Goodwill - and indigestion - toward men . . .

I hope and trust your Christmas has been a good one.  Mine certainly has.  I was up early, continuing to set up my new computer, and I took time out to take Oleg to the airport later in the morning, on his way to visit his parents over the holidays.  Miss D. and I will be catsitting for him.

We've just finished our Christmas dinner.  We roasted two chickens in an oven bag, which yielded 4 cups of the richest broth you could wish for, plus succulent, moist meat that fell off the bone when poked with a fork - no knife necessary.  One chicken largely disappeared tonight, accompanied by a green salad and washed down with a bottle of Tennessee white wine;  the other will be eaten over the next few days.  All the bones, the skin and the broth are already in a slow-cooker, along with 12 cups of water.  We'll simmer them overnight to harvest up to 12 cups of chicken broth for future soups and stews.

Miss D. and I have a lot to be thankful for this Christmas, despite our physical ailments and restrictions - she after being the meat filling in a two-car sandwich some years ago, and me after my back injury in 2004 and heart attack in 2009.  We're doing as well as can be expected, and a lot better than many others in our position.  That's reason enough for celebration, right there, even if it weren't for the blessings of the season.

I hope and trust your Christmas was also blessed and peaceful.  May the remainder of it be happy, and the remainder of the year relaxing and enjoyable.

Peter

Santa's on his way . . .

. . . and you can track his path, as always, at NORAD.

The Telegraph has published a couple of useful articles to explain how he does it.  The science behind Santa is handily explained.

A rocket-powered sleigh is out of the question: the fuel costs would be prohibitive (not that that has stopped people drawing up possibilities). But if Santa’s elves - “undoubtedly the most spectacular research and development outfit this planet has ever seen” - have worked a way of warping space-time, allowing the sleigh to sit in a small bubble of space that itself moves, it could travel faster than light. Alternatively, wormhole technology could provide cosmic short-cuts, and would have the benefit of permitting time-travel, removing the constraint of having to get all the work done in one night.

But this all involves a powered sleigh. The reindeer themselves still need to be able to fly. This could be achieved by genetic engineering, altering the reindeer so their lungs are huge and filled with helium; they could even be born with wings and stabiliser fins. Or, as Professor Ian Stewart, Warwick University maths professor and occasional Telegraph contributor, points out: “Reindeer have a curious arrangement of gadgetry on top of their heads which we call antlers and naively assume exist for the males to do battle and to win females. This is absolute nonsense. The antlers are actually fractal vortex-shedding devices. We are talking not aerodynamics here, but antlaerodynamics.” At the speeds the reindeer have to travel to deliver gifts, their antler-tips would, apparently, create enough lift to allow them to fly.

There's more at the link.

As for Christmas Eve in numbers:

Speed of sleigh

If he's clever about it, and travels from east to west with the Sun, maximising his available night-time, Santa has about 32 hours to work with (assuming children sleep for eight hours, he has 24 hours plus those eight to finish). Travelling 342,510,000km in 32 hours equates to a speed of 10,703,437.5km/hr (6,650,807.72mph), or a little under 1,800 miles per second, assuming he takes no time actually to deliver the presents or stop for any comfort breaks. The fastest-moving man-made object in history, the space probe Voyager 1, manages a rather less impressive 10.8 miles per second.

Weight of gifts carried

Assuming each child gets the Transformer Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, for a present, in his box, Santa will be carting 659g (1.45lb) per child. That's 461,300 metric tonnes, or about the same in imperial tons, total. For comparison, a Boeing 747-8I airliner can carry 237.5 tonnes in passengers, luggage and fuel.

Again, more at the link.

Ah, well.  Science, mathematics or whatever - it's still Christmas Eve!

I said all I wanted to say about Christmas back in 2008, as regular readers will know.  I wish all of you the happiest, healthiest and most blessed Christmas it's possible for you to have.  May the blessings of this season of grace be yours, and may they go with us all into the new year that lies ahead.  Thanks for keeping company with me over the past year.

Peter

2013 in photographs - reasons to be thankful, this Christmas

The Atlantic has come out with three picture essays of the most memorable photographs of 2013.  The three parts cover January to April, May to August, and September to December.  Here's one image from each of them to whet your appetite.  I selected photos that should give us reason to be thankful, this Christmas, that we were spared similar trials.

At the site of a collapsed garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh, people gather in front of Rana Plaza building as rescue workers continue their operations on April 25, 2013. Survivors of collapse described a deafening bang and tremors before the eight-floor building crashed down around them. An estimated 1,129 people were killed in the collapse, the deadliest accidental structural failure ever recorded.

A garden with a swimming pool is inundated by the waters of the Elbe River during floods near Magdeburg in the state of Saxony Anhalt, on June 10, 2013. Tens of thousands of Germans, Hungarians and Czechs were evacuated from their homes as soldiers raced to pile up sandbags to hold back rising waters in the region's worst floods in a decade.

Boys maneuver their boat, made from a broken refrigerator and bamboo, to the beach in Tanauan, in the province of Leyte, Philippines, on November 20, 2013. After losing their boats and houses in the Typhoon Haiyan, fishermen of a destroyed village in Tanauan started building two-seated boats made of abandoned refrigerators and some wood. The first boat was made by a fisherman, whose children gave him the idea as they wanted to play in it, and soon others followed. The Philippines and international armed forces and aid agencies are struggling to get help to devastated areas due to the extent of the destruction from Typhoon Haiyan.


There are many more images at the links provided above.  Recommended reading.

Peter

Cthulhu at your table!

Talk about channeling H. P. Lovecraft!  The Gothamist reports:

Rusty Eulberg, a database administrator from Lubbock, Texas, tells us he brought forth what he called the Cthurkey about two years ago. Reached by phone at work, Eulberg says, "Apparently my Cthurkey — I always called it a Cthurkey as opposed to a Cthuken (no duck) — blew up online. A buddy of mine just told me he found it on Tumblr."

According to Eulberg, he and wife Jennifer Robledo "wanted to do something unique for Christmas dinner with friends of ours. Jenny is a big fan of Cthulhu so we went and bought some crab legs and some octopus and bacon and cooked them all separate and slapped them together on a plate, and that was it. The next year I made a Cthicken; the same thing using squid instead of octopus and a chicken."

Eulberg says, "The universal reaction was, 'Oh my God, I couldn't eat that.' But each individual piece was cooked separately; all I did was set them together on the plate. It was delicious. The crab leg was awesome and the bacon added a nice flavor to the turkey. And for added horror, the serving platter is an old Nazi plate with a Swastika on the bottom that a friend bought in an old abandoned Luftwaffe base in Germany."

There's more at the link, including more photographs.

I'm sure it's as delicious as he claims . . . but doesn't that look like the kind of meal you'd serve to your mother-in-law to discourage future visits?





Peter

Merry Christmas - firepower edition!

A tip o' the hat to reader J. D. for sending me the link to this video.

Peter

New toy

I've long appreciated the virtues of the Russian 7.62x39mm. round (the cartridge used in the ubiquitous AK-47 and SKS rifles).  It's low-recoil and very controllable by the average shooter, adequately accurate (although no match-winner), very reliable, and more than powerful enough for combat purposes (I should know - I've been shot twice with it!), or for hunting small to medium-sized game (it's ballistically comparable to the US .30-30 cartridge).

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

I've owned both AK-47 and SKS rifles in the past, but I've hankered after a bolt-action rifle chambered for the same cartridge.  The reason is very simple.  If one wants to train frequently with a bolt-action sporting rifle, ammunition can get very expensive, very quickly;  and rimfire rounds such as .22LR, while relatively cheap, don't have the same recoil or shoot out to the same range as more powerful centerfire rounds.  However, military-surplus or similar 7.62x39mm. ammunition is so cheap (typically about 20c-25c per round) that it's hardly worth reloading for the caliber.  Furthermore, it's low-recoil enough that it can be used to train new shooters without inducing a 'flinch' that will affect their accuracy.

Czech riflemaker CZ introduced a light, handy bolt-action carbine in that caliber, the Model 527, some years ago.

(Image courtesy of CZ-USA)

It attracted favorable reviews, but was hard to find - CZ-USA doesn't seem to import many, for some reason.  I've been looking for one for some time, and yesterday spotted one for sale in a Washington gunshop.  A quick telephone call and a couple of e-mails later, and it's mine.  It wasn't cheap, but since they're so scarce, I wasn't in a position to argue.  It should arrive at my local dealer for transfer next week.  Color me happy!  That's my Christmas present to myself.

Now, what to get for Miss D. so that she won't feel left out???

Peter

ARC REVIEW: Christmas on 4th Street by Susan Mallery

Christmas on 4th Street

(Fool's Gold #12.5)

by: Susan Mallery

3.5 HEARTS

From Goodreads

There's nowhere better to spend the holidays than with New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery in the town of Fool's Gold, where love is always waiting to be unwrapped... Noelle Perkins just got a second chance at life, and she intends to make the most of every minute. That's why she ditched a frustrating legal career to open her own store in Fool's Gold, California. The Christmas Attic celebrates everything that's magical about her favorite season. Business is booming, and as a bonus, gorgeous army doctor Gabriel Boylan has offered to help out during the holiday rush.

Gabriel's memories of Christmas past contain more sour grapes than sugar plums, thanks to a drill sergeant father who ran his home like a boot camp. Spending the holidays with his family while he recuperates from injury sounds as appetizing as last year's eggnog. Still, there are some enjoyable distractions in town, including sunny, sexy Noelle...and the red-hot mistletoe kisses they can't stop sharing.

Gabriel didn't think he was made for happily-ever-afters. But when fate hands you a love as sweet and surprising as this, only a fool could refuse....

Overall this was a good story, but it just lacked the usual connection I get from Mallery's books. I liked Noelle and Gabriel. They had a beautiful story, a good relationship, I was disconnected.

Noelle is the type of person I could get along beautifully with. She was carefree and happy, and it was contagious. Nothing got her down for long. She kept her head high and took life as if it could disappear at any moment. She lived for the day and never let an opportunity pass her by. Her personality and outlook on life was the perfect complement to Gabriel. He gave her a reason to take a chance again, even if it may not have been the type of chance she hoped for. She was missing something in her life, and she found it in the most unexpected person.

Gabriel is a very exhausted and beaten down man. His life is not one he wishes to share with anyone. It's disturbing, horrifying, and very very dark. He never realized how broken he was because of it until he came to Fool's Gold and met the most remarkable woman in Noelle. Everything bad in his life was forgotten in the midst of her happiness and joy. She made him forget his life and relax. She allowed him to see the brighter side of life that he had been denying himself for so long. She healed him in a way he never expected, or believed, and she made him realize that he really could have happiness and love.

This is a very cute holiday story. I wish I would have connected to the characters more, but it was still a story worth reading. Although some of it was rather sad at times, overall it was a story of two forgotten souls finding each other and falling in love.

**ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Hotness Rating
 3 out of 5