-Right. Now, uh, item four: attainment of world supremacy within the next five years. Uh, Francis, you've been doing some work on this.
-Yeah. Thank you, Reg. Well, quite frankly, siblings, I think five years is optimistic, unless we can smash the Roman empire within the next twelve months.
His potential energy at 120,000 feet would be...ummm, let's see...120,000 foot-pounds per pound of suited-up weight. Tough calculation.
More to the point, let's say he intends to go sonic at 20,000 feet. In falling 100,000 feet he'd reach a speed of 2530 ft/sec if there were no air drag. The speed of sound at that altitude is 1036 ft/sec, so he has a chance, depending on how little drag he can achieve.
As he comes down in altitude, the drag and the speed of sound both go up, so it becomes a much harder calculation. There is an abrupt drag rise right around Mach 1, so there's a significant chance he could stabilize at, say, Mach 0.98 and be unable to accelerate further.
Unobtanium was never meant to be serious. It's been an engineer's metaphor for a substance you wish you had, for at least thirty years that I know of. Not any more, of course: Hollywood has taken it for itself.
(Cue the squeals of "But it just isn't the same without big-screen 3D!!!" Well, if it isn't then it's just a special-effects movie, isn't it?
In a real movie, what you see onscreen supports the story. There are two classes of movies where the story, such as it is, is just there to justify the visuals: porn and special effects movies.
Here's an example of the real kind: Kenneth Branagh's film of Henry V. He delivered the "Unto the breach" speech sitting on an old plug horse that was as tranquilized as the poor Dalmatian who rides the Budweiser wagon. Every couple of lines he would turn the horse around...and in my mind's eye, that horse was a fierce, dancing charger on the point of bolting at the enemy. Real writing and acting provide their own special effects: they turn on pictures in your head.
I didn't see Titanic, but over the ensuing year I had every minute of it inflicted on me, piecewise, via TV and it turned out to be just what I expected: a lot of visual bling overlaid on a plot that made effective use of one dramatic device -- adequate foreplay -- but otherwise was semiliterate ("That Picasso fellow will never amount to anything"...eat your heart out, George Bernard Shaw).
I'm guessing that under the SFX in this picture lies a knockoff of Dances With Wolves.
-Marketed a disk drive that had a hundred percent failure rate, couldn't be stacked because of overheating, and was the slowest floppy drive ever built. -Marketed a computer that accessed that drive by sending BASIC statements, in ASCII, down a serial bus. -Advertised that the drive was user-programmable and refused to release programming information for it. -Marketed a computer whose ROM kernel routines didn't work, so programmers had to take up scarce RAM with their own routines to do stuff like moving the cursor. -Couldn't even spell "kernel". They called it the "Kernal".
...an expensive, delicate suit to show that you don't have to do any physical work. You wear a uniform to show that your identity is a three-ring binder.
...is the display of the Harrison Clocks at the Greenwich Observatory. To get their importance, read Dava Sobel's "Longitude" on the plane.
For an additional geek treat, set your GPS on the Meridian Line and figure out why it reads about 5 seconds west.
The Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London is neat, but it's too late for that: you have to write ahead for tickets.
At the British Museum, go to the Rosetta Stone and find some of the encircled symbols that gave Champollion the critical clue to decoding the hieroglyphics.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because you never saw a Saturn V launch at night.
rj
-Right. Now, uh, item four: attainment of world supremacy within the next five years. Uh, Francis, you've been doing some work on this.
-Yeah. Thank you, Reg. Well, quite frankly, siblings, I think five years is optimistic, unless we can smash the Roman empire within the next twelve months.
rj
...or Domino's will sue you for copyright infringement.
rj
If you go supersonic, there will be sound. Trust me on this.
rj
More to the point, let's say he intends to go sonic at 20,000 feet. In falling 100,000 feet he'd reach a speed of 2530 ft/sec if there were no air drag. The speed of sound at that altitude is 1036 ft/sec, so he has a chance, depending on how little drag he can achieve.
As he comes down in altitude, the drag and the speed of sound both go up, so it becomes a much harder calculation. There is an abrupt drag rise right around Mach 1, so there's a significant chance he could stabilize at, say, Mach 0.98 and be unable to accelerate further.
rj
rj
Do you suppose they got the idea from the drive-through prescription lane at Walgreen's?
rj
Unobtanium was never meant to be serious. It's been an engineer's metaphor for a substance you wish you had, for at least thirty years that I know of. Not any more, of course: Hollywood has taken it for itself.
Incidentally, we always spelled it "unobtainium".
rj
rj
Just watch the long shots in "CSI: Miami". They do it for you...
rj
(Cue the squeals of "But it just isn't the same without big-screen 3D!!!" Well, if it isn't then it's just a special-effects movie, isn't it?
In a real movie, what you see onscreen supports the story. There are two classes of movies where the story, such as it is, is just there to justify the visuals: porn and special effects movies.
Here's an example of the real kind: Kenneth Branagh's film of Henry V. He delivered the "Unto the breach" speech sitting on an old plug horse that was as tranquilized as the poor Dalmatian who rides the Budweiser wagon. Every couple of lines he would turn the horse around...and in my mind's eye, that horse was a fierce, dancing charger on the point of bolting at the enemy. Real writing and acting provide their own special effects: they turn on pictures in your head.
I didn't see Titanic, but over the ensuing year I had every minute of it inflicted on me, piecewise, via TV and it turned out to be just what I expected: a lot of visual bling overlaid on a plot that made effective use of one dramatic device -- adequate foreplay -- but otherwise was semiliterate ("That Picasso fellow will never amount to anything"...eat your heart out, George Bernard Shaw).
I'm guessing that under the SFX in this picture lies a knockoff of Dances With Wolves.
rj
The original Commodore....
-Marketed a disk drive that had a hundred percent failure rate, couldn't be stacked because of overheating, and was the slowest floppy drive ever built.
-Marketed a computer that accessed that drive by sending BASIC statements, in ASCII, down a serial bus.
-Advertised that the drive was user-programmable and refused to release programming information for it.
-Marketed a computer whose ROM kernel routines didn't work, so programmers had to take up scarce RAM with their own routines to do stuff like moving the cursor.
-Couldn't even spell "kernel". They called it the "Kernal".
And they went downhill?
rj
That was back in the days when they were putting the real electronics stores out of business. Serves 'em right.
rj
You don't even have to be formerly great. There is a company paying money to call itself CompUSA, fer chrissake.
rj
...a "Top 10" website that doesn't make you wade through ten pages of ads. Nice work.
rj
Wi-fi hijackers know perfectly well how to make a high-gain antenna. This is not rocket science.
rj
...an expensive, delicate suit to show that you don't have to do any physical work. You wear a uniform to show that your identity is a three-ring binder.
rj
You don't set precedents by filing lawsuits. You set precedents by winning them.
rj
...is the display of the Harrison Clocks at the Greenwich Observatory. To get their importance, read Dava Sobel's "Longitude" on the plane.
For an additional geek treat, set your GPS on the Meridian Line and figure out why it reads about 5 seconds west.
The Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London is neat, but it's too late for that: you have to write ahead for tickets.
At the British Museum, go to the Rosetta Stone and find some of the encircled symbols that gave Champollion the critical clue to decoding the hieroglyphics.
Look right and mind the gap.
rj
Like people got more respect for the mainstream scientific community because Y2K fizzled?
rj
Two words: Heaven's Gate.
rj
Folks raised much the same objection in regard to the big crater in Arizona...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_crater
rj
Ursa Major is Greek? Scorpius? Libra? Aquarius? Canes Venatici? Sagittarius?
rj
Just trying to keep up with Liberia and Myanmar...
rj
...I can't wait to hear Jon Stewart say that out loud.
rj