While many men might envy your job, you are wise to realize it has both ups and downs. And you should also realize that despite your unusual occupation, you are not alone in your feelings of inadequacy.
Interesting piece on what happened to David Bloom, the NBC journalist who died in Iraq. The sad part is that he died from a condition that just as easily could have killed him while flying to Europe or sitting under a desk for a long period of time. He just happened to be cramped up in tank.
Now, if we could only do something about the damn popup ads and clickbacks, internet porn will be on the defensive. Trust me, I not any more anti-porn than the next guy, but I hate it when the sleaze gets forced upon me or someone else who isn't necessarily searching it out...
Consumers deciding that they no longer are entertained by the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore or Pearl Jam? Fine with me. But I think that this is taking it a bit too far:
Now, don't get me wrong, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are simpleminded fools, but this is getting dangerously close to "the line" that we were discussing last week.
Just received a nice little email from the North Texas contingent - a nice piece of pro-war artwork. It's a bit crude to post here in its full glory, but click here if you feel like seeing it. Be warned, though - there is some crude language.
At this rate we'll be hearing about how "the predicted battles of Tikrit, Kirkuk, Ankara, Athens, Bucharest, Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Stockholm have all been busts, but just wait until the US army gets to Oslo - the Iraqis will be holed up and put on one hell of a fight in one last stand! Saddam is read to fight!"
To borrow a phrase from Lileks yesterday: whatever!
John Kerry is upset for no good reason. The controversy has nothing to do with his "patriotism" - it's his use of the phrase "regime change" which means something totally wrong and sinister compared to what he really meant.
This is excellent - it will never EVER happen, but me myself, and I'm sure other people who are also still paying for college agree with me, I would LOVE to see these kinds of reforms put in place that put the student back in "student athlete" and make these guys who are lucky enough to get to go to college for free actually appreciate the experience instead of seeing it as just a necessary waypoint on their way to playing pro sports or otherwise playing sports instead of studying:
Gee recommends three reforms, all compelling. One is to tie the number of scholarships a school offers to graduation rates. The rule would be: for every student on, say, a basketball scholarship who doesn't graduate (within six years), the school has one less basketball scholarship to give. (Division I men's programs currently can give 13 scholarships.) Gee also would tie graduation rates to the distribution each school in a conference receives from TV revenue. Thus, instead of an equal distribution, schools failing to graduate a high number of their athletes would receive a lesser payout.
The most compelling one is the TV revenue, in my opinion. Make those guys graduate or take away their money and pretty soon we might not be seeing illiterate street punks playing hoops for a couple of years and then moving on to the pros. Think about it: Vanderbilt, the doormat of the SEC on the field, would be getting a majority of the TV money. Awesome.
Rachel sent me more on rubber bullets and my question about how they survive the heat from the powder charge in the gun. I guess the ultimate answer is that I don't know anything about physics or chemistry.
On to the rubber bullet query. I know my nylon, polyethylene, polypropylene, etc. you know. My undergraduate education included a polymer science class that did everything to train people going to work for the government contractors who supply our boys (Is there anything else for people from northern VA to do with an engineering degree?). Whatever they are using is probably designed to handle the gun firing it. Designer polymers abound. Time of exposure to the heat (not necessarily the the temp.) is probably a key issue - it takes a while to deform some polymers, not just heat. the type of goo they are using is probably tough, but relatively fragile so that the
little (relatively unbranched, long) chains of molecules are all bundled up like layers on a Canadian kindergardener. They probably also coat it with a little protective insulation material. Thermostable, short term neurotoxic paint is a term that I seem to recall from the a heat transfer problem set that totally freaked me out at the time. The density will be a lot higher than normal rubber though, or it would take an act of congress to get a gun designed to fire off real bullets to work the same way (i.e. so that
the boys that are used to ranges and targets with lead could use them with rubber). The coeffieicnt of friction of air might be better with the polymer than with bullet, but I think both have some pretty remarkable coatings and serious design factors. I am going to stop typing about this because really, I am just a dumb blonde and hell if I want to cross over into the world of dumb blonde war technology geek. Don't ever ask me anything about soap or lipstick or socks and war! Chemistry ROCKS! I am gonna go study now.
From the brother who once said that Kuwait wasn't any worse than Midland or Odessa or Andrews (all places in West Texas that are flat and sandy and rich in oil):
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 09:32:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: benjamin greene
Subject: Kuwait
To: mail@johnmackeygreene.com
J,
Your blog has a mention of Ali al Salem air base.
Proud to say that is where I got promoted to Sergeant
on December 3, 2000. Oohrah.
And anyone who leaves his home to go fight on behalf of a murderous fascist dictatorship in a war against the US Army is a moron. A complete and utter moron.
If anyone has a television available, check out the sledgehammer crew being broadcast on just about any cable news channel right now. A mob of Iraqis are trying to take down a statue of Saddam in Baghdad. It's 60 feet high and made of bronze and concrete - they have a long job ahead of them, for sure, but it's fun as hell to watch.
UPDATE: This guy did the most damage. He was on TV and was just waling away with that hammer. Then a couple the little guys took their turns and could barely hold the hammer. It eventually took a tank to pull it down, but as the picture I posed above tells you, they finally got it on the ground. Very very cool.
My favorite quote of the past 24 hours- Bush referring to his promise that Iraq will be ruled by a domestic Iraqi government and not the US or the UN or Europe:
''Evidently, there's some skepticism here in Europe about whether or not I mean what I say. Saddam Hussein clearly now knows I mean what I say,'' Bush said.
I got a lot of hits here yesterday - more than double the usual amount. I guess now that Baghdad has fallen, my Iraqi fan base is venturing back to the internet cafes to get caught up. Damn Saddam Hussein - yet another reason I'm glad he's gone: restricitions on my readership base.
Ali al Salem air base, Kuwait: Britain's Royal Air Force is preparing to drop a new weapon on Iraqi forces - lumps of blue concrete to knock out tanks without causing a devastating explosion.
It may not be the most high-tech weaponry available, but Group Captain Simon Dobb said the bomb-shaped 1000-pound concrete blocks were highly effective weapons.
"We have the option of using these inert bombs," said Captain Dobb, commander of the Tornado detachment at Ali al Salem air base, in northern Kuwait.
"They still have the guidance and steering methods of other high-explosive weapons but the risk of causing civilian casualties is greatly reduced."
Dropped from height and with laser guidance, the concrete bombs can destroy a tank without destroying surrounding buildings.
"There is the impact, without a massive explosive effect. It's all about proportionality."
"This is propaganda," he said brightly. "I was born and grew up in a propaganda country, and so I know it well." He beamed. "Actually, they do the propaganda very well, better than we do it. We in China can learn from this propaganda."
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi forces staged a major counterattack Tuesday morning, sending buses and trucks full of fighters across the Tigris River in a failed attempt to overrun U.S. forces holding a strategic intersection on the western side of Baghdad...
The Iraqi attack began shortly after dawn, when more than 20 buses and trucks dropped off dozens of Iraqi foot soldiers firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks blocking an intersection leading to a bridge over the Tigris, Wolford said...
So how did it end?
U.S. troops strafed the Iraqis from A-10 Warthog attack planes and opened up with artillery and mortar fire. About an hour after the firefight began, Wolford moved his tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles forward again, retook the intersection and began pursuing the remaining Iraqi defenders.
This is by no means original - I will give Canonico credit for the joke - with victories over Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, Syracuse is now the men's basketball champion of the Big XII conference. heh heh
UPDATE: Word is we took another shot at Saddam tonight and may have been successful. Could it be? Might we be finding his remains in much the same way as we dug Chemical Ali (or what was left of him) out from under his house in Basra? I sure hope we got Saddam in someone else's house, because I want to leave the gorgeous toilets in place.
Except, of course, for those who regard the enormity of the Administration’s perfidy as worse than anything that springs from foreign soil. I heard again on the radio today a series of talk-radio callers who believed that Bush could be as bad as Hitler, and they all pointed to his unnerving combination of religious faith and willingness to use military power. It makes me laugh, really - one of my favorite clips I saved from the TiVo is some tall scary Iraqi guy in a uniform, replete with meaningless medals, insisting that God is on their side - and he’s waving an automatic rifle at the assembled journalists. Has the President ever done this?
Well, not literally, but metaphorically, he’s -
Whatever. I remember what Robin Williams, the intermittently amusing hairy-backed hyperbabbler, said last week about Bush: “He's like 'We have to get rid of dictators,' but he's pretty much one himself.”
If someone invaded America tomorrow, how many big public posters would they have to tear down? How many airports and hospitals and highways would they have to rename?
The gun is the same, the bullet is the same except the slug is rubber instead of lead. It works because of basic physics.
Lead is really dense (11.36 g per cu. cm), therefore, lots of mass. Rubber is not very dense (1.5 g per cu. cm, so very low mass. Assuming the muzzle velocity is roughly equal (this may not be a good assumption for many reasons, but we have to start somewhere), apply the law of conservation of momentum and Newton's second law and you'll see what happens. The lead bullet hits the target with about 8 times more force than the rubber.
They came out with these a few years ago to reduce the number of shooting deaths by cops. The idea is it won't kill you, but it will knock you down and hurt like hell.
I looked those values up in one of my textbooks that I have hear at work.
They are pretty good ballpark numbers. Speaking of, here's some [very]
rough math....
Assumptions:
2 cu cm slug (about the size of a .45 round)
Muzzle velocity (v): 2000 feet per second (a rough estimate)
target impact time (t): .01 seconds
Drag slowing the bullet down after it leaves the gun is insignificant
mass (m) of lead slug: 22.72 g
m of rubber slug: 3 g
Momentum (P) = m*v
P of lead: 13.85 kg-m/s
P of rubber: 1.83 kg-m/s
Force (F) of impact = P/t
F of lead = 311 lbs (1956 psi)
F of rubber = 41 lbs (258 psi)
Question answered.
Now, does the heat of the charge deform the rubber in any way? Hmmm...
Lots of stories today about all of the weapons and missiles that are being found that Iraq supposedly "doesn't have". Maybe we need Hans to come inspect the situation.
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 12:58:12 -0500
From: Nichol Subject: Yahoo! News - U.S. Says It May Have Found Iraqi WMD Storage Site
To: mail@johnmackeygreene.com
Heard about the missiles this morning on the radio. The barrels are new. Sure makes 'W' look good and 'Old Europe' look bad if it turns out to be true.
How the hell does a "rubber bullet" work? I presume it's either really slow or really soft so as not to puncture the skin of the target, but how? Is it a different gun? Anyone have any insight? A quick web search didn't get me anywhere.
If anyone has a television available, check out the sledgehammer crew being broadcast on just about any cable news channel right now. A mob of Iraqis are trying to take down a statue of Saddam in Baghdad. It's 60 feet high and made of bronze and concrete - they have a long job ahead of them, for sure, but it's fun as hell to watch.
