Crash! Bang! Wallop! Wot? No picture?

W

e've just had a v. rough fortnight's hiatus after our PC went Flash! Bang! Very Dead! Black screen of blue-smoking, motherboard (WTF happened ????) death of a (not so) old machine :-(

So this is a new machine. With all that that involves. Avoiding the Vista Fister. Finding the driver CDs for the various peripherals. Re-installing all the programs we use regularly (even finding them first?), because the dead machine used an IDE disc and this one has only SATA, I couldn't just plug in the old disc here. Luckily the most recent backup to an external USB2 disc was fairly up-to-date, so we didn't lose much of our data. But I'd boobed on the paperwork and didn't have a paper copy of all my logins and passwords, e.g. for Internet access, so that's what has taken the time. That and Xmas being in-between of course, so nobody working to provide any support etc. Even being an atheist didn't help, because everybody else (i.e support people in various companies) was off work. Yet another disadvantage of religion :-(

Be that as it may, today's blog is merely by way of an explanation of why we've been offline. I do apologise to the regular readers. Normal service will be resumed etc etc...

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 29th December 2007 at 06:29 CET permalink Comments Email

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Your varied blog requests

Several of you have provided feedback on what you would like me to blog about, or changes to my style etc. Liz wrote "Stop being so intelligent in your posts. Or at least have a little break. Write something to amuse me!". And 4D has repeatedly complained that I am often too highbrow. Contradicting this, both Janet and David have asked for "more of your unique mix of humor and hard science". Wendy is more specific and wants a piece about freemasonry. Kevin wants another rant about religion. And Uli wants more humour, viz. "lighten it up some, no more social science please. Jane asks me to try conveying impressions instead of always quantysizing (sic!) everything. So I'll try to comply over the last 2 weeks of this year.

Humour first? The Kama Sutra has been set to music. Here's the score (NSFW) ;-)

And I see that Four Dinners has taken up cartooning, drawing a very good cartoon dog in just 60 seconds. Rising to the challenge implicitly given, 4D old bean, here's my cat cartoon, drawn in a mere eleven seconds, just for you. Speed-sketching indeed ;-) N.B. : The view from the other end takes somewhat longer ;-) Liz, this animal is called Kit-Kat (you wanted a little break ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 15th December 2007 at 06:15 CET permalink Comments Email

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Reach for the sky !

When my friend and fellow pilot Klaus visited this year I took him to see the National Gliding museum on the Wasserkuppe. Here are some of my photos, so you can see what's in the museum. Just click on the links to see the photos pop up in a new window. Some gliders are originals, some reconstructions.

The photo above shows Klaus reaching for the sky, aka one of Otto Lilienthal's early biplane gliders. Just to the right,also suspended from the ceiling, is his monoplane.

• Here is a bust of Otto Lilienthal, first glider pilot, a decade before the Wrights.
• This is what (hang) gliders looked like in the early 1900s. Sticks, fabric, wire.
• By the 1930s there were enclosed cockpits, fine woodwork and doped cotton.
• But the training gliders were kept simple for easy repair. Here is an SG38. Launch is by the rubber bungee ropes shown in the foreground. I've flown one of these; there are no instruments, speed control is by feeling the wind in your face ;-)
• Advanced trainers had a streamlined (but open) cockpit. Beautiful woodwork.
• D-Hotzenplotz had an enclosed perspex cockpit and internal metal struts.
• This wooden beauty is a Canard design (i.e. the 'tailplane' is at the front and the main wing at the rear). Those black tubes behind the pilot are three solid-fuel rockets(!) for the initial launch. Opel also built a rocket-powered drag car then!
• After WW2, two-seaters were used for training and even record attempts.
• As an engineer, Klaus was particularly interested in construction details,
• whereas I, as a flying instructor, was looking at the modern sailplane cockpits.
• For the aircraft modeller, there were some interesting exhibits too. Prior to the introduction of radio-control, there were even model sailplanes steered by a magnetic compass in the middle controlling the rudder. This one is a 1950's canard.

  Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 14th December 2007 at 06:14 CET permalink Comments Email

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Gone, but not forgotten!

Recently a good blogfriend decided to set up a new blog, and 'deleted' his old one. Getting a 404 'Blog not found', he thought his old blog was deleted and thus safe from prying eyes. Not so :-( Remember folks, everything you ever blogged stays in Google's archives (for ever?) and can be hauled out at any time and used as evidence.... :-( One merely needs to look up something likely to have been mentioned in the old blog and then ask Google to give you the cached version :-(

Never blog anything you might regret later, even if you think you are anonymous!

In a similar vein, the UK Labour party is provably involved in an illegal contribution campaign. The politicians were using MS Word, which by default keeps a change-tracking history of the files it writes. So when the politician thought he had 'deleted' the incriminating passages from his document, he had forgotten about this convenient 'restore' feature. By tracking all the changes, investigators were able to recover the 'deleted' passages, and even show who had 'deleted' them and when ;-) This merely serves to confirm how IT-ignorant our politicians are; not to mention losing 25 million unencrypted data records :-( Remember folks, you can turn off the change-tracking feature in most word-processing SW packages, albeit you then lose the ability to 'undo' changes. Alternatively, save your documents as .txt and not .doc files, OK? Because when you send anyone a .doc file, you send them the change history too.

Similarly, if you have been viewing porn etc. on your PC and - thinking to play safe - then 'delete' the files, you have merely deleted a pointer to the file from your file directory. The porn photos etc are still out there on the disc, just not linked to from the directory. Police etc can find them using their forensic data recovery SW. In fact I have such a piece of SW sitting right here on this PC, called "PC inspector Smart Recovery" (from Convar). I use it to recover inadvertently deleted photos from the chips in my cameras. And yes, I once bought a camera on eBay second hand and there were 'interesting' photos on the chip which the seller thought she had deleted. Double-D Ooops!When reselling cameras etc, do so without the chips! Or scrub 'em.

Even the CIA etc screw up like this. They failed to realise that 'blacking out' the classified pieces of a recently declassified .pdf document electronically merely adds a 'blacked out' layer on top of the original which is still there. IT-savvy newspaper reporters were thus able to remove the 'blacking out', thus recovering the allegedly obliterated pieces of the document. Triple-Ooops! And this is 'national security'? BTW, the NSA has a public document on how to delete parts of (eg .pdf) documents.

You DO know that eMails are postcards, don't you? Anyone can read what's in them.

Finally, let me remind you of my blog entry from 1st of february 2006 showing you how to really scrub a disc (or storage chip) free of data before selling it. Be careful folks...

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 12th December 2007 at 06:12 CET permalink Comments Email

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What's a wage worth working for?

S erious social stuff today folks. There has been controversy raging about the issue of Minimum Wages here in Germany. This was for postmen (Mail delivery personnel) and coincided with the liberation ( end of the Deutsche Post monopoly) of the letter-delivery market due 1/1/2008. The government proposes to make into law a minimum wage for postmen of 9.80€. The response of packet delivery companies such as PIN and TNT (who pay their deliverymen about 5€/hour) has been to fire thousands of people and get out of that line of business. So the government's generous plan to raise their wages above the poverty line has backfired rather badly.

Let me generalise this discussion to talking about work on or below the poverty line.

The Poverty Line is not an absolute number. Within the EU (European Union) it is defined as earning below 60% of the median income in the EU country you are in. 50% of employees earn less than, and 50% more than, the median. It was around 1550€/month total before deductions here in Germany last time I looked it up.

Here in Germany we do have a social security scheme. This is intended to provide the long-term unemployed with a benefit on which to eke out a minimal existance. It is called ALG2 here. Besides the people who cannot find work, there are those who do not want to work, and prefer to live on benefits with plenty of free time, scrounging off the regular taxpayers :-( On the other hand, there are employers (e.g. PIN) who pay their unskilled workers so low a wage that these poor people need a supplemental benefit to bring them up to the general benefit level. There are over a ½ mio of them.

So how much is the ALG2 benefit (also called Hartz4, the whoremonger who came up with the idea)? ALG2 is currently 347€/month for a single person plus rent and heating benefits (totalling 664 €). Children's benefits increase this to 969 € total for a single with 1 child. Married couples with 2 children get 1592 €, with 3 children 1925 € total.

Now let us look at some wages. The median white collar worker gets 3510 € total, that's before deductions like taxes and social security contributions. The median blue collar worker gets 2582 € total, a median shop employee gets 2715 € total, but some branches are poorly paid. For example, the median bar/restaurant worker gets only 1621 € total ; after deductions he/she has only 1099 € netto take-home pay.

So now let us look at the margins. If the aforementioned waiter is single this net 1099€ is some 435 € more per month than his ALG2 benefit of 664 €. If the aforementioned waitress is a single mom (with 1 child) her net 1152 € is only 183 € more per month than her ALG2 benefit of 969 €. If the aforementioned waiter/barman is married with two children his net 1593 € is only 1 (yes, ONE) € more per month than his ALG2 benefit of 1592 €! Is it then any wonder that he chooses to stay at home, not work (legally) at all, rather than slaving away for a differential of 1€ 45c ? Furthermore, if by staying at home and breeding more kids, he can "earn" even more in benefits, what motivation does he have to work?

Just to put this in perspective, the median white collar worker makes 3510 € total, if married with 3 kids, he nets 2834 € meaning he nets 909 € more than he would get on ALG2 (1925 €). Assuming a 160 hour month, his work is worth under 6 €/hour.

And so we have this political dilemma. As a society we want to avoid having people fall into poverty through unemployment. However, we also want to stop scroungers deliberately exploiting the benefit system. Also we want people to be able to earn a wage that they can actually live on, hence the call for a decent minimum wage.

No, I don't have a solution to the problem. My next vote will go to the party that has.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 11th December 2007 at 06:11 CET permalink Comments Email

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The Policeman's Ball

There is a hoary old joke in the UK which goes like this . . . . . Charity lady selling tickets door to door : "Would you like a ticket for the Policeman's Ball?"

Uninterested potential customer : "Is it a dance or a raffle ?" ;-)

And thereby hangs (sic!) today's tale.

Our courts have decided that in the state of Hessen (Germany), policeMEN must have at least one (functioning!) ball. [ Some rugby songs may have to be rewritten ;-) ]

And why did the justice system have to decide this?

A transsexual, born as a girl, later (aged 22) had an OP to equip 'him' with an artificial penis (but no testicles), so that 'he' might live as a man. Said Tranny, now 36, applied for a job as a gaoler in one of Hessen's prisons but was rejected on the grounds that 'he' was not a man. He then appealed against this decision on the grounds of sexual discrimination. And lost. The court decided it is permissible for the police service to require that policemen have at least one (functioning!) ball. The transexual may appeal this decision, referring it to a higher court, which the gutter press will call a balls-up ;-)

No details were given as to how the state of Hessen tests whether said policemen's ball/balls are 'functioning'. Pity. Enquiring minds want to know ;-) Similarly it was not explained WHY the transexual wanted to work in a men's gaol, a hotbed (sic!) of sexually frustrated males. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Neither did the court decide about the minimum set of sexual characteristics that the policeWOMEN have to have. Again, enquiring minds ( and hands? ) want to know ;-)

But finally I think I now understand the role of the rank 'Inspector' ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 9th December 2007 at 06:09 CET permalink Comments Email

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One Million Visitors reached^* !

We have cause for celebration today at the Savory website! Since we started using Site Meter back in 2003 we have had over one million visits to this website, generating over 1.5 million page-views. Now I know that's not the same as one million unique visitors (it's more like seven to ten thousand repeated uniques), because despite me blogging sometimes in Scots, or Russian, or Latin, or even the calculus of quantum mechanics, some of you keep coming back regularly for more punishment. So here's saying a big thankyou to all who contributed to the popularity of this site over the past (almost) five years :-) I'll try to stay interesting.

On weekdays we are nowadays usually bowling along at or above 1600 visits/day, now reaching 55,000 visits per month, although the last year has seen its ups and downs.

Just FYI, the lucky millionth visitor came from Semarang (Indonesia) via a search engine and came to read the (surprisingly popular) article Write on the Speed Limit. Thanks, y'all!

BTW: The number on the right sidebar includes the 16,699 before I used SiteMeter.

Over one million visitors! Confucius he would surely say "A cause for cerebration" ;-)

^* Pun intended; yes, I do know there is more than one possible interpretation of the word 'reached' (sic) ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 7th December 2007 at 09:37 CET permalink Comments Email

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Objection, m'lud!

Blogreader MaryLou - who is a science fiction aficionado - points out a logical fallacy in last saturday's blog post. She wrote "If the Aliens have Faster-Than-Light (FTL) UFOs as you suggest, then why would they bother sending electromagnetic messages (at lightspeed) when an FTL messenger could get here faster?" . She also sent me this thumbnail copy of Mulder's infamous X-Files poster ;-) Thanks. She also says "We wouldn't even see them coming (at FTL).", and claims "Nothing can go FTL anyway, as Einstein proved! "

Certainly it is true, MaryLou, that the Aliens would get here faster at FTL. But that is a point-to-point flight. An electromagnetic wave message would propagate spherically from the starting point (OK, OK, maybe only a hemisphere if propagated from the surface of their planet). Thus after 10 years the wavefront would reach ALL points 10 lightyears away, not just the one point. So the broadcast idea works better - even if slower - if you don't know where to aim (i.e. exploratory broadcasting). Once contact has been established the destination is known and they'd go there superluminally.

As far as seeing them coming is concerned, she is also correct. They would appear out of nowhere as soon as they went subluminal ( = popping out of hyperspace). So we wouldn't see them coming. In fact they would then appear to be going! Let me explain with the help of the sketch below.

Assume the Alien's world is 10 light years away. The calibrated solid line shows where the wavefront of the light from their starting time would be after 0,1,2...9,10 years on its way to Earth. The dotted line shows their UFO taking 1 year for the trip (at 10c). The UFO would appear 'out-of-nowhere' where I have drawn the asterisk. After a year we would see the light from point 9, after 2 years from point 8 etc. We'd see them at points 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0 in that order (Hubble telescope permitting). So they would appear to be moving away from us! Don't know if they are coming or going ;-)

But yes, MaryLou, things can go FTL. Einstein's statement referred to a vacuum. The blue glow that you see in the water of nuclear reactors (Cerenkov Radiation) is caused by charged particles from the reactor rods entering the water FTL in the water.

Understand that I'm not arguing pro-UFOs - which I don't believe in anyway - I'm just commenting on your mail, MaryLou. BTW, back in the mid-60s when there was all that brouhaha about the Dean Drive my mate John and I spent a fruitless 3 weeks trying to build a Dean Drive based on Dean's vague and woolly patent. Needless to say it didn't work! Pity, a Dean Drive would have been a great motor for our very own UFO ;-)

PS : Apropos FTL : Physicist Sean Carroll has just put a great piece up, the Arrow of Time FAQ. Go read it.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 5th December 2007 at 06:05 CET permalink Comments Email

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R.I.P. Elly Beinhorn, 1907 - 2007 :-(

With great regret, I relay the news of pilot Elly Beinhorn's death; she passed away last wednesday, at 100.

She was one of pre-war Germany's most famous female pilots. She flew a Klemm 25 solo 7.000 km to Guinea-Bissao in 1931, crashed on the way back near Timbuktu but made it home. On 4th december 1931 she flew the Klemm solo around the world via Port Darwin in Australia, Panama, and South America. In 1935 she flew the then new Messerschmidt 108 Taifun from Gleiwitz in Schlesia to Skutari (Bosporus) and back; 3500 km in 13½ hours, thus demonstrating the 108's superior performance. Not many modern singles could average 160 mph!

I had the privilege of meeting her in the mid seventies when I was just starting to fly. We took a ride in a beautifully restored Klemm 151. In 1979 - at the age of 72 - after a flying career spanning 51 years, Elly handed in her licence. She will be missed by pilots around the world, not only in Germany. A brave woman. Rest in peace, Elly!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 3rd December 2007 at 06:03 CET permalink Comments Email

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Is there anybody out there?

Just last tuesday I wrote a tongue in cheek piece called Is it JUST background noise? suggesting that the heavens are alive with the sound of music intergalactic/interstellar broadcasts or beamcasts by extraterrestial civilisations.

Now I have been asked "What is the basis for that assumption?"

Coincidentally ['cos I'm not conceited enough to think it is a response] Alan Bellows has answered that question rather well over at his blog, which is Damn Interesting :-) Alan even has an interactive app which will let you plug YOUR probability estimates into the Drake equation, thus calculating the number of currently simultaneously broadcasting alien civilisations. My estimates resulted in an answer of 300 broadcasting alien worlds. Go to Alan's page, plug in your numbers and see how many alien worlds YOU get.

One rich man who gets a result larger than one (which would be us) is Paul Allen. He is financing a telescope specifically designed to seek out alien life. The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) will sweep more than one million star systems for radio signals generated by intelligent beings. It should help spot definite signs of alien life by 2025. Too late?

Again, I emphasize that we are talking about one-way communication, due to the limitations of the speed of light. I don't expect any Charles-Adamski-like visits by UFOs, ~Roswell.

On the other hand, if they receive one of our TV broadcasts about US policy on dealing with illegal aliens - interpreting it as being about aliens like themselves perhaps? - they may just pop over FTL to stamp out the pesky human race before it invents interstellar travel (perhaps in 2013 ?).

Ever wondered why the Mayan calender stops on 21 December^* 2012 ?

^* : Buy your Xmas presents early that year. Oh, and enjoy the last 5 years before the Rapture comes ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st December 2007 at 06:01 CET permalink Comments Email

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