, cannons then most people can imagine. We were able to have home made rockets fly out of sight, cannons that shoot potatoes 100's yards and bombs that made craters.

Yet none of us were ever killed, arrested or became terrorist. Imagine that!

...

Same here, Ed! Those were the good ol' days:)

Ed, still my favorite, getting salt peter, from the drug store, mixed it with something, (forgot what) added it to a jar of match heads we cut off of the rest of the match, stuff it all into a jar or pipe, added a piece of fuse!!!!!!!
Now I would be a convicted terrorist!!!! Oh shoot, is there a 7 year limitation on that????

rbursek wrote:Ed, still my favorite, getting salt peter, from the drug store, mixed it with something, (forgot what) added it to a jar of match heads we cut off of the rest of the match, stuff it all into a jar or pipe, added a piece of fuse!!!!!!!
Now I would be a convicted terrorist!!!! Oh shoot, is there a 7 year limitation on that????

Phosphorus bombs were a lot of fun!!!

As noted above all good memories.

My brothers and I at the 4th would shoot Roman candles at one another. You had better have a tree to hide behind when the games began. During the rest of the fall we had wooden guns that could shoot acorns and really put a hurt on you. Then too, we took the shot out of 12 gauge shotgun shells and placed them in a close fitting pipe with a nail fixed in the bottom of the screw cap. We would put a 2 foot rod in the open end and drop it from the second story of the barn. Goal was to see who could shoot the iron the highest. Stupid, really, but all four of us are still living. I forgot about the rockets, went through that stage too.

On reflection, I'm aware our parents, WWII generation, didn't hover over us the way parents do today today. I know they saw a lot of evil in the world and figured there was little harm that could come to us; they were glad to be alive and wanted us to enjoy life too. Basically, they trusted the neighborhood and if they had concerns they would say something like "don't go down where such and so's house is."

I also remember the neighborhood spankings. Where anyone that caught you doing something you shouldn't had the right to whip your butt. One Halloween I spent half the night going around to everyone's house soaping the windows and half the next day getting my butt beat and washing windows.
Great fun!!!!!!!!!!