Through The Sandglass

A personal bloggy milestone

I realise that, in the grand panoply of the global blogosphere, this is but a mote of dust, on a scale more diminutive than a grain of fine sand tossed into the vastness of the universe. BUT, if you had asked me, some three-and-a-bit years ago, as I hesitatingly tapped out my first post, to visualise 200,000 visits to this blog, I would have laughed at the preposterosity of such an idea. However, yesterday evening (Jakarta time), the image above appeared on my Typepad dashboard.

I still can’t quite believe it. I know that this milestone is, in large part, the result of repeated visits by a small number of dedicated readers, and to all of you, my eternal gratitude. The remainder of this statistic is made up of the serendipitous visitors – and, should you be one of those who happens on this post and lingers long enough to read it, thank you. It’s a pleasure, for example, to see how the activity drops off during school holidays, leading me to conclude that I am somehow helping someone out with something that they wanted (or at least needed) to know. It’s a periodic fascination to look at the “keywords” analysis that shows me how a particular search term has led someone here – a selection from the last couple of hours:

• Coastal tourist complexes
• sand grains which have been magnified
• You have a 7-minute sand timer and an 11-minute sand timer. How can you use them to cook a piece of…
• global sediment discharge
• murano glass factory in venice
• permo-triassic event
• bacillus pasteurii uses
• alcanivorax borkumensis oil spill
• 2004 tsunami
• pink coral with tentacles
• verkhoyansk mts map

plus, of course, the ever-popular “Andrew Clemens.”

It’s not that I scrutinise and analyse these things on a daily basis, but it’s intriguing, to say the least. So there we are, enough introspection – but all this brings an added dimension to life that I never anticipated, and which is very much appreciated.

Helpful arenaceous Thanksgiving tips

The following are entirely reputable and independent pieces of advice for managing a safe and environmentally benign holiday culinary process:

Partially frozen turkeys will cause the oil to bubble over, possibly covering the entire deep fryer in flames......If the fryer does bubble over or tip and spill hot oil, get away from it and don’t try dousing it with cold water. Move objects away from the oil and any fire and smother it with dirt or sand. Having a few buckets of these materials on hand helps you stay prepared in case something does go wrong.

Safe disposal of leftover cooking oils: Mix the cooking oils with unscented kitty litter, sawdust or sand to solidify the oil. Dispose of it in the trash. Avoid scented or disinfectant types of kitty litter as they can react with the oil and cause a fire (so ensure that a few buckets of sand are to hand).

A VERY HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

Another margarita!

You live and learn – well, at least I try. And often I don’t even have to try – something I didn’t know (a category that knows no limits) just ups and surprises me. I read in the paper today about the birth of a sand cat (or sand dune cat, otherwise, Felis margarita). I wan't even aware that there were such critters as sand cats, and I certainly didn’t anticipate how damned cute they are. This sand kitten – above, with her mother - has just been born at the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, Israel. The kitten is the first of the Sand Cat species, considered extinct in Israel, to be born at the safari park. “She has been named Renana and it is hoped that she will join Israel's Sand Cat Breeding Program in order to reintroduce the species back into the wild.” (3news, New Zealand). 

Sand cats are so-called because hairs on the soles of their feet have helped them adapt to their desert environment by providing both insulation and traction in the sand; herewith, from the BBC’s “Wildfacts” site: 

Sand cat, sand dune cat
Felis margarita

Like some other desert animals, sand cats are capable of surviving without drinking - they obtain all the water they need through their food.

Subspecies
F.m. margarita, F.m.harrisoni, F.m.thinobia, F.m.scheffeli.

Life span
In captivity, sand cats live for up to 13 years.

Statistics
Body length: 42-57cm, Tail length: 26-35cm, Shoulder height: unknown, Weight: 2-3kg.

Physical Description
Sand cats have a pale yellow, to grey-brown coat, which is slightly darker on the back and pale on the belly. A bold streak runs across each cheek from the corner of each eye.

The tail is ringed with a black tip. Sand cats have a broad head with large eyes and low-set ears. They have short limbs and dense hair on the soles of the feet. The hair on the feet serves to insulate against the intense heat and cold of their habitat, as well as aiding movement across the sand.

Distribution
Sand cats range across N Africa and SW Asia (Sahara to Baluchistan).

Habitat
Sand cats live in the desert and are adapted to extremely arid terrain.

Diet
They hunt rodents and occasionally hares, birds and reptiles. They are apparently able to survive without drinking free water, and obtain the moisture they require from their prey.

Behaviour
Sand cats are mainly active at night. They are good diggers which helps when hunting for underground prey and for digging the burrow that they rest in during the day.

Reproduction
Sand cats give birth to 2-4 kittens after a gestation period of 59-63 days. The kittens weigh about 39g at birth.

Conservation status
The IUCN lists the Pakistani subspecies F.m.scheffeli as Lower Risk. Sand cats are on CITES: Appendix II. They face persecution due to the threat they pose to livestock. F.m.scheffeli was not discovered until 1966 but has declined drastically through uncontrolled commercial dealing.

In a somewhat chaotic week that continues to consume time and mental energy, this has provided a fun (and yet informative) instant post topic. But it also reminds me of the sort of feline meme that went around the geoblogosphere not long ago, wherein photos were contributed of various cats in geologically resonant poses. Not owning a cat these days, I could not contribute, and even my daughter’s feline, Woody, has yet to show even a passing interest in the mineral and rock collection that should attract his limited attention on a daily basis – and hence provide a geofelino photo-op. But what this does do is give me an excuse, with no arenaceous connotations whatsoever, to post my photo of a quintessentially Indonesian cat that I recently found living in a quintessentially Indonesian tree. 

Ozymandias

The United Arab Emirates seem to have a monopoly on follies on a grandiose and megalomaniacal scale when it comes to sand. Not, of course, that they use the vast sands of the desert hinterland that herd their cities on to the shores of the Persian Gulf – those sands are useless for their gigantic construction projects; rather, they dredge biblical volumes of essentially irreplaceable marine sands from the Gulf. These they convert into concrete to build, for example, the Burj Al Arab, the world’s only seven star hotel (self-proclaimed) and the outrageous developments of Ras Island, or pour and compact into the artificial islands that comprise the monstrous absurdities of the famous “Palm” developments and “The World” – now largely suspended as a result of the economic setbacks experienced by the rich and only somewhat famous, and reportedly, like the world’s economies, sinking. Then there are beaches cooled by water pipes in the sand, and golf courses in the desert – including the famous billion dollar Tiger Woods resort that remains mostly desert.

 
But now we have perhaps the finest example of self-aggrandizing projects. Although completed a few years ago, this has only been picked up in the world press over the last few days – here, from the UK’s Daily Mail:

Hamad, the biggest name in the desert: Arab sheikh carves two-miles-long name in sand until it's visible from SPACE

Every child has written their names on the beach at some point.

But whereas most people's 'sandwriting' is washed away, one super-rich Arab sheikh has ensured that his doodles will last a little longer. Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, 63, has scrawled his name in sand on an island he owns with letters so big they can be seen from space. The word 'HAMAD' measures 1,000 metres high and is a staggering two miles long from the 'H' to the 'D' on the Al Futaisi island. And rather than allow the writing to be washed away by the ocean, the letters actually form waterways that absorb the encroaching tide.The ruler's name is even visible on Google's map service.  Hamad dreamed up the idea and had his workmen toil for weeks to craft the enormous piece of sand graffiti. It is not known how much it cost to make.

Anything's possible: Hamad, 63, ordered workers to write his giant name in the sand. However, the sheikh boasts a personal fortune second only to the Saudi king's. Hamad, also known as the 'Rainbow Sheikh', is a member of the Abu Dhabi Ruling Family. He is understood to have some 200 cars including seven Mercedes 500 SELs painted in different colours of the rainbow which he stores in a giant pyramid. The Arab sheikh has a taste for doing things on a large scale. He built the world's largest truck - eight times the size of the Dodge Power Wagon, with  four bedrooms inside the cabin. Hamad constructed a motor home in the shape of a giant globe which is exactly 1 millionth the size of the actual earth.

Alongside his lavish displays of wealth he has become a well-known philanthropist in medicine and supplied a complete kidney stone operating theatre to a public hospital in Morocco where he continues to fund its staff.

As the images at the head of this post illustrate (assuming that Google Earth’s historical imagery dates are roughly correct), Hamad having “his workmen toil for weeks” is something of an understatement; perhaps not surprisingly, their toil seems to have lasted a couple of years.

Beyond this, I can’t bring myself to comment further; however, for some reason or another, Shelley’s poem comes to mind:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Penguin geophagy

I have to confess that, with the single exception of when my daughter was one in a pantomime many years ago, I have never understood the attraction of penguins. Having spent time in the Arctic, I have long had a yearning to see the other end of the planet, but this has remained – and probably will continue to be – unfulfilled. For two reasons: primarily of course, the enormous cost, but secondly because the only opportunities for visiting the Antarctic seem to have, as their primary focus, endless encounters with endless colonies of penguins. It’s not that I don’t recognise the validity of a penguin’s existence, it’s simply that their sheer numbers and prolific excretory habits bestow on their environment an unbearable stench, and that they don’t strike me as being creatures with a compelling intelligence that invites lengthy observation. Essentially, seen one penguin, seen ‘em all. And I do realise that this is not a popular perspective – penguins have, after all, become film stars and loveable icons of their pristine (if smelly) environment. And yes, I am aware that these ungainly birds display exquisite grace underwater, and yes, I have read of the clever communal wave that that they perform to stay warm, but even so….

It was therefore with some amusement, given my views on their ranking on the IQ scale of life on earth, that I read of the emperor penguin that turned left and ended up on a beach in New Zealand – a profound navigational error that, once made, seems to have been pursued without further reflection. Now, don’t get me wrong, I certainly felt sympathy for it – even felt sorry for it – but my first reaction was mirth and a sense that my view of the position of the penguin on the tree of life’s skills was confirmed. It is surely a good thing for penguins that polar bears were destined to roam the other one – survival of the fittest would inevitably have otherwise prevailed, and penguins would have been but a fleeting aberration of evolution (unless, of course, the stench is a clever defensive mechanism that even bears could not overcome). 

The bird (an adolescent, of course), now popularly christened “Happy Feet” (oh Michael, bite thy tongue…) and of so far unknown gender (how difficult can penguin-sexing be?) is, as I write, recovering after an endoscopy. It required this procedure because it had taken to eating sand.

Now many birds need to intake grit or sand to assist with the grinding process in their gizzards – and penguins are reported to pursue this activity. When humans do the same, it’s referred to as geophagy. “Bizarre stories abound of such diets. An eighty-year-old woman in India is said to eat a kilogram of sand before breakfast. Japanese inhabitants of coral reef islands are said to have eliminated the need for doctors through eating the calcium-rich sand. All this is arguably patent nonsense, but pica, from the Latin for “magpie,” is the medical term for an appetite for nonnutritional substances; it is a medical disorder.” (Welland, 2009).

But within Happy Feet was found enough sand to fill its stomach and esophagus – it had clearly gone to excess in terms of gizzard assistance, and it is suggested that, since in the Antarctic penguins eat snow and ice, perhaps the hapless creature mistook sand for snow. I rest my case.

At the time of writing, Happy Feet was reported to be recovering – and I do hope that this continues to be the case. But if, in the interim, a tragic reversal of he/she/its condition has occurred, I respectfully ask that my readers do not resign in protest.

Sunday sand: a clever little piece of kit

This week has taken on a theme of microscopy, so today I will continue with it and answer a couple of readers’ questions about what I use for my – admittedly amateur – sand images. Back in London, I have a binocular microscope and an attachment that allows me to screw on my old digital camera (not a full-blown SLR, but a fixed lens with an excellent telephoto and threaded for filters and microscope adapters). However, I didn’t want to haul all this out to Indonesia. I am currently awaiting the arrival of a small shipment - no, it’s not coming by sailing barge, but it could not even leave England until I had work and residence permits, a somewhat prolonged bureaucratic process….. In that shipment is a full-sized Celestron digital microscope that I much look forward to playing around with, but to keep me going, and to fill in at the lower magnification range, I decided to bring with me a small hand-held digital microscope.

I had first seen one of these devices used on a television science lecture, and was impressed. I now have one and remain impressed. I don’t do commercials on this blog, but it’s obviously necessary to give some details: it’s a Celestron 44302 microscope, incredibly available for less than $65 in the U.S., and, unusually, for a fair exchange rate equivalent price in the UK. It’s small and light, and comes with a simple bit of software so that after installation it’s just USB plug-and-play. And play with this thing you really can. It has a built in LED light and the magnification of 10-40x and a higher value around 150x is controlled by a large ribbed knob. You can take snapshots and video using the built-in 1.3mp camera, and the software includes some kind of image organisation capability. In reality, I prefer to simply use “alt-print screen” and transfer the image directly into Photoshop where I can do what I want with it.

 

The stand that it comes with is extremely useful, certainly at low magnifications; it takes quite a bit of playing around and fiddling with the focus (plus taking lots of images and deleting many – the wonders of digital photography) to obtain satisfactory results. One problem is that there is a finite time delay between adjusting the focus and the result showing up on the computer screen, plus moving the focus dial easily nudges the microscope and you lose where you were. In some situations, particularly at higher magnifications, I find that I have to hold the microscope rather than using the stand and have a willing assistant press “alt-Prt Sc” on my command. And the colour and contrast treatment is not great in the digital imaging system – hence the value of Photoshop. For 3D objects, such as a great variety of sand grains of different sizes nestling together, depth of field is always going to be a problem – it was for my set-up back in the UK and it certainly is with this. When I am reunited with my full-size microscope, I will look into software that I believe exists that takes a series of images taken in sequential focus on a 3D object and combines them into a single, completely in-focus, image. But take a look, for example, at Gary Greenberg’s microphotography of sand grains for what can be achieved with highly sophisticated and specialised technology.

So, this little device certainly doesn’t fall into the category of highly sophisticated technology, but it sure is clever, it serves my purpose – and it’s fun. It would be a wonderful addition to any school classroom and any home with a kid with even a hint of an interest in science – for the price, I think it’s amazing.  

Oh yes – this sand. It’s from Bradenton Beach (thanks, Lori!), a barrier island on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It’s dominated by tiny, clean, quartz grains and large shell fragments – plus some little black grains; I’m not really sure what the latter are – my guess is that they are of organic origin. The sweeping expanse of Bradenton beach is shown below; it’s an image taken from a real-estate site, and close examination shows why – housing and development crowds the shores yet again on one of the most unstable and shape-shifting, storm-prone environments on the planet. I have asked why this makes any sense in earlier posts, so I won’t bother repeating the question today. 

Yardangs: an Accretionary Wedge Weirdness Cross-post

  Yardangs 1. Photo courtesy of Michael Welland.

It has been great fun to collaborate with Evelyn over at Georneys on a serendipitous coincidence of the letter “Y” and geo-weirdness, as exhorted by Dana, who is hosting the latest Accretionary Wedge. So, here goes, a copy of Evelyn’s post.

def. yardang (also sometimes: jardang):

An elongated erosional landform, commonly found in deserts, resembling the hull of an inverted boat. Similar to sand dunes, yardangs typically have a tall, steep side facing the prevailing wind direction and slope gently down away from the wind. Yardangs are formed when looser material is eroded away (primarily by the wind and particle abrasion), leaving behind more consolidated material that is then sculpted into strange, ship-like shapes by further erosion. Yardangs most commonly form in soft rocks such as siltstone and sandstone (rocks commonly found in deserts) but can also form in harder rocks in places where the wind is the primary erosional force. The word yardang is of Turkish origin coming from the word "yar" which means "steep bank or precipice." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word yardang was first introduced to the English language in 1904 by the Swedish explorer Sven Anders Hendin.

 

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I had actually never heard of the word "yardang" until quite recently. Earlier this year I wrote to Michael Welland, author of the book Sand: The Never-ending Story and the Through the Sandglass blog, and asked him if he had any pictures of nabkhas for my "N is for Nabkha" word of the week. Michael wrote back promptly and sent me a beautiful picture of some nabkhas in Namibia. He also told me that he had some great yardang pictures for when I reached the letter Y. 

Well, I've finally reached the letter Y, and Michael has been kind enough to send me some pictures of yardangs and also some musings on these strange desert landforms. Both the pictures and the musings are below. Thanks so much, Michael!

Yardangs 2. Photo courtesy of Michael Welland.

  Yardangs 3. Photo courtesy of Michael Welland. Click to enlarge.

  Yardangs 4. Photo Courtesy of Michael Welland. Click to enlarge.

Michael's Yardang Musings:

In the distance, in the morning desert sun, would seem to be herd of great beasts, grazing on the sand. They are, like all good herds, all facing in the same direction, but barely moving. On closer inspection, they are, of course, not moving at all and are completely inanimate clay and silt – but herd would still seem to be the right collective noun for yardangs. Yardangs. For once, a piece of geo-terminology that seems right, exotic but with a vague and indefinable animate sound to it that suits these things – “a yardang can go for days without water.”

 

They cluster together in a slight depression in the landscape, in all likelihood an old lake bed in which their clay and siltstone were deposited. The lake dried up as the climate changed, bringing with it the desert, the sand, and the wind. And the sand and the wind conspired as a great sculptor, sand-blasting the softest sediment, liberating the rough forms of the harder rock. The abrasional power of the sand is greatest within a meter or so of the ground, the height of flying grains in a sandstorm limited by the physics that Ralph Bagnold set out. And the sculpting takes place in the face of the prevailing wind, the face of the rock heading into the wind receiving the fiercest blasting, eddies and the slipstream chipping away in its lee. So these things explain some of the forms of the yardangs – the front face undercut to the maximum height of the strongest sandblast, leaving the “head” above. The result is, of course, reminiscent of the Great Sphinx, and romantic speculators like to think of yardangs as the inspiration for the iconic monument. Just as the Sphinx was for so long draped and buried in the sand, so the yardangs  are draped in the debris of their deterioration, and drifts of sand pile up against their flanks. But they are simply the inevitable result of aeolian processes – they are all facing the same way because they are facing into the prevailing wind, their shapes are determined by the interplay between the physics of flying sand and the varying resistance of the rocks that are in its way.

 

So far, so good – but think about them some more, and yardangs have their mysteries. Why are they spaced out the way they are? Some intrinsic depositional variation in the old lake sediments? Or is there some feedback going on here, one yardang influencing the flow of the wind so as to preclude another one developing within some critical distance? And, while I talked blithely about “eddies and the slipstream” chipping away in the lee of the front face, what does this actually mean? Why is the slope and curve of their “backs” so remarkably uniform?  I don’t know that we know the answers to such questions – which is why there is an intrinsic geo-weirdness to them. But, regardless of any geo-weirdness, a herd of yardangs is simply weird in its own right, making for a distinctly weird landscape.

 

And you just can’t not think of them as a herd. As we walked away, I could have sworn some of them were watching us.

Sunday sand - not

What can these colourful grains be? Clearly a variety of rock-types, quite angular but showing signs of smoothing and abrasion. Some limestones? Green chert, perhaps? Dark basalt? And turquoise?

Well, actually, no. A colleague where I’m working just returned from taking his 82-year-old mother on the “Mini-Haj” in Mecca (he had spent some time in advance getting into shape so as to be able to push her wheelchair the necessary distances). When he saw these in Mecca, he thought of his geologist friends and brought them back – they’re candies/sweets, chocolate inside, a sugar colourful glaze on the outside. And they are granule-size, not sand. So this post is entirely a hoax, a bit of perhaps much-needed fun – and they are good!

Second Grade

 
An audience of a couple of hundred on the Queen Mary 2? A few flutters of nervousness. The Gottingen Literary Festival? Despite giving an introduction in German to an illustrious group, merely a tangible increase in adrenalin. I have to admit that I enjoy giving talks and, having done so many, the days of the fear of public speaking are long gone. But when a neighbourhood friend in suburban Philadelphia asked if I could come in and talk to her second grade class, stage fright would be an understatement; rather I felt a gathering sensation of something verging on terror.

But I needn’t have worried. Kids of that age are curiosity engines, their enthusiasm infectious, and it was a totally memorable experience. I was, of course, helped by the fact that my topic was one immediately accessible to kids, and that they had already done some investigation of sand. Add to that the imagery that sand has to offer and the wonderful fact that every classroom seems now to equipped for Powerpoint, and the time flew by. I was also set at ease – and surprised – by first having to autograph everything and anything that was available, mostly the kids’ workbooks, but it was the first time that I had signed a glasses case.

The enjoyable memories of the occasion were wonderfully enhanced by the fact that the teacher had all the kids write up and illustrate what they had learned – and then presented me with the results. A real treasure! And so this post is essentially written and illustrated by these kids. In the header above, I believe that the picture on the left is of the event itself – me, the class, and Powerpoint. Here’s a photo of the reality (scary, huh?):

 
I am amazed by what these kids took in, and how they illustrated and wrote about it.

The diversity of sands, the critters that live in sand – and erosion! And they really took to my recommendation of always taking a magnifying glass to the beach.

 

And the idea that, between the sand grains of a beach, is a miniature zoo seems to have struck a chord:

I will simply select some quotes from the written reports – I couldn’t possibly include everything, so my apologies to anyone whose work does not appear; note, by the way, the interest in the physics of granular materials:

The guy that taught us about sand is Mr. Welland

Sand is an interesting thing to learn about. And that is what Mr. Welland told me.

Sand is made out of really tiny rocks. Sand just looks brown. But it is really not. If you look up close you can see beautiful shiny and different colored rocks.

Sand is great, it feels so smooth but really it’s tiny bits of rock...I love sand and I never leave the house without a magnifying glass... There are also bugs, insects, and creatures.

A lot of things live in sand.

Sand might act like a liquid but it is a solid. That’s why sand is awesome.

I learned that storms and stuff break rocks and turn into sand. I learned that in Hawaii there is black sand. I learned that there is red and pink sand.

I learned that sand is made out of shells and rocks...desert sand is made out of little balls. Sand is fun to play in.

p.s. Make sure you have a magnifying glass with you when you go to the beach.

Some sand is shells and the sand breaks up into pieces and it makes sand. Sand is interesting to learn about. Animals live in sand.

I learned that there are no two sand pieces alike. The sea crashes against the rocks and makes tiny pieces.

Sand is tiny tiny rocks but it is weird because it is like a solid and a liquid. Little bugs live in the sand. They cleaned up the dirt.

Waves wash on rocks and small pieces fall off the rock. The small shells of small creatures can be sand too, when the creatures die. But is sand a liquid or a solid? That is still a mystery.

Never leave the house without a magnifying glass if you are looking at sand. Sand will not stick without water... I learned a lot from Mr. Welland. I like sand.

And as I was getting ready to leave, one question threw me: “I thought that sand was a kind of polymer?” Second grade?

So many many thanks to this class – you were brilliant and I enjoyed myself enormously – I look forward to coming back!

 

[Note that the photograph of the class is published here with permission – I had originally blurred individual faces, but I was pleased to be told that this was not necessary.]

 

 

 

A long-tailed black swan visits

A quick visual inspection of the visit stats for this blog reveals a rather startling anomaly: in general a typical day will see a couple of hundred visits, but when I first checked on Tuesday morning the figure was well over 2000 and ended the day close to 4000. I was, to say the least, astonished. There was also highly anomalous twitter and facebook traffic, and it rapidly became clear that all this excitement originated from a post on Reddit, which in turn originated from this, about the extraordinary sand art of Andrew Clemens. This became linked to a very recent episode of Antiques Roadshow broadcast from Des Moines, Iowa, where the State Historical Society hosts a collection of Clemens’ work and kindly gave me permission to reproduce images in the book. This all led to a cascade – indeed, an avalanche – of links and the unprecedented, unpredictable, and unique event on this blog.

The segment on the TV program is well-worth watching – for the moment, at least, it’s available on the New Hampshire Public Television site – the discussion of Clemens begins at around 22 minutes.

What happened has, when I think about it, always been within the universe of possible events, but well outside the historic metrics and the limited world of expectations – hence this post title. When I wrote the “Sandpile world” post last week, little did I think that this would be dramatically illustrated by imminent events on the blog itself!

 

[By the way, Sandglass will shortly be travelling to distant parts – a couple of posts have been pre-scheduled for the coming week, and I hope to be reporting “live” soon thereafter.]