Mar 212023
 

OSU requires DEI statements from mechanical, aerospace engineer job applicants

Scholars seeking a job in Ohio State University’s College of Engineering must pledge their allegiance to diversity, equity and inclusion as part of the process.

University officials ask applicants to provide a statement that describes their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, along with “specific examples such as teaching and/or mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds, outreach activities to underrepresented groups, or conducting research that address social inequities,” according to a copy of the application rubric recently tweeted by John Sailer with the National Association of Scholars.

One suggestion I have: use the current terminology against them. What, exactly, is an “underrepresented” group? That’s nicely vague. One could simply assume that it means “minority.” Okey doke. Well, what is one of the “progressives” most favoritist descriptions these days? “The Global Majority.

“Global majority” is a collective term for ethnic groups which constitute approximately 85 percent of the global population. It has been used as an alternative to terms which are seen as racialized like “ethnic minority” and “person of color” (POC), or more regional terms like “visible minority” in Canada and “Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic” (BAME) in the United Kingdom.

OK. Cool. Then that means “The Global Minority” is anyone not described by that 85%. You know… white people. So… say “why yes, I’m committed to mentoring minorities.” By doing so, and keeping it vague, it means you’re committed to mentoring EVERY TYPE OF HUMAN IMAGINABLE. Because by one definition or another, everyone is a minority.

Also:

High scores are given to candidates who have a “sophisticated understanding of differences stemming from ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and cultural backgrounds and the obstacles people from these backgrounds face in higher education.”

This can also go pretty much any way you want it to. “Yes, I fully understand the importance of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. (Because I understand how they cause a general reduction in competence and quality.) I understand how all these different factors can play into the difficulties people face. (Because I’ve seen how Asians and The Global Minority are shut out of educational opportunities due to quotas.)” And so on.

There is a way to game any system, no matter how devious and malicious. However, better still would be to toss out this nonsense. *Especially* in stem fields of education and endeavor, where competence and merit are the only metrics by which someone should advance. otherwise buildings burn, bridges collapse, planes crash and people die. But in the mean time, people have to decide to either stand up to the bullies and risk it all, or undermine the bastards.

 Posted by at 11:03 pm
Mar 202023
 

An emerging fungal threat spread at an alarming rate in US health care facilities, study says

Clinical cases of Candida auris, an emerging fungus considered an urgent threat, nearly doubled in 2021, according to new data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. …  rising from 53 in 2016 to 330 in 2018 and then skyrocketing from 476 in 2019 to 1,471 in 2021.

It’s resistant to drugs and disinfectants; a lot of people can be carriers and not know it. It usually causes harm to people with compromised immune systems, is difficult to eradicate either in people or facilities once it sets up shop. It was first discovered in 2009 in Japan, being found for the first time in the US in 2013. Somewhere between 30% and 60% of the people who develop Candida auris bloodstream infections die, but they also had other conditions.

 Posted by at 11:37 pm
Mar 182023
 

“Zipline” is an American company specializing in drone delivery systems. While package delivery via drone has been promised in the US for some years, Zipline has been operating successfully in Rwanda since 2016 as a medical supplies (meds and blood) delivery system. And it seems to work *really* well… something like 90 seconds from receipt of order to launch of the drone, which flies at 60+ mph at a radius of up to 50 miles, delivering up to 4 pounds of payload via parachute. Since startup, Zipline has made over 20 million miles of flights. This system seems not only remarkable successful, but remarkably efficient to run; their main distribution center launches 500 drones a day, and they’ve made this Really Neato System as run of the mill as SpaceX is making launch vehicle recovery.

While this is great for emergency deliveries in rural Africa, it would not be a great system for package delivery in American cities and suburbs… you want your package *delivered,* not dropped, and delivered accurately, not somewhere in a dozen yards radius. A big enough quad/octocopter could over course do this, landing right on your porch and dropping off the box. This type of drone delivery has been proposed for years, but there are obvious problems. First, the things are *LOUD.* Second, all those blades spinning about would pose a hazard to people, pets, property. Third… have you *seen* city folk? Chances are real good that in the half second it takes to land and drop off, some “youths” would spring upon it, not only stealing the package but beating the drone to death with baseball bats. Because that’s where we are now, I guess.

Zipline has what looks like a decent answer to those, though. They still use a big quadcopter, but it lowers a  “gondola” up to 400 feet. The gondola has some basic maneuver capability, but no more than needed for translation; all the lift is provided by the main drone. This keeps the “loud” and “dangerous” far overhead. And with the “loud” further away, there’s less chance of Cultural Enrichment spotting it and ambushing it. Additionally, their 50-pound drones are *really* quiet due to special props.

Below is an interesting video on the topic, covering both systems. There is definite cringe… the  YouTube goes to Rwanda to see it in action, which is fine; he somehow finagled his way into the operations system, working to get an order processed and launched, which is fine, but his “I just saved a life!” schtick gave me a headache.

The military applications for this are obvious, but somehow were left completely out of the video. Never mind the dullsville of dropping off medical supplies or even ammunition… Zipline has figured out how to make a nearly silent drone delivery system. An inherently quiet drone with a sensor platform/bomb pod suspended 500 feet below it? You could likely drift along over a trench at night, the gondola maybe only ten feet up, dropping off small care packages as you go. The drone itself would be virtually silent, and so far up that it would be virtually impossible to shoot down with small arms. Ordnance that was set to go off via timer or remote activation would allow this to scatter bomblets around and set them all off at once. Or, heck, just pack the gondola with high explosives, napalm, thermite, WP, drift it right up to somebody or something your really don’t like and BLAMMO. Won’t hurt the drone none.

 

 Posted by at 6:48 pm
Mar 152023
 

Huh.

Surface changes observed on a Venusian volcano during the Magellan mission

In short, a volcano on Venus seemed to be active from 1990 to 1992. It could be that the mountain simply slumped, but more likely it that it blarped up some lava.

 

So if you decide to go for a hike on Venus, add “volcano” to the list of things to be careful of.

This would make Venus the third world in this solar system to have active volcanoes, after Earth and Io. But some form of geological activity is much more common, with ice geysers all over the place out among the larger moons.

 Posted by at 11:16 pm
Mar 072023
 

100 Million Years Unveiled: The Most Detailed Model of Earth’s Surface Ever

 

it’d be interesting to see what it says about the maximum mountain height in that time. When India slammed into Asia it drove up the Himalaya’s; doubtless to altitudes well above where they are today.

Reference: “Hundred million years of landscape dynamics from catchment to global scale” by Tristan Salles, Laurent Husson, Patrice Rey, Claire Mallard, Sabin Zahirovic, Beatriz Hadler Boggiani, Nicolas Coltice and Maëlis Arnould, 2 March 2023, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.add2541

 Posted by at 11:29 pm
Mar 062023
 

Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox

Yes, there are practical applications here for agricultural planning, water engineering, etc. But let’s face it: if this was affordable, this sort of thing would be used far more by people designing their own worlds for role playing games, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:59 pm
Mar 052023
 

Sir Sic (the Social Inequality Crusader) mocks a “college professor” who claims to have a mechanical engineering degree and who claims that rockets cannot work in a vacuum. Because he not only doesn’t understand basic science, he thinks it’s all a conspiracy.

The original video seems to date from quite some time ago; the version I found was uploaded to YouTube in 2017, and was apparently in existence some time prior to that. Unfortunately, no information is given about who this guy is, and whether he’s *actually* a college professor. Given the accent, he’s clearly not a westerner… which is a relief. There are already quite enough shrieking morons in American academia. And while I’m appalled at anyone claiming to be an engineer talking uneducated and factually wrong smack about science, it’s much less offensive to me if they are from a competing or even adversarial land. However, since he’s speaking *English,* it’s not impossible that he’s an enemy agent come to the US in order to dumb down American college students.

Another possibility is that he not only knows he’s full of BS, he’s actually trolling. Perhaps his purpose is to confuse the kiddies, and then get them to correct him. Teach them critical thinking and skepticism. Teach them to not trust The Man, but instead to apply the lessons of science and arrive at the facts. However, “he’s a moron” is a hell of a lot simpler explanation.

The difficulty with this guys world view is that he lives in a world where rockets exist in space and perform just fine. Of course the conspiracy theorist would argue that that’s all just a scam; there are no space rockets. But then the counter to *that* is “go outside at night and look up. You’ll see satellites.” And doubtless there are terribly clever and fundamentally stupid counters to *that.* Robert Goddard encountered just this sort of dumbassery more than a century ago when the New York Times mocked him for claiming that rockets would work in a vacuum. Not only did he have the math behind him, he actually demonstrated it. On ground level, by firing a rocket in a vacuum “track.” Nothing stopping people from replicating this today. A long length of plexiglas or polycarbonate clear pipe, with a model rocket motor at one end, pumped down to very low pressure, then fire off the rocket and watch it zip down the tube. Do that a couple times, both with vacuum and with air pressure. It’s a safe bet the rockets in vacuum will move faster.

This “professor” is an exemplar of “other ways of knowing.” I fully support his ambitions… for other countries.

 

 Posted by at 11:21 pm
Mar 022023
 

How about NO:

Government considered killing all domestic cats at start of Covid pandemic

Ministers briefly considered ordering all domestic cats in Britain to be killed amid fears they could be spreading Covid, a former health minister has said. … “In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?

Had that come to pass, what *should* have happened was that the British people *should* have risen up and overthrown their government, putting any official who was supportive of the idea on the same boats the invading migrants had come in on, and shoved them – and the invaders – out to sea.

 Posted by at 7:57 pm
Feb 232023
 

Turns out the AI are learning to code. Two immediate takeaways from that:

1) There goes another career path.

2) Dear Sweet Baby Jeebus, have none of these people ever watched *any* science fiction? Giving an AI that has a demonstrated lack of morality the ability to re-write itself is the very height of “I *told* you not to do that!” insanity.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

 Posted by at 7:10 am
Feb 172023
 

I have a *pile* of books to sell; the first of them are now on ebay. More will be added as I get around to it…

An Illustrated Guide to Space Warfare by David Hobbs, 1986

TC-188 Aviator’s Recognition Manual March 1977

FM-1-88 Aviator’s Recognition Manual July 1980

The Evolution of the Cruise Missile by Kenneth Werrell

FLYGPLANS-RITNINGAR 6 SWEDISH AIR FORCE

USS Iowa BB 61 Warship’s Data 3 First Edition 1986 Robert F SUMRALL

Aerofax Minigraph #14 Lockheed F-94 Starfire by Francillon & Keaveney 1986

Warplanes of the Future by Bill Gunston

“Box Kites to Bombers: The Story of the Glenn L. Martin Company”

American Secret Projects : Bombers, Attack and Anti-Submarine Aircraft 1945…

New Earths: Restructuring Earth and Other Planets by James Oberg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 9:14 pm