Thursday Things: Lake of Lemons Edition
14 October 2021. Vol 3 No 41 By Dan McGirt. #114
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“We’re a tired metaphor. Very tired.” Photo by Thitiphum Koonjantuek on Unsplash
Hello? Is it me you’re looking for? Man reported missing joins search party seeking him.
In a scene worthy of a comedy sketch, a Turkish man joined a search party for a missing person not realizing the individual being pursued was him.
Beyhan Mutlu, 51, went drinking with a friend in a forest in the town of Inegol, northwest Turkey, late Tuesday. His wife reported him missing after he did not return home and she heard he had walked away from his friend, drunk.
Gendarmerie and rescue teams were called in to find Mutlu, who had gone to sleep in a house in the forest, Turkish online news site T24 reported Friday.
I mean who hasn’t wandered off into the woods drunk and fallen asleep in a strange house in the forest — which I can only assume was made of gingerbread — right?
He came across members of the search party in the morning and decided to help them find the missing person. He realized he was the focus of the search when they began calling his name.
You have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Beyhan Mutlu!
Actually, you probably don’t.
"I told them I was Beyhan Mutlu, but they continued to search," Mutlu continued. "They didn’t believe me. The truth came out when my friend Mesut saw me."
Talk about an identity crisis — you tell the search party you’re you and they deny it. Thank goodness his buddy Mesut happened along or poor Beyhan might still be out there in the woods trying to find himself.
Or eating porridge with three bears. One or the other.
When life give you lemons, make lemonade. And when life gives you an exploding lake, turn it into a power source. An explosive lake becomes a source of power
Lake Kivu lies on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the East African Rift Valley, which is slowly being pulled apart by tectonic forces. This stress results in volcanic activity and hot springs that feed carbon dioxide and methane into the lake’s deepest part, reports Knowable Magazine.
Because of Kivu’s great depth, gasses that usually would bubble out of the lake are trapped at the bottom, as much as 1,500 feet deep.
Okay, what’s the problem? Well, imagine the lake is a gigantic can of Coke that has been thoroughly shaken. And is also about to get a truckload of Mentos dumped in it.
In 1986, Lake Nyos — a similar but smaller lake 1,400 miles away in Cameroon — suddenly released its gas reservoir, possibly because of a landslide. The lake eruption caused a 300-foot geyser of water and foam, and the resulting gas cloud asphyxiated almost 1,800 people nearby.
Scientists are concerned the methane and CO2 in Lake Kivu could go off in an even bigger catastrophe. The solution — tap the gases trapped in the lake for productive uses to release the pressure and reduce the danger.
Rwanda has a plan to curtail this potential environmental disaster by tapping into the deep reservoir of gasses in the lake, exploiting the methane gas for cooking.
The government has been working on a $400 million project with Gasmeth Energy to convert methane gas from Lake Kivu into compressed natural gas for heating, industrial use, and automobiles. Switching to natural gas and electric power can alleviate health problems, especially respiratory diseases, which are aggravated by air pollution caused by burning wood, reports Rwanda’s New Times.
Engineers say Shema Power Lake Kivu (SPLK) will generate 15 megawatts of electricity by extracting gas from Lake Kivu
This is the kind of story I like — human ingenuity and creativity solving problems. This is why Thursday Things generally takes an optimistic view of the future. There aren’t many things people can’t figure out if we really put our minds to it. Except where Beyhan Mutlu disappeared to.
John Dee was a fascinating character — among other distinctions he was an early advocate of England establishing colonies in the New World and coined the term “British empire”. He also was big into astrology and the occult. Obsidian ‘Spirit Mirror’ Used by Elizabeth I’s Court Astrologer Has Aztec Origins
An obsidian “spirit mirror” used by John Dee, an advisor to England’s Elizabeth I, traces its origins to Aztec culture, a new study published in the journal Antiquity suggests.
A Renaissance polymath whose interests ranged from astronomy to astrology, alchemy and math, Dee advised the queen from the start of her reign in 1558 to the 1570s. As court astrologer and scientific advisor, he advocated for overseas exploration and the establishment of colonies.
“Later he became involved in divination and the occult, seeking to talk to angels through the use of scryers (those who divine the future), who used artifacts—like mirrors and crystals,” the study’s lead author, University of Manchester archaeologist Stuart Campbell, tells Ashley Strickland of CNN.
Today, the British Museum owns the mirror, which is on display in London alongside two similar circular obsidian mirrors and a rectangular obsidian slab that may be a portable altar, reports Tom Metcalfe for National Geographic. Researchers had previously suspected that the artifacts originated with the Aztecs, and the new study confirms this chemically.
This item caught my eye because a few years ago I saw an exhibit in London of books and objects from John Dee’s library, including a “spirit mirror” and a scrying glass. Not sure if the mirror I saw was the same one the British Museum has. Either way, I saw no spirits. Whether any spirits saw me, I don’t know.
Crystal John Dee claimed was given to him by an angel. And who’s to say otherwise? Source: Me
Also in the collection was a crystal that, according to his diary, the angel Uriel gave him in November, 1582. Uriel gives such thoughtful gifts. Dee used it for predicting the future by looking into it for symbols or the “ghosts” of people. Sounds about as reliable as opinion polling and computer models.
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