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posted by J Bowen at 8:01 AM ~

Stupid college tricks
Back in college a few lunatics I knew used to have beer chugging contests. Except they'd do it while hanging upside down from the railing of a stair landing.

It was only half a flight up, but it probably would have been enough to break their necks or even kill them if they slipped.

And now we have this -
College Student Dead After Apparent Fall Over Balcony.
posted by J Bowen at 8:00 AM ~

Don't get shook
An earthquake rattled southern IL and environs last night. It won't make the history books so much because it wasn't that strong, but it's still creepy.

People unfamiliar with the area might not associate it with seismic activity. But know that one of the worst earthquakes in the US happened within a couple of hundred miles to the southwest near New Madrid, MO. It was also in the news around 1990 when a prediction of an earthquake by Iben Browning was picked up by the media but did not pan out.

You can see more about the area's seismic history on an episode of A&E Network's Mega Disasters series, which examines consequences of a major earthquake there on Memphis, TN and St. Louis, MO.

Anybody who's thinking "all the nukes there will melt down now!" can relax. No operating commercial nuclear power facilities are particularly close. There are none in IN or KY. In IL the closest is Clinton Power Station, around a couple hundred miles north. Calloway in MO is about that far west. LaSalle County, Dresden and Braidwood are about 80 miles on the far side of the Clinton site in IL, and farther yet are Quad Cities and Byron. The next closest is probably in AR. The closest in MI is DC Cook near Michigan City, or in OH it would be Davis-Besse near Toledo, or in TN it's either Sequoyah or Watts Bar. That's from memory - maps are for wimps.

I was working as an engineer at an operating nuclear power plant back in the late 80's when I felt a small earthquake. The civil engineers and others on staff immediately got to work looking for seismic damage wherever they could onsite. I don't recall any issues arising.
posted by J Bowen at 7:59 AM ~

Old men on the make
Oh boy, New Kids on the Block are back! You remember them - they were once scheduled as an opening act for Tiffany!
posted by J Bowen at 8:50 AM ~

Security personnel sleeping at Turkey Point
Maybe I'm lucky that in my nuclear power days I never caught a security guy sleeping on the job. The first time I might just make some noise, but I doubt it. For while I don't necessarily think it's a huge security compromise (if someone has made it to your reactor building already this isn't your only security issue), it's definitely something that'll get the plant busted bigtime by any NRC inspector who happens upon it.

Fines are the easy part. Then the usual braying idiots would trot out their usual claptrap, and the clueless buffoons who pass for media would publicize it far beyond its significance. So as a minimum I would have been tempted to make a beeline for his supervisor.

OTOH this security person is probably positioned to make your life miserable too. He and whoever might have been covering for him could say that they'd caught you doing something and guess who's in trouble now?

Security is outsourced at many facilities. If that's true at Turkey Point, there definitely ought to be blisters all up and down their local management's backside. They ought to know how to keep their staff awake - this isn't exactly a new problem with security firms.

But they might have fewer options than you think. One obvious one is security cams at strategic areas. This isn't trivial for a number of regulatory and other reasons that I don't have time to discuss now (some of which involve security...), whether the system is wired or wireless. I'd expect newer plants to have such things in the design, but backfitting them to today's fleet would be awfully expensive.

I haven't set foot inside a nuke plant for over a decade now, so maybe things have changed. But while I was there, NRC inspectors didn't exactly swarmed over the facilities. There was no need to really - day to day operation isn't exciting and shouldn't be. So inspectors would show up in the plant once in a while, but mostly they did paperwork and went to meetings. So if they caught someone sleeping it's pretty sad.

I don't want to hear any excuses for the security guys sleeping. But let's not get too excited about this either.
posted by J Bowen at 8:35 AM ~

It's never too early...
...to choose your child's gang.
posted by J Bowen at 7:46 AM ~

Video made simple
About a year and a half ago I went to make a fairly simple video production and failed miserably. It would have helped if I hadn't waited until the last minute, but I didn't expect my software to put up so much of a fight, especially with syncing sound to video.

So lately I've been reading good things about the Flip Video device and thought I might check it out. Then when I happened upon them in stock at a Sam's Club for $140 when I had some money burning a hole in my pocket, I bit.

Wow, it couldn't get much simpler or easier.

It was a bit of a PITA the first time I used a particular computer with it because it needed to load a codec, and the first time I used it at all I had to sit through a firmware upgrade. But since then it's been a real trouper with both XP and Vista.

It's about as self-contained as you can get. You don't need to install any software with DVDs or downloads - everything you need is already loaded on the device. Plug it in to an available USB port, wait for the system to recognize the device and go!

Likewise there are no cables to lose on the run. The USB male connector is built in rigidly - you just extend it from the case, plug it in, let the system recognize it and you're in business. I did have trouble trying to plug it into the USB ports on a couple of different machines because of funny geometry in one case and an EVDO card in another. But for most it will work fine, and for the rest there's A-A USB extension cords (which shouldn't cost more than $10 no matter what Radio Shack or Best Buy say).

So when someone of longish tenure left the company recently, I wound up going around shooting quickie goodbye videos. The picture and sound quality were far better than I expected, and loading the videos onto the PCs was more or less idiot simple. So with nothing but miserable past experience, no talent, a device I'd had for 2 days, and a newish Vista laptop with a DVD burner, I produced some tolerable output from a bunch of people in no more than a couple of hours, and most of that time was probably data transfer time while I multitasked.

It's not perfect, and it certainly doesn't have advanced features. But it's $140, for crying out loud. It's self-contained, small, runs on AA batteries so there's no wall wart (I don't want to know how many of those blasted things I have), and the learning curve is nearly nonexistent (with the caveat that I'm a gadget geek with an engineering background). It's roughly the size of a candy bar, so it can go anywhere. You can take still pictures. The model I bought at Sam's has 2GB of RAM which allegedly will hold an hour's worth of video (haven't really challenged it yet). And I've only had it since Sunday, so I probably don't know a lot of things it can do yet.

Bottom line - I'll be buying more of them.
posted by J Bowen at 12:18 AM ~

Suckers?
More than once I've heard companies described as "the best first and third job you'll ever have". The idea was that if you stuck around nothing would happen, but if you left and came back you could jump a couple of grades ahead.

Today just happens to have been the last day for someone who had been with the company for several years. The joke is that they'll be back in a couple years in a much better job. At least two people in my org chart have done that that I know of.

And now today Glenn Reynolds links to this. Hmmm.
posted by J Bowen at 12:18 AM ~

The history of computer data storage, in pictures
Right here.
posted by J Bowen at 9:14 PM ~

Unpresidented authority
Glenn Reynolds notes how some people think the next President ought to seize greater authority to fight global warming, to avoid having to work at Congress's pace.

Well, there's another way to avoid Congressional nonsense, and that's to avoid using the govt in the first place. All they can bring to the party is coercion.

Oh yeah, they can write big checks too. But how did they get that money, anyway? Yep, coercion. No matter what willfully obtuse technical jargon Harry Reid might hide behind.

Lots of private citizens can write big checks too. Unfortunately they seem to be writing them to the Democrats. Obviously, rather than addressing problems yourself, it's far better to spend money on people who a) might not get elected, b) might not be able to deliver, and c) might not really have any intent to deliver in any case. Right? Maybe the answer is to start selling lottery tickets in larger denominations.
posted by J Bowen at 8:28 AM ~

Lost arts
I'm not *that* old, doggone it. But even over my time things have changed so much with the way things are done mathematically and otherwise, I have to wonder what most people would do without calculators and canned software.

Then again I went to engineering school, so what I thought of as normal turned out to be unrealistic for most people. Sheesh, a couple of days ago I told someone what the sine of a certain angle was off the top of my head and you would have thought I'd performed a miracle.

Even technical people are deteriorating because calculators are inescapable. Can you still do math in your head? If you want to see where you stand with impromptu mental calculation, try this. How did you do?

And then there are simple graphical constructions. Do people still know how to use a straightedge and compasses nowadays? I haven't talked into any newly minted engineers lately, but it wouldn't surprise me if they knew much about how engineering graphics were produced before the CAD era.

Or would they even know what a nomogram is? And slide rules - we don't even speak of slide rule calculators any more. But surely they still use Moody diagrams and psychrometric charts.

Nomograms and lots more are to be found at Dead Reckonings - Lost Art in the Mathematical Sciences, which is such a great find I have no idea what to link in particular.
posted by J Bowen at 2:02 AM ~

Snark today, science tomorrow
I was being sarcastic on an earlier post referring to removing tonsils rectally. But it could be closer than we think.
Appendix Removed Through Vagina: U.S. First
Appendix removed through mouth
Gall Bladder removed through vagina
Kidney Removed through Navel
And on a more depressing note, remember that little girl who got stuck on a pool drain and had her insides yanked out rectally? She died recently
posted by J Bowen at 9:15 AM ~

Liary
Remember Josh Steiner? He's the young Clinton aide who was said to have "lied to his diary". He allegedly regretted that his diary was not "more accurate".

Now along comes another diary that Hillary Clinton won't like. It seems that one Jerry Zeifman recalls HRC's work on the Watergate investigation and wrote of problems with her. (You have to follow that link - it's not too long).

For instance, she didn't get a recommendation afterwards. Why? As shocks go, finding documentation that HRC is a liar doesn't rank too high. But what got me were the details. She took some files from the committee and hid them in her office, then proceeded to work as if they hadn't existed. Hmm, Hillary hiding files? Where have we heard that one before?

Yes, believe it or not the fact that Hillary Clinton lies and hide things is well precedented. But what makes this priceless is that on that particular occasion she was trying to show that there was *no* precedent for something - that Richard Nixon was entitled to counsel during an impeachment proceeding. The files that she hid that time showed how William O. Douglas was granted counsel when he faced an impeachment attempt in 1970. (Of course Douglas was a liberal. He couldn't be held to the same standards as a Republican like Richard Nixon.)

As for her own defense, she might try to cite the case of Steiner. How vast a right-wing conspiracy must be to get a lifelong Democrat to lie about her in his diary over 30 years ago!

Was this pettifoggery? Mr. Zeifman didn't think so - Hmmm.

I haven't seen a response from the Hillary camp yet. Can she dodge another bullet?

Original link from Powerline.
posted by J Bowen at 7:25 AM ~

Medical breakthrough!
Scientists have come up with a method for removing tonsils rectally. They conceded that it might be safer and more effective to do it the usual way, but you know, they just had to show that they could do it.

Believe it or not, the above is a total fabrication. But then there is this headline: Cloned cells treat Parkinson's in mice - Yahoo! News.

All well and good, but then read this passage from it:Ya think?

But hey, let's suck in lots of federal dollars for more of this. It might not give us any really useful results, but then it gives some researchers something really cool to fool with. We'd be money ahead if we just gave the researchers free phalloplasty.
posted by J Bowen at 10:53 PM ~

Advice for politicians
I hate to disagree with Soccer Dad, but I offer some different ideas on how to handle a sex scandal.

For one, Eliot Spitzer should have captured the whole thing on tape. Then he could have said that he was making a porn movie, and you can't bust people for prostitution when they're acting in a porn movie.

What's more, he should have used this opportunity for campaigning. Maybe have him making campaign speeches on a TV in the background or something. He could sell the tapes to raise funds, and no one would dare complain about the campaign messages because everyone knows that only bluenoses could possibly object to mass distribution of porn.

Spitzer's failure to do these things can only be explained as a lapse in judgment. Surely it's not because he wasn't cynical enough.
posted by J Bowen at 1:08 AM ~

Random Easter venereal disease post
Overheard back in the early 80's - "you know the difference between true love and herpes? Herpes lasts forever"

It so happens that a few weeks ago I was talking to a pharmacist who was amused by some of the TV ads for pharmaceuticals. She was particularly amused by one for Valtrex, in which one person would say "I have herpes" and their presumptive bedmate said "and I don't" To which our pharmacist said "but you will".

I assume that the people in the commercials were actors, or at least would claim that they were. Even so, we're talking social evolution here. I can't find a link, but I seem to recall that back in the 80's a couple filed suit because their image was used in a public service ad about herpes.

Such innocent times! We hadn't heard of AIDS yet. Once the acronym appeared it was pretty firmly associated with IV drug users, Haitians and especially gays. Some of my less PC coworkers in hard hats said it stood for "another infected..." and the rest will be left as an exercise.

Hey, while we're at it why not work in something about syphilis too. I understand that you can get it from blood transfusions. And that apparently this was a problem in Mexico once upon a time.

More social evolution: a few weeks ago I took a pit stop at a convenience store and the men's room was out of service. No problem, they said to use the ladies' room. Ah, they have condom machines in here too. But it's been a while since I've seen one that said "for prevention of disease only".

Ha, good luck with that. They aren't 100% effective as birth control when used as directed by competent adults, much less by horny adolescents. It's hard to see how they'd be any more effective against disease. Of course abstinence is always 100% effective when used. It's not very reliable when it's *not* used, but then neither are condoms. Yes, that's absurd, but then why do some people blame abstinence education programs for problems that occur when they clearly aren't being followed? Are programs that encourage condom use ever blamed for problems that occur when kids don't use condoms?

Clearly I've run out of things to write about, so that will be all.
posted by J Bowen at 1:40 PM ~

Does he ever shut up?