Covering information that shouldn't be caught out in the open.
Covering information that shouldn't be caught out in the open.
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June-July 2006
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July 30, 2006 What kind of man drives an Excalibur? I have no idea. I also have no idea what the heck this thing is, other than hideous. After some online searching, I don't think it's an Excalibur. Or a Clenet, a Tiffany, Zimmer, or Luxxor. But check out the sharp-dressed dood who's headed back to his wheels. Class, baby. Class all the way.
Aha. Found it. It's apparently a “National Motor Cars Johnson Phantom.” Well, of course it is. What better name for it, seeing as it obviously addresses some, um, inadequacy? D'ya suppose people ask him about his big Johnson? D'ya think he “gets” it? Or, if people ask him, “Hey, mister, what kinda car is that?” And he replies “That's my Johnson,” are there any folks out there quick-witted enough to reply “Well, of course it is”? Speaking of dealing with inadequacies, the recent Hummer H3 TV ad campaign shows that GM knows exactly who still buys H3s (another hideous box) and why. There are two variations – 1) “Restore your Manhood” in which a guy goes to the supermarket checkout with a load of tofu, and sees another guy behind him putting a rack of ribs on the conveyor. TofuMan immediately goes out and buys an H3. Presumably to haul a man-sized load of tofu. 2) “Get your Girl On” in which a generic suburban mom has some other suburban mom and her pushy spawn cut in front of her at the playground. “Excuse me, but Billy was here first.” “Well, now Johnny is first.” Mom goes out and buys a Hummer. It's not clear whether she's expected to go back and drive over the other mom. If anybody is still wondering why GM is in a world of doo-doo, look no further than products like the Hummer, and the ad campaigns to sell them. Postscript – looking at that photo again, yes, that is indeed a yellow Hummer H3 on the overpass. A Hummer over the Johnson. I'm not making this up. I don't have to.
July 29, 2006 Here's one for the Guinness Book So I went to the supermarket for frozen pizza. My usual brand, Red Baron, is in a new box. And what's this, there's a freebie inside! Sold!
Coming from Chicago, I really miss decent deep-dish pizza. Locally, BJ's Chicago Pizza does a pretty good job, but I haven't found a good, full-size frozen deep dish yet. So in eager anticipation, I tore into the box and found... this.
Even Mini-Me wouldn't need more than two bites to finish this off. It was good, though, such as it was. And with Red Baron Pizza, I figure some portion of every purchase goes to support an aerobatic team -- the Red Baron Pizza Stearman Squadron. They've been doing this for more than 25 years.
July 23, 2006 And yet, it does evolve... ...to mangle a line from Bertolt Brecht's Galileo. (“And yet, it does revolve” or “it does move” – and Brecht's dramatization notwithstanding, it was supposedly uttered not by Galileo but by Giordano Bruno as he was being burned at the stake, but never mind that right now). The Church seems to have made its peace with Galileo (pity he couldn't stick around to get the word, though). Yet the Philistines of science and the dogs of dogma are with us still, 364 years after Galileo shuffled off this mortal coil. Science, when it's at its best, keeps trying to light candles against the darkness of ignorance, but the morons around us keep trying to put them out. (I can't take credit for that metaphor. An outstanding book on this topic is Dr. Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark). Some may recall the story in the New York Times a few months ago, in which a NASA public relations flack was (eventually) handed his head after he tried, in effect, to censor scientific communications by, and to restrict media access to, NASA's chief climatologist, who (like many in his field) happens to hold a politically incorrect view of global warming (at least, as far as the current political powers are concerned). Read all about it in this NY Times piece. Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with a scientist – an astronomer – who shall remain nameless, working at an institution which shall likewise remain nameless. (These days, it's not wise to name names; funding – and careers – may hinge upon it). Said scientist mentioned that this was just the tip of the iceberg. It seems that this PR flack, one George Deutsch, had even tried to exorcise that evil concept, “evolution,” from any discussion of – the life cycle of stars. As in “stellar evolution.” The mind boggles. Can this be? Ayup. Mentioned anecdotally here (near bottom).
But as for “resigning” – a post in a discussion thread on the Bad Astronomy Web Site points out that officially, he “resigned” (jumped, fell, got pushed) from NASA not because of his ham-handed attempts at censorship to promote a personal religious agenda, but because he fudged his resumé. Another NYT piece on the esteemed Mr. Deutsch:
Beautiful. Have to teach “both sides” of cosmology now, too. Science policy being made by a snot-nosed 24-year-old journo school dropout, liar, and political hack. And what happened to George Deutsch? Well, his decidedly non-stellar career evolved to its end state when it couldn't generate enough photons to overcome the gravity of his errors, and simply... imploded. Here's way more than anybody should want to know about George Deutsch. Personally, I believe we're all riding around on the back of a giant turtle, which may decide to submerge in Mother Ocean at any time. I think they ought to teach the chilluns that one, don't you? Once they have all the facts, then they can decide for themselves, no? (The benefit of this would be many more George Deutsches in the halls of power, and then we'd finally have consistency in science!)
July 7, 2006 Space Shuttle STS-121 and International Space Station flyby I just came in from watching the Shuttle and Space Station fly past. I tried to get my telescope to track it automatically but I must have gotten the orbital elements entered wrong somehow, or was still working with old elements. But it was clearly visible to the unaided eye, and I was able to get the telescope pointed at it momentarily by slewing at high speed. In the split second it took to zoom through the low-power field of view, nothing was apparent except a very bright blob. Meanwhile, I had set up my Kodak P850 digital camera, set speed to ISO 50, exposure time to 16 sec, and got this.
The Shuttle / ISS is moving from upper right to lower left. Jupiter is the brightest starlike object at upper right, the Moon is overexposed at lower left. The other stars in the field may be identified from star charts such as the outstanding, powerful freeware package Cartes du Ciel. I simply downloaded the latest elements from Space Track, which is operated by the U.S. Air Force Space Command, and pasted them into the Catalogs folder of Cartes du Ciel.
Another very useful site is Heavens Above, which is maintained by a fellow named Chris Peat in Germany and hosted by DLR, the German Space Agency. (No need to log in, just select your location from the popup menus). Its pass predictions for this event look like this. Heavens Above now also gives a view of the ground track, like this.
June 28, 2006 Twilight's last gleaming and a rocket, but no red glare Last night, the first-ever Boeing Delta IV rocket to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base went up just after sundown. The rocket carried a spysat, NROL-22. It was scheduled for 8:14 PM, and I was dutifully up on my rooftop with my Kodak P850 digital camera on a sturdy tripod. 8:14 came and went, no rocket. Cloud cover in the direction of Vandenberg was probably about 50%. So after about 10 minutes I went in, took a phone call, came out again to take the camera down, looked in the appointed direction at about 8:33-34ish and saw the glow of the first-stage booster below the first set of clouds. By the time I could power up the camera and set it to snap off five bracketed exposures, the glow was gone but I got a shot of the exhaust plume. That's the trail at the right center. Effective focal length about 400mm (max optical zoom, no digital zoom).
Boeing had a live webcast of the launch on their web site, but I tried it earlier in the day, it wasn't working and appeared to need some more AV plugins and I hate those things, so I gave up on it. Now, it turns out that Vandenberg is about 167 miles, great circle distance, from my house. (Here's a handy online utility for finding distances). So, how high would the rocket have been to clear my (idealized) horizon? Neglecting atmospheric refraction of course which lets us see stuff that is actually below the geometric horizon. Wikipedia has the horizon distance arithmetic. The short form is, horizon distance in miles is √((1.5h), where h is your eye level above ground. Doing this backwards, assuming the “eye” is aboard the rocket, how high does it need to be to see 167 miles? Crunching the numbers, h for 167 miles turns out to be just above 18,000 ft. (This ignores things like atmospheric refraction, local obstructions, and the fact that I'm up on my roof, so I might pick up the rocket several thousand feet lower). So what this means is that I'm able to pick up Vandenberg's rockets just seconds after they leave the pad. How long does it take a rocket to reach 18K ft? Guessing at a conservative 3 g acceleration, from ordinary Newtonian equations of motion, I come up with about 19 seconds. No, wait, Boeing says it doesn't accelerate nearly that fast early on; at 115 sec. it's only traveling at 4490 ft/sec, so on average it was accelerating at 1.2 g to that point. So 18,000 ft. at 1.2 g happens after 30 seconds. One derivation of the horizon equation (and a story about Pikes Peak for my Colorado friends) is here. Interestingly, at 18 seconds, it's still well below Mach 1, according to the Boeing flight sequence of events.
June 25, 2006 Even mad scientists have to start somewhere Well, the loyal readers (both of them, and you know who you are) have been clamoring for more. Time to throw out some fresh meat to you information wolves. So I offer you... the Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments! (Lots more details on how to do it at that link).
Had enough? No? Then see The music just adds the finishing touch of whimsy; these videos come off like the twisted love child of Blue Man Group, Devo, and Mr. Wizard, caught in a bizarre love triangle. Or Discovery Channel's Mythbusters, but without Adam Savage's giggling. (He has entirely too much fun crashing, burning, and otherwise wrecking stuff). Don't know about you, but I know what I'll be setting off on the Fourth of July...
June 11, 2006 Jack, the bear In New Jersey, they have a different way of dealing with bears (see May 23 entry). They send in the Attack Cat.
And this just in: the German bear is back. So what do the Germans do? They send in foreign mercenaries – a team of Karelian bear dogs from Finland. At a cost of 25,000 € – about $30,000. Leave it to the Germans to over-engineer and over-manage everything. I see from that article that the German tabloid Bild picked up on the Jack the Cat story as well. I'd say “great minds think alike” except that Bild is the German equivalent of the National Enquirer.
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