Saturday, April 18, 2015
Bills vs Begs
The mail man (oops she is letter carrier) brings a lot of both. I throw them in a pile on my desk and once a month a I sit down and pay the bills, and send a check to the beggars if I feel like it. This month the pile was of scary height, so I sorted out the bills from the begs and paid the bills. The beg pile was taller than the bill pile. And it isn't even an election year. Lord preserve us next year.
Thunder Storm went right over the house
Must mean spring. We don't get thunder and lightening with snow storms. Maybe spring is not a myth.
Friday, April 17, 2015
How deep can the penetrator bombs go?
Can they go deep enough to take out Iran's nuclear facilities? Ordinary iron bombs in reasonable sizes (750 to 1000 pounds) punch down 30-35 feet in plain dirt. Out of a six bomb rack load, we would put a long delay time fuse on just one bomb. The other five would get instantaneous fuses. Those bombs would blow up the target. The long delay fuze would get the repair crews the next day. After a while the comrades wised up and would wait 24 hours after the raid before starting work to fix the damage.
Back in WWII, Barnes Wallis in England devised the first deep penetrator bomb. He called it Tallboy, it weighed 12000 pounds, had a tough steel case with a pointy nose, and it would go down 80 or 90 feet and then explode. It took out a number of German targets, and was used to sink the Tirpitz in Alta Fiord. Even Tallboy couldn't deal with all targets. The British built a bigger penetrator for the harder targets that they called Grand Slam. Grand Slam was 20000 pounds, which was so heavy that the wings of the Lancaster bomber carrying it could be seen to bow upwards under the load. Grand Slam seems to be the limit for WWII aircraft to hoist off the ground.
Twenty first century aircraft can hoist a good deal more than their WWII ancestors. Little has been published, but Aviation Week once described new penetrator bomb casings made out of old 16 inch cannon barrels. Those ought to go down quite a ways.
But, little has been published on how deep the Iranians have dug in. And what they have bug into, plain dirt? sedimentary rock? granite? NORAD HQ in Colorado was dug under a solid granite mountain and was considered proof against nukes.
So, mission planners either IAF or USAF, the question is, will your penetrator bombs penetrate deep enough? Will even a nuclear penetrator bomb go that deep?
One clue, the Israelis have not already bombed out the Iranians. If they thought it would work, they probably would have done it by now.
Back in WWII, Barnes Wallis in England devised the first deep penetrator bomb. He called it Tallboy, it weighed 12000 pounds, had a tough steel case with a pointy nose, and it would go down 80 or 90 feet and then explode. It took out a number of German targets, and was used to sink the Tirpitz in Alta Fiord. Even Tallboy couldn't deal with all targets. The British built a bigger penetrator for the harder targets that they called Grand Slam. Grand Slam was 20000 pounds, which was so heavy that the wings of the Lancaster bomber carrying it could be seen to bow upwards under the load. Grand Slam seems to be the limit for WWII aircraft to hoist off the ground.
Twenty first century aircraft can hoist a good deal more than their WWII ancestors. Little has been published, but Aviation Week once described new penetrator bomb casings made out of old 16 inch cannon barrels. Those ought to go down quite a ways.
But, little has been published on how deep the Iranians have dug in. And what they have bug into, plain dirt? sedimentary rock? granite? NORAD HQ in Colorado was dug under a solid granite mountain and was considered proof against nukes.
So, mission planners either IAF or USAF, the question is, will your penetrator bombs penetrate deep enough? Will even a nuclear penetrator bomb go that deep?
One clue, the Israelis have not already bombed out the Iranians. If they thought it would work, they probably would have done it by now.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
If the radar cannot see you, the fighters cannot find you.
Looks like our air defenses are about as good, or as bad, as the Soviets used to have. Back some years ago a German teenager flew a Cessna all the way into Russia and landed it in Red Square, right in front of the Kremlin. The Russians freaked, this was back in the cold war, and they figured if a German kid could make it thru, SAC could as well. Some Russian heads were rolled over the affair.
Yesterday we had a guy land a Gyrocopter (very small one man autogyro) right on the Capitol lawn. He flew it down from Gettysburg PA. He probably never exceeded a couple of hundred feet altitude, and the radar cross section of a little, largely wood, autogyro is SMALL. The radar never saw him, and even if it had, he would have looked like any other light plane. The restricted airspace around DC ain't that big, and it was probably only minutes from the time he crossed into the DC no-fly zone and he landed at the Capitol.
So, if it can happen to the old Soviet Union, it can happen to us. The Gyrocopter is too small to carry much in the way of munitions. You could do more damage ramming an SUV thru the Capitol gates. It's given us a lot of amusing TV news. I hope the guy that did it gets off with a scolding.
Yesterday we had a guy land a Gyrocopter (very small one man autogyro) right on the Capitol lawn. He flew it down from Gettysburg PA. He probably never exceeded a couple of hundred feet altitude, and the radar cross section of a little, largely wood, autogyro is SMALL. The radar never saw him, and even if it had, he would have looked like any other light plane. The restricted airspace around DC ain't that big, and it was probably only minutes from the time he crossed into the DC no-fly zone and he landed at the Capitol.
So, if it can happen to the old Soviet Union, it can happen to us. The Gyrocopter is too small to carry much in the way of munitions. You could do more damage ramming an SUV thru the Capitol gates. It's given us a lot of amusing TV news. I hope the guy that did it gets off with a scolding.
Defending Middle Earth Patrick Currey
I am a long term Tolkien fan. My parents gave me the first volume of Lord of the Rings for Christmas back when I was in grade school. I read and reread the entire trilogy several times. I read it aloud to my children years later. I saw all the Peter Jackson movies.
So when I saw this title down at the Littleton Village Bookstore I bought it. I read it. Somehow, Currey manages to let the words roll out but never gets around to saying anything that I didn't know before I read it. "Shoveling" is what my high school English teachers called this style.
English teachers, and literary critics have never liked Tolkien, despite or perhaps because of, its enormous popularity. Tolkien has little "hidden meaning" of the sort that literary types enjoy searching out. Tolkien doesn't hide any meanings. He lets his love of trees, the countryside, Anglo Saxon myth and legend , courage, Elvish languages, and endurance stand right out in plain English. There isn't all that much that needs teaching in Tolkien. This might account for the disdain for Tolkien shown by teachers and critics.
Tolkien creates a wealth of truly wonderful characters. Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Theoden, Faramir, Barliman Butterbur, Treebeard, Galadriel, Merry, Eowyn, and Pippin. Tolkien's bad guys are really bad, the baddest ever. Sauron is more evil, more dangerous than any other villain in literature. Saruman and Denethor are not far behind in the practice of villainy. This is in contrast to modern literary style of a single character coping with his psychological hangups. Sauron doesn't have psychological hangups. He knows exactly what he wants and he moves directly toward getting it and crushing his enemies.
Lord of the Rings follows the classic formula for story telling. The protagonist (a unisex word for hero) is faced with a challenge. He rises to his challenge, and makes a first attempt to deal with it, and it doesn't work. At the climax of the story he makes a final do or die attempt to surmount the challenge and either wins or looses. All the rest of the story is anti-climax. In chapter 2, The Shadow of The Past, Gandalf explains to Frodo about the ring and shows him what he must do. From there on thruout the rest of the book, we readers are perfectly clear about the Quest's objective, although we have no idea how Frodo is going to cope with it. At the climax, Frodo fails, he takes the ring for himself, and is saved by Gollum of all people.
One reason for Tolkien's popularity is the Middle Earth setting. It's beautiful, it's comfortable, it has dangers lurking in the darker spots that heroes can overcome with courage and cold steel. It's the sort of place many of us would like to retire to, or perhaps move to tomorrow. It is solid in our imaginations, so solid that Peter Jackson's movie sets looked just right, first time I saw the movie. Tolkien's prose is so vivid that Jackson, Jackson's set builders, and I, an old reader, had the very same image of what the Shire and Bag End should look like.
Since Tolkien, numerous authors have attempted to write fantasy. I've read some of it and it's not Tolkien, in fact most of it is dreadful. Somehow Tolkien did it, and nobody else has been able to. I'm nor sure why, but that's the way it is.
So when I saw this title down at the Littleton Village Bookstore I bought it. I read it. Somehow, Currey manages to let the words roll out but never gets around to saying anything that I didn't know before I read it. "Shoveling" is what my high school English teachers called this style.
English teachers, and literary critics have never liked Tolkien, despite or perhaps because of, its enormous popularity. Tolkien has little "hidden meaning" of the sort that literary types enjoy searching out. Tolkien doesn't hide any meanings. He lets his love of trees, the countryside, Anglo Saxon myth and legend , courage, Elvish languages, and endurance stand right out in plain English. There isn't all that much that needs teaching in Tolkien. This might account for the disdain for Tolkien shown by teachers and critics.
Tolkien creates a wealth of truly wonderful characters. Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Theoden, Faramir, Barliman Butterbur, Treebeard, Galadriel, Merry, Eowyn, and Pippin. Tolkien's bad guys are really bad, the baddest ever. Sauron is more evil, more dangerous than any other villain in literature. Saruman and Denethor are not far behind in the practice of villainy. This is in contrast to modern literary style of a single character coping with his psychological hangups. Sauron doesn't have psychological hangups. He knows exactly what he wants and he moves directly toward getting it and crushing his enemies.
Lord of the Rings follows the classic formula for story telling. The protagonist (a unisex word for hero) is faced with a challenge. He rises to his challenge, and makes a first attempt to deal with it, and it doesn't work. At the climax of the story he makes a final do or die attempt to surmount the challenge and either wins or looses. All the rest of the story is anti-climax. In chapter 2, The Shadow of The Past, Gandalf explains to Frodo about the ring and shows him what he must do. From there on thruout the rest of the book, we readers are perfectly clear about the Quest's objective, although we have no idea how Frodo is going to cope with it. At the climax, Frodo fails, he takes the ring for himself, and is saved by Gollum of all people.
One reason for Tolkien's popularity is the Middle Earth setting. It's beautiful, it's comfortable, it has dangers lurking in the darker spots that heroes can overcome with courage and cold steel. It's the sort of place many of us would like to retire to, or perhaps move to tomorrow. It is solid in our imaginations, so solid that Peter Jackson's movie sets looked just right, first time I saw the movie. Tolkien's prose is so vivid that Jackson, Jackson's set builders, and I, an old reader, had the very same image of what the Shire and Bag End should look like.
Since Tolkien, numerous authors have attempted to write fantasy. I've read some of it and it's not Tolkien, in fact most of it is dreadful. Somehow Tolkien did it, and nobody else has been able to. I'm nor sure why, but that's the way it is.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
IRS, crying for funding.
They have 85,000 employees. Put every single one of 'em on the help desk. That ought to answer the taxpayers calls. What do they have to do before the tax returns come in on April 15 (today!!). Put 'em on the help desk, every single one of 'em, including that snooty commissioner. After April 15 put 'em to work processing tax returns.
And, while we are at it, Congress ought to outlaw all those damn worksheets the IRS has socked us with. Being unable or unwilling to state what the tax is in the instructions for Form 1040, the IRS gives us all these crazy 20-30 step work sheets to calculate this or that. By the time you have fought your way thru all the steps, you head is so turned around that you have no idea whether you got it right or not. If they cannot state the basis of the tax, and how to compute it, in plain English in a sentence or two, it's too damn complicated.
And, personal income tax would be fairer and easier to compute if we had a rule, income is income, no matter where it comes from. Wages, dividends, qualified dividends, rents, royalties, capital gains, company cars, social security, pensions, bank interest, company health care, gambling winnings, you name it, it's all income, it all pays the same tax rate.
And, while we are at it, Congress ought to outlaw all those damn worksheets the IRS has socked us with. Being unable or unwilling to state what the tax is in the instructions for Form 1040, the IRS gives us all these crazy 20-30 step work sheets to calculate this or that. By the time you have fought your way thru all the steps, you head is so turned around that you have no idea whether you got it right or not. If they cannot state the basis of the tax, and how to compute it, in plain English in a sentence or two, it's too damn complicated.
And, personal income tax would be fairer and easier to compute if we had a rule, income is income, no matter where it comes from. Wages, dividends, qualified dividends, rents, royalties, capital gains, company cars, social security, pensions, bank interest, company health care, gambling winnings, you name it, it's all income, it all pays the same tax rate.
Pictures on the Tracfone
OK, I got the phone to take a still picture. It's grainier and more pixelated than what my Canon point-n-shoot can do, but fair. The test photo is still in the phone. I tried plugging the USB cable into my computers, one an antique running XP, the other an up to date laptop running Win 8. The computers noticed the USB plug in of the phone. Neither of them had a device driver to talk to the LG phone. Google did not turn up any LG device drivers on the net. Best I found was a site that promised to download a driver checker, inspect ALL my drivers and replace any that it pleased. That was too scary for me. The drivers presently on the machines work, new drivers sometime don't work.
So then I thought I would introduce cell phone to my wifi router. That did not go well. The phone asked for the router's password but would not show the alpha key board to allow me to type in "Ridgecut". All the other magic numbers from the router, which I had faithfully logged, were mixed alpha-numeric, which I could not type in from the telephone style keypad offered.
So, the photo is still in the cell.
So then I thought I would introduce cell phone to my wifi router. That did not go well. The phone asked for the router's password but would not show the alpha key board to allow me to type in "Ridgecut". All the other magic numbers from the router, which I had faithfully logged, were mixed alpha-numeric, which I could not type in from the telephone style keypad offered.
So, the photo is still in the cell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)