Good Monday to you all and I hope you had a happy Mother's day. (Ok, for those of us who are guys, if we survived without major damage we're in luck.) For me, it was a couple movies, a play, skipping fighter practice, and generally getting up with the baby. (And sleeping a bit in the recliner, for which my back may not forgive me.)

The Play was Alice in Wonderland. I want to congratulate Bob Jones of Madison Alabama for a wonderful play. My son had a relatively obscure part manning a projector under the stage, though he also helped in building the set. I'm glad he is learning a skill in high school.


Movie Reviews: We rented Looper and went to Iron Man 3.

Loopers: I like the concept of a time travel flick. This one is flawed.

What the F' is this gun? Can they not find guns in 2030? They have flying motorcycles, but ...

1) Don't kill people in the future, all crime is solved....
(except the story hinges on a murder and burning a house down... in the future.)

2) Don't kill Loopers in the past, it changes the future. (Except maiming the shit out of them doesn't apparently have any effects until the most recent 10 seconds.)

3) Killing yourself or dying stupidly causes a restart on the loop, except when it doesn't.

There was a very cool moment when our hero or villain saves his memories of a past that no longer exists... or changes something. It seems very important, except it stops being important and has no further impact on the story. I guess it was the only way the hero could shoot the woman in the end...but it frankly didn't get enough explanation for me to figure out before now.

Loopers - sucks. Don't watch it. Maybe 1 star in 5 or something. I wish I had drunk more beer before the 1/2 way point. I left and went to work on dishes.

Iron Man 3: This is obviously the 4th story featuring Iron Man. If you have missed any of the previous stories, go back and watch before you get to this one. Oddly enough, this is the story where he finally breaks down and tries to figure out where he is going.

The Mandarin. ARRRGH!!!  Ok, all throughout I thought - "This guy talks like a loony liberal leftist from a freaking demonstration. He plays all the tropes without a single worthwhile concept." Pissed me off. (Turns out, it wasn't supposed to be so obvious, but it was part of the plot.)

Iron Man Mark 42: When they become available for the general public...wait for the upgrade. This is the freaking Windows 2000 of the armor world. The final battle felt like Tony was using 20 suits of Nerf armor and the villain had somehow picked up the "Iconic Villain Slaying Sword" the hero was supposed to have. Hated the final battle
 
That said, this is easily the best Iron Man movie. Easily. I loved 1 and was ok with 2.Avengers was amazing, of course, but this was a movie. It was long, it had character development, and you got to know the villains and the heroes. It had surprises and it wasn't all "pow" "biff" "bam"

Iron Man 3: If you don't see this movie, there will be no point in having a conversation with you in the future.

Beer : Tried a Milk Stout - Left Hand Nitro. nice beer. Really liked it. So far, I love Left Hand Brewery.

Look at that nice head... I assume they shook the bottle first, I've poured four of them without generating a cm of head.

Look, if you've never had a milk stout, try one. Different. You may hate it, you may love it. I can't tell you what you will think, but frankly, they are dark and creamy and full of flavor. Enough palate nonsense for two beers at least. As a milk stout, the only crime of a milk stout is being thin and weak. I've had a few of those. Brewers look at the library paste they are supposed to be putting in a bottle and think, "Gosh, we should water this down with a couple pale ales so that folks will drink it." *WRONG* If it forms much of a head, then they watered it down. Milk stouts have a tiny, thin, foam that doesn't last. It has a mild hop aroma. it has a strong sweetness that overpowers the malt flavor - but you can smell the chocolate malt they could dump on top of all that lactose sweetness. Tastes sweet with coffee and dirt (chocolate). Good stuff. Oh, the Nitro is 6% alcohol, so it'll give you a wallop. Might should start at the next one down...but damn it was good.

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I want to point out first that these people aren't nuts, but they are technology geeks. There are a good number of people who love 3-D printing, laser cutters, fab machines.They also do some hacking, some EMP, and a good bit of random art projects. I think they have a lot of LAN parties as well. Frankly, I've been over to the local group a total of twice, but a good friend of mine donated his laser and has built a couple of fabs.

Why? I'm not sure I can answer this for you. Either the idea of playing with a 3D printer is worth a couple nights out of your week, or you go fishing. Huntsville is a pretty tech-savvy town, but I expect that most cities over 100,000 people support one or more "Makers" groups. Heck, I want to play just to cut steampunk gears. (Using the laser, you can cut them out of a vinyl plastic material or plywood and they don't weigh like brass. A good paint job (or three) and they look like well-used sprockets. 

Not to drift too far afield, I was bringing them up to discuss this marvel.

The 3D-printed gun that Cody Wilson calls the "Liberator." Click to enlarge. (Credit: Michael Thad Carter for Forbes)

A single-shot lexan pistol is not going to win a gunfight, but it could be built, easily, in one of those 3D printers. Go ahead and ban the design. Go ahead and ban trading in mp3s and japanese anime while you're at it. The design is out there. It isn't an assault weapon, but really, nothing sold in the US is, despite the national media. (Oh, the M16's that our army sells to Mexico's army are assault weapons...the fact that those weapons end up on the streets of Mexico City is a big issue...but their issue, not ours.) What is the issue is that this is a single summer's work from an amature. Get a gun professional and a materials scientist together for 6 months and I expect the results will look a lot like a .38 special.

In 10 years, I expect the printable materials will include high temperature ceramics and metals, the printing materials will be better than 90% of the materials currently used on handguns. With the exception of the barrel, I expect that most towns could start an assembly line of automatic weapons. This isn't to suggest that we ban ... something... or make anything illegal, but we really need to discuss the future of technology. "False shortages," usually due to government interference, are simply not going to affect the rate of distribution to the populace.

My dad used to tell me stories about putting together cars in the barn on his dad's farm. In the 50's, the government didn't control much about cars and couldn't mandate headlights, much less seatbelts. Now days, the government is happy to restrict everything about cars, guns, or medicine. 99.9% of that is for the good, but those 50 years of regulation may be coming to an end. << MORE >>

A month before my second birthday, man landed on the moon. Yes, I know some people argue that it was faked, but unlike so much science today, it wasn't. There is an app that I can't access here -

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/01/experience-18-minutes-of-world-history-as-if-you-were-there-landing-on-the-moon/

that lets you experience the landing. A shorter, film version, is below. The one below is plenty tense to me. There is also a couple sims out there that let you try to land yourself.

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

I'm not bothering to embed the codes, lazy day.

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As I was pointing out to a fellow scientist - this isn't a "Mad Science Project" it is a "Creative Resource Redistribution Device." Yeah, it is part of my mad science street-CRReD. Give me your money or I'll ... destroy the world? Perhaps, at least the tri-state area. hey, Dr. Doofensmirts is my hero. (I want a nemesis.)

Ok, so the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow are thinking on some CRRDs. Something unique for D*Con. There was a concept for a real Science Faire, but ... well... there are too many weirdos who show up. I'll not have someone torturing puppies and calling it a science project for my show.I may discuss some real work, but I've got a lot of limitations on that. I can talk in broad terms about some associated particle detection devices, neutron generation and detection, real science.

So I guess I have a couple questions for the audience. Mainly: What do you want to see? I think Dr. DNA, Granade, and myself can talk about "Failures in science" a bit. I'd like to rain on some billion dollar budget failures that we have lauded in the past. (No, I won't go on a Global Warming rant, there is a difference between science failures and fraud.) Solar power, wind power, wave power - those aren't science failures. The attempts to model the future of temperature is laudable...if poorly done. Sucking a billion dollars out of public coffers and giving it to your friends is fraud.

A great example is the National Ignition Facility, which I love, but which does not produce what it was designed to do. Of course, neither does the Princeton Tokamak or frankly any other fusion facility. Heck, funny story. A young cadet performed a huge study of a neutron detector to get it properly calibrated to measure output at a fusion facility I shall not name. Afterwards, (as the second half of her senior thesis) she compared her calibration to actual results at the fusion facility. Weirdly enough, the very carefully calibrated detector showed a whole lot of ZERO at the facility. (Much less than their internal and apparently badly uncalibrated system.) Apparently, their system detected the presence of electricity in the detector circuits, not neutrons in the lab.She had no idea why her detector "decided not to measure" that day. ... Yeah. Poor kid. At least one of the fusion experiments the government is pouring money into is producing less neutrons than the average banana. 

You know what is really sad? I was trying to get my PhD in fusion. Can you imagine spending your life in that field? That is like a PhD in Bigfoot spotting and UFO analysis, only it doesn't play as well for Reality TV.

Ya know, I think that is what we'll do this year. Science Track, the reality TV Show!!! (I'm sure I'm crazy now.)

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I'd like to talk about emotions today, because a lot of people don't understand them. As a scientist and engineer (yes, both) I study everything. What the heck are these "emotions." First off, let me tell you what they are not. There is no background environment for emotion. In other words, if the tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it... nobody cares either. If you feel happy, it isn't because the background level of H+ is high, it is because your mind/body interaction decided on happy.

But not to focus on "simples." If you feel that you should wear a nice outfit to work you have made a decision. It is actually an intellectual decision. You have weighed factors such as Dress Code, Peer Approval, Comfort, Desire to Display Status, and built a matrix. Then you weighted each of the factors - dress code is important, so x2, Peer approval is about the same as comfort, maybe status gets a X3 when you know you will see the boss... I don't control your weighting factors, but maybe you don't either. In the end, you build a matrix with these values, for each of your outfits on the bottom, and the ranking of each outfit depending on the weight factors across the top. Then you EMOTIONALLY adjust each of the weight factors. In the end, you chose an outfit. You FELT like wearing the suit on Tuesday. You FELT like wearing jeans on Friday.

Ok, so picking out clothing is actually a complicated intellectual endeavor, but so is everything. Emotions are how we determine our responses to complex inputs. Which is why Geeks exist. Why are geeks poor at social interaction when they have the same ability to use emotions as everyone else? Because most of us in the science fields have a "better" use for our emotions.

You have seen me make a number of predictions and discussions on the blog. I have spend my life applying the emotional matrix to scientific problems. Our minds walk down the mathematical paths, but figuring out which path to travel is a guess. Our history, thousands of hours of research, tens of thousands of hours of experience, and our specific knowledge from the problem at hand suggests multiple solutions. I am rarely given a problem with only one solution, often the problem has dozens, but I can usually FEEL which solution is going to give the better answer.I can feel when a project is doomed, because people are choosing low probability of success options. I can feel when a project is BS because the science/politics ratio crosses 1. It basically feels (to me) like a bad relationship.One side is doing all the romancing, the other side is reading porn on the internet.

Yes, any scientist could cure his lack of social skills with a bit of study, but frankly the insanity of the "normal" people make it hard. People make all sorts of decisions with ... poor ... understanding of the reasons they are making them. People are frequently irrational, showing out, uneducated, or simply unintelligent.Trusting people usually ends up biting you in the ass. It is easier to satisfy your emotional needs with an interesting scientific problem than to deal with people.

So, I've been married - twice - and still trying to make the second one work. The strains of kids in college, high school, and diapers doesn't help. (Or the fact that I tend to marry crazy women, something I've had to come to grips with.) I'm still trying to raise my current baby right. How much should she depend on those weird "social" emotions, that women speak so highly of. (And then weirdly complain about, as if society was stuffing those emotions down their throats.) My older daughter appears to have escaped, I may ask her advice. Despite the fact that she is an artist, she appears to be sane. Maybe some level of geeky-ness helps.

In any case, here is a picture of my bundle of joy. She decided to get up at 3 am last night, she looks none the worse for wear. I think I do: wide staring eyes, exhausted. (oh, thats Pinky Bear, not me laying there dead on the floor, I guess I'm not that stylishly dressed.)


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Dr. Woozley warned me Friday that there was a high probability for a huge CME - thats a coronal mass ejection - over the weekend. A CME is when the sun throws off a chunk of hot gas, possibly weighing more than a planet, and the temperature is enough to blow out electronics in space and mess up the magnetic field enough blow out electronics on the ground. This really is in my job description, so I went to work. I didn't report anything on here for various reasons, but after some research, I didn't worry as much as he did.

Why? Well, lets take a look at http://www.solarham.net/ I recommend everyone take a look at the sun everyday, and since I like my eyeballs, I use the web instead. Right off the top their x-class flare warning was 15%. (big worry) I looked at it and guessed about half that, but since the CME was hiding behind the sun, I went ahead and took their numbers. Ok, better than 1 in 10 of a big event. So, How big? I looked at the previous events, some previous years, and compared some magnetic field strengths, and decided that an X-class wasn't going to top 3 on my scale. (A Carrington event is an 11, but the usual number we use for comparison is the October 89 event, a solid 9.)

Ok, so a 3 on my scale can shift the Kp index pretty solidly a few points, if we can get Kp above 5, then we are set for a badass geomagnetic storm. Something we would need to be very concerned about. I checked the current Kp... and it was 1. Well, a 3 storm and a 1 Kp ... might make it to 4 Kp. One storm just doesn't really affect the Kp very much, usually a set of storms, a week of bad space weather... it just didn't look like it. Ok, so no geomagnetic storm.

How about a solar storm? Below is a picture of the sun during the Bastille Day solar event. A classic 3 on the Hawk-scale.





Next is a picture of the sun today.


Now, I'll agree that the sun's magnetogram LOOKS like a butterfly chart. With a couple high-density regions (1723) which could produce a particle-rich event. But it just doesn't have the "feel" of the hot sun of the 89 or 2001-2003 time period.

Current sun magnetic field diagram:

This is a butterfly chart:

AND, since solar maximum is ON NOW, any major solar storm this cycle produces will be produced in the next two or three years. But... the sun isn't selling me on a major storm. I decided that while there was a possibility, I'd say it wasn't going to happen at sufficient energies to cause a major worry.

Now, there was a solar event which did produce a good amount of protons and Kp in the 4 region. There is evidence on the far side that we could see more of these and the geomagnetic field could get a good charge. If it keeps up or gets worse, I'll be in touch.

However, the aurora in Alaska is lovely, I wish I were up there this week.

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Hard to be light-hearted when a tyrant is threatening to send a nuclear weapon. There are a lot of places he could send it, I suppose I'm personally safe, but I like Japan, Seattle, ... I don't particularly like LA, but I don't think it deserves to be blown away.


Picture: A view of Hiroshima, one month after the US dropped an atomic bomb on it.


Frankly, there is a lot of damage a small fission weapon could do in knowledgable hands. I guess we are lucky that the losers in NK don't have any of those hands. I also suspect that this is all a ploy to get the Venerable Senator and Secretary of State J. F. Kerry to send them more money. Kerry doesn't really care about solutions, he isn't that type. He just wants to make sure that nothing interesting happens on his watch. If that costs a billion or so, it isn't important to him.

Picture: JFK testifying before the Senate that we need a "less militaristic foreign policy."

Understand that no doing something today is worse than making the wrong choice. NK, today, has one or more nukes that probably can't be missile launched and a handful of missiles capable of reaching our shores. In four years, maybe five, they will have a dozen weapons and twice that many missiles. How many will we have to stop? All of them, of course. A dozen weapons could devastate the West Coast, Japan, and possibly strategic locations. If four years of negotiations get China on their side, we might face a retaliatory strike of over a hundred weapons. What if Iran manages to improve its rockets and NK, China, and Iran become the new Axis, reaching into South America for further allies. Kerry could be the man who decides the shape of WW III. It isn't a comforting thought.

Given that today is Euler's birthday, we should celebrate with a Venn Diagram of some sort. I can't think of one but it should show that WW III would be caused by the intersection of US weakness in response to threats and the ever growing desire of failed regimes to steal more money from us in order to prop up their power for a few more years.

 

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Alabama Phoenix Festival - May 24 - 26 - Birmingham Alabama.

I know some of my friends will be here, so I may go ahead and show up. I originally was going to be in Alaska, but once that trip was canceled, I was happy to help out. They got me signed up for all sorts of things -some panels, some games, maybe a show, but now I'm apparently down to running one game when the schedule permits, probably not Saturday. Lets be honest, at this point I'd rather not go. If I wasn't going to be hanging out with Zen... I might not bother. There is an SCA event that weekend and I'd rather cook breakfast for 200 people than be bored in a hotel.

If somebody is going and has a decent reason I should be there, ping me or something. Otherwise I think I'll make other plans. I had a good time at SCI FI SUMMER CON Atlanta, so maybe I'll try them again. Worth thinking about.



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Lasers on Ships - This is lovely.

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