BobRingReflections

Last year, in February, I wrote a blog titled, “The Story of Clouds,” all about how clouds form, the different types, and so forth.   Since then I’ve been keenly interested in watching how clouds change every day, even within a day - with weather being a driving cause. It occurred to me recently, that I didn’t know much about weather, how it changes and why - and its intimate relationship to clouds.   So, I decided to learn a bit and write about weather, its key elements and weather phenomena - with emphasis on weather in and around Tucson, Arizona. I found three good online sources for some of the basics:   1) How to Read a Weather Map by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2) What is Weather? by the United States Search and Rescue Task Force, 3) Severe Weather 101 by The National Severe Storm Laboratory.   I borrow liberally from these three sources. Elements of Weather First, I’m going to talk about weather elements th...

Pat and I were talking the other day about all the changes that have made our lives easier, safer, and perhaps more interesting.  Pat suggested that this was a good topic for a blog, so here goes. I’m going to reflect on how the principle activities of my life, that have been, or are, most important to me, have changed over my lifetime.   I’m 80 years old now, so I have a lot of stuff to reflect on.   Calculating.   In the early 1960s, as a student at Purdue, I carried a wooden slide rule to make a variety of engineering calculations.   When I started my engineering career, developing computer simulations in FORTRAN, I had to punch each line of code into a single card on a card punch machine, submit a metal tray holding my hundreds of cards to the main frame computer, and wait until the next morning to get a result.   By the time I retired in 2000, we had networked desktop computers with all kinds of power and flexibility.   ...

I started out writing an opinion piece about how screwcaps are better than corks for sealing wine bottles, and how punts (indentations) on the bottom of wine bottles are unnecessary.  I began researching wine container sealants and punts and quickly was overwhelmed with history that I didn’t know much about.  So, this article became a history article; I’ll leave conclusions and opinions to the reader. The first known evidence of wine is from ca. 6, 000 BC  in the Middle East, but evidence of so-called “fermented grape drinks” dates back to  at least 9,000 BC  in northern China. Wine Containers and Sealants Since the discovery of fermentation, people have enjoyed drinking wine and have looked for ways to keep it fresh, tasty, and portable.   Wineskins, containers made from animal hide or bladders, are some of the earliest known vessels for storing and moving wine.   It is difficult to say when they originated, since animal hides degr...