Tag: miscellaneous

Quick Update

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Quick Update

1) Twelve-hour workdays suck.

2) Good news! Bullberry called and my .260 Remington Encore barrel is in queue for production.

3) Even though I haven’t posted a damned thing since Monday, TSM has received over 1,000 hits a day anyway. Thanks!

4) My absence must have affected Uncle, since he posted not one, but TWO pieces longer than three lines in total, and the second was mostly his own, not cut-n-paste! Way to step into the breach there, Uncle! That second one was 1,120 words!

5) The comment thread on comparative religion seems to have finally petered (no pun intended) out. I think that one’s responsible for the 1,000 hits a day, myself.

And, finally:

6) Via Joe Huffman (via Ry Jones) I find out that someone in the UK has determined that the subjects there are not only too incompetent to be trusted with firearms, they’re too incompetent to be trusted with fire extinguishers. The logical circle is now complete. No one but “professionals” – i.e.: someone drawing a .gov paycheck – should be allowed to do anything requiring interfacing with danger!

So when will the .gov there start issuing Nerf™ sporks, and collecting up all the flatware? Oh, and issuing pre-pureed foodstuffs to the proles? Someone could get hurt!

I get to go home tomorrow afternoon for the “weekend”. This means I get home between 7-8PM, but I have to be back up here again Sunday evening for another week. In other words, I get to sleep in late Saturday in my own bed. This is week #6, and it looks like I’ll be doing this (with a break over Christmas/New Years) through January and into mid-February.

Sometimes being an engineer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

But the pay’s pretty good.

Movie Review – Changeling

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Movie Review – Changeling

My wife and I just got back from seeing Changeling. I have to agree with Roger Ebert:

Jolie plays Christine Collins without unnecessary angles or quirks. She is a supervisor at the telephone company, she loves her son, they live in a nice bungalow, all is well. She reacts to her son’s disappearance as any mother would. But as weeks turn into months, and after the phony “son” is produced, her anger and resolution swells up until it brings the whole LAPD fabrication crashing down. Malkovich as the minister is refreshing: He’s not a sanctimonious grandstander who gets instructions directly from God, but a crusading activist.

—

Eastwood’s telling of this story isn’t structured as a thriller, but as an uncoiling of outrage. It is clear that the leaders of the LAPD serve and protect one thing: its own tarnished reputation. Collins joins many other female prisoners whose only crime was to annoy a cop. The institution drugs them, performs shock treatment, punishes any protest. Mental illness is treated as a crime. This is all, as the film observes, based on a true story.

Eastwood is one of the finest directors now at work. I often say I’m mad at Fassbinder for dying at 38 and denying us decades of his films. In a way, I’m also mad at Eastwood for not directing his first film until he was 41. We could not do without his work as an actor. But most of his greatest films as a director have come after “retirement age.” Some directors start young and get tired. Eastwood is only gathering steam.

It’s a damned good film.

I saw it because A) it’s directed by Eastwood, and B) it was written by J. Michael Straczynski – the guy who conceived, wrote and brought to life Babylon 5. What an interesting partnership that had to be. I was not disappointed.

This is not an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but – if for no other reason – I recommend it to readers of my blog because you need to see what unfettered police power, Cartman’s “RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!” can really, has really produced here in America’s history.

It can happen here. It has happened here.

I’ve Got Some Time Off . . .

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I’ve Got Some Time Off . . .

. . . before I have to drive back up to Wickenburg on Sunday. I got some of the honeydo’s taken care of today, and I have a pistol match tomorrow morning. It’s been far too long since I sat down and wrote an actual essay.

Expect to see something longish posted on or before Sunday night.

Don’t expect “cheerful.”

Five Years? Toshiba Has Them NOW!

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Five Years? Toshiba Has Them NOW!

Instapundit links to this story from the Guardian:

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

£13m shed-size reactors will be delivered by lorry

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. “Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,” said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. “They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.”

Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. “It’s leapfrog technology,” he said.

The company plans to set up three factories to produce 4,000 plants between 2013 and 2023. “We already have a pipeline for 100 reactors, and we are taking our time to tool up to mass-produce this reactor.”

The first confirmed order came from TES, a Czech infrastructure company specialising in water plants and power plants. “They ordered six units and optioned a further 12. We are very sure of their capability to purchase,’ said Deal. The first one, he said, would be installed in Romania. ‘We now have a six-year waiting list. We are in talks with developers in the Cayman Islands, Panama and the Bahamas.”

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.

“You could never have a Chernobyl-type event – there are no moving parts,” said Deal. “You would need nation-state resources in order to enrich our uranium. Temperature-wise it’s too hot to handle. It would be like stealing a barbecue with your bare hands.”

Other companies are known to be designing micro-reactors. Toshiba has been testing 200KW reactors measuring roughly six metres by two metres. Designed to fuel smaller numbers of homes for longer, they could power a single building for up to 40 years.

I (and Instapundit) mentioned the Toshiba units back last December. Still nothing about how the thermal power of the reactor is converted into electrical power. Micro steam turbines? Thermoelectric conversion? What? Still, I like the idea of neighborhood power generation. Makes me wish I were Bill Gates so I could afford one of my very own.

Still, I’m glad to know that the .gov has seen fit to license the technology for production. It’s about damned time.

Awwww Crap!

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Awwww Crap!

Michael Crichton has died. I didn’t even know he had cancer. One of the most eloquent voices against the abuse of and the politicization of science has been silenced. And it appears that his web page, where most of his speeches and essays are posted is getting hammered – I’m seeing a lot of “503 Error – Service Unavailable” messages.

I’ve read just about every book he’s written, and most if not all of his essays. The last book of his I read was Next, and it was one of the most disturbing novels I’ve ever read – especially since I know how thoroughly he researched his work. The man was a national treasure.

If you haven’t already seen it, I strongly recommend you go to this post from July and watch the 56 minute interview he gave to Charlie Rose after Next came out.

RIP, Michael. We need you, and we’re going to miss you. The Church of Global Warming will be ramping up their membership drive shortly.

WTH is This?

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WTH is This?

My wife came back from a thrift store with an antique (says “1916” on the bottom!)

What the hell is it?


Any clues?

UPDATE: The container is about 8″ tall, the wood-ball-on-iron-stick assembly is about 12″ in overall length.

UPDATE II: OK, we’ve concluded that it’s a fire starter. That would explain why there are ashes in the container. My guess is that the original pumice-stone or unglazed ceramic ball was replaced at some point with a wooden one.

Thanks!

I Have the Best Readers

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I Have the Best Readers

Man, the comment threads recently have been full of WIN! Y’all are impressive.

I just wanted to make that generally known.

As an aside, it looks like blogging is going to be taking a back seat to work soon. Starting Monday I will be working four 12-hour shifts (M-Th) and then 10 hours on Friday, not including the four hour drive home (returning on Sunday to start over.) At the present time, that schedule will run for two weeks, then I’ll spend a week back in Tucson, and then back to the jobsite for two more weeks (with weekends at home unless the job demands that I stay over the weekend.)

This is supposed to go on until the project is finished, and completion is scheduled in early December.

Like I believe that.

Needless to say, blogging will be light.