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5:02 PM
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Q: Scale for the amount of effort

Eyal RozenbergI'd like to tell someone "please rate the amount of effort necessary to complete this task. Use the scale: __" What I had in mind is "extensive, considerable, moderate, light". My questions are: Are these all valid in this context? Are these in the right order? (That is, every one signifying...

 
Beams of light are visible, yes. The photoshopping is afwul, yes.
 
I think only what the light hits is visible, but certainly I have seen the wild green laser beams bouncing around.
Is that question an acceptable one for ELU? He’s asking list-ordering questions. I don’t think those can have a single right, or even best, answer.
 
5:31 PM
@RegDwighт Only if directed at your eye.
@tchrist Of course, but they reflect on smoke or other particles.
And even then it is only visible in the dark.
In broad daylight, under a clear sky, you would see nothing at all.
 
I shouldn’t think so.
 
At night, in the rain or mist, then you would see something, although it would look very different from this drawing. There would be an internal structure in the beam.
 
I have seen laser shows where great green lasers bounce off distant mountainsides. Utterly blows away the toy lasers at clubs.
 
Sure.
The evening is perfect for laser shows, because of all the water evaporating and condensing in the air.
 
Plenty of dust though to show up.
 
5:34 PM
Dust helps too.
 
No, no water vapor there.
This is at Burning Man. Very dry.
And dusty.
 
Even so, you probably mostly saw the spot on the mountain, much brighter than the far end of the beam itself, right?
There is this club here thas has giant moving laser beams directed at the clouds.
The beams are normally visible at night, although not brightly.
 
Are the clouds close enough?
 
But it is always humid here.
I'm not sure whether the spots on the clouds are actually visible, but the beams are visible up to a great height.
It's nearly dark.
I will go outside and look, I need groceries anyway.
Although I may not be able to see the beams from here, the houses are too high and too close together.
 
Hm, let me check to see whether the cloud height is listed for you right now.
You could hit those with a laser, sure.
 
5:40 PM
Yeah.
 
And it’s semi-not-cold there, too.
 
I prefer to call it semi-somewhat-cold.
 
At 50, it would be ok here if the sun were shining and there were no wind.
(You’re at 50 now.)
 
Yes.
But it's dark.
 
5:42 PM
We sat in the sun yesterday.
 
Dark so soon? So yes, that would be chilly.
 
It was OKish, with coats on.
 
It’s like our daytime temps suddenly stopped happening a few days ago.
 
At 2 PM, with no people on the terrace blocking our sunlight (grrr...), it would probably have been OK without coats.
 
Poor tomatoes.
 
5:43 PM
If there had been no wind.
 
I find the dampness of your climate makes the cold bite more.
 
It does.
A dry climate is better.
That's why it can be so nice in winter when it's freezing but extremely sunny.
 
A dry heat isn’t as bad as a wet heat, and the same with cold.
 
So they say, yes.
Although I find 30 °C unbearable dry or wet.
 
In the mountains up high, you can be comfortable wearing much less so long as the sun is high.
 
5:45 PM
Yes, that's nice.
 
The rule is that you will be comfy if the F-temp + humid does not exceed 100.
So 30C is 86F, so you merely need a humidity of 14% or lower.
Well, or exceed body temp, which is 37C.
But 99F.
98.6F.
 
Evaporation can cool you below air temperature.
 
I find the hundred-rule works.
That’s like you don’t need AC in your car if your windows are down and you are driving faster than the temperature.
 
@tchrist A big problem is that it does not take radiation into account.
Take only the sun.
 
What, you mean the radiant heat of the sun?
That’s true. How much it counts for is . . . complicated.
 
5:47 PM
When you're outside, the sun makes a huge difference. 25 °C at noon in the summer is unbearable.
 
Angle of incidence, altitude.
No it isn’t.
Maybe where you live.
Here it is pleasant.
Trust me.
 
And in the city, the bricks and stones add a lot to the perceived heat as well, it really matters a great deal. Air temperature is nothing.
 
Cities suck.
 
@tchrist I do not.
 
But we have been here before.
 
5:49 PM
And being in a car in the sun means the temperature inside will be much higher than in the shadow.
The same applies to being inside a house.
 
No one will call 77F in the high Colorado sun too hot to enjoy, because we have negligible humidity.
 
In summer, I pray for clouds much more than for lower temperatures.
 
Clouds are icky. They make it sticky.
What is with all really lame ELU questions? I thought today was Sunday!
 
I have been in areas with low humidity, but I still find that high summer noon adds maybe 8 °C to perceived temp.
 
The rule is +15F.
 
5:51 PM
For what?
 
For direct sun.
 
For maximum sun?
Ah.
Well, that is about 8 °C, so my intuition does not disagree, hehe.
 
But that is only approximate, since it doesn’t take the angle of incidence — how high the sun is — nor the altitude into account. Both matter.
 
And I find that perhaps 0 v. 100 % humidity might make as much of a difference, but it is usually something in between anyway.
 
You probably seldom have < 20%.
 
5:52 PM
@tchrist Absolutely. So that 15 F is not the maximum difference?
@tchrist You = who?
 
Probably not. At 2 or 3 miles high, it is better.
 
I?
"One"?
 
You who.
Too close to the sea.
Too low.
 
As I said, I have been to dry places a lot.
 
Dry as in single digit?
 
5:53 PM
I don't know how dry exactly.
 
Where dry?
Africa?
 
Inland Italy?
 
Hm.
 
Spain?
 
Inland Spain has dry places, yes.
 
5:54 PM
Not really in deserts, though.
 
I don’t know whether they are desert-dry though.
 
There is nothing to see there.
 
Nope. Extremadura.
 
Spain has almost-deserts, but I would never go there.
 
There is nothing there.
 
5:55 PM
Exactly.
 
Our deserts are more interesting, actually.
 
What surprised me, btw, is that my friends had cell reception in the Moroccan desert.
Far beyond the warning signs.
 
Ours have a great deal of life, and many stunning natural features. They are not simply badlands and sand everywhere.
We have no cell coverage in our wildernesses.
 
What besides sand? Rocks?
We have cell coverage nearly everywhere.
 
I think you would be surprised.
That is because you are a little tiny place.
Easy to cover.
 
5:56 PM
It can be spotty in some areas, but I have never been anywhere where I really could not get reception outside.
However, my brother had zero reception in his room in a city, on T-Mobile.
They are said to have the worst network.
Each network is supposed to cover the entire country, and it mainly does.
 
Two out of three networks are European telecom giants anyway. They cover all of Europe, probably.
@tchrist Nothing happens.
 
Odd.
 
Oh, pretty.
So rocks.
Does that even count as desert?
There is enough moisture for plants?
 
Sure, it is desert. What would you call it?
Yes.
 
6:02 PM
I don't know, wilderness?
That snow?
 
It is.
 
This is all we have.
 
It is pretty, though.
 
That terrace is exactly like my parents' terrace, except that theirs has pretty old bricks and better furniture.
The view is the same.
Those are typical Dutch cows.
But everything is flat.
Nothing is ever exciting in Dutch landscapes.
Little variation.
 
6:08 PM
Nice flowers.
And is that really the desert?
It doesn't look very deserted!
 
Yes, absolutely.
 
@tchrist Nothing.
 
Hm.
Ah, I see the bug.
Fixed.
 
This looks like two people dancing in a pleasant garden.
A third one watching.
 
6:14 PM
Weird dress.
Is that moss?
Lichen thingies?
 
No, it is giant yucca, a Joshua tree.
@Cerberus The saguaros can do exotic poses.
 
But the fur?
Is that normal?
 
It is their old leaves.
Yes.
 
You sure it's their own leaves?
 
Watch...
See? Like with palm trees.
 
6:16 PM
Hmm yes.
 
Yucca brevifolia is a plant species belonging to the genus Yucca. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, yucca palm, tree yucca, and palm tree yucca. This monocotyledonous tree is native to southwestern North America in the states of California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada, where it is confined mostly to the Mojave Desert between 400 and 1,800 meters (1,300 and 5,900 ft) elevation. It thrives in the open grasslands of Queen Valley and Lost Horse Valley in Joshua Tree National Park. A dense Joshua tree forest also exists in Mojave National Preserv...
And that is an ocotillo.
Much bigger than I am.
Its leaves and flowers come out after a rain, any time of the year.
It is super-spiky. Ouch ouch.
That is a close-up of its flowers, with the moon behind.
The desert can be very beautiful.
 
Nice.
Those bees?
 
They are. Thanks.
But the desert will never look like the mountains, which that is.
With that early-spring green, almost chartreuse.
That is what it looks like right now here. Everything is golden.
That is an old mine.
 
6:34 PM
Best part of autumn!
When it's still golden or coloured, not brown.
 
That is up in the mountains. It is only just now getting more colorful down here in the foothills.
 
The old garden of the country house.
 
Summer.
 
Yeah.
 
I miss summer, but the crispness of fall is bracing, and it is still pretty here yet.
 
6:39 PM
Lots of heathlands.
This must be summer.
 
Where “heath” is some sort of low scrub?
 
Yeah.
It normally is here.
 
I was suddenly afraid that you would not know the word scrub.
 
The heath is blooming in the picture.
Sure I do.
 
I just realized it is an odd word.
Is heath, heather?
We call this sort of thing something else here.
A heath or heathland is a shrubland habitat found mainly on low quality acidic soils, and is characterised by open, low growing woody vegetation. There are some clear differences between heath and moorland. For example moorland has a very peaty topsoil, and it is also free-draining, whereas a heath is not. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with — especially in Great Britain — a cooler and damper climate. Heaths are widespread worldwide. They form extensive and highly diverse communities across Australia in humid and sub-humid areas. Fire regimes with recur...
 
6:41 PM
Heath is a specific kind of plant here.
 
Bad picture.
 
Ugh, it's complicated.
 
Looks like sagebrush territory.
 
I think we call only Erica "heide" here.
Heather is broader, I think?
We also have heester.
But heester is even broader than heather.
 
This is kinda cool. No pictures, but good graphics.
 
6:45 PM
Nice. But confusing shades.
 
Our lifezones are almost all by altitude:
Shortgrass Plains: 4,000-6,000 ft above sea level
Semidesert Shrublands (West CO) : 5000-7,000 ft above sea level
Foothills Life Zone: 6,000 to 8,000 ft. above sea level
Montane Life Zone: 8,000 to 10,000 ft above sea level
Subalpine Life Zone: 10,000 to 11,500 ft. above sea level
Alpine Life Zone: 11,500 ft above sea level and above
Riparian Life Zones: anywhere near major lakes, ponds, streams, or rivers
Only the "semidesert shrublands" are by longitude. They are the western side of the Divide.
I think your heather is like our shrublands.
Or heathlands.
 
Our heathlands are must have lots of erica.
In bloom.
 
Oh, what is that?
 
@Cerberus are you trolling me?
 
6:49 PM
I do not think we have Erica.
 
This ^ is a typical heideveld; all that purple is erica.
 
Erica (), the heaths or heathers, is a genus of approximately 860 species of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae. The English common names "heath" and "heather" are shared by some closely related genera of similar appearance. Most of the species are small shrubs from 0.2-1.5 m high, though some are taller; the tallest are E. arborea (Tree Heath) and E. scoparia (Besom Heath), both of which can reach up to 6–7 m tall. All are evergreen, with minute needle-like leaves 2–15 mm long. Flowers are sometimes axillary, and sometimes in terminal umbels or spikes, and are usually outwar...
The lepidoptera it mentions are foreign to us.
> At least 660 of the species are endemic to South Africa, and these are often called the Cape heaths, forming the largest genus in the fynbos. The remaining species are native to other parts of Africa, Madagascar, the Mediterranean region, and Europe.
Nope.
 
@RegDwighт Never.
 
Are you saying all these beams of light are photoshopped in real time? Also, in real life?
 
6:50 PM
@tchrist Aww. It's so pretty!
 
@RegDwighт Which of those is Cerberus?
 
@RegDwighт No, that's smoke machines.
@tchrist The hawt one.
 
@Cerberus nonsense.
 
@RegDwighт Is it.
Besides, it's pretty dark in there.
The darkness is partly for the lighting effects, you know.
 
I am holding a torch light right now. I can see the beam. No smoke, and it isn't dark.
 
6:52 PM
This has nothing to do with the clear-sky photo I posted.
 
Of course it does.
All the beam has to do is be brighter than the rest.
Whether at night or at daytime, doesn't matter.
We wouldn't have the word beam.
 
@RegDwighт No, no.
 
I think that corresponds to your heathlands.
 
@RegDwighт It needs both brightness and particles to reflect on.
 
That is in western Colorado, in late September.
 
6:54 PM
Nothing can beat a a full bright sky.
 
@Cerberus and there are no particles in the desert air? Or any air, for that matter?
 
Besides, I see no beam at all with my torch light.
@RegDwighт Not enough.
 
@Cerberus the sky is blue for the very reason that there are particles to reflect on everywhere.
 
Too few, and too small.
 
@Cerberus Torches do not have beams, silly!
They have flickering shadowlight.
 
6:55 PM
@tchrist Oh, nice. But those are autumn colours, not flowers, right?
 
@RegDwighт Actually, it’s complicated.
@Cerberus Right.
But there would not be a blue sky with nothing to scatter the light.
The moon does not have a blue sky.
 
The eastern half of my country is sand, the western half clay. That makes all the difference. The heathlands are sand.
 
That is sand country above.
Not clay.
That is another difference between eastern and western Colorado.
 
@tchrist Nothing < very little < enough.
 
That is sagebrush in the foreground.
 
6:57 PM
Do you have clay?
 
I imagine.
I think that is what they call most of the soil around here.
 
Hmm.
@RegDwighт Stop Googling. I can hear your frantic clickety-clicking.
You're not going to win.
 
> Whatever Mother Nature's gifts to Colorado -- and there are many -- rich soil is not among them. Rainfall, or in Colorado's case, lack of it, plays a major role in creating deep, rich layers of top soil. Eastern states, such as Iowa and Indiana, get more rainfall, resulting in more vegetation for organic matter. This leads to deep, dark, rich topsoil.
> Front Range soils are largely heavy clay. To improve this type of soil and create better drainage, some people add sand. Research has shown, however, that you'll need to add anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent, by volume, of sand to improve clay soil. Anything less will result in the formation of adobe.
 

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