Doofus Of The Day #910

I should perhaps have titled this 'Boys And Their Toys #whatever';  but he's definitely a doofus, too, so I guess this will do!

I'm just glad the glass didn't shatter and cut him to ribbons . . .




Peter

Charges? Hell, I'd buy him a beer . . .

I note with displeasure that a New York man is facing charges for defending his wife against the attack of a career criminal.

Bronx cabby Mamadou ­Diallo was looking for a parking spot outside his building when he got a call from his wife that filled him with shock and fury.

She said a stranger had just tried to rape her in their apartment — and was still upstairs.

Diallo grabbed a tire iron and did what most husbands in the same situation would do: He rushed to his wife’s aid and then bludgeoned the pervert.

The attack killed career criminal Earl Nash, 43 — and left Diallo facing assault and weapons charges Tuesday.

. . .

Surveillance footage shows Mamadou walk past Nash, but wheel around when Nenegale pointed him out as the attacker.

The enraged husband swung the weapon at Nash — driving him into the elevator. He followed with several more blows, in a beating that lasted up to two minutes, sources said.

Nash fought back with a belt, but the pounding left him with a fractured skull, sources said.

Emergency responders rushed Nash, who also had severe body trauma, to Lincoln Hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Diallo was initially charged with manslaughter by cops, but during his arraignment at Bronx Criminal Court, the charges were dropped to two counts of assault, harassment and criminal possession of a weapon.

“This was not an offense where the defendant committed an aggressive act,” defense attorney Anthony Michaels said. “This was an attack on his family, in his house under extreme circumstances.”

At the hearing, which was attended by more than a dozen members of Diallo’s family and mosque, prosecutors didn’t ask for bail, and instead said they would agree to whatever Judge Julio Rodriguez thought was best. He released Diallo on his own recognizance.

There's more at the link.

I know there are some who will argue that the husband's response was excessive;  that the assault on his wife had already ceased, and that therefore he should have let the police handle the situation.  To that I can only say that where I now live, the defense of "He needed killing!" is very widely recognized by both the law enforcement officers and agencies, and the citizens of the region - so much so that if the husband were facing those charges down here, not only would he be virtually guaranteed an acquittal in court, but the District Attorney who dared to bring such charges would probably be voted out of office at the very next opportunity.  Charges, indeed!




Peter

If you want better and more secure Internet passwords . . .

. . . but don't want the complications, security hassles or expense of a password manager program, there's a simple and very effective way to get them.

Go to the Norton IdentitySafe Password Generator, enter the details it asks for, and click the 'Generate Passwords' button.  I'd suggest a minimum password length of 12 characters for greater security.  When the list appears, copy and paste it into a word processor document, then save it on your hard drive or print it out.  You can generate up to 50 passwords at a time;  for more than that, run the Generator more than once.  As you use each password, note the Web site or account that uses it, then cross it off the list of available passwords.

Short, sweet, simple, and pretty secure.  What's not to like?

Peter

An interesting training aircraft

I recently came across this video of the prototype Russian KB SAT SR-10 forward-swept-wing training aircraft.  It shows the plane making a series of touch-and-go landings and takeoffs.  The smoke trail from the 1960's-vintage turbojet engine fitted to the prototype is clearly visible;  production aircraft (if it reaches that stage) are expected to be fitted with a more modern, more economical turbofan engine.

What's particularly interesting is that this is a private venture aircraft, not sponsored by the Russian government.  It's intended as an ab initio trainer, taking student pilots from their first flight through mid-level aerobatic training, before they progress to the Yakovlev Yak-130 advanced transonic training aircraft (closely related to Aermacchi Alenia's M-346 Master) for operational conversion.  The SR-10 was apparently defeated in the competition to supply the Russian Air Force's basic training aircraft by the turboprop Yakovlev Yak-152, but the former aircraft's development is being continued as a private venture in the hope of attracting customers.

The SR-10's forward-swept wing is certainly unusual.  It appears to be a further development of the experimental forward-swept wing of the Soviet-era Sukhoi Su-47.  I note that it's positioned fairly far aft on the fuselage, with a leading edge extension reaching forward to almost beneath the dual cockpit.  I've no idea what that means for its handling, but other videos on YouTube show the aircraft performing most standard maneuvers.

The SR-10 is the smallest and lightest jet training aircraft I can remember seeing.  I look forward to observing its progress.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #909

Today's award goes to several embarrassed members of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force.

Japan’s military officials may be feeling a bit sheepish after their troops accidentally fired dozens of live rounds at one another during a military exercise - though no one was hit by the stray bullets.

Nine members of the country's Ground Self-Defence Force (GSDF) reportedly shot as many as 79 live rounds at one another during the military drill in northernmost Hokkaido after mistakenly loading assault rifles with the wrong ammunition.

Two people sustained minor injuries – a sergeant in his 30s and a leading private in his twenties – although to the force's relief no one was shot by bullets during the incident on Monday, according to Kyodo News.

. . .

Bullets are typically handed to each troop just before the drill, before being loaded into their rifles, according to Kyodo News.

Confusion reportedly surrounds how such a mistake could take place as troops generally understand the difference in appearance between life and blank rounds.

There's more at the link.

I'm still mind-boggled at this news.  During my military service I had plenty of opportunities to fire 'blank' rounds.  There was never any doubt, visually or by feel, how to differentiate them from 'live' ammunition.  How the hell did these soldiers not know the difference?  And after the first injury, why did they continue using the real stuff?  Was this a case of, "Because I said so!  The Army doesn't pay you to think, private!  Get on with it!" ?

However it happened, there's egg (or should that be egg drop soup?) on several Japanese faces right now . . .

Peter

The Battle of Jutland - 100 years ago today

On 31st May and through the night into 1st June 1916, the Battle of Jutland, the biggest ever clash of steel and steam in a single place in the history of naval warfare, took place in the North Sea, between England and Germany.  (The Battle of Leyte Gulf during World War II involved far more ships, and also hundreds of naval aircraft, but it was actually four separate battles taking place almost simultaneously across a much wider area.)

The Battle of Jutland was tactically indecisive (although the Germans claimed victory based on sinking more ships than they lost).  Strategically it was a victory for the Royal Navy, which kept the German High Seas Fleet bottled up in its bases for the rest of the war.  However, that led to the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany in 1917, which almost brought Britain to its knees . . . but that's another story.

Here's a very informative animation of the battle, showing its major elements.  I highly recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

At a century's remove, it's hard to imagine the impact of this battle at the time. Admiral Jellicoe was later criticized for his conduct of the battle, but his caution was understandable in the absence of hard and fast information.  Churchill said of him that he was "the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon".  That just about sums it up.  He may not have won the smashing victory for which England longed, but he kept the German navy penned up for the rest of the war.  That was enough to ensure a victory for Britain and her allies.  If the result of the Battle of Jutland had been different, seaborne supplies to England and France would have been terminally disrupted, probably drastically affecting the entry of the United States into the war.  Who knows what might have happened then?

Peter

Old NFO ventures into military science fiction

Jim Curtis, alias Old NFO in the blogosphere, has tried his hand at military science fiction.  His first short story in that genre, 'Rimworld: Stranded', has just been published on Amazon.com.  From the blurb:

Senior Sergeant McDougal wasn’t a combat troop, he was a maintainer. He was good at it, proud of his status, and on his first planetary detachment as the lead maintenance troop for an outpost.

But, when he got stranded on Regulus Four, a Rimworld and one of the clusters that formed the DMZ between the Patrol and the Dragoons, his status didn’t mean a thing…

Improvising, adapting, and trying like hell not to panic, he did his best to fulfill the Patrol’s prime directive to destroy the portable stargate, and still get himself off the planet in one piece before the Dragoons got to him.

I had the pleasure of being one of Jim's alpha readers on this project.  It's a lot of fun - and the role of illegally distilled moonshine, in a combat zone in space, is an unexpected twist.  To make it even better, the price (free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers, $0.99 to others) is unbeatable.  Go read, and enjoy!

Peter

Portable, battery-powered microwaves?

It looks like the microwave oven as we've always known it is about to become obsolete.

The Adventurer is a portable battery-powered microwave the size of a Thermos. Campers, hikers, and anyone else away from the grid can make a hot meal in minutes without a fire. Camp cooking could get a whole lot easier.

The three-pound Adventurer is more than a handy piece of kit, though. This is one of the first fruits of a new technology that could not only nuke your lunch on the go, but also make an impact in areas as diverse as crop protection and oil extraction.

. . .

Portable gadgets like the Adventurer are just the start—solid-state microwave sources are driving a new generation of kitchen appliances ... "The 'more controllable' feature cannot be overestimated," says Klaus Werner, executive director of the RF Energy Alliance, an organiation dedicated to realizing the potential of this technology. "It gives you perfect process control via fast control loops. The Magnetron is very slow at best. Sensitive processes such as food pasteurization, blood thawing, sous vide cooking or pharmaceutical reactions all benefit greatly from this technology."

Looking further afield, Werner says that solid state has myriad other possibilities. "The technology allows a number of hitherto impossible radio-frequency applications—automotive ignition, radio-frequency ablation, hypothermia treatment, plasma lighting, novel industrial heating systems..."

At the extreme end of the microwave revolution is a novel alternative to fracking. Rather than injecting the ground with chemicals at high pressure to force hydrocarbons out of shale, Peter Kearl and colleagues at Qmast LLC use microwaves ... The highly efficient heating provided by microwaves also makes them appealing for crop protection. Vines in particular are vulnerable to frost after new leaves break out. The traditional protection is to set out thousands of frost candles to warm the air, which are spectacular but inefficient. Some wine growers are now experimenting with microwave-based heating ... in which a series of emitters bathe the vines in gentle warmth when frost threatens. Someday, maybe solid-state microwaves will take our wines to a better state.

There's more at the link.

All this sounds fascinating, but what will exposure to such radiation do to humans in the area?  Current microwaves employ heavy shielding to protect those around them.  Even though the new technology emits much less radiation than traditional magnetron microwave ovens, won't even that lower radiation put people at risk?  After all, it's just been alleged by a very authoritative source that cellphone radiation - which is a tiny fraction of that from microwave emitters - is potentially hazardous to our health.  Who will guarantee - can anyone guarantee - that we don't face any risk from the new microwave appliances?

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #908

Today's award goes to all the racist idiots who tried to use the tragic incident at Cincinnati Zoo, in which a young toddler was injured and a gorilla shot and killed, to instigate racial tensions.  Breitbart reports that "angry black people in social media forums ... have been blaming the incident on entrenched white privilege".

Unfortunately for such idiots, the photographic evidence is clear:

The child was black, not white.

I suppose this proves, yet again, the wisdom of Abraham Maslow:  "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."  Since such people can only see the world through racist spectacles, it's understandable (even though lamentable and detestable) that they should see such an incident in the same light.  However, it also demonstrates their lack of honesty and integrity more clearly than almost anything else could.  They deserve neither our consideration nor our attention.

Peter

"Brings The Lightning": a first week report-back

My latest book and first Western novel, 'Brings The Lightning', was published a week ago today.

I honestly didn't know what to expect, and neither did my publisher, because of three factors:

1. The Western market has been moribund for many years, abandoned by most of the bigger publishers and invaded by romance and erotica books that have little or nothing (besides their setting) to do with authentic Westerns.  It's difficult to judge the level of interest in a revival of the 'classic' Western such as 'Brings The Lightning'.
2. We weren't sure whether my readers (who are accustomed to this blog, as well as science fiction novels from me) would be interested in a Western, and prepared to invest their money in one.
3. We weren't sure how best to promote the novel to an audience interested in Westerns.  That was, and remains, a steep learning curve for us.

Despite those difficulties, the book has done moderately well.  It's sold close to a thousand copies in its first week on the market.  It's also attracted more (and more positive) reviews than any other novel I've written.  At the time of writing there are 34 reviews, of which 9 are 4-star and 25 5-star.  That's very gratifying, and I'm glad so many of you have enjoyed the book so much that you wanted to share that with other potential readers.  I'm particularly pleased with the lack of reviews of 3 stars and below.  Clearly, I've been able to improve my writing (with the help of my editor) to the point that some previous weaknesses have been addressed.  I'll strive to continue that improvement in future books.

A major sticking point is that most of those buying and reading 'Brings The Lightning' have been previous readers of either my books, or others published by Castalia House, or those published by the author-contributors to the Mad Genius Club writing blog.  This is clear from the 'also-boughts' on the book's Amazon web page (i.e. the series of books headlined, "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought").  There are few books listed there from the Western genre.  I've got to find a way to market my new novel directly to those who like Westerns.  It's obvious that nothing I've done so far is having that effect.  I'm exploring a number of options in that regard, including talking over the problem with experts, and there'll probably be some advertising in the not too distant future.  It'll take time to spread the word, but as that happens, I hope sales will improve.

Castalia House is hard at work on print and audiobook editions of 'Brings The Lightning'.  They should be available within a matter of weeks, so watch this space for details.  This will be my first venture into the audiobook market, so that's an exciting development.  If it's successful, we'll see about audio editions of some of my science fiction books as well.

All in all, I'm generally satisfied with the launch.  There's plenty of room for improvement in marketing, which I'll be tackling (with the able assistance of my wife and my publisher) over the next few weeks and months.  By the time the next book in the series comes out, about this time next year, I expect the ground to be much better prepared for its arrival.

Peter

More about Ray Carter

Following Ray Carter's death yesterday, I've heard from a few readers who didn't know him, and asked for more information.

Joe Huffman put up this post on his blog, which provides more background information about Ray.  I hope it'll help introduce him to those who didn't have the pleasure of knowing him.  Click over there to read more.

Peter

The Coopers Hill Cheese Roll is back!

After having been nobbled by the health and safety types for a couple of years, the Coopers Hill Cheese Roll and Wake is back!  We've covered earlier contests in these pages, and it's great to welcome back the revived tradition.

Here's sample footage of some of the runs this year.  You'll find more on YouTube.

Mad dogs and Englishmen - and, of course, wheels of Double Gloucestershire cheese . . .

Peter

Memorial Day 2016

It's that difficult time of year again - difficult for me, at any rate.  Every year on Memorial Day the USA remembers and honors those who died while serving in the armed forces.  That's laudable, and I share in their commemoration . . . but to me, there are so many more who should be part of that commemoration, but are not, because of the arbitrary cut-off of "served in the Armed Forces".  I know so many who died while doing their best to serve in wars and armed conflicts, but were never formally members of any military organization.  They are left out of celebrations like this, whereas a member of the armed forces who died of, say, appendicitis, or influenza, or something else unrelated to combat, is honored.  There's also the people who are left behind.  What about their sacrifice, their sorrow?  Why is that not honored too?

I still can't quite wrap my mind around those things.  I suppose that's part of being an immigrant to this country.  Our background, our perspective, is wider and more diverse than those who've grown up with the Memorial Day tradition.

I've said a lot in earlier years about what this day means to me.  I urge you to go and read those articles, if you haven't already done so.  One in particular - starred with asterisks below - can still bring tears to my eyes, because those memories have never grown less real to me;  in fact, they seem to grow more real over the years.  In chronological order, they are:

Remembering the forgotten ones

Armistice / Remembrance / Veterans Day

* My heroes *

Memorial Day: They also served

Memorial Day 2012

May all who served, and all who survived them, and all who gave their lives so that others (including ourselves) might know the blessings of peace, rest in peace.

Peter

In Memoriam: Ray Carter (a.k.a. Freethinker)

I've just been informed that long-term friend, blogging buddy and Blogorado comrade-in-arms, Ray Carter, has died.

Ray had been suffering from a recurrence of cancer that he hoped he'd beaten a couple of years ago.  Sadly, this time, the cancer won.

Ray was an activist for gun rights.  He worked for the Second Amendment Foundation as its Director of Development, and was also active in the gay community, encouraging its members to defend themselves (lawfully, of course) against attack by those who stigmatized them in any way.  He was also a heck of a good guy in his own way, with an absolutely wicked sense of humor (which he would doubtless have preferred me to call "absolutely fabulous!").

So long, Ray.  It was good to know you.  Rest in peace, buddy, until (please God) we meet again.  Thanks for the memories.

Peter

It's not the size of the dog in the fight . . .

. . . it's the size of the fight in the dog, as Mark Twain put it.  Shamelessly stolen borrowed from C. W. Swanson:

I bet that dog was preening like mad as it trotted back to its owner.  "I showed 'em who's boss!"




Peter

Lightning in very slow motion

Prof. Ningyu Liu, from NASA'S Geospace Physics Laboratory in Florida, recently filmed lightning using a special camera running at 7,000 frames per second.  Played back at 700 frames per second, the results are mesmerizing. Watch in full-screen mode for best results.

I'd love to see different types of lightning filmed like that - not just forked or chain lightning, but sheet and ball as well.  It gives a whole new perspective on the subject.

Peter

The Guardian's series on cities is complete

Back in March I mentioned that the Guardian had begun a series of 50 articles on the history of urbanization, under the overall title 'The Story of Cities'.  It's just completed the series with two wrap-up articles, 'What will our growing megacities really look like?' and 'The tales we missed'.

All 52 articles are now available at a single Web site, where you can read a little about each of the 50 cities covered and click on the article(s) concerned for more information.  It's a great resource for anyone interested in urbanization and the development of civilization - and a stark warning of what can happen when such developments are imposed from outside, rather than allowed to develop naturally.  (Not that the latter are always great, either, but at least there isn't some mastermind making decisions for people!)

Recommended reading.

Peter

The kid's never going to forget this!

And he has the coolest dad!

No word on what his mom had to say about it . . .

Peter

Special Forces and the threat of technological disruption

War on the Rocks asks whether emerging technologies threaten the mission of Special Forces.

What happens when the capabilities that we give to special operators can instead be deployed by amateurs? How will the special operations community respond?

. . .

To complete its missions in an increasingly chaotic world, U.S. special operations forces (SOF) must learn to rapidly adopt technologies that may only be months old. Just as machine intelligence transformed the professional chess circuit — today’s top chess teams are human-machine hybrids — so too must SOF evolve and drive emerging capabilities more deeply into its operational elements.

Fortunately for those involved in planning, training, and executing sensitive and special operations, no nuanced actor has yet synthesized all of these new tools into a precise instrument. But there are signs of experimentation by America’s potential adversaries, most notably in the special operations campaign run by the Russian government during its annexation of Ukraine.

. . .

For years we’ve been seeing an exponential increase in computer and communication capabilities. Exponential growth looks linear until it hits an inflection point. Are we there? Perhaps. The iPad 2, released in 2011, was more powerful than the 1985 Cray-2 Supercomputer, which cost $35 million in today’s dollars.

This comparison illustrates the commoditization of so-called “national technical means.” What was once the sole provenance of nation states can now be purchased at the corner store, and the downward price pressure on these capabilities is not limited to the digital spectrum. Unmanned aerial vehicles with cutting-edge optics, built and used by nation states for over half a century, are now available for the cost of a meal at a modest restaurant.

Combining sensors, actuators, transducers, and other analog and digital components hereto unknown provide a potential generational leap in asymmetric capability by non-state actors and non-elite units of potential competitor nations. How can we continue to man, train, and equip the best special operations forces in the world when the same capabilities they employ, which cost us billions of dollars to acquire and train up, are available to a weekend hobbyist for a few hundred dollars?

There's much more at the link.  Thought-provoking reading.

I suggest one place to start would be with Israel.  It's a highly technological society, reflected in the training and equipment of its defense forces.  It's facing terrorist opponents who are doing precisely as the above article postulates;  using over-the-counter technology to aid their operations.  Hezbollah has already deployed unmanned aerial vehicles operationally, and operates a drone base in Lebanon.  It's also intercepted radio transmissions from Israeli drones and used that intelligence operationally.  (The same was done more recently, in more sophisticated fashion, by US and British intelligence.)

Israel can probably teach us a lot about how to counter such dual-purpose technology.  I agree with the article's premise;  such technological overlap is going to make the life of our Special Forces troops - not to mention conventional forces - a lot more tricky.

Peter

Rest in peace, Sir. Mission accomplished.

I don't mind admitting that this report brought a tear to my eye.

U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Melvin Rector ... served ... with the 96th Bomb Group in 1945 as a radio operator and gunner on B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, flying eight combat missions over Germany during the spring of the war's final year. On four of these missions, his plane came under heavy fire. One almost proved catastrophic, and the plane returned to base with holes dotting its wings.

. . .

On May 6, Rector stepped foot on British soil for the first time in 71 years. The group first visited RAF Uxbridge in the London Borough of Hillingdon.

Rector toured Battle of Britain Bunker, an underground command center where fighter airplane operations were directed during D-Day. After climbing back into the sunlight, he told Jowers he felt dizzy. She grabbed one of his arms, and a stranger grabbed the other.

There, just outside the bunker where Winston Churchill famously said, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," Rector died quietly.

"He walked out of that bunker like his tour was done," Jowers said.

. . .

Before repatriating his remains to the United States, a small service for the fallen hero was planned in Britain. It did not remain a small service.

"They just wanted something very simple. And when I found a little bit of background out about Melvin, there was no way we were going to just give him a very simple service," Neil Sherry, the British funeral director in charge of Rector's service, told ITV London News. "I wanted it to be as special as possible."

Though Jowers expected no more than four people, word of Rector's war record reached the American and British Armed Forces. The American Embassy donated a flag to drape over his coffin, and the room filled with servicemen and women and London historians who had never met Rector but wanted to pay their respects to their spiritual brother in arms.

There's more at the link.  I highly recommend clicking over there and reading it in full.

Here's a British news report on MSgt. Rector's funeral.

May MSgt. Rector rest in the peace he earned the hard way.

Peter