In 1973, I participated in such an online chat, dictating to a young brass-key telegraphist in the tiny Ecuadorian town of Santa Isabel, while my boss sat beside a more senior operator who had scored a location in the regional center of Cuenca. It was straightforward, common and useful for business conversations in those places that still had no telephone, and IETEL, the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Telecomunicaciones had an entry for it on its rate sheet. The Quito-Guayaquil railroad's telegraph system offered the same service.
The difference between "explosive" eruptions and those that are quieter is due to the composition of the magma. Quiet eruptions, such as occur in Hawaii (where there have also been tsunami-causing landslides, by the way) are of magma that's more basaltic, explosive eruptions are of more granitic rock, that contains volatiles that boil off on release of pressure -- the comparison that's always made is to soda water, erupting in bubbles when the top comes off and the pressure is released.
On a related point, the Mt. St. Helens eruption became so damaging because a landslide similar to that predicted for the Canarys relieved the pressure on a much greater volume of magma than would have been released through previously existing vents, and moreover had the effect of directing its force laterally, rather than straight up, as the vents would have done. But a Canary Islands tsunami wouldn't result from such an explosion, it would be caused by the rockslide, as others have explained here. Soberingly, the volume of the Mt. St. Helens rockslide-debris avalance seems to have been on the order of 2.5 cubic kilometers, as described in http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Projects/Glicken/framewo rk.html much less than the minimum 150 cubic kilometers that Ward and Day predict in their PDF http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.p df.
And, as to the drilling question, there have been exploration holes drilled into magma bodies close to the surface, but the amount of pressure relief is miniscule.
The journalist evidently thought drilling mud (which he seems to have understood was "muddy water") is a novelty. It is not. It is a slurry of various components in various recipes, designed to cool and lubricate the bit and hold the hole open, to which end it is usually designed to have a high specific gravity. It is pumped down the hollow drill stem, and through the doughnut-shaped bit, to flow up the outside of the stem (lubricating it, as well) to the surface, and in to a mud tank, from which it is recycled. The drill cuttings it carries may be examined and saved as part of the drill-hole record.
I tend to doubt the math, or any other intellectual activity, of anyone who can make a statement like, "..steel replaced bronze as the ingredient for making swords during the Renaissance." Like airplanes replaced horses after the Viet Nam war, no doubt.
The economics of using kite power are suspect, as Twitter notes. Most of the countries considered Third World have heavy equipment available and all have high explosives. Even if it is not the latest or most powerful, it is still sufficient, and sufficiently cheap, to build the sorts of village- and district-level projects I assume we're talking about, for less than the cost of building and practicing with kites.
I doubt that anything short of vaporization would have made any useful F-117 parts that might have been stored in Belgrade's Chinese embassy less interesting to technicians. Certainly any additional damage they sustained in that episode wouldn't have been worth the diplomatic and public relations flap that resulted. As an American, I'd rather hear that it was a straight-forward mistake, and not some damned fool's bright idea of how to prevent a hypothetical, Clancy-esque bit of debatably-useful espionage.
Something like a dual presidency was the original American intent: the vice-president was the candidate who came in second, on the sound principal that he had been proven the next most popular choice for the job. One might indeed have hoped for shared responsibility, discussion of issues, and mutual aid, but in practice, both men hated one another's guts, and the practice was soon dropped.
Of course the original reason for the Electoral College was slavery: it allowed slave states to use their non-voting, slave population to offset the larger number of voters in the non-slave states.
The guy who made the hand-cranked radio practical has been working on a hand-cranked computer, after having extemporaneously lashed up a working prototype in the field.
Okay, Jon is asking for personal reactions. For me as an American, the news comes daily from the newspaper, National Public Radio, and Slashdot. Magazines are weekly. Television is infrequent. All could use more science and technology reporting, and all need more international news.
Newspapers give a wide variety of news, with selected topics provided in some depth -- often topics that would not have been my selection, but much of the time that's to the good: I learn more, that way. Sure enough, there are prior decisions as to what's news and what can be ignored, obligatory pro, con, and middle views, a usual-suspects list of purported experts, and a punditocracy, and most of the time all are too right-wing for my taste, but still, all are also thoughtful enough to provide some insights, if only by indirection, or from their different perspective.
Besides science and overseas news, papers need more news of social issues -- and I don't mean "lifestyle." For my money, most papers try unsuccessfully to compete with the visual media by running too many graphics of the sort that look better on a CRT. What papers have to offer comes in the wide variety of articles that fill their space, and long columns of print. The graphics should illustrate those, rather than try to be attractions in themselves.
NPR gives a fairly good sample of the news across the spectrum nationally and internationally, and is reasonably centrist.
Depending on the magazine -- let's not get into that -- you have more points of view, better explanation and commentary, and better graphics.
I stopped watching much television years ago, at the time of the intervention in Somalia, when there was take after take of Mogadishu, and no explanation of what was happening in any of them. I got more out of a German TV feed, and I don't speak German! The channels offer a bare smattering of news with their crime and weather, conservative perspectives and commentators (PBS worse than private channels), and commercials, by God, commercials.
All US media are deficient in international news. It can be garnered from the web as has been mentioned, and that is very useful, but not many foreign sources give an American perspective on matters. America's willful ignorance may go along with being a superpower -- our version of the "Wogs start at Dover" mentality of 1890's Britain.
Living through something may impart special knowledge, but it doesn't mean that one automatically becomes an authority. I lived through the '60s, was exposed to both the positive and negative of the decade, and can't claim that I "understand" them, in any way than marginally more than I understand the '40s, when I was an infant, the '30s, which were before my time, or 1776. Rob wasn't around in the '60s. So what?
"Linux is a system that can have a special impact in the process of the computerization of Cuban society since it is not tied to any commercial company. Linux constitutes an economic alternative for its character of freedom, and a good development platform for its character of openness. Additionally, it is a development platform much fairer than other commercial operating systems, for it offers the option of much more democratic participation, depending on the talent, the creativity and the labor of those who use it....
"...philosophically, a system built and developed on a basis of cooperation and solidarity by its users everywhere, from the mutual aid of those who freely work to make it better every day, constitutes the paradigm of a common endeavor. In our country, where collective labor, solidarity and the cooperation of all concerned to attain the advance toward new goals are vital for the development of society, Linux, more than a technological graft, instead becomes a completely organic component...."
I see. Society's most important aim is to avoid cons by the unscrupulous disabled, and money-making by lawyers. We could do it too, but for unconscionable laws invented by a federal government that has apparently been forced on us by an alien power. And I didn't realize that my boycott of AOL is about to bring it to its corporate knees. Suddenly it's all so clear!
Such anecdotes verge on those about ungrateful darkies, welfare Cadillacs, and wasteful foreign aid. They don't address the issue.
As a matter of fact, I've been interested over the last couple of decades in how often it is that some people look down on "programmers," for many the generic name that covers anyone connected with computers. And in my lifetime (I'm in my 50's), auto mechanics have gradually moved from being respected professionals to the modern-day equivalent of the "peasant," symbolic of anyone that that is dumb, ignorant, philistine and conniving.
There might be something rather deeply psychological at play, here -- I understand that engineers and master mariners are considered lower middle class in Britain, and musicians were among the lowest denizens of traditional Korean society.
Slashdot Mirror
In 1973, I participated in such an online chat, dictating to a young brass-key telegraphist in the tiny Ecuadorian town of Santa Isabel, while my boss sat beside a more senior operator who had scored a location in the regional center of Cuenca. It was straightforward, common and useful for business conversations in those places that still had no telephone, and IETEL, the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Telecomunicaciones had an entry for it on its rate sheet. The Quito-Guayaquil railroad's telegraph system offered the same service.
The difference between "explosive" eruptions and those that are quieter is due to the composition of the magma. Quiet eruptions, such as occur in Hawaii (where there have also been tsunami-causing landslides, by the way) are of magma that's more basaltic, explosive eruptions are of more granitic rock, that contains volatiles that boil off on release of pressure -- the comparison that's always made is to soda water, erupting in bubbles when the top comes off and the pressure is released.o rk.html much less than the minimum 150 cubic kilometers that Ward and Day predict in their PDF http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.p df.
On a related point, the Mt. St. Helens eruption became so damaging because a landslide similar to that predicted for the Canarys relieved the pressure on a much greater volume of magma than would have been released through previously existing vents, and moreover had the effect of directing its force laterally, rather than straight up, as the vents would have done. But a Canary Islands tsunami wouldn't result from such an explosion, it would be caused by the rockslide, as others have explained here. Soberingly, the volume of the Mt. St. Helens rockslide-debris avalance seems to have been on the order of 2.5 cubic kilometers, as described in http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Projects/Glicken/framew
And, as to the drilling question, there have been exploration holes drilled into magma bodies close to the surface, but the amount of pressure relief is miniscule.
The journalist evidently thought drilling mud (which he seems to have understood was "muddy water") is a novelty. It is not. It is a slurry of various components in various recipes, designed to cool and lubricate the bit and hold the hole open, to which end it is usually designed to have a high specific gravity. It is pumped down the hollow drill stem, and through the doughnut-shaped bit, to flow up the outside of the stem (lubricating it, as well) to the surface, and in to a mud tank, from which it is recycled. The drill cuttings it carries may be examined and saved as part of the drill-hole record.
I tend to doubt the math, or any other intellectual activity, of anyone who can make a statement like, "..steel replaced bronze as the ingredient for making swords during the Renaissance."
Like airplanes replaced horses after the Viet Nam war, no doubt.
>The mission that Columbus sent on was pretty damn >cheap, and was pretty much given to him to get >rid of him.
Columbus was on his way to France to see if he could sell his idea there, when a rider from the monarchs reached him.
Here's a link to the crater left by the K-T impact: http://miac.uqac.ca/MIAC/chicxulub.htm
Sit in on some actual superior court cases. You'll feel better.
The economics of using kite power are suspect, as Twitter notes. Most of the countries considered Third World have heavy equipment available and all have high explosives. Even if it is not the latest or most powerful, it is still sufficient, and sufficiently cheap, to build the sorts of village- and district-level projects I assume we're talking about, for less than the cost of building and practicing with kites.
I doubt that anything short of vaporization would have made any useful F-117 parts that might have been stored in Belgrade's Chinese embassy less interesting to technicians. Certainly any additional damage they sustained in that episode wouldn't have been worth the diplomatic and public relations flap that resulted. As an American, I'd rather hear that it was a straight-forward mistake, and not some damned fool's bright idea of how to prevent a hypothetical, Clancy-esque bit of debatably-useful espionage.
Al Capp had the cloud thing before Schultz. And Romeo and Juliet were taken from an Italian novel. Big deal.
Something like a dual presidency was the original American intent: the vice-president was the candidate who came in second, on the sound principal that he had been proven the next most popular choice for the job. One might indeed have hoped for shared responsibility, discussion of issues, and mutual aid, but in practice, both men hated one another's guts, and the practice was soon dropped.
Of course the original reason for the Electoral College was slavery: it allowed slave states to use their non-voting, slave population to offset the larger number of voters in the non-slave states.
The guy who made the hand-cranked radio practical has been working on a hand-cranked computer, after having extemporaneously lashed up a working prototype in the field.
Okay, Jon is asking for personal reactions. For me as an American, the news comes daily from the newspaper, National Public Radio, and Slashdot. Magazines are weekly. Television is infrequent. All could use more science and technology reporting, and all need more international news.
Newspapers give a wide variety of news, with selected topics provided in some depth -- often topics that would not have been my selection, but much of the time that's to the good: I learn more, that way. Sure enough, there are prior decisions as to what's news and what can be ignored, obligatory pro, con, and middle views, a usual-suspects list of purported experts, and a punditocracy, and most of the time all are too right-wing for my taste, but still, all are also thoughtful enough to provide some insights, if only by indirection, or from their different perspective.
Besides science and overseas news, papers need more news of social issues -- and I don't mean "lifestyle." For my money, most papers try unsuccessfully to compete with the visual media by running too many graphics of the sort that look better on a CRT. What papers have to offer comes in the wide variety of articles that fill their space, and long columns of print. The graphics should illustrate those, rather than try to be attractions in themselves.
NPR gives a fairly good sample of the news across the spectrum nationally and internationally, and is reasonably centrist.
Depending on the magazine -- let's not get into that -- you have more points of view, better explanation and commentary, and better graphics.
I stopped watching much television years ago, at the time of the intervention in Somalia, when there was take after take of Mogadishu, and no explanation of what was happening in any of them. I got more out of a German TV feed, and I don't speak German! The channels offer a bare smattering of news with their crime and weather, conservative perspectives and commentators (PBS worse than private channels), and commercials, by God, commercials.
All US media are deficient in international news. It can be garnered from the web as has been mentioned, and that is very useful, but not many foreign sources give an American perspective on matters. America's willful ignorance may go along with being a superpower -- our version of the "Wogs start at Dover" mentality of 1890's Britain.
Living through something may impart special knowledge, but it doesn't mean that one automatically becomes an authority. I lived through the '60s, was exposed to both the positive and negative of the decade, and can't claim that I "understand" them, in any way than marginally more than I understand the '40s, when I was an infant, the '30s, which were before my time, or 1776. Rob wasn't around in the '60s. So what?
From the "Que es Linux Cuba?" page:
...
..."
"Linux in Cuban Society:
"Linux is a system that can have a special impact in the process of the computerization of Cuban society since it is not tied to any commercial company. Linux constitutes an economic alternative for its character of freedom, and a good development platform for its character of openness. Additionally, it is a development platform much fairer than other commercial operating systems, for it offers the option of much more democratic participation, depending on the talent, the creativity and the labor of those who use it.
"...philosophically, a system built and developed on a basis of cooperation and solidarity by its users everywhere, from the mutual aid of those who freely work to make it better every day, constitutes the paradigm of a common endeavor. In our country, where collective labor, solidarity and the cooperation of all concerned to attain the advance toward new goals are vital for the development of society, Linux, more than a technological graft, instead becomes a completely organic component.
I see. Society's most important aim is to avoid cons by the unscrupulous disabled, and money-making by lawyers. We could do it too, but for unconscionable laws invented by a federal government that has apparently been forced on us by an alien power. And I didn't realize that my boycott of AOL is about to bring it to its corporate knees. Suddenly it's all so clear!
Such anecdotes verge on those about ungrateful darkies, welfare Cadillacs, and wasteful foreign aid. They don't address the issue.
Good comment on the "royal proletariat."
As a matter of fact, I've been interested over the last couple of decades in how often it is that some people look down on "programmers," for many the generic name that covers anyone connected with computers. And in my lifetime (I'm in my 50's), auto mechanics have gradually moved from being respected professionals to the modern-day equivalent of the "peasant," symbolic of anyone that that is dumb, ignorant, philistine and conniving.
There might be something rather deeply psychological at play, here -- I understand that engineers and master mariners are considered lower middle class in Britain, and musicians were among the lowest denizens of traditional Korean society.