Author: Simon

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Lights Out

I heard a joke once about why hurricanes are given women’s names. I won’t repeat it here, as it’s too lowbrow for even my blog, but I’m chuckling to myself nonetheless. Fortunately, she only took my silver maple when she left, and cut the power for 4 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Helene

I’m no stranger to these weather events, but Ohio is not prepared for hurricanes. Tornadoes, we all collectively know it’s a gamble and if you get hit directly it’s game over, but hurricanes always seem to sneak in and do more damage than expected.

I am not a Prepper, but I am a Something Will Go Wrong-er, so I had some contingencies in place. Still, it’s interesting how quickly things go downhill without power. So, following the cataclysm, I took the opportunity to document a timeline of failure events for future reference. Here’s what I can expect for the next event that cuts off our electricity:

After…

  • 2 hours, the UPS will fail and the network equipment will go offline (the internet was out anyway since the cable had been severed).
  • 6 hours, the upright refrigerator/freezer will exceed 40 and 32 degrees, respectively.
  • 20 hours, the emergency hall lights will fail.
  • 48 hours, the cooler (if packed with ice), will exceed 40 degrees.
  • 48 hours, the emergency basement light will dim to the point of being unusable.
  • 72 hours, the chest freezer will almost reach 32 degrees.

More condensed, these are the priorities:

  • Day 1: wired communications will fail and short-term food storage will reach unsafe temperatures. Backup lights will begin to fail.
  • Day 2: More backup lights will continue to fail and the cooler will need to be restocked with ice if being used for backup food storage.
  • Day 3: Long-term frozen food storage will begin to thaw.

Overall, we made it out with minimal losses, but the area that needs addressing is a backup power supply for the chest freezer. Provided we can source ice, refrigerator food can remain safe in the cooler, but substantial losses would have occurred had we not borrowed a generator. Lesson learned.

I also bought a chain saw.

–Simon

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Choke on This

I know I settled on “Feist Choke”, but “Jew Choke” just stuck better.

Forage Patch

No matter. True to their botanical descriptions, they have done well with very little care, even in the drought we had. I did not harvest any this year, preferring to give them a free year to establish themselves. So far so good, and they have even managed to flower.

It looks like an unremarkable weed, which is how most native plants look.

I have nothing pithy to add.

–Simon

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Tomatillo Salsa Verde

Ah the tomatillo – the tomato wannabe that’s forever doomed to live in the shadow of its more popular and better-looking brother. So sad that I can’t even find a picture of past harvests. This year I didn’t even plant any – I just let some grow where they came up on their own.

Part of this aversion is their sticky and slimy skin, surrounded by that annoying husk that needs removal. And they’re very sour. And I had failed to create a good way to use them.

But at long last, I finally have formulated a recipe. Here it is so I don’t forget:

  • Add enough tomatillos to line the bottom of a 9X9 baking dish, cut in half (cut side up).
  • Bake at 325 for an hour.
  • Process through food mill and add juice to blender.
  • Add 1tsp salt, 1/2 white onion, juice of 1 lime, 1Tbsp sugar, 1Tbsp corn starch; and discretionary amounts of white pepper, cilantro, jalapeño, minced garlic.
  • Blend until puréed.
  • Refrigerate until cool.

Ta-daa!

–Simon

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Fingernail Growth Rate and Life Expectancy

“Wow Simon, this is such an enticing title for a blog post!”

“I know, right?!”

Okay chill out. This is indeed mildly interesting, at least to me, because the thought never occurred to actually measure this. That is, until some time following the events of March 17, 2024:

Das blood!

A slipup washing knives, totally unrelated to this being St. Patrick’s day, resulted in 3 stitches.

Ouch!

Here’s a better pic, 4 days later:

Twitches get stitches

The wound, being a clean incision brought to me by alcohol-impairment and fine German steel, closed within 2 weeks. But as my fingernail grew out, I noticed that it had been damaged behind the cuticle. What started as a divet turned into a flaking nail as the damage neared the fingertip.

So much for being a hand model

Eventually though, the damage grew out and was clipped away. And unlike my toe which slid under the bathroom door while exiting the shower some 30 years ago, the growth cells were not permanently rendered incapable of uniform nail growth. Huzzah! At long last, the injury is fully healed.

Except for that small split on the side, which might be permanent. But it’s not very noticeable and the skin doesn’t even have a perceptible scar, or more importantly, lasting numbness (I was worried about that for a while).

So how long did this injury take to completely heal? 181 days! Essentially two full seasons. So back to the original line of thought: what is my nails’ growth rate, and naturally – is that normal? Squander not an opportunity, for I have definitive empirical measurements based on when that crack grew out.

This was a difficult picture to take myself

It would appear that, based on photos of the original injury’s location, that between March 17 and September 14, 15 millimeters’ worth of nail grew out. So if we apply some basic math, that’s…

~2.5mm per month, or…

~0.08mm per day.

Which seems like a long damn time to be catching that cracked nail on things. But is that normal?

According to healthonline.com (seems like a legit website), the average nail grows 3.47mm per month, or “roughly a tenth of a millimeter per day”. My math works out to 0.12mm per day, so they’re using fuzzy math, but whatever. Dear God! My nails are growing at 2/3 the average rate for a healthy human! Do I need more alpha-keratin in my diet?

Okay, so digging deeper reveals that’s a rough estimate and nail growth peaks at age 10. I’m 40, so not exactly in my prime anymore, granted. So that means, if my nail growth indeed peaked at age 10, then for each decade since, my nail growth has decreased by 22.2%, if we’re assuming a linear function, which I can only do with two data points. 66.7/3=22.2.

Now the important question: can I use nail regeneration rate as a benchmark for all my cellular regeneration? And if so, can I use that to predict the point at which I’ll no longer be able to adequately heal – i.e. die?

Let’s try. So for X, when X = current percent rate of nail growth (66.7%)…

And when Y = # of decades passed since X, then…

My predicted rate of cellular regeneration, C, = 100-((X/3)*(1+Y))

Then we see where C falls to zero. Then I can simply narrow it down by dividing (X/3) by 10 to determine degeneration rate per year.

My conclusion: I will die sometime just before my 75th birthday!

Not very encouraging. I think I need more data points. Give me another 10 years and I’ll complete another measurement. I hope the prediction is a little more encouraging, otherwise I’ll be looking at early retirement!

–Simon

P.S., This counts as Quantitative Philosophy!