Hail Guns?
Several of my friends are orchardists, and two of them lost their crop last year due to a hailstorm.
The hot topic at present is “hail guns.” Do they work? How do they work?
There seems to be a dearth of real information on the topic. The manufacturers make extravagant claims but it comes to mind that not too long ago mankind was firing arrows and cannons at the clouds just as confidently.
Does anyone out there have the answers?
Phil Spencer, Westbank, Motueka
OOS and 6000
(1) It hurts me to write this, but as a sufferer from RSI (now called “Occupational Overuse Syndrome” or OOS) I was annoyed by Dr John Welch’s description of it (Skeptic 27) as “essentially a conversion disorder” and a “delusion.” I can assure him the pain is no delusion. In my case it arose after I began transcribing long interviews (fast, repetitive typing, unlike creative work), and that is precisely what you would expect from an analysis provided by the ACC in terms of the metabolism of oxygen by the muscles.
I am grateful for the publications on ergonomics, which have helped me; pity about the forests, but there are plenty of worse ways they are used (such as those that clog my letterbox every day).
Stress and boredom may well be factors, but in my case, disabling pain is likely to have an effect exactly the reverse of “helping [me] sort out [my] … financial problems.”
(2) All power to Phil Spencer and the celebration of the Hexamillennium, but has he taken into account the lack of a year zero (which is going to drive the world crazy at midnight on December 31, 1999, just one year too soon)? The change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar? And the day that was lost when the sun stood still during the Battle of Jericho?
Congratulation to whoever typed out all those little slips saying “4004 BC”: I hope it didn’t give you RSI (OOS)
Hugh Young, Pukerua Bay
It was Bernard Howard who typed 300 little “4004 BC” slips and pasted them in every issue. We wish him well with the ACC. — Editor
