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 SEPTEMBER 2003

Vol.4. NO.9 (WhoLe No. 23)......................................................Pages 10 and 11

WEIRD NEWS

Translations

The following signs have been found in various locations, using the English language somewhat creatively.

Cocktail lounge, Norway

LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

Budapest zoo

PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD,

GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY

Doctor's office, Rome

SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Hotel, Acapulco

THE MANAGER HAS PERSONALLY PASSED ALL THE WATER SERVED

HERE.

Using hotel air conditioner, Japan

COOLES AND HEATES: IF YOU WANT CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN YOUR

ROOM, PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.

Car rental brochure, Tokyo

WHEN PASSENGER OF FOOT HEAVE IN SIGHT, TOOTLE THE HORN.

TRUMPET HIM MELODIOUSLY AT FIRST, BUT IF HE STILL OBSTACLE YOUR PASSAGE THEN TOOTLE HIM WITH VIGOUR.

Men's rest room in Japan

TO STOP LEAK TURN COCK TO THE RIGHT

Nairobi restaurant

CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE

MANAGER.

On the grounds of a private school

NO TRESPASSING WITHOUT PERMISSION.

On an Athi River highway

TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS

IMPASSABLE.

On a poster at Kencom

ARE YOU AN ADULT THAT CANNOT READ? IF SO, WE CAN HELP.

In a City restaurant

OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, AND WEEKENDS TOO.

A sign on an automatic restroom hand dryer

DO NOT ACTIVATE WITH WET HANDS.

In a Pumwani maternity ward

NO CHILDREN ALLOWED.

In a cemetery

PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS FROM ANY BUT

THEIR OWN GRAVES.

Sign in Japanese public bath

FOREIGN GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO PULL COCK IN TUB.

Tokyo hotel's rules

GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO SMOKE OR DO OTHER DISGUSTING

BEHAVIOURS IN BED.

Menu of Swiss restaurant

OUR WINES LEAVE YOU NOTHING TO HOPE FOR.

Tokyo bar

SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.

Bangkok temple

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER A WOMAN EVEN A FOREIGNER IF DRESSED

AS A MAN.

Hotel brochure, Italy

THIS HOTEL IS RENOWNED FOR ITS PEACE AND SOLITUDE. IN FACT,

CROWDS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD FLOCK HERE TO ENJOY ITS SOLITUDE.

Hotel lobby, Bucharest

THE LIFT IS BEING FIXED FOR THE NEXT DAY. DURING THAT TIME WE

REGRET THAT YOU WILL BE UNBEARABLE.

Hotel elevator, Paris

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR VALUES AT THE FRONT DESK.

Hotel, Yugoslavia

THE FLATTENING OF UNDERWEAR WITH PLEASURE IS THE JOB OF THE

CHAMBERMAID.

Hotel, Japan

YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel

YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN

COMPOSERS, ARTISTS, AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.

Hotel catering to skiers, Austria

NOT TO PERAMBULATE THE CORRIDORS IN THE HOURS OF REPOSE IN

THE BOOTS OF ASCENSION.

Menu, Poland

SALAD A FIRM'S OWN MAKE; LIMPID RED BEET SOUP WITH CHEESY

DUMPLINGS IN THE FORM OF A FINGER; ROASTED DUCK LET LOOSE; BEEF RASHERS BEATEN IN THE COUNTRY PEOPLE'S FASHION.

Supermarket, Hong Kong

FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, WE RECOMMEND COURTEOUS, EFFICIENT

SELF-SERVICE.

The Soviet Weekly

THERE WILL BE A MOSCOW EXHIBITION OF ARTS BY 15,000 SOVIET

REPUBLIC PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS. THESE WERE EXECUTED OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS.

East African newspaper

A NEW SWIMMING POOL IS RAPIDLY TAKING SHAPE SINCE THE

CONTRACTORS HAVE THROWN IN THE BULK OF THEIR WORKERS.

Sign in Germany's Black Forest

IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN ON OUR CAMPING SITE THAT PEOPLE OF

DIFFERENT SEX, FOR INSTANCE, MEN AND WOMEN, LIVE TOGETHER IN ONE TENT UNLESS THEY ARE MARRIED WITH EACH OTHER FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Hotel, Zurich

BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE

OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Ad by Hong Kong dentist

TEETH EXTRACTED BY THE LATEST METHODISTS.

Laundry in Rome

LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON

HAVING A GOOD TIME.

Tourist agency, Czechoslovakia

TAKE ONE OF OUR HORSE-DRIVEN CITY TOURS. WE GUARANTEE NO

MISCARRIAGES.

Ad for donkey rides, Thailand

WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?

On box of clockwork toy made in Hong Kong

GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

In a Swiss mountain inn

SPECIAL TODAY - NO ICE-CREAM.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen

WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS

More Things to Worry About

A car traveling on Interstate 77 just north of Charlotte, N.C., was hit by a flying speedboat at 2:20 a.m. on Aug. 21; the boat was dashing across adjacent Lake Norman, became airborne, clipped the car, and landed in the median, but the only casualties were the boaters. And a 13-year-old girl was expelled from school in Beaver, Pa., in July for performing oral sex on a boy during a school bus ride home in May; her mother had challenged the expulsion, unsuccessfully arguing that the school had never specified which activities were unacceptable. [Myrtle Beach Sun News, 8-22-03] [Beaver County Times, 7-27-03]

Below the Fold

(1) Ben Mann (apparently a very good meditator) fell out of a tree while meditating, down a 30-foot ravine, and had to be rescued (Berkeley, Calif., June).

  HOW STUFF WORKS

How Blackouts Work
by Marshall Brain


The blackout on August 14th was the biggest in U.S. history. And just like every major blackout, it raised a lot of questions about how our power distribution system works.

At a high level, the power grid is a very simple thing. It consists of a set of large power plants (hydropower plants, nuclear power plants, etc.) all connected together by wires. One grid can be as big as half of the United States. (See How Power Distribution Grids Work to learn about the different pieces of the grid.)


Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy
A breakdown of the major power plants in
the United States, by type

A grid works very well as a power distribution system because it allows a lot of sharing. If a power company needs to take a power plant or a transmission tower off line for maintenance, the other parts of the grid can pick up the slack.

The thing that is so amazing about the power grid is that it cannot store any power anywhere in the system. At any moment, you have millions of customers consuming megawatts of power. At that same moment you have dozens of power plants producing exactly the right amount of power to satisfy all of that demand. And you have all the transmission and distribution lines sending the power from the power plants to the consumers.

Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy
A map of U.S. electric control area operators (CAO). Computerized systems at each CAO monitor the power grid activity and balance power generation (supply) with power consumption (demand).

This system works great, and it can be highly reliable for years at a time. However, there can be times, particularly when there is high demand, that the interconnected nature of the grid makes the entire system vulnerable to collapse. Here's how that happens:

Let's say that the grid is running pretty close to its maximum capacity. Something causes a power plant to suddenly trip off line. The "something" might be anything from a serious lightning strike to a bearing failure and subsequent fire in a generator. When that plant disconnects from the grid, the other plants connected to it have to spin up to meet the demand. If they are all near their maximum capacity, then they cannot handle the extra load. To prevent themselves from overloading and failing, they will disconnect from the grid as well. That only makes the problem worse, and dozens of plants eventually disconnect. That leaves millions of people without power.

The same thing can happen if a big transmission line fails. In 1996 there was a major blackout in the western U.S. and Canada because the wires of a major transmission line sagged into some trees and shorted out. When that transmission line failed, all of its load shifted to neighboring transmission lines. They then overloaded and failed, and the overload cascaded through the grid.

In nearly every major blackout, the situation is the same. One piece of the system fails, then the pieces near it cannot handle the increased load caused by the failure, so they fail. The multiple failures make the problem worse and worse and a large area ends up in the dark.

One solution to the problem would be to build significant amounts of excess capacity -- extra power plants, extra transmission lines, etc. By having extra capacity, it would be able to pick up the load at the moment that something else failed. That approach would work, but it would increase our power bills. At this moment we have made the choice as a society to save the money and live with the risk of blackouts. Once we get tired of blackouts and the disruption they cause, we will make a different choice.

Big Blackouts in U.S. History

* The Great Northeast Blackout of 1965: After a relay failure, more than 80,000 square miles of the northeastern United States and parts of Canada lost power, turning the lights out on 30 million people.

* The New York Blackout of 1977: One hot night in July, multiple lightning strikes knocked out power to the entire city of New York, leaving 8 million people without light or air conditioning. The blackout triggered mass looting and arson across much of the city.

* The Northwestern Blackout of 1996: Transmission lines sagged into some trees, causing an electrical short that knocked out power to more than 4 million people in Oregon, California and other western states.

* The Blackout of 2003:Cities across the midwestern United States, northeastern United States and southern Canada lost power, apparently due to a problem with a series of transmission lines known as "The Lake Eerie Loop." Roughly 50 million people lost power.

September 2003 ~ The Ninth Month

Mars rocks. Its historic superclose approach during the last days of August ensures a dazzling all-night dominance of the heavens throughout September. On the 1st, Mars shines at an amazing magnitude of -2.9, three times brighter than Jupiter and ten times brighter than anything in the midnight sky. But don't blink: Earth speeds so quickly past Mars that the red planet dramatically loses half its light during September. Meanwhile, Jupiter emerges in the predawn east and conspicuously hovers above Mercury after the 21st; the two are strikingly joined by the Moon on the 24th. Fall begins with the autumnal equinox on the 23rd, at 6:47 a.m. Moon phase times are based on Eastern Time.

First Quarter: 3rd day, 8th hour, 34th minute
Full Moon: 10th day, 12th hour, 36th minute
Last Quarter: 18th day, 15th hour, 3rd minute
New Moon: 25th day, 23rd hour, 9th minute

Inside This Issue

Americanos: Latino Life in the United States…........……1

Another Mistake…....……..10

Book Review……..………15

Call Girl…………...……….7

Cat-Astroph…...….12

Follow Up to Open Letter...................4

How Bush Won the  20044 Election………....…11

Loose Labeling……...……..6

Mommy’s Little Angel…..............15

Naked Lunch………....…...12

New Film Instructors.......……6

North Central NM Events..................3

Objective Science Does   NOT Exist Here……….............5

Resolution Opposing Modern Pit Facility........……7

Roosevelt vs. Bush……................9

Solar Fiesta 2003……...........…..1

“Smart Bomb” Technology   Moving to China……..........….5

Translations……….12

Unclassifieds….…….7

Use It & Pay For It…….................…7

Volcanic Activity in   Española Valley?…….........…3

Who Was It?……..........………10