January 11, 2008

COLD MUSINGS AND THE FED

It is cold in our concrete house. Whereas northern wooden houses have between their stud a fibrous mass of mineral hair, each one holding tight a few CC's of dry insulating air and thus retarding conduction of heat towards the outside, our cinder blocks with their tight little atoms just telegraph any heat to the outside at one-tenth the speed of light. Molecular agitation of air molecules, also called 'heat' , is soon sucked into a nearby wall to warm Mexico skies... while we freeze are little butts.
Of course we have an attractive cast iron stove, large enough for a lumbermen camp. Alas, iron is the sole remaining element when collapsing stars have successfully fused hydrogen into helium, followed by chlorine, phosphorus, oxygen etc...each emitting its own spectral ID until iron, too inert to glow anymore forms a dead star, still capable of transmutatuing into rare earths and their isotopes but useless as a reliable source of heat. Iron is a sad element, omnipresent in the universe and totally useless in our house. That cast iron stove stuffed with 5 logs of pure oak, a tight and highly caloric wood paid for with muchos dineros, will emit less energy than the incandescent bulb over our piano. Than faint heat is then propelled all over the house by a five-blade ceiling fan, diffusing that meager resource while making sure it disappears pronto into the vast expanse of uninsulated ceiling.
Thanks Christmas our new flannel sheets that create a thin layer of insulating air between our bodies and the cold night. We also manage to sleep with the help of Amelie's hot furry young body providing scalp protection , while Sesame's aging mass keeps our legs a little warmer too.
It would seem that the oak logs we use, tightly wound as they are, burn so slowly that the combustion products just ride the chimney to heat Mexico, no matter if I turn the damper down to 5 degrees. Unfair.
When you think that the few grams of the metal present in one peso, if allowed to fuse (change energy level to the corresponding higher atomic number metal in the Mendeleev table ) would generate enough heat to melt all the sand in Baja to pure glass, a boon for ecotourism. But we would need to compress that peso with a force of 142,000,000,000 tons (;-) I made that up. It's probably a lower number) , this to initiate a thermonuclear fusion reaction in silver, something we cannot do today for practical reasons.
But then I thought of the shrinking US dollar and it's effect on the Mexican peso. Shit the whole thing might implode soon and we might have heat at last! Heat at last! Thanks Bernanke!

5 comments:

Camille said...

Jacques: This is absolutely delightful. Sorry you're freezing your ass off but the writing is humorous and so well done. Keep it coming.

Anonymous said...

cold......? in Mexico?.......what gives? And, why you, oh architectural one, have not found a way to sort of put a layer of something or other between concrete walls, or at least line the outside walls with some sort of insulation (styrofoam - painted or designed by Nikki, of course). And.....what about wiring the floors so as to have radiant heat?

I am at a loss to understand your dilema!

Damps and rainy here - but then, us Canuks, are used to dat!

Jacques POIRIER said...

Jackee, I think we are slowly turning into cry-babies. It was 47F last night. Feels like -30F in Canada. As for the house, we bought it already built and before we knew there was a thing called winter here. The days are as high as 75F but the nitght...the nights...glacial under a million stars.
Let me just tell you this. Canadians INDOORS are a lot more confy than Mexicans INDOOR. We learned to create tight insultaed house. They learned shit!, making tortillas maybe!
;-)
J.
Be happy. Canada aint so bad at all!

Anonymous said...

hey Jim, isn't that cool? In the universe it started with H then He after fussion and so on throughout. I wonder what new elements are forming. Well with fuel oil at $3.50 a gallon we too are using wood 24/7 week after week. And our dollar with the backbone of a jelly fish we can not afford to do otherwise. It still sounds mighty cozy down there. Take care. Wish we were there again. Dale

Anonymous said...

Mettez dont un gilet toute la gang.
Nous on en a des gilets et on en en a en masse.
What is a 'gilet' ?
It is a piece of clothing that the child must wear when the mother is cold.