What are you planning on doing with all of that phosphorous, anyhow?

Motherfucker, i ain't going near the shit. Sometimes, IMO, it is important to know how to do a thing, simply to ensure that one can be absolutely sure to be able to avoid the process entirely.

Phosphorus will fuck you up something fierce. Definitely a prime candidate for a substance worth letting others manufacture.

I suppose authentic Victorian-style matches is off the list of projects? And let me guess, you probably don't have large quantities of mercury around, either...

Actually it is funny, just the other day i found myself looking at instructions on how to harvest red phosphorus from matchbook strikers.

All i could think was, "okaaayyy... and who exactly would want to do that, in this fashion, for these tiny amounts?"

Somewhere in a corner of the internet is a mass of curious young'ns and overly optimistic militia-leaning old'ns, who have no eyebrows or armhair.

From the strikers? I was unaware. And somewhat surprised I didn't read about that when I was, say, 14 or so.

I'm not entirely sure what purpose it would serve, either. There's far more readily attainable things that would be useful if one wanted to set something on fire or blow something up.

Well, for one, white phosophorus can be derived from the red, and for two, the kids seem to be into mixing the stuff with the ground up match heads for a suuuupersketchy explosive powder.

Which basically cannot be touched or moved.

You know, the most useful kind.

Oh, and of course, regarding the first, white phosporus will ignite with oxygen at oh just about anything above 87º Fahrenheit.

Which of course, is a nice surprise for some of those young'ns/oldn's who might be trying to heat the red stuff up to 500º to turn it into the white stuff....

It sounds like just the sort of substance one could easily manufacture in quantities that would make it useful as some sort of weapon or booby trap, too.

And re: white phosphorous, that makes me curious, actually, as to how they legitimately make the stuff. It's not exactly, you know, stable. Noble gas environment?

Needs a vacuum. In the olde dayes, they did the first bits in a vacuum crucible sort of deal, and then handled the rest of the stages of purifying it down into pure phosphorus, carefully keeping it separate from any air, and doing some of the steps basically under water.

Especially for the kind of booby trap that catches the person setting it?

Or weapon-wise, for the assailant of a self-harm sort of bent?

http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/14213248?selectedversion=NBD535161

Gerald E. H. Abraham, On Russian Music, 1939.

No cover photo; I have the 1970 edition I picked up at a library used-book sale. It smells wonderful. It does not go past Tchaikovsky; no Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Stravinsky, etc. (Not surprising considering their post-WWII output either; still, it wasn't updated/expanded to cover then-contemporary composers.) I have a thing for Russian composers, and classical music is my first and forever love, and perhaps my biggest nerd-dom.

Twain, as Archangel Satan, lampoons The Bible. It's great stuff. Among other things, Noah is blamed for the lack of dinosaurs.

Ah, finished "III - THE ANIMAL WORLD" a ways back and am currently a ways into "IV - THE MINERAL WORLD". I am trying to read these slowly(very much against my nature), because i don't want them to end, due to their high quality of texts, and the fact that i do not have anything quite as decent as them, to read once they are exhausted.

At the moment, in a detailing of the cost comparison of electric trolley versus mule, in the haulings of coal(in 1901 dollars, roughly $2.76 per ton via machine, against a relatively extravagant $7.15/T for animal motive methods).

Nowadays, a century and change later, I would choose mule for the sheer ostentatiousness of it. But, back then, I suppose mechanical means were the new hip thing. And, to be fair, more practical. But I'd really like to see my mule teams hauling tons of coal down the interstate.

Those seem to be of a very, very high quality indeed. How many volumes are there, all told?


Currently, this:


Which is a quality concise history of the period leading up to the American Revolution as well as the revolution itself. Honestly not a subject I'd spent much time with outside of an academic setting where it's perfunctorily glossed over. It mentions people you don't hear about in school- not unless you take more American history in college than I ever did- and in a fair bit of detail, too. There's an entire chapter on James Otis.

It also contains useless historical trivia about people you have heard of. Fun fact: at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, two dashing young American officers had their horses shot out from under them: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

Ringworld, fuck yeah.

So far he only said 'conical' once.

Never read the Ringworld- I loves me some Discworld, but that's completely different- anything, but I remember liking Lucifer's Hammer, Footfall, and The Mote In God's Eye.

None of which were conical, I don't think?

They go to Volume X.




I'd've thought that they would have hit that era a bit harder almost anywhere in NY. Around here(bordering Lexington and Concord, and well, Boston) we got a LOT of revolution school. To the degree that i actually don't remember a history class until high school, that covered much of anything else?

They covered it, but covered the post-revolution history of New York as well. First post-revolution governor of New York was George Clinton, that I remember. Then they dump that in 5th/6th grade for a more general world history thing, 7th/8th is American history again; Native Americans and their relationship to New York State get worked in there, vague world thing 9th, European history 10th, 11th/12th are American things or advanced classes. Granted this is from memory going back a long ways, and they have surely dumbed down the curriculum to raise test scores since, so that politicians can appear to Give A Shit About Education. It gets covered, but not in super-detail, or didn't, and it almost assuredly wouldn't now. How much of what I know there I actually learned as a very young person I have no idea. Probably not most of it outside the basics, not unless I read it myself. Lower-level college courses weren't much better, really, but they assume you are literate and can get, say, what de Tocqueville was on about. Honestly, Intro To Political Philosophy or whatever it was called hit some of the concepts in more depth, and had a much broader reach besides.

Nay.
However in the first Ringworld book the word keeps coming up, to describe a ship's hull, a crater, Teela's breasts, a pit, etc.

Chris: this reminds me of the cover of your glorious discoveries:

Yarr, i'll bet it smells as awesome as these do too. Brilliant bit of oldbook/oldbinding bookstench to them.

The science books started out blue, but have gone to that sort of green on the spines, i guess from bookshelf sunlight, and possibly something to do also with the aforesaid bookstinkglue.