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#46784 11/06/01 01:58 AM
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The Amish in Pennsylvania use gas refrigerators both in their homes and to cool milk in bulk. While electric refrigerators are forbidden, they have no problem with a device that works by using a flame. (They also use gas ranges and heaters, with no electric ignition, timers or clocks.) Along with some orthodox jews, they adhere to the letter of the law while finding ways to adapt to the needs of modern life.


#46785 11/06/01 02:06 AM
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And the Amish still use hay-burner transportation. My wife had a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch in her, and went to a family re-union in PA. She saw a properous Amish patriarch, with an extremely well finished buggy, and a gorgeous mare pulling it. She remarked what a beautiful rig he had, and was dumbfounded that his face turned dark with suppressed fury. I had to explain it to her.


#46786 11/06/01 05:04 AM
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Perhaps you could explain it to the rest of us as well?

Bingley


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#46787 11/06/01 10:46 AM
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#46788 11/06/01 01:54 PM
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I was just handing BobY a post. The Amish are US principal exponents of conspicuous underconsumption. They sternly reject display of wealth, so that the deacon with his beautiful buggy and horse felt painfully rebuked to have their beauty and high cost remarked on in front of his peers.


#46789 11/06/01 02:01 PM
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The Amish in Georgia don't seem to have a problem with electricity or electronics. When I paid for a meal at an Amish restaurant, they took Visa, used a standard electronic till and telephones ...



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#46790 11/06/01 02:51 PM
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I mentioned the term "conspicuous underconsumption". I think it might surprise you to know that the Rockefellers in the twenties practiced it. I knew a Harvard instructor whose father was an AT&T vice-president, and summered in Bar Harbor, Maine, and knew the Rockefeller children. One summer the kids were beach combing, and Nelson Rockefeller discovered a wrecked dory, and was trying to figure out how much it would cost to fix it up. A nouveau riche kid, less well brought up, sneered:"Why don't you buy a new one?" Nelson Rockefeller turned on him and demanded, quite sincerely, "What do you think I am, a millionaire?" He simply had no idea that the was indeed many times over a millionaire.


#46791 11/06/01 02:54 PM
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You wrote about the condenser/capacitor. About twenty years ago an engineer I knew who was working on the power plant up near Lake Anna told me not to run my automobile air conditioner with my window down. He said that practice would ruin my condenser. First, is this the same condenser in your reference; and, second, would you please explain in a few simple words whether this is true.

I don't think it is the same sort of condenser. The thing in a car's A/C does something (what exactly, I'd have to look up) to make the air cold. A capacitor (also called a condenser) stores electric charge. Basically it is two metal plates quite close together, with a voltage across them. It just sort of "holds on" to the electrons. Normally these are quite small. If you look at any circuit board, the little things that look like yellow Chiclets are capacitors. Anyway, a microphone which uses a capacitor to convert sound to electric signal is called - you guessed it - a condenser mic.


#46792 11/06/01 03:31 PM
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#46793 11/06/01 03:48 PM
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Dear WW: your engineer who advised you not to have windows down when using air conditioner, had to be talking about putting excess load on the air conditioner. But I have no idea what he meant by "condenser" in that situation. The air conditioner is a heat pump, and used to use dichlorodifluoromethane as heat transfer agent. I don't know what he meant by condenser in this situation. Heat turns the refrigerant into a vapor. Compressing the vapor heats it very hot. When the pressure is high enough, the very hot gas opens a valve, and it passes into a long tube boustropheded (how do you like that coinage) into a small area, where it loses heat to the environment, and then is compressed again. In that long cooling tube, the gas would begin to condense, but I never heard it called a condenser. I suppose that the extra load on motor alternator from excess stress on air conditioner might stress alternator's capacitor, but I never heard it mentioned. Damn people who give lousy explanation, including me.


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