April 30, 2006
Light posting tonight
Starting to take apart one of the two Japanese Robot Arms that I won at auction a few weeks ago.
Pictures of the controller are here.
I will be using the parts for this.
More on the Robot Arms themselves here.
Pictures in a few days.
I'll be doing more on the Pyrex story in a few days too.
First Cat Shit and now Cannabis
Schizophrenia is very prevalent in today's society and causes for it are not clear.
There has been an interesting link between Schizophrenia and Cat Feces containing a parasitic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii
Now it seems that the use of Marijuana causes a “significant increase”
From the website:
Use of street drugs (especially marijuana/hash/cannabis) have been linked with significantly increased probability of developing schizophrenia. This link has been documented in over 30 different scientific studies (studies done mostly in the UK, Australia and Sweden) over the past 20 years. In one example, a study interviewed 50,000 members of the Swedish Army about their drug consumption and followed up with them later in life. Those who were heavy consumers of cannabis at age 18 were over 600% more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia over the next 15 years than those did not take it. (see diagram below). Experts estimate that between 8% and 13% of all schizophrenia cases are linked to marijuna / cannabis use during teen years.
Chronic indeed!
A past life
Meet Jeff Christie.
Remind you of anyone?
From the website:
Yes, Jeff Christie is Rush Limbaugh!
Jeff Christie was at KQV twice in the early seventies. Jeff originally came to Pittsburgh to work at WIXZ. He came to KQV to do nights in 1972. A number of the phrases we still hear on his Rush Limbaugh show today on more than 600 stations “all across the fruited plain” were heard when he was on KQV. You can hear a sample of Jeff's work during the 14K days at the Reel Top 40 Radio Archives. He returned for a short time during KQV's final days of top 40 filling in middays before moving on to Kansas City. Rush Limbaugh's EIB network came from a term he used here in Pittsburgh in the early seventies. EIB = Excellence In Broadcasting
WikiPedia has more
Curious indeed!
Country Lyrics
Been listening to a fair bit of Country music — goes with the landscape up here :-)
Found an excellent website for Country song lyrics.
Check out: Cowboy Lyrics
Just wonderful
From Yahoo/AP comes this story of Mr. Ashraf Ahmed Abdallah Bashar:
Egyptian man pleads guilty to smuggling dozens of people to U.S.
An Egyptian man has pleaded guilty to smuggling at least 100 men from the Middle East into the United States.
Ashraf Ahmed Abdallah Bashar, 37, admitted to leading a smuggling ring that brought 100 or more men from Middle Eastern countries into the U.S. from April 2001 through January 2002, officials from the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department said. He pleaded guilty Friday in federal court before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson.
“Providing persons with unknown backgrounds undetected entry into our country is a threat to national security,” said Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division.
Abdallah admitted to arranging land transportation and guides into the U.S., as well as layovers at safe houses in Guatemala and Mexico, for up to $8,000, according to plea documents. He told the men how to avoid capture during their journey across the southwestern U.S. border, according to his plea.
Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 24.
And of course, the people that he smuggled across were peaceful and only wanted to assimilate into the culture of the USA and to contribute to the sucess of this nation.
Makes you wonder how many others are running the same racket…
April 29, 2006
Google tools
Google continues to amaze me.
They do have a problem with aiding Chinese censorship but they also do things like this:
Arabic to English
English to Arabic
As Google says:
Our system works better for some types of text (e.g. news) than for others (e.g. novels) — and you probably should not try to translate poetry … but do stay tuned for more exciting developments.
Wonder how it works on Friday Sermons…
How not to rob a casino...
From Reuters/UK:
Thieves gas selves in cyanide heist blunder
Two hapless Chinese thieves gassed themselves to death with cyanide along with five intended victims while trying to rob a gambling den in the city of Ruichang, the Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.
A court in nearby Jiujiang on Thursday sentenced their three surviving accomplices to death for the robbery, carried out last June.
One of the three passed out for several hours from the effects of the gas — but still remembered to rob the dead of 15,950 yuan (1,090 pounds), five mobile phones and a gold necklace when he came round, Xinhua said.
DOH!
An email from Europe
It is difficult to sit over here in the USA and watch Europe slide into decay.
I ran into another example of this tonight in an email.
I am building some Computer Numerical Controlled equipment for my metal shop and am on several email lists. The commercial “solutions” for CNC run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars but there is a strong hardware hacker contingent that finds surplus equipment and makes it work for home use. Some people are even running small and successful business with their equipment making and selling parts for whatever catches their fancy.
Unfortunately, this is becoming harder and harder for our friends in Europe — from the email:
Well, in the EU, they have essentially banned the mom&pop business, desktop manufacturing, etc. The amount of regulation is insane - you practically need ISO9000 registration, and a whole raft of other certifications to install a car stereo. Basically, if you don't employ 1000 people, you can't sell anything as a “product”. Machine shops seem to still be permitted, though.
Scrounging is already outlawed, as all manufacturers have to set up these WEEE shops to recycle their old products. They'd have to be idiots to not take advantage of this requirement to not make sure their old products simply disappear. No usuable motors, circuit boards, transformers, etc. for tinkerers to experiment with.
I think most people are familiar with the entreprenurial inventor figure in the history of the US, so anything that actually legislates that sort of thing out is not going to go over well. All you have to say is “Oh, so under this law Thomas Edison and Henry Ford would have been put out of business, huh?” But, we do have to be vigilant, as legislators are so in the pockets of big business that they don't think of this stuff unless you constantly remind them.
The leaders over there are idiots — where does the disruptive technology come from? People working in their garages and coming up with the better mousetrap.
Sometimes I bemoan the state of innovation in the USA but compared to what the EU will be like in five years, we are a regular Tesla or Edison.
Sad…
Andy Serkis
While waiting for United 93 to start, they showed a still from King Kong.
That got me to wondering what Andy Serkis was up to these days. He was the motion capture actor for Golum in LOTR, he also played Kong (as well as the ships cook Lump).
Turns out that Andy is busy!
He is doing a character voice on the animation: “Flushed Away”, doing a television drama: “Longford”, a biography of Eadweard Muybridge called “Freezing Time” (Muybridge invented motion pictures and is a fascinating character), an action/adventure based on the Alex Rider novels by Anthony Horowitz: “Stormbreaker” and finally, this film which I cannot wait to see: “The Prestige”
From the entry for The Prestige:
Bale and Jackman will play rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London who battle each other for trade secrets. The rivalry is so intense that it turns them into murderers.
They have David Bowie playing Nicolas Tesla. It's in post so it should come out relatively soon (this year)
Cool!
United 93
Jen and I saw this film tonight. Very powerful and very well done.
The Writer and Director Paul Greenglass played it very straight relying just on telephone calls and flight recorder data for the conditions on the airplane. He could have “tarted it up a bit” and tried to flesh out the characters and provide a backstory but he didn't and this makes the film that much more powerful.
I was expecting it to make me sad but it ignited that burning pit of anger in my gut that had been slowly turning into embers since the original 9/11. I was pissed as hell then and I am just as pissed if not more now.
Regardless of your political views, you should see this on the big screen. Those idiots that started blathering about “Why do they hate us so much” simply do not get it — this is a pathological culture. These people are truly evil, their false prophet Mohamed (Pigs be upon his name) is the prophet of Satan, not the true God. The people in power have suppressed all that is good about the Middle Eastern culture.
As I have said before, my first wife was a Sufi and I had the great delight in meeting many wonderful Persians and Arabs. Some of the most gracious people in the world. The Sufi's have the concept of polishing you're heart so that it may reflect God's love to the world.
The people in charge these days have no love, only hate and lust for power.
April 28, 2006
Brutus and the Chainsaw
A cute fuzzy lil' critter story from Australia — Yahoo/AP
Crocodile Attacks Chainsaw in Australia
A 14 1/2-foot crocodile mauled a chainsaw a worker was using Friday to clear up debris left by a tropical storm that lashed northern Australia. While the croc and worker were both uninjured, the saw's woodcutting days are over.
Freddy Buckland was cutting up a tree that fell against a crocodile enclosure at the Corroboree Park Tavern, 50 miles east of the northern port city of Darwin when the crocodile, called Brutus, apparently took exception to the chainsaw's noise and attacked.
“As he was trimming up the tree on the outside the croc jumped out of the water and sped along the tree about 18, 20 feet and actually grabbed the chainsaw out of his hands,” said Peter Shappert, the tavern's owner.
“It must have been the noise … I don't think he was actually trying to grab Freddy, but I'm not sure. He had a fair go at him … I think he just grabbed the first thing he could and it happened to be the chainsaw,” Shappert added.
Neither Buckland nor Brutus were injured.
The saltwater crocodile, which Shappert said he now is considering renaming Two-stroke in honor of the saw's fuel, appeared to like the snack.
“He chewed on the chainsaw for about an hour-and-a-half, then we finally got it out,” Shappert said, adding that the saw was destroyed when it finally was retrieved from Brutus' giant jaws.
Saltwater crocodiles have been known to attack small power boats, apparently because they do not like the noise of outboard motors.
Emphasis mine — love the dry Ozzie sense of humor…
That chain saw is probably proudly displayed on the tavern wall and everyone had a round of beers.
Local Geek Fun!
The 2006 Linuxfest Northwest is going on tomorrow in Bellingham.
This is an annual event and I have missed the last couple ones but am planning to attend tomorrow. Keynote speaker is George Dyson.
Looking forward to networking with some local geeks!
e-mail hack involved in Madrid Bombing
It seems that the swine responsible for the March 11, 2004 train bombings used a simple e-mail hack to avoid detection… From the International Herald-Tribune:
Madrid suspects tied to e-mail ruse
One of the leading figures indicted in the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid used a simple trick that allowed him to communicate with his confederates on ordinary e- mail accounts but avoided government detection, according to the judge investigating the case.
Instead of sending the messages, the suspect, Hassan El Haski, saved them as drafts on accounts he shared with other radicals, according to papers issued by the judge, Juan del Olmo. They all knew the password and so they could access the accounts to read his comments and post replies, according to the judge.
This ruse meant that there was no digital trail that the authorities could easily trace, according to the judge and government. Had the messages been e- mailed, the government might have monitored them, as is common across Europe.
Intelligence officials have said in the past that terrorist groups were using the trick, which investigators call a “virtual dead drop.” But few concrete examples have come to light, especially in an attack as extreme as the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people.
Few details of this use of e-mail accounts were given in the lengthy indictment that named 29 suspects, mostly North African, this month. The government charges that these e-mail accounts were apparently used from as early as late 2003 until after the March bombings. But it does not detail how many people shared the accounts, and what kinds of instructions were given.
“This is probably a common method of communication among jihadists in Europe,” Javier Jordán, the director of the Center for Security Studies and Analysis at the University of Granada, said in a telephone interview.
“Haski is a person who traveled a lot and had lots of contacts,” he said. “If he used this method, a logical interpretation is that many others did too.”
That loophole is probably already closed in Yahoo, GMail, Hotmail, etc… but there are lots of small services out there that would still be usable. As long as the e-mail is on one server system, reading stays difficult without cooperation from that ISP. Once it gets routed into the Internet, then detection becomes easy. Crap…
April 27, 2006
Do as I say...
and not as I do…
From Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics comes this perfect example of the hypocrisy of Seattle government and why we are so glad to be out of there:
Full Kyoto: Greg Nickels' city car uses 5 gallons of gasoline a day
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is being hailed as an eco-hero by the likes of Vanity Fair [photo] for his Mayor's initiative to implement the Kyoto Protocol and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nickels #1 goal is to “Reduce Seattle’s dependence on cars”. But while he's calling on other people to get out of their cars, Nickels' gluttonous dependence on his own official automobile should raise eyebrows. Seattle taxpayers provide the Mayor with a 2006 Cadillac DTS Luxury III for his exclusive official use. And use it he does. City expense records [sample] reveal that the Mayor has burned an average of 152.1 gallons of gasoline a month since Jan. 2005, the equivalent of 5 gallons of gasoline every single day of the year.
And it's not just the gasoline consumption that's profligate — in the last 12 months alone, Hizzoner has spent roughly $36,000 in public funds on leasing, maintenance, fuel and other operating costs for his various luxury cars, and that doesn't even include salary and benefits for his chauffeur. May we all reduce our dependence on automobiles to $36,000 a year —
A bit of a funny story — Seattle was for a while trying to implement a very expensive public transportation project, namely a Monorail. It was supposed to connect SeaTac airport with Downtown and then on to points north. The project was funded by licensing fees — $100 or so was added to the annual license fee for each car registered to people living in the Metro Seattle area. People started registering their vehicles with friends who lived out of the city.
Since we have moved to our farm, we have received a stern notice with each license renewal that we have to provide several pieces of proof that we are no longer living in Seattle. Our drugstore is about 15 miles away and they are also a Licensing office and we show them the notice, our drivers license and we all have a good chuckle.
When will these people realize that top-down big government has never worked and will not work in the future — the idea has been tried, fried and put down.
Time to put the pipe away and find a real job…
Flooding in Romania
From Yahoo/Reuters:
Danube bursts more dikes in Romania, hundreds flee
The swollen Danube river burst several waterlogged dikes in Romania on Thursday, swamping new villages and forcing hundreds more people to leave their homes, officials said.
Europe's second-longest river, which flows through a 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) stretch of Romania, has submerged large swathes of land in central and southeastern Europe.
Water levels have started falling in several countries, but Romania, the worst-hit, is still battling cracks in strained flood defenses in the Danube delta near the Black Sea and faces the risk of further flooding and evacuations.
“The water flow is expected to remain high over the next 35 days and this is a permanent threat to defenses and people,” Environment Minister Sulfina Barbu told state radio.
Lefter Chirica, the government's representative in the county of Tulcea, told Reuters: “580 people fled overnight from the village of Ostrov in the delta as high waters threatened their lives after several dikes collapsed.”
Flooding caused by heavy rain and melting snow has forced thousands of people living on the Danube's flood plains out of their homes over the past month, including around 15,800 in Romania where about 130,000 hectares of farmland and pastures are submerged.
This isn't the countryside, this is a city and it's dikes and water systems are failing. Not that long ago (in August, 2002 to be precise) a “100-year-flood” stuck and caused massive damage. It will be interesting to see who points what fingers where when people start talking about preparation and infrastructure.
Here is an image from Dresden, August 2002:
I want a Freeware Utility to...
Nice collection of freeware utilities for various tasks/problems/productivity.
Visit: I want a Freeware Utility to … 450+ common problems solved.
Categories include:Anti-Spyware/Anti-Virus/Anti-Rootkit/Security Freeware Utilitiesand about a dozen more. Good stuff!
Audio/Music/MP3/Real/Wav Freeware Utilities
Business/Office/Access/Excel/Word Freeware Utilities
Communication Freeware Utilities
Desktop Freeware Utilities
Editors/Notepad Replacements Freeware Utilities
Balaklava
Balaklava, Russia — not a place you or I would have visited in the last 50 years or so and here is the reason why.
From Fun Mansion:
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Balaklava was one of the most secret towns in Russia. 10km south eas of Sevastopol on the Black Sea Coast, this small town was the home to a Nuclear Submarine Base.
Almost the entire population of Balaklava at the time worked at the Base, even family members could not visit the town of Balaklava without good reason and identification. The base remained operational after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until 1993 when the decommissioning process started and the warheads and low yield torpedos were removed. Then in 1996 the last Russian Submarine left the Base, and now you can go on Guided tours round the Cannel System, Base and small Museum, which is now housed in the old weapons stowage hangers deep inside the hillside.
Twenty-two very cool photos including these three:
Very cool stuff — would not mind taking the tour myself…
Yikes!
From Reuters:
Iran has missiles that put Europe in range: report
Iran has received a first shipment of missiles from North Korea that are capable of reaching Europe, Israel's military intelligence chief was quoted on Thursday as saying.
Known in the West as BM-25s, the Russian-designed missiles have a range of around 1,500 miles, giving them a longer reach than the Iranian-made Shihab-4 missiles which are capable of hitting Israel.
The intelligence chief, Major-General Amos Yadlin, was quoted by Israel's Haaretz newspaper as saying in a lecture on Wednesday that some BM-25s had arrived in Iran.
The BM-25 was originally manufactured in the Soviet Union, where it was known as the SSN6, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, Haaretz reported.
After the Russians decommissioned the SSN6, the missiles were sold to North Korea, which adapted them to carry a heavier payload, the newspaper's military affairs correspondent said.
In February, a German diplomat, citing his country's intelligence data, confirmed a German newspaper report that said Iran had purchased 18 disassembled BM-25s from North Korea.
Israel has been urging the international community to pressure Iran to halt its nuclear programme as well as its efforts to obtain long-range missiles.
Iran, the world's fourth largest producer of crude oil, says its nuclear programme is a peaceful project to provide electricity.
Israel is widely believed to have more than 200 nuclear warheads. It declines to comment on its atomic program, saying only it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
And Europe (and the UN) continues to waffle…
This cannot be writ any clearer on the wall — these are bad mofos and they are not joking.
April 26, 2006
A computer interface
I want one!!!!!!!
Meet Jeff Han, Consultant for the Department of Computer Science, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.
His latest work is on Multi-Touch Interaction
A 3:30 video can be found at YouTube
His description:
Multi-Touch Interaction Research
While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.
Watch the video — this is amazing geek-fu
A bit short at the moment...
Couldn't happen to nicer people — from Haaretz:
$450,000 cash said stolen from PA finance minister during visit to Kuwait
Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar has had $450,000 stolen from his hotel room during his current visit to Kuwait, the Itim news agency quoted the Kuwaiti media as saying Wednesday.
According to the report, al-Zahar had asked the Kuwaiti authorities to keep the theft under wraps, but the incident was confirmed by a security official at the hotel.
The foreign minister, a senior member of Hamas, is on a tour of Arab and Muslim countries to drum up funds after Israel suspended the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority and Western donors cut off aid to the Hamas-led government.
The European Union and the United States have cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority over Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by previously signed peace agreements.
Itim also reported that an official at the Palestinian Finance Ministry has revealed that, despite its empty coffers, the PA has funded the trip for al-Zahar and his entourage.
And why would he be traveling with that kind of money — buying arms? drugs?
And these people want a state — how about Plasma…
Schadenfreude
From Wikipedia: Schadenfreude is a German term meaning “pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune”.
Cox and Forkum post an excellent example today:
Visit their site for the full-size image.
Another perfect example of unintended consequences.
Marv Klotz's Utilities
Subtitled: Software for people who Build Things!; this is an excellent collection of quick little utilities for basic mechanical and machining calculations.
Last update as of this writing was April 5th, 2006 so it is maintained and kept current.
Lots of good links too — this is an amazing resource!
Follow the Money - Spain
A week old but still very interesting — from The Guardian:
Missing Bin Ladens puzzle Spain
Spain's government said yesterday it had ordered an investigation into how the country was soaking up a quarter of one of the world's largest denomination bank notes, the €500 (£345) bill.
With tax officials and the Bank of Spain unable to explain where all the notes were going to, the country's ample black market and many money-launderers became the chief suspects.
The €500 notes are popularly known in Spain as “Bin Ladens” because like the al-Qaida leader, everybody knows they are around but hardly anyone has seen them.
The Bank of Spain said the notes were increasingly being drawn from high street banks and then disappearing. Last month 100m more notes were issued to high street banks than were handed in by them. That accounted for 26% of the total issued in all 12 eurozone countries, according to El País newspaper.
A booming building industry is thought to account for much of the high-denomination cash that has disappeared. Some 60% of real estate companies reportedly accept cash payments, while some are even said to demand them.
The deputy mayor of the southern town of Marbella, Isabel García, was found to have €378,000 in €500 notes in her safe when police arrested her in a corruption investigation earlier this month.
Spaniards have a tradition of squirreling savings away in cash hoards. “We had the same thing with 10,000 peseta notes,” a central bank source said. “For some it is a way of laundering money. For others it is just a way of keeping their savings.”
Hard to follow cash transactions when you are trying to tax people. Raise the taxes high enough and you force a large part of the economy to move underground. The government is clueless and people are still withdrawing the large bills…
Sunspot 875
Looks to be a biggie - from SpaceWeather:
New sunspot 875 has a “beta-gamma-delta” magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares.
X-Class is the biggest — if one of them hits Earth square-on, we have brilliant Aurorae, radio blackouts, electrical distribution problems. Still a few days away from being any kind of threat though.
Sure is beautiful though:
Image by Andreas Murner of Lake Chiemsee, Bavaria, Germany.
Great test
From GuyK at Charming, Just Charming:
Subject: Are you a democrat, republican, or a Southerner
Seems like I remember posting this one once before but my friend MAXX DOG sent it to me and I cracked up after I read it —-again. So I reckon it is worth a repeat. I don't carry a Glock—hell, I'm a poor redneck and can't afford that high dollar ammo. I just keep a 12 gauge loaded and handy.
Subject: Are you a democrat, republican, or a Southerner
Here is a little test that will help you decide.
The answer can be found by posing the following question:You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children.
Suddenly, an Islamic Terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you. You are carrying a Glock cal 40, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?
Democrat's Answer:
Well, that's not enough information to answer the question!
Does the man look poor! Or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about the kids?
Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
A small excerpt — read the entire post.
Do not miss the final line in the Southerner's Answer
Heh…
April 25, 2006
POGO Blog
Just ran into this one and it looks good:
POGO.org Project on Government Oversight
They have a blog here: POGO Blog
A sample entry:
Guess which Iraq reconstruction project is on time and on budget?
It’s the gigantic US embassy in Baghdad. USA Today reports:The $592 million facility is being built inside the heavily fortified Green Zone by 900 non-Iraqi foreign workers who are housed nearby and under the supervision of a Kuwaiti contractor, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. Construction materials have been stockpiled to avoid the dangers and delays on Iraq's roads.
”We are confident the embassy will be completed according to schedule (by June 2007) and on budget,” said Justin Higgins, a State Department spokesman.
The same cannot be said for major projects serving Iraqis outside the Green Zone, the Senate report said. Many — including health clinics, water-treatment facilities and electrical plants — have had to be scaled back or in some cases eliminated because of the rising costs of securing worksites and workers.
”No large-scale, U.S.-funded construction program in Iraq has yet met its schedule or budget,” the committee report said. [all emphasis POGO's]
Good stuff!
20 Years ago Today
Today was the 20th anniversary of the horrible accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant. Yahoo/AFP has a report on the memorial ceremony:
Haunting vigils mark 20 years since Chernobyl disaster
Haunting night-time vigils marked the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident that shocked the globe, ravaged this corner of eastern Europe and affects millions of people to this day.
Clutching candles and carnations, hundreds of people silently poured into the central square of the Ukrainian town of Slavutich, built 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the east of the defunct nuclear power station to house its staff and others evacuated following the accident.
A shrieking siren pierced the silence around the time that two explosions ripped through reactor number four at the Soviet-designed plant on April 26, 1986, releasing a huge radioactive cloud into the air.
Somber-faced, many with tears in their eyes, the crowd made their way toward a monument honoring the 30 people who died in the first year after the accident that became a grim symbol of the hazards of atomic energy.
“I knew all of these people,” Mykola Ryabushkin said, pointing to the portraits hanging on the monument.
The 59-year-old was an operator at the station and was working the night of the explosion that bathed the station in an otherworldly bluish light.
“I look at them and I want to ask them for forgiveness,” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Maybe we're all to blame for letting this accident happen.”
Emphasis mine — no you are not to blame. The only people to blame are the idiots who put operators on duty that had no experience with the particular kind of reactor and who decided to run a test that should never have been run. Wikipedia has an excellent article outlining the faults of that particular core and the timeline leading up to the accident.
April 24, 2006
Blowing a career?
Meet Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, author of the new book: “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life” published by Little, Brown last spring. She got a lot of publicity as well as $500,000 for the book and a sequel.
Too good to be true?
According to this NY Times article — yes:
Young Author Admits She Copied Another Writer
In an e-mail message this afternoon, Ms. Viswanathan said that in high school she had read and loved the two books she is accused of borrowing from, 'Sloppy Firsts' and “Second Helpings,” and that they “spoke to me in a way few other books did.”
“Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel, 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,' and passages in these books,” the message went on.
Calling herself a “huge fan” of Ms. McCafferty's work, Ms. Viswanathan added, “I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words.” She also apologized to Ms. McCafferty and said that future printings of the novel would be revised to “eliminate any inappropriate similarities.”
Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown, said Ms. Viswanathan planned to add an acknowledgment to Ms. McCafferty in future printings of the book.
Of course, now that the subsequent printings will be edited, this makes the first editions that much more valuable…
Probably an honest mistake but her editor should have caught that in a heartbeat. This is what a book editor does. At least she is graciously owning up to the error — I will submit these two images as an example of someone who doesn't own up to their blatant plagiarism:
Thomas Mails
Ward Churchill
The top image is a pen and ink sketch done by Thomas Mails in 1972.
The bottom one is a silk-screen done by Ward Churchill and presented as his own work in 1981. And he still continues to teach?
April 23, 2006
The Religious Policeman
Just ran into the blog the other day. From the website:
The diary of a Saudi man, currently living in the United Kingdom, where the Religious Police no longer trouble him for the moment.
A sample post:
The Work Ethic
When God created Saudi Arabia, he also presented us with three gifts:
- The Holy Mosques at Makkah and Madinah, for our spiritual needs
- The Oilfields, for our material needs
- The Indian Subcontinent, so that we had people to sweep out the former and pump out the latter.
Perhaps as a result of this, we have developed certain fixed ideas about what we will and will not do for a career.
Generally, we want to work in:
- the Armed Forces, Police, or Security services. However, you need to be in “the right tribes” to get these jobs.
- Saudi Airlines. As pilots, naturally. Egyptians (men and women) usually work as the cabin staff.
- Banks. (Nice clerical jobs)
- Civil Service (ditto)
- University or School. (teachers are very revered in Islam)
- Mosques (Imams ditto)
- Other professions, or as “Managers”. But not salesmen, that's for the pushy Lebanese.
He then talks about a job opening for 500 people where 10,000 Saudi's showed up. Needless to say, they have their own rules for standing in line (Queueing in England):
The Four Rules of Saudi Queueing.
1. Queue is a foreign word, for foreigners. Saudis do not need to queue. If you see a line of people, that indicates that there is something desirable at the front, and it is waiting for you, so just go and get it.
2. If the line is from the Indian subcontinent, they will not dare to stop you from going to the front. Indeed they will be grateful, in their quiet and humble way, that you have honored their line with your presence.
3. If the line contains Westerners, they may object to your going to the front. Affect not to understand their unrefined languages. If some smartass has a smattering of Arabic, pull a face that suggests you can't make head or tail of his silly accent. However if there are no other Saudis around, be careful, as some of them can become extremely threatening and physical. The men can be scary as well.
4. If you meet another Saudi at the head of the queue, precedence goes to the better family or tribe. Unless one of you has a relation behind the window or whatever it is you are queueing for. However if a Bedu from out of the desert turns up, let him go first, because everyone expects him to be pig-ignorant and not understand queues and you just can't be assed trying to explain it to him, and anyway he can't read so he's probably come to the wrong place and he'll bugger off soon enough as it is.
Very much worth reading and will be added to the blogroll…
April 22, 2006
The Superconducting Supercollider
Another Clinton legacy — Damn Interesting has a nice writeup:
America's Discarded Superconducting Supercollider
Deep beneath the plains of central Texas lies a catacomb of tunnels once meant to house the most expensive physics experiment ever devised. That experiment, the Superconducting Supercollider, would have revolutionized our understanding of the physical world by giving us our first glimpse of the “God Particle.” And, proposed during the Cold War, it would have been a monument to the technological and scientific prowess of the Western world.
But in 1993 after investing over $2 billion dollars into the project, President Clinton and Congress canceled it entirely. Highly sophisticated machinery and laboratories were simply sold to the highest bidder, and thousands of acres of empty land were parceled off and sold as well. All that now remains are 200,000 square feet of still-vacant factories and labs, and over 30 km of carved-rock tunnels slowly filling with water.
One of the most persistent mysteries of the Universe is why matter has mass at all. Physicists think they know the answer; a particle called the Higgs Boson, also called the “God Particle”, is thought to exist that gives all other particles mass. Around this theoretical particle they constructed the glittering edifice of late-20th century physics known rather plainly as the Standard Model.
Despite its tremendous importance, the Higgs has never been observed in experiments. According to calculations, it exists in detectable form only at astoundingly high temperatures and pressures - similar to those of the first few seconds after the Big Bang. Particle accelerators smash sub-atomic scraps together to regularly recreate such conditions, but none exists powerful enough to actually see the Higgs.
Total estimated cost was to have been around $8.5B
Given a US population of 298 Million, this puts the cost at about $28/per person. Considering that the construction would have taken over ten years, this puts the burden on each US citizen at less than one Espresso Coffee drink per year.
This would have been amazing — much more than the International Space Station and President Clinton killed it. Shame on you!
Light posting tonight
Working on the Cimroc 2 robot arm controller figuring out what to keep, what to eBay and what to toss into a landfill (hey, it is Earth Day after all!)
Gorgeous day today — first real day of spring — temps in the 60's.
Clear skies tonight, have a fire going in the studio so it's nice and toasty.
Not too much happening in the world today — that will change though…
April 21, 2006
Overheard between Bush and Cheney
Ran into this transcript at Smug Nugget:
Hu's on the White House Lawn
Bush: Look Dick. You're the Vice-President. You must know all the world leaders.
Cheney: I certainly do.
Bush: Well you know I've never met most of them. So you'll have to tell me their names, and then I'll know who runs what.
Cheney: I'll tell you their names, George, but you know it seems to me they give these world leaders now-a-days very peculiar names.
Bush: You mean funny names?
Cheney: Strange names . . . like Mwai Kibaki.
Bush: Your whatty?
Cheney: Mwai Kibaki, the President of Kenya.
Bush: Oh.
Cheney: Let's see. Who else should you know? Putin's in Russia, Chirac's in France, Hu's in China . . .
Bush: That's what I want to find out. I heard that last one's coming to visit today.
Cheney: I said Hu's in China.
A wonderful reworking of a classic…
Problems with Pyrex - part two
Just a quick note.
About a month ago, I had written about how today's Pyrex glass cookware might not be what Pyrex originally was.
When Pyrex cookware first came out, it was a true refrigerator to oven to table to refrigerator product.
Lately though, people have been experiencing catastrophic failures of their Pyrex cookware when it has been subjected to the most modest changes in temperature or shock.
The two things that give Pyrex its properties are a 10% Boron content and a long annealing process after manufacture.
From my first entry:
#1) - Pyrex is another name for Borosilicate Glass and contains about 10% Boric Oxide in addition to the Silica and other chemicals. From Wikipedia:The boron gives borosilicate glass a reduced thermal expansion coefficient (about one-third that of ordinary glass). This reduces material stresses caused by temperature gradients, thus making it more resistant to breaking.
#2) - Pyrex is also annealed which means that after it is molded to shape, it is held at near melting temperatures for a long time to allow the residual stresses to 'mellow out'.
From Wikipedia:Annealing, in glassblowing and lampworking, is heating a piece of glass until its temperature reaches a stress-relief point, that is, a temperature at which the glass is still too hard to deform, but is soft enough for internal stresses to ease. The piece is then allowed to heat-soak until its temperature is even throughout; the time necessary for this varies depending on the type of glass and thickness of the thickest section. The piece is then slowly cooled at a predetermined rate until its temperature is below a critical point, at which it can no longer generate internal stresses, and then the temperature can safely be dropped to room temperature. This relieves the internal stresses, making the glass much more durable. Glass which has not been annealed will crack or even shatter when subjected to a relatively small temperature change or other shock.
I do not have the equipment to test for Boron but there is a very simple test to see if a piece of glass has been annealed or not. If it is not annealed, it will have stress and by using a set of crossed polarized filters, I can see and photograph the stress.
Here is an example of a piece with internal stresses under regular light and under cross-polarized light:
I do a lot of photography and have some polarizing filters but these are too small to really look at the entire piece and they are circularly polarized which makes for better control over the image but isn't what I needed for this project.
Today, I took delivery of a sheet of good-quality polarizing film 17” by 24”. We are headed into town tomorrow anyway so I'll pick up a couple pieces of “Pyrex” and compare them with some of my 15-year-old ware.
If I see stress lines, I may contact someone in the Chemistry department of the local University and see if they would like an interesting project for their students…
More in a few days…
More aftershocks in Russia
The earthquakes in Koryakia (here and here) are not letting up.
The primary was about the same size as the San Francisco 1906 quake.
The aftershocks are significant earthquakes themselves. They just had two more earlier today — 5.7 and 6.1 on the Richter Scale.
Thank God the area is not highly populated…
An interesting protest
From blogger The Big Pharaoh come some photographs of a demonstration in Alexandria, Egypt:
One Nation for All
I just came from a demonstration protesting the recent events in Alexandria and calling for a “one nation for all, Muslims and Christians.” After the shock of what happened in Alex, I simply had to do something no matter how small it was.
The demonstration included the opposition movements Kifaya, Youth for Change, The Popular Campaign for Change, and Ayman Nour's party Al Ghad. People with no specific party or entity affiliation, like myself, were present as well.
The entities mentioned above are mainly secular and they were instrumental in the political upheaval of 2005. Unfortunately, they almost have zero grassroots support.
The demonstration was a success as far as I am concerned. Around 400-500 people showed up, Muslims and Christians, all reaffirming the fact that Egypt is for all and sectarianism has no place in our country.
And one more:
The very cool aspect is that there were no signs in English. This was not a demonstration played to the media, this was the real deal — they were reaching out to other Egyptians and not to the Western Liberal Main-Stream-Media.
The symbol at the bottom right of the second image is the combination Islamic Crescent and Christian Cross together.
April 20, 2006
Russian aftershocks
They already had a 7.7 earlier this evening.
(the San Francisco quake was estimated at 7.7 to 7.9)
They just had a 6.1 aftershock…
Nature, red in tooth and claw
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law -
Tho' nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
from In Memoriam
— Alfred Lord Tennyson
Time once again for Earth Day and Cox and Forkum get into the spirit of things:
They also quote from this excellent essay:
The individuals singled out for attack by environmental terrorists — namely, scientists, inventors and businessmen — are the creators of industrial civilization. As heirs of Newton, scientists discover truths about the workings of nature. As heirs of Edison, inventors use these truths to create new products which improve human life. As heirs of Ford, businessmen figure out ways to perfect and mass manufacture these products profitably.
These three categories of individuals represent the exploiters of nature, those who transform wilderness to support man's life. They find plains and forests, dangerous jungles and insect-infested swamps, in which man's life is precarious, and they build a human environment by creating houses, electric heaters and chemical pesticides. They teach man his method of survival: using his mind to reshape nature to his needs.
As monstrous as it sounds, it is precisely because these heroes are the sustainers of human life that they are targeted by those who are willing to take up arms for their cause, environmentalism.
This has a personal resonance as terrorists from Earth Liberation Front burned down a wonderful Horticulture Facility in Seattle in 2001 while Jen and I were still living there. Their protest was against the Genetically Engineered Poplar Trees that were “being developed there”.
Only problem for them was that Dr. H.D. “Toby” Bradshaw was doing selective breeding and not genetic engineering. They had neither the equipment nor the budget for G.E., this was hybridization pure and simple. Dr. Bradshaw did work with some G.E. tissue samples but these were never propagated.
The fire also destroyed an amazing library. It also destroyed one fourth of the world's population of an endangered plant species: Showy Stickseed
If these people really wanted to do something about the environment, they would put the bong away, go back to school and take Algebra, Calculus, Chemistry (InOrg. and Org.) and then start in on the Hard Sciences.
A small typpoe
Oops — from Wired Magazine:
Typo Confounds Kryptos Sleuths
For more than a decade, amateur and professional cryptographers have been trying to decipher an encrypted sculpture that sits on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Three-fourths of the sculpture has already been solved.
But now Jim Sanborn, the artist who created the Kryptos sculpture, says he made a mistake. A previously solved part of the puzzle that sleuths assumed was correct for years isn't. The new information, including what the mistaken text really says, is creating a buzz among enthusiasts who've been obsessed over the sculpture for years.
It all comes down to a letter that Sanborn left out of the sculpture. He only recently realized the omission was leading sleuths down a misguided path. His followers, however, aren't feeling any grief about the misdirection.
“Any time we get the sculptor saying anything for sure, it's cause for celebration,” says Elonka Dunin, a game developer for Simutronics and co-moderator of a Yahoo group devoted to Kryptos who also maintains a comprehensive website about the sculpture. “We love to get any information out of him that we can.”
And the error:
Sanborn realized only this week that the original decryption was incorrect while doing a letter-by-letter comparison of the plain text and coded text in preparation for a nonfiction book he's producing about the life of the sculpture and the unexpected interest it's garnered.
The mistake involves an “x” that Sanborn intentionally deleted from the end of a line in section two for aesthetic reasons, to keep the sculpture visually balanced. The “x” was supposed to signify a period or section break at the end of a phrase but Sanborn removed it thinking it wouldn't affect the way the puzzle was deciphered. It turns out the “x” made all the difference.
Oops…
Pigs in Space
Oops. Make that Pigs Muslims in Space
From Space Travel:
Malaysia Conference Considers How To Practice Islam In Space
How do Muslim astronauts pray in space? Malaysia's National Space Agency is holding a conference to consider such questions as the country prepares to send its first citizen into orbit.
A nationwide competition in the majority-Muslim country has narrowed the field to four astronaut candidates, three of whom are Muslims.
Two will eventually be trained and sent into space by Russia, and Malaysia's space agency — or Angkasa — said it had been scratching its head over how Muslim rituals could be carried out properly.
Performing ablutions for Muslim prayers with water rationing in space and preparing food according to Islamic standards will be among issues discussed, said Angkasa's director-general, Mazlan Othman.
Welcome to the 21st century guys — hope you enjoyed your trip from the 9th…
Ablutions can be ritualized — you aren't going to bathe in space. Unh unh — no way. As for food, Kosher is very similar to Halal and we have had Jews in space for a long time so you can just eat their food??? Right???
The astronaut will also visit the International Space Station, which circles the earth 16 times in 24 hours, so another thorny question is how to pray five times a day as required by Islam, she said.
Muslims also have to turn towards Mecca to pray and working out which direction that will be while hovering above the earth might also be challenging.
Yeah. Right. So you look at the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun as one day. Assuming 50% day and 50% night, 16 diurnal cycles in 24 hours makes that 45 minutes for each “day” so you will have to pray every nine minutes.
Part of the prayer ceremony is bashing your forehead on the floor — some people sport large bruises and calluses as an outward sign of their righteousness. Since Mecca is just down there somewhere (same direction as Jahannum), you can just use some bungee cords and bounce off the floor during prayer. Since it takes more than nine minutes to complete a proper Salah, you will just be spending your entire time in space bouncing off the floor in microgravity — 45 minutes on, 45 minutes nap time and then back to 45 minutes on again…
And why are these people going up to the Space Station?
It is not as though they were real Scientists.
The agreement to send the Malaysians aboard Russian spacecraft was part of a billion-dollar deal in which Russia will sell Malaysia 18 Sukhoi 30-MKM fighter jets.
Well why don't they build their own or buy from a Middle Eastern manufacturer? Oh. Right. They don't have any industrial capability to speak of. They have purchased a number of foreign businesses but since they don't value education and science (or 50% of their population), they don't have this capability themselves — if they do, it has been purchased, it is not created by them.
No wonder they are scrambling like mad to establish a Caliphate, they have about a hundred years until they are fossicking about in the sand lopping off the heads of other tribesmen. They are scrambling to establish some level of power before it all dries up and blows away on the desert sands.
If I ran the place, theocrats would be silenced and education would be paramount. I would hire top people from outside the Middle East and build a world-class University system — Science, Engineering and Medicine. I would endow large research and development think tanks. Say what you may about capitalism, it works. The marketplace is not that difficult to figure out.
Will they do this?
Tune in in ten years and see — the tipping point is that close…
Russian Earthquake
No news on the web yet but there was a Magnitude 7.7 Quake about 4,000 miles NNE of Moscow in Koryakia in the Kamchatka Peninsula close to Alaska.
They have had a fair bit of activity in the last few days.
No Tsunami is expected.
BASED ON MAGNITUDE AND HISTORIC TSUNAMI INFORMATION THE EARTHQUAKE WAS NOT SUFFICIENT TO GENERATE A TSUNAMI DAMAGING TO CALIFORNIA - OREGON - WASHINGTON - BRITISH COLUMBIA OR ALASKA. SOME OF THESE AREAS MAY EXPERIENCE SMALL SEA LEVEL CHANGES. IN COASTAL AREAS OF INTENSE SHAKING LOCALLY GENERATED TSUNAMIS CAN BE TRIGGERED BY UNDERWATER LANDSLIDES.
April 19, 2006
What I have been working on...
Here are a few photos of the robot controller that I have been working on the last few days:
Here is the front of the controller. The cabinet stands just under six feet tall and is 30” by 30”. Weight was around 1,200 pounds before I got started…
One reason why it was so heavy. Note the Coke can — these two power transformers are a good 150+ pounds each.
A total of 568.1 Hours of run time. Practically brand new!
Here is the “brains” of the box — the compartment on the right holds an IBM compatible computer running a 286 processor with a 287 math co-processor. Processor speed is a blistering 10 MHz (million cycles per second). System memory is right up there with a whopping 512 Kilobytes.
The compartment on the left holds the brains for the servo controllers (board on the right) which is even less powerful than the system on the right. The other five boards read the position of the arm and report that to the computer. The computer then issues commands to the servo drivers to move to where they should be.