Anhydrous Ammonia

WARNING: this blog post contains disturbing images caught on video.

A year ago I was involved in HazMat training for the hospital I worked for. During that training we watched a couple of videos on a toxic substance called anhydrous ammonia.

What is anhydrous ammonia?

Anhydrous ammonia is 99.99% pure. It is used as a fertilizer along with other uses (I won't go into them all). In contrast to anhydrous, typical household ammonia is 5-10% pure. Some firearm cleaners are 13% ammonia (ammonia is an excellent at dissolving copper). Think about that for a moment. Most of us have smelled ammonia in our homes. Some of us have been hit in the head and become lightheaded then brought back with smelling salts (ammonia tablets in a first aid kit). Or used an ammonia cleaner for windows and mirrors for the streak free shine. Now imagine a form of ammonia that is twenty times more powerful. That is anhydrous ammonia.

The human body is made up of 50-70% water. The brain between 70-85% and the blood around 92%. Why does any of that matter? Because of the term anhydrous. Anhydrous means free from water. And, anhydrous ammonia is solvable in water. Do you see where I'm going here folks? If you have something that is solvable in water, and is free of water, then comes in contact with something 50-70% water...

In the following video the kind of volatile reaction is demonstrated when a human comes in contact with anhydrous ammonia. If you should decide to watch the video, I want you to take a look at the upper right of the screen and note the time. Then note the time when the officer arrives on scene, and note it one more time once he is overcome. Also, listen to the radio chatter so you can understand what the officer is thinking when he arrives on screen.

I want to warn any of you that chose to watch the video, it's disturbing.

My advice to anyone approaching a scene like this, don't approach the scene, get upwind immediately.

http://youtu.be/lzObhHet9QM

Book Review—"I Travel by Night"

Book Review—"I Travel by Night."

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I Travel by Night

Robert McCammon. Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2013. 147 pp.

The following is a review of I Travel by Night by Robert McCammon. 

Step inside the shop for a moment before we get into the book. You’ll need to outfit yourself with some appropriate clothing for the time you’ll travel back to—1886. Here’s a Stetson, a button-up shirt, a leather belt with two revolver holsters set to reverse draw, and the pistol handles pointed out toward your quarry when they are holstered. You’ll need a duster and a pair of cowboy boots and denim jeans. Oh, and lets not forget to equip you with pure silver bullets with holy water mixed in. You’ll need a horse, and dark coverings—blankets or window drapes—to protect your sun-sensitive skin from the burning rays of solar light. And last, but certainly not least, you’ll need a small bottle to keep the red liquid in. For emergencies. 

Trevor Lawson is a Civil War veteran and a gunslinger and a vampire. Lawson is also a mercenary of sorts and is hired to find a missing girl. His business card reads: All Matters Handled. I Travel By Night. 

So off you go to find a missing girl, use your cool vampire skills, and look for the one person who can change you back to a human before you die or completely convert. 

Robert McCammon creates a likable and relatable character, Lawson, in this short book. He adds enough internal conflict and action to engage the readers. McCammon also returns to his bold descriptive horror-based style in this novella. An easy read that will make you want more, especially since the ending was rushed. I would expect other short tales as Lawson grows alongside his new, human sidekick.

A wonderful story to keep diehards happy and bring in new fans. I give it a rating of three and a half out of five stars.

Rant: Muscle Weighs More Than Fat

I constantly hear the claim that muscle weighs more than fat. Somewhere this question was asked and some fucking moron made the claim of muscle weighing more than fat. Bullshit! Muscle does not weigh more than fat. How about an example? Sure, why not. 

If I carve a pound of muscle out of your thigh then carve a pound of fat out of your ass and put them on a balance scale it would read equal. If I did the same weight experiment with lead and feathers it would also be the same. So, just to be clear, I weigh an ounce of lead and an ounce of feathers. Are you following me? It's like that old joke about a plane crashing on the boarder of two states and the question is where are the survivors buried? Don't get all twisted up with muscle and fat or lead and feathers, focus, instead, on the weights. Pound and pound or ounce and ounce. 

So how about getting to what is different between muscle and fat, aside from the obvious? Okay, sure. Returning to the pound of each, now that we know they weigh the same, what you'll find is a difference in density. Muscle is far denser than fat just as lead is far denser than feathers. With muscle being denser than fat it will take up less space. But a 180 pound man with 5% body fat will weigh the same as a 180 pound man with 40% body fat. One will be lean and muscular while the other will be on the frumpy.

I think what people are misunderstanding is the difference between weight and mass. Weight is related to the pull of gravity. Mass is related to the amount of matter something has. Muscle will have more mass because it has more matter than fat. But if equal weights are measured they will be the same. 

https://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/textbook/weightvmass.html

Heart Rate Monitors

Heart rate monitors. Need them? Want them? What the hell are they? 

First let me tackle what they are. And the focus will be heart rate monitors used in fitness tracking not for medical conditions. 

Through fancy voodoo science with LEDs and electrodes, heart rate monitors can detect a person's pulse with each beat of the heart. The electrode kind senses the electrical activity given off with each heartbeat. The LED kind uses light beams and absorption to signal a heartbeat. 

So with all the wild science stuff out of the way, which device is better? Which one do you need? 

The truth is unless you have a medical condition requiring you to monitor your heart rate or you're an elite athlete, you don't need any of them. As I posted previously in a blog about heart rate zones and their relation to overall weight loss knowing your heart rate won't amount to much. 

But since they are fancy electronic gadgets you're going to want one. So which one is best? 

I've had experience with three different monitors. I had a Withings Pulse O2 and currently have a Wahoo Tickr and an Apple Watch. Now the Withings was a fitness tracker first and a pulse/ox reader second along with the magical sleep analysis thing. The Withings was great at tracking steps and sleep but wasn't amazing at tracking the pulse. I had to be still during the reading process. So it goes to the bottom of the list. 

Next up is the Apple Watch, and like the Withings used a beam of light to find the pulse. It tracks steps and activity, and with a third-party app, it'll track sleep but not as comprehensively as the Withings. But this isn't about sleep so I need to stay on task here. The Apple Watch will track pulse in real time every ten minutes or so, but the accuracy is more than suspect. I'll add the numbers later. 

My Wahoo Tickr tracks the heart rate in real time as soon as its strapped on. And uses electrodes to detect pulse. The Tickr doesn't track steps or record oxygen saturation. But it clearly tracks the pulse with more accuracy than either of the other devices. 

Here are some numbers from tracked heart rate doing the same exercise at the same time with both the Apple Watch and the Wahoo Tickr:

Maximum heart rate as recorded by the Apple Watch was 132bpm. The average heart rate of the same exercise as recorded by the Wahoo Tickr was 138bpm with a maximum of 153bpm. So as you can see the Apple Watch leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to accurate pulse recording. 

If you plan on purchasing a heart rate monitor because you want one, I suggest sticking with the type using electrodes and a chest strap, breasts or no breasts. 

Sources:

http://www.wareable.com/fitness-trackers/heart-rate-monitor-accurate-comparison-wrist

http://www.macworld.com/article/2911939/how-the-apple-watch-heart-rate-sensor-works-according-to-apple.html

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rrNCmo61UIA

Heart Rate Zones

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. These are my own opinions and observations. If you have health or medical concerns contact your health care provider.

Heart rate zones, what are they and do they matter? 

Heart rate zones are measurements in percentages of a person's maximum heart rate. They are supposed to be used as a tool for finding peak fat-burning or carbohydrate-burning rates. But do the different zones matter in overall weight loss? Can a person lose more weight by staying in the fat burning zone? 

First I need to discuss the heart rate zones, and to know these zones you'll need to know your maximum heart rate. To find your maximum heart rate take 220 and subtract your age. Or for a slightly more accurate measurement multiply your age by 0.7 and subtract that from 208. 

Now onto the zones. 

The first zone is the so-called fat-burning zone, which is 60-75% of your maximum heart rate. The claim here is your body will use more fat as energy since your body has more time to convert fat to energy. Is this true? I have no idea. 

The next zone is the cardio or aerobic zone. This is 75-85% of the maximum heart rate and is supposedly where carbohydrates are mostly used since they are easier to convert into energy. 

But does being in the fat-burn zone help you lose weight faster? The answer, as far as I can tell, is no it doesn't. Weight lose comes down to simple mathematics. Burn more calories than are taken in and weight loss occurs. So, if you take in 2,000 and you burn 2,500 through normal body function and focused exercise, you'll shed pounds. 

So onto the zones. Exercises that require a higher heart rate burn more calories in the same amount of time as exercises with a lower heart rate. If you don't believe me, check it out. There are several how-many-calories-am-I-burning calculators available on the web. Plug in simple numbers: 30 minutes of walking versus 30 minutes of running. See what you come up with. Here are some numbers from my own training: 54 minutes of walking with an average HR of 118 bpm (beats per minute) burned 474 calories; 25 minutes of step aerobics with and average HR of 138 bpm yielded 511 calories. It's easy to see that if I maintained my heart rate for 50 minutes of step aerobics, I would double that of walking in 4 fewer minutes. 

All that being said, heart rate zones matter for those who need to control their heart rate for whatever reasons relating to medical conditions. 

Now that we have that out of the way I'll talk about heart rate monitors next week. 

Sources:

http://www.m.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/the-truth-about-heart-rate-and-exercise

http://www.mensfitness.com/weight-loss/burn-fat-fast/trainer-qa-does-the-fat-burning-zone-really-exist

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/information/usda-aerobic-exercise-guidelines-ga.htm

Ranting About Swearing

It's been said that swearing is the language of the ignorant. So with that in mind, let's get on with this fucking post.

I ran across a blog post the other day. In the title of the blog was fuck*d. Haha, funny, hardeeharhar. Now at first glance, I read f*cked, and it wasn't until I looked again, I noticed the asterisk blocking out a different letter. I can easily see why someone would do this. Well, no I can't. Maybe it was a mistake? Why would anyone asterisk out the e instead of the u? Furthermore, why replace any of the letters with symbols? Ask yourself: are you going to read the word in any other way than how it normally looks? Are you going to say fuck-asterisk-d? Or sh-asterisk-t? No, I don't think you are, and neither do you.

As I saw the word, I started reminiscing to my childhood. Now, when I was fairly young church was a normal part of Sundays in an on and off way. My parents, or maybe mostly my mom, was constantly in search of a church that provided quality instruction, a dynamic pastor, and a climate she believed was beneficial to everyone in the family. One thing she didn't like was the fire and brimstone preachers who casted a lot of stones without tossing any his way first. Needless to say, the search was long and hard, and I believe she's still on the quest. Politics, too strong or overbearing preaching, or whatever, has kept the Church at bay, somewhat. There was one thing that ran around the neighborhood, and I can't be sure if it was from the other kids or their parents or my parents, but it was well-known that swearing wasn't to be tolerated. Not in the full verbal sense. As much as it wasn't okay to curse, it was perfectly acceptable to spell the word out. I have faint memories of all the friends, we were in the second or third grade at the time, running about, "Oh S. H. I. T." For the most part I was too active to get drawn into these kind of conversations where the boys would out-cuss each other with spelling tests, but I wasn't deaf.

Fast-forwarding way too many years later and I'm having a conversation with my boss. The where, when, and who I will leave out because it doesn't matter. Anyway, my boss was a prude, or presents as one at least. During this conversation a curse word is spelled out, and another one is replaced: goddangit. Okay. Good job at preventing anything harsh from spilling out. So, I decided to let my internal thoughts slip out in a verbal format and said, "Why did you replace one word for another, and spell out yet another." Understand that my next comment is being made to a hard-core religious person who believes all the English curse words can be found in the Bible somewhere all you have to do is look. What I said was, "You do realize that just because you spelled the words and replaced one with the other, you're still sinning. Because if you've already thought up the word and felt it prudent to replace it with something less graphic, it's too late. God knows what you were going to say anyway. So you might as well say it." The boss just shot me a look and wandered off. No doubt cursing under the breath. Whether my boss was trying to prove something to me by being "polite" but it came off as a ruse. And so do the blocked out letters when someone cleans up the word. Why bother?

I find it more irritating for someone to edit the words than just say what they mean to say. Are you trying to be the example by not spelling it out how it's supposed to be? Maybe it's to be above all us knuckle-dragging ignorants? Stop wasting time trying to be prudish. If you mean shit, well spell shit and not sh*t. This is especially important to writers. Write the word you mean and not the word you think the censors will like.

RICIN

If you've watched "Stand By Me" a movie based on "The Body" by Stephen King, you might remember the scene where Lardass drank a bunch of castor oil mixed with a raw egg. He then participated in a pie eating contest. After eating a load of pies, he hurled all over other contestants, which led to a chaotic scene of puking. It was his revenge for being the butt of everyone's jokes. 

Most likely the castor oil would have caused a loose situation regarding the poop chute and not vomiting unless a sensitivity or allergy was already present.

But there is something far more dangerous when it comes to castor beans, which is what castor oil is refined from. A toxin so terrifying and so lethal the amount needed to kill an adult is just 300 micrograms—about the size of a grain of salt. It is known by one of the most wicked names around. 

Ricin! 

What is it? Some double-bad shit is what it is. But I'll come back to that. 

Pinpointing when I first became interested in ricin is difficult. My guess is I first heard of it on "Forensic Files" or a show similar. But that's neither here nor there. 

Recently, though, I needed to do some research on poisons or toxins to help me complete a short story (which I still haven't done yet), and during some brainstorming, I remembered ricin. I needed something lethal and a way it can be used in an airborne transmission. So, I looked it up. 

Ricin comes from the castor bean, which is the same place castor oil comes from. So how is it one product is relatively safe to use, or be in contact with, and the other deadly? Well, it comes down to where and how it's harvested. 

Castor oil is made from the seed's oils whereas ricin comes from from the proteins, and can be produced from the waste or "mash" from the processing of the castor seed (bean). 

Ricin attacks the ribosomes in the cells and destroys the ability for the cell to process proteins, which will eventually kill the cells. Without functioning cells, organs fail, and ultimately organ failure will lead to death. 

There's no antidote for ricin. 

Since ricin poisoning possesses the same symptoms of many other illnesses, and not knowing you were poisoned reduces any chance of survival, which is minimal at best, anyway. Symptoms are different according to route of exposure. 

For inhalation: respiratory distress, fever, cough, nausea. A tightness in the chest and cyanosis of the skin, which is a bluish coloring. 

For ingestion: vomiting and diarrhea, potentially bloody, low blood pressure and dehydration. 

Ricin doesn't work as fast on the body's functions as other toxins do, such as cyanide, which can kill in minutes. Depending on the route of exposure, and the amount exposed to, death may occur between 36-72 hours. 

Ricin has no antidote. Did I mention that already? Yes, I did. 

I found ricin in in the top ten deadliest poisons known to man, and in the top five naturally occurring poisons. 

For more information:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/04/28/castor-oil-to-treat-health-conditions.aspx

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/ricin/facts.asp

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question722.htm

http://listverse.com/2013/04/03/10-poisons-and-their-horrifying-effects

http://itsmejohnsmith.hubpages.com/hub/5-Deadliest-Poisons-Known-to-Man-and-Their-Effects

Welcome

Welcome, everybody, to my new (again) blog. As my previous blogs were focused on my fiction writing, which I have tabled for the foreseeable future and not to ever be shared on a public blog again, this blog will be more focused on how I perceive the world. The topics will range from education to exercise, covering anything I might be learning or doing. But to prevent this to be an all-about-me blog, I will invite others to share some of their experiences about interactions in their lives. I don't want to waste more of your time reading a welcome post, so I'll get to my first post of substance on this new blog.