rjb
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Post by rjb on May 6, 2012 17:03:57 GMT -8
Sergei: Hey, no problem! It's not your fault if I'm humor-challenged. The proper joke when the subject is "dyeing with mushrooms" is to change the "dyeing" to "dying". Since everyone in the US feels that a wild mushroom will kill you, this gets a chuckle and everyone thinks you are correct.
In Russia there is a mushroom Lactarius deliciosus that is considered, well, delicious over there. I find them in abundance here in New Mexico but nobody eats them, and I didn't really like the taste either so I leave them out in the field. So it goes.
I use natural plant dyes also. Lately I have tried lichens, but they generally give color that is light sensitive and not permanent (even using mordants).
Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on May 3, 2012 7:45:02 GMT -8
Not endangered. They contain an hallucinogenic chemical. The US has it on the list with Peyote and other substances as illegal to possess. Users of psilocybin often used to refer to it as sacred mushroom. Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on May 2, 2012 19:34:41 GMT -8
Haven't tried any Psilocybes. Of course in the US it would not be legal for me to collect them, but the best book on dyeing does not list it as promising. Often the color of the mushroom is unrelated to the color you get dyeing wool. The blue appearance of some Psilocybes does not mean it contains a good blue dye. Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Apr 30, 2012 18:53:37 GMT -8
That sounds nice! My wife and I are into wild mushrooms, mostly for eating, but there are also mushrooms that can be used for dyeing. Whenever I find one of those I try it out on wool yarn. I've gotten some good results, but still haven't gotten a good blue color out of mushrooms. I find lots of Hydnum imbricatum in NM and CA, and that should give blue. I always get more of a green color with faint bluish tint. Still working on it. I've also dyed wool with the famous Cochineal bug which is out in our yard eating the cacti. It was historically a big export for Mexico for dyeing cloth red. These days it is sometimes used as a food coloring which gets the strict vegetarians upset. They don't like eating insect products! Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Jan 13, 2012 7:21:58 GMT -8
I can't really help about sprayers, but there are many species of milkweed and they have different requirements. I grow two native species in the yard here in New Mexico, and they tend to be pretty weedy and invasive. In the greenhouse I have 5 species of exotic milkweed from around the world, Morocco, Thailand, Malaysia etc. I think temperature, watering, humidity all can affect the happiness of the plants. Many expect to go down for the winter and look rather shabby this time of year- for me. I have never experimented with types of sprayers though, I just use simple sprayers once or twice a day to maintain humidity since this is a very dry climate. Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Dec 18, 2011 7:20:35 GMT -8
On two visits to southern Argentina (Ushuaia), I saw lots of this medium size weevil, 2 cm long. I think it is very common and they are often roaming the ground or on logs, not on any plant. Does anyone know the name? A search turns up a couple pictures of it, but no ID. Thanks for any help. Rick Attachments:
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Nov 26, 2011 21:20:59 GMT -8
Agreed. I know that many/most of western medicines are derived from herbal or otherwise naturally occurring substances. Lots of current research is still testing everything we can find in the jungle or ocean.
Homeopathy is another matter but to each his own! Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Nov 25, 2011 20:56:30 GMT -8
I'm visiting my relatives in Sunnyvale, CA right now and we have a smart meter on the house. I'm feeling only good vibes!
About these anecdotal stories, you must remember the anti-placebo effect: Many supposed remedies like homeopathy and acupuncture and lots of herbal and folk medicines work by the placebo effect. Give the crying baby a pacifier and you solve the problem, the baby becomes temporarily happy- a placebo. (Note you aren't allowed to then claim you "fed" the baby!) Likewise if you truly believe something is harmful it may harm you in the sense that you may develop symptoms like nausea, headache etc: the anti-placebo effect. The important thing is that the Smart Meter CANNOT hurt anyone by radiation. It radiates something very very safe, RF radiation. A light bulb is much more dangerous. It radiates something much higher energy than RF, namely light, and many more watts of the stuff. If RF could hurt you then a light bulb would be instantly deadly. RF cannot harm you unless you are blasted with enough to warm you up. Same with light. Use a magnifying glass to concentrate the light and you could fry an ant (I felt I should mention insects). Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Oct 25, 2011 18:25:28 GMT -8
Lots of sympathy to the Rev. I love cats but they can be the sneakiest, most untrustworthy creatures ever. I just returned from a couple weeks hiking around the Atlas mountains in Morocco. There were cats everywhere! We had to fend off the beggars from lots of our dinner tables.
However, making a fuss about Hyles lineata? I get about a hundred every summer by UV lights in the yard here in Albuquerque. They are a major food for my box turtle. I put them in the refrigerator each night and hand them to the turtle in the morning. As they wake up and fan their wings the turtle grabs them. Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Oct 20, 2011 5:28:53 GMT -8
I think humans have an inalienable right to worry about any kind of nonsense we want to. Invisible radiation is kind of scary like ghosts and evil magic. It's fun to scare yourself with this stuff.
If you want to know if the radiation actually hurts you, you have to consult the science. The answer is not nearly as fun- actually pretty boring. Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Oct 13, 2011 17:17:36 GMT -8
Right. We just got one installed on the gas. Electricity will be next. Used to be the meter reader would come into our yard once a month and walk around using binoculars to read all our neighbors' meters. We don't have a dog, so the meter guy was safe in our yard. Now our gas meter reading is simply broadcast to a receiver. And this is in backwards New Mexico!!! Can't believe we aren't last in the country. Rick
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rjb
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Post by rjb on Oct 13, 2011 17:10:33 GMT -8
I like smart meters. They should be way cheaper to use than having meter readers walking the neighborhood.
RF cannot damage DNA- it is too low energy by over a factor of a million. UV and above (Xray, Gamma Rays etc) can cause damage. Regular light can't and anything lower energy can't. RF is way lower energy. That's why all the "cell phone might cause cancer" is such a chuckle. Einstein told us the answer in about 1906.
Rick
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Post by rjb on Jul 31, 2011 5:27:18 GMT -8
That was a really nice thing to say Wingedwishes. Please be sure that I am also trying to retain an open mind. One of these days I may read that someone discovered a big missing component in those climate models and they have got it all wrong and we discover that humans are playing a tiny role. I don't think it will happen, but maybe... Rick
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Post by rjb on Jul 30, 2011 11:27:14 GMT -8
WingedWishes: Sorry that my writing appears arrogant. I certainly don't feel arrogant, but scientists are notorious for being poor communicators.
You have stated: "I think this because the things that I have read and are presented by others are cogent and qualified to speak about it. Thise things are publically available to read."
I consider it very difficult to distinguish true from false, and it seems unrelated to how well a thing is verbally presented. There is much literature written on how to tell good science from pseudoscience. One of the first things to look for is the citations. I just failed by not putting in a citation in the previous sentence. I am writing something that I read in the Skeptical Enquirer a few years ago but am too lazy to look up the reference so you could check me. Any peer-reviewed paper of any worth has lots of cites explaining every sentence so you can check on the authors. I once published a paper on the chemistry of silicon manufacture and it was 11 pages long with 45 citations. The reader must be able to check the history of everything I am proclaiming. If some web-site tried to argue, for example, that the release of toxic gases during the industrial revolution should be in the model, then they should have added the cites to the published literature demonstrating how they knew it was important, and how they knew it was ignored in the model. That is how you check that the writer is not feeding you BS. Otherwise, they can say anything that sounds good but it will likely be wrong. So whether on the web or in print the question is how many times did they back up their writing by citing previous work.
Then you have to be careful because the more savvy liars like many creationists who criticize evolution realize it looks scientific to provide citations so they cite irrelevent material which sometimes even contradicts their own point. This last statement of mine really needs a citation. Lacking any citation, you can assume that I made this all up until proven otherwise.
Anyway, peace to you Wingedwishes, I'm sorry to sound so arrogant, but I lived my life immersed in science and so many of your statements sound like you misunderstand how science works that it brings out the worst in me. If I said I am a Soccer expert, for example I know everything about Home Runs, Touchdowns and High-sticking Penalties, then you would question if I were from another planet and you would be sure I didn't know soccer. That is you and science.
Rick
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Post by rjb on Jul 28, 2011 14:27:30 GMT -8
Scientific debate is indeed very important in science progress. It occurs constantly and is still going on in the area of climate change. You and I are not participating because we are not climate scientists. Science debate goes on in the peer-reviewed literature. You say: "The industrial revolution spewed more unfiltered toxins, including CO2, than today or yesterday (or 30 years ago - what ever is reasonable). This is important. Why is it not factored in to predictions? Is it human ego? "
If you were correct that: 1) this is important and 2) It was not factored in to predictions
then I would be amazed. The standard for scientific study is that whenever I discover that someone has left out an important factor from their calculation, I immediately redo the calculation with the important factor included and show that they were stupid. I get an easy publication and a lot of acclaim. This has not happened. I would guess that a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation would show that including those pollutants in the quantities released cannot have any measurable effect.
The release of tetraethyl lead into the environment may have had some very important toxicological consequences including to the developing brains of all of us. Effect on climate, I sincerely doubt it but I won't make that discovery. I am retired and don't have easy access to the primary literature. You are lucky that you are able to acquire the important climate science publications. I cannot. Rick
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