Re:Creepy...
on
Book on NR-1
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· Score: 2, Insightful
They seem to get it together somehow. A good illustration is to watch aircraft being parked as they land on an aircraft carrier. When a highly trained Annapolis officer taxis an airplane toward the edge of a wet, rolling deck until he's about 10 feet out over the water and looks back for a 19-year-old kid to tell him with hand gestures when to turn, he seems to be showing a certain confidence.
Long ago when Miami Beach was getting ready to host a Republican Convention, Time Magazine did a story about the preparations. The reporter asked an elderly lady sitting on a hotel porch if she thought there would be an influx of prostitutes.
So your kid is safe from vaccination side effects because he's not vaccinated, and he's safe from chicken pox because most of the other kids are vaccinated...cool move.
rj
Interesting...I'm 50% Irish, no red hair in the family, but I do take a pretty robust dose of dental anesthesia. Wonder if they correlated ethnic backgrounds in general.
There was a run of just that sort of thing in the 1970s.
The chemical toilets on airplanes are emptied by connecting a big hose to a fitting on the bottom of the airplane, opening its valve, and pumping the contents out. The valve has a rubber seal, and the toilets occasionally collect small metal objects -- jewelry, coins, keyrings, OJ's knife and so forth -- which can damage the seal on the way out.
So once in a while the seal springs a leak, and since the airplane is pressurized in flight by as much as 8 pounds per square inch, a lot of the water can leak out. At jet cruising altitudes it immediately freezes, and a ball of ice collects on the outside of the airplane. Then when it lets down into warmer air, the ice gets dislodged and, well, bombs away.
After three or four of these incidents over a couple of years, the industry worked out some design changes and inspection requirements that seem to have pretty well stopped it. But if one hits your property, you should immediately note the time and location, put the biggest chunk in a baggie, and stick it in your freezer for proof. You can count on a rather nice settlement from the airline, especially if keeping it quiet is part of the deal.
rj
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
Well, yes, he suspended habeas corpus...and the Constitution said he could. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2:
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
The heliopause is the limit of the sun's contribution to particle flux. The sun spews out a constant flow of particles of various kinds, called the solar wind. As you go out, they naturally get more and more sparse.
At the same time, there are a certain number of particles just flying around free in space, with a (very roughly) uniform density all over the universe.
The heliopause marks the points where the density of solar particles has declined to that of the free-space particles. Inside it, most of the particles you see are from the sun; outside it, most of them come from elsewhere.
The solar gravity does indeed reach farther. The Oort Cloud is made up of objects so far out that while they're basically orbiting the sun, they're also affected by the gravity of other stars in the "neighborhood". Once in a while this disturbs one of them enough that it falls into the inner solar system and we get a comet.
They already did, in a way...Carl Sagan wanted to release the record to the public but couldn't, because NASA wouldn't spring for the rights. They got to put it on the spacecraft for free, but some of the copyright holders wouldn't allow more than the single use.
>The only requirement the computer giant has made of the city is that New Orleans let Microsoft use it as a model for marketing the system to other governmental bodies once it is up and running, said Greg Meffert, the city's technology officer.
Well, Maynard Hill has records like 500 kilometers in a straight line, 33 hours duration, and 8 kilometers of altitude gain to his credit...that crazy dreamer must have one hell of a backyard.
There are some gotchas there. In the Southern California earthquake of 1971 (think that's the right year) much of the San Fernando Valley moved three feet. The legal costs of keeping property lines fixed to coordinates would have been atrocious (I'll swim in my end of the pool if I damn well please, pal...); as it was, they just let the property lines move with the land.
In writing the manual for some civil engineering software back in the 80s, I found that there are some very oddly laid-out survey markers out there, especially in the plains states. The client explained that most of these were laid in the mid-19th century, which was the peak period of American alcohol consumption.
Varying degrees of accuracy in the replies to this...I'll try to clarify a little.
I'll agree with the comments on "donuts on a rope"; the reported phenomenon is about the appearance of certain contrails, not the pattern of shock wave intersections in the exhaust flame known as "shock diamonds".
The Blackbird engines are turbojets, not turbofans. Turbofans have a fan that extends outside the combustion gas flow and moves "bypass air" around the engine. You can see the fan on most airliners; it's right at the point where the diameter of the engine housing abruptly decreases. The Blackbird achieves a similar effect by enclosing the engine in a complex-shaped duct that moves bypass air by means of a phenomenon called "entrainment". It takes a lot of chalk-pushing and arm-waving to make the principle clear, but the effect is to generate a lot of heat energy in a relatively small airflow and then couple it into a large flow. At full speed only about 15% of the thrust appears on the engine mount; the rest is supplied by a nonuniform pressure distribution on the housing. There's nothing new about entrainment, by the way; it's also what combines the steam and the smoke on the way out the smokestack of a steam locomotive.
There are no separate ramjets, or ramjet "components", and there is no such thing as "turning on ramjet mode". A ramjet is simply a jet engine with no compressor or turbine, which has the disadvantage that it doesn't begin to work until it's going fast enough to ram a lot of air into the intake; consequently, a pure ramjet can't take off under its own power. However in a turbojet engine, the amount of compression required from the compressor decreases as speed increases. At supersonic speeds the compressor becomes totally unloaded, and basically just turns in the breeze; the engine is then functioning as a ramjet. In other words, ramjet behavior is what any jet engine does when it's really hauling ass.
In both ramjets and turbojets, the flow through the engine is always subsonic, decelerating as much as necessary in the compressor or ram section and then accelerating on the way out the tailpipe. There are all manner of aerodynamic and thermodynamic demons that set to work when you try to burn fuel supersonically, and the scramjet is an experimental approach to doing this. It's been an active development objective since the 1960s -- i.e., about a decade less than controlled fusion, and mostly with equal frustration. Maybe it will pan out this time, but don't stake too many hopes on it.
My Chem 101 prof gave us a problem to determine how much francium (element 87) you would have to buy in order to make a complete investigation of its chemical properties, assuming you could do it by working continuously for two weeks and would have to have at least one milligram left at the end of the procedure. Considering that the half-life of francium is 21 minutes, it worked out to around one million kilograms.
Not that you would really order the full load up front, but it made a good illustration of why you don't find these elements lying around...
Chemical reactions do not change the structure of any nuclei. Physical reactions do. Physical reactions involve much larger energy exchanges and take place on much shorter time scales.
Ummm, no they don't. When you carry an aerodynamic vehicle on a rocket (the Shuttle, for instance) the aerodynamic control surfaces are locked in neutral until separation. The rocket gets all the guidance it needs by gimballing its engine(s), and doesn't need any outside help.
Agreed. The idea was for the rocket to carry the test model to high altitude and cut it loose for a glide test. Much like your computer not working because the UPS truck crashed in front of your house...
Slashdot Mirror
They seem to get it together somehow. A good illustration is to watch aircraft being parked as they land on an aircraft carrier. When a highly trained Annapolis officer taxis an airplane toward the edge of a wet, rolling deck until he's about 10 feet out over the water and looks back for a 19-year-old kid to tell him with hand gestures when to turn, he seems to be showing a certain confidence.
rj
Long ago when Miami Beach was getting ready to host a Republican Convention, Time Magazine did a story about the preparations. The reporter asked an elderly lady sitting on a hotel porch if she thought there would be an influx of prostitutes.
"Of course not," she replied, "We've got plenty."
rj
So your kid is safe from vaccination side effects because he's not vaccinated, and he's safe from chicken pox because most of the other kids are vaccinated...cool move. rj
Interesting...I'm 50% Irish, no red hair in the family, but I do take a pretty robust dose of dental anesthesia. Wonder if they correlated ethnic backgrounds in general.
rj
Yep...it was Time Magazine's review of Softporn that put Sierra on the map.
rj
>How can this company be doing well enough to afford this gear, yet be dumb enough to let their people "case mod" the E15K's?
Easy: It's gonna look GREAT on the cover of the annual report.
rj
The check will buy her a new fridge, contents, and a kitchen addition to put it in. rj
There was a run of just that sort of thing in the 1970s.
The chemical toilets on airplanes are emptied by connecting a big hose to a fitting on the bottom of the airplane, opening its valve, and pumping the contents out. The valve has a rubber seal, and the toilets occasionally collect small metal objects -- jewelry, coins, keyrings, OJ's knife and so forth -- which can damage the seal on the way out.
So once in a while the seal springs a leak, and since the airplane is pressurized in flight by as much as 8 pounds per square inch, a lot of the water can leak out. At jet cruising altitudes it immediately freezes, and a ball of ice collects on the outside of the airplane. Then when it lets down into warmer air, the ice gets dislodged and, well, bombs away.
After three or four of these incidents over a couple of years, the industry worked out some design changes and inspection requirements that seem to have pretty well stopped it. But if one hits your property, you should immediately note the time and location, put the biggest chunk in a baggie, and stick it in your freezer for proof. You can count on a rather nice settlement from the airline, especially if keeping it quiet is part of the deal.
rj
Well, yes, he suspended habeas corpus...and the Constitution said he could. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2:
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
rj
The heliopause is the limit of the sun's contribution to particle flux. The sun spews out a constant flow of particles of various kinds, called the solar wind. As you go out, they naturally get more and more sparse.
At the same time, there are a certain number of particles just flying around free in space, with a (very roughly) uniform density all over the universe.
The heliopause marks the points where the density of solar particles has declined to that of the free-space particles. Inside it, most of the particles you see are from the sun; outside it, most of them come from elsewhere.
The solar gravity does indeed reach farther. The Oort Cloud is made up of objects so far out that while they're basically orbiting the sun, they're also affected by the gravity of other stars in the "neighborhood". Once in a while this disturbs one of them enough that it falls into the inner solar system and we get a comet.
rj
They already did, in a way...Carl Sagan wanted to release the record to the public but couldn't, because NASA wouldn't spring for the rights. They got to put it on the spacecraft for free, but some of the copyright holders wouldn't allow more than the single use.
rj
And when they see the picture that goes with it, they'll conclude that we're all nudists...
rj
>The only requirement the computer giant has made of the city is that New Orleans let Microsoft use it as a model for marketing the system to other governmental bodies once it is up and running, said Greg Meffert, the city's technology officer.
Two words: Aluminum siding.
rj
The flight plan calls for manual control until it's cruising at 1500 feet.
rj
Well, Maynard Hill has records like 500 kilometers in a straight line, 33 hours duration, and 8 kilometers of altitude gain to his credit...that crazy dreamer must have one hell of a backyard.
rj
There are some gotchas there. In the Southern California earthquake of 1971 (think that's the right year) much of the San Fernando Valley moved three feet. The legal costs of keeping property lines fixed to coordinates would have been atrocious (I'll swim in my end of the pool if I damn well please, pal...); as it was, they just let the property lines move with the land.
rj
In writing the manual for some civil engineering software back in the 80s, I found that there are some very oddly laid-out survey markers out there, especially in the plains states. The client explained that most of these were laid in the mid-19th century, which was the peak period of American alcohol consumption.
rj
Must be a zero Hertz CPU...
rj
Varying degrees of accuracy in the replies to this...I'll try to clarify a little.
I'll agree with the comments on "donuts on a rope"; the reported phenomenon is about the appearance of certain contrails, not the pattern of shock wave intersections in the exhaust flame known as "shock diamonds".
The Blackbird engines are turbojets, not turbofans. Turbofans have a fan that extends outside the combustion gas flow and moves "bypass air" around the engine. You can see the fan on most airliners; it's right at the point where the diameter of the engine housing abruptly decreases. The Blackbird achieves a similar effect by enclosing the engine in a complex-shaped duct that moves bypass air by means of a phenomenon called "entrainment". It takes a lot of chalk-pushing and arm-waving to make the principle clear, but the effect is to generate a lot of heat energy in a relatively small airflow and then couple it into a large flow. At full speed only about 15% of the thrust appears on the engine mount; the rest is supplied by a nonuniform pressure distribution on the housing. There's nothing new about entrainment, by the way; it's also what combines the steam and the smoke on the way out the smokestack of a steam locomotive.
There are no separate ramjets, or ramjet "components", and there is no such thing as "turning on ramjet mode". A ramjet is simply a jet engine with no compressor or turbine, which has the disadvantage that it doesn't begin to work until it's going fast enough to ram a lot of air into the intake; consequently, a pure ramjet can't take off under its own power. However in a turbojet engine, the amount of compression required from the compressor decreases as speed increases. At supersonic speeds the compressor becomes totally unloaded, and basically just turns in the breeze; the engine is then functioning as a ramjet. In other words, ramjet behavior is what any jet engine does when it's really hauling ass.
In both ramjets and turbojets, the flow through the engine is always subsonic, decelerating as much as necessary in the compressor or ram section and then accelerating on the way out the tailpipe. There are all manner of aerodynamic and thermodynamic demons that set to work when you try to burn fuel supersonically, and the scramjet is an experimental approach to doing this. It's been an active development objective since the 1960s -- i.e., about a decade less than controlled fusion, and mostly with equal frustration. Maybe it will pan out this time, but don't stake too many hopes on it.
Deadstick
>Although, mass would make some difference on slippery surfaces like ice, so we shouldn't dismiss safety concerns.
Oh, jeezus, is "road-hugging weight" rearing its malevolent head again?
rj
>Take Xerox and the mouse
The problem is knowing when you've invented a mouse and when you've invented OS/2.
rj
My Chem 101 prof gave us a problem to determine how much francium (element 87) you would have to buy in order to make a complete investigation of its chemical properties, assuming you could do it by working continuously for two weeks and would have to have at least one milligram left at the end of the procedure. Considering that the half-life of francium is 21 minutes, it worked out to around one million kilograms.
Not that you would really order the full load up front, but it made a good illustration of why you don't find these elements lying around...
rj
Chemical reactions do not change the structure of any nuclei. Physical reactions do. Physical reactions involve much larger energy exchanges and take place on much shorter time scales.
rj
Ummm, no they don't. When you carry an aerodynamic vehicle on a rocket (the Shuttle, for instance) the aerodynamic control surfaces are locked in neutral until separation. The rocket gets all the guidance it needs by gimballing its engine(s), and doesn't need any outside help.
rj
Agreed. The idea was for the rocket to carry the test model to high altitude and cut it loose for a glide test. Much like your computer not working because the UPS truck crashed in front of your house...
rj