Silent Spring is another one of those books that I've heard about, meant to read, but never got around to reading. All that I recall from the reviews is that DDT causes the shells of bird eggs to be weak, causing a precipitous drop in the birth rate. I think peregrine falcons and the California condor were particularly threatened, but I don't know for sure. I haven't read the book. Yet.
Found it online and I may give it a read, it looks pretty short, less than 200 pages. Does that sound right to you guys? I'm interested in seeing how dated it may be but it is probably still very relevant. Given the nature of chemicals and pesticides in the environment her warning was probably just in the nick of time. It is tragic that some of the environmental regulations are probably going to be rolled back by Trump, if they haven't been already. There are a lot of know-nothings in his cabinet, especially regarding science and education. Sad!
----
There are a lot of satellite dishes in my neighborhood, but they are the little ones from Dish Network and the like, maybe two feet big with an offset "horn" I think it's called. They're elliptical, not round, and I suspect Mr. Beagles uses something much larger, but I could be wrong. If the dish can pick up signals from two different satellites they must be very close together. I wish I knew more about the technology, as I've always liked fiddling with parabolas as solar collectors and I wonder how a bunch of little satellite dishes in an array would work for TV reception, like the arrays used for radio astronomy. If one dish is good, three would be better, right?
-----
My goodness whatever do they teach in those Lutheran schools? Apparently the only thing that Old Dog can quote is doggerel.
Nope, not taking the bait. Nice try, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment