Working in Ottawa today --Play safe

Good morning good people,

I will be working in Ottawa today.

So before I get too carried away on today's blathering of rare earth magnets, questionable dietary practices and home experiments in cold fusion, I just read that James Holmes --the Colorado Joker massacre shooter may have sent a notebook of writings and self-promotional material to a Colorado psychiatrist prior to the shooting.

May have.  You see there are two reports of notebooks.  Fox News reported that a notebook had been sent to a Colorado psychiatrist but had lingered in the university mail room since July 12.  But that notebook was determined to be unrelated to Holmes by the FBI, but wait!  There is a second notebook, and reportedly sat in the same mail room for 2 days prompting a second probe to determine if the killings could have been prevented.

By having faster mail?  This is what it comes down to?  A lunatic can acquire tear gas and assault weapon and sidearm fire power over a few week period and take it upon himself to exact merciless and senseless killing of innocent persons for his own twisted effort at obtaining notoriety and satisfying some demon of delusions of persecution, grandeur and inadequacy and the investigation will focus on the goddamned mail?

Sure, blame the Posties, they can get blamed for their own rampages and others as well.

This also in the news.. In the U.S. the Consumer Product Safety Commission, largely dormant and ineffectual for the last dozen years (bet you weren't even aware of it), has banned the sale of BuckeyBalls.  No not the long chain carbon (element 6 on my wallet sized periodic table) molecule, but those wacky fulfilled rare earth magnet balls that the annoying guy in the next cubicle keeps arranging to look like a cube, cone, tetrahedron or Gumby.

Seems that if you ingest these magnetic balls (!) that they can seek each other out and then end up getting trapped by binding or pinching the wall of the intestines, requiring surgical intervention.

Gosh.  Craig Zucker, CEO of BuckeyBalls has vowed to not go down without a fight.  I find it a bit absurd to ban them on this basis.  They are not sold as a child's toy, nor as a food substitute, perhaps a warning label with a really cool graphic of open abdomen intestinal surgery.

Don't try this at home kids!

Damn.  Not enough time to write in much detail about cold fusion nor how I made a 2000 watt carbon arc lamp when I was 12 years old from a tobacco can, carbon rods from several C size batteries, a saltwater rheostat and a wing window from a '66 Buick.

Yeah.  About 2000 watts.  The kid across the street said it made the whole second floor of our house glow, even where there were no windows :)

Yes it blew the fuses.  Mom and Dad never knew.

Perhaps the CPSC should ban the sale of batteries.

Have a good day, play safe.