In the World of the High Tech Redneck, the Graybeard is the old guy who earned his gray by making all the mistakes, and tries to keep the young 'uns from repeating them. Silicon Graybeard is my term for an old hardware engineer; a circuit designer. The focus of this blog is on doing things, from radio to home machine shops and making all kinds of things, along with comments from a retired radio engineer, that run from tech, science or space news to economics; from firearms to world events.
When we first got an HDTV a few years ago, Mrs. Graybeard and I naturally spent most of our TV time watching HD programming. One of the first movies we watched was "The Chronicles of Riddick". You have to understand this is not even really good scifi. It's a fun movie, it's a visual treat, it's a fantastic display of special effects perfect for HD, but don't pay too much attention. To quote a review I read, "Furyans, Necromongers, Elementals, The Underverse, the Threshold...it so clearly wants to be epic that it forgets to tie all of these disparate worlds, universes and civilizations into a coherent story. (Director) Twohy clearly makes the mistake of not realizing that there is a huge difference between being grand and being simply confusing and the more ideas that are introduced, the more lumbering it becomes…"
A large portion of the movie, and one of the longest action sequences, takes place on the planet Crematoria (yes, all the names in the movie are that cheesy) . Crematoria is a planet that has a tremendous temperature variation (probably an impossible amount) with daytime temperatures of 700C and night time temperatures far below zero. When the sunrise terminator sweeps through, the force of the heat gales that come with it are literally enough to blow you apart, disintegrating flesh and blowing pieces off until you die. There's a scene where a character (Purifier) destroys himself by walking into the sunrise terminator and self-immolating.
The first time I saw that scene, I said, "We've been out bike riding on that day". Mrs. Graybeard said, "I know I've been on the Causeway that day".
And that's what life in Florida is like in the summer; here in Central Florida, it's August plus or minus a week or two. Stay out of the sun. Do your outdoor stuff near sunrise or sunset. Don't expose bare skin to the sun for longer than necessary - and even then, use sunscreen (SPF 3 million is adequate) if you need to be out for any length of time. And thank God everyday for air conditioning.
Catchy acronym credited to commenter Dyspeptic Curmudgeon on Alpheca
So NASA has apparently been ordered to make its primary mission outreach to Muslim nations.
Charles Bolden, head of NASA, tells Al Jazeera that the "foremost" task President Obama has given him is "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." Thus, NASA's primary mission is no longer to enhance American science and engineering or to explore space, but to boost the self-esteem of "predominantly Muslim nations."
Exploring space didn't even make the top three things Obama wants Bolden to accomplish. The other two are "re-inspire children to want to get into science and math" and "expand our international relationships," source Powerline Blog
Bull crap. First off, the contributions of ancient Arab and Persian civilizations are duly noted - but there haven't been any noteworthy innovations out of that part of the world since Islam took over. There are no great contributions to Science, Mathematics or Engineering since then. Islam has destroyed that culture. Again, to quote another commenter:
Paraphrasing the address given by the Prime minister of Malaysia to a conference of Moslem heads of state around 29th December 2004. The gist of it was, original thinking has been haram (forbidden) to Moslems for the past 1200 years.
Got an exception? If the Muslim world is so great, why is it that when a leader gets sick, he comes here? Why is it they send their students here to learn engineering?
Former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin joins us in disgust:
The former head of NASA on Tuesday described as "deeply flawed" the idea that the space exploration agency's priority should be outreach to Muslim countries, after current Administrator Charles Bolden made that assertion in an interview last month. (Fox News)
The administration is backpedaling on this like a four year old caught with both mitts in the cookie jar.
....Bob Jacobs, NASA's assistant administrator for public affairs, ... said that Bolden was speaking of priorities when it came to "outreach" and not about NASA's primary missions of "science, aeronautics and space exploration." He said the "core mission" is exploration and that it was unfortunate Bolden's comments are now being viewed through a "partisan prism."
When in doubt, blame everything on the Republicans, right?
Look, I'm one of those who think the moon landings were one of the pinnacles of human history. It pains me deeply for us to be throwing out our heritage in space. In light of this, it's noteworthy that Bolden also said:
... the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help.
In other words, we have completely lost our vision, and our ambition. We have no desire to explore any more and would rather contemplate our navels. Exploration's too hard. It costs too much. He's saying we can't even recreate technology we had 45 years ago and improve on it. Even knowing the answer, as if from the back of the book, we can't re-create it. He's telling the Chinese, the Indians, the Japanese and every other nation with a space program that they can't do it, either. What a bunch of myopic crap.
So the answer is that instead of taking on challenges, let's all just sit around and be proud of something our ancestors did over 2000 years ago. Thanks, but if I'm proud of anything, it will be of things I've accomplished - anything my ancestors did was for them to be proud of.
In a way, Glenn Beck hit on a very good concept a few weeks ago. You may not have noticed it or it may not have stuck with you, but it's good. Think of the summer of 1969. Two big things happened that summer. The first moon landing in July, and Woodstock, a few weeks later.
The first was a tribute to hard working men and women: engineers, technicians, assemblers, and tens of thousands of hard working people who undertook a task that many viewed as impossible. "To land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of this decade". It was hard work, it was risky work. Men died: outstanding men you'd be proud to have known or worked with. It was a triumph of intellect, done with slide rules and calculators that your Smart Phone out classes by a factor of thousands. Even today, it is thought of as so hard to do that about 5% of the population thinks we never did it.
The second was a bunch of kids having sex in the mud while drugged out of their minds, listening to singers and musicians drugged out of their minds.
The first group was dedicated to doing things others can barely only imagine - bending the universe to their will through sheer intellect and power. They are "can do" people.
The second group was dedicated to rubbing body parts against each other with no effort of will and no character. Their entire focus in life is their genitals.
The second group is now in charge of the country.
Which kind of person are you?
...and lest you forget what Woodstock was like, Mrs. Graybeard and I laughed until we hurt at this ...
We had the Supremes vote that the 2nd Amendment is covered by the 14th, by a 5-4 vote, throwing aside complete gun bans. On the one hand, it's good we won. On the other, it's a 5-4 vote and wasn't a sweeping set aside of state laws. The definition of "reasonable laws" will have to be won in their court, too, I bet. It means we have four morons on the Supreme Court who can't tell cause from effect. Chicago residents, your "leadership" is bound and determined to keep you helpless in the face of armed criminals, and willing to spend all of your money going back and forth to courts. I wouldn't live there or even visit that place if you paid me.
We had Elena Kagan's hearings begin. (Phlegm Fatale had the absolute best line on Kagan's appearance, "If Mike Meyers and Matthew Broderick had a love child...I mean that in the nicest way possible. Truly, I do") but we're too mature around here to make fun of someone's looks. Heh heh. I thought she looked like Bob Costas after too much of a carbohydrate binge.
With political views like this, though, it's easy to find fault with qualifications:
Yeah. She'll get confirmed. And in a year we'll still have four morons on the Supreme Court; they just won't be the same four morons.
We had the death of Senator Robert C. Byrd at age 92. The "Foghorn Leghorn" of the Senate, someone who was well known for their racial bigotry over the years. While I might side with Billy Beck, Borepatch has the right tone. But he brought the bacon home to West Virginia and that gets you elected. You'd be amazed at the things named after him.
A mere day after my posting on Sunday about the world's deepening economic troubles, the Royal Bank of Scotland warned their customers about monster inflation coming in the US, thereby adding to the number of major financial outlets trying to get their customers to prepare for the poop hitting the air moving device. And Bloomberg News reports 46 states are on the verge of collapse. Any doubt you'll pay for bailouts?
Still, I think the most important thing I've seen this week is from a new blog I read, New Zeal. Watch this. Consider how it goes with the blogging from Israel I reported on. Consider what a small miscalculation from any of the (don't call me stupid) wise men involved could do. If you're like me, you'll go stock up on beans, bullets and band aids.
H/T to the Gormogons on this topic. EE Times is a newspaper for Electrical Engineers. They did some polling of their readers' attitudes about Twitter.
In a recent EE Times survey of 285 engineers, 85% reported that they don’t use Twitter. More than half indicated that the statement “I don’t really care what you had for breakfast,” best sums up their feelings about it; others characterized it as “a ridiculous waste of time and electrons” or expressed the strong desire for it to simply “go away.”
Yeah, that's kinda where I am, too. I don't care if it goes away, and I don't care that it's there, but ridiculous waste of time and electrons seems pretty spot on.
“The amount of information in a tweet is not worth the time spent looking at it,” asserts Jeffrey Tuttle, a hardware design engineer with 20 years of experience. “To be productive when doing design you need long periods of uninterrupted thought. Twitter by its nature is intrusive and interruptive. Consequently it seems to be for those people who don’t have enough to do.”
Engineers and other highly educated workers tend to need to concentrate on tasks, studying them in great detail. I've come to call it Attention Surplus Syndrome; the opposite of ADD. You see it in craftsmen as well as doctors, engineers, authors and other professions. It's a good attribute for a sniper, too.
I guess I view Facebook the same way. I joined to see what it was, and maybe chat with dear son and daughter in law, the found friends I hadn't heard from in 30 years. I also have about 30 friend requests to wade through ("wait... who are you again?") and one friend who plays those non-stop Facebook games which fill my home page with stuff that means even less than what he had for breakfast. Dude, I'm studying history, economics, monetary theory, shooting, military strategy and tactics with just about every minute I'm not herding electrons. I don't have the time to play Mafia Wars or feed imaginary pets.
I'm not anti-social. I enjoy sitting for hours with friends, talking, or enjoying hobbies together. The social media is what sucks.
"We found that Mother's Day is far and away the most popular day to place phone calls across the world, registering more calling traffic than any other holiday, including New Year's and Valentine's Day."
It gets better. Children often call dad to send their love but do so on his dime: Father's Day traditionally marks the year's busiest collect-call day for AT&T. And those who remember to send greeting cards do so in significantly smaller numbers.
For all you other fathers out there: enjoy your day. Have a barbecue. Do some shooting or fishing or something you like.
Earlier this week, I heard the Texas State Board of Education was choosing new textbooks. One of the items the social studies people wanted to talk about was the role of hip hop in American culture.
I can answer that. It's a fad. Hip Hop in 20 years will be like that lower back tattoo your young girl got on on a trip to Capo San Lucas. Hip Hop will be like a meaningless tattoo that sags as you get older.
So the answer isn't quite "no role" in American Culture. It will worse than no role, it will be more like that tramp stamp you regret.
Managers and engineers tend to take different view of risks. I work in a pretty risk-averse field, highly regulated, where if we shipped something that turned out to be defective, we have to make public recalls.
So I'm facing a decision that involves some risk. We are doing a "next version" of a product I'm developing and the chance to make things better shows up. If it works, we'll save a few dollars on every unit we ship. If it doesn't work, the effort to change the product is probably thrown out. Or we'll be late on shipments. Either way it costs real money.
If it works: I save the factory - and all of us - a few bucks per box. Maybe $5. Pure profit. Hey - would you turn down $5 if someone offered it to you with no strings? If it fails: it costs tens of thousands of dollars and they leave my severed head on the flagpole outside as a warning to others not to take risks like that. Hmmmm. $5 vs certain death. That's a tough one. Like Scott Adams says on risk vs reward: For a manager: Success: you get tons of money. Fail: someone under you gets laid off. For an engineer: Success: you get a handsome certificate, suitable for framing. Fail: think Space Shuttle Challenger, Columbia, Hyatt Regency walkway. Money lost, possibly large numbers of people die. Tends to give you a different view of the whole risk/reward continuum.
However, if this is the new rule, than I am correct to understand that more legislation is in order.
We have a right to keep and bear arms. Bill of Rights, Amendment #2.
According to the new rules on “Rights”, this means that each and every citizen now has a “Responsibility” to purchase a firearm so that they may “Keep and Bear” it, lest their fellow citizens be burdened with having to put themselves in danger by defending those who are not responsible enough to purchase their own.
To not file new legislation as an Amendment to the new law and vote FOR it under the now ongoing “fixing” of the new law, is to either be the ultimate hypocrite or admit that fines cannot be levied upon those who do not wish to pay for use of their “Rights”.
This gives me an idea for a letter to my Senator, the Wretched, Useless, Bill Nelson, who voted for this abortion (seems like the right word).
Mr. Nelson,
You voted, against the will of the majority of your constituents, for this health care monstrosity. I know I personally contacted you a half dozen times to urge you not to vote for it, but let's let bygones be bygones. This law certainly is a "game changer", that's for sure!
So let me get this straight: you've established that health care is a right and passed a law that mandates people are responsible to buy a product (insurance) to fill that right so that they don't have to depend on the good, productive people who already buy that product. For people who can't afford it, subsidies up to the full amount are available - paid for by those same people who buy the product. Since a requirement wouldn't mean much without the threat of punishment, the IRS will hire a few thousand agents to enforce citizens buying that product. I read they ordered a boatload of Remington 870 shotguns to help in this.
This idea seems to have wider applications than just health care.
You need to sponsor and pass a law regarding the right to freedom of speech. I suggest you mandate every citizen be required to buy a computer and desktop publishing software so that they may exercise their freedom of speech and create newsletters. How about blogs? That way, they won't have to depend on the productive people who already own computers. Similarly, you could mandate we buy Bibles, or the religious document of our choice, so that we can practice our right to freedom of religion.
You need to sponsor and pass a law regarding the right to keep and bear arms. I suggest you mandate every citizen purchase a firearm so that they may “Keep and Bear” it, (we can make an exception for felons) so that their responsible fellow citizens won't be burdened with having to put themselves in danger to defend those who are not responsible enough to purchase their own.
I guess I should interject here that for all of the above purchases, there should be subsidies for those unable to afford their computer, or Bibles, or firearms, up the full amount of purchase, just like for health insurance.
It's difficult to come up with a product to mandate that would keep soldiers from being quartered in our houses, or a product that would prevent search and seizures, but you guys are clever. You found a right to health care that never existed in 235 years of the Republic, so you'll find something to mandate.
Come to think of it, you'll have your work cut out for you coming up with products to mandate we buy to protect us from testifying against ourselves, our right to due process and protection from double jeopardy. Perhaps we should be required to keep a lawyer on retainer! That's not a product, per se, but it would be swell, too.
Gosh. Trial by jury? Right to a speedy trial? Right to reasonable bail? Now these are really going to tax (hah!) your ability to define products we need to buy. But as I said before, I have confidence in you and your fellow senators ability to find ways to meddle.
Oh - one more thing. I pledge my life, my "fortune" and my sacred honor to make sure you're unemployed after this term.
