The Laughter of Wolves

 "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life:  'The Lord of the Rings', and 'Atlas Shrugged'.  One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.  The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

I recently re-read an awesome article, which was prompted in part by the previous post.  That post had an image of a household humidifier in the shape of the stricken Chernobyl reactor #4.  

That in turn brought to mind the article that I'd read when it was first published about how nature (among other things) manages to adapt - I'd like to share it here - and also keep the tech bros in Silicon Valley and their AI schemes in mind as you read the article:

https://www.ecosophia.net/the-laughter-of-wolves/ 

I found time recently to make my way out to the shop and complete the work on the air compressor.  The old air pressure gauge was not reading correctly, so there was no way to know the actual pressure inside the air reservoir.

Below:  The old gauge, showing 12-13 psi with the tank at zero pressure.

I figured this would be a pretty quick process, swapping out the gauge and fixing the leak on the overpressure safety valve threads, but it took much longer than I assumed.  It turned out that adjusting the pressure switch on/off setpoints took a while.  Each time I bled off the pressure to start the compressor, it took several minutes for the pressure to build up - adjusting the switch each time so as not to overpressurize the tank.

 Below:  New gauge, glycerin-filled to keep the vibrations from ruining the movement.

Below: The overpressure safety valve, with teflon tape, rather than pipe joint compound, on the threads.

 Below:  Allowing the pressure to come up in the reservoir.  It's pretty noisy, so it's best to wait outside.

Once the tank came up to pressure, I removed the earplugs and listened carefully for leakage.  There was only one remaining hiss, and that was coming from an air coupling that goes to the blast cabinet.  I fiddled with it and it was leaking out the end of the connector, so it's a little corroded or defective.  I'll have to replace that.