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A few months ago, a friend posted about having to get rid of wasps.
Sometimes wasps build a nest too close to a doorway or otherwise pose a hazard, and you want them to go away. Physically removing the nest often requires climbing a shaky ladder while being stung, and the wasps will just rebuild. Chemically killing the wasps harms you and the environment.
A way that works on the wasps in our area is to gently spray the nest with water from a garden hose. I assume the wasps interpret it as rainfall, as they don't respond by swarming and attacking. The water soaks in and slowly washes away the nest. When the wasps start to rebuild, sprinkle the area again. The wasps decide the area is too damp and not adequately sheltered from the weather, and move to a different location.
Sometimes wasps build a nest too close to a doorway or otherwise pose a hazard, and you want them to go away. Physically removing the nest often requires climbing a shaky ladder while being stung, and the wasps will just rebuild. Chemically killing the wasps harms you and the environment.
A way that works on the wasps in our area is to gently spray the nest with water from a garden hose. I assume the wasps interpret it as rainfall, as they don't respond by swarming and attacking. The water soaks in and slowly washes away the nest. When the wasps start to rebuild, sprinkle the area again. The wasps decide the area is too damp and not adequately sheltered from the weather, and move to a different location.
BOOK: Cold Welcome, by Elizabeth Moon
Apr. 20th, 2017 11:17 pmI recently finished reading Elizabeth Moon's latest book, "Cold Welcome".
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/cold-welcome/9781101887318-item.html ;
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cold-welcome-1
This book is essentially the Shackelton Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917, set in the future, on another planet. It was quite obvious when reading it, and the author confirmed that she had seen several documentaries on the epic adventure before writing it. No issues with that at all - she managed to fit it with the future setting quite well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Expedition
However, there is one thing that really spoiled the book for me.
[SPOILERS]
The evil bad guys are simultaneously too subtle and too blatant in their attempts to kill the hero, Ky Vatta.
The story is set in a universe where humans have had faster-than-light space travel for thousands of years and travel between terraformed planets is cheap and easy. Characters zip up from planets to space stations for business meetings, rich people have their own private starships, and spaceflight is about as easy as flying in jet aircraft is for us.
The hero's spaceship arrives at a planet, and she boards a shuttlecraft to take her to the surface. This will be a trip taking dozens of minutes. As she fears an assassination attempt, The hero insists on bringing her own personal survival suit with her, even though the shuttle has them as standard emergency equipment. This is equivalent to bringing your own life vest and oxygen mask in your carryon whenever you fly on a plane.
The shuttecraft malfunctions while entering the planet's atmosphere. The bad guys sabotaged it so blatantly that everyone knew it wasn't an accident, even before it finishes crashing. If the bad guys didn't want it to look like an accident, they could have just shot it down with a missile from one of their starships. However, they sabotaged it so subtly that the pilots can bring it under control.
The bad guys had a backup plan in case people survived. Everyone puts on their survival suits - but the suits of certain people have been sabotaged. This could have been made to look like an accident, perhaps by giving them empty air tanks, or weakening the seams of the suits. Instead, there are little robotic needles in the necks of the suits that stab poison into the victims. This would have taken time and effort to implement, and is obviously not an accident. The bad guys could have used a poison that mimicked natural causes. Instead, they used a poison that caused the victims to froth at the mouth and turn purple. The hero, having brought her own suit, is unaffected.
The bad guys have a backup plan. The survival suits of the pilots are also sabotaged, so they die. However, the bad guys didn't bother to sabotage the automated safety landing system, or cut the cords of the automatic parachutes,so the shuttle lands safely in the ocean.
The survivors dig out the inflatable lifeboats. The bad guys could have replaced the lifeboats with an equivalent weight of rocks, or could have slashed holes in them so the survivors would quickly drown. Instead, the bad guys have only removed the radio beacons, and carefully repacked the lifeboats into their containers.
The survivors are safe and sound in their lifeboats. The bad guys have a backup plan - they infiltrated one of their members onto the shuttle craft, to kill their targets if they survived the sabotaged shuttle, the sabotaged survival vests, and the radio-free lifeboats. Their spy gives bad navigation directions. That doesn't kill the hero, obviously. The bad guys have a backup plan - their spy is armed with a knife! Instead of stabbing the hero while she sleeps, and instead of slashing the floatation chamber of the hero's lifeboat at night, the spy waits until a shark attacks, and then slices a hole in the floor of one of the two lifeboats, so the hero is inconvenienced.
After weeks of drifting across the ocean, the survivors land their lifeboats on the beach right in front of the bad guys' secret base. The bad guys have all evacuated it, leaving only the spy left to take out the hero. The survivors move into the enemy base and make themselves at home. The spy goes into the armory of the base, which is full of weapons and ammunition. Instead of arming himself and shooting the hero, he just rearranges the storage lockers so the hero has a harder time finding replacement ammunition for her handgun.
Late one night, the spy sees the hero alone in the kitchen of the base. The spy has access to kitchen knives, cheese graters, and vegetable peelers. He could dice, slice, and blend the hero into tiny pieces. Instead, he breaks into her bedroom while she is out. Instead of setting a bomb, or poisoning her mouthwash, or just waiting in the closet for her with a machine gun, he changes the voltage on the electrical outlets, in the hopes she will electrocute herself.
And so on. The bad guys just didn't seem to be any good at being adversaries.
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/cold-welcome/9781101887318-item.html ;
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cold-welcome-1
This book is essentially the Shackelton Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917, set in the future, on another planet. It was quite obvious when reading it, and the author confirmed that she had seen several documentaries on the epic adventure before writing it. No issues with that at all - she managed to fit it with the future setting quite well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Expedition
However, there is one thing that really spoiled the book for me.
[SPOILERS]
The evil bad guys are simultaneously too subtle and too blatant in their attempts to kill the hero, Ky Vatta.
The story is set in a universe where humans have had faster-than-light space travel for thousands of years and travel between terraformed planets is cheap and easy. Characters zip up from planets to space stations for business meetings, rich people have their own private starships, and spaceflight is about as easy as flying in jet aircraft is for us.
The hero's spaceship arrives at a planet, and she boards a shuttlecraft to take her to the surface. This will be a trip taking dozens of minutes. As she fears an assassination attempt, The hero insists on bringing her own personal survival suit with her, even though the shuttle has them as standard emergency equipment. This is equivalent to bringing your own life vest and oxygen mask in your carryon whenever you fly on a plane.
The shuttecraft malfunctions while entering the planet's atmosphere. The bad guys sabotaged it so blatantly that everyone knew it wasn't an accident, even before it finishes crashing. If the bad guys didn't want it to look like an accident, they could have just shot it down with a missile from one of their starships. However, they sabotaged it so subtly that the pilots can bring it under control.
The bad guys had a backup plan in case people survived. Everyone puts on their survival suits - but the suits of certain people have been sabotaged. This could have been made to look like an accident, perhaps by giving them empty air tanks, or weakening the seams of the suits. Instead, there are little robotic needles in the necks of the suits that stab poison into the victims. This would have taken time and effort to implement, and is obviously not an accident. The bad guys could have used a poison that mimicked natural causes. Instead, they used a poison that caused the victims to froth at the mouth and turn purple. The hero, having brought her own suit, is unaffected.
The bad guys have a backup plan. The survival suits of the pilots are also sabotaged, so they die. However, the bad guys didn't bother to sabotage the automated safety landing system, or cut the cords of the automatic parachutes,so the shuttle lands safely in the ocean.
The survivors dig out the inflatable lifeboats. The bad guys could have replaced the lifeboats with an equivalent weight of rocks, or could have slashed holes in them so the survivors would quickly drown. Instead, the bad guys have only removed the radio beacons, and carefully repacked the lifeboats into their containers.
The survivors are safe and sound in their lifeboats. The bad guys have a backup plan - they infiltrated one of their members onto the shuttle craft, to kill their targets if they survived the sabotaged shuttle, the sabotaged survival vests, and the radio-free lifeboats. Their spy gives bad navigation directions. That doesn't kill the hero, obviously. The bad guys have a backup plan - their spy is armed with a knife! Instead of stabbing the hero while she sleeps, and instead of slashing the floatation chamber of the hero's lifeboat at night, the spy waits until a shark attacks, and then slices a hole in the floor of one of the two lifeboats, so the hero is inconvenienced.
After weeks of drifting across the ocean, the survivors land their lifeboats on the beach right in front of the bad guys' secret base. The bad guys have all evacuated it, leaving only the spy left to take out the hero. The survivors move into the enemy base and make themselves at home. The spy goes into the armory of the base, which is full of weapons and ammunition. Instead of arming himself and shooting the hero, he just rearranges the storage lockers so the hero has a harder time finding replacement ammunition for her handgun.
Late one night, the spy sees the hero alone in the kitchen of the base. The spy has access to kitchen knives, cheese graters, and vegetable peelers. He could dice, slice, and blend the hero into tiny pieces. Instead, he breaks into her bedroom while she is out. Instead of setting a bomb, or poisoning her mouthwash, or just waiting in the closet for her with a machine gun, he changes the voltage on the electrical outlets, in the hopes she will electrocute herself.
And so on. The bad guys just didn't seem to be any good at being adversaries.
