Cyanotype print update

 blather, cyanotype blueprints, drawings, drawings&documents, news  No Responses »
Nov 152012
 

Until a few days ago, it had been many weeks (a couple of months, I believe) since I’d last received an order for one of the cyanotype prints. But with Up Goer 5, there were a few orders that came in all at once. I was short on some of them, so I’m working on printing up new ones at this time. I plan on shipping them all early next week, latest.

Also: I’ve been experimenting with alternate paper. Most paper either turns to mush or curls up and dies when it gets wet, as blueprints made this fashion must (they must first be painted with a water-based photoreactive dye or ink, and then mus be hosed down). I’ve been using watercolor paper to this point, as it stands up to the process; but it’s not practical for larger format prints, as it’s not readily available in larger sizes. And while it looks great framed hanging on a wall, it’s not historically representative. Today I’ve been testing out several different vellum papers, and have been having promising results. Velum has the dual advantage of being available on rolls, and being historically accurate. So at some point in the future, larger-format cyanotype blueprints will be made available on vellum. The specific target is of course the six-foot-long Saturn V, but others are possible as well. The current infrastructure I have on hand will permit up to a bit short of 2 foot by 3 foot. The only thing preventing *that* right now is a lack of ability to procure 2X3 transparencies… but I am assured that that ability is coming.

 Posted by at 2:36 pm

Secession Legality

 blather, news, politics  8 Responses »
Nov 152012
 

Been lots of talk about states seceding lately. Mostly I assume that this is just a bunch of people blowing off steam, though the sentiment is understandable. I take no real position on it other than it would be unfortunate if it came to pass. My point in bringing it up is the question of legality of secession.

On the one hand, I’ve heard/read a lot of people over the years claim that secession is illegal, that “we fought a war over that.” But… we didn’t. The Confederate Slave States of America had seceded successfully. They’d gotten away with it. Home free. Until… South Carolina attacked Fort Sumer and started the War of Southern Aggression, and they got their butts handed to ’em. The war was not because states seceded from the US; it was because they seceded and then waged war on the US.

So, where is secession declared illegal? That it is not explicitly called out as a right of the states does not make it illegal; to be illegal, something has to be clearly defined as such in the law. And while the Declaration of Independence does not have the force of law that the Constitution has, what it says on the subject is pretty clear:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

In short: it would seem that secession is not something to be taken lightly, but neither is it something that cannot ever be allowed. So where does the “secession is illegal” idea come from?

In any event, the numbers of signers to the petitions is, really trivially small. One hundred thousand Texans had signed? Yeah, well, the population of Texas is about 25.6 *million.*

Still: having grown up there, I’d love to see Illinois secede from Cook County. Indiana could secede from Lake County. The Chicago and Gary could form a unified corruptocracy, but would not be able to enforce their whackjob laws and regulations on the rest of the states. Everybody’s happy!

 Posted by at 1:43 pm

Is today the Last Twinkie Day?

 blather, dumbassery, Forward!, news  1 Response »
Nov 152012
 

Hostess to liquidate if bakers’ strike continues through Thursday

The Bakers Union represent 5,000 of Hostess’ 18,000 employees. They are upset because:

The new contract cuts salaries across the company by 8% in the first year of the five-year agreement. Salaries then bump up 3% in the next three years and 1% in the final year.

Hostess has also reduced its pension obligations and its contribution to the employees’ health care plan. In exchange, the company offered concessions including a 25% equity stake for workers and the inclusion of two union representatives on an eight-member board of directors.

So, the union is upset about an 8% pay cut, and to protest, they are going to enforce a 100% pay cut… not only for themselves, but everyone else. If the union goes through with their extortion and kills Hostess, one can only hope that a class action lawsuit by the *other* employees for lost wages can be brought.

Importantly: the Hostess brand names – Wonder Bread, Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Zingers, Ding-Dongs, etc. – will probably get snapped up at auction. There will presumably be a substantial delay as Twinkie production is shifted from the current Hostess factories to other, presumably non-union and not unlikely non-American, factories elsewhere. Expect changes in recipes and whatnot.

 Posted by at 12:55 pm

“Europa”

 science fiction, youtube  1 Response »
Nov 152012
 

Some trailers are coming out for the movie “Europa” (previously mentioned here more than a year ago) due for release in 2013:

[youtube VBDXBfylo_k]

Now, it *looks* really pretty good.. Europa looks like Europa, Jupiter looks like Jupiter, the spacecraft, from what I can see, looks like a spacecraft.

The story, from what I can tell, is about a privately funded mission to Europa that winds up finding life of some kind (this being a movie, you can bet it’s Scary Life). I hope they deal – reasonably – with the fact that Europa is in a scary, scary radiation environment; stepping outside in a normal space suit would be a death sentence.

Also posted is 14 minutes worth of silent video, for what it’s worth:

[youtube zIwAQ6Ncn1w]

 Posted by at 10:42 am

Saturn/Nova Comparison

 art, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  1 Response »
Nov 142012
 

A 1962 NASA graphic showing the Saturn I, Saturn V and one or the more stereotypical of the Nova configurations to scale. Note that they all show direct-landing Apollo spacecraft… an extra stage, and no LEM. The Nova is similar to the “Saturn C-8” configuration. Note that the second stage of the Nova is larger in diameter and almost as long as the first stage of the Saturn C-5, and would have made the basis of a fairly substantial launch vehicle on it’s own.

 Posted by at 1:11 am

Driving In Russia

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Nov 132012
 

Thirteen minutes of piss-poor driving, mechanical failures and pure bad luck:

[youtube ZPkE2hHneP4]

In the US, dashboard cameras are a rarity, generally only found in police cars and the like. Let’s face it: what is there to film on the drive to WalMart? But it is my vague understanding that dashcams are quite a bit more popular in Russia (and much of Asia). Part of that may be, I suspect, that the roads seem to be more entertaining. But I’m led to believe that the real reason is exemplified at about the 12:05 mark, where someone *intentionally* throws themselves onto the hood of a car (in this case, very slowly and very gently). Why? Insurance fraud. I’ve heard it’s rampant over yonder.

UPDATE: A reader suggested by email that I link up some of the dashcams that Amazon sells. I’ve never bothered to look up such things before; it appears that prices are all over the place. So, a range:
———-

————

————

———–

————

———
I guess the days when “digital video camera” meant “really expensive” are long since passed. Still, I imagine that the resolution on the cameras above is probably not generally spectacular… good enough for the insurance company and YouTube, I suppose. If you want high-rez, you probably need something like these:
——–

————–

———–

———-
And if you’re of a mind to buy a dashcam but don’t see the one you want, just search for it here, ahem:

Say: does anyone know how to format a blog post like this so the Amazon ad/link thingies are in a nice neat grid, rather than a long space-consuming line?

 Posted by at 5:42 pm

Crash of the planets

 awesomeness, blather, reshaping the world, science, science fiction, youtube  4 Responses »
Nov 132012
 

A comet or asteroid hitting the Earth would be interesting. Enough so that this scenario has been played out by computer animators for years, with highly variable results in terms of accuracy and quality. Vastly less likely than getting whacked by a comet or asteroid would be getting whacked by a *planet,* for reasons which I hope I don’t need to go into. As a result, this scenario has been simulated far less often, and usually fairly badly. However, there are two such simulations I’ve seen that seem to be both reasonably accurate and visually “appealing” (well, as much so as the depiction of an event which would wipe out all life on the planet, including the extremophile bacteria kilometers below the surface can be).

This one comes fromt he Canadian/Japanese documentary series “Miracle Planet.” The show discussed the heavy bombardment phase of the formation of the Earth, some four or so billion years ago. At the time the inner solar system was lousy not only with comets and asteroids, but planetoids and minor worlds in vast numbers. On occasion, such worldlets would hit the inner planets, such as Earth. To illustrate this, the documentarians simulated a 500-km-wide asteroid hitting the modern Earth in the Pacific off Japan:

[youtube zc4HL_-VT2Y]

The second one is a typical Youtube video… cropped from a longer video, the audio replaced with music, and then  re-posted without proper attribution or context. Feh. Anyway, it appears to show the impact of the hypothesized Mars-size planet Thea with the *very* early, somewhat smaller Earth. The result of this impact was the splashing out into space the material that would become the Moon. While this event has been animated a number of times, this one seems to be unique in that it shows the Earth reacting  to Thea *before* impact. And this is as it should be:  on the scale of worlds, the hardest stone has less apparent structural strength than water; materials properties play no meaningful role in determining the form of the stone… just gravity and pressure. So when a world the size of Mars gets within a few thousand miles of the surface of Earth,  the surface will respond. The gravity of Thea will pull *upwards* as seen from the point of view of an unfortunate observer on the surface of Earth directly below Thea. Of course, at no point is the upward pull of Theaa match for the gravity of Earth. If the surface gravity of Thea is, say, .35 g’s, while the surface gravity of Earth is 1.0 g’s, then right at the moment of impact, the gravity felt be someone on the surface of Earth would be .65 g’s.

However, it’s not *exactly* just that simple. As Thea approaches and the surface gravity decreases, the shape of the planet will deform. Gravity on the Thea-facing side will be a little lower than normal; gravity on the anti-Thea side will be a little higher than normal. The world will seek a gravitational balance, resulting in an egg-shape, pointy end pointing at Thea. Since this will be  process that occurs over a span of only hours or even minutes, the way this egg-shaping will be done is by the magma flowing as a vast tide, and the solid surface simply cracking along a million fissures. The magma won’t be sucked out of the ground by Thea’s gravity, but if you make cracks in the surface hundreds of miles long and dozens of miles deep, the magma will come out of it’s own accord due to the subsurface pressure. From space, this will have the approximate appearance shown here.

[youtube zZD1R54r3Tc]

If the impact velocity is 25,000 miles per hour, and Thea is 4000 miles in diameter, then the time it takes from the moment it first touches Earth to the moment the last little bit of the far side of Thea passes that impact point – and is swallowed up by the ruined form of Earth – is 0.16 hours… a bit short of ten minutes. The impact alone, never mind the conversion of Earth into an incandescent blob that does not even remotely resemble a sphere, would be a long-drawn-out horror movie, far longer than the few seconds Hollywood might grant the event.

 Posted by at 11:54 am
 Older Entries  Newer Entries