Today, we are going to see a few things that were spotted in the neighborhood this week. We are catered by Stell San Jac of Austin. Our entertainment is Kris Kristofferson.
Menu
Eggs Your Way – Two Eggs, Crispy Hash Brown, Toast, Choice of Meat: Chorizo, Pork Sausage, Turkey Sausage/Bacon or Smoked Bacon
My mind goes to the song Anticipation by Carley Simon, watching the precious drops of Columbian brown drip from the stainless machine into my double-sided glass mug. The crema forms at the top per the recipe, and the ten ounces of bliss is ready. A hurried gulp brings to mind the clock. The setting is June 1st, 1924, and the location is Chicago. The duration is set for an hour. When the plunger is pulled, we find ourselves on the corner of Dearborn and Madison Streets in downtown Chicago. This is the headquarters of the Chicago Tribune newspaper.
We are in time for Col. Robert R. McCormick’s announcement that what would become one of the most widely heard radio stations in the U.S. and a widely seen television station was created when the Chicago Tribune newspaper purchased Chicago’s WDAP radio station and renamed it WGN, an abbreviation of the Tribune slogan, “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”
Since Col. McCormick is a man of few words, it does not take long for the announcement and our alarm to sound. The couch proved to be a soft landing place, and my text notice tells me Linda Hill has sent this week’s prompt. It reads:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “recipe.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
When a severe water shortage hit the Indian city of Kozhikode in the state of Kerala, a group of engineers turned to science fiction to keep the taps running.
Like everyone else in the city, engineering student Swapnil Shrivastav received a ration of two buckets of water a day collected from India’s arsenal of small water towers.
It was a ‘watershed’ moment for Shrivastav, who, according to the BBC, had won a student competition four years earlier on the subject of tackling water scarcity, and armed with a hypothetical template from the original Star Wars films, Shrivastav and two partners set to work harvesting water from the humid air.
“One element of inspiration was from Star Wars, where there’s an air-to-water device. I thought, why don’t we give it a try? It was more of a curiosity project,” he told the BBC.
According to ‘Wookiepedia’ a ‘moisture vaporator’ is a device used on moisture farms to capture water from a dry planet’s atmosphere, like Tatooine, where protagonist Luke Skywalker grew up.
This fictional device functions according to Star Wars lore by coaxing moisture from the air through refrigerated condensers, which generate low-energy ionization fields. Captured water is then pumped or gravity-directed into a storage cistern that adjusts its pH levels. Vaporators can collect 1.5 liters of water per day.
If science fiction authors could devise the particulars of such a device, Shrivastav must have felt he had a good chance of succeeding. In 2019, he and colleagues Govinda Balaji and Venkatesh Raja founded Uravu Labs, a Bangalore-based startup.
Their initial offering is a machine that converts air to water using a liquid desiccant. The desiccant absorbs moisture from the air, and sunlight or renewable energy heats it to around 100°F. The captured moisture is released into a chamber, where it’s condensed into drinking water.
The whole process takes 12 hours but can produce a staggering 2,000 liters, or about 500 gallons of drinking-quality water per day. Uravu has since had to adjust course due to the cost of manufacturing and running the machines—it’s just too high for civic use with current materials technology.
“We had to shift to commercial consumption applications as they were ready to pay us, and it’s a sustainability driver for them,” Shrivastav explained. This pivot has so far been enough to keep the start-up afloat, and they produce water for 40 different hospitality clients.
Looking ahead, Shrivastav, Raja, and Balaji are planning to investigate whether the desiccant can be made more efficient. Can it work at a lower temperature to reduce running costs, or is there another material that might prove more cost-effective?
They’re also looking at running their device attached to data centers in a pilot project that would see them utilize the waste heat coming off the centers to heat the desiccant.
The good news in this article is that smart people are exploring ideas that seem more fiction than reality to solve real problems. Today’s JohnKu talks about the potential of the human brain. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
“Using this image (below) as inspiration, write a short story, flash fiction, scene, poem; anything, really. Either put your offering (or a link to it) in a comment or email it to me at keithchanning@gmail.com before the end of the week. If you post it on your own blog or site, a link to this page would be appreciated, but please do also mention it in a comment here. Thank you for taking part.”
Today, we are visiting an exhibition of Needle paintings by Lakeway artist Carol Williard van Ginkel. Needle painting is a process using needles, thread, and multicolored string to produce a work of art.
Carol learned to embroider from her grandmother, who taught her to cross-stitch. She became interested in Needle painting and fell in love with it. The exhibit shows her progress over the last seven years.
We are catered by Bouldin Creek Cafe in Austin. Our entertainment is Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton
Menu
Predictable Breakfast – Eggs or tofu served with a scratch-made herbed potato hash cake & choice of toast | Sub hash for sm. granola or spring greens w/citrus vinaigrette
El Tipico – Scrambled eggs or tofu, scratch-made herbed potato hash cake (GF), diced local tomatoes, shredded lettuce, house salsa & choice of tortillas
El Maximo – Same as above, served with beans, avocado & cheddar-jack, or vegan cheddar
Oven Cake Breakfast – Grilled house-made vegan blueberry cornbread served with two eggs or tofu & real maple syrup, dairy or vegan butter | Contains flour
Garden Breakfast – Eggs or tofu, with sliced local tomatoes & steamed baby spinach & lemon |
Zucchini Migas Plate – Eggs or tofu scrambled with a pepper purée, tortilla chips, zucchini, onion, spices & cheddar-jack, or vegan cheddar. served with house salsa, choice of tortillas & choice of beans or fruit
The Renedict – Tofu bacon, organic baby spinach, sliced local tomatoes, topped with over-medium eggs or tofu scramble on an open-faced grilled ciabatta with vegan hollandaise sauce (contains flour) & scallions | Served until 4 pm
Breakfast Scramwich – Organic spinach & chili flake folded in eggs or tofu scramble. topped with basil aioli, local tomato & cheddar-jack or vegan cheddar on sourdough toast
Let’s go.
The lights and locations of the art make photos very difficult. I have tried to avoid glare, and so some may appear distorted. Also I have cropped the photos to focus on the art and not the frames.
Sparrow
Proud Rooster
Bluebird on a nest
Fat Bird
Buddha 3
Sitting Buddha
Two Worlds
Hokusai Landscape
My Pet Alligator
Two Fishs
Painted Pony
Rainbow Pony
Dimensions
Iris 1
Hibiscus
Falling Off The Edge
Poppies
I hope you enjoyed the exhibit. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the music. I hope you have a great week.
A move to the coffee machine is necessary to find out what is taking so long. An investigation turns up the cause. The communication screen clearly asks if a regular cup or something special is required. Neglecting to make a choice sends the machine into hibernation. The original settings called for a regular 10 oz delivery. The machine must have taken some advice from the WordPress Happiness Engineers and decided to do something different. So the question is answered, and in a happy moment, the cup is delivered.
The clock is at hand, and after a sip of soothing syrup, the setting is May 24, 1924. The time is two hours, and the location is the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC. The plunger is pulled, and we arrive just in time to witness Calvin Coolidge signing the Immigration Act of 1924.
The act limited immigration in response to public and political anxiety about the country’s rapid social and demographic changes. The 1924 act supplanted earlier legislation by vastly reducing immigration from countries outside the Western Hemisphere: Immigrants from Asia were banned, and the total annual immigration quota for the rest of the world was capped at 165,000—an 80% reduction of the yearly average before 1914.
The law was passed in both houses of Congress with very few dissenting votes. A strong West Coast lobby effort designed to limit Asian immigration proved successful in the final passage of the law. The 1924 act would define U.S. immigration policy for nearly three decades, until being substantially revised by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and ultimately replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The 1924 act also made provision for the founding of the US Border Patrol.
The act incensed the government of Japan, and some believe it laid the groundwork for the attack on the US in 1941.
It is a lovely day in Washington, and the signing ceremony on the South Lawn is brief. Our alarm goes off, and the couch becomes the new destination. A text notification comes through. It’s from Linda Hill and reads: Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “move.” Use it as a verb or a noun; write the first thing that comes to mind. Have fun!
The French postal service has released a scratch-and-sniff stamp that will fill your letter room or office with the aroma of freshly baked bread as it honors the classic baguette.
The best thing since sliced bread, the baguette, was recently honored by UNESCO with the status of ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage. ‘ In other words, it is a standout element in humanity’s story that can’t be pinned down to the words on a page, the outcome of a battle, or the bricks making up a monument.
La Poste unveiled The Stamp last Thursday on the occasion of Sant-Honore’s feast day—the patron saint of bakers.
“The baguette, the bread of our daily lives, the symbol of our gastronomy, the jewel of our culture,” La Poste says on its website.
It will cost €1.96 ($2.12 US) and run for a limited time. Just under 600,000 copies are set for printing. The image depicts a baguette wrapped in blue and white ribbons.
The stamp’s ink is coated in microcapsules that burst when the customer scratches it, releasing the scent. La Poste purchases the special ink pre-made, and the smell is derived from a collection of bakeries.
“And the difficulty for us is to apply this ink without breaking the capsules, so that the smell can then be released by the customer rubbing on the stamp,” Damien Lavaud, printer at Philaposte, was quoted as saying by France Bleu, according to France24.
UNESCO attempts to summarize the value and uniqueness of baguettes over other breads with the following description.
Baguettes require specific knowledge and techniques. They are baked in small batches throughout the day, and the outcomes vary according to temperature and humidity.
They also generate modes of consumption and social practices that differentiate them from other types of bread, such as daily visits to bakeries to purchase the loaves and specific display racks to match their long shape.
In this turbulent world, the good news in this article is that normal can be refreshing. Today’s JohnKu talks about normal I hope you have a lovely weekend.
Rare white Crepe Myrtles.
“Hey, Twiggy. What you got there?”
