December 2011
Cheap Thoughts: Melatonin – why do we need it?
I’ve been eyeing that Zeo sleep monitor for the past few months and enjoying the sleep tips they post on their blog and Facebook page. Recently Zeo shared a post from an ABC Action News story about how electronic gadgets are stealing sleep. Seems looking at a lighted screen right before bed delays the production of melatonin, the hormone that is produced when darkness falls to make us sleep. As a blogger who does quite a bit of his writing near bedtime, this was of interest to me.
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The Right (and Wrong) Way to Die When You Fall Into Lava
Wired examines what happens when you fall into lava. Science proves the movies wrong. Yay, science!
At first, it seemed like an easy question. Well, not so much easy as obvious: yes. However, the more I thought about it, the more I though that pretty much every scene I’ve ever noticed where somebody falls into lava and dies has got to be wrong. Some are just straight out obvious to explain — like in Volcano when the subway maintenance director jumps from the subway car that is being inundated by lava after he saved the unconscious subway driver. The guy jumps from the subway, but not far enough to miss landing in maybe 6 inches of basaltic lava and he proceeds to more or less melt away into the lava like the Wicked Witch of the West. Not likely. Maybe some very severe burns, maybe lost feet (think Darth Vader), but no wholesale melting like that.
However, the death of Gollum at the end of Return of the King got me thinking. Gollum, if you remember, dove into the lava of Mount Doom after his precious ring was thrown in — he proceeds to sink into the lava (see below) and leaves the ring floating on the lava until it melts away. Guess what? Sinking into lava just will not happen if you’re a human (or remotely human). You’d need to be a Terminator to sink into molten rock/metal … and here’s why.
via The Right (and Wrong) Way to Die When You Fall Into Lava | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Screen time with the new mayor
My friend Scott alerted me to another appearance in the news, this time at Tuesday’s inauguration of Mayor Nancy McFarlane and the new city council. WTVD was there and caught me on video, much to my surprise. I had no idea!
I must have some friends over there or something. Thanks, y’all!
Raleigh CAC chair
Oh, by the way, I won another election last night when I was elected chair of the Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council. As far as I know, it’s the first time a soon-to-be-former CAC chair will lead the council since it’s inception in 1974.
One thing that is up for discussion is the fact that the bylaws have no provision for an ex-CAC chair to vote. Thus I will preside over the meetings but have no vote. The group could amend the bylaws to change this, of course, and it might be helpful to do so. With 18 CACs, getting a tie vote on a matter is a possibility, remote as the chance may be. Getting the opportunity to vote in a tie might be useful at the very least.
Anyhow, I’m looking forward to serving in this new role and making Raleigh’s neighborhoods stronger!
What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447
Popular Mechanics published and translated a partial transcript of the cockpit voice recorders of the doomed flight Air France 447. As the flight data recorders indicated, one of the pilots was pushing the nose up the entire time the stall took place. The voice recorder does not indicate why the first officer made this simple but tragic mistake, however. It simply indicates the level of confusion in the cockpit, and the unfortunate fact that the other two pilots realized the error far too late.
We now understand that, indeed, AF447 passed into clouds associated with a large system of thunderstorms, its speed sensors became iced over, and the autopilot disengaged. In the ensuing confusion, the pilots lost control of the airplane because they reacted incorrectly to the loss of instrumentation and then seemed unable to comprehend the nature of the problems they had caused. Neither weather nor malfunction doomed AF447, nor a complex chain of error, but a simple but persistent mistake on the part of one of the pilots.
Human judgments, of course, are never made in a vacuum. Pilots are part of a complex system that can either increase or reduce the probability that they will make a mistake. After this accident, the million-dollar question is whether training, instrumentation, and cockpit procedures can be modified all around the world so that no one will ever make this mistake again—or whether the inclusion of the human element will always entail the possibility of a catastrophic outcome. After all, the men who crashed AF447 were three highly trained pilots flying for one of the most prestigious fleets in the world. If they could fly a perfectly good plane into the ocean, then what airline could plausibly say, “Our pilots would never do that”?
Gas-Fracking Chemicals Found in WY Aquifer
And to think the American Petroleum Institute ran a 3/4 page color ad in today’s News and Observer, singing the praises of fracking.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said for the first time it found chemicals used in extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing in a drinking-water aquifer in west-central Wyoming.
Samples taken from two deep water-monitoring wells near a gas field in Pavillion, Wyoming, showed synthetic chemicals such as glycols and alcohols “consistent with gas production and hydraulic-fracturing fluids,” the agency said today in an e- mailed statement.
Lonelier street
McNultys' moving van
I watched with sadness today as our next-door neighbors, the McNultys, moved out. I remember how welcome they made us feel when we moved in almost four years ago. Now their house stands empty and our little end of Tonsler Drive has gotten a bit lonelier.
Life is full of moments where everything can change in an instant. The death of a loved one, or a pet, or when good friends move away. They knock you out of your happy slumber, sudden reminders that nothing in this life is permanent.
You’d better enjoy every moment in life because they’re here and they’re gone. All too soon.
Congress about to undermine our basic constitutional rights
I’ve said again and again, if people like Jose Padilla, a U.S. Citizen accused of terrorism, are truly as evil as the government says they are, then put them on trial and prove it. Padilla did finally get a trial, by the way, but not until he spent years without trial in solitary confinement in a sensory-depravation situation – destroying his personality, according to psychologists.
So much for liberty, folks.
Should the U.S. military be given the power to arrest U.S. citizens, here on U.S. soil, and to detain those citizens indefinitely in military prisons, without access to legal counsel or due process, and without trial in civilian court?
The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights say hell no. Holding U.S. citizens in military prisons without right to trial or counsel? Really?
Centuries of American liberty also say hell no. The CIA, FBI and the entire U.S. intelligence system say no, as does the military. They do not want the power to arrest and detain U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, and any legitimate reading of our nation’s traditions, beliefs and founding documents says they should never have it. It is antithetical to a free people.
Yet a majority of the U.S. House and Senate says otherwise. Despite a stern veto threat by President Obama, Congress is about to pass such language into federal law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. I hope and pray that Obama has the guts to carry out his veto threat, and I hope freedom-loving Americans of all ideologies rally to support him in that cause.
via Congress about to undermine our basic constitutional rights | Jay Bookman.
How to shoot down an F-117 – lessons from the Serbian war
I had heard rumors of this before but this is the first time I’ve learned the details of how the Serbs defeated America’s stealth and cruise-missile technologies.
The myth of a push-button war grows smaller each day.
The Serbian battery commander, whose missiles downed an American F-16, and, most impressively, an F-117, in 1999, has retired, as a colonel, and revealed many of the techniques he used to achieve all this.
Colonel Dani Zoltan, in 1999, commanded the 3rd battery of the 250th Missile Brigade. He had search and control radars, as well as a TV tracking unit. The battery had four quad launchers for the 21 foot long, 880 pound SA-3 missiles.
The list of measures he took, and the results he got, should be warning to any who believe that superior technology alone will provide a decisive edge in combat. People still make a big difference. In addition to shooting down two aircraft, Zoltan’s battery caused dozens of others to abort their bombing missions to escape his unexpectedly accurate missiles. This is how he did it.