Comments | steuard: Small towns aren't bad in the cold

steuard

Small towns aren't bad in the cold

Jan 22, 2013 16:17

It is cold in Alma today. When I walked in this morning, the temperature was right around 0 degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind chill was something like -8F (though the wind chill forecast had been for -17F; maybe we lucked out ( Read more... )

stories

Comments 5

beth_leonard January 23 2013, 06:33:02 UTC

When I was little and people sometimes still hitch-hiked my mom told me never to pick up hitch-hikers and never to hitch-hike. I got it in my head that doing either of these things was a bad-guy type of thing to do. And then one day my mom picked up two young girls hitch-hiking. She explained to me that she did it because she didn't want the girls to get hurt, and this added some nuance to my world view ( ... )

nemene January 23 2013, 16:24:08 UTC

There is a world of difference between good, and safe - and it is murky grey which one is 'right' in each situation.

akiko January 24 2013, 21:06:55 UTC

I really only ever took away that it was unsafe for me to hitchhike or pick up hitchers from all the instruction not to do it, not that it was Wrong or Evil or Bad. Just that since I'm a girl, I was probably going to get raped and/or murdered if I did.

robbbbbb January 23 2013, 20:41:44 UTC

We use metal frame (usually aluminum) windows because aluminum forming was cheap and easily understood at the time that sort of framing was done. This has been replaced by a whole industry (the vinyl window industry) which has figured out how to make vinyl cost-competitive with aluminum, and thus brought energy-efficiency into everyone's home. Joseph Schumpeter says, "Hi!"

While I was unemployed I interviewed at a couple of places in the industry, and I got a chance to (a) do a little research and (b) see it up close and personal. It's a big and important industry.

akjdg February 4 2013, 06:13:13 UTC

Some (certainly not all, alas) aluminum window frames are designed with a thermal break to retard conduction through the frame. Try jogging at -15F sometime. You stop worrying about cold flesh, and start contemplating novel ways to channel air in and out through your nose/mouth to keep your nose from freezing and your lungs from freezing. The tongue has lots of blood flow. It's quite useful in this regard.