I am taking a break from the blogging world over the summer holidays. This virtual disappearance is occurring in order to allow me more time to enjoy the real world.
Uncommon Uses for Bread
Bread's best for sandwiches, but surprise -- it does these 7 things well, too!
Remove scorched taste from rice
Did you leave the rice cooking too long and let it get burned? To get rid of the scorched taste, place a slice of white bread on top of the rice while it's still hot. Replace the pot lid and wait several minutes. When you remove the bread, the burned taste should be gone.
Soften up hard marshmallows
You reach for your bag of marshmallows only to discover that they've gone stale. Put a couple of slices of fresh bread in the bag and seal it shut (you may want to transfer the marsh-mallows to a self-sealing plastic bag). Leave it alone for a couple of days. When you reopen the bag, your marshmallows should taste as good as new.
Absorb vegetable odors
Love cabbage or broccoli, but hate the smell while it's cooking? Try putting a piece of white bread on top of the pot when cooking up a batch of "smelly" vegetables. It will absorb most of the odor.
Soak up grease and stop flare-ups
To paraphrase a famous bear: Only you can prevent grease fires. One of the best ways to prevent a grease flare-up when broiling meat is to place a couple of slices of white bread in your drip pan to absorb the grease. It will also cut down on the amount of smoke produced.
Clean walls and wallpaper
Most kids have a hard time understanding how easily the dirt on their hands can be transferred to walls. But you can remove most dirty or greasy fingerprints from painted walls by rubbing the area with a slice of white bread. Bread does a good job cleaning non-washable wallpaper as well. Just cut off the crusts first to minimize the chance of scratching the paper.
Pick up glass fragments
Picking up the large pieces of a broken glass or dish is usually easy enough, but getting up those tiny slivers can be a real pain (figuratively if not literally). The easiest way to make sure you don't miss any is to press a slice of bread over the area. Just be careful not to prick yourself when you toss the bread into the garbage.
Dust oil paintings
You wouldn't want to try this with an original Renoir, or with any museum-quality painting for that matter, but you can clean off everyday dust and grime that collects on an oil painting by gently rubbing the surface with a piece of white bread.
Here is a story about mathematical deduction that I love, mainly because it is said to be true, and because it had an impact (albeit small) on the outcome of the second world war. It is the story of how a simple statistical formula successfully estimated the number of tanks the enemy was producing, at a time when this could not be directly observed by the allied spy network.
By 1941-42, the allies knew that US and even British tanks had been technically superior to German Panzer tanks in combat, but they were worried about the capabilities of the new marks IV and V. More troubling, they had really very little idea of how many tanks the enemy was capable of producing in a year. Without this information, they were unsure whether any invasion of the continent on the western front could succeed.
One solution was to ask intelligence to guess the number by secretly observing the output of German factories, or by trying to count tanks on the battlefield. Both the British and the Americans tried this, but they found that the estimates returned by intelligence were contradictory and unreliable. Therefore they asked statistical intelligence to see whether the accuracy of the estimates could be improved.
The statisticians had one key piece of information, which was the serial numbers on captured mark V tanks. The statisticians believed that the Germans, being Germans, had logically numbered their tanks in the order in which they were produced. And this deduction turned out to be right. It was enough to enable them to make an estimate of the total number of tanks that had been produced up to any given moment.
The basic idea was that the highest serial number among the captured tanks could be used to calculate the overall total. The German tanks were numbered as follows: 1, 2, 3 ... N, where N was the desired total number of tanks produced. Imagine that they had captured five tanks, with serial numbers 20, 31, 43, 78 and 92. They now had a sample of five, with a maximum serial number of 92. Call the sample size S and the maximum serial number M. After some experimentation with other series, the statisticians reckoned that a good estimator of the number of tanks would probably be provided by the simple equation (M-1)(S+1)/S. In the example given, this translates to (92-1)(5+1)/5, which is equal to 109.2. Therefore the estimate of tanks produced at that time would be 109.
By using this formula, statisticians reportedly estimated that the Germans produced 246 tanks per month between June 1940 and September 1942. At that time, standard intelligence estimates had believed the number was far, far higher, at around 1,400. After the war, the allies captured German production records, showing that the true number of tanks produced in those three years was 245 per month, almost exactly what the statisticians had calculated, and less than one fifth of what standard intelligence had thought likely.
Emboldened, the allies attacked the western front in 1944 and overcame the Panzers on their way to Berlin. And so it was that statisticians won the war - in their own estimation, at any rate.
From The Guardian
Thursday July 20, 2006
A few years ago, an American and a British journalist were discussing Thanksgiving on a British radio program. The American asked if Thanksgiving was celebrated in the UK.
"Yes," the British journalist replied, "but we celebrate it on the 6th of September."
"Why then?"
"That's when you chaps left."
He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
~ T. S. Eliot
Obstacles are those frightening things that become visible when we take our eyes off our goals.
~ Henry Ford
Courage is resistance of fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
~ Mark Twain
Whatever you are, be a good one.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Thirteen year old Mackenzie Riford completed the 80 km JFK ultramarathon in America. You're never too young to run!
We were wakened at 6 am on Saturday morning by Dad posing this question to us as we reposed in our sleeping bags. Yes, we did lug two big Canon cameras all the way up to Syme hut. Looking east we could see the silhouettes of Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, and Tongaririo framed by orange and pink clouds. Egmont was surrounded by low cloud so we didn’t get a glimpse of the surrounding countryside. We had a leisurely breakfast and organized the gear we would take to the summit. Dad took his rope, snow stakes, ice screws et cetera, just in case.
We walked out the door of the hut and suddenly we were in cloud. Mum didn’t want to hold us up, so she decided to stay back at the hut and attempt the summit the next day providing the weather held. The cloud rolled away as quickly as it came, and we were in brilliant sunshine.
Angela and me near the start of the climb. Syme hut in the background.The snow was firm and made nice, crisp cramponing. To get to the summit from Syme hut, you descend a few metres into a saddle, then climb 600 metres up the south face. There are no flat spots, no downhills; nothing to ease the task of ascending (until you reach the crater rim, which is only about 30 m below the summit). The slope started off benignly enough but gradually got steeper and steeper.
Resting on the crater rim
Once the rim was gained, we sat down with relief. The first real rest we had in about two hours since leaving Syme hut. Crampon straps were tightened for the final assault of the summit. We walked along the crater for a little bit before ascending to the very top. We stood on the summit, victorious. Well, half victorious. We still had to get down. Egmont was still surrounded by cloud, so we had no view apart from the top of billowing clouds below.
The summit as viewed from the south entrance of the crater rim.
Dad, me, and Angela on the summit of Mt. EgmontA brief rest on top as there was a bit of breeze, then we descended back into the crater for a longer rest and lunch. Dad happened to meet an acquaintance from the NZ Alpine Club, and they decided to climb the crater face of the Shark’s Tooth (a secondary peak), which was covered in ice. Magnus hadn’t brought any gear with him, as he had been soloing due to the lack of a climbing partner. He borrowed Angela’s harness, and it wasn’t long before Dad and Magnus were setting up a belay at the bottom of their intended route. Due to minimal gear – four ice screws and a snow stake, they had to do the climb in two pitches.
The Shark's Tooth as viewed from the south entranceDad led the first pitch up to a sloping ledge, and set up a belay point there. Magnus followed, then passed Dad and led the final short but hard pitch. At this time the first few wisps of cloud started rolling over the summit, at times obscuring the two climbers from view. Angela and I rested down in the crater (and took plenty of photos). There were lots of other mountaineers up there; we would have seen around twenty people in the time we were up there, but no other ice climbers. Eventually Dad reached the top of Shark’s Tooth, and we could see Magnus and Dad walking down the ridge. It took them an hour from setting up the first belay to reaching the crater floor again.
Dad sitting on the belay ledge, and Magnus halfway up the first pitch.
By this time the cloud was rolling in thicker and more frequently, so we decided that we had better start our descent. When we reached the crater rim above the south face, Dad short roped me (tied a rope from his harness to my harness) as I wasn’t comfortable walking down the steep, icy slope. Luckily, I didn’t need to test the system. By this time it was white out. We just kept heading down and occasionally saw our crampon marks and platforms from our ascent. But all the holes in the ice soon started looking like marks from an ice axe or crampons.
Being in a whiteout is very disorientating as you often can not see more than one step ahead of you. It is hard to tell whether the ground slopes up or down beside you, and it is very hard to keep in a straight line. This is one reason why Mt. Egmont has the reputation of the deadliest mountain in New Zealand; because it is subject to sudden and frequent whiteouts.
The return of the mountaineers.
