The Ministry of Minor Perfidy

Ministers

Minister Emeritus

Perfidious Advertising

Perfidious Merchandise

Most recent entries

• Trafficking in Your Baby
• Galileo Would Totally S*** a Brick
• Death Takes a Holiday
• A trenchant question, searching for an answer
• I suppose this should make me sad
• Bread Pr0ns
• Anna, damn ‘er!
• Carnival of the Recipes #159
• Low Blows
• Flame On!
• I Made This
• A good parallel with blogging, actually
• Saved from certain doom
• A new low, or high, depending on how you look at it
• Hangover Food for Ambitious Drunkards

Categories

• No Category
• Category Offsets
• Crazy Foreigners
• Darwin Award Contender
• FakeBlogging
• Entertainment
• Filthy Lucre
• Holy Shit!
• It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell
• Just So You Know
• Lead Pipe Cruelty
• NaNoWriMo
• Music Wonkery
• Partisan Politics
• Perfidy
• Perfidy Attacks
• Perfidy Responds
• That Buck Rogers Stuff
• The Miracle of Science
• Unmitigated Gall
• War

Monthly Archives

• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006
• August 2006
• July 2006
• June 2006
• May 2006
• April 2006
• March 2006
• February 2006
• January 2006
• December 2005
• November 2005
• October 2005
• September 2005
• August 2005
• July 2005
• June 2005
• May 2005
• April 2005
• March 2005
• February 2005
• January 2005
• December 2004
• November 2004
• October 2004
• September 2004
• August 2004
• July 2004
• June 2004
• May 2004
• April 2004
• March 2004
• February 2004
• January 2004
• December 2003
• November 2003
• October 2003
• September 2003
• August 2003
• July 2003
• June 2003
• May 2003
• April 2003
• March 2003
• Complete Archives
• Category Archives

Syndicate

• RSS 1.0
• RSS 2.0
• Atom

Join our Mailing List

Calendar Thingy

That Buck Rogers Stuff

Thursday, August 09, 2007

For when the zombies come

Intrepid engineers - both amateur and professional - have come up with some prototype portable laser weaponry for when the zombies come.  And one of these projects is even one you can build in your own home workshop.

The Precious

At around 2:00 yesterday afternoon, I was Ralphie on Christmas morning discovering that he had not gotten an official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle, but instead a Barrett M82A1M .50 cal semi-automatic rifle with the lengthened accessory rail, rear grip and monopod socket.  And ten boxes of ammo and a range pass.

Why was I so happy? 

Because I had gotten home and after some minor difficulties gotten my precious iPhone hooked up, activated, and synced. 

Thanks to existing contractual obligations, the unreasoning greed of auto mechanics and the Federal government, and a wife who despite her manifold virtue was dubious of the clear and obvious need for my iPhone purchase I was not one of the geeks who waited in line on June 29th for an opening day iPhone.  Instead, I was a geek who had to wait six weeks like a sucker, while review after glorious review only whetted my appetite and turned the screws on the rack of my anticipation.

But having it in my sweaty palms, I find (almost to my surprise, despite having actually wasted a lunch hour in a pilgrimage to the local Apple store to fondle one) that the iPhone actually does live up to the hype.  It is literally and figuratively the Jesus phone.

I got the 8GB version, figuring that more is better in the storage department.  I loaded up almost four hundred songs, a movie, three tv shows, a complete audio book college course on the Crusades, a hundred pics of the Buckethead clan – and I still have 4.3 GB left.  Plenty of storage.

As for performance, playing with the iPhone I remembered a quote I read once from Jonathan Ives, the design guru at Apple – “when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.” It is staggering, after witnessing the ease of use and careful attention to detail embodied in the iPhone, to realize that in decades of cell phone design evolution, no one had ever come within a country mile of getting it right until now.  Other phones are sun-warmed piles of dung compared to the glory of this phone.

I had a decent phone – a Motorola Razr.  I appreciated above all its slenderness – if I was going to carry around a phone all the time, I might as well have one that was unobtrusive.  For dialing numbers and talking to people, it was certainly adequate.  I could press and hold “2” to talk to Mrs. Buckethead.  But if I needed to look up another number from my contacts, I was screwed.  Can’t do but one thing at a time.

Adding contacts was nightmarish, typing on the tiny number pad and being prompted at each change.  Using the internet was a painful and expensive joke.  The only function other than talking that I used at all regularly was the calculator.

Now I realize that the Razr was not a smart phone.  But friends of mine have had smart phones, and I’ve played with them, and they are pretty much just as user hostile as mine was – just user hostile over a broader range of functionality.

In the last 24 hours or so, I’ve:

• Watched a movie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
• Watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force (“Circus”) and the Soup.
• Gotten and replied to dozens of emails
• Talked to my mom
• Read many articles on the internets, including this one
• Listened to lots of Johnny Cash
• Consulted the weather in several cities
• Used the map function to locate stuff, and navigate there
• Set the timer for no good reason
• And, gotten Mrs. Buckethead angry for setting her personalized ringtone to “bark”

In any given 24 hour period in the last decade or so, I might have used a computer to accomplish most if not all of those tasks.  But forty pounds of computer equipment does not travel well, and the wireless router in my office does not reach several miles to the nearest town – let alone fit comfortably in your pocket.

The stunning thing is that all of these tasks were accomplished gracefully, easily, even joyfully.  I’ve found myself just switching between applications to watch the animations.  I am a techwriter by trade, so it is perhaps disturbing to realize that this thing does not need a manual.  It is that intuitive – nothing is arcane, obscure or clearly not designed to be used by humans. 

Which makes you want to use all the various thingies and gadgets, because they are flat out fun to use.  And so well designed, that even this website looks better on the iPhone than it does on a 24” monitor on my desk.  (It also makes you crave more applications.) I knew how to access and use most of the applications on my Motorola phone, I just didn’t use them because it was entirely too much of a pain in the ass to actually use them. 

All other phones are broken, and this one is not.  And of the two major worries that many had – the keyboard and the battery life – I have no complaints on either score.  I’m already getting pretty fast on the typing, and I’m just about to recharge it for the first time. 

This is one kick ass, highly enslickened, gorgeous piece of technological gimcrackery.  I recommend it highly. 

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Stephen Colbert Gets It

Friday, July 20, 2007

Happy Moon Conquest Day, 2007!

NASA’s site commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Apollo landing read, “On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a human first set foot on another celestial body.”

But the NASA text, and other sources, typically ignore one important and obvious detail:

We CONQUERED it!

The British created a world spanning empire through the simple expedient of planting the Union Jack on soil inhabited by wogs who didn’t know that flags meant ownership.  Benighted natives woke to British officers telling them that they now lived in the British Empire.  When they disputed this, the officers merely pointed at the flag and said, “See, there’s the flag.  England.” And when they continued to disagree, there was always the Maxim gun.  In keeping with this grand tradition of symbolic declaration strecthing back millenia (but without getting too into the semiotics of possession) our guy put our flag up there- so it’s ours!  Happily for the granola crunchy set, there were no Lunar aborigines that needed to be convinced more… strenuously.

Today is the 38th anniversary of that glorious event, when not just homo sapiens in general, but specifically God-fearing Amurricans left the cradle of Earth to begin the conquest of heaven.  We sent men into space on a tower of fire, backed with nothing more than whiz-wheels, slide-rulers, and less computing power than my car’s fuel injector.  A relatively modest start, some might say - the Moon being low-hanging fruit, solar system wise - but it was a start nonetheless on the long road to interstellar domination.

And someday, when Old Glory waves on 10,000 worlds and our mighty fleets cruise the galaxy, our fair descendants will look back at the Moon and Apollo as the start of it all.  The only question is how they’ll fit all those stars on the flag.

Huzzah!  Huzzah!  For the bonnie striped flag borne by a single moon!

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Waiting is painful

By now, even headhunters in the highlands of New Guinea are aware that the Jesus Phone from Apple will be released on the 29th of this month.  But I will have to wait a little longer to get my hands on my own personal iPhone.  My current two year contract does not expire until July 17th, and I must wait until it does before starting a new one.  Damn, damn, damn.  Mrs. Buckethead is highly dubious of my intentions to get a new phone, especially since it costs half a grand.  I have a perfectly good Motorola Razr, she says, and she’s right.  But the Razr doesn’t have that touchscreen magic.  It doesn’t have the preternaturally slick interface that can only come from Apple.  It doesn’t have WiFi.  I want an iPhone so bad I can taste it. 

Monday, June 04, 2007

Indian Rope Trick?

It seems that Liftport, the space elevator company, is running into some serious trouble - which bodes ill for both efforts to build a beanstalk, and for friend of the Ministry Brian.  Here’s hoping that they get it together.  I want to ride a train to space.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

The purity of essence of our precious category tags

Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource.  The category tag.  In this, of course, he is completely wrong.  Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags.  And I would have been right.  But that wasn’t the point.  I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye. 

Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have.  And, when I have a free moment, I’ll add some new categories, and add them to this post.

So there.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Riding Rockets, by Mike Mullane

Riding Rockets, Mike Mullane

I’m sure this book was all the rage on boyblogs when it first got published. Buckethead likes to tease me like he’s from Planet Arrested Development, but I know he’s not that bad. He’s not an astronaut and lacks The Right Stuff. Being an astronaut either takes being a special kind of pig or else a really ginormous brain. Since we are neither, Buckethead and I will have to stay grounded on earth.

As for Mike Mullane, USAF Ret., he’s got IT. The Right Stuff. The Goods. The cojones. That “cocky bastard something” gives him the gumption to walk up to Bo Derek on a beach and start basically hitting on her in front of her husband. Same again with putting his arm around Christie Brinkley at the Super Bowl. He’s got the golden wings of an astronaut. The book is about his journey into space. THREE TIMES. That’s three more times than the rest of us yahoos.

More than being an insider’s take on becoming an astronaut or about NASA, I was fascinated by his perspective on the Challenger disaster and the lessons learned from it as an organization. While I would love to go to Mars and the Moon, I’m not sure how I will feel about being vaporized in space. Nor do I feel like I’d survive the space vomit syndrome that’s common up there. When I was a kid, I’d throw up in the car after about 10 minutes, before my pop could even get onto the PA Turnpike. (We lived right next to an exit.) I doubt I’d pass the Vomit Comet or the 15-minute enema. (And that duration was **VOLUNTARY**)

This guy isn’t some saintly man going up against The Big Organization in some David and Goliath story. Even though he’s completely arrogant, he retains his humility enough to tell you that he went to see a shrink and buckled while fighting the organization and it’s mercurial and cryptic managers. I could never work for guys like Young. I’m too chatty and their stony silence and inability to look you in the eye would bug the crap out of me. I must not want to go into space that badly. But I do like to blow things up and things that go boom.

One day, I will be in Florida to watch a rocket launch. I’m going to make one of my old skating buddies fulfill his promise of letting me watch a launch from his house in Cocoa Beach. He and his wife are both NASA rocket engineers. It’s their life’s work. How lucky they are to be a part of greatness.

If you’re a guy, DON’T READ THIS BOOK. You’ll find out how much of a man you ain’t. (Ross, being Canadian, isn’t even a contender.)

Monday, May 07, 2007

Son of Cold Fusion

It looks like Cold Fusion is returning from the outer darkness of fringe science, where it had been condemned by legions of right thinking scientists from 1989 on.  Some pointy-heads at the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego have achieved a reproducible sort of room temperature fusion:

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder from serious nuclear physicists since 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were unable to substantiate their sensational claims that deuterium nuclei could be forced to fuse and release excess energy at room temperature. Spawar researchers apparently kept the faith, however, and continued to refine the procedure by experimenting with new fusionable materials.

Szpak and Boss now claim to have succeeded at last by coating a thin wire with palladium and deuterium, then subjected it to magnetic and electric fields. The researchers have offered plastic films called CR-39 detectors as evidence that charged particles have emerging from their reaction experiments.

The Spawar method shows promise, particularly in terms of being easily reproduced and verified by other institutions. Such verification is essential to widespread acceptance of the apparent breakthrough, an important precursor to scientists receiving the necessary funding to fuel additional research in the field.

Maybe we will have our Mr. Fusion after all.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Friendly Reminder

Just a note to remind the Ministry’s loyal reader...dammit, readers...readers... that we are only three months away from Moon Conquest Day. 

I hope everyone can take some time out and reflect on the stellar travellers who we have lost, commemorate America’s first off-planet adventure, and celebrate telling the Russians to suck it.  “It” being our collective wang which, given its interplanetary reach, is among the largest on our world.

And let’s think about what symbol we can add to the flag to represent the moon.  If states are stars, what can the moon be?

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

C or Bust!

The more alert of our mostly sessile readership may have noted that astronomers have detected a new extrasolar planet.  We’ve discovered hundreds of extrasolar planets, so why is this one so damned special?  Well, let me tell you.  It’s earthlike.  It’s close.  And it’s in the habitable zone of its star.

Roadtrip!

Well, close in astronomical terms, and for some odd values of “earthlike.” The new planet, Gliese 581c, is about half again as big, and five times as massive as Earth.  The bigdomes are guessing that this would result in a surface gravity somewheres around twice that of Earth.  Which would kill any fat, tall people on a colonization mission.  It’d be worse than Oregon Trail.  For more details on what life might be like on this planet, visit here, here, here, or here.  And get in line behind this guy for tickets:

What might be most significant about this discovery is its implications for the Drake Equation – something we talked about in great depth just a little while ago.  Pretty much as soon as we fired up that fancy new telescope, we discover an earthlike world, right on our doorstep.  That has to be indicative of how common planets like ours are in the galaxy. 

As we learn more about the big universe out there, more of the numbers in the Drake equation are looking to be large.  The Drake eqation can be divided into physical, life, and civilization factors.  All of the physical factors are now almost certain to be large across the galaxy, so there’s no way to minimize your estimates of the number of ETs by saying that there aren’t going to be abodes for life as we know it.  (Of course, they may be many other places amenable to life as we don’t know it.)

As for life, there are two ways that we could get a firmer grasp on how to judge those numbers, and both are within, nearly, our grasp.  Any evidence of life in our solar system would be a strong, but not definitive, clue that life is common in the galaxy.  Europa and Mars are the prime candidates there.  More research along the lines we are pursuing now may give us some answers.  The other way is to increase our capacity to gain information on extrasolar planets, which we are also pursuing.  If we get to the point where we can image these planets, it is certainly possible that we could detect chlorophyll or other biological evidence in their reflected light.  Finding that would be strong evidence that life exists outside our solar system, and that it could be common as well.

That would mean that two thirds of the Drake Equation’s constituent elements would be heavily weighted toward high numbers.  And that the chance of ET’s would be correspondingly higher as well.

[Wik] The super nifty star map has not yet been updated to include our new vacation destination.  However, you can look at it anyway by going to the to the scrolly thing right on the left side of the window, and scroll down about halfway, looking for “Gl 581.” When you find it, click it, and you’ll see the Gl 581 circled on the star map.  Click on it, or in the window on the right to see the solar system, sadly absent little c.  On the star map, if you click on the right arrow, and then the back arrow, you’ll be in our sector.  Neato!

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Sweet, and by sweet I mean kick ass

Trawling through the vast wasteland of the internets, one finds mostly crap.  To the point that Sturgeon’s law seems wildly optimistic.  Every now and again, though, your suffering is rewarded with unalloyed joy.  This is one of those times.  I found this over at AEBrain, and it is, without exception, the coolest use of Flash animation I have ever seen.  (Though Homestar Runner comes close.  And this is an addictive close third.)

[Wik] I probably put more links in that paragraph above than I have in any in the last year.  As a blogger, I should really consider linking more.

[Alsø wik] Distracted by the linkiness, I forgot to say why that first link is so damn cool.  Though if you clicked it, you’d know already.  But I’m about to tell you, so wait a minute.  The extrasolar system map is unlike most astronomical doodads you’ll find, becasue it’s not sol centric.  Most star maps simply show what the stars look like from Earth. Which doesn’t give you a good idea of how they are connected.  A star map is like one of those goofy odd-perspective “the view of the world from New York” maps, that doesn’t really provide any useful information.  This map actually shows what stars are near each other.  And, clicky on a star, and it will show if we have detected any planets in that solar system.  Combine this thing with googlemaps and it would be awesome.  If it had smooth scrolling between map sections, and a route planning mode with waypoints, it would be the most amazing thing in the world.  Also, it would be cool if you could see more than one little bit at a time.  Nevertheless, wow.  Four thumbs up.

[Alsø alsø wik] In light of my last post, I wonder how many of those planets in the nifty star map have ETs waiting to eat us.  Most of the stars in that map are within the light cone of our radio broadcasts.

[Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] Broadcasting to a potentially unfriendly galaxy is probably not wise.  On the other hand, a sufficiently advanced technology could detect us anyway.

The aliens are coming, hooray, hooray

The blessed amazon fairy delivered another load of printed goodness at my doorstep.  Typically, the amazon fairy brings me science fiction that is more or less throw-away, enjoyable to read but whose thinks pass in and then out of my brain leaving little lasting impression.  Or history tracts that expand or deepen my knowledge of the past without notably changing my opinions of it.  But this last deposit was a little different.

The book in the plain brown wrapper was “An Introduction to Planetary Defense, A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion.” The careful and attentive reader of this website will quickly discern why this title got onto my wishlist.  Of the four writers, I had only heard of the lead author, Travis S. Taylor, who had written a few science fiction novels for Baen Books.  From the bios in those works, I knew that Dr. Taylor was a bit of a big brain, working for NASA and various defense department projects, including the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program at NASA before its untimely demise.  The name of the book and that last fact was enough for me to shell out the $35.

Was it worth it?  On balance, I think definitely yes.  There are problems with the book.  Let’s get them out of the way first.  The book is very poorly edited.  There are typos, bad grammar, and poorly formed sentences throughout.  That is irritating and distracts from the message the book is trying to get across.  The book is poorly balanced, by which I mean that certain points will be attacked in great detail, and the next bit, seemingly of equal importance, will be glossed over.  This creates a problem when the authors refer to something that was not adequately discussed further on, and my reaction is a resounding, “huh? Where’d that come from?” That’s the technical side.

On the idea side, I have far fewer problems, and where I do, it’s wishing that the authors had explored a topic a little more, or discussed something they didn’t.  More on that (oh, much more.  I’m going to go den Beste on their ass) later.  Despite the flaws that are, I imagine, the result of what looks like self-publishing, this book is chock full of interesting, thought-provoking meaty stuff. 

Why do I think so?  Let me count the ways…

In thinking about aliens, two things have always bothered me, and I hoped that An Introduction would address them.  The first of these problems is Fermi’s paradox, and the second is the remarkable optimism of SETI researchers.  I was happy to see that this book addressed both of them, and in spades.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Tech Bedoins

Interesting, and I’m half way there.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Rockets are right

Rocket Jones totally breaks character and links to something relating to rockets instead of his usual diet of never-ending reviews of very, very bad movies.  This one is an interesting one - on how economy of scale could make even disposable rockets reasonably affordable.  Most of the skullsweat invested in lowering the per-pound-cost to orbit focuses on building reusable vehicles, or in some way using advanced technology to duck the inherent limits imposed by the rocket equation.  (Or, the think up crazy shit like using atom bombs or Indian rope tricks.) This guy points out that if we just build rockets in job lots of thousands, they’ll be cheaper.  I find it hard to find any flaw in what he’s saying, especially since our entire economy is based in large part on that very concept.  The funding proposal he ends his article with is in line with my own thinking - the key point being that the chicken/egg dilemma is the real stumbling block in the development of affordable space travel.  I’ve said before that a guaranteed government contract for ten launch vehicles of a given level of performance would result in advances pretty fuck quick.  His idea has the advantage of supporting effectively any launch technology - by aiming at launches, rather than vehicles.  A cheap enough disposable rocket could meet the requirements as well as a more advanced reusable, and would be an easier technological target - and would, in the meantime, provide the launch market that everyone insists is there, waiting for launch costs to drop sufficiently.  That alone, and certainly in addition to government launch contracts, would get the ball moving.

And all for less than the cost of a single shuttle launch…

About

Current Terror Alert Level

Buckethead's Bad Blogger Bash-o-Meter

Ross in the hot seat:

Members

Buckethead's Novel Meter 'O Progress

11,000 / 50,000 (22.0%)

Blogroll

Cronies:
Rhine River
Six Layer Kate
Mapgirl
Dead Men's Hollow
Rocket Jones
EDog's Everything Page
Naked Villainy
A Swift Kick & a Bandaid
Patton's Other, Windier Blog

Top Five²:
Instapundit
Lileks
Volokh Conspiracy
Murdoc Online
Winds of Change
Wizbang!
Q and O
Belmont Club
Pejmanesque
Norbizness
Transterrestrial Musings
Begging to Differ
Outside the Beltway
Michael Totten
Hatemonger's Quarterly
Marginal Revolution
Blackfive
Obsidian Wings
Balloon Juice
Protein Wisdom
Ace of Spades HQ
Gary Farber
Ezra Klein

Broadsheets:
The Atlantic
New Republic
Reason
National Review
Slate
Commentary
The New Criterion

Resources:
Google
StrategyPage
GlobalSecurity
Command Post
Slashdot
Threats Watch
Tits Watch

Metablogging:
Blog Ecosystem
Technorati Profile

Ministry Legion of Merit