Termination Shock - Notes Part 2

Notes on the book Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. The book is set in the not-too-distant future.

Part 2 - Louisiana

Part 1

There is some discussion about people in the mining business and the Paguna Mine in Bougainville comes up: "The place was famous for its hugeness and infamous for political reasons."

Paguna Mine, Bougainville
The central pit is over one mile across.

Excerpted from Wikipedia:

Panguna is one of the largest copper reserves  in the world, having an estimated reserve of one billion tonnes of ore copper and twelve million ounces of gold. The site was at one time the world's largest open-pit copper/gold mine. The mine caused devastating environmental issues on the island, and the company was responsible for poisoning the entire length of the Jaba River, causing birth defects, as well as the extinction of the flying fox on the island. Dissatisfaction with the company led to an uprising in 1988, led by Francis Ona, a Panguna landowner and commander of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. The outcome of the uprising was the Bougainville conflict, between the BRA, who sought secession from PNG, and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force. The ten-year conflict resulted in over 20,000 deaths, as well as the eventual closure of the mine on 15 May 1989, and the complete withdrawal of BCL personnel by 24 March 1990. It has remained closed to this day.

There is also an extensive backstory about Willem, one the queen's aides. His family was in Indonesia when WW2 broke out and were imprisoned by the Japanese. Their troubles didn't end when the war did, now we have Sukarno mounting a campaign for independence which meant more chaos and more trouble for, especially for white Europeans.

Earthquake

GMV for mww 7.8 TURKEY

Acronyms:

• GMV stands for Ground Motion Visualization
• mww is a subtype of the moment magnitude scale (mw) derived from a centroid moment tensor inversion of the W-phase.

I don't understand exactly the description for mww, just that they are doing some number crunching on the data.

Via The Feral Irishman

Termination Shock - Notes Part 1

Notes on the book Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. The book is set in the not-too-distant future.

Part 1 - Texas

Part 2

Princess of Orange
Possible future queen of Holland

The Queen of Holland flies into Waco, piloting an aging private jet.

Dassault Falcon 900EX

They have flown from Amsterdam, a distance of 5,000 miles. There are numerous business jets that could make the trip, the Dassault Falcon is just one. It's been in production since 1984, so an old one is entirely possible. The current Dutch Airforce One is a 737.

Noordeinde Palace

Noordeinde Palace is where the future queen will have her office.

Waco Texas airport, dam, and confluence of the North Bosque and Brazos Rivers

Texas has a real problem with feral hogs. Rufus has made is his mission in life to kill as many of them as possible. He hunts them at night using a rifle with a night vision scope. Rufus is a character in the book, but his technique is real.


107 Hogs Down | Hog Hunting with Thermal Night Vision in Texas | Zeus Pro 640
Ultimate Night Vision
Feral hogs get onto the runway at Waco. The plane runs into them just as it is touching down and crashes. Everyone survives, the plane doesn't catch on fire, but the hogs are a problem, and then Rufus shows up and saves the day.

Resort

Aleenta Hua Hin Resort, Thailand
Jigsaw Puzzle

Old

Parking Garage Ticket Machine

They changed the payment system in the parking garage we use in downtown Portland. Used to be the machine would hand you a thin little card with magic numbers on it when you drove in and when you were ready to leave you would insert this little card into another machine and which would demand money before it would let you go.

Now instead of a thin little card, you get a piece of paper much like a credit card receipt. When we are leaving, I am standing in line with all the other sheep, waiting for my turn at the altar of mammon. The people at the front are taking a really long time to complete their offering, must have been at least a minute. Wretched philistines. They finally move off and now the line has accelerated from a dead stop to crawling along, so I think I should probably get my ducks in a row. I pull out my wallet and start looking for the thin card that the entrance machine usually gives me, but I can't find it. All I find is a whole sheaf of credit card receipts. Bah, double bah and humbug. I am taking so long, I let the next person go in front of me. My wife steps in and helps me identify the correct nasty gram.

I step up to the machine and instead of inserting the card, you simply show the machine the magic squiggle that is printed on the nasty gram. Now, of course, it want's money. There is a snout protruding from the machine and I think it's for the credit card. It's not. There's another slot for for the card. Get that sorted, collect the receipt from the snout and we're clear.

Now we drive to the exit and show the exit machine the nasty gram and wait for a response. We don't get one. It just repeats its innocuous greeting. Only after I have been fussing with this machine for a minute or two do I realize that the gate is open. Geez, I must be slipping.

Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson

Holmes & Watson

Saw this hilarious play at Portland Center Stage yesterday afternoon. Holmes is a manic pixie, Watson is her foil. The dialog bounces all over the cosmos and drags in any number of cultural touch stones. It was great! 

RC Aircraft Crosses the Atlantic Ocean

Can an RC-PLANE cross the ATLANTIC?
Captain Joe

This happened in 2003. Progressive Engineer has a story about Maynard Hill, the man who designed and built the RC airplane that made this flight.

Via IAman