The Royal Society of Chemistry piles on...
Phil Jones is on the hot seat...
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The Last Four Minutes of Flight 447...
This is the Air France flight that crashed off the coast of Brazil. Interesting, but scary...
As the Ship Turns...
Pictured at right is CVN 77 (the USS George H. W. Bush) in a hard turn to port (left). It nicely illustrates a phenomenon that catches a lot of first-time sailors on large naval ships by surprise: the ship leans “the wrong way” in a hard turn.Actually, it's more complicated than that. A large ship's motion in a turn varies as the turn progresses. For example, suppose a ship is travelling at high speed in a straight line and then initiates a hard port turn by traversing the rudders to port. Initially the rudders engaging with the moving water will force the bottom of the ship to starboard (right), and the top swings to port (left), as most people expect on a port turn. However, as the ship itself swings around to port, the moving water acts with even more force against the hull – overpowering the rudder's sideways thrust and forcing the bottom of the hull to port, and the top of the ship to starboard.
I still remember the strangeness of these motions during hard turn exercises on the USS Long Beach when I was aboard in the '70s. Things got even more squirrely in high winds and heavy seas as both of those phenomena contributed their own force vectors that caused yet other, even stranger motions...
Why'd They Do That?
Interesting theory about why Iran recently moved their stocks of enriched uranium from deep, protected underground storage to an open, above-ground area...
Why McDonald v. Chicago Matters...
McDonald v. Chicago matters a lot, if you care about your right to bear arms...
Baby Girl Survives a Bullet Wound for Three Days...
Two parents in Argentina, apparently distressed about global warming, decided to kill their two children and themselves. They shot their children, then themselves, killing all but their seven month old baby girl. She survived for three days on her own until found by paramedics; now she's in the hospital.
If this poor little thing survives, she's going to grow up with quite a burden...
If this poor little thing survives, she's going to grow up with quite a burden...
Mickey Kaus for Senator?
Mickey Kaus is one of the amazingly few liberal bloggers whose posts I can read without retching. The man thinks hard, applies lessons from the past, and really seems to “get” the political process. I've quote him more than a few times on this blog, either because of an interesting insight, or because he eloquently defended a position one normally thinks of as not liberal.
This morning I read that he's taking out papers to run against Barbara Boxer. If I had to choose between the two, Mickey is a no-brainer choice (actually, Boxer is the “no brainer”, but you know what I mean).
Our November elections just got more interesting for Californians...
This morning I read that he's taking out papers to run against Barbara Boxer. If I had to choose between the two, Mickey is a no-brainer choice (actually, Boxer is the “no brainer”, but you know what I mean).
Our November elections just got more interesting for Californians...