Darkoshi

I went to a Lowes on the other side of town yesterday, as per the website that store still had 17 of an item (rubber stair treads) that was out of stock over here. When I got there, I looked all over but couldn't find the item. An employee found them for me. They were on a top shelf, above my line of sight. That's probably why that store still had so many in stock; other shoppers probably didn't see them either.

While over there, I went to an Indian grocery store I hadn't been to before. They had several interesting items.



Cumin soda! I want to see what that tastes like.

Lemongrass Basil seed drink! There were several flavors, but this was the only one that seemed to be without artificial coloring.

This morning I remembered my spice cabinet has a jar of Thai "sweet basil seed", which either my mom or I bought a long time ago in an Oriental grocery. Tiny black seeds with a mild cucumber-skin flavor. We never could figure out what to do with them. But now I've read that they can indeed be used like chia seeds, to thicken drinks or desserts. So I finally have a use for them.

Rose petal spread! I believe I bought this same thing a long time ago, and didn't remember it being particularly good. Even so, I couldn't resist, because rose petals. It does taste good, but the texture is very sticky and thick; not something easy to spread on bread.



The Sabudana Poha is tapioca flakes. I've bought that before. The flakes soften and cook much quicker than tapioca pearls, so I can make a quick pudding out of them.

The Namak Para are fried wheat-flour chips flavored with Ajowan seeds. I seem to recall having a jar of ajowan seeds in my spice cabinet at some point in time, but it's not there now. Maybe I didn't like the flavor enough to keep it. (I'd say ajowan tastes similar to oregano.) But it tastes very good in these chips.

The Gol Matthi are "fried round patties" flavored with black pepper. I haven't tried them yet. I was initially attracted by the picture on the box because they look like chocolate chip cookies. But the ingredient list does not include any sugar or sweetening, so I'm intrigued.

I avoid buying any Indian grocery items which list chili powder or even generic "spices" in the ingredients, because even what they consider very mild is too hot for me. That rules out a large portion of the items for sale, but makes my choices simpler.

A goose is on the nest by the picnic area again. I walk towards my usual table, coming around from the back side rather than walking right by the nest.

As I start to sit down, a Swoosh sound as the other goose comes flying out of nowhere at me. (Whoa, I haven't had one do that before.) It lands a few feet away and hisses.

Me: What? I can't sit here?

Goose: HISS! HISSSSSS!!!!

Me: Really? You're not going to let me sit here?

Goose: HISSSS!!

Me: Oh, okay. ::grumble:: I'll go sit somewhere else then. You scared me away.

I walk to one of the other tables further away.

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A tree branch hangs over the walkway. Sometimes I have to duck to avoid it smacking into my face. But I always enjoy watching its leaf buds as they develop.

Several of my "hacks" actually involve hacking (i.e. cutting) things.

This hack works for knee socks whose top elastic band is somewhat too tight. It can also help if the socks are a little too short. But if the elastic is very tight, this probably won't help enough. If the elastic isn't too tight to begin with, then doing this may make them too loose.

Many knee socks nowadays have the top elastic band made of an elastic section that's been folded over and knit together on the inside, so that it's two layers of elastic fabric. With this kind of sock, it is easy to cut open the seam where it's knit together, thereby changing it into a single longer layer of elastic.





Right leg: original sock. Left leg: hacked sock.

I fixed holes in the tips of my shoes by cutting pieces from an old black synthetic belt, and gluing them on with Shoe Goo.

First shoe done. I used too much goo so you can see shiny stuff around the edges.


Second shoe done; this one turned out better.


To help the pieces adhere well, I stuffed some socks into the front of the shoes and used a bag of pebbles over the glued pieces to apply pressure.

Sometimes I stay up very late to finish something that I've already wasted/spent so much time on today, that I really don't want to have to waste/spend time on it tomorrow too. Maybe this way, tomorrow I'll get around to doing what I really wanted to do today.

I did at least get some things accomplished today which I had planned on, namely raking the yard.

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These are the good-tasting corn puffs (Mikesell's "Puffcorn Delites") I found recently at Big Lots (but they only had this one bag left), which have no added flavoring:




Here is another brand, Simple Truth Organic "Sea Salt & Butter Flavored Baked Puffs", which I found recently at Kroger. Note that the front of the package says "Vegan" even though it also has "Butter" in the name.




I was confused by the "natural butter flavor" ingredient. I thought that meant "flavor derived from butter". So how could the product be vegan? Because of that uncertainty, I only took the photo of it while in the store, and did not buy it.

So today I spent some (a lot) of time trying to find out what "natural butter flavor" is, and can it be vegan? Also, how is it different from the "artificial butter flavor" which another brand of corn puffs used to include and which had previously been implicated in causing lung disease (mostly in workers in microwave popcorn plants, but there was also at least one case of someone who ate a lot of microwave popcorn who got it)?

Short answer: Yes, apparently both artificial and natural butter flavor can be vegan. I'm still not sure if they are always vegan though, or if in some cases they also extract a flavoring from butter and call it "butter flavor".

Both artificial and natural butter flavors are basically the same chemicals; the difference is only in how they are produced; from what source and through what process. Either can be one of several different chemicals.

Diacetyl (butane-2,3-dione) has been voluntarily phased out from most, if not all, microwave popcorn brands, but the FDA still allows its use. In popcorn, diacetyl seems to have been replaced by acetylpropionyl (2,3-pentanedione); however, the latter appears to have the same dangers as diacetyl. (Other pages I read suggested that it may not be the specific chemicals themselves which are the problem, but rather that inhaling any particulate matter like that can be dangerous.)

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Microwaving prepacked microwave popcorn results in the production of a number of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter (abstract, 2007/01)

4 major popcorn makers to drop toxic chemical. Companies working to remove buttery flavoring linked to lung disease (2007/09/05)


Chemtura Resolves Butter Flavor Cases (2010/08/30)

Respiratory Disease Among Flavoring-exposed Workers in Food and Flavoring Manufacture (abstract, 2012/07)

The diacetyl substitute, 2,3-pentanedione, has comparable toxicity to diacetyl, and other members of the a-diketone family have not been evaluated for respiratory toxicity.

Update on flavoring-induced lung disease (abstract, 2016/01)

Attempts to decrease the risk of lung disease have included the use of flavoring substitutes; however, these chemicals may cause similar injury ... Diacetyl substitutes cause similar peri-bronchiolar fibrotic lesions in animal studies.

Is Microwave Popcorn Bad For You? Cancer & Butter Flavor Risks (2017/11/06)

If diacetyl has been mostly phased out, what’s the new “butter flavor” made of and is it safe?

That brings us to the next concerning compound…
4. The “butter flavor” acetylpropionyl

You won’t even know whether popcorn is made with this. FDA labeling regulations don’t require specific flavors to be identified by name.

Since it’s possible to find acetylpropionyl and diacetyl in nature, manufacturers can list both of these chemicals as "natural butter flavor" or simply "natural flavoring."
They don’t even need to use the word artificial. Even USDA certified organic microwave popcorn can use them.
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Technically known as 2,3-pentanedione, acetylpropionyl is molecularly very similar to butane-2,3-dione (diacetyl).
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Toxicity reports on acetylpropionyl were not even published until 2010. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says in a peer-reviewed paper that:
"…acute inhalation exposures to 2,3-pentanedione cause airway epithelial damage that is similar to diacetyl in laboratory studies (Hubbs et al. 2012)."

On "Natural Butter Flavors" (a blog post)

Artificial butter flavoring (Wikipedia article)
Obviously, I'm not the only one who assumes that "natural butter flavor" means something that is derived from butter.
This article says: "Butter flavor" redirects here. For natural butter flavor, see [the article on] butter.

Artificial butter flavoring may contain diacetyl, acetylpropionyl, or acetoin, three natural compounds in butter that contribute to its characteristic flavor.

The Flavor Rundown: Natural vs. Artificial Flavors

The FDA broadly defines natural flavors to include any flavor isolated from natural sources like plant material (fruits, roots, bark, herbs, etc.) or animal products (meat, dairy, etc.). Artificial flavors are any flavors that are not defined as natural, even if they have the exact same chemical composition as flavors isolated directly from nature.

...these flavor additives are generally produced through chemical synthesis or industrial fermentation on specialized culture, which is optimized for flavor production, but is not the sort of media people generally like to eat. When produced through this culturing technique, diacetyl and acetoin are listed as "natural butter flavoring," but when they are produced through controlled laboratory synthesis, the very same components are listed as "artificial butter flavoring"

What is the difference between artificial and natural flavors?

Natural and artificial flavors are defined for the consumer in the Code of Federal Regulations. A key line from this definition is the following: " a natural flavor is the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional." Artificial flavors are those that are made from components that do not meet this definition.
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The flavorist creating an artificial flavoring must use the same chemicals in his formulation as would be used to make a natural flavoring, however. Otherwise, the flavoring will not have the desired flavor. The distinction in flavorings--natural versus artificial--comes from the source of these identical chemicals
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Another difference between natural and artificial flavorings is cost. The search for "natural" sources of chemicals often requires that a manufacturer go to great lengths to obtain a given chemical. Natural coconut flavorings, for example, depend on a chemical called massoya lactone. Massoya lactone comes from the bark of the Massoya tree, which grows in Malaysia.

But then why do some German artificial flavors taste different from the corresponding American ones, like Raspberry for example? And why do some artificial flavors not taste the same as the actual food they are based on? I suppose it is because the food includes many chemicals and flavors, while the artificial ones are subsets of those flavors.

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2018/12/27 2pm: Edited to add more info to the "Short Answer".

It was partly cloudy here today.

I got to see a lot of the partial eclipse. A few minutes before totality, a big cloud moved in front of the sun, so I didn't get to watch that most special part. But I did get to experience the sky darkening (not nearly as dark as in the middle of the night; more like shortly after sunset), and the temperature dropping, and the wind whipping up, and a few cicadas starting to buzz, and part of the horizon looking pink.

It was very similar to a big thunderstorm building up. That's what the dogs seemed to think, anyway, as they rushed for the porch and pawed at the front door to be let inside. I let them in and then us humans remained outside to watch.

One curious thing is that the partial eclipse started with the moon entering the upper right portion of the sun, and ended with the moon leaving the upper left portion of the sun (when viewing generally southwards for both). That's not what I had expected. Maybe I'm mistaken about what direction I was looking when it started.

Many people here in town did get to see the totality; it just depended on where one was, and where the clouds were. But in some areas, it even rained.

My neighbor was visiting a relative at the hospital this afternoon, and she told me that a lot of the hospital staff went outside to view the eclipse (but staff who were needed inside stayed in). She said that the Emergency Room remained open, but the normal operating rooms were closed for that time period. That answers one of the things I had wondered about.

Click to enlarge...

For the last 3 days, I've seen the crescent moon in the sky during the late morning.

2017/08/16, 10:16am EDT:


2017/08/17, 8:43am EDT:


(On 2017/08/18, I saw the moon around 10:30am, but didn't think of taking a photo.)

But I have been unable to find the moon in the sky around 2:30pm (during my lunch breaks). I've been wondering why I can't find it in the afternoon.

(No wonder I've never paid much attention to the path of the moon in the sky. At night, I'm usually inside or asleep. In the daytime, even when the moon is in the sky, it's hard to see.)

On all 3 days, it's been partly cloudy, with today being the least cloudy. So it's possible the moon was behind a cloud. But as much as I've searched the sky, it seems unlikely it's *always* been behind a cloud.


As of today (2017/08/18) at my location, per the NOAA solar calculator (Find Sunrise, Sunset, Solar Noon and Solar Position for Any Place on Earth), solar noon is around 1:30pm. So at 2:30pm, the sun is still fairly high overhead.

On 8/16, it was 5 days before new moon and the eclipse, so the moon would have been about 5 * 13 = 65 degrees away from the sun. So that was most likely too near the horizon for me to see, as there are some trees and buildings around.

On 8/17, the moon would have been 4 * 13 = 52 degrees away from the sun. I think I should have been able to see it at that angle.

Today on 8/18, the moon would have been 3 * 13 = 39 degrees away from the sun. Surely I should have been able to see it at that angle.

The closer we get to the new moon, the thinner the crescent is. So the harder it is to see. It is hard to find a tiny arc of white in a light blue sky, and even more so when there are distracting white clouds around. But is that the only reason I haven't found it?

Per this page: Finding the Moon, crescent moons are "not observable" except right before sunset or after dawn. But I've seen it at 10:30am which isn't right after dawn. So I think it would be more accurate to say "not easily observable".

If I can see it at 10:30am when the sun is already bright in the sky, why shouldn't I be able to see it at 2:30pm?

I got to wondering whether how I think of the angles in the sky is wrong. I am thinking of 45 degrees as being the distance from straight overhead to a point halfway to the horizon. But the 13 degrees that the moon moves per day is in relation to the center of the earth, not to my spot on the surface of the earth. Therefore, is how I'm visualizing the angles in the sky wrong?



When the moon orbits 45 degrees around the earth, is that a much greater distance than the distance I see from overhead to halfway to the horizon?

But... as can be seen in the diagram, the larger you draw the earth, the closer the 45 degrees gets to one's visible horizon, and it would eventually even pass below the horizon. Yet I've been able to see the moon in the mornings, and the distance between it and the sun hasn't seemed such a large angle. So surely the above diagram can't be right.

(Update #2, 2017/08/20: I've figured it out. The diagram is basically correct, but my assumption about the 45 degree line eventually passing below the horizon was wrong (just because I don't draw the horizon line to infinity, doesn't mean it doesn't go to infinity). If the angle to the moon as measured from the center of the earth is 45 degrees (from directly overhead), then the angle as measured from the surface of the earth would be more than 45 degrees. But because the distance to the moon is so large in comparison to the size of the earth, the angle is only slightly more. See follow-up post.)

On the same topic, I got to wondering how much of the sky / celestial sphere am I actually capable of observing from a point on the earth, at any moment in time. Ie. if I turn all the way around, looking towards the horizon, and up above me, how much of the sphere of the sky which surrounds the earth, am I seeing?

Based on the diagram, the amount of sky seen would not be half the sphere, as I've previously assumed. Yet again, the larger one draws the earth, the less of the sky one would seem to see. Surely that can't be right?

Based on these answers, it sounds like you should be able to see half of the sky at any time. But I don't understand the formulas and calculations listed.


Update (afternoon of 2017/08/19):

Today, the morning of 8/19, around 7:40am and again at 10:20am, I wasn't able to find the moon in the sky, even though it was clear with no clouds. So as of 2 days before new moon, the crescent must be too small and faint to see in the daytime. Perhaps a clear sky being so much brighter than a partially cloudy sky, also makes it harder to see.

MoonCalc.org - shows you the current position of the moon in the sky, and moonrise/moonset directions, for any position you select on the map.

Sun Locator Lite - a free app which lets you find the sun and moon by pointing the phone at the sky (as long as the phone has an internal compass/magnetometer - mine doesn't, but Qiao's does). The Pro version lets you get information for any day and time of the year.

Today, 2 days before the eclipse, the moon should be about 2 * 13 = 26 degrees from the sun. I used the above Sun Locator app to find the position of the moon and compare it to the sun's position, and estimated the angle between them. If anything, it seemed less than 26 degrees, not more. So that indicates that there's something wrong with my thinking in terms of the above diagram. But where have I gone wrong? I still haven't figured that out.
(And even with the app to show me its exact location, I still can't see the crescent moon in the afternoon sky.)

But I did have an epiphany on how much of the sky is visible from a point on earth at a single moment in time. It depends on what I'm calling the "sky". I think of the sky as a sphere centered around the earth, upon which I see moon, sun, stars, clouds, etc. But there are many such possible spheres around the earth, different distances from the center of the earth.

How much of the sky is seen depends on which of those spheres one considers. If one considers a sphere which is say, 10 kilometers above sea level, you can calculate the surface area of that sphere. The earth's diameter is 12,742 km. So the sphere's diameter would be 12,752 km, its radius (r) would be 6376 km, and it's surface area would be 4*pi*r^2.

[ another interesting thought... For an infinitely thin sphere, the size of the inside and outside surface areas should be the same, right? But how can that be? I can't visualize them being the same size. ]

Imagine that we cut a small slice, 10 km deep, from the top of that sphere. We can then calculate the surface area of that slice (with some formula, which I would have to look up.) That would tell us how much of the whole sphere we can see at a single moment, and it would be a fairly small portion.

But now, consider a sky-sphere with a much larger radius of 5 light-years - reaching the nearest stars - or even larger. At such distances, the diameter of the earth is minute in comparison - it can be considered negligible. A plane which touches the surface of the earth at one point is practically the same as another parallel plane which intersects both the center of the earth and the sphere. Either way, half of the sphere is above the plane, and half below. So the person can see half of that sky-sphere.

Now, what about a sphere with radius of 150 million km (about the distance from the earth to the sun)? In comparison to that distance, the earth's diameter is roughly 0.01%.* So again, it's basically negligible, and we can see practically half of the sphere at any moment in time.

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Other interesting tidbits:

How far away is the horizon? Short answer: About 4 to 5 kilometers away, at standing eye-level for an average-height adult.

I see the moon: introducing our nearest neighbour - has several good diagrams/images.
Per this page, the moon's orbital plane is tilted 5 degrees from the ecliptic. That's not as much as I imagined. But when you add in the 23.5 angle of the earth's axis, the moon can orbit up to 29 degrees above or below the earth's equator.

Lunar Orbital Libration
Libration definition: "a real or apparent oscillatory motion, especially of the moon."

Altitude and Azimuth

* A lot of these numbers are rough calculations I've done, and they may have errors. Please don't rely on any numbers I've posted, without verifying them. If you find an error, please let me know so that I can correct it.