Time for some cat photos

Since the internet is supposed to be full of cat stuff, I thought I should do my bit. Starting with a few pictures of our current cat (Holly) from when she was young (we got her at about 1 year old from the Toronto Humane Society).

(photo by Jon, along with 'some' editing he did)

(this was a month or so later - still quite small)

Then, about a year and a half later:

(perhaps her 'larger' phase')

And finally, about a month ago or so, with one of her favourite toys that has reinvigorated her!

And although she likes to explore the friendly confines of our back yard, she's not really an outdoor cat:

Old and New Toronto - Spadina Streetcars

Another postcard from the 'Flashbacks 2' series. "A streetcar on the Belt Line route (Spadina, King, Sherbourne, Bloor) rumbles by workmen engaged in road repair work, Spadina Avenue, c. 1899"

(Perhaps taken at the same time as my previous post?)

And now, with a similarly old streetcar in the picture:

(Similarly old meaning that in 116 years we can take another photo and compare).

Looking in the other direction, this photo (from 1927) already shows the Waverly Hotel (also in the picture above, just to the left of the '24hr' TTC sign). I was looking to see if the trough noted in the previous post was still there, but I think it would be hidden by the construction huts(?) on that side of the street.

Old and New Toronto - Spadina Water Trough

Number seven in the series of old and new pictures of Toronto. The picture below is a scan of a 'Toronto Flashbacks 2' postcard noting that this is "Spadina Avenue and College Street, 1899. At one time there were dozens of these water troughs in the city for dogs, horses and (thanks to a cup on a chain) people to refresh themselves."

I had heard that there is at least one of these still around - in front of St. James Cathedral at Church and King. No idea if it is the *same* one, but I found it easily enough and it is being enjoyed mainly by pigeons now.

(I've also seen this online at http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/miscellany-toronto-photographs-then-and-now.6947/page-252 and the photo quality is much better than my scan of the postcard). Also, there was another one at Bloor and Christie at one point. And many others of course, including one by the old police station on Pape Ave just north of Queen East.

As for the original location now?

Other than the building in the center (1 Spadina Circle) which used to be the site of Knox College, not many other buildings seem to have survived, though parts of the building between the Scott Mission (to the left of the picture) and the old Knox College building might still be there. Hard to see in the picture above (you'll need to click on it to get a larger view) but there is a three story building on the corner. This picture is zoomed in and from a slightly different angle - with the building circled in red.

So I walked up to get a picture of it, and the roof line looks somewhat like the original picture anyway. The rest has obviously been reworked.

 

Newton's Cradle

Newton's cradle is a popular 'executive toy' that demonstrates conservation of momentum/energy. The steel (usually) balls that it is made with are quite elastic and do not lose much of the kinetic energy of the balls when they hit each other.

(For various things you can do with Newton's cradle, see this link and play the video. It also notes why Mythbusters' large-sized example didn't work as planned.)

When you pull back one steel ball and release it, it hits the other four and the last ball moves off with (almost) the same speed as the first one that hit the four. And interestingly, if you pull back two of the balls and release them, when those two hit the remaining three balls it is almost as if they 'know' that you pulled back two balls, since now the last two balls move off.

But how could it 'know' that you pulled back two balls? Of course, you can go through the equations (fairly straightforward) but the explanation at wikipedia is pretty good for a simplified situation:

"...when two balls are dropped to strike three stationary balls in a cradle, there is an unnoticed but crucial small distance between the two dropped balls and the action is as follows: The first moving ball that strikes the first stationary ball (the 2nd ball striking the 3rd ball) transfers all its velocity to the 3rd ball and stops. The 3rd ball then transfers the velocity to the 4th ball and stops, and then the 4th to the 5th ball. Right behind this sequence is the 1st ball transferring its velocity to the 2nd ball that had just been stopped, and the sequence repeats immediately and imperceptibly behind the first sequence, ejecting the 4th ball right behind the 5th ball with the same small separation that was between the two initial striking balls."

Seems like you only need a few micrometers separation for this to be true, so I'll have to look at that first photo a bit more closely!

Are your drugs *really* expired?

Ever wondered if those acetaminophen you found in the drawer with a 1990 expiration date are any good? Or if they could kill you?

I came across this study
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/drug-expiration-dates-do-they-mean-anything
(which is one of many giving the same information - but of course, not *enough* information for you to really make any decision on specific drugs in your house).

They referenced a U S Army study, which you can find online (but it looks like you can’t get it without either being a military/government person, or perhaps paying for it).  This was important to the Army since it could potentially mean savings of multiple millions of dollars in costs (not having to replace their reserves so often).

Nevertheless, I found a separate study:
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1377417
which gave some good information on some specific drugs. One thing is that Acetaminophen seems to have a long shelf life. They looked at some drugs that were at least 28 years(!) past their 'expiry' date and the 250mg Acetaminophen tablet still had 249.2mg of active ingredient!

Various caveats on temperature and humidity of course – and some good rules of thumb (if it smells bad, or is starting to ‘crust over’ or change colour then consider it to be going bad).

If you find any other good sites with more information please let me know.

Asteroids and commerce

Like many people, I have been fascinated by the thought of asteroids whizzing around the sun (and occasionally close to, or into, Earth). When I was young I had a poster on my wall that included all the planets and two asteroids - Ceres (actually a dwarf planet) and Eros. Interestingly, although Ceres is the largest asteroid (at almost 1000 km in diameter) Eros is quite far down the list (and is only about 34 x 11 x 11 km).

Side note: there are some pretty good pictures of Eros (from the NEAR-Shoemaker mission) and some incredibly good pictures of Ceres (from the NASA Dawn mission). The Dawn mission also captured great pictures of Vesta, which is about 525km in diameter and the second most massive (and third largest) asteroid.

But the really 'valuable' asteroids could be quite different. (Unless there is something under the surface of, say, Ceres that has more value to us. Perhaps the bright spots on Ceres signal something there?)

But to get back on topic - I recently found a site that ranks asteroids by criteria such as 'most valuable', 'most cost effective' and 'most accessible', as well as giving information on their orbits and their next closest passes by Earth. Take a look at: http://www.asterank.com/. It seems like a pretty good informational site (outside of the rather speculative valuations).

Most of the 'most valuable' are not easily accessible, and many of the 'most accessible' are not valuable. The 'most cost effective' list ranks them by a combination of value and accessibility - ranking '1999 JU3' as the best bet. You can click on that row to see information about the asteroid and its orbit, etc. Or you can enter a name into the 'Lookup' field (hint: enter a few letters and then wait - it will then bring back a filtered list in the lookup field).

Some other interesting possibly mine-able asteroids:
1. One of the most massive metallic asteroid is probably ‘16 Psyche’ (could seriously damage the prices of Nickel, Cobalt and Iron)
2. Or ’21 Lutetia’ (would hit the same commodity prices)

I also saw that ‘2011 UW158’ is ranked as a very valuable asteroid for the Platinum in it. It just made a close pass by earth (http://www.space.com/30074-trillion-dollar-asteroid-2011-uw158-earth-flyby.html) but won't be back for almost 100 years. Also, if a 'trillion dollars worth' of platinum suddenly entered Earth's platinum market, I'm sure it would quickly be a tiny fraction of that!

(If looking up on the 'asterank' site, put ‘436724 (2011 UW158)’ in the lookup field)

#NoToTorontoOlympicBid number 3

OK - now I remember why I was against Toronto making an Olympic bid! It will cost me a lot of money and mean less for actually improving the city.

As promised in the last '#NoToTorontoOlympicBid' post, I read a couple more articles on the olympics and recommend you do too.

The first was an article from the Globe & Mail - 'Why Toronto Should Say No to the Olympics'. And it references this article by Richard Florida looking at the book by Andrew Zimbalist that shows why hosting mega-events is a bad deal for the city involved.

Perhaps we can just follow Boston's mayor's lead. And for a few hints on how to influence the result, see this article on How Boston Kicked Out the Olympics.