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Everybody's heard the one about the Martians, right?
As Jews are tormented (and worse) at a newly disturbing frequency in the United States, Sailer links a particularly good piece by the formidable Alexander.
Know what I'm good at? Text... Nearly 2 SD's above average!
Know what I'm bad at? Everything else, including remembering things. I can't imagine what it's like to have a wide collection of intellectual blessings... It's gotta be really sweet.
Anyway, Sailer is tweeting a bunch of good stuff about this today/yesterday/Sunday. See there also the Parsis, about whom I did not know.
Crid
at December 30, 2019 1:00 AM
Maybe we should do more on this… Despite its stunning blessings, this century has already been a disappointment, and the next decade in particular might take a horribly familiar turn for the worse.
So here again is a favorite book passage, with emphasis by Uncle Cridmo:
E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation
When the united States finally did get a serious atomic project started, it was helped through some skillful manipulation by impatient visitors from Britain. Mark Oliphant was another one of Rutherford's bright young men, and in the summer of 1941 he led a two-front assault. First he arrived in Washington, dangling the gift of the cavity magnetron--a key device for shrinking room-sized radar sets to a volume that could be crammed into an airplane, and also for greatly increasing accuracy. (This was when Oliphant discovered that Lyman J. Briggs, leader of the West's atomic research project, had locked the top-secret British results inside his safe.) Next, Oliphant traveled to Berkeley, where the physicist Ernest Lawrence worked.
Lawrence was not especially bright as physicists go, but he loved machines, great big powerful machines, and his very simplicity--his directness of focus-- allowed him to get them built. For example Samuel Allison (working at the University of Chicago then) remembers that Briggs had "a tiny cube of uranium which he liked to keep in his desk and show to insiders... Briggs used to say 'I want a whole pound of this,'... Lawrence would have said he wanted forty tons and got it."
By the summer of 1941 Briggs was out, and group of more effective leaders including Lawrence was in, and by December--when Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war--the project really took off. It came to be called the Manhattan Project, as part of the cover story that it was simply part of the Manhattan Engineering District.
The refugees Briggs had scorned were indispensable. Eugene Wigner, for example, was a remarkably quiet, unassuming young Hungarian, who came from an equally quiet and unassuming family. When World War I had broken out, Eugene's father had stayed away from political discussions, pointing out, quite sensibly, the he was pretty sure the emperor was not going to be swayed by the views of the Wigner family. But this caution meant that when Eugene, a superb student, was facing university choices, the father had him take a practical engineering degree, as the odds on a career in theoretical physics succeeding were very slight.
Wigner did succeed at physics, and after he was forced out of Europe in the 1930s, he ended up centrally involved in the American duplicate of Heisenberg's calculations, detailing how a reaction could begin. But his engineering training meant that he handled the subsequent steps far better than Heisenberg. What shape, for example, should the uranium be that would go inside a reactor? The most efficient possible design would be a sphere. That way the maximum number of neutrons would be deep in the center. Next best--if a sphere was too hard to cut accurately-- would be an oval shape. After that comes a cylinder, then a cube, and last, worst of all, would be to try building it with uranium stretched out in flat sheets.
For his Leipzig device, Heisenberg had chosen the flat sheets. The reason was simply that flat surfaces almost always have the easiest properties to compute, if you're advancing by pure theory. But engineers with enough practical experience are never restricted to pure theory. There are many informal tricks of the trade for how ovals and other shapes work. Wigner knew them, as did many other similarly cautious refugees, who'd also been advised by their families to take engineering degrees. Heisenberg did not. That was of central importance. Professors in general tend to be hierarchical, and pre-World War II German professors were at the of peak such confidence. As the war went on, a number of junior researchers in Germany found that Heisenberg had been mistaken in one engineering assumption or another. But Heisenberg almost always refused to listen; would angrily try to keep them from even daring to mention it.
Even so, nobody could be confident the United States was going to to win the race to make the bomb. America was just coming out of the Great Depression; much of its industrial base was still rusted and abandoned. When Heisenberg began his research for army ordnance, the Wehrmacht was the world's most powerful fighting force. It had entire army groups supplied with equipment that surpassed that of any other nation. The United States had an army that, if you included a lot of generation-old World War I artifacts, could just about supply two divisions, thus placing it below the tenth rank in the world, at about the level of Belgium.
Germany also had the world's best engineers, and a strong university system--despite having expelled so many Jews--and above all, they had that head start; two precious years when Heisenberg and his colleagues had been working full out, while Briggs had mostly been musing at his desk. These were the quirks of fate that would influence who ended up using the equation first. E=mc2 was far from the pure reaches of Einstein's inked symbols now. The Allied effort would have to go faster.
The German effort would have to be sabotaged.
Crid
at December 30, 2019 1:19 AM
Considering her politics, her humor and her looks, Mel may be the most attractive woman in America.
Crid
at December 30, 2019 1:31 AM
Considering her politics, her humor and her looks, Mel may be the most attractive woman in America.
Crid
at December 30, 2019 1:33 AM
Sorry.
BTW, had you heard of Yandex? I thought Google Images was still cutting edge.
This exchange called to mind the discussion here about Commodores & laptops and F1 etc a couple days ago.
The damning paradox seems to be that standards are incredibly useful, so they keep creating new ones.
Additionally, everything is hacked eventually, including today's proudest security algorithms (and every record-keeping corporation you can name. Your grandchildren will be able to readily investigate your porn preferences, and will know which one of your mistresses soaked up the majority of your out-of-household, um, investment.
Crid
at December 30, 2019 2:08 AM
@Crid: "BTW, had you heard of Yandex?"
Yandex has a cool map application as well, which allows street views of places Google hasn't got to, yet. I remember about a year ago, one of my kids was hanging out in Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana) Kazakhstan, and while talking with her via WhatsApp, was able to see exactly where she was.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com)
at December 30, 2019 5:20 AM
These are pretty enough for your favorite holiday, but despite the responses, I doubt it's more environmentally friendly than conventional powder work. All the design and logistics and transportation and chemistry for a drone has got to be more destructive than a conventional, one-time sparkler.
Crid
at December 30, 2019 7:24 AM
Considering her politics, her humor and her looks, Mel may be the most attractive woman in America. ~ Crid at December 30, 2019 1:33 AM
Name a sport or sports-like activity and you'll find it has at least one professional league struggling to gain mainstream acceptance.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers
at December 30, 2019 10:26 AM
Side note on that link source:
Raw Story's front page warns voters against disinformation, while announcing the Trump administration is like 1930s Germany.
Make of that what you will.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers
at December 30, 2019 10:32 AM
Using a gun is like playing the violin. Practice makes perfect: ~ Sixclaws at December 30, 2019 7:46 AM
On TV the amateur is always an instant Annie Oakley taking down the perpetrator with one perfectly placed shot, usually the shooter's first ever. However, having put more than a few shots in the target's edges when starting out, I can attest that good shooting takes practice, and lots of it. Acquiring and re-acquiring a target with iron sights on the fly is a skill that takes some practice as well.
Conan the Grammarian
at December 30, 2019 10:51 AM
BTW, had you heard of Yandex?
Yep. I thought I'd mentioned them, here. Maybe not. What I do know is that I trust the Rooskies more than I trust Google.
CBS News just reported that John Lewis is battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and called him a "living legend." I mentally flashed forward to his funeral where he'll undoubtedly be called a "national treasure" and lauded for his "long years of public service."
Lewis has been in Congress since 1987 - that's 32 years. Should we consider anyone with a long-term sinecure at the public trough a "national treasure" - no matter their party?
We tend to slam the other party's long-term office-holders, but laud our own party's as statesmen. Perhaps it's time we rejected career politicians - of any party.
Everybody's heard the one about the Martians, right?
As Jews are tormented (and worse) at a newly disturbing frequency in the United States, Sailer links a particularly good piece by the formidable Alexander.
Know what I'm good at? Text... Nearly 2 SD's above average!
Know what I'm bad at? Everything else, including remembering things. I can't imagine what it's like to have a wide collection of intellectual blessings... It's gotta be really sweet.
Anyway, Sailer is tweeting a bunch of good stuff about this today/yesterday/Sunday. See there also the Parsis, about whom I did not know.
Crid at December 30, 2019 1:00 AM
Maybe we should do more on this… Despite its stunning blessings, this century has already been a disappointment, and the next decade in particular might take a horribly familiar turn for the worse.
So here again is a favorite book passage, with emphasis by Uncle Cridmo:
When the united States finally did get a serious atomic project started, it was helped through some skillful manipulation by impatient visitors from Britain. Mark Oliphant was another one of Rutherford's bright young men, and in the summer of 1941 he led a two-front assault. First he arrived in Washington, dangling the gift of the cavity magnetron--a key device for shrinking room-sized radar sets to a volume that could be crammed into an airplane, and also for greatly increasing accuracy. (This was when Oliphant discovered that Lyman J. Briggs, leader of the West's atomic research project, had locked the top-secret British results inside his safe.) Next, Oliphant traveled to Berkeley, where the physicist Ernest Lawrence worked.
Lawrence was not especially bright as physicists go, but he loved machines, great big powerful machines, and his very simplicity--his directness of focus-- allowed him to get them built. For example Samuel Allison (working at the University of Chicago then) remembers that Briggs had "a tiny cube of uranium which he liked to keep in his desk and show to insiders... Briggs used to say 'I want a whole pound of this,'... Lawrence would have said he wanted forty tons and got it."
By the summer of 1941 Briggs was out, and group of more effective leaders including Lawrence was in, and by December--when Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war--the project really took off. It came to be called the Manhattan Project, as part of the cover story that it was simply part of the Manhattan Engineering District.
The refugees Briggs had scorned were indispensable. Eugene Wigner, for example, was a remarkably quiet, unassuming young Hungarian, who came from an equally quiet and unassuming family. When World War I had broken out, Eugene's father had stayed away from political discussions, pointing out, quite sensibly, the he was pretty sure the emperor was not going to be swayed by the views of the Wigner family. But this caution meant that when Eugene, a superb student, was facing university choices, the father had him take a practical engineering degree, as the odds on a career in theoretical physics succeeding were very slight.
Wigner did succeed at physics, and after he was forced out of Europe in the 1930s, he ended up centrally involved in the American duplicate of Heisenberg's calculations, detailing how a reaction could begin. But his engineering training meant that he handled the subsequent steps far better than Heisenberg. What shape, for example, should the uranium be that would go inside a reactor? The most efficient possible design would be a sphere. That way the maximum number of neutrons would be deep in the center. Next best--if a sphere was too hard to cut accurately-- would be an oval shape. After that comes a cylinder, then a cube, and last, worst of all, would be to try building it with uranium stretched out in flat sheets.
For his Leipzig device, Heisenberg had chosen the flat sheets. The reason was simply that flat surfaces almost always have the easiest properties to compute, if you're advancing by pure theory. But engineers with enough practical experience are never restricted to pure theory. There are many informal tricks of the trade for how ovals and other shapes work. Wigner knew them, as did many other similarly cautious refugees, who'd also been advised by their families to take engineering degrees. Heisenberg did not. That was of central importance. Professors in general tend to be hierarchical, and pre-World War II German professors were at the of peak such confidence. As the war went on, a number of junior researchers in Germany found that Heisenberg had been mistaken in one engineering assumption or another. But Heisenberg almost always refused to listen; would angrily try to keep them from even daring to mention it.
Even so, nobody could be confident the United States was going to to win the race to make the bomb. America was just coming out of the Great Depression; much of its industrial base was still rusted and abandoned. When Heisenberg began his research for army ordnance, the Wehrmacht was the world's most powerful fighting force. It had entire army groups supplied with equipment that surpassed that of any other nation. The United States had an army that, if you included a lot of generation-old World War I artifacts, could just about supply two divisions, thus placing it below the tenth rank in the world, at about the level of Belgium.
Germany also had the world's best engineers, and a strong university system--despite having expelled so many Jews--and above all, they had that head start; two precious years when Heisenberg and his colleagues had been working full out, while Briggs had mostly been musing at his desk. These were the quirks of fate that would influence who ended up using the equation first. E=mc2 was far from the pure reaches of Einstein's inked symbols now. The Allied effort would have to go faster.
The German effort would have to be sabotaged.
Crid at December 30, 2019 1:19 AM
Considering her politics, her humor and her looks, Mel may be the most attractive woman in America.
Crid at December 30, 2019 1:31 AM
Considering her politics, her humor and her looks, Mel may be the most attractive woman in America.
Crid at December 30, 2019 1:33 AM
Sorry.
BTW, had you heard of Yandex? I thought Google Images was still cutting edge.
Piece about the TSA.
Crid at December 30, 2019 1:52 AM
This exchange called to mind the discussion here about Commodores & laptops and F1 etc a couple days ago.
The damning paradox seems to be that standards are incredibly useful, so they keep creating new ones.
Additionally, everything is hacked eventually, including today's proudest security algorithms (and every record-keeping corporation you can name. Your grandchildren will be able to readily investigate your porn preferences, and will know which one of your mistresses soaked up the majority of your out-of-household, um, investment.
Crid at December 30, 2019 2:08 AM
@Crid: "BTW, had you heard of Yandex?"
Yandex has a cool map application as well, which allows street views of places Google hasn't got to, yet. I remember about a year ago, one of my kids was hanging out in Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana) Kazakhstan, and while talking with her via WhatsApp, was able to see exactly where she was.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at December 30, 2019 5:20 AM
These are pretty enough for your favorite holiday, but despite the responses, I doubt it's more environmentally friendly than conventional powder work. All the design and logistics and transportation and chemistry for a drone has got to be more destructive than a conventional, one-time sparkler.
Crid at December 30, 2019 7:24 AM
Name a sport or sports-like activity and you'll find it has at least one professional league struggling to gain mainstream acceptance.
Conan the Grammarian at December 30, 2019 7:25 AM
Aha! / Found it.
As regards Conan's bespoke technology comment from a few days ago, consider this example.
Crid at December 30, 2019 7:41 AM
Here's a thing that will amaze my generation of sports-aware (if not -enthused) people, and it's true.
Crid at December 30, 2019 7:46 AM
Using a gun is like playing the violin. Practice makes perfect:
https://mobile.twitter.com/stillgray/status/1211419587788468225
Sixclaws at December 30, 2019 7:46 AM
When was the last time you had your prefrontal cortex checked?
Link between religious fundamentalism and brain damage established by scientists
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 30, 2019 10:26 AM
Side note on that link source:
Raw Story's front page warns voters against disinformation, while announcing the Trump administration is like 1930s Germany.
Make of that what you will.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at December 30, 2019 10:32 AM
On TV the amateur is always an instant Annie Oakley taking down the perpetrator with one perfectly placed shot, usually the shooter's first ever. However, having put more than a few shots in the target's edges when starting out, I can attest that good shooting takes practice, and lots of it. Acquiring and re-acquiring a target with iron sights on the fly is a skill that takes some practice as well.
Conan the Grammarian at December 30, 2019 10:51 AM
BTW, had you heard of Yandex?
Yep. I thought I'd mentioned them, here. Maybe not. What I do know is that I trust the Rooskies more than I trust Google.
I R A Darth Aggie at December 30, 2019 11:31 AM
Movie.
Crid at December 30, 2019 12:04 PM
"What the Average Diet Was Like in Medieval Times"
Amusing enough. There are 12 subjects.
https://www.ranker.com/list/medieval-food/kellen-perry
lenona at December 30, 2019 2:41 PM
CBS News just reported that John Lewis is battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and called him a "living legend." I mentally flashed forward to his funeral where he'll undoubtedly be called a "national treasure" and lauded for his "long years of public service."
Lewis has been in Congress since 1987 - that's 32 years. Should we consider anyone with a long-term sinecure at the public trough a "national treasure" - no matter their party?
We tend to slam the other party's long-term office-holders, but laud our own party's as statesmen. Perhaps it's time we rejected career politicians - of any party.
Conan the Grammarian at December 30, 2019 4:08 PM
How a pair of creepy-looking bridges in Will County, Illinois became the centerpiece of a campaign for the state's next infrastructure program.
mpetrie98 at December 30, 2019 5:48 PM
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