Diary (June 10, 2020)
Online diary of Karl Jones for Wednesday June 10, 2020.
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Diary
The ambiguity of oracles
The Oracle always replies Yes — and No!
- Comment @ Boing Boing
The Punisher is a criminal
Police in the US Have Embraced the Punisher Skull as an Unofficial Logo. Now the Character’s Creator Is Asking Artists of Color to Reclaim It
Gerry Conway doesn't want the Punisher skull to become a symbol of law enforcement.
Junior Johnson
Boing Boing: "NASCAR is an activity in which humans sit in wheeled, self-propelled boxes and hold contests to see who can roll the fastest."
Racing is not my thing to defend, but I am a huge fan of Tom Wolfe’s work, and I have to say that his “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes! 3” (1965) is “must” reading (I re-read at least once a year, in the The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby collection, which is excellent in its entirety and among my most beloved books).
- Comment @ Boing Boing
Cooking moonshine in automobile radiators
Tom Wolfe: "Moonshining was illegal, however, that was also the unvarnished truth."
User brainspore wrote: "Well of course it was “unvarnished,” that stuff is basically paint thinner."
Automobile radiators are cheap and available (talking prohibition and depression era, here) and readily adapted for use as ethanol distillation boilers, and it’s my understanding that this is a true "hillbilly liquor makes you go blind" trope.
If you are a diligent engineer, you wash the radiator really well before cooking. But I have to wonder how possible it is to clean a radiator under low-budget field conditions. And I assume some cooks don’t clean their boilers because they don’t know or don’t care.
UPDATE (and tip of the hat):
User Purplecat observes: "Washing them out would get rid of the traces of anti-freeze, but the main problem with using radiators in a moonshine still was the lead solder which would gradually leach into the product. Also, the product would inevitably be a bit sulphurous, if you’re using less copper in the set-up."
- Comment @ Boing Boing