War Objectives

And Israel goes to war again. I wonder if Hamas expected that.

I wonder what Israel's objective will be this time? I don't think they'll reciprocate Hamas' goal of extermination.

Short of that, three other goals come to mind; maybe four. None of them are more than short-term solutions, of course. It is pointless for the Israelis to worry about PR downsides, but they probably will anyway.

• Wipe out all of Hamas' leadership and capability and withdraw. Two problems jump up from this: Knowing who's who, and the fact that to do this you have to occupy the place, which lets the locals get up close with "lone wolf" attacks.
• "Rip them a new asshole" and back off. This could be done without occupation. It could be modified by seizing a few miles of border and fortifying/mining it. Cue the chorus of "proportionality." I know proportionality is part of Catholic just war theory, but I'm not sure that it was entirely thought out.(*)
• Occupy and govern. This one has a lot of long-term pain as the Gazans do the "lone wolf" thing. The Gazans would no doubt be materially better off, but still feel themselves second-class, and they take their religion seriously; I don't think they'd all let themselves be seduced by the secularism of the Little Satan or the Great Satan.
• Occupy and expel. This has a lot of short-term pain, and really bad optics, and nobody wants the Gazans. The only place that would seem to be a plausible relocation spot is the West Bank. I doubt that Jordan would be happy with that, and it would probably just make the problem bigger down the road.

At least, I hope they have a goal. It's kind of hard to win a war without one. Just ask the USA.

(*) UPDATE: The comments pointed out that I used an interpretation of the theory rather than a reference to the theory itself--mea culpa. The statement from the Catechism is reasonable--though still subject to subjective interpretation: how heavily does one weight potential woes? Still, I should have checked the original before publishing.

Lost sheep

I remember thinking about the parable of the lost sheep that it didn't seem quite right. Why should there be more rejoicing in heaven about a rescue? It seems like an all-too-human fascination with drama.

It's because it's a bigger miracle than a creation. It's a resurrection.

“Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works.” — Robert Farrar Capon

It's spelled out in the prodigal son parable--"He was dead and is alive." (And a son that treated his father that way would probably have been considered dead to his family...)

Entertainment or Exercise?

I remember hearing some mild grumbling when "The Passion of the Christ" won no Oscars: "Hollywood hates Christian things." The complaints seemed muted, possibly because tainted awards are hardly things to covet.

I thought at the time that although Hollywood undoubtedly does loathe Christian themes, they were right to give the movie a pass, despite its huge box office. Many of the attendees weren't going to be entertained, but to use it as part of a religious exercise.

Since then, I've wondered a bit about whether I was right. Are there other movies (or books, or songs) to which we go in order to "afflict ourselves" to prepare ourselves for communion with something greater than us?

People sometimes go to movies to "cheer themselves up" being reminded that there are good things despite the disappointments of the day--entertainment with a psychological purpose; utilitarian art.

Others seem to want to go to be reminded of how patriarchal and white and bad they are and how good they are to have noticed this--which seems like a gnostic religious exercise.

It's not as crisp a distinction as I thought.

Tribal land

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" Attributed to Andrew Jackson, who may not have actually said it, though in a letter he says something similar. The decision was Worcester v Georgia. Oddly enough, given Jackson's record in the subsequent Cherokee eviction, the matter at issue was "Did a State have the right to pass a law requiring that a non-Indian visiting tribal land had to get a permit from the State first?" The law aimed at protecting the Indian tribes' rights, and the Supreme Court ruling removed that protection.

The Court's decision was almost certainly right--relations between nations are what the Constitution envisioned, and a State doesn't function as a nation. The Feds didn't prove more honorable than Georgia, though.

I get it now

A recent post of Dr. Boli's included "City police remind residents that tap-dancing lessons are now mandatory for all citizens between the ages of 10 and 65". The spotted lanternflies show up everywhere, sometimes in dramatic numbers. And they're sensitive little beasts. If you're tentative about your smash, they'll be elsewhere with a click.

We took the car for a wash after leaving Pittsburgh. No doubt the lanternfly will reach Wisconsin eventually, but not because of us. Though since they are especially fond of tree of heaven, maybe they would kill the neighbor's stand of them. Tree of heaven turns out to be toxic.

We're putting my national parks pass to use this year: Indiana Dunes National Park and Cuyahoga National Park for a few hours each. Maybe next year we'll get farther afield.

Cod

The USS Cod is interesting. Each sub is restored slightly differently. This one doesn't have big cutouts for tourists to walk in conveniently. You have to climb in the way the sailors did. Don't slip; you can wrench your shoulder. Don't ask how we know.

Ice cream machines were a much-coveted item. This one apparently was acquired through proper channels back in the day, and not via "midnight acquisition."

See it if you're in the area, but beware: Cleveland drivers seem to include as high a proportion of rude drivers as Chicago does.

The Gardener

Jesus told the parable of the gardener: “But the gardener answered, ‘Leave it alone sir, for this year too; until I dig around it and put in fertilizer, and if it bears fruit …’ “

I’ve heard it used to explain God’s patience with us, and that’s certainly part of it. But it also warns against inferring things from prosperity. Maybe if everything’s coming up roses for you, it isn’t because God’s so happy with you, it’s because the gardener is giving you one last chance.

Rome

There seems to have been a little teapot tempest about how much men (compared to women) think about ancient Rome(*). I haven't bothered to investigate (life is short and I've been busy with non-Rome related things) but in order to make up your quota here is a video on the 1'st Punic War, which includes some surprising strategic implications of the economics of their warships, and a series from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry starting here on the subject of the Middle Roman Republic. Yes, I learned a lot, though as usual I will promptly forget all the names.

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(*) I almost wrote "how much men think about ancient Rome compared to women," which wouldn't quite be the same thing. Word order matters in English--not quite like Latin. Oops, there goes the Ancient Rome bit again...

Models and meaning

I was in a little discussion at Grim's Hall about mathematical models of the physical world, and asserted that in a good model, aspects of the mathematics related to aspects of the physical world.

For the honor of truth, I must admit that in quantum mechanics, the physical meaning of the wave function is a bit hard to pin down. If it were easy, there wouldn't be so much disagreement among very smart characters. Follow the link for discussion.

I'm not fond of "shut up and calculate", and I hanker for a clearer theory (although quantum mechanics works extremely well), but possibly the world is a bit stranger than my mind. If an electron slung out of Alpha Centauri interacts with an apparatus in Earth orbit designed to react differently if the electron's spin is + or -, is that apparatus part of the boundary conditions for the electron's wave function and if so, what does that mean for it's state however many years ago when it was created?

Were those really part of the shipment?

The Customs Department of the Liberia Revenue Authority has seized and transferred three boxes of confiscated narcotics drugs and 13 pieces of guns to the appropriate government entities.

Those look like home-made shotgun-shell-shooting pistols. The contents of the plastic bags in the right side of the picture seem fibrous--marijuana or khat? But those pistols: it looks likes there's a cottage industry churning them out. I wonder what the trigger mechanism looks like. I also wonder if those are the pistols that LRA found in the shipment, or something LRA already had on hand. If I had the money to smuggle lots of drugs, I'd smuggle some better weapons along with them.

UPDATE: not-homemade, Grim identified them. Still, they look like substitutes.

Confessional

An ELCA priest confessed his infidelity to a fellow priest, who promptly told his bishop, who called the fellow's wife. I do not know the details well enough to know if there were any loopholes in the definitions or procedures that would authorize those reactions, but on the face of it they seem deeply improper.

The original priest betrayed his promise to his wife (the story says they are reconciling). If the story is true the second priest, and the bishop, betrayed their duties to the whole church--who will ever trust them, or possibly any priest, to hear a confession again?

Devil in the details, milk jug edition

For those gardeners who make their own manure tea, the obvious thing to decant your 5-gallon pails into is old plastic milk jugs. They're free and easy to store, pour from, and cap off.

But.

Look closely at the jug. Is it made from two peices of plastic sealed together? Remember, your garage will get hot and the pressure inside the jug will rise. If there's a weakness in the seams anywhere, the liquid will find it. Half the jugs sprang leaks. This isn't a dry ice bomb class failure, fortunately. But it is a mess.

I'm trying some old injection-molded round gallon jugs--no seams.

FWIW, for homeschool science class I'd made a couple of robust screens of different mesh sizes to illustrate sorting by "particle size" in soil. They've been kicking around unused for a while, until I needed something for making the "tea."

neutrino interactions

I saw article claiming that low energy neutrinos (low is a relative term here--these are nuclear energy level neutrinos) could have large interaction rates in a magnetized plasma. I have to--rather grumpily--admit that I'm having a bit of trouble following the paper and won't have an immediate critique ready. X is true therefore we can assume Y--wait, what? And the coupling constant is proportional to 1/B?

Neutrinos at low energy are tough to spot. I tried to figure a way to use a cold crystal and detect phonons from neutrinos collectively scattering from the array of nuclei (instead of from a single nucleus), but it would have been extremely wavelength specific and since the neutrino wavelength wouldn't match the atomic spacing (it would only be commensurate) the result would have been pretty muddy at best, and likely not much more sensitive than the detectors we already have. Oh well.

Weapon efficiency

In terms of energy delivered to Japanese cities as a fraction of the energy put into the devices, the atomic bombs were about a few percent efficient. True, there was lots of energy available in the uranium, but it was hard to purify the isotope they needed. (It's easier now.) For the energy in the device to go bang there, you have to pour even more energy into it here--true for chemical explosives as well.

Monarchs

When monarch butterflies leave Wisconsin, they fly to a valley they have never seen before in Mexico. They were born in the USA. There seems to be some kind of hereditary memory involved. I've no idea how this works.

I wonder how long it takes for such a hereditary memory to develop.

I suspect that in the past four years the butterflies have learned that wherever you see this sign, someone with white fluff on a long stick is going to snare you, grab you, and poke a sticker on your wing, and then all the other butterflies will laugh at you.

They have been extremely skittish this year.

UPDATE: But seriously: "When applied as directed, the tags do not interfere with flight or otherwise harm the butterflies." But if mates are looking for symmetrical wings, the tagged ones (the not-so skittish ones) may not mate as often.

Lanchester's Law

I learn something new every day. I wasn't familiar with Lanchester's Law: the relative capability of two forces attriting each other during combat goes as the difference of the squares of their numbers. With, of course, some caveats--it doesn't take mechanized systems into account (machine guns, artillary, gas, disease, etc).

Sometimes it works. Sometimes--"Attempts have been made to apply Lanchester's laws to conflicts ... with chimpanzees and fire ants. The chimpanzee application was relatively successful; the fire ant application did not confirm that the square law applied."

The quality of the forces matters and is included--though how this gets "measured" isn't obvious.

"The Helmbold Parameters provide quick, concise, exact numerical indices, soundly based on historical data, for comparing battles with respect to their bitterness and the degree to which side had the advantage." One of the results of that approach is an estimate of the "defender's advantage", which "While the defender's advantage varies widely from one battle to the next, on average it has been practically constant since 1600AD" I wonder if that date is because earlier data is less trustworthy. The Helmbold source isn't in the UW library.

Of course there are cases where the square isn't the best model. Mechanization, terrain, etc, etc.

It's easy to guess how seductive a simple model could be. But your mileage will vary.

Great antiquity

It's straightforward to try to evoke antiquity in a story--describe the ruins of something majestic. Ruin and decay are pretty straightforward--the trick is getting across the majesty. You can throw canned phrases at the problem, like Lovecraft at his worst (which was all too often), but try to do better.

The subject of Bombadil came up at the table (wrt movies), and what use he was to the story. I hadn't known where Bombadil came from--AVI notes that Tolkien was good at revising and repurposing.

Bombadil may be the clearest example. Suppose you think that the oldest thing in the universe isn't majesty but joy. That's not the way most of us think, though there's warrant for thinking so. How do you convey that sense of joy so old and strong that the moment's circumstances don't dent it? Tolkien tried hard--maybe the text was more compelling for him than for us. (Some things I've written have turned out that way.)

I'm glad Jackson didn't try to put Bombadil in--I don't think he'd have caught the sense at all. (Not to mention time constraints.)

"I'm not myself"

In a writer's group meeting tonight, one member shared a journal entry she made during chemo. The key for her was the sense that "I'm not myself." I'll not share details of the situation or her interpretation; that's for her to do. But the sentence says something important. I've been there a few times. (luckily not right now)

When the body won't work right and the mind won't work the way it used to and the emotions are random or out of control, it seems to hammer home just how contingent we are. I might not have existed at all, and I might be very different than I am (or seem to be). "Nice mind you have there. Are you sure you'll get to keep it?" "This must be somebody else; I don't react this way."

The "First Things" for me in the morning is "me waking up", aka "Everywhere I go, there I am." If the fundamental pillar of my world--me--is shaky, my whole universe is.

Some change we're made for, and prompted about, and sometimes supported in--puberty, for example. We're not doing well with the support part lately, but that's another story. But when you can't seem to even think anymore--it's easy to say that the fundamental pillar of your world ought to be God, but it turns out to be hard to make that happen. Your habits are against you. Maybe sometimes we need a shakeup.

Of course in another sense I'm already not myself. There's human nature as designed and human nature as found, and restoration to "factory defaults" is hard and costly. Fortunately most of the cost is borne by someone else.

GOAT

I suppose the obscured headline on the magazine in the rack was supposed to read "Greatest of All Time". Those who know me can predict that I would take it as "Latest of All Time."

I hate the breathless narrators who puff up this critical event or that as something that "changed history forever." (or "changed his life forever")

Ok. Name three monarchs from the Indus Valley civilization. Just the names; I don't need to know what their great accomplishments were.

Yeah. Forever turns out to be a pretty long time, and even whole civilizations that are only 5 thousand years old can vanish from memory. Western Civ will leave a lot more relics than the Harappans did, but given enough time it could fade. True, we leave lots of writing around, but how many civilizations have cared to try to understand the history of other people's ancestors? Yep, Western Civ. With no Western Civ, who will care?

Half the time I've seen "Greatest of All Time" the writer's scope was pretty limited--"one of the best known recently" would have been more accurate. Most of the rest of the time the comparison is tricky: was Euler a greater mathematician than Erdos? (How would I know--they went after different problems in different eras and they're both way out of my league?)

A pier collapsed at UW-Madison Union Terrace

I've never seen it that crowded. I'm not a big "crowd" fan--the only time I've been on that thing school was out and the pier was empty. I was curious what the view was like. No risk of losing a cell phone that long ago--long enough ago that the pier was wood. And none of those kids was even born yet.

UPDATE: FWIW the pier was scheduled to be removed the next day. I wonder if the students knew that and were either a) taking one last stand on it or b) trying to help with dismantling.

"Ignorance is bliss"

After prayer meeting this morning I brought up the question about why would God need to test us. Doesn't He already know what's in our hearts? Is it because I have to know it? Maybe because testing makes it real, not just potential.

Drone wars

Why Drones Have Not Revolutionized War is a useful read. The authors conclude that drones don't "level the field" that much--the already powerful have the technology and training to leverage the tools better in attack and defense.

On the other hand... Some of the drone attacks on Russia have seemed to push the limits of how far drones can travel, and I've read speculation that some of the drones are launched and controlled from inside Russia. I'm not sure active drone control is a safe thing to do inside Russia, but fire and forget might work.

Damage to factories in the homeland, power lines, fuel depots, bridges--they can be as useful to your adversary as damage to your tanks, though the effect takes a little longer to percolate to the battlefield. They need to be able to supply their infiltrators, and provide training and up-to-date ways to counter your countermeasures.

Some countries would seem more vulnerable to this sort of attack than others: most obviously those with open borders and large foreign populations. Dispersed production is more resilient and harder to defend while centralized production, though you can concentrate your defenses, has more catastrophic consequences when attacks get through (as they will). I don't see how just-in-time systems could stand up to damage well.

Prigozhin

I never quite figured out what he thought he was doing, or what would lead him to trust Putin. None of the scenarios people were tossing about seemed to make sense. If it was he aboard the plane, I thought he was supposed to stay in Belarus? It's probably safest to assume that nothing he or Putin said was true.

It would make things nice and lively if the air defense system was supposed to let the plane go through, but somebody had, in the drone vs countermeasures race, figured out how to spoof the system to make it think the plane was a drone. (fast drone, if so) I doubt that many Ukrainians are crying about the results. I'd read that Ukraine had figured out how to make an empty field seem like a drone-controlling station, inducing the Russians to waste a few missiles. Sort of like the doorless microwave in a field the Serbians used against us to the same end.

“There’s a Bene Gesserit saying,” she said. “You have sayings for everything!” he protested. “You’ll like this one,” she said. “It goes: ‘Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.”

Whether ghost or in the flesh, he's unlikely to show up on my doorstep, so my confusion doesn't seem to matter much. I'm fortunate to be far enough away.

War Crimes Court

"First time voters overwhelming back a war crimes court" in Liberia.

Advocates of a court have long argued that justice for war crimes is essential if Liberians are to regain trust in government.

“If a war crimes court comes to Liberia, nobody will steal our country money,” said Amie Y. Wilson, 20, in Joe Bar, Paynesville.

and

“Justice is good for Liberia’s future because, during the war, some people just decided to hold guns to be firing people. They were killing innocent people so I believe that when they bring the court in this country it will be better for us,” said Oretha Kangomah, 18

My take on it from 13 years ago is that this is eye-wateringly naive.

For many years opponents of a court argued that a court would reignite fighting. That fear was cited by some older generations of Liberians interviewed by FPA/NN over the years. But many first-time voters surveyed said a court was needed to deter future warlords.

The warlords are still there. So are the weapons. Their command infrastructure will have deteriorated over the years, but I'll bet the warlords are making sure their loyal retainers stay bought. Sure, you can offload the actual trial somewhere else, as was done with Charles Taylor, but the US isn't going to send troops to arrest warlords. Actually, I can think of some people in DC stupid enough to try...

Human justice isn't going to prevail here. Maybe in another dozen years you could get away with something like a war crimes court, when it is largely moot. Right now I don't sense that they're as stable as they think they are.

hope

AVI’s post touching on how much early and middle life matters compared to the end got me wondering about hope.

National Geographic, writing about an Inuit group, described a young man who had killed a polar bear by himself. This is a great accomplishment, one of the greatest available in the culture. Shortly thereafter he killed himself. The journal suggested, based on I know not what personal evidence, that this was in part because he had nothing more to look forward to, that everything in life after this was going to be anticlimax.

It seems a waste of time to try to define hope in some non-circular way–I’ll take it as understood. The object and ground of hope vary.

If your hope is in personal accomplishment, as defined in your culture, what remains for you if your pinnacle is in your youth? You can rest on your laurels, but not hope. Or suppose some impediment prevents accomplishment forever. You need a different target of hope–easy to say, not easy to manage.

My career in physics is over, as far as I can foresee. I cannot hope that what I have helped do will endure, for in large part the results we found are already superseded by more complete studies. I’m hardly alone in this–the same is true for police or soldiers or doctors. Whatever you have done, there will be new crimes, reenergized enemies, fresh diseases. Somebody else has to deal with those. You can hope that they will cope, but that depends on them. You can hope you’ve prepared your children for what lies ahead, but that too depends on them.

There’s hope that depends on my accomplishments, and hope that depends on others’.

There seems also to be another hope–a hope in the graces for the next day. “Graces” because I don’t, or only partly, earn them. It’s a more humble hope–that even if there is nothing I can do or say, I can still enjoy a new day. It’s a humble trust that what I do and trust in will be met with grace. Both my parents died of dementia, which doesn’t augur well for my future, but both seemed to rejoice as best they could in each new day they had, whatever the pains that came with it might be.

We don’t do much without hope. Discouraging reasonable hope in children is a crime. Some hopes are unreasonable–the third son of the peasant is not going to marry a princess–but we tell stories about them anyway, maybe because sometimes their hope shouldn’t be unreasonable. (I don’t remember nearly as many stories about the simpleton marrying the princess, but they’re there too. Wicked hopes are to be defeated, of course.)

unexpected effect

I've had general anesthesia surgery twice before. All I remember of tonsilectomy is a sore throat so bad I did not even want any of the promised ice cream. The shoulder surgery was merely and clearly painful and awkward.

But the torso has many active parts. Is the discomfort from the sutures, from bruising from the inflation they used, from muscle complaining about the alien mesh it has to meld with, or something significant in one of the other organs?

I didn't expect the confusion.

Copyright

A federal judge on Friday upheld a finding from the U.S. Copyright Office that a piece of art created by AI is not open to protection. My first reaction was "Good!"

On reflection, there are some complexities here. If you are trying to do your own book covers, you might find these web posts useful. Cover art and More midjourney

Are you back from the rabbit hole yet? Two things stood out:

• It generally takes some skill and practice to make the AI do something actually useful. That is human ingenuity at work. The AI itself doesn't actually do work in any deep sense: the programmers and the program's users do. Who gets the copyright for this effort? Nobody. (Assuming there is some significant effort. Maybe a generic landscape is all you need.)
• As illustrated in this link, "None of the images are perfect. They need work before being used." The initial image is not copyrightable, per the copyright office and now the judge, but when you maniplate it with GIMP in some non-trivial ways to make it suit your purpose, you possibly do have something copyrightable. But how much effort is required to make it yours, and how do you then distinguish yours from someone else's who used the same base image?

I think there are still some worms left in the can.

Studies in Words

I referenced this book by C.S. Lewis in the previous post. He meant it as a textbook for literature students. It has moments of his trademark insights and wit. Examples of his broad and detailed reading appear in almost every paragraph.

The book is about the development of the meanings of several words, some of which were used radically differently in other eras, e.g. nature, sad, wit, free. He ends with a chapter on criticism that's worth reading by itself.

I had just enough curiosity about the words and the examples to make it through. I wasn't cut out to be a linguist. If you are, read it. Otherwise just read the last chapter.

Lewis on language

In Studies on Words, a challenge to the manipulators: "Let no one say, and say it to your shame, That there was meaning here before you came."

To Lose a Battle

France 1940 by Alistair Horne (orig 1969, updated 1990 with Ultra material).

Why did France collapse so quickly when Germany attacked?

He describes lots of reasons, including bad luck and bad weather, but the critical parts were

• Lack of preparation:
  • Communists: generically against capitalists at first, then once the USSR allied or close enough to it with Germany, actively sabotaging things
  • Politicians who hated each other more than outsiders were unable to cooperate on programs with no instant political reward
  • Political military leaders. One unexpcted side effect was multiple lines of authority. Another was lies about the true situation, and pretending you knew something when you did not.
  • Trust in their Maginot shield
  • Nowhere nearly enough R&D in aviation, nor capacity to build their own
• The lowland nations were terrified of seeming non-neutral, which meant they didn't fortify adequately against the Germans, which required battle plans that stationed lots of Allied troops ready to move into an unfortified northwest
• Lousy communications, with apparently little thought for resilience. During the battles, army groups couldn't communicate with their constituents nor with commanders at critical times
• Trench-warfare mentality. In a critical moment, when faced with Panzer attack, a French armored division had its tanks split up to cover a front rather than concentrated to counterattack. This seems to have been the default attitude for strategy as well as tactics--with some exceptions.
• Deception: The German attack through the Ardennes was covered by a "feint" in the northwest. The "feint" was a major attack in its own right, and successfully drew the reserves that way. The Germans broke through in the battle there as well. They feinted at the Maginot Line, and German propaganda threatened to come through Switzerland as well. The French left divisions guarding these that could have been better used elsewhere, though admittedly they weren't the best.
• Lousy morale.
• Few people had any clear idea about what tanks and dive bombers could do, especially together.
• Lack of practice with maneuver, making new air fields, and other such exercises

The German attack through the Ardennes was audacious and risky, and the drive west even more so. Near the end of his life Manstein, the inventor of the Sicelschnitt plan, said "The hopeless French reconaissance won us the Battle of France; just that."

Could be. The Germans had a better organized system, with coordinated air strikes and local air superiority. They might have won in the end anyway.

And Ultra didn't help. The Germans had changed codes, and at the start of the Ardennes strike were using land lines to keep anybody from eavedropping, so there was no way to warn of the start of the invasion, and by the time Ultra messages were getting decoded they were generally not timely, and communications were so poor that sometimes they never got through at all.

In short, the book explains what you probably learned in school, though in school we didn't learn about the mistresses. For a day by day coverage, with background, it's worth reading. Some of the points of failure have parallels today (e.g. political military leaders); some not so much.

It's useful to remember that however powerful you think your army is, somebody has a plan to bring it down--that might actually work. And that your leaders--civilian and military--are just men too, and therefore idiots. And that sometimes a genius one day is a fool the next.

WW-2 drones and a rabbit hole

We all know about the V1's. Youtube's algorithm threw a peice about WW-2 pilotless planes at me: mostly the TDR-1. It was slow and guided by a "mother ship" flying out of sight behind it. The mother plane monitored where the drone went using a TV camera in the drone's nose.

It wasn't on anybody's short list--cranking out lots of ordinary planes came first, and when we had enough spare capacity it wasn't so vital anymore. And the things were pretty slow and vulnerable to flak. But in their final mission, 31 of 50 drones hit their targets--often by being crashed into them.

The rest of the air force wasn't that accurate, was it? 60% is pretty good! UPDATEOr 46 and 21=45%?

The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys say no, they weren't that good.

Conventionally the air forces designated as "the target area" a circle having a radius of 1000 feet around the aiming point of attack . While accuracy improved during the war, Survey studies show that, in the over-all, only about 20% of the bombs aimed at precision targets fell within this target area. A peak accuracy of 70% was reached for the month of February 1945.

That's hitting within 1000 feet. I don't know if the "hit their targets" metric for the drones was that loose, but the video suggests it was at least sometimes much better

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I should not indulge this sort of research when I have to get up early. A few quotes from the report:

Germany was scoured for its war records, which were found sometimes, but rarely, in places where they ought to have been ; sometimes in safe-deposit vaults, often in private houses, in barns, in caves ; on one occasion, in a hen house and, on two occasions, in coffins.

and a note about industrial capacity

Because the German economy through most of the war was substantially undermobilized, it was resilient under air attack.

wrt steel: Germany didn't have to build up as much as fast as the US did, so steel shouldn't have been a bottleneck, but

Although steel was considered a bottleneck by the Germans, a detailed examination of the control machinery together with interrogation of officials in the Speer ministry and its predecessor organizations, reveals that the trouble was partly an inefficient allocation system and partly, in the early years of the war especially, an unwillingness to cut out nonessential construction and civilian consumption . German industrialists were also found to have had a marked propensity to hoard steel.

and

German steel producers were required by the government to keep records of production losses and their causes. These records show that air raid alerts in 1943 were a more serious cause of the lost production than the actual damage from the raids.

Another oddity: Japan lost 50,000 planes, 60% of them to "training, ferrying, and other noncombat losses". The USA lost 27,000, of which we lost 70% to non-combat losses.

Kamikaze missions had an 18.6% hit rate--we got better at stopping them. Probably the Japanese would have gotten better at stopping drones too.

10.1 millon tons of Japanese shipping was reduced by 8.9 million tons by our actions; about 55% due to subs, 30% to planes, 9% to mines and less than 1% to surface gunfire--the rest to accidents.

And I had not heard before that thanks to disruption of the nitrogen fixing plants, Germany was so low on explosives that they were adding rock salt to shells.

Superconducting

Room temperature superconductivity sounded great. I read the paper, and decided I couldn't comment. Some of their measurements sounded interesting, but the critical bit was a plot of voltage and current--and it didn't look flat in the central region. Almost. Was that because bits of the sample had gone superconductive and other bits in between hadn't? That demanded some experimental work, and I have neither the domain knowledge nor the facilities.

As you all probably know by now, the answer is that nobody's been able to verify it. Too bad.

The high pressure superconductivity looks interesting, though not yet very useful. The pressures required are comparable to those at the Earth's core. I wonder, might the core of some cold moon superconduct as it cooled down? If it had a magnetic field, and if the outer part of the core cooled below the critical temperature while the inner core retained its magnetic field, the Meissner effect would try to expel the field from the outer shell (probably in patches at first)--what would that do to the currents in the inner non-superconducting part of the core?

domestication

There are some popular "documentaries" which mix interviews with paleontologists with "live action" dinosaurs interacting with people and things like automatic doors in the modern world. In one I was shown today, my "people wouldn't act like that" alarm rang. e.g. They'd devise improvised weapons to protect the kids while staging their retreat.

Which, of course, had me wondering: if you took a dozen young adults with pocketknives and tossed them back into the Cretaceous, how many generations would it take before they decided they'd reduced the risks enough (and could build sturdy enough pens) that they could start trying to domesticate some of the dinos? So far, at least, reptiles in general have been at best tamed a little, but only as pets and not for food or for assistance. But dinos weren't exactly reptiles--maybe it would work.

It might help if you started with a pack-animal type (wolf to dog)--footprints tell us some of the dinos moved or hunted in packs. Most modern reptiles don't seem to--though some move in family groups and some crocs seem to coordinate hunting.

Trying to picture the result gets biased by what happens when we domesticate mammals (rounder muzzle, floppy ears). There were already relatively small dinos about. Breed herbivores to not freak out around omnivores and be small enough for a human to conveniently slaughter. Breed some velociraptor to accept humans as alphas and help herd herbivores.

DALL-E-2 gave me this in response to "Herd of domesticated albertadromeus with big eyes and rounded muzzle kept in line with two domesticated velociraptors with giant cycads in the background." A bit more colorful than clear... I think there's some Dall-E fu I haven't mastered.

meteors

I've always liked meteors. Tonight as we lay out on a baseball field in the shadow of the light pole, one came so straight at us that it just looked like a star that brightened and then vanished. I've written about the one that I "heard"--it was almost straight at me too. From little squibs that you aren't sure you saw to bright green slashes across the sky--it's fun to watch. Standing leads to a crick in the neck, though--lie back.

I think my favorite was when we were camping at Governor Dodge park, talking to a couple and their daughter about meteors. The daughter had never seen one and didn't know what they were, and the parents weren't quite sure either--and just as we spoke one lit up the sky in front of the daughter and me. She was so excited: "Was that a meteor!?" Perfect timing. It was behind the parents' heads--they missed it.

work in progress

I originally wrote the story from a girl's POV, for historical reasons.

It was pointed out by a reviewer that I didn't describe the girls' reactions to a stressful moment very convincingly, and another who didn't read it noted that the market for girl's adventures was currently weak.

OK, happy to fix things up. And without permission to use one character, a revamp was needed anyhow. I stared at the result a while, and wondered--what if I do the switch to a boy's POV? I've been a boy, and helped raise a couple--which should help keep it fresh in the mind.

Of course it isn't a simple global "she" → "he" and "her" → "his"/"him". The whole initial setting changed, the first chapter was replaced, the last chapter revamped, and I'm having to make dozens of verb changes throughout, dropping at least one sub-theme entirely--I'll have to replace it. It's a useful exercise, and forces me to try to think harder about action descriptions. Scenes just don't look the same through different eyes. Well, some do.

I was about 3/4 through the sequel--I figured practice was the best way to start editing--so I now have 2 WIPs. It would be even more confusing if I hadn't gotten wedged on the next section of the second book. (You can't travel fast in trackless lands when you have to spend time looking for food. And you can't carry as much food as you hope.)

Will the book end up being worth the effort? Maybe not, but I'll have given it a good try, and I haven't had any Direction to quit wasting time on it. Doug wanted to try to pilot every kind of vehicle; I can try to write all kinds of different things.

colds

I don't know why I feel fine in the morning, and am hairballing my lungs in the afternoon. The anesthesiologist postponed once already.

No protection?

Groups of gangsters looting stores is a problem all over the place now, and mob violence seems more in the news too--though more so in select places, such as cities which refuse to call it mob action.

It used to be you could rent protection in Chicago or New York. Probably that only works where there are just a few gangs.

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

One of the sessions:

Too much water

I remember reading about the "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" many decades ago and thinking it was clever but I'd like to wait and see about it. Researching WW-I diseases brought it back to mind--if we adapted so well to water, why is prolonged soaking so bad for the skin?

Surprise

No predictions are certain. He was outgoing, active, "picked his ancestors carefully", and had lots of friends and family. I, the same age, am rather introverted, a desk jockey, and with a family history of several unwanted conditions--some of which I continue. A surprise heart attack and ER, and then another one a couple days later before the hospital could get him studied.

He touched a lot of lives--hundreds came to visitation. Luckily he and his wife had had a reunion with their large extended family a few weeks before, so everybody got to see him hale and happy one more time.

Poetry?

Patrick Kurp passed along the detail that William Topaz McGonagall was "the worst poet in the world." I tried reading his The Tay Bridge Disaster and my eyes hurt too much to finish. I think he bests The Sweet Singer of Michigan (perhaps best known now for a little tweaking she got from Twain in Huck Finn(*)) for the title of worst.

(*) I had no idea she inspired Ogden Nash.

Vehicle inspection firm

The story asserts that traffic accidents caused by improper maintenance can be blamed on government corruption. A new facility, given official concession by law, was effectively replaced by another company which lacked the inspection facilities and just happened to be owned by a crony of the President.

A few thoughts come immediately to mind--the trucker whose ill-maintained truck killed Lucky would probably have found it cheaper to bribe than repair, and the accident would still have happened. The other is that although I much prefer to get several sides of a story before passing judgment (though I may report on it in the interim), corruption is so much a part of the scene in Liberia that one may assume it as the default. I don't think I have to bother hearing the protestations of Sudue et al that there were sound reasons to block LTM (a private firm with official concession) from operating.

By the same token, if a representative of FPA/NN were to claim that LTA had gotten its concession by chicanery, I would probably credit that accusation too.

It doesn't seem right to accept the story this way, without further investigation, but it's an efficient and quite accurate shortcut for stories about corruption.

"You make me sick!"

Perhaps literally. "some people claim that their skin gases provoke allergy-like reactions in people in their near vicinity." The linked study says that the people in question seem to have higher levels of toluene.

When active smokers smoked a single cigarette, within 15 min, toluene was detected in skin samples collected immediately after the smoking event, together with numerous tobacco-specific chemicals, including nicotine, 3-methylfuran, 2,5-dimethylfuran, and 3-ethenylpyridine12. ... However, the emission amounts of these chemicals in the PATM group were considerably higher than those in the non-PATM group: approximately 12 times for 2E1H, 39 times for toluene, and four times for m,p-xylene on average.

Years ago I was mildly curious about what would be needed to study human odors down to very low concentrations, but not curious enough to dig in to find out what people were actually researching. Quite a lot, it turns out. My naive search must have used the wrong keywords.

Easy to fool yourself

We've all heard this passage from Luke 10:

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

It struck me the other day as curious that his question was about the second commandment, not the first. Its phrasing suggests that he thinks he's already pretty good with "loving his neighbor", and wants to be sure he has the parameters right. (Or he wanted to find out where Jesus stood on his theological spectrum, and didn't really care about the answer.)

It's easy to think you love God when you say the proper things and think the proper thoughts at the proper prescribed times. But since we can't see God, are we sure we haven't left some things out? "All your strength" might turn out to be pretty expansive. Why not ask for clarification?

I wonder if the lawyer was self-sure, or afraid to ask. (Or if he was just testing Jesus, and didn't really care about the answer.)

Of course if he started to realize he wasn't doing such a bang-up job on the lesser commandment, maybe he'd become a bit less confident about how he was doing with the greater one.

Non-humans

What shall we make of things like "South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace ... asked about whether the U.S. government has recovered “non-human” bodies from “crashed crafts” in its possession. ... answer was a “Yeah.”"?

Technically, that answer would apply to Project Pigeon relics.

I will be very skeptical about reports of crashed alien spacecraft, and super-skeptical about intimations that we picked up new technology from them.

If we really had, what would be the reaction of our adversaries when they learned of it? Would we want that reaction?

A book I'll have to look up

Poems of C.S. Lewis. I'd never seen these three.

A century in a day

I started looking up references to "fairy-land time". We hear that a day in fairy-land can be a year of ours--and there are rarer stories that tell the reverse. Maybe Lewis borrowed from a legend about Mohammed. Legends about such time differences, and the problems associated with them, seem to appear from Japan to Spain, in Russia, Vietnam, India--and Germany, of course. (There are other pages in that sequence.) I don't know if this is a Eurasian genre or if the author simply didn't sample stories from Africa or the Americas. Most of the stories I'd never heard of before, like this one:

a man at Dornoch, in Sutherlandshire. He was present at a funeral in the churchyard on New Year's Day, and was so piqued at not being invited, as all the others were, to some of the New Year's festivities, that in his vexation, happening to see a skull lying at his feet, he struck it with his staff and said: "Thou seemest to be forsaken and uncared-for, like myself. I have been bidden by none; neither have I invited any: I now invite thee!" That night as he and his wife were sitting down alone to supper, a venerable old man entered the room in silence and took his share of the delicacies provided. In those days the New Year's feast was kept up for eleven days together; and the stranger's visit was repeated in the same absolute silence for six nights.

At last the host, alarmed and uneasy, sought the priest's advice as to how he was to get rid of his unwelcome guest. The reverend father bade him, in laying the bannocks in the basket for the seventh day's supper, reverse the last-baked one. This, he declared, would induce the old man to speak. It did; and the speech was an invitation--nay, rather a command--to spend the remainder of the festival with him in the churchyard.

The priest, again consulted, advised compliance; and the man went trembling to the tryst. He found in the churchyard a great house, brilliantly illuminated, where he enjoyed himself, eating, drinking, piping and dancing. After what seemed the lapse of a few hours, the grey master of the house came to him, and bade him hasten home, or his wife would be married to another; and in parting he advised him always to respect the remains of the dead. Scarcely had he done speaking when the grey old man himself, the guests, the house, and all that it contained, vanished, leaving the man to crawl home alone in the moonlight as best he might after so long a debauch.

For he had been absent a year and a day; and when he got home he found his wife in a bride's dress, and the whole house gay with a bridal party. His entrance broke in upon the mirth: his wife swooned, and the new bridegroom scrambled up the chimney. But when she got over her fright, and her husband had recovered from the fatigue of his year-long dance, they made it up, and lived happily ever after.

F377 if you want to look these sorts of stories up elsewhere. Well, D1950.1 and D2011 too, I suppose.

Civil War and marriage, first note

I'd read of Confederate war widows--so many young men had died that there was little hope of remarrying. I'd also heard that a recent shortage of men in a community (when a significant fraction of them are in prison) had unhappy effects on sexual competition for the remaining men. If that's a reasonable hypothesis, similar attitudes should have appeared after the Civil War, especially in the South. It might be a trifle harder to document, since people weren't so proud of that kind of competition then.

I have no results yet, but I did find this:

but "approximately 92 percent of southern white women who came of marriage age during the war married at some point in their lives." Although war casualties significantly impacted the number of young southern males, Hacker, Hilde, and Jones point out that the resulting marriage gap among southern women soon shrank because some young women married older widowers, some married beneath their social status, and some dared to marry northerners.

UPDATE to keep reference handy

Stingless bees

A rabbit track, as usual--I was curious if AmerIndians domesticated goats (seems not), and found a list that included stingless bees. That sounded interesting--it might help get around objections to bee-keeping in the city.

Unfortunately, they are tropical or subtropical only. Their honey is expensive (\$100/pound or thereabouts). It apparently contains more flavonoids than the usual honeybee's output, and all sorts of wonderful claims are made for its medicinal properties. "stingless bee honey has antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and natural moisturizing properties that aid in wound healing. Moisture content, water activity, pH, peroxide, non-peroxide, phenolic acids, flavonoids, vitamins, and enzymes are likely to be the components of stingless bee honey that contribute to fast wound healing".

Boaring in Berlin

Authorities there claim that the lioness they'd been looking for in the southwest of Berlin was probably just a wild boar, and they're calling off the search.

Apparently "the animal looked more like a boar, which are common in the region".

I'm not sure that's the most comforting thought for the residents. Wild boars apparently don't kill a lot of people, though they do attack, but the notion that they're common enough in the city area that the authorities don't care...

Granted, packs of feral dogs could be worse.

Cruise ships

When you're 8 years old, a freighter is a fine enough cruise ship, provided the weather is good--which it mostly was. I've not taken a trip on anything like the new cruise ships. The SS Badger, yes.

It seems like just the thing if you like being around lots of people: 7600 passengers and 2350 crew. Most of it is "below deck." The number of passengers goes as the cube of the length, but the area exposed to the sky only goes as the square, and the gangway space only as the length. That looks like a nice fat gangway, though.

Nevertheless, "the sunlit lands" seem fairly extensive--I ballparked about 35 square feet per passenger(*). On the SS Badger I liked being on deck or at least by a large window (why else are you on the water?), but some people like indoor amusements--which might be enlivened by common experiences along the trip. I'm not a huge fan of crowds, but possibly fellow traveler friendships might make the crowding less of an annoyance.

A cruise trip like that is a bit too pricey to enjoy, but it doesn't seem entirely crazy--on a smaller ship where you could get to know a few people. Something this big seems too easy to get lost on.

---

(*) For comparison, our bedroom is 120 square feet, or 60 each.

Grumpiness about lyrics

The song Crown Him With Many Crowns has a line that drives me nuts: "Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own." Um... What's the point of creating at all if everything comes out the same? Immortal, Invisible says "in all life thou livest, the true life of all," which seems much more fitting--there are many expressions of life or music with the same enlivening life and music in them all.

I can't complain too much--the rest is great and I've composed nothing comparable. But some lines catch me sideways: e.g. ""And now I am happy all the day!"

A lot of hymns are aspirational, not descriptive; I have to cut some slack.

Priorities

A wise note from "National Apostasy"

As to those who, either by station or temper, feel themselves most deeply interested, they cannot be too careful in reminding themselves, that one chief danger, in times of change and excitement, arises from their tendency to engross the whole mind. Public concerns, ecclesiastical or civil, will prove indeed ruinous to those, who permit them to occupy all their care and thoughts, neglecting or undervaluing ordinary duties, more especially those of a devotional kind.

Of course this also can be taken to extreme--"Am I my brother's keeper?"--a community implies some involvment and responsibility, though there's radical disagreement on how much.

Buskers

Taking the week's writing prompt challenge:

“If I had known that busker would sit by us I would have demanded that we eat indoors.” Maron gestured with his wine-glass. “He has hit the right note only five times and he cannot keep the tempo.”

“Consider it part of the atmosphere of a modern city and ignore him. He’ll go away if nobody drops anything in his guitar case. And, to be fair, we use a different musical scale.”

“The way he plays blasphemes Euterpe,” Maron snapped. “You didn’t summon her, but I can take revenge on her behalf.”

“Be kind, be kind,” Samay urged. “The powers are no longer the same, and you must tread lightly. Have you tasted anything like these pastries before?”

“Not even the finest honeycakes were like these,” Maron agreed. “They are worthy of the tenth, Mageirema.”

Samay set down his fork. “A tenth?”

“There are twelve of them, not nine. And I cannot abide that clumsy crow any longer.” Maron rolled up his sleeves. “I shall set his instrument on fire and make him eat it.”

“Let us not draw attention to ourselves. There is much to learn and enjoy yet, and others would quickly send you back. Think of the beauty, please.”

Maron sat back in the sidewalk chair. “True, I want to stay a while.” He grinned. “Nevertheless..” He waved his left hand delicately in the direction of the player.

Suddenly the chord was muffled and the playing stopped. The guitar was filled with daisies.

Curious description of Revelation

From the Library of Congress' description of a German block print circa 1470:

This work, printed in Germany in 1470, includes part of the text of the Apocalypse of Saint John, the last book of the Christian Bible, also known as the Book of Revelation. The book is based on letters written to church members in Asia Minor that describe Saint John's heavenly visions and revelations. It tells the story of the great heavenly warfare between good and evil, Christ's return to earth, the punishment of the wicked, and the reward of righteousness.

The description sounds like it was written from third-hand reports. The book also includes a summary of John's life. The illustration of Jesus appearing to John is somewhat less than awe-inspiring. Probably nothing could adequately convey the vision, but having a sword clenched in His teeth seems awkward.

Strained ruling

Judge Diane Schlipper "said the legal language in the ban doesn’t use the term “abortion” so the law only prohibits attacking a woman in an attempt to kill her unborn child."

The Wisconsin statutes involved are a bit mixed thanks to Roe. The original 1849 statute, preserved in 940.04, was clearly written to prosecute abortionists while leaving the erstwhile mothers unprosecuted:

940.04 Abortion
(1)  Any person, other than the mother, who intentionally 
destroys the life of an unborn child is guilty of a 
Class H felony.
(2) Any person, other than the mother, who does either 
of the following is guilty of a Class E felony:
 (a) Intentionally destroys the life of an unborn 
 quick child; or
 (b) Causes the death of the mother by an act done 
 with intent to destroy the life of an unborn child. 
 It is unnecessary to prove that the fetus was alive 
 when the act so causing the mother's death was committed.
(5) This section does not apply to a therapeutic abortion which:
 (a) Is performed by a physician; and
 (b) Is necessary, or is advised by 2 other physicians 
 as necessary, to save the life of the mother; and
 940.04(5)(c)(c) Unless an emergency prevents, is 
 performed in a licensed maternity hospital.
(6) In this section “unborn child" means a human being 
from the time of conception until it is born alive.

Statute 940.13 makes this exemption of the mother explicit.

940.15, post-Roe, attempts to protect viable babies by regulating abortionists.

The judge, as far as I can tell, ignores the sense of 940.04(1) (the title of the section is "Abortion"!) and claims that the only restriction is that of 940.04(2): feticide. The latest addition to the Wisconsin Supreme Court was quite upfront with her intention to make sure abortion was permissible in Wisconsin again--if this decision is appealed I know how she will vote already, law or no law.

Winnebago history

I'm mostly interested in the Wisconsin Winnebago tribes.

The article I read begins

For as long as anyone can remember, the Winnebago lived in the vicinity of Green Bay in northeastern Wisconsin. The most powerful tribe in the region, they dominated the western shore of Lake Michigan from Upper Michigan to southern Wisconsin. As part of major climatic change in North America sometime around 1400, three closely related tribes - Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Ottawa - began moving west along the shore of Lake Huron ...

Read the article for yourself. Apply a little "temporal symmetry" to the wars and alliances and counter-alliances--the past before records was probably like the past after records were made.

Smallpox has been blamed, but the Winnebago say the disease turned their people yellow suggesting it was something else.

The Winnebago emerged from this with less than 1,500 warriors and 4,500 people. They were also starving since war and epidemic had made it impossible to harvest their crops. As mentioned, the hostility between the Illinois and Winnebago must have existed for many years before the refugees began to arrive. Perhaps motivated by a need to form an alliance against the newcomers who were also overrunning their territory, or even pity for an old enemy fallen on hard times, the Illinois sent 500 warriors and food to help the Winnebago. This proved a serious mistake. The Winnebago welcomed and held a feast for them, but in the midst of the dancing and celebration, they secretly cut the Illinois' bowstrings. Then they fell upon their benefactors and killed all of them to appease the spirits of Winnebago warriors killed earlier by the Illinois.

It took the Illinois some time to learn what had happened. In the meantime, the Winnebago had anticipated retaliation and retreated to an island in the middle of a lake where they built a fort. A sensible precaution, since it was impossible for the Illinois to bring their heavy dugout canoes overland with them to attack the Winnebago. The Illinois proved patient and waited a year to take revenge. When the lake froze that winter, a large Illinois war party crossed over the ice to attack the village only to find the Winnebago were absent on their winter hunt. After a six-day pursuit, they caught up with the Winnebago and, during the slaughter which followed, almost annihilated them. Few Winnebago escaped to find refuge with the Menominee. About 150 Winnebago prisoners were taken back as slaves to the Illinois villages and, after several years of hard usage, released to return to Wisconsin. Less than 500 Winnebago survived to provide a future for their people, but their near-extermination was the second serious mistake made by the Illinois. Despite the circumstances which had caused it, the Winnebago never forgave or forgot what had happened.

---

UPDATE from Winnebago stories

"The Winnebagoes always encouraged one another to die on the warpath, because, if one dies in battle, the person would not really lose consciousness, but simply live right on in the spirit, and death would seem to him as if he had stumbled over some object. So they would say. If you wish to have a happy life as a spirit, do not die in your house. If you die in your house, your soul will wander over all the earth in want, and when people eat the four-nights' wake, you will not get anything. If they drink water, you will remain thirsty. It is said that people not dying on the warpath will, as spirits, have to content themselves by pointing to food and drink, and licking their fingers.

Those that die in battle have a village four days' distant from the general village the souls. They are in need of nothing, as they plant and raise their own food, and have so many clothes that they look as if they were covered with furs. They play ball and have lots of fun, ride horseback, and dance. If any of them should desire to return to the earth and become alive again, they can do so. The wounds, however, from which they died, remain with them in the spirit world. Those who lost their scalps are without scalps. Some are without heads, and some without scalplocks. They can see their relatives here on earth whenever they with to."

Security

A largish proportion of the complications in data archiving and retrieval had to do with authentication and privileges (those are not the same animal). I was a little surprised at the bank yesterday.

I'll omit identifiers.

I've been the treasurer of an association for a few years, largely because I was willing to take the not-very-onerous job. A new and more experienced volunteer appeared, and the minutes of the meeting approving a new treasurer were finished. So the old and new treasurer trooped down to the bank.

The bank's small business rep was new to me and I to the rep, but the rep took me at face value, and the minutes at face value. The rep wanted the ID of the new treasurer, but seemed quite content to remove one of the signatories on an account without reference to either my ID or my signature, and add a new signatory without authenticating the minutes.

I pulled out my drivers license anyway, part way through the exercise, to show that I was the person registered in the account and referenced in the minutes. I hope it was a learning experience.

Maybe my honest face was good enough.

Titan musings

I've some not-quite-connected thoughts about the thing.

There's a transcript going around allegedly from the fatal dive. You may have seen it. While waiting for my tea to cool down I watched an engineer comment on it. He claimed that the reported depths show that the craft was descending far too fast, which is consistent with the transcript being a fake. (Or that his estimates were naive--"descend fast at first and then more slowly when you get close" is a plausible approach.) Perhaps ship-to-craft questions were mainly for crew health and not for information, but if I had a hand in the design there'd be as much telemetry monitoring on the craft as the bandwidth would carry; you'd hope they'd not need to ask the crew for wattage numbers. Granted they sometimes lost communications, so the bandwidth wouldn't be great, and a relay system would be quite difficult and expensive to build and position.

So, if you could only send a few numbers, what would they be? Depth and a summary hull health value?

The business about ascending very slowly after dropping the ballast doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. If they succeeded in dropping all the ballast they should be as on buoyant as on the previous trips. The devil is in the details, of course, and I don't know what was in the tail cone--I figure it was just for streamlining and let water in freely. But just based on the crude schematics google shows me, I suspect the slow ascent isn't true and the transcript is fake.

But while listening to the engineer, it occurred to me that cracking and hull failure could begin non-catastrophically. If the seal at one side leaks just a bit, and water seeps in at an edge to begin to delaminate the outer half mm or so of the carbon hull, it might crackle quite a bit. There was some (unfortunately) unknown safety factor in the hull design, so I assume they could lose a bit of the outside and live. There were edges at the endcaps, but also at every perforation. If delamination aggressively peeled up sheets of the outer hull, could those bits puncture or otherwise interfere with the operation of the systems outside? I can't think of a good reason why the power should fail without a short or a severing. Assuming the power did fail this time. It did fail on earlier tests.

Though--the batteries were where? I find the schematics online to be less than useful. If they were outside, and since they had battery problems before, it sounds like they had an issue with protecting the batteries.

At the scale of fractions of a mm I don't think the difference between a round hole through the hull and a flat edge at the endcap makes much difference to delamination of the glue layers. I'd guess that it was harder to verify the seal on a small perforation than on a big flat edge, though the big one has more edge to worry about.

Once again, I don't find the detail I'd prefer--but what goes through those perforations, and is it robust against a small leak compressing the contents?

I assume they designed the parts so that the titanium caps would compress by almost the same amount as the carbon/epoxy body. This was a custom carbon-fiber mix, so I doubt that whatever I find online for bulk modulus is going to be relevant--and the body's compressibility won't be the same along the axis as it will "squeezing the can". (Plus the bulk modulus value changes with pressure) If the cap and body compress differently, the joints between the two get stressed as the body bows in or out.

Just trying to chase some low-hanging fruit gets me into nit-picky research details. I assume those "50yo white guys" are familiar with these things--and charge accordingly.

Effigy Mounds

In Aspects of Winnebago Archaeology Radin tries to show, among other things, that the effigy mounds were built by Winnebago, some of them as recently as the 18'th century, and were clan property markers. They didn't have radiocarbon dating then, though they did have the testimony of Winnebago elders who died over a hundred years ago and are no longer available for interview. Those elders also unanimously said that they have never known how to make the stone arrowheads found all over the place--those were made by earthworms. They sometimes used them, but only when found.

I have a nagging suspicion that "earthworms" was a euphemism for something secret.

Circumstantial evidence can be unreliable, but so can testimony.

Hubris

"Now it is a well-known belief among the Winnebago that if you fast too long, one of two things will happen, either you will die while fasting, or you will obtain blessings of such power that they will eventually destroy you."

The subject of Radin's article is distinguishing between "myths" ("what is old") and "tales" ("that which is told"). One useful distinction is that frequently the myth tells of actions that horribly violate Winnebago cultural standards--and there is no repudiation of the actions. That should sound quite familiar to anyone who remembers Greek myths about Zeus.

National Security 60 years on

Althouse noted that RFKJr complained that the JFK assassination records haven't been released. Biden decided to maintain secrecy, as did Trump before him. "National security"

Naturally, most comments speculate about embarrassment to people who want to hide our government's stupidity or culpability. One sympathizes; the government seems to generate surpluses of those.

“When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before."

60 years is quite a while. I assume all the most deeply involved players, known and unknown, are either dead or far into at least their 80's and not active movers and shakers any longer. I'd think that close enough for Kipling's rule to apply.

Given that very different presidents were persuaded that there actually were national security interests at stake in revealing all the evidence and ways it was acquired, let's pretend that's true. What sort of reasons could there be?

One obvious reason isn't quite so critical now that the Soviet Union is no more, and since 9/11 told of one limit. Suppose Oswald was closely enough directed from Moscow to lead people to believe this was ordered by the Kremlin. We obviously didn't go to war over that, but we don't want the discussions about that to become public (or even be discussed much)--how much can an enemy get away with before we go big?

Others pointed out that individual spies of the time are no doubt dead, but the channels they used may still exist. It seems unlikely, given the number of moles we've heard about, but weirder things have happened.

Or perhaps it is very simple: the default of generations advisors has been "We might use that method again someday, so keep it secret".

Smoke

We left LA in late '63. I don't remember weather like this, but I'm told I had bad asthma when I was young. I don't remember that either--I remember chickenpox, but not asthma. Perhaps things that happen frequently don't register as well. If your interest is the playground (and what happens when you melt tar with a magnifying glass--do ants get caught like sabretooths in the tar pit?), or the yards on the way to school, maybe you don't notice the haze in the distance. It's just the way it is.

I noticed the Canadian haze here well enough. I took it easy. No asthma--maybe I grew out of it.

Warrior Ascetics

Maybe "ascetic" brings to mind a guy who lives in the wilderness and doesn't eat a lot or like being around people much. If you're well versed in your religious traditions, you may have a more nuanced picture. After all, the Templars were effectively monks. But these surprised me.

That religious ascetics would be inducted into fighting regiments is neither necessarily perverse – in the context of the history of traditional Hinduism – nor necessarily a radical break from a previous mode of life. There is an obvious similarity in the lifestyles of both soldiers and ascetics: both require rigorous self-discipline, enduring the hardships of lengthy travel and extended periods of camping; subsistence, sometimes, on meager rations; being subservient to a commander or guru; and enduring extended (or permanent) celibacy. In medieval India, asceticism, trade, and war were not incompatible.

Fighting ascetics are usually referred to as nāgās (deriving from the Hindi term naṅgā, “naked”). Nāgās are usually almost naked, except for a loincloth (laṅgotī/kaupīn ̣ ),

There may be a reference to such armed ascetics in a 7'th century romance, and maybe references from the 9'th to 12'th centuries. In the 16'th century "scorn is poured on yogīs, siddhas (another name for yogīs), mahants (chiefs/superiors), and ascetics who resort to arms, keep women, and collect property and taxes." And the East India Company ran into them: "Peasants and marauding Sufi faqīrs and Daśanāmī gosāīṃs fought company troops in the Bengal region, with many casualties on all sides, in a series of military encounters"

I gather that this kind of naga, though transliterated into English the same as naga (serpent), isn't related or pronounced the same.

Reporting on Titan

If he was reported correctly, Cameron implied that a hydrophone picked up the bang at the (presumably sound delayed) time that communications with Titan stopped. It was possible to come up with scenarios in which the crew survived, but not if there was a bang when communications went dead. We've all read that the Navy picked it up (and didn't understand it at first), but was there a hydrophone on the Titan's sevice ship? Another report claimed that they'd jettisoned the ballast and were on the way back up. I assume telemetry would include such things if they really happened.

Would the staff fail to mention such things before the search starts? Maybe. Embarassment, reluctance to squelch all hope...

One news source, which I will charitably leave nameless, claimed that the rapid compression in an atmosphere "with lots of hydrocarbons" ignited and reduced the humans to ash. (*) Yes, rapid compression superheats gas; no there wasn't lots of hydrocarbon in the air; and in any case the thermal mass of the gas would be small. The mechanical destruction of their bodies killed them, not a flash fire. Although--I don't have a good intuition for what you get when you super-compress a liquid. I assume it heats up too--compressed by about 2%--but that doesn't seem like a huge effect. (I'm having the dickens of a time trying to get the equation of state for liquid water, and I'm getting sleepy.) I'd guess the heating due to the shock wave traveling through the body to be greater.

Just after the accident several stories disparaged the use of a game-controller brand of joystick--as though a machine designed to work reliably despite abuse by excitable gamers is somehow inferior.

And "I warned you" types are coming out of the woodwork. Me? It wasn't on my radar and I had never looked at the design--and would have had to do quite a bit of research to say anything intelligent about the use of carbon fiber hulls. I'm pretty sure I'd have suggested testing to failure several times before trusting people in it, but I've never been in that kind of position, and I might have gotten complacent too.

Specific details can be keys to determined what happened, but in between cya and mistranslation and reporter ignorance, you can't trust the details. Or, sometimes, the big picture.

FWIW about ratings: we used to use some high voltage cables that were rated for 1000V, with SHV connectors rated for 5000 (now. I think they were also for 1000V back in the day). We ran them at 6000V.

(*) I will uncharitably point out that Newsweek's fact checker got the fact-checking wrong. No, the vessel did not become superhot, but the air did.

UPDATE: To be clear, the 2% compression is just for the liquid parts of the body. Lungs and other less dense things get mashed flat.

UPDATE*2: Also note that where and while bulk motion in a gas is comparable to the average speed of molecules in it (O(500 m/sec)), temperature isn't well-defined. When the gas motion is randomized again, you can define temperature again. And yes, I did find some formulae for the equation of state for water, but when I varied the temperature I found that they went weird at higher temps (O(300 degrees)), and I concluded that they might not apply in a wide enough domain for me to assert that rapidly compressed body tissue wouldn't get hot. So I don't know for sure.

43 years

What with the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" the celebration was low key today, but we'll take it into extra innings later. It has been a good 43 years.

You can't always get what you want

We had a look at Luke's story of the demoniac from the aspect of what the various parties wanted and what they got. The demons wanted to not go into the abyss--"please let us go into pigs!" OK, they got what they wanted--but not for long. I have no idea whose intention that part was.

The townspeople wanted Jesus to please go somewhere else. Our opinions were divided--some thought Jesus threatened their bottom line and others thought they were terrified of that kind of power. Jesus gave the townsfolk what they wanted--He left them. But He didn't abandon them: He left a witness--the first of His evanglists.

The former demoniac wanted to go with Jesus. He was the only one Jesus said "No" to--he didn't get to go with Jesus. But, as the first of Jesus' evangelists, maybe Jesus went with him.

sometimes you wonder how the species survives

The sower and the lamp

My Bibles conveniently divided Luke 8:4-18 with headers: "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Lamp." So guided, I thought the parable of the lamp had to do with how visible God was in your life.

It wasn't until this morning when a fellow asked "What did Jesus mean by "take care how you listen?"" that the light went on. It's all one explanation.

How do you listen? In one ear and out the other (suitable for advertisers, politicians, and other known liars). Summarize as you hear; meditate on what you hear; critique as you hear; try to multitask; think about something else instead of listening.

The application to the different soils is obvious. The fruit comes to those whose mind is not just open to the word (light) but those who make it important.

So what's the lamp about? I think it's about the inside--what's in our mind. What do I do with the word (light) in my own mind? Put it up for observation or bury it under other stuff? Sooner or later what happens in my mind is going to show up outside--in actions, or fruit, or lack of fruit.

I think it all fits together. I feel pretty silly for not noticing before.

dragonfly

I ran across this site tonight, and so, just for fun:

The sun burned high and hot, and he cared nothing for foolish giants like the rabbit warily chewing in the shade of the hedge. The ripples in the stream reflected in flashes under the maple leaves, and Siof raced from cusp to cusp drinking in their water-tempered light.

“Greedy one! Leave some for me!” Mog whistled at him.

“You’re as slow as a moondrinker! Dance! A cloud is coming!”

She beat him to the next and laughed red lilac at him as she skimmed on. He dashed after her breathing red pine. “So strong you are!” she giggled.

A thousand sips later they rested on the wings of a dragonfly and let the haze from the river wash them until the sun should come out again.

The young giant of the trampled shore skipped a stone into the river, and for once got its angle almost right. Siof and Mog leaped to the stone and rode it spinning into splash after splash. The sun came out just in time for the last splash, and as the rock sank the two flew into the light focussed by the water, racing higher faster and faster as the focus moved into the sky.

At tree top height they dove again.

“What do you think Mirabel will take as her fourth syllable tonight?” Mog asked. “I can’t imagine being that old.”

Siof chased flashes among the reeds. “One day you will be, young one, but never as old as she.”

Mog balanced on a water strider. “One day I’ll have a longer name too, and then you’ll see.”

Siof swung close to a fish’s splash and reflected the sun flash to her. “Maybe I’ll loan you a part of mine.”

“Is that a promise?” Mog whispered.

The wind shook the river birch. Siof flew through its cloud of pollen, dancing around its swirls in the air. “Catch me if you can!”

Burnt Offerings

Time makes a holocaust of all that we make or have. Even pyramids crumble, and knowledge is replaced. Pythagorus didn't discover his rule--who did nobody knows anymore.

An old preacher complained about that, perhaps forgetting that all our works are present to God, unforgotten.

Why did God command that some of the offerings be burnt offerings? He doesn't need smoke--the offering was for our sake.

A burnt offering shows our complete abandonment of the offering--there's no sacrificial meal we share in. That's a well-known part of the benefit for us--loving God more than things.

But perhaps it is also an object lesson to remind us that, contrary to our default expectation, we don't keep anything for long, but God holds all of our works and ways forever.

Writing

Naram-Sim: "We have fallen upon evil times ... Each man wants to make himself conspicuous and write a book."

An alternative view, allegedly earlier (but actually about 2000 years later): "And the fourth was named Pênêmûe: he taught the children of men the bitter and the sweet, and he taught them all the secrets of their wisdom. And he instructed mankind in writing with ink and paper, and thereby many sinned from eternity to eternity and until this day. For men were not created for such a purpose, to give confirmation to their good faith with pen and ink. For men were created exactly like the angels, to the intent that they should continue pure and righteous, and death, which destroys everything, could not have taken hold of them, but through this their knowledge they are perishing,"

Or there's the more famous "But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body." Some joints are creaking and aching more than before--I wonder if I have authoritis.

I think I'll keep on writing, despite all this good advice. Which you'll notice was also written...

Great Powers around the American Civil War

How the British caused the American Civil War is worth reading for the background. I do not follow the author to the end--that the Brits provoked the war for their own economic ends. But that the Great Powers had a great interest in dismembering the USA seems obvious--I wrote years ago that if the South had won the Civil War (by not attacking), the USA would have rapidly devolved into chunks under the influence of the French and English empires. The author documents some of the maneuverings, and claims that the Tsar had a beneficial role for us.

It also helps put some of the attitudes towards England (part 1 and part 2) that Russell found into some perspective. In our retrospective we think of Great Britain in terms of its relationship as an ally since World War 2, but it was not always so. In fact, when during WW2 we needed to dust off some war plans for safeguarding shipments across the North Atlantic, the ones they found assumed that Britain was the enemy.

Poe says that Britain wanted the South independent of the USA, but as an economic colony of Britain. And a name you might recognize:

On September 25, 1861, following a long string of Union defeats, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a leading British statesman and member of Parliament, gleefully predicted America’s break-up into four or more pieces, “with happy results for the safety of Europe.”

“That separation between North and South America which is now being brought about by civil war I have long foreseen and foretold to be inevitable,” said Bulwer-Lytton in a speech.

He predicted that the U.S. would split not into, “two, but at least four, and probably more than four separate and sovereign commonwealths.”

And what France was doing at the same time was no secret either: "Years earlier, Louis Napoleon had carelessly admitted that he wished to “establish a French Gibraltar at Key West, to seize Florida, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast, and to bring the Mexican Empire under French domination,”"

The Civil War killed a lot of Americans. Alternatives might have killed a lot more.