Update #1: The only reason Europeans went along with the Union and the Euro as a currency is because they loathe the US. They presumed that by some sort of enforced evolution they could synthesize an analogue to the US.
Now they are dropping the pretense, unwilling to profess undying love and dedication through the shattered remains of their smiling teeth.
In Italy, the coalition of premier Silvio Berlusconi was given an ultimatum to submit concrete plans within 48 hours on how to reorganize Italy’s complex society, touching on the neuralgic issues of labour rights (Article 18 of the labour code) and how to treat the elderly.
Nobody tells us what to do retorted a furious Mr Berlusconi, who then gave his first hint of revenge by calling the euro a strange hybrid creation that hasn’t convinced anybody.
Update #2:
Politico’s Jonathan Martin: “And also, what actually happened to these women as well, we want to be sensitive to that, too. It includes both verbal and physical gestures.
“These women felt uncomfortable, and they were unhappy about their treatment, and they complained to both colleagues and senior officials. In one case it involved, I think, inviting a woman up to a hotel room of Cain’s on the road … We’re just not going to get into the details of exactly what happened with these women beside what’s in the story.” – PoliticoWeasel Jonathan Martin
So… “beside what’s in the story” really means “Cain is a sexual predator”?
Trust us on this, the details are only going to slow the process down, or worse yet, shut it down entirely. This a demon we’re talking about, after all.
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We carved pumpkins and scooped pumpkin guts tonight. Fun?
Annnnnd HOW!
Allow me to introduce the brand new Dr. Lemur’s 1200W NoondaySun Pumpkin, just in time for Halloween 2011.
This was formerly known as Project X-Ray but that seemed to me to be too much of a cliché.
No, I’m not an expert on carving pumpkins nor a particularly good layman at carving them (as you can plainly see). What I care about is that this pumpkin is going to shine.
But what's special here? The fact that this pumpkin is loaded from the rear with four 300W bulbs.
Yes. Four 300W light bulbs. Why? Because I couldn’t get five 500W incandescent bulbs in time and no one sells holders for the 500W halogen ones that burn houses down via torchiere lamps. Probably just as well since I had been thinking of elaborate cooling methods involving heat exchangers and mineral oil.
Only one friend out of the many I have (six, maybe seven? – 
) suggested that one ought to do something that flies in the face of sound thinking every once in a while, and I’m glad that he saw potential and nurtured it.
At one point I even thought, “Oh, I know! Forced air cooling!” But then I thought, “You idiot, it’s going to take 3000 gazillion cu-ft/min to cool it” – or some big number of cubic feet, and I realized that pumpkins just aren’t designed to be cooled by large quantities of forced air (and therefore pressurized above ambient). It occurred to me then that pumpkins are ephemeral things with the approximate shelf life of an outdoor cat in a busy neighborhood, and I should stop worrying about the MTBF of the average garden-variety pumpkin. Instead I shall visually observe the pumpkin every 30-45 seconds and be on the lookout for the smell of caramelization gone bad, where we begin to tread into the caramelized-until-it-burnt smell regime.
See the four holes at the bottom of the pic? Those holes allow the bulb sockets to stick into the pumpkin from the back and the bulbs attach once the sockets are in.
The top six holes around the stem and their matching bottom six circumferential holes? Those are cooling holes cleverly designed to keep the pumpkin from outright bursting into flame and serve to let the smell of roasting pumpkin waft around the neighborhood.
I figure five minutes on and five minutes off should be safe.
I want this pumpkin to light up like the noonday sun.
I have sad news to report, however… due to this weekend just not working the way it should have, the alternate lighting method that I was going to use – a pumpkin with three road flares shoved up it’s hoo-hoo – was doomed to be a no-starter. Sadly, I had to accept my limitations (read: seriously, the painkillers weren’t doing a damn thing) and be pleased with the tasks that we accomplished, and go home.
I am satisfied, however. Pictures will be forthcoming.
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Cruel Wife, meanwhile is doing the Turducken approach to pumpkins – a pumpkin being eaten by a bigger pumpkin being eaten by a monster pumpkin. It’s in it’s rough stages here. She has broken two Saf-T-Carve pumpkin knives, an X-acto blade, and is currently using the dullest knife in the house with the logic that if she does slip it won’t cut as deep.
No, she is not doing that. I am making a joke. She’s got a post-graduate level degree and knows metallurgy things. She wouldn’t use a dull knife. I don’t think she would, anyway. But I’m not asking because I don’t want to be insulting.
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
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Here is what happened to Dr. Lemur’s Pumpkin….
900 Watts of power coursing through this gourd.
1200W pumkin was enough for Cruel Wife to carve pumpkins by.
Lest you feel like you can stare into the pumpkin through the vent holes, I don’t advise it.
A 1200W pumpkin glows with an unnatural fire of eldritch origins.
Within a short amount of time the pumpkin began to smoke. Next year I am cooling with chilled mineral oil.
Cruel Wife’s tier of pumpkins came out snazzy.
Kind of creepy Halloween places to be over at Cracked.com.
Cool pumpkins.
Thanks, CF.
I will say this – a photo does little to capture the ambiance created by a blazing pumpkin.
Can you do something with dry ice? Maybe stick pieces into Jack?
Both set-ups loook awesome.
You are the second person to mention that in the last 30 minutes (which means your idea is a good one).
I could, but not in the amount of time that I have. It would look groovy with a smoky pumpkin putting out gobs and gobs of pumpkin-colored photons.
Hmmm, maybe next year I could stuff one full of UV cold cathode lamps?
Yeah, the ‘smoke’ was a factor.
In my first year of college, at Siena, the drinking age was 18, so not only was drinking allowed, it was encouraged (they didn’t have “Orientation so much as they had “Disorientation”, it took me another week to realize the gym was 200 yards “that way” for instance, even though I had been to two parties there).
The point, a few wings of dorms had their own special “drink”, they were mostly just variations of garbage cans full of Hi-C and Everclear (grain alcohol, from NY you had to go to Pennsylvania to get it).
One wing in Plasman (freshman dorm) added dry ice for their Halloween bash.
It looked like the tea served by Morticia Addams.
For some reason I remember the beginnings of a lot of parties but not so about how they ended. Weird.
I have to say, your idea, while cool on the onset, just fizzles out compared to the grandioseness of CW’s.
She wins, hands down
Thank ye, Aggie. Thank ye verah much.
CW has got style. Those are great!
You? You have… The Powah. Powah.
Nicole,
See the comment to Aggie above, and ditto it here.
LK, in reading about your pumpkin, I applaud your effort. However, though you may have an Engineering degree, I believe you skipped ThermoGoddamics.
That, or you solved the puzzle of baking a pumpkin pie from the inside-out.
CW, on the other hand, has a firm grasp of a regressive series…
Oh, I use thermodynamics enough in my work – it wasn’t unexpected that the thing would cook. Yes, it baked from the inside out. It wasn’t hot to the touch but warmed your hands nicely when you shifted it and it was steaming and smoking to an alarming degree. One thing to know it, another thing entirely to witness it.
The power sources contributing to parasitic heat loads in my field are typically way lower – on the order of watts or perhaps tens of watts at most. 1200W is friggin’ insane.
CW did indeed go into the self-similar fractal geometry or recursive shapes. Not quite a Serpinski fractal but similar.