A lot of my friends seem to be confused about Global Warming. I hear people arguing the point of global warming on an almost weekly basis at school, sometimes even a daily basis.
I constantly hear arguments like "this is a really cold winter, therefore global warming is a hoax". If you hear statements like these, it's clear the person saying them doesn't understand the subject matter.
I decided to test this theory recently by asking everyone I heard talking about global warming the simple question "What is global warming?" Predictably, almost none of them could come up with a correct answer.
Here's why: In the world of psychology there is an effect known as "Ad Hominem", which basically states that people have a propensity to believe or disbelieve facts depending on who they come from. For instance, if George W. Bush said I was a pretty smart guy, I know he's lying. He might not be lying, but I don't believe him. Even if he's not lying, he's clearly wrong, because HE said it.
On the flip side of that, people are more likely to believe people who say things that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. For instance, Obama says I can dunk a basketball better than Jordan. We all know he's right. Obama said it, it must be true.
To make matters worse, politically driven organizations have dedicated news services who work 24 hours a day to share their messages, so depending on who you like and dislike, you'll have 24 access to real time 100% accurate data to reinforce your beliefs. Once they have your trust, they'll even give you new beliefs of their very own, so you don't even have to go do your own research on anything. It's like a membership kit which comes complete with beliefs, morals, and a secret decoder ring.
Ad Hominem. It's the reason we are probably only right 50% of the time, but think we're right 100% of the time.
It's also the reason almost no one understands global warming. So I decided to do my own research on the matter. I've read a ton of information over the last few months, but I think this small blurb from WikiPedia sums it up best.
"Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the start and the end of the 20th century." .. WikiPedia
These are facts, and despite much confusion, these facts are not in debate by many who actually make a career as a climatologist.
The debate has been between liberal and conservative pundits about whether man has any impact on the rate at which global warming is taking place. Nearly universally, educated liberals believe man is increasing the rate of global warming, and educated conservatives believe man has no impact on which the world is warming up. These two groups represent the minority, at least according to my own independent observations. The vast majority of the debates are taking place between the uneducated masses as to whether global warming even exists.
I'm not going to try to convince anyone one way or the other because I simply do not know. There are literally thousands of PHD holding climatologists from universities all over the world who say global warming is real and the earth's temperate has increased, and I have no education or research to tell them they're all wrong. In fact, to even attempt to do so would just be me regurgitating something I've heard from a politically motivated news organization, and that would just make me look stupid.
As to whether man is contributing to the problem, I don't know. What I do know is I can be as good to the environment as I'm financially capable of being and if the climatologists are wrong, then I've not done anything that has a negative impact on my life or the environment. If they're right, then I helped by doing what I could. I don't see any downsides to being a bit more considerate about my actions and purchasing decisions.
Ad Hominem. The real culprit behind global warming misinformation. Stop playing along, and do your own research. Read ALL of it, not just the stuff that supports your pre-existing beliefs. I think regardless of your findings, you may learn something useful if you put enough effort into it. You might even be surprised by the results.
I hope this helps.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Regarding welding gloves
For the last few months when driving home from school, my face and neck have been breaking out in a rash for reasons unknown. For the longest time I thought it was due from me getting light reflecting off of the glossy welding screens hitting my face while welding.
Then the other day, I ended up only being in welding class for a small period of time, then went back to my home garage to prep some metal for class for the following week for a bike project. I didn't do any welding. Still, when driving home after psych class, I broke out in a rash again.
Today I decided since we had some downtime in class, I would go get some new gloves. While in the store I asked the salespeople where they were hiding the American made welding gloves, to which they welcomed me to the new United States of China and told me no one made gloves in America any more. Not satisfied with their response, I came home to do my own research.
While trying to find some American Made welding gloves, I ran across this interesting post.
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/1187968-post9.html
In a nutshell, it says that the lining in the Tillman gloves (which are actually the gloves most people in class are wearing, they are just rebranded for the location that sells them), has been causing dermatitis.
So if you are experiencing this phenomenon in class, it may be caused by the gloves you are wearing, or similarly, the leather welding jackets some people are wearing.
I have been doing more research on this, and have found a company that sells gloves that are supposed to be made in the USA. I'll have to call and confirm this, but here's the link to their products for anyone interested.
http://www.west-chester.net/Category.aspx?mid=1&cid=20
And here's a link to the BOSS gloves mentioned in the post above:
http://www.boss-safety.com/shop/weldas®-cushioned-comfoflex®-welding-gloves-p-327.html
If anyone has a link to American made (non-Tillman) welding gloves, please post a link below. I'd like to check them out.
Then the other day, I ended up only being in welding class for a small period of time, then went back to my home garage to prep some metal for class for the following week for a bike project. I didn't do any welding. Still, when driving home after psych class, I broke out in a rash again.
Today I decided since we had some downtime in class, I would go get some new gloves. While in the store I asked the salespeople where they were hiding the American made welding gloves, to which they welcomed me to the new United States of China and told me no one made gloves in America any more. Not satisfied with their response, I came home to do my own research.
While trying to find some American Made welding gloves, I ran across this interesting post.
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/1187968-post9.html
Tillman welding leathers and gloves are a mixed bag. Some items may be made here and some may be made here of materials/parts from "elsewhere". We had an experience with Tillman welding gloves and a mechanic at the powerplant where I work. The mechanic was welding pretty steadily, wearing a new pair of Tillman insulated rawhide leather welding gloves. He came down with a severe dermatitis, and it reached the point he needed medical treatment. I believe it took an injection and some prescription medication to clear up the dermatitis. The Health & Safety officer here at the powerplant investigated the matter. The Tillman gloves are "made in USA", but the lining and insulation are made in China. The Chinese used some kind of fiberglass material for the insulation and possibly as a non-combustible fabric for the lining. No word as to where the hides are tanned.
The answer here is you cannot trust anyone. Simply saying "made in USA" is not necessarily a guarantee the materials are made here, let alone what they are made of (or contain).
The tanning of leather has largely shifted to Chinese tanneries for environamental reasons as well as costs. Chinese tanneries use whatever they please, and at one point were putting naked convicts serving long felony stretches into the tanning vats to work the hides. A welding jacket or welding gloves mad ein USA may well be made from hides tanned and processed in China, so be wary !
OT, but parallel: Harley-Davidson markets all kinds of what they call riding leathers as well as boots and gloves. They get a handsome price for it, but the goods are made in China. There have been incidences of dermatitis amongst the people who buy/wear H-D boots and leathers. Sweat in a set of H-D leathers or a pair of their boots and it can bring on the dermatitis. Chinese welding leathers and gloves are just as bad. Our purchasing department buys bundles of leather "driving gloves" at the powerplant. The price was so low, and bieng purchasing agents, they could not resist the bargain- despite our protests. They were getting Chinese gloves, and people were winding up with stained hands if the gloves got wet or perspired into, and people were getting some irritations.
I think we buy Boss gloves now for driving gloves. I think those are made or assembled in Mexico. A sight better in quality than Chinese.
Joe Michaels
In a nutshell, it says that the lining in the Tillman gloves (which are actually the gloves most people in class are wearing, they are just rebranded for the location that sells them), has been causing dermatitis.
Dermatitus: Dermatitis is a general term that describes an inflammation of the skin. There are different types of dermatitis, including seborrheic dermatitis and atopic dermatitis (eczema). Although the disorder can have many causes and occur in many forms, it usually involves swollen, reddened and itchy skin.
So if you are experiencing this phenomenon in class, it may be caused by the gloves you are wearing, or similarly, the leather welding jackets some people are wearing.
I have been doing more research on this, and have found a company that sells gloves that are supposed to be made in the USA. I'll have to call and confirm this, but here's the link to their products for anyone interested.
http://www.west-chester.net/Category.aspx?mid=1&cid=20
And here's a link to the BOSS gloves mentioned in the post above:
http://www.boss-safety.com/shop/weldas®-cushioned-comfoflex®-welding-gloves-p-327.html
If anyone has a link to American made (non-Tillman) welding gloves, please post a link below. I'd like to check them out.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Mac Tips: Batch file moving / copying, and disk defragmenting
Today's entry will be a two parter: Batch file copying / moving, and disk defragmenting.
First up, file copying / moving.
Over the weekend I was trying to manage my photo archives. I'm sad to admit, but I've allowed them to become a total mess. I have 129GB of photos, many of which are duplicates due to years of mismanagement.
When I saw Aperture 3 was released for the Mac, I figured it was time to try something new, so I copied all of my files from the NAS device on my local network and thought about what I was going to do to organize them. It's literally hundreds of subdirectories full of RAW (multiple types), JPEG, PSD, DNG, MOV and TIFF files.
I decided the easiest thing to do would be to import just the RAW files into the new archive, but I wanted to also get all of my files with similar file types into one place. My JPEG's were mostly older images from 1998 - 2004, the PSD and TIFF files were edits of the RAW images, and the DNG files and MOV's were simply out of place or duplicates, or both.
The solution was fairly easy. Here's what I did.
First, in my $home/Pictures directory, I created new directories called movies, jpeg, psd, dng, and tiff.
Then sitting in directory containing the images (../Master\ Photos, in this case) I issue the following command from the console command line:
find /Users/YourName/WhereEverYourPhotosAre/. -name *.mov -exec mv {} /Users/YourName/WhereEverYouWantTheFilesToBeMovedTo/ \;
(This is all one command, with no hard returns.)
So for me, the command looks like this:
find /Users/jamiewilburn/Pictures/Master\ Photos/. -name *.mov -exec mv {} /Users/jamiewilburn/Pictures/movies/ \;
What this does is find all of the files ending in the extension .mov and moves it automatically to the new directory. This is a recursive command, meaning it will look at all of the files in the directory you're in, and the subdirectories of the directory your in, and in their subdirectories, and so on. If you wanted to run this command on your entire HD, you'd do it from the root directory.
Variations:
- Change mv to cp if you wanted to copy the files instead of moving them.
- Change -exec to -ok if you'd prever to have it ask you for authorization on every file (not recommended for large batch jobs).
How to defragment your Macintosh HD:
Step 1: Turn on your Mac.
Step 2: You're done.
The Mac file system is a journaled filesystem and thus, self maintaining. There is no defragmentation required by the end user. In fact, there's not even an option for it.
First up, file copying / moving.
Over the weekend I was trying to manage my photo archives. I'm sad to admit, but I've allowed them to become a total mess. I have 129GB of photos, many of which are duplicates due to years of mismanagement.
When I saw Aperture 3 was released for the Mac, I figured it was time to try something new, so I copied all of my files from the NAS device on my local network and thought about what I was going to do to organize them. It's literally hundreds of subdirectories full of RAW (multiple types), JPEG, PSD, DNG, MOV and TIFF files.
I decided the easiest thing to do would be to import just the RAW files into the new archive, but I wanted to also get all of my files with similar file types into one place. My JPEG's were mostly older images from 1998 - 2004, the PSD and TIFF files were edits of the RAW images, and the DNG files and MOV's were simply out of place or duplicates, or both.
The solution was fairly easy. Here's what I did.
First, in my $home/Pictures directory, I created new directories called movies, jpeg, psd, dng, and tiff.
Then sitting in directory containing the images (../Master\ Photos, in this case) I issue the following command from the console command line:
find /Users/YourName/WhereEverYourPhotosAre/. -name *.mov -exec mv {} /Users/YourName/WhereEverYouWantTheFilesToBeMovedTo/ \;
(This is all one command, with no hard returns.)
So for me, the command looks like this:
find /Users/jamiewilburn/Pictures/Master\ Photos/. -name *.mov -exec mv {} /Users/jamiewilburn/Pictures/movies/ \;
What this does is find all of the files ending in the extension .mov and moves it automatically to the new directory. This is a recursive command, meaning it will look at all of the files in the directory you're in, and the subdirectories of the directory your in, and in their subdirectories, and so on. If you wanted to run this command on your entire HD, you'd do it from the root directory.
Variations:
- Change mv to cp if you wanted to copy the files instead of moving them.
- Change -exec to -ok if you'd prever to have it ask you for authorization on every file (not recommended for large batch jobs).
How to defragment your Macintosh HD:
Step 1: Turn on your Mac.
Step 2: You're done.
The Mac file system is a journaled filesystem and thus, self maintaining. There is no defragmentation required by the end user. In fact, there's not even an option for it.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
TIG Electrode Basics
First up on the chopping block is an effort to understand Tungsten electrodes.
There are several types of electrodes that are widely used today. They are:
Pure Tungsten (Green): Used primarily on Transformer based welders for welding Aluminum.
There are several types of electrodes that are widely used today. They are:
Pure Tungsten (Green): Used primarily on Transformer based welders for welding Aluminum.
Other Tungsten Electrodes contain a variety of oxides which provide the following benefits over pure Tungsten: facilitate arc starting, increase arc stability, improve current carrying capacity of the rod, reduce the risk of weld contamination, and increase electrode life. These oxides include zirconium, thorium, lanthanum, yttrium, and cerium. (source)
The three most popular alternatives to pure Tungsten electrodes are listed below. The oxide content can range from 1% to 4%, with 2% being the most common (i.e. 2% Ceriated Tungsten Electrode).
Thoriated Tungsten (Red): On a Transformer based welder, this is primarily used for steel. On an Inverter based system it can be used for both steel and aluminum.
Thoriated Tungsten is being slowly phased out due to it's radioactive properties. While it produces such a low level of radiation that it cannot penetrate skin or paper, the Tungsten electrode needs to be grinded down before use. During this grinding process, it is possible to inhale the dust that is created during the grinding process. There is an estimated 0% to 3 % chance that over a sustained period of 30 years, inhaling the dust from grinding Thoriated Tungsten Electrodes may cause cancer.
Thoriated Tungsten is being slowly phased out due to it's radioactive properties. While it produces such a low level of radiation that it cannot penetrate skin or paper, the Tungsten electrode needs to be grinded down before use. During this grinding process, it is possible to inhale the dust that is created during the grinding process. There is an estimated 0% to 3 % chance that over a sustained period of 30 years, inhaling the dust from grinding Thoriated Tungsten Electrodes may cause cancer.
It is advised that when using Thoriated Tungsten special care be used. Do not handle more electrodes than required for any given day's work, and keep all electrodes in a steel box for safe storage. Wearing a ventilation mask will also reduce the amount of Thorium inhaled while grinding.
Lanthanated Tungsten (Gold): Used primarily as an alternative to Thoriated Tungsten on Transformer based systems for welding steel.
Ceriated Tungsten (Orange): The relative new kid on the block, Ceriated Tungsten is produced from the "rare earth element" Cerium, and is suitable for both Steel and Aluminum welding on the newer Inverter based systems. Ceriated Tungsten possesses roughly half of the radioactive properties of Thoriated Tungsten and requires no specialized handling.
Due to it's heat resisting properties, ceriated tungsten has a very high resistance to heat and thus, does not ball up easily like pure tungsten. When preparing a Ceriated Tungsten electrode for welding aluminum on an inverter based welder, it is recommended you grind the tip to a point like you would for welding steel, then grind the tip creating a slight land.
Tungsten Sizes:
A 3/32" Tungsten electrode can support up to 250 amps, however the exact size electrode required depends on the material type and thickness, the type of electrode, as well as the type of welder being used (transformer vs inverter). An inverter based welder can use thinner electrodes while passing less heat to the electrode.
While it may be possible to weld a piece of 1/8" aluminum on an inverter based welder with a ceriated tungsten electrode, welding the same piece of aluminum on a transformer based welder with a pure tungsten electrode would not only require a thicker electrode, but also more amps.
Links:
Content Coming Soon
Welcome new and returning visitors!
I am in the process of converting this blog to serve a specific purpose, which is to share information in the form of videos, screencasts, screenshots, and how-tos, as they relate to my hobbies. These hobbies include but may not be limited to music creation and home studios, photography, welding, and do-it-yourself (DIY) projects.
This is not a commercial endeavor or a service. I'm simply a believer that information should be shared, and I'm doing my part by sharing information with others in areas that I have been fortunate enough to have varying degrees of experience.
If you would like to have questions answered as they relate to any of my hobbies mentioned above, feel free to e-mail me and ask. If I can answer them I will, time permitting.
I plan to start posting content by the first of March or sooner. In addition, I will be posting a Photo of the Week from my personal archive with information about the stories, equipment, location, and processing techniques behind the shots.
To stay up to date on posts, click on the Follow button below, or check back regularly.
Thanks for visiting!
Jamie
I am in the process of converting this blog to serve a specific purpose, which is to share information in the form of videos, screencasts, screenshots, and how-tos, as they relate to my hobbies. These hobbies include but may not be limited to music creation and home studios, photography, welding, and do-it-yourself (DIY) projects.
This is not a commercial endeavor or a service. I'm simply a believer that information should be shared, and I'm doing my part by sharing information with others in areas that I have been fortunate enough to have varying degrees of experience.
If you would like to have questions answered as they relate to any of my hobbies mentioned above, feel free to e-mail me and ask. If I can answer them I will, time permitting.
I plan to start posting content by the first of March or sooner. In addition, I will be posting a Photo of the Week from my personal archive with information about the stories, equipment, location, and processing techniques behind the shots.
To stay up to date on posts, click on the Follow button below, or check back regularly.
Thanks for visiting!
Jamie
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