Pic of the Day

An atomic mushroom cloud, Las Vegas, 1953.

Muscle Shoals

TVA Wilson Dam, Muscle Shoals, Alabama

The Wilson Dam was built in the early 20th century. It generates over 600 megawatts of electricity. The government needed gunpowder for the war, so they built this dam, the attached power house and two plants for producing nitrates. WW1 ended, and the need for gunpowder went away, so the plants were converted to making fertilizer. When WW2 came along, they went back to making gunpowder, and after that they went back to making fertilizer again.

Air View of Nitrate Plant No. 2 at Muscle Shoals, AL
Wilson Dam can be seen in the background.

There is still a fertilizer factory there, though it seems to be much reduced in scale.

I was reminded of this by the similarity to the Norsk Hydro plant in The Heavy Water War - hydro power being used to generate electricity which in turn is used to make fertilizer.

The Heavy Water War

The Heavy Water War Teaser
We started watching this series on Netflix last night. It's pretty good. Back during WW2, the USA wasn't the only country trying to build an atomic bomb, Nazi Germany was working on the idea as well. 'Working' might be exaggerating their effort a bit, flailing might be a more apt description. But we didn't know how inept their efforts were, I mean the Germans are obviously very talented technically. Maybe they will succeed, and we sure don't want that, so we need to stop them if we can. Failing that we need to slow them down as much as possible, hence the raids on Norsk Hydro.

We started watching this and I'm wondering how it is that Norway has this monopoly on heavy water? Do they have some mystical spring where they get an abundance of the stuff? It took a little digging, but what I eventually figured out was that they were electrolysing water to get hydrogen so they could make fertilizer. They had built a power plant and factories, in fact a whole town, all to produce mass quantities of fertilizer.

All water contains a very small amount of heavy water, something like 0.03%. Electrolysis tends to preferentially break down light (normal) water, so after you have been running your electrolysis for a while, the water you are left with has a higher concentration of heavy water. Since heavy water is such a small percentage of natural water, in order to get useful amount of heavy water, you need to be electrolysing tons of water, which is what they were doing to Norsk Hydro.

Norsk Hydro Power Plant. The pipes running down the side of hill supply water to the turbines that drive the generators that make the electricity that is used to electrolysis the water.

There have been a number of films made about this. I saw one some time ago. There is one from 1948 available on YouTube.

Hello, Russia

A Look Inside Russia’s Creepy, Innovative Internet (Hello World: Episode 9) Bloomberg
We, and by that I mean everyone, have no idea of the extent of what computer systems are doing.

Note about this video series title: "Hello, world!" is the standard first programming problem for students. It is a test to see if you can master the basic concepts of editing a source file, getting the syntax right, and invoking the compiler. If you do all that correctly, then you can invoke your program and it will spit out "Hello, world!" on your display.

Via Detroit Steve.

Pic of the Day

Lab Rat Monument, Akademgorodok, Russia

Via Bloomberg's Hello World.

I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you.

Serge Gainsbourg - Chez Les Ye-Ye
1963 French pop song. Serge pulls out a switchblade a little awkwardly about halfway through. Translated lyrics here.


Retrolectro Swingtoon LIIb (Palm Dance with Boogalox aka Minimatic - Chez Les Yeye)
Here's an Electro-Swing version of the same tune. I ran across it listening to Electro Swing | Jazz House Mixwolf Session 2016 #1. Louis Armstrong makes a brief appearance here at the 1:56 mark.


I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You - Louis Armstrong
Here's the whole tune. Louis recorded this in 1932.


Jamie Berry-Sweet Rascal
Here's the Electro-swing version with Mistique burning up a square meter of carpet.

People get excited, then they get upset and out come the knives. Peace, love and understanding are all very well, but how's a girl supposed to know whether a guy can defend her or not? Well, you might want to see how well he handles a knife. Love and hate are like two sides of the same, human, coin.

Update March 2021 replaced missing Louis Armstrong video.

War in the Vendée

A Mass at Sea, 1793,  by Louis Duveau, first exhibited in 1864. 

Catholics were persecuted during the French Revolution so if people wanted to celebrate Mass, they had to do it surreptitiously, hence going out to sea where they would be out of sight of the revolutionaries and their sycophants.

My parents were atheists. One of my mother's homilies was that religion was the root cause of all wars and was therefore bad and very possibly evil. Reading today about the War in the Vendée I am reminded that the religious don't have a monopoly on murder and mayhem, atheists in the French revolution and Communists the world over have trumped the religious wars of the past. Of course, you could say that revolutionary zealots have their own religion, they are 'true believers' after all.

Combat de Quiberon en 1795, by Jean Sorieul

Sombreuil and a handful of royalist fighters (left) are trying to push back the Republican forces and protect the flight of non-combatants trying to take refuge on English ships.

War in the Vendée

Inspired by a post from Marcel.