’ll tell you a funny story,” said Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University. It was the day before the first home football game of the season and he was sitting in his corner office, overlooking the postcard-perfect quad.
“So the cost of a year of undergraduate college at Purdue University, tuition and fees, is $9,992. I’m proud of that number.
This article appears in the April 2020 issue.
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“One day I’m looking at one of those college guides, and it said, ‘Tuition and fees: $10,002.’ I called up our people and said, ‘Lookit here, there’s a mistake. You got the wrong number.’ They said, ‘That’s not a mistake.’ I said, ‘Yes, it is. Believe me. I know.’ They went back and checked and they said, ‘No, that’s the right figure.’
Most critical services, and financial markets, have backups—their own atomic clocks, perhaps, or connections to slightly less precise tools. But some of those backups depend on GPS timing, and might last only a few minutes. “GPS is the single point of failure for the entire modern economy,” says Representative John Garamendi, a California Democrat who’s been warning about the hazards for years as a member of the House committees on armed services and on transportation and infrastructure. “No cellphone, no ATM machine will work.”
It was brought to my attention that PDF maps were not properly displaying on the blog. They should be working now, you may have to click refresh on your browser. It was a silly little issue with my updated .htaccess RewriteRule that I didn’t catch until now.
Good morning! Happy Thursday. Mostly cloudy and 34 degrees at the Elm Ave Park & Ride – CDTA. ☁ Calm wind. Without a breeze doesn’t feel really cold. I haven’t bothered to turn my heat back on again. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Saturday around 11 pm. ☃️
Today will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a high of 50 degrees at 5pm. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 28th. Light and variable wind becoming south 5 to 10 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had light snow in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 38 degrees. The record high of 69 was set in 2012. 30.4 inches of snow fell back in 1888.❄
Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:06 pm with sun having an altitude of 44.3° from the due south horizon (-26.5° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 6.1 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. That said, the your not going to see much of a shadow today. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:22 pm with the sun in the west (260°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (267°) starting at 6:56 pm and lasts for 2 minutes and 55 seconds with dusk around 7:26 pm, which is one minute and 11 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:00 pm. At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 48 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 10 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 47 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 54 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will have showers likely, mainly after 2am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 40 degrees at 6am. 16 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 22nd. Southeast wind 9 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 21 degrees. The record low of -6 occurred back in 1885.
Today in 1933, was the first of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats. 📻 Now we just have the president’s tweet storms at five am to run the news 📰 narrative of the day. Although nobody seems to care about the presidents thoughts 💭 while he’s on the toilet 🚽 today, it’s all about Coronavirus. 👾
A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 47. West wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Sunday, sunny, with a high near 43. Typical average high for the weekend is 43 degrees. That wind might make it a bit chilly especially after the fun goes down. We’ll see but there is still a lot of spring time left
🌹🌻🌼One week remains until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼
One month 📅 from now will be Easter 🐰 when the sun will be setting at 7:34 pm with dusk at 8:03 pm.
I grew up on six acres although my parents always said it was around eight but the tax rolls say six. That said, I don’t think the tax rolls count buildings and what immediately abuts them, if I really wanted to know I could look up the deed online. Regardless, when I eventually own land, I think I would want to own more than five acres. While you can do a lot of homesteading on five acres, especially if you are able to buy hay and feed, it does really limit your buffer between yourself and your neighbors.
Buffer space is a good thing. States often require and strongly recommend new landfill operations have a buffer around themselves to avoid odors, views of the mounds, truck, bulldozer, compacter, and even toxic chemicals leaching out from them from causing a nuisance.
Buffer space around a homestead is good too. For one it offers privacy. It keeps noisy neighbors from looking in, hearing your music, the shouts and beer your drinking, the noise from shooting your guns, smelling your livestock, your wood smoke or trash burning barrel.
It also keeps you from having property next door from being developed or used in ways that might prove to be a nuisance – a farm field can become a McMansion where the owners always complain about every little thing to authorities. He shoots guns in his backyard! He has cows and pigs that smell like farm animals! He burns trash and heats with wood! And even if a bordering farm field remains working land, growing crops you might want a buffer from the agriculture chemicals, the cow and hog slurry or potentially more pungent – bio-solids made from sewage treatment plant sludge. Stinky yes, but good for the crops but maybe not so good to have right next to your porch. And the neighbor’s cows, pigs and donkeys can be remarkably loud when they want to be fed or milked too.