Wernher von Braun

Here's an excerpt that cracked me up, regarding a childhood incident in the life of Wernher von Braun:

The young von Braun was enthralled by explosives and fireworks, to the great chagrin of his father, who considered his son a juvenile delinquent. As a teenager, he strapped six skyrockets to a red toy wagon and set them off. The wagon traveled five blocks, streaming flames, before the rockets exploded, destroying the wagon, and von Braun was arrested.

For those who don't recognize the name, von Braun was a leading US rocket scientist during the early years of NASA; it's reasonable to suppose the moon shot wouldn't have happened until many years later if he had been working in another country- such as Russia. And where did he train?

Despite this inauspicious beginning, he went on to earn a PhD in physics in the late 1930s. Within two years he found himself heading Nazi Germany’s military rocket development program. He invented the V-2 ballistic missile, first launched on October 3, 1942. This would be the ancestor of practically every missile used today.

After Germany's defeat in 1945, von Braun and his entire team of rocket experts came to the US with all their plans and prototypes.

It was only in early high school that I began to understand enough history to more fully understand the humor in Tom Leher's take on the man. But from an early age, I loved the line in the song below, "'Once zee rrrockets are up, who cares where zey come down? Zat's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun."

I'm not able to get to the post I took the above quotes from at the moment (Google tells me the site appears to be down), so I'll stick in a link later. Followup: I just realized that the site may be down, but the URL ought to be valid when it comes back up...

Wednesday Words

Only Dean submitted definitions for last week's edition, so I guess he sweeps it.

hydromes- what you put around your underwater garden.

imbities- tiny imbeciles

gambal- betting everything!

Gotta have definitions for all of them (why, yes, in fact, I am writing a book) so here's my take on the remaining two.

lionsts- why the visitor to the big cat exhibit got mauled. (lions t's)

gogiotly- Holly's original last name before they decided "Golightly" was more titillating.

Bad Day To Be a Train

Nicked from Electronic Cerebrectomy. Things get exciting about a minute in, then more so 'til near the end. Eventually, it does stop. Eventually.

Fads

Someone out there really knows how to parody them: behold, the Three Hippopoticorn Moon T-shirt! It's a fer realz, on-the-market tee; the original source (and vendor) appears to be here, via several vias. I first saw it on BuzzFeed.If you're unfamiliar with the product being sent up here, Check out a picture here, and the hilariously hyperbolic reviews here. It even received an amusing article in the NYT, which is how it came to my attention about a month and a half ago.

123456789

My friend JD just... I guess I don't know what it's called... "Google chatted me?"... with this message:

At 12:34.56pm today it will be 123456789. Not gonna happen again for another century so happy 123456789 day!

I propose a boisterous one-second-long party at that moment.

Followup, 1:09 PM- Well, I was late to the party, which in this case means I missed it completely. But No Worries! A site I just found today, The Daily What, has alerted me to another opportunity for a one-second party! And it's later today! Oops... it was this morning when I was asleep. Nuts!

The Coming Ice Age

As you all know, global warming is the greatest hoax empiracism has ever perpetrated. You can see from the latest data and analysis from NSIDC that we're clearly headed into a new ice age. Bust out the woolies and fire up the coal furnace: it's going to be a cold one! (I've added a red trend line to highlight the seriousness of the problem; the original graph can be seen in the previous link or here.)

Today's Moment of History

After the Japanese bombed Hawaii with Pearl Jam, Roosevelt requested, and Congress quickly granted, the passage of an act of war against the Axis powers. Shortly afterwards, Japanese guitars were rounded up and sent off to internment warehouses in California's Owens Valley, among other places. Kawasaki and Yamaha owners remember the injustice to this this day.

(inspired by the Buzz Lightyear post earlier, and by a conversation a few minutes ago, outside the Interzone.)

Advertising and the Environment

Advertising is propaganda, and by and large it drives me crazy. Advertising has become the most pervasive education system on earth, pervading even (especially, actually) the system of social infrastructure we call "education." I rail against it too much, perhaps, but if so, it's because I have become painfully aware how effective it is in promoting beliefs and decisions that do not, over the long run, make sense in terms of human survival.

Nevertheless, I'm no more immune to being affected by it than anybody else, and I frequently encouter examples that engage me at one level or another: fascinating imagery, emotional tugs, and humor are among triggers that get my attention. All three of those are present in abundance in a gallery of 27 environmental advertisements posted at BBC. The above is titled "Tarzan," with the tagline "15m sq of rainforest disappears every minute." My main complaint is that they don't have large, readable versions available.

My other complaint is that it's still advertising; in the end, it's still promoting belief without any basis in knowledge and understanding. And in the end, if we're going to cope with the problems facing us, it will only come out of knowledge and understanding. It will not come out of simple belief, however well-intentioned and benevolent that belief may be.

First Man on the Moon

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo Moon landing, The Telegraph has this depressing bit of news for us:

Some people believe that Buzz Lightyear, the fictional cartoon character from the film Toy Story, was the first man on the moon.

In a survey, which reveals "deeply worrying" levels of ignorance about the Apollo space programme, which sent three men to the moon forty years ago this month, 11 out of 1009 people surveyed thought Buzz Lightyear was the first person to step onto the moon. A further 8 people thought it was Louis Armstrong, with less than three-quarters correctly answering that it was Neil Armstrong.

The survey, undertaken on behalf of E&T magazine, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, also revealed that over a quarter of all people do not believe the astronauts actually landed on the moon.

I feel quite priviledged to have had the opportunity to look at some of the moon rocks in thin section when they were on loan to OSU when I was an undergrad, and I can say with a fair degree of confidence there's no way they came from Earth. Nor do any meteorites have the bizarre combination of crystalline igneous rocks, brecciation, and glass.

This just reinforces my pessimistic side.

Sigh...

Of Glass and Bones

Two fascinating pieces in today's NYT science section, one on glass as a construction material, the other on the paleontological opportunity afforded by an expansion project underway at the Panama Canal.

Glass fascinates me at a number of levels. I have mentioned before that what drew me so firmly into science is the aesthetic appeal; glass is a perfect example of that appeal. Natural glass, obsidian, comes in a wide variety of forms, some of which show extraordinary plays of light and optical effects- rainbow sheen, silver sheen, and fire mahogany are some examples (these are rockhounder's terms, not geological terms). Man-made glass is more predictable but still has a mesmerizing beauty to me. Art glass can hold me entranced for hours.

All that said, and even though I comprehend the engineering and margin of safety that goes into a work such as the Grand Canyon Skywalk or the newly opened glass observation boxes at the Sears Tower, I don't think I could actually go out onto either of those structures. I get queasy just thinking about it. Nevertheless, I found the discussion of the materials science regarding the use of glass as a structural material in the first article quite fascinating. The graphics and slide show were quite engaging as well. I just don't think I would tolerate the first hand experience of the results very well.

The second article explains that paleontology is the wet tropics is difficult. One of my frequent complaints in western Oregon is "there's 30 freakin' feet of dirt on top of all the rocks." Decent exposures are not easy to find in our mild, moist climate, and roadcuts and quarries are my best friends. I can only imagine the problem is magnitudes worse in a tropical rain forest setting. So when Panama decided to increase the canal's cargo capacity from 65,000 ton ships to 300,000 tons, geologists and paleontologists jumped to attention. It's humorous, frustrating and fascinating, to think about the result. I can only describe it as "guerrilla geology," as scientists race into the newly exposed rocks, collecting as much information and as many samples as they can, before rain, heavy equipment, or the next round of blasting wipes out their opportunity. I expect this will result in a glut of fossils and data that won't get analyzed for years or decades, but will pay off with fascinating and amazing science for years to come.

I like science.

FIRE!

It is OK to yell "Fire!" in a crowded blog, if it's not too crowded, isn't it? It looks as if fire season is underway in Oregon's forested lands. KGW (a Portland TV Station) is reporting a 300-acre fire near Black Butte, which is a marvelously beautiful cinder cone a bit west of Sisters.

In the Google Earth oblique view, I have highlighted three central Oregon Cascades features: The Butte (not a true butte, but the misuse of the word is epidemic in the PNW), the crest or watershed of the high Cascades, and Green Ridge. (Click for bigger, and note 2X vertical exaggeration). The central Oregon Cascades have been shown by Ed Taylor to sit in a graben; the subsidence of the graben is apparently synchronous with the development of the modern, or "high" Cascades. Green Ridge is the eastern side of the graben, and displacement was shown on the basis of mapping and water well logs by one of my most enjoyably memorable TA's, Rich Conrey. Rich was the TA who taught me how to make thin sections, so I had an opportunity to look at rocks I had collected, rather than just department specimans.

So Black Butte is considered to be a cinder cone that developed on the normal fault that created Green Ridge.

This general area, in the immediate rainshadow of the Cascades, gets enough precipitation to support a magnificent ponderosa pine forest, but when it gets dry it's really dry. Furthermore, when disturbances move through (as one did yesterday), rain often evaporates before it reaches the ground. Lightning associated with such storms, unfortunately, does not. This is believed to be a lightning-caused fire.

So firefighters are very dependent on breaks of cool, wet weather to bring these puppies under control. I'm sure many would be tickled pink for the conditions shown in these pictures from late December... about freezing and snowy:
From a few miles east of Sisters, looking west; Black Butte is about 10 miles away, and the Cascade crest is socked in.
Looking up and NW at the peak from its base. It's subtle in the original image, but with a little tweaking, you can more clearly see what I was trying to capture in this picture: a snowbow!

In honesty, I don't think "snowbows" can even occur. It was barely above freezing at this point, and I suspect snow at higher levels was melting as it fell toward the ground... making this more of a "mistbow" than either a snowbow or a rainbow.

I'd like to note, blooger has decided to rotate every picture I've tried to upload for the last few hours, won't allow me to unrotate them in picassa, and doesn't touch them if I put them in with a pre-emptive rotation- so they come up rotated the other direction instead. I've come up with a tedious workaround, but probably no more posts today. I'm pretty exasperated. But Happy Birthday to my Mom! This is also the one year anniversary of my web counter... this is an obscure little blog, with a few close followers, but it's grown enormously in the last twelve months. Thanks for all your comments and visits.

"Murder," He Wrote

The continuing trial of the fundamentalist "parents" who allowed their 15-month old daughter to die rather then overcoming their "faith" is continuing to sicken me:

The Worthingtons, an Oregon City couple who believe in faith healing rather than secular medicine, are charged in Clackamas County Circuit Court with second-degree manslaughter and criminal mistreatment for failing to seek medical care for their daughter.

(...)

The child died on March 2, 2008 after being sick for several days. "She struggled so long she couldn't struggle any more," Leonhardt said. Ava could have been saved, right up to her last hour, with medical treatment, he said.

Ignorance not supposed to be used as an excuse for breaking the law. Yet apparently the Worthington's ignorance, that medicine works better than prayers, is being used as an excuse to try them for manslaughter and mistreatment rather than murder.

Good News

has been hard to come by lately. No, I don't count Palin's resignation as good news- it just highlights the disaster that politics in this country has become. But Krugman's analysis of pending healthcare legislation is one of the most optimistic things I've read in... well, a long, long time. Nice!

A Great Time:

"Food, wine, a little personal abuse, and the heads of the religious right going foom."

The BBC is reporting, "Visitors to the website www.codexsinaiticus.org can now see images of more than half of the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript."

OMG!!! You mean the Bible wasn't written in English? No way man, gotta be a heathen photoshop job or something. “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for Texas”

BTW, do you recognize the piece that I paraphrased for the title and first line above the picture?

Weather Report

Today has been very pleasant and breezy, and cooler than the last three days. It's supposed to get much cooler into tomorrow and Tuesday. By August, 90-degree days will seem normal; I won't like them, but I'll cope pretty well. But the first real heat of the summer- which Thursday through yesterday were, is always pretty miserable for me. Friday night I checked the thermometer in my apartment at 11 PM... it was still over 80. (I'll admit it cooled down quite quickly after that, and it was 60 when I woke up yesterday morning. If I can have cool nights, I can tolerate the hot days.)

At any rate, with the changing weather today, we've been having some beautiful clouds outside the Interzone...

They are consistently moving north, which means the low pressure is off to the west and headed in, and the gusty winds suggest is has some power. We might actually get some rain out of this, and I love warm-weather rain. We don't get much of it in Western Oregon.

Hey Ben...

Towels are out. Just thought you'd want to know.

Sunday Funnies

It's a hot (though cooler than the last few days), lazy Sunday, and I don't particularly feel like coming up with a narrative for this week's funnies. So I'll just cut to the chase and wish you a good week at work, and offer you the opportunity to come up with your own witty storyline as you look through the stuff that made me laugh this last week. Sources are below each funny.
http://www.tattoodisasters.com/2009/06/29/six-pack/

http://www.buzzfeed.com/reddit/something-is-not-right-herepic/

http://pictureisunrelated.com/2009/06/30/some-people-will-do-anything-to-be-cool/

http://francescoexplainsitall.blogspot.com/2009/07/word-from-mega-shark-producer-himself.html (This is a real film that I don't plan on watching; here's the trailer)
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/07/cartoons_controlled_burn_or_pl.html

http://thereifixedit.com/2009/07/02/epic-kludge-photo-ahhh-air-conditioning/

http://criggo.com/2009/07/03/thats-a-huge-difference/

EAST HANOVER, NJ—A new report released by the Food and Drug Administration Monday suggests that regular consumption of Oreo's Double Stuf cookies could lead to an increased tolerance to stuf.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/report_double_stuf_oreos

Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, “I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, ‘No.’”

He continued, “I believe he’s gotten me on this grassroots movement. If I can encourage leaders to step up, that’s what I would like to do. That’s a heavy role. That’s something I don’t know if I am prepared to do yet.”

But Wurzelbacher said he will keep that door open if God ever calls him to be that leader.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/01/plumber-god/


http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/post/135386670/the-pursuit-of-awesomeness-ice-cream-sandwich

Vanilla ice cream with raspberries and blueberries between two chocolate brownies.

http://criggo.com/2009/07/05/error/

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/07/on-sale-now.html

One exception to the lack of narrative: both the above and below are described as attractive women. Funny. The above totally creeps me out. Tina Fey, on the other hand, is hawt!

see more Lol Celebs


see more dog and puppy pictures


see more Celeb Look-A-Likes


see more Lol Celebs


see more Lol Celebs

see more Political Pictures


see more Political Pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

See You in the funnies!

What Was She Thinking? What Is She Planning?

Lots and lots of conjectures and hypotheses. Even though she told us three times or more that she had laid out her reasons for resigning, no one- even her supporters- seems to have a clue what those reasons are. Lots of guesses, but no solid evidence. So for the record, here's my take on the answer to question one of the title:
And my suspicion regarding question two...
Yeah, they're repeats, but they do seem appropos. Faith and guts are all about not thinking or planning.

Malthus and Population Growth

Very interesting take on the "Malthusian mistake" in Krugman's blog earlier in the week (I'm finally getting to some of the "marked as unread" pieces I wanted to look at and think about more carefully). And here's a slightly earlier related post.

And here’s the sense in which Malthus was right: he had a fundamentally valid model of the pre-Industrial Revolution economy, which was one in which technological progress translated into more people, not higher living standards. This homeostasis only broke down when very rapid technological change finally outstripped population pressure for an extended period.

Of course, Malthus’s predictive failure wasn’t accidental. Technological takeoff was the product of a newly inquisitive, empirically-minded, scientific culture — the kind of culture that could produce people like Malthus.

So what does that say about the size of the human population as we move into a world where climate change takes an ever growing toll on agriculture? Nothing good, I'm sure.

I suppose I should link to a source on Malthus' thesis, if you're unaware of it

Partial-Term Abortion

Very cheeky, very funny...
Available at Jesus' General Store (store here and another shirt here).