I have not yet heard how much it will cost me to buy copies of my new book for signing. But for estimating purposes I think I’ll probably have to charge something like $50 each plus media mail postage. I don’t want to guess what it’d cost to ship them internationally. Yikes. But as I did with the SR-71 book, signed copies would likely have signed 18×24 prints as a bonus… in this case, probably 3 or 4. Subjects as yet undetermined. I’m far from taking orders, but I’m interested in getting a read on the level of interest. If spending $50 or more on a signed copy sounds like something you’d want to do, send me an email:
This looks a bit like a skit… it’s kinda too “perfect.” The acting seems shaky and staged. And yet… I dunno, the world is full of whackaloons these days. Context would be handy. I wonder if this was created as a training video for aircrew?
I haven’t flown in years. I used to love it; even got myself a pilots license. But then 9-11 and the subsequent security theater came along. And since the Commie Cough floated over and turned *everything* into garbage, it sure looks like air travel has become not only laborious, time consuming, expensive and physically uncomfortable (my knees were typically mashed up against the seat ahead of me *before* they slammed them back), it now seems like far too many flights are equipped with violent or screaming entitled loonies.
The transonic flight regime can be one of the most difficult for aircraft. Drag goes up nearly exponentially as you approach Mach 1, which is why it’s expensive to fly at or just below the speed of sound; in principle, it can be more fuel efficient to fly *faster* than sound. And some low-supersonic transport designed were studied back int he 70’s and thereabouts, designed to move at up to about Mach 1.4 But as with every Really Cool Thing, the additional costs and complexities (including sonic booms rattling the suburbs below) ended up trashing the idea of slightly-supersonic transports.
The interesting thing is… a distinctly subsonic aircraft can move, at least in part, faster than the speed of sound relative to the air going by it. An airplane with an air speed of, say, Mach 0.8 needs to shove air out of the way. Air needs to flow around fuselages, wings and engine nacelles; by flying around these structures, the air – relative tot he structure – has to speed up… and then slow down again as the structure tapers off. This can often mean that air is flowing at or even beyond the speed of sound in localized regions. if you know what to look for, and if the lighting conditions are just right, you can actually make out the standing shock waves from airflow that has been shoved past Mach 1.
“Real world” shockwaves are difficult to see. They can be seen far more clearly in wind tunnels where the lighting can be carefully controlled.
On the one hand, this setup is fairly huge. On the other hand, the end result looks pretty claustrophobic… especially if it had the planned 24 inhabitants. Such a structure would make a nice add-on to a house; useful as a damned quiet rec room or some such. Neither the video nor their catalog seem to give the cost of this setup, but I imagine we’re looking at around a million bucks of stuff and labor here.
By the title, you might think that “ethnomathematics” might be a means to count or calculate the number of people in this or that ethnic group. Nope.
Originally it seems to have been the study of how different cultural groups did math or at least understood the concepts of numbers and counting. But recently it has taken a far more sinister turn, and has become the nonsensical notion that mathematics is somehow subject to ethnicity, that this ethnic group has a different set of math than others. That multiplication and division and simple addition are different from one group to another. And that some primitive form of math that struggles to count to ten is somehow relevant in the modern world and that limited educational time and resources should be splurged on teaching kids ineffective, outdated and really rather useless ways of doing math purely to make some people feel good about their mythical past. It is in effect, if not necessarily in intent (though I would not bet against intent), a means by which a population can be rendered incompetent to even *understand* their own technological underpinnings.
So today I signed the contract for my third book. This one will be a little different than the previous two: rather than covering one or two specific aircraft types and their evolution, competitors and derivatives, this one will cover a *category* of aircraft. Details later.
Sometimes you just need a good actor. And if what you’re shooting for is “holy frak that’s creepy,” a good actor who is literally dying at the time of filming can be incredibly effective. Such as Julian beck here in “Poltergeist 2.” Thirty years ago this bugged the bejeebers out of me, and it *still* works.
I recently stumbled across some vids on youTube showing something I didn’t know I needed: networked radio communications that don’t need cell networks or subscriptions. They seem to be basically dinky encrypted radios used for text messaging. These would be handy in the event that cell networks go down or get mangled or overloaded, or for communicating where cell networks simply aren’t available. They look like snazzy devices… and for the life of me I can’t seem to actually find commercial version of them, only hand-made units. These things seem like they’d be popular as hell; the cost of parts seems to be well under $50 so you’d think a proper manufacturer could sell them for a hundred bucks a pop and make a fortune. So… where are they?
