A depression that something may solve.

Yeah, the shaving cream got hot without water, so I assume the stearic acid is triggered to produce heat from reaction with air. Stearic acid as the heating agent is verified.

Now, a hard alkali like sodium hydroxide will produce high heat in water, but I ain't putting that stuff on my face!
 
Yeah, the shaving cream got hot without water, so I assume the stearic acid is triggered to produce heat from reaction with air. Stearic acid as the heating agent is verified.

Now, a hard alkali like sodium hydroxide will produce high heat in water, but I ain't putting that stuff on my face!

Other thing carboxylic acids do is form dimers (2 molecules linked to each other), but the longer chain ones like stearic acid don't like to stay attached like that, maybe they found a way to keep stearic acid as a dimer under pressure and when released they go back to monomers releasing heat as the bonds break? They are weak hydrogen bonds so no worries about too much heat being produced when they break.

Yea, when making high concentration NaOH solutions you have to do it in an ice bath, or the water will boil, that's called heat of solution.

Hmmm, wonder if it was a special can that held the stearic acid and foam separate, them mixed them at the tip? Then you could have heat of solution working for the warming... Could probably look up if they had a patent on the can as well as the stuff in it.
 
Not sure if the can had dual compartments.
 
as i'm sitting here with an annoying headache and little impetus to get anything done except assemble beach boys tunes for the upcoming trip to chautauqua institute and my brother's wedding, i'm thinking maybe i can finish off some of my thoughts in this thread. it's been a depressing, unhealthful couple weeks, but i feel like i'm coming out of it now. for one thing, it looks like the agent that was giving me these paranoically-tinged headaches is nothing less than fish oil capsules.

the first time i took these was last fall at the advice of my step-aunt, a doctor and accupuncturist. she had recommended them as an anti-depressive, and having worked myself through many, pharmaceutical and supplemental in nature, i figured i'd give fish oil a try. what i wound up having was a somewhat enlightening, but mostly awful experience while i was transitioning from the fish oil to a new med my regular doctor had prescribed. the head pain got so bad at the time that i thought i was not going to live long, and left a message to that effect online (which i'm sure managed to enlighten no one, heh). even after that i didn't realise in the least that fish oil was the problem, but i do have a much stronger hunch now. i had been trying it again recently for my high genetic cholesterol, but we're quits now since the headaches returned and the connection was revealed.

the other thing that was getting me down lately was this 'grappling with civilisation' crisis, which i'm glad happened but don't want to go through again for awhile! but it was good, you know; it resolved certain questions in my mind and allowed me to construct a more accurate view of reality that can serve me the rest of my life. i know where we're going and i know how we got here and in the end these conclusions reinforce what i already intellectually realised some time back: that life is short and precious, and should be enjoyed to the extent that one can before one's turn is up. which of course puts us in the same boat with every other life form on the planet and quite possibly, everywhere.

anyway, what was it that was left to say?

i had believed for years that man was the 'bad guy', off-track in his pursuits and incredibly cavalier towards animals and nature for quite some time now. then lately i begrudged the fact that the problem is inherant in all life. this knocked my deep reverance for all forms of life down a bit (although the reverance is starting to resurface in different ways). and now i'm back to thinking of man as the bad guy, just not as bad as before.

why? because the difference between us and the other lifeforms on earth is that we have more free intelligence than any of them to throw back at the 'civilisation and extinction' problem and prevent it from getting out of control. notwithstanding the fact that we (mostly) are the ones responsible for the current / impending crash, it was man's responsibility more than anything / anyone else's to prevent it. which is not to say that some of us didn't try and aren't trying- it's just that the forces of selfishness inherant in life were always a bit stronger. it's one of those struggles which seems to be always unequal, which is to say a losing struggle for control and a winning one for entropy.

so what does one do with one's life knowing that one's family line is likely going to go extinct, that barring a series of miracles civilisation will certainly go extinct, that very likely nothing we do or accomplish is going to have relevance to mankind or the future world? that almost everything we think of as permanent is going to crumble, and very little, if anything, of human history or these times, is going to be preserved or remembered? there's all the depressing stuff.

the corresponding positive thoughts seem paltry and nearly worthless by comparison. at least at first. what's going to carry on? life, almost certainly. the planet, absolutely. the potential or achievement of high intelligence by animals? probably, although the timeframes may be knocked back. human life? maybe, possibly, probably... we just don't know. if you look at the 'major planetary disasters', i think most of them model man as surviving. if you look at global climate change, the one we have some of the most detailed and extensive data and modelling for, the potential for human extinction is quite likely in the worst case scenerios. but still, nobody is going to know ahead of time nor their descendants understand very well what actually happened if man does survive.

so... what to do, taking all the above as the working conclusions? i guess that's the last entry to write, or maybe just to carry into action the rest of my life. there is a kind of strange beauty that occurs to me in this whole arrangement, if i can only put my finger on it. anyway, thanks to myself for working out this difficult period in words and by reflection, and thanks for anyone reading / listening!

recently i started adding some text to sketches of mine that i'd uploaded. if there's a carrot at the end of this thread, maybe that's it. :D
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38097009@N05/sets/72157619422490947/
 
At the very least, I can solve all your problems:
Start with "Let Him Run Wild"
then "Wendy"
"Girl Don't Tell Me"
"You're So Good To Me"
"Shut Down" (just to have one car song in there)
"Don't Worry Baby" (technically, another car song, but a slow one)
All of Pet Sounds
"Feel Flows" for a cool, spacey kinda thing
"Heroes and Villians" but make sure it's the superior version from Brian Wilson's Smile album.
Wrap it up with "All Summer Long"... if it's good enough to wrap up American Graffiti, it's good enough to wrap up your disc
 
i had believed for years that man was the 'bad guy', off-track in his pursuits and incredibly cavalier towards animals and nature for quite some time now. then lately i begrudged the fact that the problem is inherant in all life. this knocked my deep reverance for all forms of life down a bit (although the reverance is starting to resurface in different ways). and now i'm back to thinking of man as the bad guy, just not as bad as before.

why? because the difference between us and the other lifeforms on earth is that we have more free intelligence than any of them to throw back at the 'civilisation and extinction' problem and prevent it from getting out of control. notwithstanding the fact that we (mostly) are the ones responsible for the current / impending crash, it was man's responsibility more than anything / anyone else's to prevent it. which is not to say that some of us didn't try and aren't trying- it's just that the forces of selfishness inherant in life were always a bit stronger. it's one of those struggles which seems to be always unequal, which is to say a losing struggle for control and a winning one for entropy.

Exactly. That's a great way of putting it.

I'm not sure if it's selfishness, most people are capable of being very unselfish. Sure a few people with power and or money acting selfishly can do some damage, but for the human race as a whole it's different.

Since you brought up entropy, that's probably the best answer, the vast majority of people only learn what they need to learn to survive, minimal energy expended... So even though the potential is there for everyone to be more enlightened and understanding of the global problems, it would be somewhat against the natural way things work for the vast majority of the population to put in the effort.

The irony is that it is the vast majority that are just getting by on minimal education that support our civilization, making it possible for a smaller percentage of people to invent necessary stuff that keeps civilization going as it grows. Is that a "catch 22" or "chicken or egg" thing? Not sure...

So for an abstract thing to blame, it's civilization itself. :p

As a great philosopher once said: "don't worry, be happy". Easier said then done a lot of the time but certainly worth trying.
 
Sounds like you're taking too much fish oil Nic.
If you're taking fish oil containing Vitamin A or Vitamin D, then it's vitaminosis which is a fancy word for vitamin poisoning. Fat soluble vitamins like A and D are toxic in large doses.
If you're taking Omega 3 to cut cholesterol which has been stripped of A and D, then you might be overdoing it. Too little cholesterol will give you headaches and is also not recommended.

You like Beach Boys? I like Wouldn't it be Nice, California Girls, Good Vibrations, Vegetables, Surf's Up and Sail On Sailor, and I *might throw in Jobim-Aqua De Marco or Astrud Gilberto Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars:

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And I Might slip in Vince Guaraldi/Cast Your Fate to the Wind, or does everything have to match a theme?
 
thanks, guys. more comments later.

409
Add Some Music
All Dressed up for School
All Summer Long
Ballad of Ole' Betsy
Barbara Ann
Be True To Your School
Cabinessence
California Girls
Car Crazy Cutie
Carl's Big Chance
Caroline No
Catch A Wave
Come Go with Me
Cotton Fields
Cuckoo Clock
Dance, Dance, Dance
Darlin'
Diamond Head
Do It Again
Do You Wanna Dance
Don't Back Down
Dont Talk
Don't Worry Baby
Drive-In
Finders Keepers
Friends
Fun, Fun, Fun
Getcha Back
Girl Don't Tell Me
Girls on the Beach
God Only Knows
Good Timin'
Good Vibrations
Help Me, Rhonda
Here Today
Heroes and Villains
Honky Tonk
Hushabye
I Can Hear Music
I Get Around
In My Room
Kokomo
Let Him Run Wild
Let's Go Trippin'
Little Deuce Coupe
Little Honda
Little Saint Nick
Misirlou
Noble Surfer
Passing By
Rock & Roll Music
Sail On Sailor
Shut Down
Sloop John B
Surfer Girl
Surfin' Safari
Surfin' U.S.A
Surfin'
Surf's Up
The Girls On The Beach
The Warmth Of The Sun
Till I Die
We'll Run Away
Wendy
When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)
Whistle In
Wild Honey
Wonderful
Wouldn't It Be Nice
You're So Good To Me

i didn't realise that they had so many good songs until i went looking recently. for all i know, there's still a lot more!


EDIT: nice call, arne. i like bossa nova a lot, and waters of march is one of my very favorite songs of all time. :)
 
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I still can't make out the theme, or is it that your brother loves The Beach Boys?
If it's for partying, along with the boys there was also Jan and Dean with Ride the Wild Surf, Surf City, Little Old Lady From Pasadena, and Dead Man's Curve, and if it's about old school partying, you might want a copy of Louie, Louie by The Kingsmen, but for a wedding I would go with Just the Way You Are/Billy Joel.
 
the theme is simply good beach boys tunes for this summer trip. no idea what he's playing at the wedding / reception, although i plan on dancing like a fool unless my CFS prevents me from doing so. i like those J&D hits, so those might make some worthy additions.
 
Great list of BB songs. Few on there I'm not sure I've heard, but probably have and just don't know the correct name.

Got one original vinyl album of theirs around somewhere, and it is the one with the car theme and has 409 and little deuce coupe on it.

Edit: looked it up it's their 4th album, pretty much all great songs:

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width=900 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width="100%" colSpan=5>4) LITTLE DEUCE COUPE

</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width="3.5%">1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
</TD><TD vAlign=top width="40%">Little Deuce Coupe
Ballad Of Ole' Betsy
Be True To Your School
Car Crazy Cutie
Cherry, Cherry Coupe
409
Shut Down
Spirit Of America
Our Car Club
No-Go Showboat
A Young Man Is Gone
Custom Machine
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
 
My brother had a copy of that album and I never realized how much of a concept album it was until I saw your list and remembered a few things. I'm noticing the flow of the titles from great expectations (Little Deuce Coupe) and sentiment (Ole' Betsy) through duty to your school, then the night and the cutie, the following day and 409/Shut Down/Spirit of America, then the car club grouping, but then the dropping out with No Go. And then we hit "A Young Man is Gone" which is a song about James Dean who died in a car accident.
 
@bill,
"feel flows" was interesting- listened to it on youtube because i hadn't heard it before. quite likely all of the songs i listed above are available on youtube, so you can tell me what you think of some of my more obscure picks. here's one that i think is meditative / pretty / somewhat haunting, "till i die":
Code:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcUeSDMll5s

it's one of those tunes i can set to autoplay and kind of zone out on...


@marty,
thanks, and by "selfish" i meant in the ways that i had described the very character of life as being selfish, ie in the core programming.

interesting catch-22 / chicken and egg thing you bring up. the populace is the pond, perhaps, and when the inventors / innovators throw a pebble in, the ripples begin transforming the populace and eventually reach to every corner.


@arne,
yea, from what i've read, "little deuce coupe" was rock's original concept album. every single song about a car, with the possible overtones of meaning that you mention.

it's also been fun reading and re-reading the fascinating history behind the beach boys- their origins with their semi-tyrant father, their rivalry with the beatles, their incredible song output over the years, mike love's simmering and historic resentment at brian wilson's influence and acclaim, the power struggle involving brian wanting to make concept music while mike wanted to make 'hit' music, brian's legendary nervous breakdown trying to make the album which would top "sgt. pepper", his descent into drugs and isolation, his revivals, the helpful / harmful shrink who gained power over him, dennis wilson marrying mike's illegitimate daughter, the tragic deaths of brian's brothers, his daughters forming their own successful band with the daughter of the mamas and papas' singer, mike's eventual gaining control of the official band, brian finally releasing "smile", mike's brother being an NBA player and last season his nephew becoming one of the top NBA draft picks.

re: fish oil,
it's straight, without supplements- EPA, DHA and omega-3 fatty acids. on the vitamin overdose, that's more something i have to watch with hitting up the carrot juice pretty good this summer. on a side note, my aunt said that EPA and DHA are major chemical constituents of... the cerebellum, i believe it was. haven't checked it out, but i think i'll be dropping the fish oil entirely given how common it is for people to have headaches when dosing it.


@all,
i've been reading a bit about the life of siddartha (buddha) lately, and he seems to say some good things with regard to the thread topic. for example, that suffering is inherant to existence and that all things are impermanent. i don't really understand his other principles, but there's a start. i'm going to keep reading.
 
I got fucking ripped off! My version of Little Deuce Coupe was issued by Pickwick, a bargain-basement reissue label owned by Musicland/Sam Goody, and it had about half the songs on it that Arne's version has! I bought that about the time I was 12, about the same time I bought Surf's Up, which I couldn't quite get my head around. Not a single song about surfing! What a rip-off to a 12-year-old. I never heard "Feel Flows" until it was on the Almost Famous soundtrack, and really missed out on that great "Til I Die" track. I need to find that album again!
Speaking of Mike Love (as much as I hate to), I felt a certain amount of satisfaction when Brian rewrote the lyrics to "Good Vibrations" on Smile so Mike wouldn't get any money out of it.

I gotta admit, Nic, your list pretty much covers the gamut. One that I would include is one of my all-time favorites from Pet Sounds:

YouTube - The Beach Boys - I'm Waiting For The Day

Love the drums and the production.

Pet Sounds is better than Sgt. Pepper's. Discuss.
 
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A lot of The Beach Boys' mythos is fiction and the rest is substitution by rejuxtaposition of the facts involving people and things that were true at the time I'm sure, though I cannot explain it.

With respect to Sgt. Pepper, I was thinking Pet Sounds was inspired by The Beatles' Revolver, but it turns out it was inspired by Rubber Soul instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_sounds
 
i think pet sounds loses points next to sgt peppers because more of its strength was tied up in innovation, the thrust of which is going to quickly erode in a technology-driven culture. sgt peppers wasn't as innovative, but the songs were crafted and polished to perfection, remaining relatively timeless. IMO it was an unequal struggle too- basically three geniuses against one (lennon, mccartney, martin versus wilson). for a more fair comparison, i don't think any of those three guys individually ever put out a music project which could match pet sounds or the best brian-led projects, such as little deuce coupe.

from what i remember, the beatles heard pet sounds and were utterly blown away. they responded with sgt peppers, which brian was utterly blown away by. brian started to respond with smile, but that's where 'one against three' had a hand in wrecking him. simply an unbalanced fight.

EDIT: gotta hand it to mike in at least one way- "mike love, not war" is one of the best album titles i've ever heard. :)

EDIT2: sgt peppers might not have been as innovative as pet sounds, but i've never known a band with the chameleon-like quality of the beatles. not only was the talent unbelievable, but they could seemingly pick any genre or type of song and absolutely nail it on the head... before moving on to the very next song and mastering a completely different genre. i'm not sure most people realise how uncanny this talent was.
 
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There's also Chicago's "Wishing You Were Here" sung with The Beach Boys.

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I'd throw in Bananarama's "Cruel Summer"
 
side note: can't believe i forgot dennis being buddies and musical collaborator before falling out with another musician, name of charles manson.
 
Oh yeah, I know that one.

When I was working at Warner Bros./Reprise Records/Creative Services in 1976-77, the location was on Vanowen St., North Hollywood, next door to WEA Creative Services. WEA = Warner, Elektra, and Atlantic Records = WEA.

At least once or twice a week this guy dressed in casual sports attire not suitable for work except perhaps as an exec who was not coincidentaly a dead ringer for Carl Wilson would come over from the WEA side and talk to the senior shipper at my work table about "the upcoming Jimi Hendrix revival" and this was a running joke because Hendrix had passed away in '71 EDIT: 1970. At that time Warner Bros. on the side of the store where I worked was the distributor for Brother Records which was The Beach Boys' own label.
The Beach Boys had nothing to do with WEA at all. We had Beach Boys frisbees to mail out to the stores and I might have one tucked away in the ol' toy box. Hendrix was on Reprise Records.
 
i think pet sounds loses points next to sgt peppers because more of its strength was tied up in innovation, the thrust of which is going to quickly erode in a technology-driven culture. sgt peppers wasn't as innovative, but the songs were crafted and polished to perfection, remaining relatively timeless. IMO it was an unequal struggle too- basically three geniuses against one (lennon, mccartney, martin versus wilson). for a more fair comparison, i don't think any of those three guys individually ever put out a music project which could match pet sounds or the best brian-led projects, such as little deuce coupe.

from what i remember, the beatles heard pet sounds and were utterly blown away. they responded with sgt peppers, which brian was utterly blown away by. brian started to respond with smile, but that's where 'one against three' had a hand in wrecking him. simply an unbalanced fight.

EDIT: gotta hand it to mike in at least one way- "mike love, not war" is one of the best album titles i've ever heard. :)

EDIT2: sgt peppers might not have been as innovative as pet sounds, but i've never known a band with the chameleon-like quality of the beatles. not only was the talent unbelievable, but they could seemingly pick any genre or type of song and absolutely nail it on the head... before moving on to the very next song and mastering a completely different genre. i'm not sure most people realise how uncanny this talent was.

Oddly enough, I've always felt just the opposite; When I listen to Pet Sounds today, its sound has a real timeless quality. It could easily have been recorded in the '70s or the '80s. Sgt. Pepper's always sounds firmly rooted in the '60s, from the by-today's-standards inept stereo production (vocals and guitars on one channel, bass and drums on the other) to songs that sound too '60s. The price of too much experimentation like calliope music and sitars is music that just doesn't age too well. Then again, that's coming from a guy who's firmly on the "Stones" side of the "Beatles vs. Stones" debate. :joy:

I think sleepy may have gotten the timeline nailed earlier: Brian heard Rubber Soul and recorded Pet Sounds; McCartney heard Pet Sounds and started cooking up Pepper's.

One thing that the Beach Boys and Beatles have in common is that people are still copying them 40 years later! Check out this cut from some stone Beach Boys fans! Could easily be a '60s outtake!
 

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hah! i don't think we'll find much agreement then if you're on the other side of the stones - beatles debate.

yea, that fan-made song sure nailed the BB aesthetic. not much else to comment on, but they sure got that part down.
 
Speaking of the Stones, they were what came to my mind when you talked about the "chameleon like quality" that the Beatles had. And Zeppelin to a lesser extent, they occasionally did some stuff far from their core sound.

For bands I could listen to just their songs for days, it would be those 3. Maybe The Who but I'd probably get tired of them after 1 day. When I was living in CT there was a station in NYC changing formats and played nothing but Beatles for I think 2 weeks, never got tired of it.
 
Oh, I agree when the use of sitar is more underrated that it can benefit a song like Norwegian Wood, or Brian Jones' sitar action on "Paint It, Black." I was speaking specifically about Sgt. Pepper's and, in that album's case of sitar overdose, "Within You, Without You"; from the lyrics to the music, there's no doubt in the listener's mind that it's obviously a song from the '60s, whereas "Norwegian Wood" has a more timeless quality that doesn't make it a prisoner of the decade it originated in.
 
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