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    Seaweed Sarge

    With the U.S. Memorial Day holiday in the rear view mirror, the 2023 summer season is officially upon us. According to surveys from American Express Travel, sun-and-fun seekers prefer New York City, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles this year. Las Vegas raises an eyebrow (after all, summer in Sin City is broiler-setting hot) but notice something else: Florida didn’t make the top three. Maybe – no, probably – it’s because Seaweed Sarge is already wreaking havoc on the Sunshine State’s beaches.

    Miami Beach

    If you don’t know Seaweed Sarge, it’s because 1) you deliberately avoid the news these days – an increasingly popular trend – or 2) like me, you need a more creative label for sargassum, because it’s a weird name for the seaweed intent on taking over the world.  Sarge is a little intimidating, if only for his size.  Picture him as a belt of algae 5,000 miles long (I can’t picture anything 5,000 miles long, can you?)  Now consider: Sarge will double in size by July, the peak of his “bloom season”.

    Sargassum

    Sargassum is a particularly annoying form of seaweed.  It’s rootless, which means it can reproduce while simply floating around on the ocean’s surface.  Its rapid growth is bolstered by nutrients leached into rivers and oceans from land-based agriculture.  Once it makes shore sargassum rots immediately, releasing irritating hydrogen sulfide and the stench of rotten eggs.  And trying to remove countless tons of seaweed begs the question: where the heck do you put it all?

    Florida’s gonna have to figure out the answer to that last question, and fast.  Sarge is already littering beaches from Ft. Lauderdale to Key West and we’re just getting started.  Come July and August it’ll be virtually impossible to walk along the shoreline.

    Ft. Lauderdale

    My own visits to the beach have been blissfully Sarge-free.  Most of my sun-and-fun takes place in San Diego, far from Sarge’s primary Atlantic Ocean residence.  The only real nuisances on San Diego beaches are the occasional jellyfish or stingray, and a once-in-a-blue-moon shark sighting (which stirs up more anxiety than actual sightings).  Admittedly, Sarge washes ashore in San Diego as well, but mostly just here and there as a remnant of off-shore harvesting.  Seaweed does have its upsides, in foods, medicines, and fertilizers.

    Ironically, I have fond memories of Sarge as a kid.  He’s built with giant flappy leaves reminiscent of a mermaid’s fishtail.  He’s got countless air sacs to keep him afloat, which make a popping sound as satisfying as squeezing bubble wrap.  If I’d thought to take pictures back in the day, I could show you Sarge as an adornment to many a childhood sand castle.

    It’s time for robots

    An army of beach tractors could work all summer in South Florida and barely make a dent in Sarge.  The seasonal maintenance of the single half-mile beach in Key West alone is in the millions of dollars.  But a better solution may be in play.  A prototype robot has been designed to do battle at sea.  “AlgaRay” cruises slowly through the water, hooking tons of Sarge’s strands in a single pass.  Once at capacity, AlgaRay drags Sarge underwater to a depth where all of those air sacs explode.  No longer buoyant, Sarge sinks to the ocean floor; a “watery grave” if you will.  AlgaRay has been likened to a weed-eating Pac-Man or a vacuuming Roomba.  Either image works for me.

    Let’s have one more look at those tourist surveys.  One in ten say they’d cancel or reschedule a trip to Florida if they knew Sarge was coming ashore.  Maybe that explains why landlocked Las Vegas ranked #2 on this summer’s most popular U.S. destinations.  Not that Vegas doesn’t have its own threats.  Three years ago a swarm of locusts descended on the Strip, blotting out casino windows and streetlights.  An annual migration of tarantulas passes by in the surrounding desert.  So take your pick: hordes of flying/crawling bugs or a giant mass of inanimate algae.  Maybe Sarge isn’t so bad after all.

    Some content sourced from the NPR.org article, “Giant blobs of seaweed are hitting Florida…”

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    Lifeless Buds

    I have a Venus flytrap named Frankie. He lives alone in a plastic cup on the patio table, happy in the humid air as he nabs the occasional bug. My wife’s nearby garden is boasting fruit, vegetables, and colorful blooms but I’m content to just watch my little tabletop carnivore do his thing. I’ll get to why I named my bud “Frankie” in a minute but let me just say this: At least he’s a live little bud. That’s more than a lot of people can say about their more imaginary friends.

    “Frankie”

    Here’s a morsel of self-discovery for you, extracted from my several years of blog posts.  I have a habit of referring to inanimate objects with terms of endearment.  My most recent example: two weeks ago when I discovered the SpaceX satellites launching into outer space.  I referred to those technological marvels as “little guys who talk to one another”, and, “when their time is done they’ll return home for a proper burial”.  Whether this is just cheap entertainment or an effort to elicit empathy from you readers, I regularly inject life into the lifeless (or in this case, a soul into the metal and mechanical).

    “Little Caesar”

    I didn’t have to scroll back very far to find other examples.  My post a week before the satellites, Hail, Caesium, endeared of all things, a lost capsule of nuclear waste.  First, I nicknamed the capsule “Little Caesar”.  Then I re-nicknamed it “LC” and noted how detection equipment ultimately “…led the search team right to our little friend”.  Were you more relieved to know the waste had been contained or that our little lost friend had finally been found?

    Pine cone “sororities”

    Conifer Confetti, a post from last fall, lamented the hours I sacrifice to contain the untold number of pine cones on our property.  I referred to the cones as “females” (because biologically, they really are) and in one frustrated burst of endearment, said “It’s like having the world’s biggest sorority row above my backyard, and every house is about to disgorge its girls for a giant party on the ground”.  So which is it Dave, a whole lot of “yard waste” or thousands of “little ladies”?

    The “poor” leftover pieces from the LEGO Grand Piano

    Finally, my series of posts on building the LEGO Grand Piano and LEGO Fallingwater were rife with terms of endearment.  All those plastic pieces were like little families bagged up in a single box; couples waiting to be married.  At times I thought I lost “one of the little guys”, and I felt sorry for the leftovers who’d never realize their destiny of being a part of the completed model.

    “Cassini” (image courtesy of NASA/JPL)

    This topic was inspired by an article in The Atlantic about the spacecraft Cassini.  Six years ago, Cassini completed a 13-year data-gathering cruise around Saturn and its moons.  Utterly alone and running out of fuel, Cassini turned towards the planet, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.  As NASA described the final moments, Cassini “fought to keep its antenna pointed at Earth as it transmitted its farewell”.  An entire room of scientists at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory fell into tears.  Cassini is the perfect example of – big word here  – anthropomorphism.  In simpler terms, the more “alive” a machine appears to be, the more empathetic the response from humans.  Some robots are deliberately anthropomorphic, a subtopic we just don’t have enough words for today.

    As I watch Frankie ingest another insect, it’s time to reveal the genesis of his name.  Maybe you don’t remember Frankie Avalon in his prime but you do remember the 1970s movie Grease.  Avalon showed up in a memorable scene, descending a staircase dressed in white while singing “Beauty School Dropout” to Didi Conn’s “Frenchy”.  Guess what?  Avalon had an even bigger hit: Venus.  That song is a plea to the goddess of love to bring him romance; someone pretty and very much alive.  Okay, so my Frankie isn’t pretty, but at least he’s alive.  That’s more than I can say about all those other little buds who keep showing up in my blog posts.

    Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “How to Mourn a Space Robot”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    State Flyovers

    The heavy-duty bracket I purchased to display our American flag sits patiently on the garage shelf. The flagpole and flag stay wrapped in the plastic they came in. I hesitate with this little DIY project because I’m mounting the bracket onto a rounded wood column on the front porch. If the column isn’t solid throughout, it may not support the Stars and Stripes. Or the Palmetto State flag, for that matter.

    South Carolina

    If you’re not familiar with the South Carolina state flag, you are now.  Not very exciting, eh?  A white palmetto tree in the middle and a white crescent to the upper left, on a rectangle of deep blue.  Okay, but what about why the flag has this look?  That’s a little more interesting.  All of it is a nod to the Revolutionary War.  The crescent could be found on an American soldier’s cap, palmetto logs were used to build the forts they fought from, and the deep blue was the color of their uniforms.  My assumption was simply, “Oh, our state has a lot of palm trees and a lot of clear moonlit nights.”

    Colorado

    The same could be said for the state of our former residence.  Colorado’s flag is likewise simple, with a big red “C” for Colorado surrounding what I assumed was a yellow nod to the state’s bountiful days of sunshine (300+/year).  Nope, I only got the sunshine part right.  The “C” represents “columbine” (state flower) and “centennial” (Colorado became a state in the hundredth year of America’s independence).  The red represents the state’s distinctive sandstone soil, the white its ever-present snow, and the blue its endless skies (which really are an amazing blue).  More than meets the eye with this “state flyover”, am I right?

    Maine

    Not content with just SC and CO, I decided to give a few other state flags a whirl… literally.  I flicked my mouse wheel the way someone might spin the bottle, for an unsuspecting kiss choice from the list.  Up came ME.  There’s a lot going on with Maine’s state flag, including a couple of proud characters and a moose that looks rather cartoonish.  “Dirigo”, from a long-ago-but-now-defunct language of the region, means simply, “I lead”.

    Here’s a further sampling of U.S. state flag trivia:

    • Arkansas was the first of the fifty states to produce diamonds.
    • Hawaii was once under British control, so their flag includes a small version of the “Union Jack”.
    • Montana’s motto is “gold and silver”.
    • Ohio’s flag is not rectangular and includes a “swallowtail” notch (which can’t be said for any of the others).
    • Oregon’s flag has a different design on each side.
    • Utah’s flag changes in 2024, to better represent the makeup of the state’s residents.
    Ohio

    If you live in an American state, you should play this game yourself.  Scroll to the image of your flag in the article: The state flag for all 50 states… but before you read the written description, make your best guess on the colors and symbols.  It’s fair to say most Americans don’t really know our state flags.

    Go Dawgs!

    South Carolinians love to fly flags.  You’ll see the colors of colleges and universities from all over down here (including the red/black of those nearby football champion Georgia Bulldogs).  You’ll see a lot of those “garden flags” designed to represent the year’s seasons and holidays.  But mostly you see the Stars and Stripes, and the Palmetto and Crescent.  South Carolina’s forever nod to the Revolutionary War means I’ll never look at our flag the same way again.  Now I just have to get the bracket where it belongs so I can hoist the banner same as every other resident.

    Some content sourced from the USA Today article, “The state flag for all 50 states…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Celestial Strings of Pearls

    When I take the dog for a walk after dark, I never know what to expect in the night sky above me. We live in an area devoid of city lights so the celestial show is clear and sometimes dramatic. Ursa Major (aka Big Dipper) often makes an appearance. Venus is the brightest star planet low in the western sky at twilight. And the full moon, seemingly biggest as it rises just above the pine trees, can be breathtaking. But none of this prepared me for the bold processional streaking across the heavens last Thursday night.

    It could’ve been Santa Claus and his reindeer for all I knew.  Sitting around a backyard fire pit with friends, having drinks and swapping stories, one of the women suddenly shrieked, “LOOK!!!” and pointed skyward.  At first it didn’t register what we were seeing (nor at second, nor at third).  I can only describe it as a tiny string of bright pearls, two or three dozen in the strand, perfectly spaced and moving silently across the sky.  Neither pulling nor pushing, they simply proceeded in a line as if drawn to some unknown destination.  It almost looked like the one-after-another cars of a roller coaster, heading up that first steep incline.

    Our group was at a loss to explain this extraterrestrial.  We thought it might be the neatly arranged contrails of a stealth fighter.  Or some faraway electronic billboard advertising in Morse code (only with dots, no dashes).  Turns out we weren’t even close.  Our little alien spacecraft parade was the latest launch of Starlink satellites from SpaceX.

    You’ve probably heard of SpaceX, even if you don’t know much about what they do.  Founded in 2002, SpaceX is one of Elon Musk’s ambitious companies, with the “modest” long-term goal of colonizing Mars.  While they design and launch the spacecraft to make that happen, SpaceX is providing Starlink Internet service to under-served areas of the globe by building a “constellation” of satellites around the planet.  42,000 of them.

    This is technology way beyond my understanding, but here’s the basic setup.  A transmitter somewhere on earth sends the Internet up to one of those satellites and the satellite then rebounds the signal back to you.  If the satellite loses your direct line of sight, it can hand off the signal to one of its buddies and your Internet service continues uninterrupted.  SpaceX earned the license for a ten-year window – starting in 2019 – to complete its Starlink constellation.  At last count they’ve already got 4,000 of these little guys in orbit.

    Starlink satellite

    Credit Musk for identifying a market in need.  Mars may not be on my bucket list but faster Internet service certainly is.  Two years ago 10,000 Earthlings signed up for Starlink subscriptions (at $599 USD for the hardware and $120/month for the service). Today? Fully 1.5 million customers are bouncing data back and forth with all those satellites.  My rural location here in South Carolina (and the s-l-o-w speed of my current Internet provider) make me a prime Starlink candidate.  Later this year, I’ll also be able to switch over my cell phone service.  Yep, Elon Musk is literally taking over the planet.  Come to think of it, maybe the entire solar system.

    A “string of pearls” before the satellites go their separate ways

    Whether or not I subscribe to Starlink, I find the satellite technology fascinating.  We have a lot of “space junk” circling Earth but this constellation of man-made stars seems more elegant.  They’re launched in strings of up to 60, separating once they’re high enough. Each satellite’s thruster is powered by krypton and argon.  They talk to one another to avoid collisions.  They’re currently undergoing “dimming” to appease astronomers by taking a back seat to the real stars in space.  Finally, these satellites can “de-orbit”.  In other words, when they’re time is done (even satellites don’t live forever), they return home for a proper burial, which means burning up entirely as they attempt reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.

    Starlink satellites x 42,000

    Several websites track the continuing launches of Starlink satellite strings (like this one).  You can find out exactly when they’ll be passing overhead in your neighborhood, destined for their rightful place in the budding constellation.  If you see them stream by, remember, it’s not Santa and his reindeer (wrong month).  It’s a string of pearls designed to provide you with faster Internet service.

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Hail, Caesium!

    I acquired a taste for Caesar salad later in life. After decades of boring lettuce/tomato and franchise salad bars, I learned to branch out a little. Caesar, with its romaine, croutons, Parmesan, and distinctive dressing, has become my go-to at restaurants. But I always double-check my “hold the anchovies, please” because even a thimbleful would put a damper on things. Kind of like caesium-137.

    Small but mighty

    You probably don’t know much about caesium.  Pronounce it just like the salad (or like “seize” in Seize the day!).  Caesium-137 is a nasty little byproduct of nuclear fission, deadly enough to turn your life into a… uh, half-life with just a brief introduction.  So here’s the story of the little caesium capsule – a.k.a. Little Caesar – that could get away, and did.

    It’s a simple enough task, really.  Transport an item from Point A to Point B, like the new washing machine we just had delivered from Home Depot.  But let’s make the job a little more challenging, shall we?  The distance you have to travel shall be almost 900 miles.  The journey itself shall be on the oft-barren Great Northern Highway of Western Australia, which isn’t always the smoothest of rides.  Finally, transport a potentially lethal substance… without dropping it.

    “Little Caesar” was t-i-n-y

    You’d think radioactive caesium-137 – no matter how small an amount – would be literally welded into the delivery truck it rides in.  Instead, the pill-sized capsule – already parked inside the density gauge equipment it was a part of, was placed in a “package”, then attached to the truck with four mounting bolts.

    Now then, imagine you’ve just completed the long and boring four-day drive to the nuclear waste treatment facility in Perth.  You hop off the truck, walk around to the back, open the doors, and discover not only a broken gauge and a missing mounting bolt, but no caesium-137 capsule.  In fact, the delivery truck wasn’t even inspected until nine days after arrival.

    This scenario raises a half-life of questions for me.  First, just how bumpy was that Great Northern Highway?  Second, even if the gauge broke open and the capsule got loose, how the heck did it escape, not only out of the package but out of the entire truck?  Finally, we’re talking about lethal goods here.  Wouldn’t some sort of alarm go off if Little Caesar skipped town?  I’m guessing someone is answering these kinds of questions as we speak, and his/her seat is a little warm.

    The fearless search committee

    imagine being a member of the ad hoc search-and-rescue crew.  Not only are you looking for something that can kill you just by being in close proximity, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack, only the needle is the size of a paper clip and the haystack is a highway longer than the coast of California.  No matter, you’re handed a radiation detection device, the keys to a truck with flashing hazard lights, and off you go.  Oh, and by the way, you can’t go faster than 30 mph or your detector can’t do its job.

    This isn’t the first unintended release of Little Caesar.  He escaped in much larger quantities from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011.  You can read about nine other incidents involving “LC” here, including one in Seattle four years ago and one in Thailand in March.

    At the time I saved this story in January, Little Caesar was still at large.  Worst-case scenarios were running rampant.  What if LC bounced to freedom on a populated area of the highway?  What if a hiker happened upon the capsule and threw it into his or her backpack before returning home?  Or, God forbid, what if a bird snatched the capsule in its beak and transported it to its nest in the middle of downtown Perth?

    LC was hiding here

    Three months later (this week), I caught up with this story.  The run-of-the-mill conclusion is that Little Caesar was found just six days after his escape, off the highway in a remote area not far from the truck’s point of departure.  The radiation detection equipment sounded the alarm and led the search team right to our little friend.

    A close-up of the escapee

    As for what happened once LC was found?  A 20-meter “hot zone” was set up around him to fend off the inevitable lookie-loos.  He was given a thick casing of lead in case he was feeling “radiant”.  Finally, Little Caesar was scheduled to be transported to the county health facility for further examination.  Yes, I said “transported”.  No word on whether or not he made it to his final destination.

    Some content sourced from the ABC News article “Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.

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