March 08, 2017
Alive....
Surgery was successful, though sitting is still difficult. I get my stent out on Friday. If all goes well, I'll be back to work on the 16th. Things are looking up from here.
After all...
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March 06, 2017
Surgery
I started bleeding again yesterday and it's persisted into this evening. This is troublesome since I'm supposed to go under the knife again in 7 hours.
I'll know more tomorrow obviously.
In the meantime, here is a reminder that good weather is no more than a month away.
Art by Koume Keito
There's more of that sort of thing here, as well as some good, if bittersweet news. Blessed are the librarians, for they keep the wisdom from dying.
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March 05, 2017
Status Six in the News Again
Well, not really, Next Big Future has a piece on this nasty Russian weapon that we've discussed here before.
Most of the articles linked in the NBF post are from last year and the post focuses on the tsunami aspect of the weapon, which is not likely to be that much of a strategic threat.
For those unfamiliar with this most clickbaity of weapons, "Status 6" is a new Russian torpedo carrying a nuclear warhead. Nothing new there except that this torpedo is over 5 feet wide and nearly 80 feet long and the warhead is between 50 and 150 megatons, with 100 megatons being the general consensus. The torpedo is big enough to carry the 100 megaton "Tsar Bomba" or RDS 220 physics package which was tested at half yield back in the 1960s producing 57 megatons of 'splody and cracking windows over 200 miles away.
It is designed to be fired into harbors, rendering them unuseable due to cratering and radioactive contamination. In the semi-enclosed waters of San Fransisco and San Diego bays, Puget Sound and possibly the Chesapeake Bay seiche effects would likely result in impressive wave heights, but the energies released by this weapon pale in comparison to what an earthquake releases and you can't just blow one up offshore and devastate the coast.
However, the effect is not nonexistant.
Table from here. A 22-74 foot wave 100 miles away is kind of scary.
The bigger concern is the blast and radiation, even if not salted with cobalt 60 or something a high yield version of the old RDS220 would be horrifically radioactive. From the Nuclear Weapon Archive article...
The effect of this bomb at full yield on global fallout would have been tremendous. It would have increased the world's total fission fallout since the invention of the atomic bomb by 25%.
Since the effects of a ground burst are orders of magnitude worse for radioactive contamination than an airburst, the effect on the targeted harbors and those downwind is likely to be so dreadful that cobalt is unnecessary.
There are 2 operational carriers of this delightful piece of technology, one is an experimental submarine that has one monstrous torpedo tube for this weapon. There is also a converted cruise missile submarine that reportedly has six tubes, though it is a combination spy- sub and work boat. In a year or so, the purpose built Khabarovsk comes into service, which will carry at least 6 tubes.
Using Alex Wellerstien's Nukemap simulator I looked at what 1 sub (assuming six tubes each) on each coast could do...
Assume 1 is hitting Pearl Harbor, 2 were used n Puget Sound because of the geography, the SSBN base OR the cities can be hit, but not both. Targets are major commercial ports and the most important naval bases. I assumed that no subs were in the gulf of Mexico, but they do have one addition sub to shoot at New Orleans. Additionally, certain Inland ports like Sacramento or Albany might be fairly easy shots for this weapon if maximum fallout is desired.
..the thing that is most striking is the sheer size of the affected areas, even not taking into account the fallout. The fireball that plasmaglobe of utter destruction in the center of a nuclear blast is 10 miles across. The orange area is where fires would be started on a clear day and the lightest shade of grey is the 1.5 psi area where all the windows are blown out, the darker shades of grey has most homes demolished and inside that it's...unpleasant.
For scale I nuked Washington DC with a B-83, the most powerful weapon in the U.S. arsenal. It doesn't really show up at this scale.
Of course if the Russians actually used these, they'd be using their other nuclear weapons too, but the sheer amount if devastation caused by 11 of these things on CONUS ports is kind of sobering.
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A Magnetic Field for Mars, on a Budget
Mars has lost the bulk of it's atmosphere in part because it's magnetic field is weak and only covers parts of its tropical regions. This has allowed the solar wind to strip away most of the planet's atmosphere other than the relatively dense CO2.
Therefore, one issue facing those who would terraform the red planet is the fact that if the atmosphere were built up through human endeavors, the atmosphere would immediately start to erode again, taking thing like the oxygen and nitrogen first.
Giving the planet a magnetic field has been considered a far more daunting task than simply terraforming it, since to increase the output of the planetary dynamo would require bringing a large moon to pull on its core like ours does.
This has...practicality issues.
One alternative is a vast series of cables built all over the red planet and powered by many gigawats of electricity. Such a system has been proposed for Earth to deal with a possible pole reversal.
However, scientists at Princeton University, have run the numbers and determined that Mars could be effectively protected from the solar wind by a small inflatable structure at Mars's Sunward Lagrange Point. This structure would generate a 2 Tesla magnetic field (that's 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss)...whatever that means.
"That's less than one quarter of a typical MRI machine's maximum capacity."
Uh...thanks.
Anyway, the magnetic field generated would deflect the solar wind around the planet, rather more completely than Earths field does, since the field is separate and doesn't leave the poles unprotected.
This would, even without any further human intervention, result in the Martian atmosphere thickening on its own.
This makes any terraforming of Mars much more sustainable.
We here at Brickmuppet Blog are more of the Dandridge Cole, Gerard K. O'Neal schools of space settlement, but this is a really neat development. A planetary settlement does have some advantages with regards to resources, especially on a place like Mars.
(Interestingly, this probably can't be made to work with regards to Earth, because our Lagrange Points are not balanced between Earth and the sun, but rather Earth and the Moon.)
HT: NBF
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March 03, 2017
I Think...
...maybe I should...uh...clean my bedroom.
If ever there was an argument for E-books....
UPDATE: J. Greely suggests that this story may be dubiously sourced. If it turns out to be apocryphal, it would still warrant the word "ignominious", but in a slightly different context.
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March 02, 2017
Wah-hoo-oo!
They're rebooting...Duck Tales? This is an odd choice in art styles, but it looks surprisingly...well I do not immediately despise this development.
Via Moe Lane.
I...um... have a niece and a nephew so this is a perfectly justified divergence from whatever our actual format is.
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Holy Crap! This Movie Actually Got Made!
It's looks to be a low budget film and of course it's being pretty much buried by hollywood and is thus floundering in limited release, but it's actually in theaters now!
I wonder if Durante is portrayed in it.
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February 27, 2017
Today was the Day
Today I saw the doctor and got some news. For those uninterested in my banal existence, here is something completely different.
more...
A good end.
Art by Hews Hack (totally NSFW)
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How About...Can We...I mean...If They're Just Little Bitty Ones?
Some small ones. Mostly under 3 kilotons.
Mostly.
Because small is relative.
Do not click on the You Tube channel, it appears to be run by crazy people.
But the 'splodies are pretty.
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February 26, 2017
Milo
The Milo story broke as I was preparing to go into the hospital and I only became aware of it in the waiting room. I was horrified...though not as much as I was 2 days later.
A bit of background:
Milo Yiannopoulos is an exuberantly gay Catholic Briton of Jewish decent with a black boyfriend. Milo is also a loud, obnoxious, rude and crude advocate for free speech and vocal opponent of both government and corporate censorship.
Naturally this assortment of characteristics got him pegged as a NAZI.
Obnoxious, rude and crude don't actually do him justice, as he has had a tendency to be sadistically catty in a way that only urbane queens can pull off. In his case this caused some anxiety because as we all know, gay men are not actually people, but a variety of animatronic fetish dolls whose only legitimate functions are to provide upper middle class white women with affirmation of their grandeur and opportunities for virtue signaling.
Sadly, Milo did not fulfill this important societal niche, at least not in the approved way. He did not turn his poison tongue against working class pizza waitresses of limited means, but rather against hollywood celebrities, as well as powerful lobbyists and activists in the gaming industry. He said some things that I think were rude and unescessary, and he hurt his argument sometimes through the exquisite sadism of his insults.
He also tended to be on the bad side of some truly loathsome individuals as seen in his habit of going after pedophiles and exposing them. Amongst those were Sarah Nyberg, and Chris Leydon and he was an early voice sounding the alarm about Jimmy Savile.
So it was pretty horrifying to learn that an interview of Milo with him advocating for pedophellia had turned up.
It's at least as horrifying that this story appears to be bunk, yet has cost this man his job, his book deal and his good name.
Here is what was expertly excised from the tape:
Milo’s money quote, which was edited out of the video, is this:
The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them, people who are sexually active younger. I think it particularly happens in the gay world by the way. In many cases actually those relationships with older men…This is one reason I hate the left. This stupid one size fits all policing of culture. (People speak over each other). This sort of arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent, which totally destroys you know understanding that many of us have. The complexities and subtleties and complicated nature of many relationships. You know, people are messy and complex. In the homosexual world particularly. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. Some of those relationships are the most -â€
Well, Milo's been an ass again, but that's hardly a new development. Milo, himself a victim of sexual abuse by a priest, did NOT advocate for pedophelia. He's said numerous times that he considers it to be possibly the worst crime possible.
Milo Yiannopoulos is often not my cup of tea, but he's been nuked from orbit by a false claim and his job, book deal and reputation are currently smouldering ruins.
That bothers me for some reason.
There are a few others who have opinions that diverge from the "It serves him right!" school of thought.
The charges against Milo are contrived from a) video editing and b) rumor and innuendo and c) pretending no one ever used the word "boy†to mean man, thereby meaning playboy is for 10 year olds and "playing with the big boys†means middle schoolers.
IF the attack on Milo were about, say how outrageous he got before the election (he’s been walking it back since. I suspect he gets a little battle mad as I tend to.) I’d shrug and say "whateverâ€. However this is a contrived and false attack and one that apparently came from the right but is teaching the left the way to take every one of us down. You might not like Milo or his lifestyle, but you should not under any circumstances, applaud this means of taking him down. And if you do, I hope you experience likewise and get to experience what you like so much. There is a good chance you will. They’ve tasted blood with Milo. We’re next.
John C Wright (Who, it should be noted is a fairly hardcore social con, going to bat for the gay guy whose being accused of child molestation.)
I have been on the receiving end of a coordinated libel Campaign like this but smaller and not this vicious.
The tactic is simple: simply edit what the victim says to make it sound like he said what you want him to say.
Then you have your Newsmen and paid trolls repeat it.
By the time the truth comes out, everyone already believes the narrative and it’s too late.
I realize that if you have never seen a fake edit job before, it will fool you. What you do to do a fake editing job is take parts of one sentence parts of one conversation and clip them to another. In this case you take a conversation about how many times two college students engaged in copulation are required to ask each other about the continued ongoing state of their consent, and then you clip in a discussion of the consent between a 17 year old and a 27 year old gay couple.You take a sentence where the speaker uses the word ‘boy’ to refer to a seventeen-year-old and you clip it to a question when someone is asking about a 14 year old boy , clever editing makes it sound as if he is talking about lowering the age of consent to 14
Having unloaded these truths, Milo nevertheless completely agreed that the legal age of consent is a good thing and lands on the right age. The unspoken conclusion driving that statement had to have been that, given the broad spread in age of sexual maturation, it’s appropriate for the law to err on the side of caution to protect the maximum number of children from sexual predators.
Neo Neocon hits on what I think is the real problem with Milo's nosehair curling rant...
As an abuse survivor, Yiannopoulos thinks he can say that consent can be given in such a case, apparently because he thinks he gave it. But that shows one of the problems with sexual abuse, and it’s not just the problem of an adult exploiting a child sexually. It’s the problem of an adult messing with a child’s mind. Because the relationships Yiannopoulos describes are actually betrayals of the child/teen in the guise of "helping†the child, betrayals that may even feel good to the child/teen in certain circumstances but exploit the child/teen’s psychological, emotional, and physical vulnerability.
Kate Paulk's piece contains this brief passage that's almost free of obceneties.
Let me be absolutely clear here. The stickybeaked moralists who are claiming that Milo Yiannopoulos somehow brought this shitstorm on himself because his lifestyle squicks them are endorsing lying to eliminate a person. They are endorsing show trials and guilt by association and all the evils of every fucking Communist regime ever. They are endorsing the tactics both the Soviets and the Nazis used to crush dissenting voices and enemies of the regime.
I'm a southerner and, arguably, a variety of social conservative, so I'm not exactly a Milo fanboy, but I do note that in general, Milo, as a reporter, as well as a rabble rouser, gave considerable discomfort to the powerful, and defended the innocent.
He may well deserve criticism's. Lets make damned sure they are for things he actually did.
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So...Amazon
I'm not the only one who's noticed a certain odd trend in your recomendations.
I wonder if perhaps this charmingly naive Twitterer has stumbled across the cause of your confusion.
I mean really; "algorithim" as an excuse can only take you so far.
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February 25, 2017
The First 12 Minutes of Yamato 2202
Note that the name Star Blazers is in the title.
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February 23, 2017
Oh. That's an Unexpected Happenstance.
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We Ought to Name Them After the Days of The Week*
Wow! No less than SEVEN planets ranging from roughly Earth to Mars sized have been discovered in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system. No less than three of the planets are in the habitable zone!
All 7, at least theoretically, could have water on their surfaces, though on the farthest planet, any water would almost certainly be ice, and the closest are...borderline. However, at least one of the planets in the habitable region has tentatively been identifies as being of water rich composition (mentioned at about the 04:40 mark in the embedded video).
Note that NASA recently tightened the definition of Habitable Zone which effectively reduced it in width for any given star. This model does not take into account many potential atmospheric effects, but does account for other things. By the older, less restrictive definition (given the distance from the star and sufficient atmospheric pressure, could liquid water exist on the surface of the planet) Venus, Earth, Luna, Mars and Ceres are all in the habitable zone of our solar system. Note too, that under the new rules Earth is a borderline case.
Image via
The star is being described an ultra-cool-dwarf, which is NOT a charismatic little person, but a stellar spectral type classification (L-T) that has recently been shoehorned into the demarcation between red dwarf stars and brown dwarfs (which are substellar). The star is only 11% the diameter of the sun or about the size of Jupiter (though much more massive). The orbits of these 7 planets, therefore are pretty close together, kind of like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but they are much much larger. This means that...well...look...
From the video, this completely hypothetical view from the fourth planet out is quite speculative and hopeful regarding the snow and water and transparent atmosphere. However, given the latter, is accurate regarding the view of other planets.The other planets, at certain times of year would appear as actual planets rather than wandering points of light. In some cases, planets in adjoining orbits would appear bigger than the moon. The planets are all closer to their tiny, cool star than Mercury is to ours.
Interestingly, while ultracool dwarfs are red stars, that is because so much of their emissions are in the infra-red. Their VISIBLE light from them (or red dwarfs for that matter) would be perceived by us as very similar to our own...basically white-yellow as all the colors are mixed together unless refracted, for example by a prism. (Earth's sun is technically a green star). There are some things missing from their spectrum though, blue and some greens are absent. Thus, optimistically assuming a Nitrogen atmosphere like ours, the nitrogen would not lightly reflect the blue as it does here, thus, the daytime sky would not be blue, but would be transparent. So, if not looking directly at the star, on an optimistically assumed clear day one might well see a black nightlike sky and even see stars (and passing planets) at noon if one was not looking at the star. Green plants, oceans and rainbows would look...different.
I guess Trappist-1 really IS an ultra-cool dwarf!
Image from Wikipedia's Trappist-1 entry.
They are remarkably similar in size with much less variation than our solar system's rocky planets, ranging from a bit larger than Mars to a tad bigger than Earth. Given the proximity of the planets to one another (as little as 1.5 times the distance to the moon) and super short orbital periods (years on these worlds range from 1.5 to 20 DAYS) they would periodically subject their neighbors to tidal forces, that would provide tides in optimistically supposed seas and perhaps facilitate magnetic fields on the smaller planets in much the same way that Ganymede has one. This would greatly increase the possibility of life. Finally, since we're engaging in highly optimistic ponderings, such tidal forces might interfere with and prevent the assumed tidal locking.
Given current technology, 40 light years might as well be infinity. We could, if we went balls-out and spent something like the budget of the USN for a decade or two, we could make something related to an Orion type starship that could make 5-10 percent the speed of light (max) which would get us to the nearest star (ProximaCentauri at 4.5 light years) in 45-90 years. The Trappist-1 system is a tad under 40 light years away and would be 400-800 years...which is a rather unsatisfactory commute. Still, this discovery is beyond cool and there is the infinitesimal possibility that something like the Alcubierre-drive might be possible and get developed.
Here, one of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes takes a moment to show off the 'work" she's planning on getting done in the hopes that she can one day see this wonder up close.
Art by Sukabu
*There is symmetry in this: The days of the week actually were named after Graeco-Roman astrology, specifically, the 7 classical planets (which included the sun) themselves then named after the high ranking members of the Roman pantheon.
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February 22, 2017
That Could Have Gone Better
There were complications.
A chunk of stone is still lodged in my kidney, and further surgery is needed, in a week or so. I the meantime, I hurt rather a lot and I'm unable to work or go to school.
On a positive note...baseball!
Jerry, from Hero War Z by Mulin
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February 21, 2017
Surgery in 25 Hours
There's a slim chance that It will be delayed due to the abominable cold I caught nephew-sitting Saturday night. I think I'm almost over it though.
Obviously, blogging will be even lighter for at least a while so here, to tide you over, is an engineer's solution to "the Catbus problem".
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...and since all my cow friends are Jerseys and Longhorns I'm gonna hafta' send you on your way.
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February 18, 2017
RWBY Season 4 Ends
Well, we're two weeks late in our appraisal, but then, out of 12 full episodes, we managed no more than four other reviews this season as life's interventions caused a substantial delay in watching the show this time around.
Thankfully, it was worth the wait.
"See guys, it says here that we ROCK!"
At mid-season, RWBY's five disparate plotlines began to converge, but not as expected. Instead of having the groups all come together, the various plotlines converged in their tone, with 5 different flavors of existential dread being presented. These, counterintuitively, coincide with the show largely regaining its optimism.
Monty would be proud.
The next season looks to be the last and this finale tees it up perfectly. My only complaint at this point is that we've got 8 more months to wait for it.
UPDATE: Rereading the post, I should have mentioned that the ending of this season is not so much a finale, or a cliffhanger as a pause point in the story.
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February 15, 2017
Churchill Tried to Warn Us!
I asked of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes comment on this headline.
Churchill essay on the possibility of alien life discovered in US college.
Next time, I'll specify that she comment on the article.
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February 14, 2017
Ouch
I'm still banned from commenting here due to a certain incident in Niue a few years ago, but I've had a knee issue. Knee damage sucks. Send some good wishes and kind thoughts over there.
"Wait...she missed the knee!"
Art by Donarudo
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