You Can't Win

 In a recent competition of the best and brightest of Americas High schoolers, kids demonstrated real genius in developing products with real utility, including adding an ingredient to soap that combats Melanoma. Here's the picture of the 10 winners up on the stage with their medals:

Click to enlarge. Note that most of the winners seem to be Asian. Big surprise. 

Note also that when you're short, and get placed between the 4 tallest people in the picture, you tend to get edged toward the edge of the dias. If you're holding your hands together (never do this!) and try to step back off the cliff, the photog will press the button just as you move, making it look like you're overdue for a bathroom break. Kid #8 probably invented antigravity, but this picture will NEVER adorn his wall without some serious cropping. I wish them all the greatest success and fortune downstream, although I suspect the biggest fortune will be won by someone who figures out how to subliminally compel people to buy his brand of sneakers.

Cynical? Moi?

Green Energy - Nuclear

 The Finns finally got their new nuclear plant turned on to full capacity. Yup, It caused a national disaster. In fact the output from the plant drove the price of electricity in Finland into negative numbers, necessitating throttling back the plant so the rest of national power grid could actually show a profit.

The low, flatt(ish) area on the right is when the reactor was running in test mode. The green circled area is when it went full time on line.

The article also mentions that the plant was 14 years late getting going without mentioning why, exactly, but given that this is almost certainly a government project, I would be surprised if it didn't come in about 2-4 times the estimated time, and 10 times the original estimated cost. 

Usually Reliable Sources - Technology Theft

Today it is being reported by usually reliable sources that the Chinese government has successfully stolen American technology used by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture to manufacture American Process Cheese. 

As is widely known, APC is a by-product of refined petroleum and is produced in large quantities by every refinery in the U.S. The final product is then sold to cheese users like Kraft to make their world famous Mac and Cheese food product in addition to thrifty citizens to help make fake meat burgers palatable. Excess production then goes into the National Strategic Cheese Reserve located in a large complex of refrigerated warehouses in Wisconsin. 

The Chinese have pilfered this technology, and are using it to produce cheese, under the name of Chinese Process Cheese, which will be used to alleviate impending food shortages being brought on by the Russian war in Ukraine which is expected to severely impact the global production of wheat and fertilizer.

Allowing the Chinese to build up a large Cheese Gap in this underhanded manner in unconscionable on President Bidens part and we all need to write him and our elected representatives in Washington and demand that the National Cheese Reserves be opened to alleviate hunger in the United States. Do it now! For the children!

Fun With Headlines - Armaments

 Here's one that's going around: From WND:

China rocks the world with missile that circled globe before dropping on target.

OK kiddies, here's a clue. Go on Wickipedia, and look up "Silbervogel" which the Nazis looked into back in 1942 as a method to bomb the U.S. by traveling at hypersonic speeds, bouncing off the stratosphere several times, and landing in Japan.

Terrifying new superweapon, indeed. Here's a bit more on that. Seems the thing still needs a bit of work:

The test went like this: China launched a rocket carrying what is known as a hypersonic glide vehicle. The missile circled the earth in a low orbit toward its target, which it missed by roughly 25 miles.

Notwithstanding that close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons, 25 miles is generally considered a miss in the nuclear weapons department.

Science Marches Onward! - Alcohol!

 For a change, here's some news about alcohol that doesn't involve burning it. Seems this fellow has come up with a way to turn alcoholic beverages into something resembling ice cream, or at least soft serve.

Yeah, I know, the purists among us will denounce this as alcohol abuse, especially as it seems to work about as well with single malt Scotch as it does with beer of any sort. The extremes though probably are alcohol abuse on the one end of that spectrum, and reportedly abuse of the consumer on the other, so if you but one of his machines (about $6000-$7000) don't pour in either Glenfiddich or Coors Lite.

Science Marches Onward - Gene Editing

Here is a link to an article in the New York Times on the state of the art in genetics that's lengthy, but well worth reading.
Imagine you could make a genetically transmitted trait super-dominant. The example here was to make all offspring of a batch of mosquitoes male. How long before the entire colony is wiped out? The answer is not very long if the bug is a fast-reproducing type, but in any case extinction will happen eventually since the trait is always passed along. Super-dominant, see?

The researcher is looking at the malaria-carrying mosquito as that is a clear and present threat. The opposition to wiping the little bugger out is irrational, but surprisingly strong. It seems to be coming from the same sort of anti-vaxers who travel from village to village in Pakistan, checking all the children and cutting off any arms that show signs of a smallpox vaccination.

Science Marches Onward

Mice have been given "night vision" by injecting nano particles into their eyeballs. This works in the near infrared and persists for some 10 weeks. Rumor has it it helps red color blindness as well.

Also we now have yeasts that produce the cannaboids (sp?) found in pot. Not only that but there are a bunch of these and depending on how you treat the yeasts, you can get all the ones we know about and some we haven't seen before. No telling what the new ones do but there's a near limitless supply of hippies out there who will happily volunteer to try the stuff and tell you what happened.

One company says it has modified yeasts to produce opioids as well which would have a major impact on the drug biz as opium and its relatives might now be produced directly in beer brewing carboys in peoples basements, eliminating the growing and shipping business which accounts for most of the expense of production.

Science Marches Onward

News is now out that scientists* have genetically modified some chickens to produce anti-viral and anti-cancer chemicals in the whites of their eggs. Great news that, potentially lowering the cost of producing the drugs.

OK now all you gene boffins: Let's have some eggs containing cholesterol reducing drugs so my bacon and eggs breakfast will not only taste great, but will leave me healthier. And don't stop at modifying the chickens, get to work on the pigs as well. Tack some life-extending hormones into the bacon and there we are.

Before taking this to the market, perhaps they should look in to some modifications to the eggs, you know like coloring the shells. White for basic eggs, brown to designate the anti-viral infused ones, green for the THC infused versions**, and maybe red or pink for the ones containing opioids. No word yet as to how this might affect the meat. Who knows, maybe Tijuana Fried Chicken will challenge the Kentucky version.

*Mad Scientists of course, but they don't like to advertise this.

**You know it's coming.

Flat Earth Conference In Denver

This should be interesting if only for the entertainment value. Still, there is probably something to be learned from the persuasion talents that drive this group.

Meantime, I picked this T-shirt up at the Science Fiction con last weekend.

Having worked a good while in the aerospace biz, I have a good deal more faith in the conventional viewpoint.

Ammo Comparisons

The folks at Ammo to go sent me an e-mail with links to their ammo testing results. The available data includes gel penetration, bullet weight, price/round, Average MV for the test quantity, and other technical information. Some people care a great deal more than others about the quality of the doom they throw about so here's the place to start.

I was impressed by the variety of results with MV's ranging from the mid 900's to the low 1200's and gel penetration ranging from 12 to 24". One would think that 12" would suffice for most threats and that one also featured sub-fragmentation that made the wound cavity look like an H.E. round had gone off in it. If you expect to face acid spitting near unkillable aliens, this may be the stuff for you despite the $2.50/rnd price tag.

I shoot cardboard targets along with the occasional steel popper or plate with arthritic hands so I look for something with a middling weight and modest velocity. I also use the ammo in a pistol caliber carbine at greater ranges than the pistol so getting a velocity boost from the carbine is a plus. Alas, that latter bit of info is not usually extracted. The last batch of ammo I tested was a "training and defense" setup that featured some very fast powder as witness the minimal difference in MV between the pistol and the rifle of 100-150 fps as I remember. That stuff would likely work very well in compact guns with the fast burn time offsetting the minimal time the bullet spends in the barrel. Some of my hand loads have shown as much as 300 fps velocity improvement. Blazer ammo w/180gr bullet is rated to 1000 fps from some mythological test pistol, and delivers 1400 fps from my carbine. Nice jump. Impressive muzzle flash from the pistol too, I bet.

Anyway, here's some links to their test results which feature sub-links to more detailed information, including pricing:

You can see our results for each caliber at the following pages:

9mm: https://www.ammunitiontogo.com/index.php/cName/pistol-ammo-9mm#gel-test

45 ACP: https://www.ammunitiontogo.com/index.php/cName/pistol-ammo-45-acp#gel-test

40 S&W: https://www.ammunitiontogo.com/index.php/cName/pistol-ammo-40-sw#gel-test

380 ACP: https://www.ammunitiontogo.com/index.php/cName/pistol-ammo-380-auto#gel-test

Hitting any of these links makes available links to several other calibers with most of the popular ones shown. LOTS of information here if you want to compare Blasto DRT defensive ammo to Everyday Range Fodder.

Scientific Progress! Bacon Now Healthier

At least a bit healthier, and for the moment, only in England. I had to look up the word rasher which means one strip or maybe 2 strips of bacon or ham. Thin sliced.

Sorry, still not Kosher or Halal.

Having It Both Ways

A microwave that can warm your pizza AND chill your beer. There's hope for the 21st century after all.

Aluminum Cased Ammo

I have nothing in particular against the stuff, indeed my carbine shoots its smallest groups using Blazer aluminum cased 180 grain ammo. The issue here is that when using this stuff in a carbine, the pressures are higher. As an example I recorded 1400 fps from the above mentioned Blazer, a boost of 250-300 fps over what I'd see from my pistol.

The extra  velocity means extra strain on the cases and for 2 of the 15 I shot last weekend, it was a bit too much.

When this happened I noticed a bright flash from the ejector port and picked up a black powder stain on my index finger. I was pulling the trigger with my middle finger as I'm missing a bit of my trigger finger. Interesting pattern, no?

I was recording all my muzzle velocities but didn't think to note which shots were the ones on the blown out cases. Checking the numbers however I see that all the velocities were very consistent around 1403 fps except for two at 1382 and 1375. So not much loss but noticeable if you're looking.

Japanese Beetles - 2

Took the buoy mentioned below out to the local pond and tossed it in. The anchor line is about 6 feet and to judge by the movement of the buoy the lake is only 3-4 feet deep 20 feet out.

The wind was pretty strong, about 7-10 mph blowing straight in at me so the trap was immediately surrounded by a cloud of bugs. Unfortunately all the usual wildlife was hanging out of the far shore so the beetles slowly blew to the near shore. After an hour or so a lone duck came by to see if I'd feed it. I tossed it a couple of beetles and it quickly found the washed up ones. An hour later the duck and all the bugs were gone. Looks promising so far.

Law Prof Demands Role Play Regulation

A busybody law prof at George Washington U is demanding that the Federal government step in and begin regulating the use of silicone sex dolls.

Saying there’s evidence rape sexbots may significantly increase the chance of rape to real women, the law should “no longer stand by and blindly ignore a major potential problem by doing nothing,” he said in an email to The College Fix.
Sexbots, especially those which can be programmed to act as if they are being raped, and those which act and appear to be young children, are already here and in use, Banzhaf said.
“The obvious first step would be to have hearings and do studies to determine just how serious the threat is, whether there are any real benefits to having sexbots programmed to simulate being raped, and then what if any new laws, regulations, etc. might be appropriate,” he said.

So in the first paragraph he says there's evidence, but in the third, he seemingly refutes this and demands hearings and studies, presumably to gin up the desired evidence, a clarion call for junk science if ever I heard one.

Be interesting to see which lawmakers step up to get positions on the committees investigating the use of sex bots.

Noting that geneticists have discovered some 3 or 4 genes that make dogs friendly, I suspect that a similar number of genes will be discovered that compel people to obsessively try to micromanage other peoples affairs. I nominate Prof Banzhaf as a carrier of these genes. The disorder can be named for any famous person determined to be so afflicted. Ralph Nader or Dianne Feinstein come to mind although the possibility of getting the affliction named Banzhafs Syndrome might be enough to persuade the professor to join the study.

More EPA Fraud

It seems the EPA has been promulgating rules based on less than wonderful data. I'm shocked! Shocked! to hear that a trusted government agency would use dubious data to help justify its existence. And mushroom-like growth.

Toxicologist Albert Donnay says he’s found evidence a 1989 study commissioned by EPA on the health effects of carbon monoxide, which, if true, could call into question 25 years of regulations and billions of dollars on catalytic converters for automobiles.

OTOH I've been pointing out for years that the requirement for catalytic converters was based on the American auto industry's inability to meet the EPAs standards when the Japanese did it  without the use of a converter. The Japs simply designed a cleaner engine, while GM ran to congress and demanded that everyone be required to put a converter on their cars and pay GM a nice royalty for the privilege.

Climate Science Arguments

Scott Adams has a nice piece up on the difficulty of making heads or tails of the climate change debate which covers the bases well, but I think misses a subtle point. I'm going to take a big risk and comment on this early in the morning with only 2 cups of coffee in me.

The climate argument is in reality, 2 questions, one fairly trivial, and the other much weightier in terms of costs and cultural impacts.

 Question 1 is "Does human activity have an impact on the global climate? The answer is a no brainer; Of course it does. No one argues differently. You get the same response to asking if there's Uranium in your drinking water. Any civil engineer will tell you yes, but then go on to explain just how much. That last bit is the important part and contains the answer to the second question.

2. a)How much influence does human activity actually have on the global climate, and b) what, if anything, should be done and c) at what cost?

If you are a hard core climatista, you always ask the first question first, and use the affirmative answer to force your agenda as the answer to the second question without actually having to discuss it. Ralph Nader used this approach successfully against General Motors arguing that the Corvair's suspension system was not up to the standards of say Porsche, and that when the older ones were driven like a Porsche, they spun out, sometimes with fatal consequences. By the time the suit was settled, the Corvair had been upgraded to the point that it was widely called the "poor man's Porsche" but too late and a car that GM marketed as a family economy car was discontinued.

Re: Climate, question 2a: It would appear that human activity has very little impact on the big climate swings which seem to happen on a regular basis whether we're here or not.

 The answer to 2b, what should be done, is answered by 2a, which suggests that not all that much actually needs to be done. Certainly some local areas need to be brought up to code as it were, since the smog from China is detectable here in the US and even the Chinese admit that something urgently needs to be done. We have the technology to burn coal relatively cleanly, and the Chinese could insist that this be implemented in all future coal burning plants and added to the existing ones as opportunity permits.

2c: We have already implemented the most cost-effective solutions like scrubbers on coal plants and conversion to natural gas, and are now debating the need for the less cost effective ones like subsidy hogs wind and solar while pulling off the table the best ones like advanced nuclear as being politically incorrect.

Changing peoples minds is very difficult, but not completely impossible. When conditions get harsh enough, the most hardened greenie will adjust his world view to allow the thermostat to be turned up or at least to toss a few more dried cow chips onto the fire. Perhaps sending some of them to a climate science pilot project installation in northern Saskatchewan, with heat and power supplied by burning freeze dried caribou chips would help.

Believe it or not, the EPA is supposed to evaluate its rules and regulations in terms of costs vs benefits, and keep the impact on the good side of that curve. To date, I've never heard of them actually doing this as forcing regulations on the public is beneficial to the continued growth of the EPA and thus over rides any cost to the public. Trumps appointment of a skeptic to head the EPA may help here but the resistance within the agency will run all the way to the bottom.

Living With The Wild Life

I was out picking dessert from the raspberry patch when my neighbors son called to my attention this piece of high density housing that had sprung up in the lilac bush:

Click to embiggen. You can see one of the residents on the twig next to the entry hole and several more just inside. The entry hole is about 1-1/2" in diameter. I found one of these a few years ago in the early fall and brought it home as all the wasps had died. Cut it open to see how it was built and found that it consists of several stories of honeycomb layers, small ones on the upper and lower ends and big ones in the middle. No honey, just cells. The wasps seem to die off in the fall and leave the nest empty. Not sure if the nest typically survives over the winter but I don't think so.

UPDATE: These are Bald Faced Hornets, an invasive species but considered beneficial as long as you don't get into territorial disputes with them. They eat other insects, specializing in yellowjackets, but will switch to pollen if that food supply dries up. Most of the nest dies over winter but a few eggs survive to start the hive the next year.

Big boys, about 3/4 to 1 in long.

Gun Suicides

Here's a link to an article that has been published in the American Journal of Headology or some such addressing the issue of gun-based suicides. Namely the author thinks we should try to reduce this number. He's exactly wrong, and here's why.

His paper states that of the some 33,500 gun deaths in 2014, some 21000 of these were suicides. He proposes several rather nonsensical approaches to the problem, all of which would have the ultimate effect of disarming the potential victims of hoodlums.

First off people off themselves because they're depressed. They're depressed right now on account of a morbid economy, increasing crime rates, an upsurge in terrorism, and limited real prospects for improvement. Address this, and the suicide rate goes down. The president could make a big dent in this by addressing the American people, apologizing for 7 years of mismanagement, and announcing his early retirement to Indonesia. This won't happen.

Plan B would be for the government to subsidize the soft Nylon rope industry and begin a series of PSA's proclaiming the comfort this material imparts as it tightens around ones neck. An increase in self hangings would of course be offset by a decrease in gun suicides.

Plan C is a simple extension of the nationalized health care we're getting now. Make the Flagon With The Dragon(tm) (single dose) available OTC and cover it with your Obamacare card. Limit one per customer, and on-site use required. Leave photo ID with the pharmacist, step into the vestibule with your 5 minute no-energy drink, and 5 minutes later the trap door deposits your mortal remains into the dumpster out back.  I hear requiring a photo ID is now racist.

 Ah but the unforeseen consequences:

Let's assume that plan B and/or C works to the maximum extent possible and the gun suicide rate drops to Japanese levels, near zero. This means that the overall gun death rate drops to about 9000/year. This cuts our gun death rate to something near that of Belgium and makes us look like one of the most peaceable countries in the world. This also makes it very difficult to argue for any more gun control although the hair-shirt extremists will continue on with lines like "Even one is too many!" The anti-gun pols will be reduced to admitting that the real reason they want guns banned is because they fear pissed off constituents. They will however be easier to ignore.

Snow Mold

I've never seen this before and of course when I first saw it, I didn't have a camera with me. Seems when you get a heavy wet snow followed by very slow melting, this stuff forms underneath.

This patch was in a school yard and from a distance it looked like a solid layer of frost about 5 ft by 15 ft. The picture above was taken a week later and not much remained. Earlier there were very thin fibers with pepper grain sized bulbs on top, presumably spore packets. I'm told it kills the grass. In my yard it seems to be attacking the crabgrass primarily so I'll say it's not all bad.

The white part started off slimy but dried out and became cobwebby later. Odd stuff.