If you ever think of yourself as a badass, compare yourself to Basil Plumley and cringe in shame.
Plumley was the guy played by Sam Elliot in “We Were Soldiers,” the 2002 movie dramatization of the battle if Ia Drang in Viet Nam. This was a region of some importance in my family history… had things gone slightly differently there a week or so earlier, you would not be reading this blog because the author would have never been.
Every now and then, like most people I suppose, I get well-meaning emails trying to convert me to this or that. I just got this one:
A woman was asked by a coworker, “What
is it like to be a Christian?”
The coworker replied, “It is like
being a pumpkin. God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and
washes all the dirt off of you. Then He cuts the top off and
scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt,
hate, and greed. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts
His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see.”
This was passed on to me by
another pumpkin. Now it’s your turn to pass it to other pumpkins.
Umm. AAaaaaarrrrrgh, as Charlie Brown would say.
Apart from “we found the Book of Genesis encoded in the cosmic background radiation,” I’m not sure what would convert me to one of them there middle eastern religions… but I’m pretty sure that analogies that basically say that being a Christian is akin to being turned into a mindless drooling moron won’t appeal to me. I’m left to wonder: for those Christians (or indeed any religious types) in the audience, does this sort of little homily work for you? For those minimally- and non-religious in the audience, does this kinda creep you out too? Conversely, does this creep out the Christians and seem appealing to the nons?
I’m curious, in short, whether the religious and non-religious types just happen to see this in very different lights. If so, it might be telling. If, as I hope, most people get a sense of Ick from the parable, then I can rest easy knowing that the fault lay with whoever originally wrote it.
A question was asked how to get Mach five air flow through a wind tunnel. Getting supersonic airflow through a tunnel is conceptually straightforward. If you have a high pressure (typically 1.4 times the outside pressure, or higher) gas source, such as a gas cylinder, and you simply poke a hole in it, the air flowing from the high pressure to the low pressure will flow right at the speed of sound. If you mount a nozzle downstream of the hole (the “throat”), the gas will accelerate, trading thermal energy for kinetic (the gas can get cryogenically cold and even begin to liquify if the difference between upstream and downstream pressures is high enough).
By adding upstream heaters, you can make the gas *very* hot at the throat. The hotter the gas, the higher the speed of sound, and thus the higher the velocity. Additionally, the hotter the gas, the longer it takes to cool down to cryogenic temperatures, thus the faster you can accelerate the gas. This is the basic process used at the NACA-Langley “Hypersonic Continuous Flow Facility.” This facility also adds a whole lot of compressor power, which allows the system to run essentially non-stop. Smaller facilities would use a compressor to pump up tanks; when the tanks blow down, the test is over.
HAs anyone every seen anything more on this 1947 supersonic transport concept, published in Life magazine? Many years ago I saw either the same painting, or a very similar one, reproduced in a NACA report that basically just *mentioned* the aircraft and gave the impression that it was one of their ideas, but I’ve never seen anything firm about who designed it. NACA? Lockheed? Boeing? Life magazine itself? Some university?
Any pointers appreciated.
Are we living in a massively complex computer simulation? Far from being an idea restricted to stoner bull sessions and sci-fi stories, this question is now receiving attention from the physics community, who are trying to develop theories and tests which could show that we are, if we are.
I’m agnostic on the question. Partly because of a lack of evidence, partly because of a lack of caring. If we are… so what? Doesn’t change things, to my mind. Sure it’d be interesting, but the mortgage would still have to get paid.
It’s a question that has received a lot of minimal-thinking thought over the past few years, with advocates on both sides occasionally crankign out some pretty lame arguments. Here are two I’ve actually heard:
1) “We’re living in a sim, because that’s the only explanation for psychic phenomena, ghosts and whatnot.” Sure, if this is a simulation, such things could be programmed in… or could be programming bugs. Or… the same counter to claims of the psychic that works outside of the sim hypothesis: there are no psychic phenomena, people are just makin’ stuff up or misinterpreting things.
2) “We’re not living in a sim, because who would make a world that’s so *boring?*” which misses several distinct possibilities:
A) The sim is building towards a particular event or character. For all we know, this is just a giant simulation of the pre-history of Batman, who will arise in 2040, fight for justice for 30 years, get killed, and then the simulation will end.
B) The sim universe is a vastly interesting place. Just not *here.* We’re filler.
C) The sim universe is a vastly interesting place. Just not to *you.*
D) The goal wasn’t interestingness itself, but to simply test what a universe would be like with this particular set of physical laws. We and our environment weren’t specifically and intentionally planned, we just emerged from the complexities of the coding. This would be virtually indistinguishable from “reality” in terms of “meaning.” We’re just an emergent property of the system, whether the system is “real” or “virtual.”
And if we are in a sim, one has to wonder about our own future in simulation programming. To us, this simulated reality is fully real (though I have doubts about Paris Hilton). A century from now, might our own computers be powerful enough to simulate entire universes? And would those universes eventually be capable of simulating their own? It’s a potential infinite series downward… and possibly upwards. If we’re a sim, there’d be no good reason to assume that we are a simulation created by a real system… we might be a simulation in a simulation in a simulation in a …
Generally when someone holds forth about the U.N. taxing American citizen directly, you can be assured of some real weapons-grade paranoid ramblings. Still, there’s some stuff in this article by former Democrat operative Dick Morris that may be worth some pondering:
If you haven’t seen Tard, you really should. I’ve never seen a more unhappy lookin’ critter *ever.*
They also feature fan art, including this instant classic:
Ack.
One wonders why:
1) The home owner can’t simply remove all food from the house, shut down the utilities and start fumigating the place for bugs
or
2) Invite forty or fifty of her best friends over for a party. Squatter winds up being dumped unceremoniously into the street.
or
3) Call the cops and have the squatter arrested for B&E
Wow. Just… wow.
Short form: NASA had an astronaut lined up to ride a Soyuz to the ISS in 2014… but Sarah Brightman ponied up $51 million, and now she’s going in his place.
OK… can we please get our own space launch capability now?
Porcupine Reservoir seems to be damn near drained dry:
Compare these shots to THESE shots from 2008, when the reservoir appeared to be full. But there’s THIS one from 2010, which seems to show a similarly low level.
As a bit of interestingness, a broken boat is sitting on what should be the bottom of the lake, but far from the edge of the water:
Perspective makes thing a little difficult to gauge, but the boat is something like 20 or 30 feet below the max water level.
There is still water flowing into the reservoir, just not very much:
