View 705 Tuesday, December 13, 2011

A Microgravity Experiment

The long knives are out for Newt Gingrich, but they don’t seem to have anything that hasn’t been known for years and years. Newt’s problem is that although he’s a professional politician, he doesn’t always act like one. When he gets a thought he generally expresses it, and since he generally surrounds himself with smart people who will argue with him if they think he’s got a wild idea, that often works out well – but it’s an awful debating technique. The immigration thing, for instance: there was no need for him to bring that up. It’s certainly true that the people of the United States are not going to insist on sending federal cops in to arrest the sextant of the local church who’s worked as a church janitor for 25 years, has no criminal record, and is father and grandfather of citizens. We’re not going to deport that man, and we all know it. On the other hand, we’re eager to find reasons to deport thugs and habitual criminals. Now we’ve tested the limits: do we have a rule that sort out those we deport from those we don’t?

Newt’s notion of a local commission has one defect that isn’t obvious until you look at it, but then stands out like a sore thumb: there are local communities that would love to grant green cards to every illegal alien, whether churchwarden or gang leader, and if the classification worked like conscription did, the local board’s decision was pretty well binding on the whole country – and back in Viet Nam days that was well known to some of those who didn’t want to be conscripted. The obvious remedy to that would involve restricting the effect of a local green card to the local community. That might be awkward. And this discussion could go on all night, and back when Newt and I were closer such discussions did go on all night. It’s the way he operates. He had no business acting as if the Republican Candidate debates were just good old bull sessions, but it’s probably as well for the voters to see him in that mode since he’s in it a lot. He likes spirited discussions. One thing you can be pretty sure of, if Newt ever becomes President he won’t fill the White House with yes men or stupid advisors.

Me, I will stick with my conclusion: there’s not a one of those six I wouldn’t prefer to Barrack Obama as President of these United States.

I have a lot of mail to deal with, and I’m working on it. Sometimes it works into View. As Samuel Johnson told us, men seldom need educating, but they often need reminding:

"The polls show no confidence in Obama’s ability to manage the economy."

And therein lies the problem. It is apparently accepted by both the pollers and the pollees that it is the job of the US Government, and more specifically the President of the United States, to ‘manage the

economy’. That in the face of all evidence that an overwhelming

majority of our economic problems are the direct consequences of the EFFORTS of the government to ‘manage the economy’. The argument is only about which individual or political party should do the managing.

Here, for example, is one recent example of typical government ‘managing the economy’ action.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20111212/D9RISCB00.html

Just where the government GOT the power to force a company to buy commercial time on a specific, government favored TV program was not stated, but it is apparently accepted by all concerned that they do HAVE that power.

Bob Ludwick=

Mr Ludwick reminds us that the concept of managing the economy was developed quite late in our history. The purpose of the Constitution was “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Nothing about managing an economy. To the extent that economies needed managing, that was the job of the States, with some hoping the states would be very active in such matters, others wanting nothing more than to be left alone. And don’t forget those blessings of liberty.

So long as the states compete there is a chance of liberty. Were I a younger and more ambitious man I would long ago have considered leaving California with its silly and mostly corrupt government and headed for some place that favored freedom and liberty. As it is I’ve been here a long time and I like the weather, and I don’t use the roads all that much (California in general and Los Angeles in particular appear to be running for the position of pothole champion of the civilized world). But since California can no longer serve as a good example – as our schools actually once did before the liberals reformed them – it will just have to serve as a horrible example, in education, and taxes, and waste, and potholes and – well, they also serve who only serve as awful examples. And here and there we find some remnants of civilization. Most of our schools are awful, but a few retain the old magic. We’ve got great art and drama schools. Out opera has an excellent chorus, and heck, starlets make great waitresses. I like it here so long as I don’t pay much attention to the politicians.

If you want an economic boom, the formula is well known. Cheap energy, and "…a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." We’ve known that a long time. It’s just that we need reminding.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. And I have been having fun with a novel that sort of looks at that. What does happen after Atlas shrugs?

dosbox and battles

OK Jerry, now for the DOS illiterate, where are DOSBOX for dummies instructions to run battles? I have successfully installed dosbox, and downloaded battles (winrar file)

Now what?

Thanks for your help and understanding.

Roger

Actually, Roger figured it out before I could answer him. For those who don’t know, DOSBOX is freeware that allows Windows 7 to run most old DOS programs including abandonware. It has the drivers to get Windows to run most of the old DOS sound programs, and many old programs like Battles of Destiny run without any problem at all once you have DOSBOX installed. That isn’t terribly tricky but it will take an afternoon. I’ve long had it going, so in the case of Battles I downloaded the zip file http://www.holistic-design.com/?page_id=133&did=7, created a directory called BATTLES in DOSBOX, and expanded the zip in that folder. After that it’s open DOSBOX to believe the DOSBOX directory is C:\ (all explained in the stuff you get with DOSBOX), change to the BATTLES directory, and launch using the batch file that comes with the game. The game itself is tricky enough that you probably need the manual http://www.hotud.org/component/content/article/44-war/19797. It’s an old turn based strategy game that holds up pretty well if you like that sort of thing.

Here Kitty

Dog meets microgravity

This compilation has some short dog videos that range from funny to tragi-comic to "failure of interspecies communication," but the one I like best can only be classed "pilot error." It starts about 36 seconds into it. Pilot demonstrating zero-gravity parabolas in a small plane and forgot that he had a few loose items in the cabin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb92wQpPG-s

Gary P.

A long time ago at a Human Factors lab on an Air Force base in Texas, a group of human factors space scientists and Air Force pilots were sitting in the O Club and got to talking about cats and zero gravity. How would a cat orient in micro gravity? Visually? They always land on their feet. But what if they couldn’t feel which way was down?

A few drinks later we realized that one of the pilots wasn’t having a drink because he had to do a proficiency flight later that afternoon. And we already had a camera rigged in the cockpit of a T Bird, and if a couple of us certified this as a human factors experiment it wouldn’t cost the government anything it wasn’t going to spend on the proficiency flight, and it would be an interesting experiment, and — Well, it seemed like a great idea at the time, and the captain who’d be flying thought it would be a good idea.

We rigged up the body sensors – he did have to insert the rectal thermometer thermistor, and we put on the face and hand temperature sensors and the other polygraph stuff and turned on the recorders. Then we captured the O Club cat, a calico, and he carried her along to the T Bird, and with the cat sitting comfortably in his lap he took off with a flight plan that included a long parabolic arc that would produce more than 15 seconds of essentially zero gravity.

All was well until he got into the parabolic flight, at which point he took the cat off his lap and released her in zero gravity. The camera recorded it all. The cat looked about wildly, realized it wasn’t moving, rotated itself so that its feet were straight out toward the pilot’s chest, and teleported – that’s the best description I could make from seeing that film run several times – toward the pilot. Claws extended. It anchored itself, finding the opening in the flight suit from which the physiological sensor wires protruded. Claws out. Firmly anchored.

The rest of the film shows the pilot frantically trying to fly while trying to peel the cat off his chest. It held fast until after landing. Then the cat allowed the pilot to carry it off the airplane and back to the club, whereupon it vanished and wouldn’t speak to any of us for a week.

But we did learn that in zero gravity a cat will orient toward the nearest human, latch on, and never let go. I suppose that film is still making the rounds of USAF, but maybe not. It was film long before digitizing film was easy or even possible, and eventually that wears out. I haven’t seen it for years.

‘Tis the season:

Another halleluja chorus video

I think this one is the best I’ve seen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyviyF-N23A&feature=share

-d

It is certainly different.

View 705 Monday, December 12, 2011

I worked on fiction over the weekend, and made considerable progress. I was going to go for a hike with Niven today, but it’s raining, and looks to be raining all day.

I suppose I ought to comment on the Republican debate of last Saturday. It was hardly a game changer. It is reported to have had the largest number of viewers of all the debates, and of course it was the first one after the elimination of Herman Cain as the not-Romney candidate, leaving Newt Gingrich as not only the leading non-Romney, but as a front runner well out ahead of the field.

This would normally have been the time to concentrate on Newt’s personal relationships, but there was a problem: Diane Sawyer hasn’t really a taste for that sort of thing. George Stephanopoulos was the Clinton War Room Bimbo Eruption manager, which gave him plenty of experience but perhaps of the wrong kind to prepare him for that kind of attack. The best he could do was to ask if character and personal relationship history was relevant to the office of President. The responses were about what one would expect. Everyone said yes, of course it’s important, and Newt was straightforward in admitting fault and seeking forgiveness. The other candidates gained character points.

One major attack on Gingrich was that he was a professional politician, while Romney, though experienced in government, was not. Newt rather deftly disarmed Romney on that issue by pointing out that had Romney won against Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney would have been a professional politician too. That didn’t harm Romney but it does negate the issue.

Another was that Newt had proposed mining the Moon. To which Newt replied that we blinking well ought to be mining the Moon. His lines came pretty well right out of A Step Farther Out. He diidn’t say he’d rather spend the money mining the Moon than hiring bunny inspectors, but he could have. He’s still a space cadet. As any President with vision ought to be.

All told, no one was harmed, Newt came out looking better than when he went in. The polls show no confidence in Obama’s ability to manage the economy. And the election continues. So do the bunny inspectors, lousy schools, bailouts, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the rest of it.

Does anyone remember a DOS game called Battles of Destiny? It came on a 5 ¾ floppy, and I don’t seem to have a copy any longer. [See below; have it, and thanks.]

I have fiction to work on. And it’s lunch time. There’s a lot of interesting mail I’ll get to after I write.

2330: I did a few hundred words and a good scene for Anvil.

Battles of Destiny

Hello Sir,

Battles of Destiny can be downloaded as freeware from the original makers web site:

http://www.holistic-design.com/?page_id=133&did=7

A pdf of the manual can be found here:

http://www.hotud.org/component/content/article/44-war/19797

E. Lee Bohannon

Which works just fine in DOSBOX. Thanks!

View 704 Saturday, December 10, 2011

It’s about lunch time, and I had a number of thoughts relevant to fiction while we were on our morning walk, so this will be brief. I’ll catch up here tonight and tomorrow, but I am going to go down to lunch and then to the monk’s cell today.

Tracy Walters sends this

Subject: Mysterious object seen near Mercury debunked

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t2#/video/bestoftv/2011/12/09/tsr-mysterious-object-near-mercury-mpg.cnn

To which we can only say, alas. Not that I really expected it to be an alien spaceship orbiting Mercury, but that would have been pretty cool. I do remind you that solar flares are real and very big, and the 1859 event caused huge electro-magnetic pulses that started fires in many telegraph offices. Telegraph lines were the only long insulated wires around in those days. A similar event could have fairly drastic consequences in this world of long transmission lines.

We have historical evidence of such solar events every century or two. They can cause such bright aurora events that night turns into day, and this as far south as the Caribbean. Alexandria, Egypt has been recording them for millennia, and it’s a supportable conclusion that really big ones happen every one or two centuries. But that’s another story for another time.

If you want something else to think about,

Evidence suggests large tropical storms trigger earthquakes

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/12/09/3387791.htm?topic=enviro

I would consider this plausible rather than definitive, but still…

Jim

If we believe that climate events can trigger earthquakes, the next question is do earthquakes trigger volcanic events? Volcanism can certainly cause climate change.

In 535 AD, Belisarius subdued the Goths, but the year was a year of world disaster. A large volcano, probably Krakatoa, erupted and spewed enough gunk into the atmosphere that the next decade was one of drastic cooling. There were also plagues. The period after is generally known as the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages officially began forty years before when the Goths deposed the last Western Emperor, but in fact Gothic rule in Italy wasn’t a lot different from what it had been under the last of the Roman Emperors.

It was also about then that the “Roman Warm” climatic period is considered to have ended and a period of global cooling began; but the beginning of the cooling isn’t so certain. What is certain is that something horrible happened in 535 which ushered in a long period of cooling, shorter growing seasons, plagues, tribal wanderings, and the real Dark Ages, if you define a Dark Age not as a time when you have forgotten how to do something, but have forgotten that anyone ever was able to do it. As with the US in education, where we have forgotten what we used to accomplish with the public schools, and now strive to achieve goals that would have been considered failure by most teachers over most of the period of the public schools. But I digress.

Fortunately the Dark Age Cooling ended, and the Earth began to warm again, producing the Viking Warm period with colonies in Greenland, grapes in Vinland (AKA Nova Scotia) and longer growing seasons across Europe and China. The Viking Warm was followed by the cooling that began in 1325 or so and led into the Little Ice Age which lasted until Earth began to warm again in 1800. There was a time when longer growing seasons, warmer winters, and farmlands in higher latitudes were considered a blessing. But that’s another story.

Anyway, I’m going to have lunch and then write fiction.