Brickmuppet Blog 2.0

March 14, 2015

A Question For My Readers

"And now, the REAL battle begins!"

I'm wondering if I was having problems with Crunchyroll's stream or if this episode of Log Horizon was really animated at about 4 fps?

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1 I'm a bit behind on my Log Horizon viewing, but as to Rudy

Posted by: Siergen at Sun Mar 15 13:54:02 2015 (Cvfrl)

2 A little OT for this episode, but something rather interesting has occurred to me while watching anime:

It seems to me like the Japanese have a better understanding of their nerds. They seem like they understand much better what makes them tick psychologically. Shiroe is pretty much an archetypical nerdy introvert: He prefers to work with the abstract, he prefers to stay in the background of a situation and get at an understanding of the problems he faces before moving. He's happy when his friends are having fun, but he's usually watching the fun from the background. etc.

I wonder why anime writers are better at this, and why in just about every bit of western pop culture I can think of, nerds are misunderstood at best, and usually dehumanized?

Posted by: MadRocketSci at Sun Mar 22 12:29:52 2015 (GtPd7)

3 PS - I have too many aliases going on the internet. I've posted here before as ams. MadRocketSci is another one I go on at my blog.

Posted by: MadRocketSci at Sun Mar 22 12:38:46 2015 (GtPd7)

4 PPS - I'm not intending nerd or introvert in the perjorative sense. It's probably symptomatic of our popular culture that there's no way to refer to this type of personality *but* in a perjorative sense. (Seriously, where does this come from anyway? It's all pervasive. Japan could make Log Horizon or Mouretsu Pirates, but the US is stuck with the Big Bang Theory. And where has our sci-fi gone?)

I really like the characters in this series. Nyanta is pretty much chivalry personified. (Can't be easy for him, and yet he's always keeping his comrades' spirits up.) Shiroe is awesome. Even the shopping street 8 guy is awesome (Seriously? A capitalist as a protagonist, doing what merchants actually do? Pinch me!)

Posted by: MadRocketSci at Sun Mar 22 13:21:57 2015 (GtPd7)

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The Day Was Saved

Astonishingly, the Village Inn was almost out of pies, but at 9:26 PM, we did our bit to save the world.

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March 13, 2015

An Argument Against Friggatriskaidekaphobia

18 minutes left to go and as of yet no disasters have yet befallen any of the staff here at Brickmuppet Blog since midnight.

So close...so close...18 minutes to safety....

Lest people grow complacent, it should be remembered that in a few minutes it will be International Pi day.

If one does not consume pie at exactly 3-14-15 9:26:54 then no one knows WHAT might happen!

UPDATE: John C. Wright speculates

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March 12, 2015

Terry Pratchett 1948-2015

Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series quietly passed away this morning, having fought a battle with early onset Alzheimers, which, in a manner of speaking, he won. You see, he succeeded in completing his last novel The Sheppherds Crown shortly before his passing. It will be published posthumously.

Pratchett leaves behind a vast body of work that has brought and will continue to bring joy to millions. He also had a fossil sea turtle named in his honor and a greenhouse full of carnivorous plants, because he was just that awesome a person.

A great man has passed, but in both his work and his life, he inspired many of the great people to come.

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March 11, 2015

In Orbit: 5x5

One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes reacts to the successful insertion of the Dawn Probe into orbit around Ceres, the Solar System's innermost Dwarf Planet.

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March 09, 2015

Log Horizon: 47 Episodes

...and it's STILL full of win.

Best Kunoichi

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1 Yes!!! Finally somebody I can talk about the show and not spoil!!!

Everything we've seen about the empathions seems to indicate that they are some kind of mental energy, possibly produced by emotions or having feelings for others (the marriage Genius) and possibly produced by adventurer memories (the Moon thing).

OTOH, in a universe where physical laws are different, it may be something that's only tangentially related. That might explain why it's supposed to be okay to harvest in areas where the intelligences are not particularly high level, but harvesting from high level intelligences (like adventurers) is forbidden by the aliens' law.

I want Akiba to build a magic spaceship! If there's anything that would stir up the adventurers with acedia, spaceship building should be it! Of course, getting it done while still protecting the city and keeping an eye on Plant Hwyaden won't be easy. But it would be pretty darned amusing if an adventurer space race ensued.

The more we see of Nyanta, the more admirable he becomes. And for being such a showy character, he's always a model of both Japanese reserve and Western chivalrous behavior. His discussion with Serara was remarkably well done, as he managed to be encouraging for her future in general without raising any false hopes in particular. But we have seen some new hints that he's missing people back home and just not advertising it. What a guy!

I am really glad that the Minori love interest plot has been toned down so much this half of the season, and that the writers have made it fairly clear that Minori has adjusted her expectations somewhat.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 10 09:25:02 2015 (ZJVQ5)

2 So that's 42 songs, plus the pop songs introduced by Isuzu, plus the one she wrote?

A lot of people online seem to have disliked that plot. I disagreed, and thought it was moving and interesting. Possibly there are nuances I wasn't getting, but I thought it was an interesting exploration of being a bard, as well as the way our society tends to denigrate people doing music even at home if they aren't instant virtuosi.

(Witness the nasty remarks about Isuzu's voice actress, who was plainly someone who knew how to sing but was deliberately singing in a breathy, unsupported way to simulate inexperience. I don't even know how she managed to sing ever so slightly off key - not even flat or sharp enough to count, something like a quartertone off in just a few places. Maybe the voice actress sings traditional Japanese tonal music, or maybe she's just a good mimic, but it was a really good simulation of someone with solid instrumentals and not-so-solid vocal skills. Which is a fairly common situation in amateur music.)

There were also some who thought Isuzu was upset out of nowhere, but I think that was just a function of how disturbing it is to have Isuzu go off the rails. She's such a supportive and cheerful girl most of the time that people forgot she might have her own concealed issues. Apparently a passion for music without the skill level she expects of herself is her biggest issue, and now she has had to confront it head on.

The thing is, self-criticism is important, but music is also one of those gifts which are not given primarily for one's own enjoyment and use. Music exists primarily to be heard and enjoyed by other people, and it is more important that they get something out of it than that you feel satisfied with yourself. So sometimes, it's more important to do your best right now than to wait for perfection that may never happen. In a world where people have been deprived of more than just a little slice of music, even a half-baked amateur has an obligation to spread beauty.

I am a bit surprised that we haven't explicitly heard of Isuzu spreading this info to every bard in the city, and everybody who can whistle. The game-style physical laws probably make her kind of stuff difficult to do, but it would be worth some effort.

I also liked the way Rudy got some new respect from Isuzu. You can only do retriever jokes so long, and he's a great guy with hidden depths.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 10 09:46:26 2015 (ZJVQ5)

3 The town may have been larger because of the large number of low-level players who had to pass that way, back in the game days, and the large amount of money they would spend. It sounds like the magic bag quest was usually something you went after at a very low level, because everybody needed to have the expansion slots for equipment. The town may also have featured a lot of side areas for minor quests.

I do think the pacing was off in the town wyvern attack episodes. But they had a lot to put in. I do kinda wish they'd let Tohya just come out and say, "You are freaking amateurs at suffering, and I'll tell you my story straight out, and then I'll tell you when you have a right to despair." I honestly don't think the Odyssey Knights were in any condition to understand his Japanese-style implication speech, or they were deliberately trying not to hear.

The discussion between Minori and Roe-2: Yeah, that could have been better staged, but convincing a high level experienced player to help was a perfectly good use of Minori's support role, at least at the beginning of the battle. I did see some commentary about the questions Roe-2 asked being references to some kind of known philosophical theory about the common good, but I didn't really get it. Obviously something more popular in Japan than here.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 10 10:04:57 2015 (ZJVQ5)

4 I was totally wrong about the intelligences. I was so sure they were just fragments of AI for the game that had come alive, because of the farmbot that had come alive.

Even assuming that the aliens have the power to go from universe to universe, ripping open space/time and possibly causing havoc, I don't see how they inadvertently dragged in the adventurers. I guess we need to stay tuned for that.

Of course, it would be pretty funny if it turns out that going from world to world across universes is just traveling from computer game to computer game, a la Reboot.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 10 10:12:14 2015 (ZJVQ5)

5 The revelation that there have only been 40-odd songs was a pretty startling one. I don't get the rage at Isuzu's reaction, which was completely appropriate, especially given her love of music. I thought it was really neat (and kind of creepy). I suspect that part of that reaction had to do with the realization that the amazing response they were getting was not necessarily a reflection of the band's skill, as it was joy to hear something new("in the kingdom of the blind and all that") which probably stung her pride a bit...in addition to the gut punch which that whole revelation entailed. There is just so much in that little side plot...it's really just a few lines of flavor text that she sulks over for a bit while the main story is happening,but it adds a ton of depth.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Mar 10 11:12:53 2015 (ohzj1)

6 That's a good point about the gut punch about her performance skill... although really, the band was pretty good, and fresh entertainment is always welcome in a medieval-level economy. But OTOH, there's no sweeter sound to a songwriter than other people singing your stuff! So it evened out in the end.

I actually thought they were going to have Isuzu creating a bardic teaching/overskill, because logically a brand new song in that milieu might have serious god-level power. But if that's where they're going, they're not there yet.

In the light novel, I think they mentioned that most people who play bard characters just let the computer play for them, and so Isuzu is still one of the few bard adventurers who actually plays her instrument, instead of using bardic powers to do it. I suspect this would change big-time once people knew more.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 10 11:52:12 2015 (ZJVQ5)

7 RE: the marriage genius-it's strongly implied that the women who vanished before Harem Fantasy Inc, West Wind took the beast out are....gone. Where is unclear, were they married off, rendered for their 'empathions'...what? The side story with Kanami's group being referenced in flashback (where the monsters that were eating people were revealed to be djin) indicates that this is a serious threat.
RE: Empathions-I think you're right that this has something to do with the memory fragments lost during the 'resurrection' process. Roe-2 mentioning that she's decided they are all class 3 and therefore 'entitled to their world's resources' would seem to solve the problem...but it seems that the harvesters did not get the memo. Does this mean that Roe-2 is not being listened to? Is rogue?
RE: Unfortunate Implications- yeah I'm glad they backed off of that. I agree completely that the conversation with Nyanta really hit it out of the park.
With regard to Tohya's speech, his personal backstory wouldn't have moved the Odyssey Knights...the thing is that he is freed here, he has regained what he lost in the 'real world'. The guy who is trying to return to his fiance' has received no corresponding perk...just loss. I suspect that many of the less well adjusted were casual gamers who were conventionally successful in Japan. The only appeal to them is one of responsibility, and they were simply too far gone to be moved by that.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Mar 10 11:54:53 2015 (ohzj1)

8 Well, I dunno. I think I'd be shamed to know that a little kid was able to stick out bad stuff for years, with no end in sight, whereas someone who was practically a grown man couldn't stand being a little bit lonesome and got suicidal.

But of course, refusing to feel appropriate shame is a pretty standard way to portray villainy in Japanese shows, and here in the US, it happens in real life a lot these days.

Of course, I think the show would have been a little bit easier on the selfish suicidal mode, if the Odyssey Knights hadn't also decided that even if the People of the Land were real, it was okay to get them killed and destroy their town as part of the suicide quest.

OTOH, I think it's also fair to say that the Knights got so crazy (in part) because they didn't go for any feedback from the larger adventurer community in the cities, or accept/seek any feedback from the People of the Land. I don't blame them for not wanting to do Plant Hwyaden, but they easily could have gone to Akiba for help, recruited more knights, etc.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 10 12:58:44 2015 (ZJVQ5)

9 Man, do I feel sorry for that guy's fiancee. If he gets back, he'll probably have lost himself all memory of her and his family, as well as having transformed himself into a really nasty piece of work with a giant sense of entitlement.

Sorry for the wall o' text. I'm getting my friend to catch up on Log Horizon this week, but she is still more than half a season behind.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 10 13:30:41 2015 (ZJVQ5)

10 In context, Roe2's comment about how the Odyssey Knights "were generously donating empathions" makes quite a bit of sense...

So, question... given the opportunity, which of the main cast would go home? I'd say "Nyanta" but, well... he's kind of a hard-core role-player and he's in his role, so maybe not? The only other main cast member that I think would have any chance of going would be Minori.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Mar 10 13:47:17 2015 (a38fD)

11 If you hold the shift key down and hit "enter" twice inside a spoiler tag, that gives you a new paragraph. (In HTML terms it gives you two "breaks" instead of closing a paragraph and starting another, and breaks don't... break the spoiler mechanism.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tue Mar 10 14:30:43 2015 (+rSRq)

12 Let's try that out with some off topic, but useful information.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Mar 10 15:03:14 2015 (ohzj1)

13
W0ot! Thanks Steven!
/images/KanamiBeatsFistaLH.gif

"Got any fixes for "being stuck in China?"

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Mar 10 15:13:47 2015 (ohzj1)

14 Sure, you just swim across the Sea of Japan, like Ranma did.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tue Mar 10 17:57:17 2015 (+rSRq)

15 (Of course, you have to be a girl or a panda to do that, like Ranma and her father would have been. After all, the Sea of Japan is cold water.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tue Mar 10 17:59:40 2015 (+rSRq)

16 To take a stab at Avatar's question...I think the obvious one would be

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Mar 10 20:11:33 2015 (ohzj1)

17 Re: the spoilerific:

All things considered, you could argue that spoilerperson is the most well-balanced adventurer whom we have met, given the exceptional challenge being faced with great cheerfulness.

Naotsugu probably does well wherever he is, although apparently he doesn't get quite as much salary back home as his talents would seem to warrant.

OTOH, people like Shiroe and Akatsuki, or Marie and Henrietta, or the West Wind crew, seem to having much more fun and doing much more good in Akiba. They get to make full use of their talents. Of course, returning to the real world would now mean having a much larger pool of friends and acquaintances and allies. (Henrietta would probably want to get a bunch of people hired, and might start her own business now that she's done it once already.)

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Wed Mar 11 12:25:04 2015 (ZJVQ5)

18 The real question is, how does this work out with respect to the Plant folks?

Obviously if you open the door home you'd have to be careful not to have the Odyssey gang trample each other going through it. On top of that, how does that affect people like Londark? It neatly eliminates his moral justification - if you want to get home, then you go home, but if you don't want to, you can't blame the world for subjecting you to it any longer; in essence you have to take responsibility for your morals from the perspective of the world as a real world. (Well, to the extent that you did in the first place; plenty of people go through real life with the thought that they don't owe the world anything to begin with, so it's not beyond the pale that some of them would take the same outlook into the game...)

It's not likely to sap Akihabara's strength much because that moral issue doesn't really exist - the people who are the base of Akihabara's strength are there because they're fully engaging the world on its own terms already.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Mar 11 17:59:06 2015 (zJsIy)

19 A lot of the Plant people are apparently out for power, so they probably wouldn't mind much if a large proportion of Adventurer good guys went home without them. OTOH, they might oppose being made to go home and let the People of the Land work things out. Also, it's pretty clear that some of the new magic is pretty bad, yet many of the People of the Land are totally okay with oppressing their fellows with it.

Still, the siren song of the Internet would incessantly haunt even some of the worst villains. Facebook and cat videos are a drug that you can only access on one planet.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Thu Mar 12 15:27:01 2015 (ZJVQ5)

20 I'm just frustrated that they haven't done anything with Crusty this season. Every now and again, someone says, "Oh yeah, Crusty's still gone isn't he? What's up with that?"

And that's it.

I feel like I'm watching Homer Simpson pitch the character of Poochie: "When Crusty's off the screen, someone should ask, 'Where's Crusty?'"

Though he'll probably be on the moon, along with So-And-So's arm.

Posted by: wahsatchmo at Thu Mar 19 11:32:18 2015 (r4uXE)

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Dynastic Twilight ?

Several articles have popped up in a relatively short time suggesting that the Chinese Communist Party may be in a surprisingly precarious position. These pre-mortems pop up from time to time and usually focus on the demographic challenges China will face in upcoming years. However several recent articles with rather dramatic titles like "The Coming Chinese Crack-Up"are positing that the rot in the Chinese Communist Party itself is a more immediate threat. Additionally we think of China as a creditor nation because they hold a good chunk (almost 8%) of our debt, but China has quite the issue with their national debt as well. With some suspecting that the middle kingdom is in a rather more fragile state than their increase in defense spending and island seizures would indicate.

Some might take this as good news, but a collapse of the Mao Dynasty could get exceedingly messy with alarming speed.

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March 07, 2015

egzamz...over....

After finishing my exams Friday, I got a replacement for the Blackberry that was destroyed during the blizzard. One of my E-mail accounts got hacked within 7 hours of the activation..which involved accessing my AOL account from the Verizon store.

There is an inscrutable, deeply hidden lesson in that story somewhere, but I am too tired to spot it .

Anyway, I've had a week, so, while I recover, here is what appears to be a still from a low budget Kaiju movie.

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March 03, 2015

Meanwhile, in Chile

The Chilean volcano Villarrica had been making rumblings for about a month before erupting spectacularly early this morning.

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Well, That Was One Heck of a Speech.

Netanyahu knocked it out of the park, laying out all the myriad reasons why the proposed deal is of such concern to so many. However, it seems unlikely to change many, if any minds amongst those in power whose minds are made up.

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Well. This is Intruiging...

One of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes points us to this article on Lockheed Martin's concept for a fusion turbine about which there is more here and here....

She also has some reservations.

"I'm not sure I can trust any scientist who isn't wearing a proper science shirt."

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1 Is it?

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tue Mar 3 00:53:24 2015 (jGQR+)

2 I'll believe it when I see it. Fusion has been "just around the corner" since I was a kid.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tue Mar 3 00:58:59 2015 (+rSRq)

3 Yes, but it's always been twenty years away, now it's five so there has been progress with regards to the hype.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Mar 3 01:08:26 2015 (ohzj1)

4 I cannot believe you guys have already forgotten the last time LM promoted CFR, it was only a few months ago!

As much as I can tell, they haven't released any new information, in particular how to protect the coils that are inside the neutron blanket.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Mar 3 13:48:00 2015 (RqRa5)

5 Also, I hope everyone realizes that they cheat by using unobtanium fuel. They want to use D/T mix. It reduces the plasma temperature by a few orders, which permits CFR to be this small. The D/T fuel can supposedly be produced by irradiating Li in fission reactors, but there's no process for it. And they depend on Uranium reactors forever, too. Note that if Tokamak people built for D/T, they would've crossed the self-sustainability long ago, too.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Mar 3 13:51:58 2015 (RqRa5)

6 The line about being five generations from a prototype makes me suspect this is just a computer model, so eh. I'll believe it when they have something built.

Posted by: Mitch H. at Tue Mar 3 14:34:32 2015 (jwKxK)

7 @Mitch, are you saying it's only a model?

Posted by: Siergen at Tue Mar 3 17:19:38 2015 (ohSuC)

8 In the fusion course I took, my impression is that all current fusion reactors try for D-T reactions, because the cross section is about 10x larger than D-D. They want to get to where the reactors can actually work, before tackling a reaction that is 10x lower, which needs to be held for 10x longer.

Plasma temperatures in which fusion occurs should be about the same order of magnitude for each. It's the confinement of the plasma which has proven to be the main problem for fusion reactors. Even if you have closed magnetic field lines and no path for plasma to leak due to a loss cone problem (such as prior magnetic mirrors have suffered from), there is cross-field motion of the ions due to ion-ion collisions. You will only ever be able to hold onto a fusion plasma for a finite amount of time, and that time needs to be long enough that sufficient reactions happen to repay the energy you put in to get it up to temperature.

In Tokomaks, additional problems keep cropping up: Mostly they have to do with plasma instabilities. Tokomak plasmas are confined mostly by the poloidal field generated by current within the plasma. The toroidal fields generated by the giant external magnets are there in an attempt to keep the plasma from developing pinch instabilities, kink instabilities, ballooning instabilities, etc. I wonder if the main problem is that we're not confining the plasma with an externally generated field as they attempt to do with stellerators. Internally generated fields --> feedback --> instabilities which throw your plasma bodily into the walls after a much smaller time than the theoretical confinement time.

Posted by: ams at Wed Mar 4 10:46:55 2015 (GtPd7)

9 So, what's your opinion on the bottle confinement?

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Mar 4 10:52:12 2015 (RqRa5)

10 Nevermind, D-D reactions have to be run hotter as well as confined longer. (If they run at 10E9 K instead of 1E9 K) they are only a factor of 5 - 10 times slower than D-T, instead of 100.

Lockheed's reactor (at least from the patent) looks like it is a magnetic mirror. I wonder if they have a solution for the loss cone problem? (It may also be that they are going for some other confinement scheme than what they are publishing).

Posted by: ams at Wed Mar 4 10:56:06 2015 (GtPd7)

11 My reading is, my placing the superconducting coils inside, closer to the plasma, they intend to create the neck gradient that's much steeper than ever was accomplished before. Some exhaust may actually be beneficial, because you need to evacuate Helium ions. Of course the fuel leaks as well, so... I don't have the answers.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Mar 4 13:58:55 2015 (RqRa5)

12 I recall a documentary many years ago where one of the early fusion power researchers said his initial work was on a long, linear containment vessel. He calculated that if it was long enough, the amount of plasma leaking out the ends would be small enough to not affect the pressures at the center. However, when that length turned out to be about one mile, he decided to join the ends together into the toroidal Tokamak configuration, which introduced new complexities.

I'm no nuclear physicist (I still have no idea how I passed my quantum mechanics test in college), but I sometimes wonder if that mile-long linear configuration might be worth a second look...

Posted by: Siergen at Wed Mar 4 16:42:47 2015 (ohSuC)

It would require a titanic number of super-cooled magnets. And a non-trivial number of extremely expensive vacuum pumps. A chamber that big is going to leak and outgas at an absurd rate; it would be really tough to achieve a hard enough vacuum.

I used to work on vacuum chambers at one job I had. Our chamber was a hexagon about a meter across, used for semiconductor manufacturing, and it took something like 20 hours for it to pump down to a vacuum low enough -- and we didn't need anything like the kind of vacuum that fusion would require. The cryopump we used cost something like $50K. For a chamber a mile long to do fusion, you'd need hundreds of those, maybe thousands.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wed Mar 4 19:13:12 2015 (+rSRq)

14 SLAC is 2 miles long and works almost constantly, so I think worries about maintaining a vacuum chamber of such configuration are overblown - except for the cost. SLAC's budget is $350 million a year, according to Wikipedia.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Mar 4 21:37:19 2015 (RqRa5)

15 I don't know that a fusion reactors vacuum needs to be as clean as a chip fabrication plant's vacuum. You are, after all, trying to maintain a 1E20 #/m^3 or more plasma density in the vessel, and the ion bombardment of the walls (you want it to be heavily limited - same problem as plasma confinement, but you aren't going to stop it entirely) is going to scatter wall material into the plasma. This is another reason that using light elements like Li as a blanket material to the vessel makes sense. Heavy elements like W produce contamination that radiates a lot of energy.

Posted by: ams at Thu Mar 5 07:42:20 2015 (GtPd7)

16 Still, one of these days it would be nice if we could push a ship across the ocean, or run a small city with these reactors. The astro-engineer in me would like to see something we could possibly launch into space.

That's not going to happen if they need to be miles long.

Posted by: ams at Thu Mar 5 07:44:10 2015 (GtPd7)

Our target was usually 10^-7 torr. But if we could do better, our customers were happy.

It was kind of neat watching a chamber pump down. A diaphragm pump would get it down to about 3 torr, and then we'd open the hatch on the cryopump, and the pressure would drop about 4 orders of magnitude in about 30 seconds.

(If you're not familiar with the unit, normal atmospheric pressure is about 750 torr, depending on the weather and your altitude.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thu Mar 5 07:48:02 2015 (+rSRq)

18 I'm curious how a cryopump works. At a guess, something cold enough to liquify whatever gasses remain?

One advantage of putting the thing in space is all the free vacuum.

Posted by: Mauser at Thu Mar 5 09:18:27 2015 (TJ7ih)

Not liquify, freeze. The pump head of the cryo is cooled to about 20 degrees kelvin using liquid helium. At the kind of pressures where you use a cryo, the gas particles bounce around the chamber like billiard balls, and when they strike the cryo they stick.

Over time ice builds up on the cryo, so about every two weeks you have to "regenerate" it, which means closing the slot valve, warming it up to room temperature, passing warm dry nitrogen over it to melt off the ice, cooling it back down to 20K, and then opening the slot valve again.

It's a sin to "dump a cryo", which means you accidentally open it to normal atmosphere. It instantly coats thickly with ice, and then you have to regenerate it. (It doesn't harm the cryo, but regenerating a cryo takes several hours.) Someone who dumps a cryo generally takes a bit of ribbing.

The vacuums we achieved in our chambers was far harder than anything available in space unless you went out to the orbit of like Neptune...

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thu Mar 5 10:44:51 2015 (+rSRq)

20 OKA-T promises 1E-12..1E-14 behind the screen, when and if it flies (currently slipping into 201

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thu Mar 5 12:54:26 2015 (RqRa5)

Pete, I don't believe that, because outgassing would prevent it. (I believe that they're making the claim, but I don't believe they'll succeed in reaching -14.)

Outgassing is a real problem. Our chambers were treated with a secret process which drastically reduced the amount of outgassing, but we still got some and that's why we had to struggle to even reach -7.

I don't think it's possible to eliminate outgassing entirely. (If someone ever figures out a way to do it, they'll get rich.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thu Mar 5 13:16:16 2015 (+rSRq)

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March 02, 2015

Brodie Rig

Here is some interesting color footage of the Brodie landing system which the Army used during WW2 to operate their light observation planes without airstrips. Towards the end of the war the devices were adapted for use at sea on Navy and Army transports.

This system is wacked, and it doesn't work with planes much bigger than a Piper Cub, but it had one obvious advantage over the Hurricat.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:01 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Does Thinking This Make Me a Bad Person?

A large explosion on Capitol Hill tomorrow would make an unusually broad coalition of people who nominally hate each other, (some of whom are boycotting the event) but don't much like people like me, alarmingly happy.

"Nah...Being a bad person makes him think that."

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I Didn't Know That He HAD a Tardis

Ben over at Midnight Tease has been live blogging the battle of the Alamo (no doubt at great personal peril). I know how this story ends so you may want to pop in and give Ben your best in the next five days.

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On To More Pleasant Things

Don has discovered a true wonderment....

...to which these young ladies are reacting appropriately.

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Stuff...

I have contracted a case of the Martian Death Flu which has kneecapped my creativity. In the interests of content here are a few random links.

First some good news: A Boko Haram force, while attempting to move into southern Chad encountered a Chadian Army unit which curb-stomped them. Boko Haram's losses were 207 killed against Chad's one dead and nine wounded. Chad also seized large quantities of small arms and ammunition left behind by the murderous, feral nutbars.

A US Military satellite has exploded in orbit. The 20 year old DMSP-F13 reported a temperature spike before breaking into 43 pieces. The loss occurred on February 3rd but was only reported Saturday.

The U.S. Korea Institute has issued a projection of how many nuclear weapons North Korea will have in 2020. The estimate is between 20 and more than 100. That's a rather....large spread. There is an interview with the researchers over at The Diplomat. It can be heard here.

We've mentioned before that America's B-61 nuclear bombs are being reduced in yield from 340KT to 50KT (while at the same same time massively increasing the accuracy). There is much more on this here. Note the buried lede 29 paragraphs down:

As part of this plan, the U.S. would eliminate the megaton-class B83 gravity bomb.

With a yield variable from a few kilotons to 1.2 megatons B-83 is by far the most powerful weapon remaining in the arsenal. The B-83 is also a much more modern nuclear bomb than the B-61. Yet this weapon is being removed from the arsenal, to be replaced with two downgraded versions of the old B-61 with 50 and 100 kiloton maximum yields. While lower yields and greater accuracy do reduce collateral damage, nuclear deterrence involves having the potential to maximize damage to the infrastructure of the country being deterred. Also, ones accuracy is only as good as one's targeting, and while missile silos and military bases might well be eliminated with 50 kiloton blasts, the great SCUD hunt reminds us that hunting for the mobile land based missiles is not at all easy and could well involve a lot of imprecise targeting in a general area, where the greater 'earthquake effect' of the earth penetrating B-83 might be valuable. Finally, there is the possibility that a nation with a different values set than ours might conclude that even 1000 or more 50-100kt weapons hitting their strategic targets would be survivable as a nation, whereas a similar number of megaton class weapons would allow no recovery for us, thus in their twisted logic, victory. This is more likely if one has 4 times our population and a Maoist outlook that might consider one's large population to represent...spares. Increasing the accuracy of the arsenal is surely a good idea, as it makes the deterrent more credible, but getting rid of our most powerful bomb (which is variable yield in any event) seems rather ill considered.

As we have again mentioned "nukes", here is a picture of 21 kilotons of 'splody.

Pete Zaitcev takes a break from aviation blogging to express his thoughts on the Ukrainian situation.

The Baltic Dry Index has hit a 29 year low.

China is building three to five times as many subs as the U.S.A.

What is being described as "vandalism" resulted in internet, phone, and cell service being disrupted across a wide swath of Arizona on Wednesday.

Something is quite rotten at UCLA.

Carly Fiorina asks a reasonable question.

Ebola has not been in the news lately as it has not been spreading as fast as feared, but it has managed to kill 10,000 thus far and get into the vice Presidential offices of Sierra Leone...oh and it is now believed that airborne transmission is very likely in certain circumstances. ISTR those who suggested this earlier were called bad names. Additonally, it has recently been revealed via a freedom of information request that Ebola does, in fact seem to be a serious concern to the military with regard to its weaponization by terrorists.

The first scenario outlined is completely redacted, illustrating the acute sensitivity about the issue. The second scenario is heavily blacked out but, according to the memo, "would be both logistically and technically challenging for a non-state group to undertake".

Well...that's reassuring. And I mean that with the same level of sarcasm that I say this is reassuring as well.

Finally, some Taiwanese news outfit has thoughts on Net Neutrality.

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February 27, 2015

Damn

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February 26, 2015

It is STILL Snowing

Tuesday evening it snowed and...iced. In the process of getting out of the car I dropped my keys and foolishly posed the question..."God. What else can go wrong?" Almost instantly my prayers were answered as I suddenly inverted myself and deposited my schoolbooks and cellphone in the briny puddle beneath my car.

Today I got out of work to find seven inches of snow on my car. I note that it is STILL coming down as I type this.

This winter has been unreal on the east coast, while other parts of the country are not having winter at all. To solve this mystery here is one of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes who will explain to you, gentle readers, why this is all Bill DeBlasio's fault...

"Wait. What!?...No I won't."

Fine. I'll do it...

On Groundhog Day 2014, the New York mayor compelled a defenseless groundhog to appear at some inane photo-op. During the course of this event the mayor dropped the animal, and despite a cover-up it has been revealed that it died of its wounds.

This year Punxsutawney Phil came out of his burrow and declared that there would be six additional weeks of winter. As Mr. Phil is a member of the groundhog tribe, and since (according to no less an August source that the Washington Post) he can control the weather, it is obvious that he is exacting revenge on the Northeastern United States by taking all the cold points from the rest of the temperate world and min/maxing the misery in the northeast.

As to why a rodent that can control the weather would not simply strike Mayor DeBlasio down with a lightning bolt, such uncongenial lines of reasoning can be special pleaded away by pointing out that the malignant critical theorist in question is an elected official (of America's Largest City) and therefore the electorate bears some blame in his eyes.

The solution to this unhappy situation is clear: Mayor Deblasio must be hog tied and left outside a groundhog warren for the Groundhog Tribe to do with as they please.

Of course it's possible that this analysis is somehow flawed, but ask yourself....do you want to take the chance that it isn't?.

Besides, even in the unlikely event that this course of action did nothing for the weather, DeBlasio would still be hogtied outside a groundhog warren. I'm seeing no downside here...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:49 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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February 21, 2015

Suddenly: A Roving Pedant Appears

Reading this article on Russian bomber incursions into UK airspace, this bit at the end jumped out at me.

The warnings came after military chiefs said Britain "could not copeâ€ if Russia attacked because our defence forces have been "decimatedâ€.
Sir Michael Graydon, former head of the RAF, said: "I very much doubt whether the UK could sustain a shooting war against Russia. We are at half the capabilities we had previously.â€

To decimate something means to reduce it by a tenth. Yet in the next paragraph it is clearly stated that the UK military is at half their previous capability. What's more, the number of carriers has gone from 3 to zero in recent years and three is greater than one half of three so even that assessment is off by 50%.

Thus the objective truth is is that the UK Military isn't even close to being decimated.

See? That doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

"That's a relief! Everybody dance!"

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:00 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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Tales of the Cold

Below the fold; weather related angst.

Above the fold; a picture of Arale, which is probably missing some context and is unrelated to the weather discussion in any way.

more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:23 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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