Crop Circles & Space Lasers

'Mysterious' crop circle showed up in a field outside Weilheim, Germany this week. The news reports are all ga-ga about all the tourists who have come to see the great mystery. The only mystery to me is why someone would put that much effort into making one. It's a cool enough design, but it's kind of hard to appreciate these things unless you are up in the air where you can get a clear view.  I suppose they are temporary art, kind of like sand castles, and I like sand castles. Crop circles aren't my cup of tea, but I guess they are okay.
    It could be a secret government program to see how long it takes someone to notice something like this. I mean, it's out in the middle of a field, no one is going to notice it unless they walk or fly across it, and nobody is going to be walking across it, you would be trampling on the crop and the farmer is liable to come after you with a shotgun. Then again, I've never heard of a farmer getting upset about the damage to the crop that these circles cause. Maybe it's because it's the most interesting thing that has happened there in the last thousand years.
    What caught my eye, though, is the giant radio antennas right next door. Do you think there is some connection? Maybe the aliens are making road signs to identify this location, or maybe the SETI crowd is trying to attract some attention. Big, permanent installations like that should be visible on a satellite view of the earth, so I go looking and eventually found them. I also found some info that suggests they are part of the new European Data Relay System.

    This system is kind of slick. They have a ground station in Germany and a geosynchronous satellite overhead that they communicate with using normal radio waves. This satellite can communicate with other satellites that are in lower orbits via a laser. This allows them to collect data from satellites over half of the world using this one ground station.
    The Airbus video babbles on about how this system can be used for humanitarian relief efforts in times of crisis, but we all know it's really there to control the drones that are being sent to kill you.

Via Graham Hancock.

WHO's to Blame

Prevalence of Malaria. Red is high, green is low.

WHO, as in World Health Organization. The world is going to hell in a hand basket. Thomas Friedman has a column today telling us all about it. I didn't finish it. I know we are going to hell, the only question in my mind is how fast we get there.

It's one thing to value life and to claim every life is important, but unless you are willing to take responsibility for the cultural conditioning of all the new people showing up on our planet everyday, I think you need to shut up. Wait, "take repsonsibility" is the wrong term, that just tells us who to blame if things go wrong, and some people will do just that. 'Yes, it was my responsibility, and I failed. I am so very, very sorry. Please don't beat me.' You can shoot the SOB who stole your money, crashed your car or wiped out the elephants, but it won't get your money back, fix your car, or bring back the elephants.

What we want is someone to step up and see that the new souls are properly indoctrinated. Many people prefer the word 'education', but education is simple. Simple if you believe in it, not so simple if you don't. Remember that book about how All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? That's what we're talking about here.*

So we've got some people who think life is the only thing that is important, everything else takes a distant second. This has led to widespread programs to inoculate people against common infectious diseases. These are universally regarded as good, even though they are at the root of all our problems. It's fine to inoculate people against disease, as long as you are going to ensure that they are properly indoctrinated with our sophisticated Western civilization's mode of thinking. But the people pushing the drugs are not pushing the indoctrination, so we are overpopulating 3rd world countries with barbarians. No wonder civil war, massacres and mayhem are the world's most popular sports.

So every one of those syringe weilding do-gooders needs to stay with that kid they've just inoculated and see that they learn how to behave in a civilized society. That might put a crimp in their hipster lifestyle, but it will likely save us a zillion dollars in future inoculation costs.

* Which makes me realize why in days of old kingdoms imposed a universal state religion. It ensures that everyone adheres to a certain standard of conduct, or at least it makes them aware of the rules. It makes a certain amount of sense. It's also why freedom of religion for countries that are still operating in the middle ages (like the Middle East and Africa) may not be such a good idea.

Fax Machine Blood Feud

I don't know what the connection is, but this was best picture that turned up when I Googled the title to this post. Yuliya Snigir plays Irina in A Good Day to Die Hard, who mainly makes an impression because she's beautiful and a shot of her stripping out of motorcycle leathers was heavily featured in the film's marketing materials. That shot was almost completely cut from the movie itself.

Got a letter from Walgreens, a form letter out of a computer, but an actual printed-on-paper, delivered-by-snail-mail letter the other day. It's telling me that one of my prescriptions has expired, and the doctor hasn't stepped up and authorized any more. All this requesting and authorizing is done with fax machines, so if the doc is going to authorize more drugs for me, he's going to need the fax number. Well, where is it? It's not in the letter, it's not on their website, so I call, fight with the robo-cop answering machine, wade through an armload of protocol with the operator and finally get the fax number. Call the doctor's office and they tell me they don't need the fax number, all this prescription s*** is handled electronically now.
     So now I see how Obamacare has started a bunch of blood feuds in the Republican party. Big businesses like Walgreens want automation and elimination of unnecessary paperwork, while small businesses, like your local fax machine dealer, like things the way they were.

Latest Weapon's Technology from the 16th Century

Full plate armour for man and horse owned by Sigismund II Augustus (r. 1548–1569)

Via The Firearms Blog

Girls with Guns

Israelis getting coffee or diet coke or something. Via View From The Porch.

Speed Limit Map

Extreme Southern Section of I-205 near Portland, Oregon

I drove from PDX to Wilsonville on I-205 today. Southbound through Clackamas and then west through Oregon City the speed limit is 55. Somewhere after that it changes to 65 MPH. Evidently I missed the changeover because all of sudden everyone in the fast lane is going much faster. Eventually I saw a 65 MPH speed limit sign and I got with the program.
    Now I'm home and I'm wondering just where does the speed limit change, so I start Googling and eventually I end up on ITO World, where I found this map.The fat blue line wandering in from the left hand edge is the 65 MPH section of I-205, and the purple section coming in the from right is the 55 MPH section. Where they meet is the point where the speed limit changes. Unfortunately, I still don't know where it is because that section of I-205 is notoriously devoid of landmarks. Nothing but trees for miles.
    I don't know how much of the world ITO has covered, but they definitely have the UK and the USA sorted.

X-Ray Telescope

I stumbled over a picture of the Chandra X-Ray telescope this morning, which was kind of a shock because while I've been hearing about it for years I don't think I have ever seen a picture of it. It's not much to look at, it looks like just another big dumb satellite, but then I came across this diagram along with a brief explanation of how it works, which I thought was kind of interesting.

Chandra X-ray Observatory optics.Launched 1999.

    Space-based x-ray telescopes allow astronomers to study a wide range of energetic phenomena from neutron stars to diffuse million-degree gas permeating galaxy clusters. Unfortunately, x-rays are notoriously difficult to focus. To produce images, x-ray telescopes must use grazing incidence mirrors, which reflect incoming photons at very shallow angles. High-resolution x-ray mirrors usually use the Wolter Type I geometry—a double reflection off first a parabolic and then a hyperbolic surface (see Figure 1). As a consequence of the shallow angles (typically 1° or less), the collecting area is a small fraction of the mirror surface. To increase the telescope's effective area, multiple mirror pairs are nested. Thin mirrors can be nested in higher number and more densely than thicker mirrors, resulting in a large total collecting area, but they are more subject to manufacturing and mounting errors that degrade the angular resolution.
    The trade-off between imaging quality and light collecting power is apparent in the most advanced current facilities. The Chandra X-ray Observatory¹ employs four thick (16–23mm) mirror shells with an unparalleled angular resolution of 0.5".

    Here we have the reflection conundrum again. X-rays go through most anything, or are stopped (absorbed), which is how we get medical X-rays. But if we can catch them at a low enough angle they can be reflected, and if they can be reflected, they can be focused, so we ought to be able to get some kind of image.
    All electromagnetic radiation (light, radio waves, X-rays) are composed of photons, which aren't really particles, and aren't really waves. X-ray photons are more energetic than visible light photons, which might explain the low angle of incidence needed for reflecting them.