Airships, submarines and similar water or airborne objects have unusual steering behavior. Put the rudder hard over and the first motion of the ship is in the opposite direction. I learned this a bit ago I was on the NASA team that studied the "Modern Airship". Thanks to Barry Goldwater's chief of staff who was a "heliumhead". We got to meet a lot of interesting folks during that study.
I also got to serve on the team that rebuilt a 660,000 cu ft pressure vessel (75psig max pressure) using modern materials and learned a bit about fracture mechanics. The old vessel was of welded construction built during ww2 using "Liberty Ship" steel. It had nil ductility at 32 deg f. We found a 113 inch long crack, 1-1/2 deep in a weld of a 2-1/2 inch thick plate. By fracture mechanics of the day the thing should have blown up. Luckily it was sited in California where it was rare to see 32 degrees. The Titanic was not so lucky.
I think this is more interesting if you throw out the idea of just one god. How about a many gods question? Can god 1 create a rock too heavy for god 2 to lift and vs versa. If god is unknowable then it may be possible that there are many of them all contending for our souls.
People found during the San Jose earthquake yesterday that cellphones were inoperable for about 15 to 30 minutes after the shaking stopped. Land lines worked fine. Our problem would be that our connection to the land line is thru our cordless - no power, no phone. We would have to crank up the generator at that point. The next line of communication would be via ham radio. Now that the code requirement has been eliminated, getting a license is easy.
People might consider joining the local search and rescue organization. Then you would have the phone numbers and radio frequencies for you local dispatch.
Some might find that a pain in the ass when you get called out at midnight, the usual time, to go look for a missing hiker, kid or confused old person.
Here I am mind firmly stuck in idle clicking thru bookmarks to find something to enjoyably pass the time till bed and what pops up but 1985. Well here I sit in my tee from the 1985 South Tower Race. Now all your comments have made that race a mindworm. I am repeating it over and over. Thanks a lot.
Then I read about 9 fingers and a mindworm of my friend 9 toes takes a firm grasp of my imagination.
Thanks again for nothing.
I came in late but has anyone had a tooth abscess or known anyone who had one? Two of my friends were told that they came very close to death from theirs. In one case the infection was moving towards the brain and in the other the transferred abscess was on one kidney and was first diagnosed as cancer. Big time hospital stays for all.
Take care of your teeth! The damn things can kill you. The problem can be that by the time you are feeling some pain the problem is well advanced.
This made me wonder how my mom, a grammer school teacher, would handle this. Her usual policy was to take a leap over the ofending chapter with a comment like: "We will get back to this topic when necessary." and of course the year ran out before it became necessary. Most likely teachers can't use that dodge now. Too Bad.
Re Magnesium and Fire Bombs
We built an armored personel carrier, M113, out ot mag cause some brass thought it would be lighter. M113s were supposded to be air transportable and could be dropped by para. The vehicle was of welded construction. I always wondered why it didn't catch fire. 20,000lbs or so of mag burning would have being quite a sight. It was an interesting experience as mag has some very interesting characteristics like not liking to stay the same shape if you heat it. Aluminum is the same except it doesn't wiggle as much.
I read "Flyboys" and found that the Germans used thermite in their firebombs but Napalm firebombs were used by the Americans to burn down the Japanese cities. Don't read this book if you still think of ww2 as the "good war".
In another blog someone talked about how Viet Nam had the "best and brightest" crew doing the "march of folly". How about a contest to name this wars "best and brightest"? How about "Dumb and Dumber"?
The codpiece war is a good one. The "jet fighter" that bush was in was a COD, Carrier Onboard Delivery aircraft. In otherwords an arial pickup truck. It also could be configured for anti sub duty protecting the carrier.
Mission Acomplished War
The Oxford Companion to Ships & The Sea has no listing for dunsail.
Julia et al,
I sort of have some familiarity with Mutants and Normies. My 44 year old son is autistic. I am quite familiar with that small group of people who have had to cope with kids like mine.
All the kids are doing well, even the autistic one who is living independently, owns a car, has a girl friend and has a job.
My wife and I laugh at our situation. The Normies and Mutants is our way of joking about our kids. It is a way of talking about how different our kids are from ourselves. We know other couples whoes kids seem like clones of the parents.
I can't remember too much of that early part of coping with the autistic son except that we just holed up till he was capable of accepting the world. We did develop quite a thick skin about peoples comments, however, I don't think we recieved a lot of flak. Maybe we were just too overwhelmed to notice.
Still interested in what peoples experieces are with the outcomes of their child raisings.
Please forgive the comment hijacking; my wife and I have 6 kids, 3 hers and 3 mine, and, I would like to ask all who attend here to let me know your child raising results - Those of you how have gotten to the adult kid stage of life.
Out of the 6, we have 4 mutants and 2 normies. Is this the average? God knows we tried hard in our own ways to raise all normies but did not get optimum results.
Thanks in advance for the fun comments.
I got tired of reading the comments to see if this had been posted: Tort Reform = Freedom to Kill.
Sort of like the fraud of the Freedom to Farm Act.
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