Dave Williams' Web Log

05/01/2009:

> > Clarke also was credited with the concept of communications satellites 
> > in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, 
> > which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are 
> > called Clarke orbits.

> > In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar 
> > blind-landing system.

The system Clarke worked on wasn't "radar", it was basically a Radio Direction Finder with range and altitude twiddles to let an airplane locate a ground position, instead of the other way around. As the article indicated, it was intended to let aircraft land in fog (common in England) or at night... remember, in wartime landing fields were prime targets, and the RAF's Spitfires had less than an hour of air time before they had to land and refuel. If a handful of He-110s cratered your nicely-illuminated runway while you had planes up, they would likely crash on landing... and the Metropolitan Air Force was critically short of aircraft to start with. So the glide slope system let them home in on a dark runway. Nowadays, every commercial airport has something similar.

[off at a tangent]

Nowadays radar is no big deal, but back then, it was one of the things credited with allowing Britain to hold off the Germans. Without it, the map of the world would be considerably different.

In one of those queer circumstances of history, the Germans actually developed radar independently and simultaneously with the British (or British/American) system. Both sides made the existence of radar top secret, for for several years neither side knew the other had it... and they were both afraid to rely on their own too heavily because they didn't want the increased intercepts to tip off the other side.

05/02/2009:

> >   RADAR systems have gotten a lot cheaper but they're still big bucks.
> > I don't know why there isn't more interest in portable systems for smaller
> > boats.  Probably because normal people don't take the party barge out in
> > fog.

"Our prices have to be high because we don't sell many."

"You could sell 10x as many if you cut your prices a bit."

"We can't justify increased production unless sales go up first. Besides, we're selling as many as we make anyway."

Eventually, some company in Bulgaria or Korea will realize there's a giant market for this sort of thing, and every boating shop will have Hap Sung "Mr. Radar" boxes on the shelf for $299, and the US companies will be screaming about cheap foreign manufacturers killing them.

05/03/2009:

> > and I've never seen another copy.

> > Doesn't anyone Google anymore?
> > 
> > http://www.amazon.com/Glidepath-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/0553290525
> > 
> > Looks like there are used copies available.

Finding one at a used book store or flea market for a dollar is one thing; seeking one out online and paying freight is an entirely different thing. As I remember it, the book would barely be worth a dollar.

If I'm going to pay $5 or $10 to get a copy to my door, there are others I'd be a hell of a lot more likely to buy; Brian M. Stableford's later Asgard books, for example. But I have a long list of engineering books that would have to be filled before I could justify mail-ordering throwaway fiction.

05/04/2009:

> > I'm thinking that if the information on your laptop is too important 
> > for a United States Border Patrol agent to access then why the hell are 
> > you taking it into a foreign country?

More likely, they're just looking for some exotic foreign pr0n to copy off for their own collections.

The original article made it sound like they were targeting anything that could store data, not just laptop computers. Which would include: cellular phones, MP3 players, USB keys, and probably electric razors, given the general level of intelligence we're dealing with.

It's just harrassement; even the dumbest terrorist would figure out you don't need to haul a whole computer around when you can burn your secret plans onto a CD labeled "Baby Pictures."

"I have seen the enemy, and he operates out of the District of Columbia..."

> > We were discussing the Border Patrol remember? New Jerk is not a border 
> > city and does not have Border Patrol agents there.

05/05/2009:

> > According to Robert C. Bonner, former commissioner of the Bureau of 
> > Customs and Border Protection, more than half of all illegal aliens 
> > entering the United States do so through Arizona.

Arizona is a sovereign state, with its own legislature, head of state, police, and military. The governor of Arizona is the equal of the leader of any European Union country. The only thing Arizona can't do is declare war on another country... but there's nothing stopping them from dealing with their own borders.

Instead of sitting on their asses waiting for "the (other) government" or "George W Bush" to do something about it, the State of Arizona is perfectly capable of putting up its own fences, setting up their own state border patrol, or simply machine-gunning anything that moves. The State of Arizona doesn't have to ask for permission from anyone.

Obviously, the problem isn't bad enough for Arizona to do anything except complain and hold their hand out for free Federal money, which isn't likely to materialize in the forseeable future.

You want something done about illegals coming over the Arizona border? It's *your* problem.

05/06/2009:

> Would also cut down on the rise of HIV/AIDS caused by sharing syringes.

I have to pay for my own syringes when I take my allergy shots; meanwhile, I have to pay so druggies can get free ones.

That's the kind of thing that liberals enact...

> Basic free market rules - they've got something you want so you'll pay.

> Stoners won't pay so there's no market, might as well give to them in
> the hope that they won't be a burden later.

05/07/2009:

> That should have been "the same sort of ass you yourself portray in
> attacking the threat of global warming would it?"
> I would prefer to be thought of an ass about something not very
> serious than being found out to have been one after it is too late
> to do anything about it.

05/08/2009:

> 1. Pro-abortion - kill life before it has a chance.

I don't see that "life" has any inherent value; like dirt, there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of it. Otherwise, each of my sperm would be individually precious, and vast armies of Dave clones would sweep down and take all your stuff. And then they'd probably fight over it, but that's a different problem.

Of course, we could legalize drive-by shootings as a way to keep the population down, but then people would probably complain about the noise. Sometimes you just can't win.

> 4. Repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed by somebody,
> somewhere (usually Europe).

I admit I got stalled about halfway through the book; there's no pedant like a German pedant, and we're talking about a level of fluff and verbiage that many politicians (or philosophers, for that matter) aspire to, but few actually manage. That book is so boring it could be used to kill bacteria. No wonder most of the Nazi Party hierarchy openly admitted they'd never read it either...

"Confiscate private property? Check."
"Invade the Sudetenland? Check."
"Concentration camps? Check."
"Kristallnacht? Check."
"Zyklon B? Check."
"Unrestricted submarine warfare? Check."
"Read Mein Kampf? NOOOOoooo! Not the Boring Book!"

05/09/2009:

-- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent)

05/10/2009:

> Our university uninstalled the spellcheckers in Word in the computer
> labs after complaints that students were not learning to spell.

> At least my students have the excuse that English is their second
> language. 

It's painfully obvious from even a casual acquaintance with the 'net that many theoretically native English speakers are only loosely acquainted with the language...

> Maybe spelling is like pronunciation: just as there is an
> age above which you will never learn a foreign language with a perfect
> accent, you either learn to spell "atta(t)chment" and "gramm[a|e]r"
> before your teens or not at all!

05/11/2009:

> Yes, of course we all feel sorry for the Jews who were displaced
> by the holocaust, but we should have given them back their own
> homes in Europe, not given them someone else's land. The decision
> was wrong in the 1940s, and we are all suffering the consequences
> of it now.

In retrospect, giving them Ireland might have been a better idea...

05/12/2009:

The Akkadians predated the Egyptians; the epic was written somewhere around five thousand years ago, at the dawn of known human civilization. They would surely have been astonished that anyone would deliberately dig out ancient cities to learn about their cultures; before the Germans and English started in the early 1800s, nobody had any use for such knowledge, even of the classical Greeks or Romans. Plenty to do already, who cares about dead wogs anyway?

Five thousand years. Close enough to forever... using technology they could not have imagined, I can pluck it from the networked aether, and have the voices of the djinni read it to me.

And who claims there is no such thing as progress?

05/13/2009:

> As opposed to the "blogosphere" where all and everyone on any
> given blog sing in unison, this list fights back.   If it
> degenerated into a mutual back-scratching confirmation club it
> surely would be a complete waste of time.

05/14/2009:

> You also have the dubious honour of being the first person, ever,
> to be killfiled by me.

> Goodbye.

"Yes, boss?"

"Goodbye."

05/15/2009:

> minister of defense; the formation of NATO to bind America to Europe. It
> did great things in the world. And most of these things were opposed
> partially or wholly by the Republican Congress.

Both Republicans *and* Democrats opposed NATO and Truman's actions to rebuild Europe; you can read Truman's comments on the subjects in several of his books, or in the autobiography of Dean Acheson, his Secretary of State. If anything, due to some fundamental differences between Truman and his party, the Democrats hated him and Acheson even worse than the Republicans did. There were several impeachment proceedings started, though none got very far.

Acheson's autobiography is very interesting, particularly the part about NATO. Truman viewed his Secretary of State as his personal representative. He decided the limits of what he was willing to give and take to create NATO, informed Acheson, and sent him off to Europe, empowered to negotiate in Truman's name without having to refer back to them. This confounded many of the other delegates, who couldn't decide when to break for lunch without having to refer to higher authority.

As far as Truman was concerned, Acheson, acting to negotiate with foreign powers, *was* Harry Truman, and entitled to the same respect that Truman would get. So Acheson flew in Truman's personal aircraft (this was before there was an Air Force One), and whenever he left or arrived, Truman was there at the airport. Acheson mentioned that several times the plane would land at 3AM in snow or rain, and the President and Mrs. Truman would be standing on the runway with umbrellas; not even the press would show up. But the governments of other nations eventually understood that Acheson was not a flunky, and if the President went out of his way to show his respect, then it might be a good idea to follow along.

05/16/2009:

> I was sooooo pissed when they told me the laptops were stolen..
> I had warned them numerous times not to leave them out,, and they didn't listen..
> If anyone was gonna steal them, it should have been me. :-(

I didn't get to set policy, just enforce it. But I did manage to institute a service chargeback from IT to individual departments for clearing viruses and removing malware. They broke the machines; labor to fix them came out of their budget on top of the IT levy. It didn't stop them from doing stupid things, but it gave us enough funds to allocate someone to Moron Patrol to blow away their files and reinstall Windows full-time.

05/17/2009:

The other day I noticed The Go-Gos' "We Got The Beat" uses the melody of whatsisname's "Mercury Blues".

05/18/2009:

> > It sounds like something out of a bad science fiction novel. During
> > World War II, a fungus called Tricoderma reesei ate its way through
> > US military uniforms and tents in the South Pacific. It chewed up

"Plastic" covers a lot of ground, but some of it is biodegradable. More-aggressive bugs could cause some trouble there.

Hell, bacteria used to grow on the edge connectors of Sinclair ZX80 computers; you had to reseat the memory block every now and then or it would lose connection.

Remember, "Mother Nature hates your guts."

05/19/2009:

-- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

05/20/2009:

> >   I know what you're getting at, and IT departments LOVE to
> > shell out for handholding backup software.  But I still maintain
> > that locking backed up data behind a proprietary barrier puts
> > too much control in the backup software.

I tarred my SCO data off to DATs, one copy to the backup box, the other to a courier for offsite storage. And I was *always* able to recover my data... they found the backup software company had just come out with a version for SCO, and the purchase order was already in process before anyone mentioned it to me. I had to sit various management types down and explain to them in single-syllable words that "backup" was not the same as "recovery", and they'd already paid for the tools I was using. Later, there were screams of anguish and hateful looks from the Windows admins.

> >   Someone must have come up with an automated incremental
> > backup package that uses a native data back end and a HTTP
> > front end to keep things simple?  A glorified RSYNC?

05/21/2009:

> > This has been my greatest source of difficulty. I value my friendships above
> > everything else in existence, but some of those--and some whom I have valued
> > above many others--appear to have bought her entire line. I'm hearing more
> > aggrieved, outraged words from them than from Liz herself, asking how I could
> > possibly have done this or that to her.

Anyone willing to pass judgement when they *know* they have only one side of the story, *and* judging against you, is no kind of friend you need.

Consign the whole lot to Hell.

> > Jesus. I just finished writing someone whose regard I highly valued, wishing
> > him Godspeed, and good luck with his life. Him, like a number of others, I very
> > much expect never to see again.

You've just rediscovered one of the big differences between friends and acquaintances. It's seldom pleasant to get your nose rubbed in it, but you'll be a better man for realizing the difference.

> > I really ought to move a couple of loads of crap out to the new property this
> > evening, but I'm tempted to drift downtown myself. It seems lately that I'm
> > facing an avalanche from every quarter, and I'm seething of a sudden with
> > disgust and discontent, so I suspect that stepping out might alter my
> > perspective for the better.

05/22/2009:

> >   Nazi war propaganda book?  Sounds interesting.  Title, ISBN, review?

It's excerpts from the 5-year publication of the magazine. Despite the title, it appears it was Goebbels' project. Interestingly, it was not a freebie; it doesn't mention what the cover price for the English editions were, but it mentioned several times that it wasn't given away. Which was a nice propaganda ploy in itself; people are probably more likely to value opinions they've paid for...

Some decent photography, coverage of the Blitzkreig into France, Holland, and Norway, the early days of Stalingrad, life in the occupied territories (everyone welcomed the Nazis as saviors), historical and geopolitical articles that were *very* well written propaganda.

I was surprised I'd never heard of Signal before, but most histories concentrate on the military aspects of the war, the Nazi Party, or specific individuals.

It's a coffee-table-size book, but fairly thin. Some of the excerpts were clumsy; there are several articles with the first page there and the second or third missing. It wouldn't have hurt to increase the pagecount a bit.

>>  "Hitler's Wartime Picture Magazine - SIGNAL"

> >   Sounds neat.  Where'd you pick it up?

>> >>there are several articles with the first page there and
>> >>the second or third missing.

> >   Ugh, that would drive me nuts.

05/23/2009:

While I was watching it the first time, the word that kept popping up in my mind was "alienation." That's still a pretty good single-word description of the movie. The movie starts off with the funeral of Walt's wife. He's standing there because it's what he was brought up to do... but it's not *his* church; Vatican II happened when he was in his mid-30s, and they don't speak Latin any more. Many of the people there he barely knows, and mostly doesn't like. A priest was someone he used to look up to; now it's some kid who could be his grandchild. His neighborhood has gone the same way, except now it's filled with gooks. They're Vietnamese gooks instead of Korean gooks, but they all look the same to him.

A bunch of people latched on to that part, babbling about "racism." It may be awkward to accept in the politically-correct 21st century, but that's how *most* people thought in the 1950s. The ones who are still alive often still do. It's the way the world was, then. People are imprinted when young, and seldom change unless they are forced to. It's unfortunate so many people I've tried to discuss the movie with can't get past that point.

What I realized after considerable thought was that the movie isn't *about* alienation, though that's a very strong theme. The movie is about... religion. Specifically, it's an intensely Catholic movie.

It took me a while to arrive at that conclusion. I'm not a Catholic, and the only practicing Catholic I knew was caught up in the "racist" thing. I guess it's like a fish not seeing water; once I pointed it out to him, he caught on.

Yes, Walter is Catholic, and the movie begins and ends in a church, but you could say that about two dozen mobster movies too. What makes it a Catholic movie is that Walter was a troubled man, and absolution might have made him right with God, but not right with his own soul. What he wanted was redemption.

Absolution, or something close, occurs often enough in religions. But as far as I can tell redemption is a uniquely Catholic concept. And redemption is something the Church can't grant; it's something you have to do for yourself. And after half a century, redemption came within his grasp.

Walter Kowalski gave up his life. On the forums I keep seeing "suicide." Even the old-school Catholics don't consider it suicide to give up your life to save others. In fact, that's how more than one saint was made.

That's the insignia of the First Cavalry division of the United States Army. They saw heavy action in Korea from 1950 to 1952; they were hammered by Chinese human-wave attacks at Inchon, Pusan, and elsewhere.

05/24/2009:

-- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

05/25/2009:

> I am not left wing, you are...it is time that you face reality
> retard....an irrational person like yourself is a leftwingretard, not
> me...but you are just burping cliches that other people tells you to

[sigh] Back in the old days, people put real effort into flaming. I mean, if it's worth doing, isn't it worth doing well?

05/26/2009:

> I've got plenty of jeans.  Turns out jeans aren't
> > permitted.  WTF?  Apparently, casual means khakis
> > and collared shirts. 

I think you should wear a dashiki, and if anyone questions it, tell them you're celebrating your African heritage, and do they have a problem with that? Then loom over them a bit.

After all, you're African, 20,000 years or so back...

If dashikis are too out-of-fashion to be found in St. Louis, you might try traditional Japanese robes and tabi. And don't forget to stop at the barber shop for an appropriate hairstyle!

If the lack of pockets in either of the above bothers you, try jeans, Western shirt, neckerchief, lizardskin boots, and a cowboy hat. That's "formal" in Texas, if your belt buckle is big enough...

Personally, I'm voting for "Samurai Dan."

05/26/2009:

I've already dealt with the city of Dumas, Arkansas, which used to hang some of its lights upside down from normal, and Little Rock, Arkansas, which went through a phase of giant light grids, three or four high, four or five wide, arranged horizonally. I dealt with those by not driving in those towns, but if I can't safely get on the freeway from home...

The DOT and the State Police both told me there's no requirement for the lights to be hung in any particular direction. Somewhere between 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 of males are red/green color blind; most apparently just assume the top light is "red" and the bottom is "green."

I've wondered about the crazy traffic signage around here before, but now I'm reasonably sure the asshats at City Hall are actively trying to kill people.

05/28/2009:

> The Continent's economic death spiral.
>
> BY BRIAN M. CARNEY
[deletia]
>  Of course, Europe did have growth, once. Indeed, for 25 years or
> so after World War II, European growth was something of an economic
> miracle, bringing countries like Germany out of hyperinflation and
> poverty into the first rank of world economies.

Without George Marshall and Harry Truman, economy of all of Europe would be on the level of Ethiopia by now, maybe...

05/29/2009:

>  Onlu if the procedural system was very badly written; 

05/30/2009:

> Bollocks ! And worse still, arrogant bollocks !!!!