{"id":19957,"date":"2015-03-21T22:47:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T02:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=19957"},"modified":"2015-03-21T23:55:42","modified_gmt":"2015-03-22T03:55:42","slug":"worlds-first-commercially-available-flamethrower-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/03\/21\/worlds-first-commercially-available-flamethrower-is-here\/","title":{"rendered":"World&#8217;s First Commercially Available Flamethrower is Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Short List<\/em> has the article <a title=\"Short List article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.shortlist.com\/tech\/gadgets\/worlds-first-commercially-available-flamethrower-is-here\" target=\"_blank\">World&#8217;s First Commercially Available Flamethrower is Here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\">\n    <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/v2iD9iNfh0U?rel=0\" style=border:thick ridge #009900;\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<p>Thanks to Randy Howard Katz for <a href=\"http:\/\/https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/randy.katz\/posts\/10104060576214523\" title=\"Facebook post\" target=\"_blank\">posting this on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I remarked to him:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nYou Californians just don&#8217;t know what ideas over 100 inches of snow can give you. This is exactly what I was thinking about. Someone told me that you can get a flamethrower at Harbor Freight. Just don&#8217;t use it on your roof to clear ice dams.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>By the way, I just went online to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harborfreight.com\/\" title=\"Harbor Freight web site\" target=\"_blank\">Harbor Freight<\/a>, but  could not find a flame thrower.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"plain\"\/>\n<p>Facebook is just a fount of knowledge.  Emin G\u00fcn Sirer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/randy.katz\/posts\/10104060576214523?comment_id=10104061197484493&#038;offset=0&#038;total_comments=9\" title=\"Facebook answer\" target=\"_blank\">answered my questions<\/a> about flamethrowers.<\/p>\n<p>He provided the link to the <a href=\"https:\/\/what-if.xkcd.com\/130\/\" title=\"Snow Remocal answers\" target=\"_blank\">article on the xkcd web site<\/a>.  There are a lot of fascinating calculations in the article, but I will just pull out one that is relevant to the use of a flamethrower.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nGas mileage in the US is often measured in &#8220;miles per gallon&#8221; of gasoline. With your flamethrower guzzling fuel, your mileage would be about 17 feet per gallon.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have an 11 gallon tank that I use to supply my snowblower, generator, and lawn tractor.  That would give me 187 feet before I had to go to the gas station according to the above calculation.  That&#8217;s about &frac23; of my driveway.<\/p>\n<p>As for using a nuclear reactor to melt the snow, the article had a nice graphical way of showing what would be required.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/what-if.xkcd.com\/imgs\/a\/130\/legal.png\" width=\"533\" height=\"107\" title=\"It would only take three nuclear aircraft carriers\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short List has the article World&#8217;s First Commercially Available Flamethrower is Here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19957"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19961,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957\/revisions\/19961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}