RDT Right Now #2002

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Really Deep Thoughts Right Now			Volume 06 : Issue #2002

              .
                    o - O - O - O - O - O - O - O - o
         .       o                                     o     .
               o                                         o
              O         "Thoughts right now...            O
              o        What will become of me,            o
              o       Become of her, become of we?"       o
          .    o                                         o     .
                 O                                     O
                    O - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - O
                             o                           .
                               o
                                  o
                                      o
                                         Tori Amos, "Thoughts"
In this issue:
o-o-o-o-o-o-o

  wwhere's neil when you need him? cov  [ wojizzle forizzle <woj@smoe.org> ]
  Waiting for Fujita                    [ Mark Alexander <alexander750@earthl ]



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Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:54:43 -0400
From: wojizzle forizzle <woj@smoe.org>
To: torinews@smoe.org, fiercest clams <precious-things@smoe.org>,
	rdtrn@torithoughts.org
Subject: wwhere's neil when you need him? cover art

neil gaiman has posted a jpg of dave mckean's cover art for _where's
neil when you need him?_ (a tribute album tori is contributing a
re-recorded "sister named desire" to) on his journal. the post is

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/04/am-i-blue.html

and a direct link to the artwork:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/uploaded_images/GAIMAN%20CD%20COVER%20image%20
type-721069.JPG

woj

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Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:51:42 -0500
From: Mark Alexander <alexander750@earthlink.net>
To: "that redhead with the piano" <rdtrn@torithoughts.org>
Subject: Waiting for Fujita

	What? What's that? RDTRN is coming back to life? Simon has returned?
	I'm still here. More to the point, I'm still alive, despite the
running contest between whether I'll die first, or Arbustus Caesar
falls. It's not going to be pretty.
	"Not pretty" also describes what happened to my car shortly before
Christmas after it got rear-ended and knocked into a parking lot.
Because of its age (over 357,000 km), the fact that the paint job,
upholstery and A/C were pretty much hosed, and the frame (and other
bits) getting bent, my very cherry Honda Accord SE, Bose stereo and
all, got sent to the crusher, and all I got was a lousy insurance
check--which bought a replacement Accord of the same vintage, but
much plainer (a DX this time), with 120,000 fewer klicks on its clock.
	Oh well, I needed a new one anyway. The old car was starting to burn
oil. Besides, I can now play MP3 CDs and listen to XM radio.
	On a happier note, I'm actually learning how (in fits and starts) to
do my own chase forecasts, or at least, to make better use of the
information that's out there (for example, how to read SKEW-T charts
and hodographs, what the difference between surface-based and
elevated convection means, models vs. observations, and so forth).
The only gotcha? TIME. Murphy's law being what it is, I'm typically
working when I should be heading for my target area! (Also, the
available storms have all tended to occur either late at night, or
over very bad terrain, or both--the Centerton-Bentonville near-F4
storm of 12 March comes to mind.)
	The Weather Graphics series of books are a good place to get started:

	Weather Forecasting Handbook http://www.weathergraphics.com/fcstbook
	An introduction to practical forecasting for the hobbyist that goes
beyond
	the "gee-whiz picture book" approach of most popular meteorology texts;
	it can be (and is) used as an instructional text in introductory
courses
	(e.g., for SKYWARN spotters). The focus is on praxis, not theory;
	while there are sections on atmospheric physics and numerical modeling,
	the math-shy need not worry about getting buried under a blizzard of
	equations.

	Weather Map Handbook http://www.weathergraphics.com/mapbook
	A companion to the above, with more specialized coverage of upper air,
	infrared, and derived-data (thickness, isentropic, Q-vector) charts.

	Storm Chasing Handbook http://www.weathergraphics.com/chasing
	Covers storm forecasting and other topics specific to storm chasing:
	equipment, strategy, safety, and most important, what to do while
	you're waiting for the cap to break. The second half of the book is
	in fact a travel guide to various parts of Tornado Alley, from southern
	Texas all the way up to the Canadian prairies. The appendices even
	include a listing of where to find, among other things, the perfect
	barbecue (no, it's not in Kansas City).

	Extreme American Weather http://www.weathergraphics.com/extreme
	This is not your typical collection of Storm Stories (tm) anecdotes.
	Rather, it's presented as a series of case studies for the forecaster,
	as such situations are notoriously hard to model.

	Also, there's an online guide at
		http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/home.rxml

	Now for the replies, all for Spaceman Simon:

 > From what I know about the space program, things
> falling far short of predictions was always more of a
> political problem than technological.  Theoretically
> we do have the technology to accomplish what was
> depicted in the movie, we only lack the political will
> to set things in motion for things to be brought
> together to make it reality.

	Yes and no. One of the biggest obstacles to further manned
exploration turns out to be something which most of us haven't
considered: radiation exposure (on the order of up to 70 rem/yr for
interstellar flight, enough to kill in less than 3 years), and what
it would require to overcome it. With current technology there are
only two ways to shield a spacecraft: by surrounding it with lots of
material (as in, a shell of water at least 5 meters thick) to absorb
the radiation, or by using powerful magnets to deflect it. The first
is simply prohibitively expensive in terms of launch costs,
especially if everything comes from Earth; a more practical approach,
construction in lunar orbit, would require a pre-existing
infrastructure there. The second would require huge amounts of power
(even with superconductors), and, if not used with a second "bucking"
field, would expose the crew to dangerously high magnetic fields
(over 20 Tesla).
	For a Mars (or Europa) voyage, the hazard would not end at the
destination, since these places lack magnetic fields and substantial
atmospheres. The crew's living quarters would have to be placed
underground (or under ice), necessitating a "pre-colonization"
process involving extensive robotic construction.
	True, these are not "technological" obstacles per se. But the cost
involved would be staggering--probably greater than the entire
military budgets of all Earth. While this might be an effective way
to prevent wars, there are more pressing needs for all that cash--
primarily linked with overpopulation.

> And am I the only one who thinks the name "HAL" is not
> a coincidence?  Move each letter back one.  And look
> at the nameplate on the hatch to the computer core on
> the ship when Bowman is heading in there.

	It *does* look an awful lot like the IBM logo, but Dr. Chandra
himself replies:

	"Utter nonsense! Half of us *come* from IBM and we've been trying to
	stamp out that story for years. I thought that by now every intelligent
	person knew that H-A-L is derived from Heuristic Algorithmic."
	(Sir Arthur C. Clarke, _2010: Odyssey Two_, p. 173)

> And of course
> practice with Photoshop and Illustrator.

	Hmmm...I thought it was called Adobe CS2 now...no, wait, that's a
bundle containing, among other things, Photoshop and Illustrator. But
what do I know? I use the Gimp 'cos it's free!

> funny (or not so funny) thing: last fall the asshole
> drawing instructor on several occasions, when
> commenting on my interest in technological-themed and
> inspired art, would talk about how historically such
> works have been the domain of fascist or totalitarian
> cultures.

	You're right...he's an asshole. Not for being unobservant (a lot of
Socialist Realist "art" did have technological themes, as it had
obvious propaganda value), but because, apart from a put-down, what's
the point?
	A lot of comic book art has technological themes. Does that make
Stan Lee a fascist? Discuss.

	(regarding Tori video collections):

> I've got a DVD
> burner on my iMac, but I need to get the hardware that
> converts analog video to digital to feed it into the
> computer.  And there's also the compatibility problem
> with some material, the whole NTSC/PAL/SECAM thing.

	El Gato have a whole line of these (the EyeTV series), for
everything from basic video-in to HDTV and digital cable; I myself
have the basic model (EyeTV USB) for recording NTSC analog TV and
dubbing old VHS recordings to MPEG-1. Formac and Canopus also have
solutions for this, primarily for direct-to-(H)DV encoding for use
with iMovie/iDVD and Final Cut Pro.
	Some of these encoders can handle both NTSC and PAL/SECAM (and your
software should do all three). Once you have the video on your iMac
(got storage?), converting between the three is a simple, if CPU- and
disk-intensive, matter of pixel- and frame-crunching; you can use the
free command-line utility ffmpeg to do this. Again, I use it in my
EyeTV USB-to-iMovie-to-DVD workflow.
	What vintage is your iMac? If you've got an older G3 box, you may
want a new Mac first: my current Mini (G4 1.42 GHz, 1 GB RAM) handles
ordinary DV OK but tends to choke on HD material, and transcoding or
DVD burning is typically an overnight job. A G4 iMac will work OK for
NTSC or other SD material; to work with HD, you'll definitely need a
dual G5 or Core Duo box.
	Don't be afraid of the command line, or of X11. There's a lot of
good GNU freeware out there that's been ported to OS X!

> has [Brad Shultz] left the service or is he still working at
> Stalag 13?

	Worse. I think he may be working in the White House, or at Faux
"Fairly Unbalanced" NewsChannel; perhaps he changed his name to Bill
O'Reilly...?
	I wanna completely scramble Arbustus Caesar's Q-vectors,
	Estraven.




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