Whitworth

Sir Joseph Whitworth proposed this thread in 1841. This was the first standardised thread form. The form of the thread is shown in the diagram. The principal features of the British Standard Whitworth (BSW) thread form are that the angle between the thread flanks is 55 degrees and the thread has radii at both the roots and the crests of the thread.  (emphasis mine)

Most common machine screws use an angle of 60 degrees in the 'V' between threads. Whitworth, in his most benevolent wisdom, used 55 degrees. I am sure he had a very good reason for it. Not. He was British. He probably drank tea.

Jack found the ultimate definition of "arcane": a web page devoted to obsolete British machine screw thread standards. Back when I had my Triumph I needed three sets of wrenches to work on it:

1. American for the engine.
2. Metric for the front brake.
3. Whitworth for the chassis.

At that point I had never heard of Whitworth. Fortunately the former owner had a small set of Whitworth wrenches that would suffice for any chassis work I needed to do. He handed them over along with the motorcycle, and why not? What was he going to do with them? Go look for another English motorcycle that used Whitworth fasteners? No-thank-you-very-much.

Introducing the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) Video

The music got me at first - "that sound's familiar" I thought, kind of like Sail by Awolnation. Then while I am watching this it occurs to me it isn't just being strong and physically fit that makes these guys special. It's also the training and practice with all the different types of equipment that are available. It's one thing to know in theory how to rappel out of a helicopter, it's quite another to be able to do it right when it needs to be done. Likewise with guns and electronic equipment. It's one thing to be able to sit down at your leisure and puzzle out how to make the thing work, but it's another to able to employ it effectively when you are under a little pressure, not to mention when you are under fire.

The Quick and the Dead

Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead

This is a little jumbled. I've had some thoughts rattling around in my head the last few days and they haven't quite jelled, but I thought I'd dump them out anyway.
    When I hear the phrase "the quick and the dead" I tend to think of gun fighters from the old West where survival depended on fast you were with a gun. You were either quick with your gun, or you were very likely going to end up dead, or at least that was the way it was in TV land.
    It wasn't until much later that I discovered that the phrase originated in the Bible and that the "quick" was simply referring to the living. So "the quick and the dead" refers to all souls, dead or alive. Seems I have heard "quickening" used in reference to something coming alive, probably in an old time horror movie.
    Just for grins I checked a King James Bible for this phrase and found three instances:

1. The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy 4: I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;
2. The First Epistle General of Peter 4: who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
3. The Acts of the Apostles 10: And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead.

I got onto this subject because of Memorial Day. Memorial Day never set right with me. Seems like a lot churchy clap-trap without any real substance. Why bother remembering the dead? It's not going to do them any good. They're dead. Nothing on Earth can touch them anymore. Shoot, you might consider them the lucky ones compared to the people that were maimed, crippled or disfigured by war. And the speeches. All that talk about the "solemn occasion" and "the ultimate sacrifice" and those who "gave their lives" for our freedom. What a load of hooey. They didn't give their lives, they had their lives taken from them by all those who conspired to put them in harms way.

    I suppose I might feel differently if I had know anyone who was killed in a war, but I don't. I know a few people who have children in the military, but they are all (cross my fingers) still alive and well. One did get shot during some kind of interdiction on the high seas, but he has recovered and has returned to duty.

    A few years ago there was a movie called Proof of Life about a kidnapping in South America and the subsequent negotiations. Russel Crowe and David Caruso played soldiers of fortune. They get called in to take over the negotiations from a gang of locals and they evict the former negotiators at gunpoint. Nobody gets shot, the local guys depart and our heroes are now in business. Russell turns to his partner and says "That was fun." like it really was fun and David concurs. (It's like the last 6 seconds of this clip.)
    Hell yes it was fun. For a brief moment there we were alive! That's one of the things we hear from soldiers coming home is that they never felt so alive as they did when they were in combat. The other thing I hear from soldiers in Afghanistan is that when they are over there, they only want to be back home, but when they get home, all they want is to go back over there. Life here is just so deadly dull. Life in Afghanistan might be terrifying, but it isn't dull.
    Once you've had your fill of stressful situations, deadly dull can be nice, but do we really need to drain the life out of everything? No wonder people do the crazy shit they do. They want to feel alive. Our modern society can provide everything we need except it's all dead, dead, dead.

Another plane crash in Kyrgyzstan

A KC-135 tanker blew up in the sky last month with no explanation. Accident? Terrorist? I'm wondering, so I said send me more news. This showed up this morning. Check the highlighted text.

Small plane crash in southern Kyrgyzstan kills 3

Posted about 53 mins ago | 0 comment 

BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN (BNO NEWS) -- At least three people were killed after a small airplane crashed in southern Kyrgyzstan, officials said Friday. 

The Antonov An-2 aircraft was carrying three people when it crashed at around 10 a.m. local time in the village of Zhyl-Kol in the country's Aksy region of Jalal-Abad oblast, Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Emergency situations confirmed, Kabar news agency reported.

The small single-engine aircraft belonged to Valor-Air Airline LLC, and faced technical pobles during disinfection of field from locusts. The plane burned down after crashing, the ministry said. 

All three people on board were killed. They were identified as crew member V. Matveyev, Bishkek resident, A. Toktosunov and Aksy resident Sapar Alymbaev, who was a chief specialist of chemicals, defense and quarantine of plants.
(Copyright 2013 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.

I thought plagues of locusts went out with the Pharisees. Seems I was wrong. The Antonov An-2 has made this blog before.

Killing Time

Found a new game - Link-a-Pix. Sucked me in for hours. It is kind of a combination of paint by numbers and Legos. It also gave me an appreciation for what a computer goes through each time it draws an image on the screen, and this image was only 150 pixels square. Each pixel is blown up by a factor of at least ten, so the working image won't even fit on your screen, which makes it possible to easily select individual pixels.

Workers of the World Unite. Or Not.

Dave Schuler put up a post about incompetence at the FDA and suggests that something should be done. The problem, as always, is just what that something should be. The first comment describes the situation and the problem very well:

DC Loser May 29, 2013 at 8:03 am

I just retired from the civil service after almost 30 years of combined CS and military service. I was a GS-15 manager and seen many personnel rating systems come and go. There is no easy solution to this problem. In really good government organizations, where you have good leadership and high workplace morale, these problems don’t occur. Where they do occur are the places with lousy or nonexistent leadership, rule by fear, favoritism, mid-level managers who are little tyrants, and a workforce in constant fear of petty disciplinary actions or worse. I’ve seen your suggested curve system at work when it was used for officer evaluations in the Air Force. It was a disaster for the unfavored officers (in the USAF, they would be the non-pilots). All the commanders’ favorites got the high ratings, while the ‘barely tolerated’ got the low end of the stick. Needless to say morale went into a nosedive. In my last organization, they went to this rating system where supervisors were supposed to write ‘measurable’ objectives so performance could be quantified. Of course, the gaming began right away and supervisors and workers began to organize their productivity around numbers that were meaningless. For fear that everybody was going to get a high rating, management imposed a distriburted curve rating system that was supposedly illegal. Once again, worker morale went into a nosedive from the cynical manipulation of the system by manangers who wanted to protect their favorites. I have not seen a system that isn’t open to gaming and manipulation.

This second comment tells us why it can't be fixed:

DC Loser May 29, 2013 at 8:19 am

One thing that I’ve seen fierce resistance to by senior and even mid level managers in the CS is a 360 evaluation system, where managers will be rated by their subordinates. I advocated such a system and was pretty much ignored. Senior managers talk all the time about accountability, but they don’t want accountability for themselves.

Yay China.

I have no idea what this is. Okay, I mean I suppose it's an ad for Microsoft Windows, but I sure don't know what the point is. It's definitely weird and just a little scary. Via Dustbury.