David Custis Kimball - blog
You: Why Dave; why now?
Me: Well, I've a two talented kids; the younger said, 'Stop with the lectures.' Then asked, 'Dad, can I help you set up a blog?' Moments later, Me: 'OK, that's a great idea, thinkin' they might just read it someday.
me ---> 'Gaarr of Blog' <---
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Matters of Import & Timely Expertise
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An Unmapped Ponderocity:
To say: '"He is a man of truth," is to say nothing; to say: "He is a man of of," is to state an elementary truth of logic.'
Winston Davids, 1969 - Trinity College Valedictorian - 1970; known endeavor: actuarial contributions to The Donald; since has contacted me and sadly is quite ill. Ask prayers for recovery; thanks for his brilliance and music.
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Real Estate, Design, Environment
It’s a terrible tragedy in Haiti that 300,000+ souls are lost in a disaster 512 times smaller (7.0) where in Chile a 8.8 shake seems to be about 1000 times fewer. My math tells me there is a 500,000 factor differential. Wow. But that’s what happens with materials and the ways you put it together. For example the dissociative constant for gypsum (drywall) is over one million times less than for calcium carbonate (cement)… which means drywall dissolves in water over a million times easier than a seashell or cement does. Which one should you build with?
Of course if you don’t connect them with any ‘stringy’ stuff that keeps together when the units are being pulled apart (tensile strength) … then you are just building a ‘disaster waiting to happen’.
‘Connections’, a sexy word, which we should all keep in mind as we look at anything we are going to go inside of and sleep or whatever. Many think that a ship is ‘connected’ and sexy. That’s true… it can be bounced around and no big deal. But as soon as we tie something down to the earth and rely on that earth to ‘connect’ the bottom of the structure together … we had better connect it to a single rock … or massive foundation …. or here’s an idea … forget the connection to the ground and make it really connected to itself in secure (beyond nails). Bucky Fuller domes have this going for them. When Bucky was asked ‘How did you think of the dome’. He responded, ‘Have you ever looked at an orange?’
Well, as a tribute to Bucky, the U. of Ark. Architecture School displayed this photgraph of a dome made from 20 sheets of plywood. Anchoring it for hurricanes is easily accomplished with lines or cables from nodes to steel reinforced foundational pours or anchored in rocks.
Any comments, additions … at a cost of less that $1 per sf, this would be a semi- and organically expandable solution for the poverty stricken in Haiti or anywhere. Another idea is that the wood should be treated for insect ‘untastiness’, using borate and copper. Forget the arsenic. Then sealed on the outside with perhaps modified bitumen,and/or fiberglass with epoxy after installing panels on the pentagons and triangles.
Chile’s quake 500 times more powerful than Haiti’s - latimes.com
