We also got a new air conditioner last week, after the forty-year old Carrier gave up the ghost. They figured the old unit’s SEER value was about three, and the new one is thirteen. It’s also so much nicer / more efficient that it needs to run a lot less, so it’ll be interesting to watch our usage over the summer. Then again, with the way the cost of energy has been going, the bill will probably stay the same even if the use plummets.

Is there a word for words that look like their meaning, as opposed to sounding like their meaning? Because “fizzy” should totally be spelled “fizzi,” and then it would be an excellent double trick.

If you ever see me giggling in the corner all by myself, it’s because this shit in my head? never stops. It’s like a shit circus. Hey! I wonder if ShitCircus.com is available…

Nicolas Francˆois Appert (1750 – 1841) was the French inventor of airtight food preservation. Appert, known as the “father of canning,” was a confectioner. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte offered a 12,000 franc reward to anyone who could devise a method for the food preservation in order to provide his troops with daily rations in order to keep his armies adequately supplied while on the march. After years of experimentation, Appert submitted his invention and won the prize in 1809. The following year, Appert published L’Art de conserver les substances animales et vegetales (or The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances for Many Years).

“Hey!” a man said as I walked by. He seemed friendly, and had a thick Jackie Mason accent. “Young man, do you want to learn electrical engineering?”

…and a YouTube clip. What a hero!

HOLY SHIT IS THAT THE COLLEST EVER?! We’re ordering more — for the car, and for our parents. The only thing I find annoying is that the siren is on the same knob as the power and alert — so you try to turn off the alert mode and you easily end up going EEE AAAAW EEEEE AAAAW at ear-splitting levels. Other than that, and the fact that we have to order a different adapter because our cellphones are Treos, it’s SO worth the money and I will never be a loser cowering in a tent with “experienced campers” again. Rock.

Now consider what’s happened at the subdivision. Once the topsoil is removed, you’re left with the rock and clay underneath, which hasn’t seen the light of day for thousands of years. Landscapers call it “hardpan,” and from an engineering point of view it’s an ideal material to mould into the site’s drainage plan.

Run heavy equipment over material like that, and it quickly gets compacted into something with much the same consistency as concrete.

Once the houses are in place, the topsoil gets put back, but usually to a depth of only 20 cm., which is the typical municipal standard and enough to support healthy turf.

The rest of the stockpiled topsoil is usually sold off and eventually ends up in nurseries, but only after it’s been rehabilitated by adding manure or peat moss or sand. That’s because the soil became anaerobic after sitting in a pile for so long. “There’s no oxygen within that pile anymore, and eventually all the living microbes and organisms in that soil die,” says Ubbens.

So you end up with less-than-ideal topsoil spread thinly over a layer of clay hardpan that often includes pieces of brick and other debris. “In our business, we call it `builder’s loam,’” says Ubbens. “It’s unfortunate that it’s so bad that it’s even got a name.”

Planting trees in that is like sticking them in a clay pot. “We bore a hole in that heavily compacted clay, put the tree in with a certain amount of soil, but the tree will eventually start to decline,” says Andy Kenney, senior lecturer in urban and community forestry at the University of Toronto.

He [Gehrt] found they have a 60 percent annual survival rate — twice that of their rural counterparts… …Their presence can be helpful, though. Gehrt found they’ve reduced a growing population of Canada geese, and said other studies cited coyotes as useful deer and rodent population controllers.

That’s really cool! (And another reason to keep the cats inside.)