June 14, 2014
An IT Question for Pixy (and any other IT professionals) UPDATED
In 1973 revelations that 18 and a half minutes of a recording on a reel-to-reel tape recorder had been erased dealt the death blow to an already struggling administration. In 2014 the revelation about the loss of every single E-mail pertinent to the investigations into the IRS political targeting of American citizens is being described as 'just one of those things'.
Pixy, as an IT professional, does the total credulity expressed by so many regards this data loss indicate that the powers that be actually have proof of the existence of a population of Magical Malevolent Data Eating Bunyips whose grazing range extends throughout the tubes of the internet?
I'm thinking that this hypothesis is the only way to square that circle.
Also: Assuming they are out there, can we coax these beasts into feeding instead on anything involving Air Jordan Snakeskins and their Dadaist proponents?
UPDATE: I mean seriously, ruling out bunyip involvement would have such implications as to open a can of yowies.
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Paraskevidekatriaphobia...Missed
I had intended to do two posts yesterday including one on the silly Friday the Thirteenth nonsense. Unfortunately my Friday involved, getting off work late, having my car stuck in the shop (where it remains over the weekend), a letter from the VA telling me I owe them 1800 dollars, an attack of sinusitis and a power failure.
On the other hand, while yesterday was the only such quirk of the gregorian calendar this year, there will be no less than three opportunities to post on Paraskevidekatriaphobia next year. Also, today has involved leveraging last nights power failure into about 13 hours of sleep, so things are definitely looking up.....embedded video notwithstanding.
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June 12, 2014
Let's Take a Moment to See What is Happening in the World
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June 10, 2014
OH WOW
There is a bit of political news from my home state that is worthy of comment.
Oh NO! Not NOW! Not politics! I just submitted a techno-yaoi manuscript to Bantam and now I'm gonna get frickking blacklisted!
You should have tried Baen, but fear not! We put the politics below the fold.
more...
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June 09, 2014
Ahhh Vocabulary....
Tonight, due to a certain series of events, I found myself looking up the word "Therian". After some initial confusion I found that which I was looking for...and yet did not need to know.
This in turn caused me to ponder the additional befuddlement that might result if any of them find themselves 'connected' to a platypus.
Pondering such ponderables is not particularly productivel. Thus, we'll try to atone by posting this bit of art for Ubu, who has pointed out some information that looks to be worthwhile indeed.
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So...What's On ?
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I'm suffering from acute fogeyism.
Most of the best anime shows I've watched recently have been recommendations. Now, I sit and look at the current and approaching line-up and see a vast wasteland, but there must be something that doesn't suck.
So what's good in the world of anime?
As "Good" is highly subjective, here are the shows that I've most enjoyed over the years.
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June 07, 2014
The Great Escape
Bernard Jordan, 89 a veteran of the Normandy landings 70 years ago had intended to pay respects to his fallen comrades by attending the 70th anniversary memorial service yesterday. However, June 5th found him confined to a nursing home and forbidden to attend the ceremony.
In the finest traditions of the British Royal Navy, Bernard Jordan eluded his captors, escaped from his facility and successfully evaded the local constabulary who were called in to assist in his recapture. He then made his way discreetly to the coast where her was able to slip onto a channel ferry, land in France and make his way to join his comrades.
Along the way, to further demoralize the enemy, he stopped for this picture.
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June 06, 2014
70 Years Later
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June 05, 2014
Neat!
Where DOES Don find these wonderful little gems?
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June 04, 2014
We are now Able to Announce an Increase From 340 to 50
It's that new math!
No we're not talking about the chocolate ration. We're talking about the B-61 nuclear bomb. This is a fearsome weapon having a yield that can be varied between the equivalent of 300 tons and 340 kilotons of TNT.
Having first been tested in 1966, the B-61 one of the only two atomic bombs the US possesses and is, by a wide margin, the oldest atomic weapon in the U.S. arsenal. As such these weapons are in need of refurbishment or replacement. The current administration scrapped plans for the reliable replacement warhead on the grounds that developing a new weapon was not in the spirit of nuclear disarmament. However, the aged B-61 (the design of which actually began in 1960) was becoming a concern for reliability (and safety) reasons so something had to be done.
The result was the B-61-12, an program to refurbish and upgrade the bombs. This has caused some consternation on the left as the addition of a GPS guidance package to the bomb, which gives it an accuracy equivalent to the most modern 'smart' conventional warheads is considered by many to be adding a new capability and a possible treaty violation. Given that the "new capability" is simply a greatly increased probability of hitting its target this does not seem to be a particularly meritorious argument.
However, as part of the upgrade, the maximum yield of the weapons is being reduced to 50 kilotons, a tad over one seventh the current value.
Now 50 kilotons is a terrifying thing. For perspective, see what a 21 kiloton blast detonated 90 feet below the surface of the water can do.
For scale, that black stain on the lower right of the cauliflower of death is BB33, USS Arkansas...the only US battleship to fly.
Still, you're reducing the yield to a tad over one seventh of it's current yield. The rationale may be that the weapon's accuracy would allow in some situations a lower yield setting to be used, thus reducing the blast area to obliterate a target and, in the unfortunate scenario where a ground burst is necessary, reducing fallout significantly. That is all well and good, but...
...except in a few very specific, oddball scenarios, if we are forced to use these terrible weapons, collateral damage damage is not going to be a concern.
Nukes are for deterrence.
That means that if we, God forbid, have to use these dreadful devices, we're going to come at whoever pushed us that far like the bastard children of an affair between Andrew Jackson, William T. Sherman and Curtis Lemay. The reason to have these weapons is the implication that we will UTTERLY DESTROY any country that attacked us with nukes or comparable weapons. To that end reducing the yield does not seem wise. It removes an option for greater power if needed and in doing so increases the likelihood that some blinkered individual will conclude that they can "take the hit" and absorb our retaliatory strike.
On the face of it, that's crazy, but if one (for instance) has expressed the opinion that Mao was a man to be admired and that the 'Great Leap Forward' and Cultural Revelation' were noble endeavors...then one might be the sort of psychopath who sees China's billion or so people as "spares". The rather large reduction in yield per bomb might well reinforce that dubious notion.
Now there may be a technical reason for the reduced yield. If the guidance package displaces, say, a tritium tank and 50KT is all they can manage then the increased accuracy is probably a good trade off. But unnecessarily reducing the yield of our weapons so dramatically, when we are already substantially reducing the numbers of our weapons seems imprudent at best.
So...one might wonder "What about the other nukes?"
Well, here's what's left.
B-61: Has already been mentioned. The most common nuclear bomb in the arsenal and second most common nuke in the US Inventory. Also used (with US controlled activation keys) by Germany, Italy and Turkey.
B-83: Designed 20 years after the B-61 it is a very advanced free-fall atomic bomb and has every available safety feature. It is also variable yield 20KT to 1.2 MEGAtons. (1200 kilotons) . By far the most powerful weapon remaining in the arsenal after the scrapping of the B-53s in 2011 . The last US atomic weapon fully tested to full yield. It is neither a reliability nor a safety concern. About 650 were manufactured most of which are still in storage.
W-76: a US/UK SLBM warhead with a yield of 100KT. By far the most common warhead in the US arsenal. Publicly available documents indicate that there have always been some concerns regards this aging weapons reliability. It is currently the subject of a refurbishment program which made the alarming discovery that the technique for making an important component of this weapon had been lost. Reportedly a work around has been developed after 9 years of intense research..It is hoped to have these 30+year old warheads refurbished by 2018. Though doubts about the basic design's reliability may remain.
W-78: The surviving Minuteman 3 missiles were designed to carry three of these 300 KT weapons apiece. There are concerns about its safety and age thus it is being rapidly phased out in favor of 1 W-87 for every 3 W-78s.
W-80: 150 KT This is the warhead on the Air-Force's cruise missiles. It was also used on the nuclear version of the Navy's Tomahawk, which has since been retired.
W-87: 300 KT Originally built for the Peacekeeper missile which could cary 10 apiece, the treaty mandated retirement of those 50 missiles freed up about 500 of these and they are being distributed amongst the 450 surviving Minuteman 3 missiles. This cuts the number of ICBM warheads by a third but improves safety and reliability of the warheads. There was an upgrade proposal to raise its yield to 475KT but this does not seem to have been done.
W-88: Thought to be, in many ways, a much more advanced design than the Air-Force's W-87, this roughly 475KT warhead is the preferred warhead for the Trident 2 SLBM which can cary 14 of them. However, the Trident is limited by treaty to 8. This weapon is considered to be by far the most advanced US nuclear warhead, more than quadrupling the yield of the similarly sized W-76. This weapon was to replace all of those older warheads but production was shut down at only 400 after the EPA/FBI raid on the Rocky Flats production facility in 1989. Although it was intended to restart production in the early 90s it was not resumed...in the US.
However, in 1995 the FBI discovered that China had obtained plans for the W88, and this diagram, which apparently contained all sorts of confidential details appeared in the NYT.
No new nukes have been made in the US since the end of the Cold War. The deterrent is aging and shrinking.
It seems inadvisable to shrink it more than necessary...especially when the Russians and Chinese are modernizing and in the case of the Chinese, expanding and brandishing theirs.
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June 03, 2014
Mt. Pavlof Goes "Boom!"
Quick! Someone call Don.
Alaska's rambunctious Mt. Pavlof is having a fit. Fortunately, the volcano is in a sparsely populated area and is unlikely to menace anyone on the ground with except unwary vulcanologists. However, it may well disrupt air travel between North America and Asia if the wind shifts and trends continue. The observatory page for the mountain is here. I was previously unaware that there are actually 4 Alaskan Volcanoes that have alerts issued for them right now.
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June 01, 2014
Woah.
Not sure what happened, but there was a glitch in the post below.
We have called in an expert who is so good that he regularly fixes IT systems WHILE UPSIDE DOWN!.
In the meantime, we have provided a compensatory beach bunny below the fold.
UPDATE: Fellow MeeNuVians, Thanks to our crackerjack team of antipodean technophiliacs, we have been informed that some formatting and visible HTML issues associated with cutting and pasting can be solved by turning off smilies.
more...
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Liebster Award
We here at Brickmuppet Blog wish give our sincerest thanks to Don of Zoopraxiscope infamy fame for nominating this site for a Liebster Award. This nomination brings with it many privileges...most of which are like those 'privileges' I'm constantly asked to check.
The Quasi-Official Rules of the Liebster Award
If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:
1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.
2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a "widget†or a "gadgetâ€. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)
3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
4. provide 11 random facts about yourself.
5. nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)
6. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.
7. list these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:
8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)
Don has helpfully provided 11 questions
1. Who should write your biography?
James Joyce (in the style of Finnigan's Wake).
2. Who should direct the movie version?
Ridley Scott: Seeing his choices in lighting, set design and camera angles on the mobile home would be fascinating.
3. Who should do the musical score for the movie?
The Puppini Sisters.
4. Please tell a favorite joke (keep it tasteful, thank you).
[ insert joke here ]
5. What book should everyone read?
I'm gonna go with Animal Farm. It would be imprudent to elaborate at this time.
6. What obscure movie is worth tracking down?
There are many, but the 1916 version of 20,000 leagues under the sea is surprisingly good.
7. Do you have a battle song, i.e., a tune that you hum, sing or stomp your feet to while on the way to a difficult day at work or an unpleasant appointment?
No. But upon refection, the Benny Hill theme might serve to reduce tension.
8. What fictional character do you particularly identify with?
Walter Mitty I'm afraid.
9. Which mode of literature do you find most congenial: comedy, romance (in the Arthurian, high-fantasy sense), tragedy or satire?
Romance ( In the Arthurian Sense)
10. Who is a writer you once thought highly of but have since outgrown?
David Webber
11. What neglected writer, composer or performer deserves rediscovery?
Marguitte Harrison, a producer who's filmography is sparse, but who was a fascinating person people should know more about.
I am now obligated to reveal 11 heretofore unknown facts about myself...which will be difficult given the sheer banality of my Walter Mitty lifestyle.
1: I enjoy spearfishing and SCUBA diving. But have done neither in 3 years.
2: I've been blogging since 2003.
3: In high school I was on the chess team, the track team and played the trombone.
4: The only rescue I participated in while on duty with the Coast Guard was assisting in saving a St. Bernard.
5: I was a college DJ in 1990-91 and 1994-6.
6: The name of this blog is actually a Hayao Miyazaki reference....by way of a wild rose.
7: I started following anime in earnest in 1987. The format debate at the time was not MP4 or FLV. It was VHS and Beta.
8: After an Identity theft incident some years ago, I shut down my Facebook account. When I attempted to reactivate it I discovered that I am now banned from Facebook.
9: #8 does not bother me in the least.
10: I did community theater for 6 years.
11: As a cub scout I once had to save a group of children including an infant from a herd of wild hogs.
Now to spread the gift.
Listen up...
CONGRATULATIONS!
Here are your questions.
1: The number of states you have visited.
2: The the number of countries you have visited.
3:What books are you reading now or are on your 'to read' pile?
4: Name a hobby you have that don't involve QWERTY or DVORAK keyboards?
5: You have 1 billion dollars. It must be spent within 3 days. The complicating factor is that it cannot be spent on any property or food for yourself. What do you spend it on?
6: If you had a chance to move off planet, to say the Moon, Mars or a NEO knowing it would take about 10 years to get beyond the "rustic" phase, would you?
7: If you were given (pinky under the nose) ONE MILLION DOLLARS but had to leave the US and never return...would you?
8: Jazz, Electronica or Symphonic Metal?
9: What period of history most interests you?
10:What city would you most like to visit if you had a week off?
11: Which anime has the highest re-watch value for you?
Your only hope now is to follow the rules above or else an unexpected phone call will surely befall you.
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Desensitization
I had never thought of A Certain Scientific Railgun as a particularly cheesecake heavy series. Even the "beach" episode seemed pretty demur to me and the lead heroine's habit of wearing shorts under her skirt appeared to be a nice mockery of the squalid trend of gratuitous panty shots.
It turns out that I must just be desensitized to this sort of thing. Someone named "John" has summarized the entire series in two minutes and forty three seconds and t turns out that the series is nothing but cheesecake and violence (not necessarily in that order).
Also dudes in wolf masks, which my desensitization caused me to miss on the first viewing.
Seriously though...
Just over a month and a half after watching the first half of the series I finally got around to finishing it.
My verdict: This show is pretty darn good.
A lot of full length series fall apart towards the end. This one did not, and provides the audience with very satisfying conclusion.
Furthermore, Mikoto Misaka is one of the more likable female leads in recent years, being decent and well grounded as well as very smart. She's also believably written, as are three of the four leads. As for Kuroko...well she's quite entertaining, though she is....well....she's flawed*.
Don't whine Kuroko, you know it's true.
The series writer, Seishi Minakami was a protege of the late Satoshi Kon (and did the screenplays for both Paprika and Paranoia Agent) and he throws in little non-explicit bits that develop the characters with some subtlety. For instance, there is, occasionally, a mention of Mikoto collecting merchandise from some Sgt. Frog inspired children's show. In most shows this would be a bit of perfunctory 'cute' ticket punching. In this show, the little frog fobs actually come off as poignant. They speak of a girl who because of her power, had to grow up a lot faster than most and as she approaches college longs for the childhood she skipped. Saten is well intentioned, hard working and quite brave, but she's occasionally quite obnoxious to Uiharu. She's a teenager and the stress and anxiety of not having any powers (in a world where they often define one's worth) is causing her to act out a bit.
Even the episodes that at first glance appear to be filler, (with one exception) manage, in retrospect, to develop the characters and/ or advance the plot.
Note that if you clicked on the video above, it includes about EVERY bit of fan service in the 720 minutes of the series and removes some context in the process. 'Railgun is surprisingly light on the cheesecake. While it's not entirely kid friendly in that regard, Mikoto is an unusually admirable heroine, the show pretty much renounces nihilism and it extols the virtues of decency.
This series was a thoroughly enjoyable ride.
Amongst all the teenage-superhero-highschool-cop-shows this is one of the best. Even without that significant caveat A Certain Scientific Railgun is well above average.
(*She tries (and fails spectacularly) to drug and presumably molest Mikoto at least twice...I mean good Lord, she's pretty much horrible. The only reason she's a "good guy" is because she feels personally invested in her identity as a Judgement officer, likes the power she gets from the job and is the vector for getting Mikoto and the others involved in the larger story. Yes she's comic relief, but.... )
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May 30, 2014
Dragon Mark 2
Two of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes react to the awesomeness that is unveiling of The Dragon Mk2 capsule by SPACE-X founder Elon Musk.
If it works as advertised it will be a huge advance on all previous space vehicles in a number of areas.
While it lacks the shuttles cargo bay, it can cary just as many astronauts (7). and looks surprisingly roomy. It can land anywhere as opposed to the two or three airports the space shuttle could use and it is designed with very quick turnaround times in mind. This is significant as the shuttle, while technically resuseable, had to be rebuilt after each flight at great expense. Indeed, refurbishing the solid rocket boosters cost more than simply making disposable ones, and contributed to the O-Ring design that doomed the crew of Challenger,
Of course reusing the capsule offers limited cost savings if the booster is thrown away. At least one Gemini capsule was flown in space twice and that did not make it a viable commercial system. To that end SPACE-X plans to reuse the first and second stages of Falcon 9 boosters it will use to boost both Dragon capsules and unmanned satellites into space.
The boosters will cary enough extra fuel to soft land at the launch point, the second stage actually doing one full orbit. This is wasteful of fuel, and reduces payload but makes up for it in preserving the hardware (kerosene is cheap).
We've covered the tests here before, but a few months ago the Dragonfly Grasshopper test vehicle made the last of its many flights, reaching an altitude of a kilometer.
Future versions will have retractable landing legs for streamlining during high speed tests and Falcon launches starting with the one this past April, are being fitted with the retractable legs to work out any bugs before the full up re-useable tests begin.
This is a logical and step by step approach that has as much likelihood as anything of succeeding. In a decade or so we may finally have the space hotels, moon bases, asteroid mines and Mars missions we were promised in our youth.
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Oh Good Grief
Apropos the previous post, it seems that the internet is just mocking me now.
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May 29, 2014
It's Not Like a Bike At All
With no one in the house to disturb, I've started practicing the piano again for the first time in 15 or 20 years. The first obstacle to overcome was the lack of any sheet music, but I scrounged up an old hymnal. My first indication of how daunting the task ahead of me is was wasting a moment remembering what the squigglypoo and the backwards C were called. Upon starting to play beat upon keys I realized that my basic hand coordination had atrophied BADLY. I've got a lot of work to do.
I used to be decent at this, but, it appears that playing Senbonzakura is rather a bit farther off that I had hoped.
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May 27, 2014
Limping Back
As I mentioned in the update to the previous post, my parents met with multiple calamities in the Gulf. They made it back to Key West and my father determined that the damage is not fixable in the short term They are going to attempt limp back to Portsmouth where we can work on it at a more leisurely pace and where professional assistance is much cheaper.
Of course with the steering out Dad has to set up the tiller and they don't trust the engine not to spew oil into the bilge again to use it for extended periods. They got their bilge pumped in Key West and have lots of oil pads but the danger of leaving a sheen is too great to have the bilge pump on automatic, so they're coming back, using the sails, a tiller and a sextant. The last two will give no trouble but dad is not particularly experienced with sails so this has the makings of an adventure.
At least they will be traveling with the Gulf Stream. On the down side the boarders of the Gulf Stream is a playground for waterspouts.
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May 26, 2014
Enjoy the Holiday, But Forget Not Why You Have It.
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May 25, 2014
Well then,
That succinctly explains why those songs are rarely translated.
However, it can be done....
more...
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