Seriously...my friends and I have been talking about the possibility of a forcible uprising in the Us in the forseeable future and we all agree that if it happens, it's going to be the right-leaning people revolting against the left, if the left comes into power (i'm sort of scared of a Kerry win, there's going to be a lot of gun nuts feeling very threatened) - the leftists here tend to be gun grabber and pacifist, two traits that wouldn't be very useful if they chose to revolt. To put it in one of my buddies words - "Extreme liberals are the kind of people you can walk up to and start pushing around, and rather than push back they'll say 'why are you pushing me? let's work out our differences!'". Not to mention if they did get their hands on a bunch of assault rifles and decide to start using them, the other conservative half of the populace (think NRA) would probably pick up THEIR guns and it would be a gigantic bloodbath.
on a tangent, we've also decided that Bush is going to blatantly steal the election if he needs to, because the worst that will happen is a bunch of protests, and then when those are bloodily ended, a massive exodus to canada. Hmm..now that I verbalize that, perhaps that's what he's planning on - have all the opposition just give up and leave a homicidal madman in unopposed control of the world's most milito-economically powerful country. Fun stuff.
[disclaimer - my political ideas are an odd mix of conservo-liberalism, my voting history is about 45/45/10 D/R/I, and i already put in my absentee ballot for a 3rd party - i REALLY don't want EITHER of those yahoos in office, and I can't choose who i intensely dislike less...so i just waffled.]
...doesn't mean he's the autocratic ruler of the FCC. Last time I checked, the committee was 5 Ds and 5 Rs. Michael is no more in control of the FCC than Colin was of the combined armed forces of the US. And like others have already said, just because Stern is screaming "nepotism" over and over again doesn't make it true. (Course, ALL politics is nepotic, but I don't think Powell's appointment was any more so than any other dealings on the Hill.)
Peter Griffin [testifying before a Senate commitee]: And that's when Clarence Thomas forced me into his chambers and showed me lewd pictures...
Judge: Mr. Griffin, we have indisputable evidence that not only have you never been in the same room as Clarence Thomas, you've never been in the same state. How do you respond to that?
Peter Griffin: Baba-booie baba-booie, Howard Stern's penis! Baba-booie, Baba-booie! Baba-boo..[several police officers wrestle him to the ground]
gotta love DVD subtitles, straight from the horse's mouth:D
Yeah, I know...I mostly posted originally because the show on Pluto was on in the background when I sat down and saw the story posted on the front page. Like the subject says...weirdly apropos.
That's true; I'm going with the statements of one of the engineers on the project who was interviewed for the TV show that was on. His words exactly were "not *particularly* radioactive" - the missile was designed to orbit around over the South Pacific for months on end, waiting for the command to go bomb the Soviets; while the reactor would slowly fall apart in the ram air flow, it wouldn't shed a horrible amount and leave a gaseous trail of death and devastation. Anyway - the nuclear rocket is only going to be operated in deep space, where I doubt the relatively small amount of radiation emitted would be much of an issue.
Again, you're absolutely right that the Tory-IIC only produced 156kN, but I was just speculating about applying some of the principles of that reactor to a larger, more powerful space rocket, not taking it as-designed and slapping it in a Saturn V.
Not really - the exhaust air wasn't radioactive, and while it's true the reactor itself was hot as hell, it was an afterthought to use it to devastate the terrain (incidentally, the shock waves generated by low-level mach 3+ flight would have done as much if not more damage). of course, shielding would make it acceptably safe, but since it was designed as a nuclear weapons delivery system, the reactor was left naked mostly to save a rather large amount of weight and allow a larger payload. it's true that the final Pluto design was pretty twisted, but the Tory reactor itself isn't a particularly unviable concept for a space rocket.
Re:Just the name brings back memories
on
Cray XT-3 Ships
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...nuclear weapons simulation. Personally, I don't see the point to that.
Would you rather we resume testing to insure the continued viability of the stockpile? I agree, humaity would be better off without the things, but if we're going to keep them around we might as well be as sure as we can that if we do ever have to use them, they're going to work; personally, I'd much rather see the DOE doing things like this that have trickle-down benefit instead of vaporizing small islands in the South Pacific.
discovery wings is at the moment running a show on Project Pluto, the government's project to develop a nuclear-powered ramjet in the 50s/60s. the research got up to successfully running the full-scale Tory-IIC 500Mw prototype for 5 minutes at 35,000lbs thrust. i realize a ramjet design is different from a thermal rocket design, but does anybody know why 'they' can't use the basic design of the tory reactor, homogenous uranium/beryllium oxide fuel tubes, at the heart of the rocket engine? seems an ideal situation, theres no graphite to ablate and AFAIK the oxide ceramics stand up pretty well to hydrogen.
At least IIRC...I think Feynman mentioned it in Surely You're Joking; I can't find a ref at the moment. I tried it once in X-Plane, and man, that pilot is made of ice - I ended up doing the Big Streak Across The Sky.
I wrote a paper on Type I superconductivity (appears in metals when cooled to a few K of zero; ceramics are a totally different beastie) in school and got diverted into reading up on ultracryogenics for a few weeks - apparently at temps that low, you get all sorts of problems like extreme brittleness and differing rates of thermal expansion, the latter being a fairly major issue in designing an ultracryogenic system. There's a good chance the CPU die, wires, and case would all tear away from each other and destroy the thing. Not to mention that lead superconducts at 7.196K; i wonder what resistanceless solder would do to a mobo...
True, not everybody has one, and they aren't perfectly secure, but FWIW having a passport does prove that you're a citizen of whatever country issued it, in effect a National ID Card without all the hoopla.
I already carry mine around with me anyway; perhaps a bad idea on account of loss/theft/what have you, but it HAS come in handy with some overzealous LE officers - "Well, this is just a drivers license, do you have any other proof of ID?"
I have done this, both at the stores and on friend's systems doing all sorts of things, and there is a distinct difference, or perhaps I should say I notice one, and it's more than subjective judgement. The colors tend to be a bit sharper and more even, and there's a VERY noticeable change with games (well, Ghost Recon at least - had a chance to play it on an analog LCD on a PC vs. a Apple 17", both 1280x1024...night and day). Don't even get me started on the image quality on the SGI 1600SW flatpanels I used in college, omfg...
I've been looking at 17" LCDs quite a bit lately, but all the inexpensive ones only have analog in - sort of defeats the purpose. I'd really like a 17" Apple LCD to match my G4, but those are still going for ~500 on ebay. Anybody know of any sub-$400, 17" LCDs with digital inputs?
actually, there was a design for a starship propulsion system that involved setting off nuclear bombs aagainst a plate to which the spacecraft was attached (via a long boom, of course), the idea being to sort of putt-putt-putt along. Unfortunately the comprehensive test ban treaty forbids nuclear explosions in space.
You said it yourself in your quote: "[T]he risk that the conventional explosives could be detonated" - nuclear weapons are designed very precisely, so much so that a random detonation of the explosive charges won't create the symmetrical compression wave needed to ignite the fission reaction, instead, the bomb will just explode and blow itself to pieces. It's called a "one-point-safe" design, a single point of detonation won't set off the weapon. Some bombs are even designed to be set off in this random fashion as a self-destruct mechanism if you don't want it to fall into enemy hands, but don't want to vaporize a few square miles.
nah, nukes are very geeky devices, they have three features that are very attractive to nerds - they use mechanics with the precision of a swiss watch, they manipulate some of the fundamental laws of nature, and they make REALLY big explosions. seriously though, the physics behind them is pretty cool, and the way they're designed to exploit said physics is no small feat. Morality aside, they're just really interesting, and arguably one of the great technological achievements of mankind (again, morality aside).
As a matter fact, I keep a 12ga pump for in-home defense; I use 4 rounds of #9 backed with a 00 shell though...personal preference I guess. I carry the 357 on the very rare occasions I'm going to a Really Bad Part Of The State (eg Bridgeport, where gangstas have 5-year olds murdered to prevent their testifying..), plus it makes a hell of an effect when i set up six gallon jugs of water all in a row and pop them, quite a splash:D
Seriously - get a 12-gauge shotgun and load it with beanbags or rubber buckshot/slugs. Anybody's who's seen Jackass: The Movie should remember the scene where Knoxville takes a beanbag in the gut and drops like a rock; that kind of reaction should suit the "non-injury" clause of the article just fine, while virtually guaranteeing stoppage of the intruder. If you want to be really sure, back up 3 or 4 beanbags with a round of 00 buck. (But then you have to train and be prepared for a lethal-force situation.)
Your story is the reason I carry a 6"bbl 357 Magnum loaded with 125 grain JHPs. It's a tad unwieldy, but the longer barrel allows for maximum muzzle energy - 4" and shorter just makes more noise than a 38Spl. I don't care how crazy psycho jacked-up my attacker is, if he's not wearing armor and I put two of those suckers into his chest at 25 yards, he is *not* getting back up - the expansion and massive shock inside the chest cavity is going to turn his heart and lungs into ground beef...instant bleedout. Marshall and Sanow are debatable, but just for reference, they cite a 98% single-shot-stop rate for that round.
9mm JHPs should have at least some of the same effect, but police can't load them, which causes the problems you mention - bunch of small holes, but the internal organs are by and large intact.
If i'm not mistaken ozone attacks the aromatic ring portion of odiferous compounds.
o3 can attack pretty much any double or triple bonds in organic compounds. the benzene ring has (pseudo-)double bonds, so it's susceptible, but it's certainly not the ONLY site ozonolysis can take place.
i suspect cameras and other recording devices were probably banned from the premises, that's a basic security procedure anywhere that's handling sensitive data, on computers or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously...my friends and I have been talking about the possibility of a forcible uprising in the Us in the forseeable future and we all agree that if it happens, it's going to be the right-leaning people revolting against the left, if the left comes into power (i'm sort of scared of a Kerry win, there's going to be a lot of gun nuts feeling very threatened) - the leftists here tend to be gun grabber and pacifist, two traits that wouldn't be very useful if they chose to revolt. To put it in one of my buddies words - "Extreme liberals are the kind of people you can walk up to and start pushing around, and rather than push back they'll say 'why are you pushing me? let's work out our differences!'". Not to mention if they did get their hands on a bunch of assault rifles and decide to start using them, the other conservative half of the populace (think NRA) would probably pick up THEIR guns and it would be a gigantic bloodbath.
on a tangent, we've also decided that Bush is going to blatantly steal the election if he needs to, because the worst that will happen is a bunch of protests, and then when those are bloodily ended, a massive exodus to canada. Hmm..now that I verbalize that, perhaps that's what he's planning on - have all the opposition just give up and leave a homicidal madman in unopposed control of the world's most milito-economically powerful country. Fun stuff.
[disclaimer - my political ideas are an odd mix of conservo-liberalism, my voting history is about 45/45/10 D/R/I, and i already put in my absentee ballot for a 3rd party - i REALLY don't want EITHER of those yahoos in office, and I can't choose who i intensely dislike less...so i just waffled.]
...unfortunately it's also very true.
...doesn't mean he's the autocratic ruler of the FCC. Last time I checked, the committee was 5 Ds and 5 Rs. Michael is no more in control of the FCC than Colin was of the combined armed forces of the US. And like others have already said, just because Stern is screaming "nepotism" over and over again doesn't make it true. (Course, ALL politics is nepotic, but I don't think Powell's appointment was any more so than any other dealings on the Hill.)
Peter Griffin [testifying before a Senate commitee]: And that's when Clarence Thomas forced me into his chambers and showed me lewd pictures...
:D
Judge: Mr. Griffin, we have indisputable evidence that not only have you never been in the same room as Clarence Thomas, you've never been in the same state. How do you respond to that?
Peter Griffin: Baba-booie baba-booie, Howard Stern's penis! Baba-booie, Baba-booie! Baba-boo..[several police officers wrestle him to the ground]
gotta love DVD subtitles, straight from the horse's mouth
Yeah, I know...I mostly posted originally because the show on Pluto was on in the background when I sat down and saw the story posted on the front page. Like the subject says...weirdly apropos.
That's true; I'm going with the statements of one of the engineers on the project who was interviewed for the TV show that was on. His words exactly were "not *particularly* radioactive" - the missile was designed to orbit around over the South Pacific for months on end, waiting for the command to go bomb the Soviets; while the reactor would slowly fall apart in the ram air flow, it wouldn't shed a horrible amount and leave a gaseous trail of death and devastation. Anyway - the nuclear rocket is only going to be operated in deep space, where I doubt the relatively small amount of radiation emitted would be much of an issue.
Again, you're absolutely right that the Tory-IIC only produced 156kN, but I was just speculating about applying some of the principles of that reactor to a larger, more powerful space rocket, not taking it as-designed and slapping it in a Saturn V.
Not really - the exhaust air wasn't radioactive, and while it's true the reactor itself was hot as hell, it was an afterthought to use it to devastate the terrain (incidentally, the shock waves generated by low-level mach 3+ flight would have done as much if not more damage). of course, shielding would make it acceptably safe, but since it was designed as a nuclear weapons delivery system, the reactor was left naked mostly to save a rather large amount of weight and allow a larger payload. it's true that the final Pluto design was pretty twisted, but the Tory reactor itself isn't a particularly unviable concept for a space rocket.
...nuclear weapons simulation. Personally, I don't see the point to that.
Would you rather we resume testing to insure the continued viability of the stockpile? I agree, humaity would be better off without the things, but if we're going to keep them around we might as well be as sure as we can that if we do ever have to use them, they're going to work; personally, I'd much rather see the DOE doing things like this that have trickle-down benefit instead of vaporizing small islands in the South Pacific.
1a
2
discovery wings is at the moment running a show on Project Pluto, the government's project to develop a nuclear-powered ramjet in the 50s/60s. the research got up to successfully running the full-scale Tory-IIC 500Mw prototype for 5 minutes at 35,000lbs thrust. i realize a ramjet design is different from a thermal rocket design, but does anybody know why 'they' can't use the basic design of the tory reactor, homogenous uranium/beryllium oxide fuel tubes, at the heart of the rocket engine? seems an ideal situation, theres no graphite to ablate and AFAIK the oxide ceramics stand up pretty well to hydrogen.
...but it said "For Peter" on it. So you must've thought it was "from" you, so you didn't...you know, it's just easier to call you stupid.
At least IIRC...I think Feynman mentioned it in Surely You're Joking; I can't find a ref at the moment. I tried it once in X-Plane, and man, that pilot is made of ice - I ended up doing the Big Streak Across The Sky.
I wrote a paper on Type I superconductivity (appears in metals when cooled to a few K of zero; ceramics are a totally different beastie) in school and got diverted into reading up on ultracryogenics for a few weeks - apparently at temps that low, you get all sorts of problems like extreme brittleness and differing rates of thermal expansion, the latter being a fairly major issue in designing an ultracryogenic system. There's a good chance the CPU die, wires, and case would all tear away from each other and destroy the thing. Not to mention that lead superconducts at 7.196K; i wonder what resistanceless solder would do to a mobo...
True, not everybody has one, and they aren't perfectly secure, but FWIW having a passport does prove that you're a citizen of whatever country issued it, in effect a National ID Card without all the hoopla.
I already carry mine around with me anyway; perhaps a bad idea on account of loss/theft/what have you, but it HAS come in handy with some overzealous LE officers - "Well, this is just a drivers license, do you have any other proof of ID?"
I have done this, both at the stores and on friend's systems doing all sorts of things, and there is a distinct difference, or perhaps I should say I notice one, and it's more than subjective judgement. The colors tend to be a bit sharper and more even, and there's a VERY noticeable change with games (well, Ghost Recon at least - had a chance to play it on an analog LCD on a PC vs. a Apple 17", both 1280x1024...night and day). Don't even get me started on the image quality on the SGI 1600SW flatpanels I used in college, omfg...
I've been looking at 17" LCDs quite a bit lately, but all the inexpensive ones only have analog in - sort of defeats the purpose. I'd really like a 17" Apple LCD to match my G4, but those are still going for ~500 on ebay. Anybody know of any sub-$400, 17" LCDs with digital inputs?
actually, there was a design for a starship propulsion system that involved setting off nuclear bombs aagainst a plate to which the spacecraft was attached (via a long boom, of course), the idea being to sort of putt-putt-putt along. Unfortunately the comprehensive test ban treaty forbids nuclear explosions in space.
You said it yourself in your quote: "[T]he risk that the conventional explosives could be detonated" - nuclear weapons are designed very precisely, so much so that a random detonation of the explosive charges won't create the symmetrical compression wave needed to ignite the fission reaction, instead, the bomb will just explode and blow itself to pieces.
It's called a "one-point-safe" design, a single point of detonation won't set off the weapon. Some bombs are even designed to be set off in this random fashion as a self-destruct mechanism if you don't want it to fall into enemy hands, but don't want to vaporize a few square miles.
'Best before November 1959.' Damn it, Bob. There were plenty of brand new bombs, but you had to go for that retro 50's charm!
nah, nukes are very geeky devices, they have three features that are very attractive to nerds - they use mechanics with the precision of a swiss watch, they manipulate some of the fundamental laws of nature, and they make REALLY big explosions. seriously though, the physics behind them is pretty cool, and the way they're designed to exploit said physics is no small feat. Morality aside, they're just really interesting, and arguably one of the great technological achievements of mankind (again, morality aside).
As a matter fact, I keep a 12ga pump for in-home defense; I use 4 rounds of #9 backed with a 00 shell though...personal preference I guess. I carry the 357 on the very rare occasions I'm going to a Really Bad Part Of The State (eg Bridgeport, where gangstas have 5-year olds murdered to prevent their testifying..), plus it makes a hell of an effect when i set up six gallon jugs of water all in a row and pop them, quite a splash :D
Seriously - get a 12-gauge shotgun and load it with beanbags or rubber buckshot/slugs. Anybody's who's seen Jackass: The Movie should remember the scene where Knoxville takes a beanbag in the gut and drops like a rock; that kind of reaction should suit the "non-injury" clause of the article just fine, while virtually guaranteeing stoppage of the intruder. If you want to be really sure, back up 3 or 4 beanbags with a round of 00 buck. (But then you have to train and be prepared for a lethal-force situation.)
Your story is the reason I carry a 6"bbl 357 Magnum loaded with 125 grain JHPs. It's a tad unwieldy, but the longer barrel allows for maximum muzzle energy - 4" and shorter just makes more noise than a 38Spl. I don't care how crazy psycho jacked-up my attacker is, if he's not wearing armor and I put two of those suckers into his chest at 25 yards, he is *not* getting back up - the expansion and massive shock inside the chest cavity is going to turn his heart and lungs into ground beef...instant bleedout. Marshall and Sanow are debatable, but just for reference, they cite a 98% single-shot-stop rate for that round.
9mm JHPs should have at least some of the same effect, but police can't load them, which causes the problems you mention - bunch of small holes, but the internal organs are by and large intact.
If i'm not mistaken ozone attacks the aromatic ring portion of odiferous compounds.
o3 can attack pretty much any double or triple bonds in organic compounds. the benzene ring has (pseudo-)double bonds, so it's susceptible, but it's certainly not the ONLY site ozonolysis can take place.
i suspect cameras and other recording devices were probably banned from the premises, that's a basic security procedure anywhere that's handling sensitive data, on computers or not.