Musings

Clearing out some old ironmongery from the garage yesterday, I fell to musing about all the waste involved in recycling such stuff. Musings which continued on my morning ramble around the Ewell Village anti-clockwise.

Yesterday it was mainly fittings: old hinges of various shapes and sizes for wooden doors, newer hinges for chipboard doors. Old rim locks. Bits of old pipe. An old letter box. Which last prompted the thought that, while I knew that a letter box was something fixed to the front of one's front door rather than the receptacle for letters sometimes hung behind the slot for letters cut in that front door, did everybody else? I tried asking Bing and it was clear that B&Q knew what I meant, although its proper name for what I was talking about was actually letter plate rather than letter box. Although that does not quite cover my case where the letter box is a letter plate combined with a door knocker. A plate with rather a strong spring.

From where I associate to the lady delivering leaflets recently, who carried a shoe horn to shove her leaflets under well sprung letter plates, further protected with draft reducing plastic brushes, like ours. Having had some experience of delivering leaflets myself, we were able to chat about how awkward some letter boxes were.

Back with the ironmongery, the next thought was that my weighty box of second hand wood screws - it probably weighs in at well over 50lbs - might one day be a candidate for clearing out - despite its presence meaning that I only rarely need to actually buy screws. Something like a wood screw version of those snapped above.

In which connection, I might add that when I asked Bing for an image of old screws, he thought I might be after pornography and added some rather distasteful images to the bottom of the search results. Along with the snap above. No idea how I might stop it doing such things.

Google managed without the porno, offering the snap above. For a proper copy of which I have to pay, or at least enter a free trial, which often involves supply of credit card number. Thanks, but no thanks.

Thoughts having turned to wood screws, I then thought about the waste involved in recycling them. All that engineering rendered down to raw metal in the furnace. Or perhaps some kind of molten slag, mainly but not all ferrous and including all kind of stuff left over after burning off a lot of the rubbish. How does one separate it all out? Do the metals segregate into layers? Does the ash sink to the bottom or rise to the top?

Which all seems expensive, but then pre-sorting all the stuff thrown into the metal waste skip would be expensive too.

From where I associate to the IBM golf-ball typewriter I once saw going cheap at a car boot sale. Wonderful bit of machinery in its day, well made in the way that my Microsoft telephone was well made. But by the time it appeared in the car boot sale, little more than a lump of scrap metal. And thinking back to the ships of reference 1, in much the same state as our navy after the end of the second war had made most of its ships surplus to requirements.

Which brought me on to the question of life in general, expressed by some as one long losing battle against the second law of thermodynamics. The complicated business of life will be gradually worn down. One can only hold on for so long. Something which the author of Ecclesiastes knew all about: whatever you might build in your lifetime, in the end the sands of the desert will sweep over it and nothing will be left.

With part of the complication being the information held in the genetic code. Information which can survive death for a long time, but probably not the vats of boiling oil reserved for the wicked. Although the family records held by Jehovah's Witnesses, engraved on sheets of silica, probably would. I believe they do do tests from time to time.

Where to count as stored information, the store has to be agnostic about what is stored: it must be able to store any letter of its alphabet at any storage location. It is not allowed to be fussy. Anything but very basic life needs to be able to do this, to be able to carry something like a blueprint of itself within itself. A blueprint which gets updated from time to time. All very tricky.

Clearly time for lunch. Which being Thursday, is probably turkey mincemeat loaf. Hopefully leg rather than breast, which last I find a little dry.

PS: on a more down-to-earth note, I offer a snap of the honesty (Lunaria annua) at the top of the garden, now in full flower, snapped at reference 3 back in February, thirty trolleys ago. What is left of the yellow archangel is visible left. Nearly over now. While the Carex pendula is in full flower right.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/battleship-bismarck.html.

Reference 2: Ecclesiastes - Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) - circa 300BC.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/trolley-639.html.