Whither Afghanistan?

Last week's Koran burning and this weekend's shootings have done a lot of damage to US relationship with the Afghans.
There is a reason for US involvement in the Afghan snake pit. The locals are incapable of maintaining civil order. Left to their own devices, they allowed Al Quada to plan and execute 9/11 from their soil. There is little evidence that things are any better after nearly ten years of US liberation. When we pull out of Afghanistan, Al Quada and the Taliban will move back in.
Dispite the terrible events of this month, there is a chance of straightening things out. We should look at the American involvement in the Philippines, which started back in 1898 and lasted thru WWII. We had to suppress a bloody Filipino uprising at the turn of last century, but after 40 years of a decent American administration, the Filipinos took our side, rather than the Japanese side, in World War II.
Of course, for that to happen, we have to stay in Afghanistan, rather than pull out.

Will a 1% change in the unemployment rate matter?

The TV news is full of stories about the improving economy, unemployment rates dropping by fractions of a percent, and it's effect upon the voters. Personally, I think the voters are going on gut feel, their own employment status, the prospect of a layoff, the price of gas and groceries, and their prospects of a raise in judging Obama's performance on the economy. None of those indicators is very favorable. I don't think anyone pays much attention to a fraction of a percent change in unemployment. If the unemployment rate were to drop from 8% to 6%, that would get their attention, but that ain't happening.
Certainly, no one (except democratic activists) really thinks the economy has improved much.

Must be a slow news season

This is the second big talk about solar flares. Probably brought on by new satellites that give nicer images. The Sun has been flaring thru out geological time, and will doubtless continue to do so. It doesn't seem to do anything bad.
The power and phone lines are all hardened against lightning strikes, they shrug off thousands of lightning hits a day. Solar flares don't pack the punch of a lightning bolt.
Could the newsies be looking for an attention grabbing story that isn't a story?

JOhn Carter,I saw the movie last night

It was opening night in Littleton, and I got my brother and my sister-in-law to come along for the fun. There was a good crowd at the Jax Jr. The movie is pretty good. On a scale of 1 to 10, where the original Star Wars is a 10, and the Jar-Jar Binks movie is a 1, John Carter is a solid 6, maybe a 7.
I've been waiting for this movie ever since I read the book as a boy. A Princess of Mars was Edgar Rice Burroughs first published novel, coming out as a magazine serial in 1911. Burroughs went on to write a lot more Martian stories. He didn't invent Tarzan until later. I always thought Burroughs Mars stories were cooler than his Tarzan stories, although I read most of the Tarzan books too.
Tarzan, requiring less special effects, made it into the movies early on, and had a long and successful run, both movies and TV. There was an effort to do a Princess of Mars movie in the 1930's (animated) but it didn't pan out. If it had, it would have been the first feature length animated film, instead of Snow White.
Anyhow, John Carter, the movie, is better than the Tarzan movies out there. So call it a success. Forbes magazine thinks John Carter will make a bundle of money and lead to profitable sequels. The movie is "live action" in that the hero and heroine are real actors, photographed in costume. The background is full of CGI Martians, exotic riding animals, ferocious monsters, fantastic aircraft, Martian cities, and marvelous terrain features such as the River Iss.
The movie takes substantial liberties with Burrough's original text, but that is nothing new. Movies never follow the book very closely. True believer fans will whine about this, but it doesn't bother me much. Had I been directing it there are a lot of things I would have done differently, but I wasn't directing, and so things are as they are.
If you are a Burroughs fan, this is a must see. It's a good action adventure story, lots of action, lots of strange places and creatures, it moves fast enough that you don't notice the two hour length.

Things come to you overnight

Thinking about railguns last night. It suddenly became clear that I had made a mistake. I computed muzzle energy of the conventional cannon as M * V . That's not right. M*V is momentum. Kinetic energy is 1/2 MV**2. So doing it right, the conventional cannon has a muzzle energy of 7,801,736 foot pounds. Which compares more favorable with the railgun at 23,603,200 foot pounds.
Onward to phasers.

Go Mitt, Go

So Mitt comes out of Super Tuesday with a lotta delegates, and six wins, but his rivals, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul, gathered enough votes to keep their campaigns alive. Why cannot Romney win enough votes to crush the opposition?
'Cause Mitt is looking to the general election, a bunch of independent voters, who ain't as conservative as a lot of Republicans. Speaking from hands on experience as a local organizer, the Republican party has a lot of VERY conservative voters, much more conservative than the independents. If Mitt were to go far enough to the right to make the really hard core Republicans happy enough to vote for him, he would drive off the just-as-important independents in he general election.
So Mitt tries to keep the focus on jobs and the economy. Let us hope that enough Republicans can vote for a winner in the general election.

Railguns

The US Navy is working on railguns, electromagnetic launchers capable of fantastic muzzle velocity. Conventional guns are limited by the speed of sound. The projectile is pushed up the barrel by combustion gas. That combustion gas only expands at the speed of sound. Grant that the speed of sound in white hot gas at enormous pressure is much higher than the speed of sound in air, but muzzle velocity in conventional guns is still limited to about 4000 ft/sec.
Railguns have no such limit and can achieve much much higher muzzle velocities. The Navy project is working on 32 Megajoule rail guns. To put that into real numbers, 32 Megajoule is 23.6 Mega foot/pounds. For comparison, the conventional 5 inch cannon has a muzzle energy of 0.185 Mega foot/pounds. The rail gun has 127 times the muzzle energy of the conventional cannon. This translates into amazing range, like 100 miles.
To power the railgun, the Navy is talking about a battery bank. That ought to be quite something. An ordinary car battery (still the best there is for this kind of application) holds only 4560 joules. Each 32 Megajoule shot would totally flatten 7017 car batteries. The Aviation Week article talked about a battery bank good for 20 shots. That's a LOT of car batteries.
Another science fiction project gets funding.