Saturday, May 16, 2009

[thought for the day] saturday evening

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.

John Buchan [1943]

[flight theory] and its application to sailing

This post is dedicated to Gallimaufry.

Children are taught the following basics:

… which might be followed up by this:

… which then leads to a discussion of the Bernoulli Effect:

The Bernoulli Effect is taken to infer that air, when it approaches a wing, separates into an upper and lower stream, the upper stream moving faster because of the curved surface and therefore creating lower pressure, the lower stream moving more slowly on a flat surface, with both streams reaching the trailing edge at the same time and exiting the wing. High pressure below, low pressure above, the wing lifts.

Gale M. Craig says:

Although Bernoulli's law is sound and well proven, the premise of equal transit time is invalid and without foundation in known physics. Thus the most popular explanation, world-wide, of wing operation is false, and easily shown to be so.

In total then, upward movement ahead, rearward movement above, forward movement below and downward movement behind constitute a circulatory movement traveling with the wing, which is known as "circulation superimposed on passing flow".

Aerodynamic lift of a wing can be explained and calculated through simple application of Newtonian physics. Air flow following the contours of a wing in normal flight departs in a downward direction. In this redirection of flow, downward momentum is produced.

Upward reaction force (or lift) must be equal, according to Newtonian physics, to the downward rate of change of air momentum. Inclination of a lower wing surface deflects some air downward there, while greater downward deflection is produced as flow follows the downwardly-curving upper surface.

In the downwardly-curving flow, an upward pressure gradient exists which opposes atmospheric pressure to cause upper surface pressure reduction. Bernoulli's law is satisfied with velocity changes related to pressure changes when oncoming air accelerates over the wing leading edge into the reduced pressure above the wing and decelerates in encounter with increased pressure below the leading edge.

The pressure difference also accelerates air upward around the leading edge. These accelerations occur in accordance with Bernoulli's law, but the greater upper surface velocity is more easily explained as resulting from pressure difference, rather than causing it as popular theories teach.

As air is accelerated downward by wing passage, upward recirculation occurs all around the airplane, away from higher pressure below and toward lower pressure above. Thus recirculation occurs forward and upward around the wing, and laterally outward,upward and inward to produce twin trailing vortices which is made visible in smoke behind aerobatic plane wings at airshows.

Forward recirculation carries upwash into which the wing flies. Energy is recovered from leading edge upwash as circulation rounds the leading edge to produce centrifugal pressure reduction, known as "leading edge suction," and forward thrust. Leading edge suction is sometimes used to operate a stall warning horn.

Leading edge pressure reduction produces forward thrust on the wing, but curvature of circulation around the rear produces opposing rearward thrust. If these were equal they would cancel, but energy lost into lateral recirculation around the wing ends causes forward thrust to be less than rearward thrust.

The difference between these thrusts appears as drag, commonly referred to as "induced drag," because the classical mathematics treatment is similar to that of electromagnetism and electromagnetic induction.

That’s a fairly complicated explanation for the layman but perhaps this picture shows some of the variables more clearly:


You’ll notice that the wing is angled to the fuselage, not by a lot but enough so that it is always pointing upwards, except at the tips, where you can see there is a twist downwards, if you can imagine the plane flying level. The angle is sometimes called angle of attack. Compared to the horizontal diagrams used to explain Bernoulli, this is far more complicated.

Another factor is the planform or shape of the wing. One of the most efficient is the ellipse, referring not so much to the actual shape but to the aerodynamics of airloss towards the tips. Add to that the vortices, the effect of wingtips, flaps and ailerons and it’s not so easy.

Louis A. Bloomfield, Professor of Physics, The University of Virginia, puts it this way:

When air flows past an airplane wing, it breaks into two airstreams. The one that goes under the wing encounters the wing's surface, which acts as a ramp and pushes the air downward and forward. The air slows somewhat and its pressure increases. Forces between this lower airstream and the wing's undersurface provide some of the lift that supports the wing.

But the airstream that goes over the wing has a complicated trip. First it encounters the leading edge of the wing and is pushed upward and forward. This air slows somewhat and its pressure increases. So far, this upper airstream isn't helpful to the plane because it pushes the plane backward.

But the airstream then follows the curving upper surface of the wing because of a phenomenon known as the Coanda effect. The Coanda effect is a common behavior in fluids--viscosity and friction keep them flowing along surfaces as long as they don't have to turn too quickly. (The next time your coffee dribbles down the side of the pitcher when you poured too slowly, blame it on the Coanda effect.)

Because of the Coanda effect, the upper airstream now has to bend inward to follow the wing's upper surface. This inward bending involves an inward acceleration that requires an inward force. That force appears as the result of a pressure imbalance between the ambient pressure far above the wing and a reduced pressure at the top surface of the wing.

The Coanda effect is the result (i.e. air follows the wing's top surface) but air pressure is the means to achieve that result (i.e. a low pressure region must form above the wing in order for the airstream to arc inward and follow the plane's top surface).

The low pressure region above the wing helps to support the plane because it allows air pressure below the wing to be more effective at lifting the wing. But this low pressure also causes the upper airstream to accelerate. With more pressure behind it than in front of it, the airstream accelerates--it's pushed forward by the pressure imbalance.

Of course, the low pressure region doesn't last forever and the upper airstream has to decelerate as it approaches the wing's trailing edge--a complicated process that produces a small amount of turbulence on even the most carefully designed wing.

In short, the curvature of the upper airstream gives rise to a drop in air pressure above the wing and the drop in air pressure above the wing causes a temporary increase in the speed of the upper airstream as it passes over much of the wing.

Here’s a Wiki demonstration of the Coander effect:

If one holds the back of a spoon in the edge of a stream of water running freely out of a tap (faucet), the stream of water will deflect from the vertical to run over the back of the spoon. The effect can also be seen by placing a can in front of a lit candle. If one blows directly at the can, the air will bend around it and extinguish the candle.

From this NACA foil section, you can see that the wing is not always flat below either:

My field of expertise is not in flight aerodynamics but in sailboat aerodynamics and in aquadynamics, the design of yachts in other words; my current interest being ocean-going outrigger canoes, which usually have simpler rigs than a solid wing. For the afficianados, I’m currently exploring the crab claw, to make it reefable and the junk, to give it windward ability.

What’s more, I think I have a solution to both, which I’ll soon send to the respective associations with whom I’ve been in touch recently.

Solid wings are used, vertically, on yachts, as in the pic of Cogito, the current Little America’s Cup holder, seen below. You’ll notice that the wing consists of three sections and that if juxtaposed at a certain angle, as in the pic, it causes the leeward or curved side of the sail to resemble the upper surface of an aeroplane wing.



Note the vertical slot which creates airflow to the leeward side, thus speeding the stream even more and creating more lift.

The reason the wing must be shaped this way is that the boat must ‘tack’ through the eye of the wind and have the wind alternately on either side of it. This creates mechanical issues and issues of flexibility, leading to greater complication, as you’ll see by the Australian crew trying to sort out theirs:


If you really want to know the physics behind these solid wings, there is one man you should check - Tom Speer.

The bottom line with softsails is that it’s not as critical in a sailboat, which goes much slower and deals with different sets of Reynolds numbers, what you do to the windward or inner side of the foil [yachts travel much slower], as long as the outer curved surface is near perfectly aerodynamic. Besides, air does not flow as well after an obstruction [the bumpy part of a mast], followed by a concave section and so there are separation and reattachment issues.

To give you a practical example – every racing cat sailor knows that your mast rotation need only be two degrees too far or too little and you’ve created quite substantial stall.

The advantage of the soft sail is lack of complexity but it loses in narrow angle of attack. Why do hang gliders and ultralights and kites come down more often?

The advantage of the wing is that it gets lift at a wider angle of attack, making stalling less likely, a nice thing for aeroplane passengers to realize but it is heavier and it’s not as easy to de-power, which you often need to do.

Here’s the soft sail set up:


You’ll notice the curvature of the sail and especially the mast rotation of about 70 degrees to the fore and aft [front to back] line. You might also notice a lever at the base of the mast – this is the mast rotation limitation lever, connected to the sail structure itself, so when the sail goes anywhere, the mast goes with it, to create the correct outer shape.

You can see the curvature of the sail in the red batten – A Class tend to use flatter sails, as do the majority of very fast craft, this taken to extremes with ice yachts which sometimes have near flat sails and deeper, flatter masts, as in these skeeters:


Incidentally, the A Class is the one I used to race in the 80s, sometimes even with success, although my particular boat was an older design to what you see above. Here I am racing on a light wind day.

Some might say that the name of my boat is a good description of me as a blogger but I couldn’t possibly comment:


Just one last point of note. If you look at the top right of the pic and then below that, you’ll see two sets of strings streaming backwards, called telltales. The idea is to have each set roughly parallel so that the sail is set correctly to the wind.

You’ll see that though it is a near-calm day, those telltales are streaming and this illustrates that the sail can create its own wind, irrespective of what’s going on around. At least, this applies to efficient foils.

In the next article in this series, I’ll look in more detail at the flow characteristics of wings and keels, including vortices and the need for flaps, ailerons and end plates.

[life's a beach] maybe

Friday, May 15, 2009

[thought for the day] friday evening

Of course not but I’m told it works, even if you don’t believe in it.

Niels Bohr [1930]

Which is only to say that there might possibly be, just by an off chance, some things in life beyond our comprehension.

[wordless friday] captions please

[comment moderation] until monday

Really sorry, people, hate having to do it. Have a good weekend.

[the magdalene sisters] new entrants

Had to chuckle.

[triumph bonneville] just for the hell of it

Perhaps this is pre-1966 - anyone know? Was the best the T120?

Manufacturer Triumph Engineering Co Ltd
Also called 'Bonne'
Production 1959–1983
Predecessor TR6 Trophy
Engine Four-stroke Parallel-twin
Power 46 bhp (34 kW) @ 6,500 rpm (T120)
Transmission 4-speed (later 5-speed)
Wheelbase 55.75 in (1416.1 mm)
Weight 395 lb (179 kg)
Related TR7 Tiger

[relativity] difficult to conceptualize


Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘Here I am this Friday, dreaming about the theory of relativity and Higham hasn’t posted anything on it for years.’ Fear no more, here it is, explained by Louis A. Bloomfield, Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia:

If you were at the back of a bus going the speed of light, and you were to run toward the front, would you be moving faster than the speed of light or turn into energy? -- TM, Ft. Bragg, NC

First, your bus can't be going at the speed of light because massive objects are strictly forbidden from traveling at that speed. Even to being traveling near the speed of light would require a fantastic expenditure of energy.

But suppose that the bus were traveling at 99.999999% of the speed of light and you were to run toward its front at 0.000002% of the speed of light (about 13 mph or just under a 5 minute mile). Now what would happen?

First, the bus speed I quoted is in reference to some outside observer because the seated passengers on the bus can't determine its speed. After all, if the shades are pulled down on the bus and it's moving at a steady velocity, no one can tell that it's moving at all. So let's assume that the bus speed I gave is according to a stationary friend who is watching the bus zoom by from outside.

While you are running toward the front of the bus at 0.000002% of the speed of light, your speed is in reference to the other passengers in the bus, who see you moving forward. The big question is what does you stationary friend see? Actually, your friend sees you running toward the front of the bus, but determines that your personal speed is only barely over 99.999999%. The two speeds haven't added the way you'd expect. Even though you and the bus passengers determine that you are moving quickly toward the front of the bus, your stationary friend determines that you are moving just the tiniest bit faster than the bus. How can that be?

The answer lies in the details of special relativity, but here is a simple, albeit bizarre picture. Your stationary friend sees a deformed bus pass by. Ignoring some peculiar optical effects due to the fact that it takes time for light to travel from the bus to your friend's eyes so that your friend can see the bus, your friend sees a foreshortened bus--a bus that is smashed almost into a pancake as it travels by. While you are in that pancake, running toward the front of the bus, the front is so close to the rear that your speed within the bus is miniscule. Why the bus becomes so short is another issue of special relativity.

The basis for Einstein's theory of relativity is the idea that everyone sees light moving at the same speed. In fact, the speed of light is so special that it doesn't really depend on light at all. Even if light didn't exist, the speed of light would still be a universal standard--the fastest possible speed for anything in our universe.

Once we recognize that the speed of light is special and that everyone sees light traveling at that speed, our views of space and time have to change. One of the classic "thought experiments" necessitating that change is the flashbulb in the boxcar experiment. Suppose that you are in a railroad boxcar with a flashbulb in its exact center. The flashbulb goes off and its light spreads outward rapidly in all directions. Since the bulb is in the center of the boxcar, its light naturally hits the front and back walls of the boxcar at the same instant and everything seems simple.

But your boxcar is actually hurtling forward on a track at an enormous speed and your friend is sitting in a station as the train rushes by. She looks into the boxcar through its window and sees the flashbulb go off. She watches light from the flashbulb spread out in all directions but it doesn't hit the front and back walls of the boxcar simultaneously. Because the boxcar is moving forward, the front wall of the boxcar is moving away from the approaching light while the back wall of the boxcar is moving toward that light. Remarkably, light from the flashbulb strikes the back wall of the boxcar first, as seen by your stationary friend.

Something is odd here: you see the light strike both walls simultaneously while your stationary friend sees light strike the back wall first. Who is right? The answer, strangely enough, is that you're both right. However, because you are moving at different velocities, the two of you perceive time and space somewhat differently. Because of these differences, you and your friend will not always agree about the distances between points in space or the intervals between moments in time. Most importantly, the two of you will not always agree about the distance or time separating two specific events and, in certain cases, may not even agree about which event happened first!

The remainder of the special theory of relativity builds on this groundwork, always treating the speed of light as a fundamental constant of nature. Einstein's famous formula, E=mc2, is an unavoidable consequence of this line of reasoning.

Clear?

Thursday, May 14, 2009

[thought for the day] thursday evening

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people [sceptics] no more milk and so they are gone to milk the bull.

Samuel Johnson [1763]

Don’t know much about this chap. Is he famous or something? Did he have any education worth speaking of? Did any wisdom ever spring from his lips? Enlighten me.

[wordless thursday] captions please

[taking the piss] there must be a reason

We're all agreed about one thing, anyway - the pollies are taking the piss, they're doing it now with impunity and the people don't like it.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

Cameron saying he was 'appalled'. Pardon?

Now look - people don't dare take the piss unless they know they're going to get away with it and this lot really do believe that they're not going to have to face the electorate because of the new regional governance. How else would you explain the gall?

[country quiz 2] for you geographical whizzes

1. This country is mainly black and it was a member of the British Commonwealth, then it was expelled, then reinstated. It has a large population in London. There are two main regions – north and south and one of the languages is known as Ibo. They have an excellent national football team.

2. This country also has more than one capital – one administrative and one legislative. Its major city has many canals, its national colour is orange and it is sometimes called the ‘sewer of Europe’.

3. This country’s national colour is also orange except that half the people don’t agree with this statement. It was very nearly wiped out years ago in a terrible accident.

4. This country is part of different world regions and yet the language is the same across the nation. It has a famous deep lake and its people are warm and friendly, although they don’t smile publicly. It’s tree is the silver birch.

5. This country has high mountains everywhere and is landlocked but not rich. It isn’t even a nation because its neighbour claims sovereignty over it and even claims it doesn’t exist. There is an important religious man connected with it.

Answers

Nigeria, The Netherlands, The Ukraine, Russian Federation, Tibet

[in safe hands] how big business operates

This Sydney Morning Herald article on Rio Tinto's iron ore battle with China - the final round of brinkmanship from last year, illustrates how close we often come to the brink and the escalation of hostilities. Even if steel is not your thing, this still makes a rivetting read:

It took place at a Baosteel office in Shanghai. Baosteel, China's industrial champion, and Rio Tinto, the world's second biggest miner, had already weathered roughly a round a fortnight since February without any sign of progress. The talks began after lunch with Baosteel's chief negotiator Ding Shouhu flinging threats and statistics at Rio Tinto's Will Malaney, as usual, and Malaney returning in kind.

Baosteel was insisting on a price rise close to the 71 per cent agreed with Brazil's Vale four months earlier. Rio Tinto was after nearly double that, to bring prices in line with China's sizzling spot market.

It was a strategy of mutually-assured destruction. If they failed to find common ground that day, [it would plunge] the Australian mining industry and Chinese steel makers into an unpredictable world of spot market sales and retaliation from Chinese industry and government. For weeks Baosteel had been privately promising a blanket Chinese embargo of most or all Australian iron ore cargoes if negotiations broke down and Rio knew there was a real chance that Baosteel and its controlling shareholder, the Chinese Government, would follow through on the threat. Nobody knew where that might lead.

"I've experienced times when politics have been unleashed in China," says a Chinese negotiator, "and it has been very hard to control."

The Rio and Baosteel negotiators edged towards each other in a haggling process not unlike what you might see in a Chinese clothing market. Baosteel gave a little, Rio gave a little. They agreed that China and Rio Tinto would be better off if the price of "lump" iron ore rose faster than "fines", as lump accounted for a relatively small proportion of China's imports compared with Japan but a relatively high proportion of Rio's exports compared with BHP.

And then after 12 months of talks, four months of serious negotiations and a tense afternoon in that room at Baosteel, the opponents jumped up and clasped each other's hands. They had agreed on a record-breaking 79 per cent price rise for iron ore fines and a 96.5 per cent rise for lump - working out to a weighted average rise of 85 per cent for Rio Tinto and a little less for BHP.

Australia had helped itself to an extra $2.5 billion in annual export earnings [but] from China's point of view, its economy suffered yet another terms of trade shock, its inflation problem got worse and its steel industry leaders lost face. But the mills would continue to expand and an all-out trade war had been averted.
For now.
In recent years Australia's big mining companies [had] underestimated China. The head offices of both BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto initially closed their ears five years ago when their analysts in Shanghai and Beijing began screaming down the phone to say the steel industry was taking off and they didn't have nearly enough supply to meet demand. Decision makers said mine expansions were too difficult, skilled workers were too scarce, the China boom wouldn't last.

In 2006 Rio Tinto surrendered the Chinese market leadership position it had occupied since 1973. Vale powered ahead, despite Brazil's ports being three times as far away as Cape Lambert in the Pilbara. The tardy Australian mining response became a macro-economic problem as Australia's overall export volumes hardly moved in six years.

BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers … understands that steel has an almost "spiritual" dimension in China and that Chinese political leaders have something of a steel obsession. And yet … BHP did nothing to prepare China for its takeover announcement [of Rio Tinto]. There had been no warning, no reassuring courtesy call, and no joint investment offer as a gesture of goodwill. Instead, BHP put the bulk of its early public relations efforts into London.

"BHP and Rio are so powerful already," [said] Hu Kai, a leading iron ore analyst at Umetal.com. "Together, they would control the world's iron ore exports and set the price absolutely. There is no question about this. Baosteel is very scared."

Rio Tinto [was] also scared. BHP is a smaller player in the iron ore market but in recent years it has been far more aggressive. Privately, BHP blame[d] Rio's "gutlessness" for its failed attempt to secure a freight premium for Australian exports to north-east Asia three years ago. Rio … kicked off the year by picking a major fight with Chinese mills by dumping millions of tonnes of long-term contract iron ore onto the Chinese spot market, in breach of the spirit if not the letter of the "contingency" provisions of its agreements.

CISA's big-talking president, Luo Bingsheng … recently gave an extraordinary account of his own strategic importance on national TV. He told China Central Television that he had summoned the "iron ore manager of Rio Tinto" - perhaps Rio's veteran behind-the-scenes negotiator Ian Bauert - and delivered a message that was polite but barbed like "needles in cotton".

Luo conceded that Rio Tinto's new-found fortitude had taken him by surprise. "We failed to consider Rio Tinto's strong attitude in negotiations," he said. And then Luo unveiled China's doomsday weapon. He had personally drafted an edict that he intended to immediately publish if that last round of negotiations broke down.

"It said the breakdown of the negotiations totally violated the traditional pricing mechanism and China's steel enterprises will resolutely boycott the switch from long-term contract ore to spot market ore," said Luo. CISA was willing to choke Chinese steel makers in the hope it would cause relatively more damage to Rio Tinto. "If [Rio] loses the China market, it would be hard for the company to survive. If the negotiation fails, then BHP would be the biggest winner," said Luo.

Mutually-assured destruction

LUO's comments to the Chinese broadcaster CCTV mirror those of another senior iron ore and mining official, Zou Jian. In April Zou told the Herald that China was prepared to slash its steel production to by as much as 10 per cent - 50 million tonnes - if that was the price to be paid for blockading Rio and BHP ships after a collapse in negotiations.

Any state-orchestrated blockade would be in breach of the World Trade Organisation rules. But that is a technicality that has bothered CISA little in the past. CISA, a government offshoot, might claim that it was not a government organisation. In any case, a WTO dispute would take years to resolve.

From Rio's point of view, the strategic question was not whether CISA and Baosteel were bluffing but whether and for how long they could hold China's 700 steel makers in line.
RIO planned to sell … about two-fifths of China's total iron ore imports and about one-fifth of its total consumption. Over the year CISA had contrived to double China's port stockpiles to about 80 million tones. Some of the stocks were run down in the final month of negotiations in an attempt to depress the spot price and place more pressure on Rio negotiators. But they still added up to around two months of emergency supplies. CISA had also been tightening an import licensing system to increase its leverage. CISA could arrange to take away the license of any steel mill or trader that broke ranks. New cargoes from Australia's "third force" iron ore company, FMG, would also come in handy.

CISA's power base … would be haemorrhaging. They would be losing market share to China's smaller private mills and to the giant mills of Japan and Korea. And then it would be Japan and Korea's turn to face the newly emboldened Rio. [However], Chinese mills would eventually revolt and CISA would buckle. Privately, a senior CISA official told the Herald that Luo Bingsheng's war plan would not have worked.

In the end, Rio Tinto didn't get what it wanted but it broadly held its ground. For all the insults and bluster emanating from the China Iron and Steel Association this year, there was little it could do. While CISA taunted Rio with the prospect of being swallowed by BHP, close observers says Rio Tinto used the same argument against Baosteel to better effect.

"They presented this case: if China didn't agree to a much higher price then BHP would take over Rio and that would be terrible for China," says Hu Kai, at Umetal.com. "And they believed this. Baosteel believed that giving Rio a high price might help to stop the merger." Baosteel was doubly upset to learn that Rio and BHP had accepted deals with European mills at the lower Vale price. There are now two contract benchmarks: a global price and another higher price reserved for Australian iron ore in north-east Asia.

"The traditional benchmark system is breaking down," says Xu Xiangchun, an analyst at Mysteel. "There will be more change next year and the system will edge closer to Australia's demand for an index pricing system. The result will be several prices." But if BHP wins its takeover bid for Rio Tinto then all bets are off.

"If BHP gets Rio then next year there will be no price negotiations," says an Australian mining executive, half joking. "Baosteel will simply go to Melbourne and collect the price."

Update

Did the merger go through?

[logic] see what you think

Make your own mind up.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

[thought for the day] wednesday evening

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds around to religion.

Francis Bacon [Essays, 1625]

Anyone heard of this chap? Did he know anything of the world or was he of the uneducated classes? Perhaps you could Enlighten me.

[wordless wednesday] captions please

Base Instincts - a story in three parts

Click on pic to zoom.


The text is up and each chapter can be accessed from the sidebar. The tricky bits, like links from text to pics and from chapter to chapter, still have to go in this week.

For those willing to take the plunge, hope you enjoy it.

And yes, that is her.

[english] transforming your grasp

The examples below are known, in the trade, as Key Word Transformations. Peruse the first line in each case, note the key word in bold on the second line and complete the third line, using no fewer than two and no more than five words.

Oh, one more rule – the key word may not be altered in any way. It must appear in the answer ‘as is’. ☺

1. It's unusual for Liya to be up at this time.
hardly
Liya …………………………at this time.


2. It's rare for the Minister to be in town.
stay
The Minister ………………………… town.


3. Is leaving everything here really necessary?
left
Does everything…………………………here?


4. There's no need for you to finish the vegetables if you don't feel like it.
have
If you don't feel like it …………………………finish the vegetables.


5. There’s almost no doubt he’s not going to win.
great deal
There’s a …………………………he’s going to win.


Possible answers

is hardly ever, does not usually stay, really have to be left, great deal of doubt [that]

[the word] love it or loathe it, it will always be


Martin Kelly makes the following observation about the internet:

Without doubt, as a tool for the dissemination of ideas the Internet sits next only to the printing press in its potential; yet just as Chesterton, I think it was, wrote that the downside of the printing press was the explosion of the volume of dud philosophy that appeared in its wake, so too does the Internet have a downside.

It is to be found in the outcome of Operation Algebra.

It is, of course, people who do bad things, and not the tools they use to inflict harm; no home would ever get built without carpenters using hammers, yet in the wrong hands there are few more lethal weapons. Just as the Internet is potentially one of the greatest tools ever created by Man for the spreading of The Word, people of faith have to acknowledge that great evil operates in it as well. We cannot shy away from this, as much as we would sincerely like to.

The main thrust of Martin’s post is about Catholicism and schism. As a non-Catholic, as a died in the wool Protestant who can’t accept the intermediary role of the Bishop of Rome, I’m going to make this observation about the Catholic faith:

It’s a living faith.

When I was in Sicily, walking down the rocky terrain, daily, from my hilltop retreat to the main town, I’d see how the churches were open door, living community centres and people really did pay attention to the papal decrees, from lip service through to devotion, to the crosses on the walls of supermarkets. This community presence of the church is something the protestants had at one time before they began ignoring the Word and corruption set in – look at the anglican church in America, for example. Look at the moribund Church of England here.

This enables a modern-day Catholic, Martin, to say:

The real world is that of The Word. For the past 200 years, many of us have been trying to live without The Word. For the most part, our efforts have resulted in catastrophic failure, their fruits ideology, genocide, and the slavery of living from paycheck to paycheck. One day, we'll look back on this period in history and laugh.

The real world is that of The Word.

Hardly anyone in these faithless, sheeple days can see that. There is a simple devotion in that sentence, similar to the Americans’ devotion to the yoo ess of ay, towards their constitution and in these relativistic, PC times, that’s a breath of fresh air. To actually see someone abiding by a set of precepts is amazing in this day and age.

Look, you couldn’t mount any more stinging attack on the papacy and catholicism than I could - where would you like to start start - with the P2 Lodge and Calvi? With Cesare Borgia? Vatican II? The Jesuits? Then let me get going on the bloody Jewish Kabbalah and its Madonna accolytes.

Those things will always be present when dualistic satanism apes something monolithically but genuinely pro-good, such as the catholic church - pro-good in outlook, if not always in practice. Say what you like but without the U.S.A., freedom, libertarianism and democracy would, by now, be down the gurgler. Say what you like but without the catholic church, the Word would be a candle all but snuffed out.

It must be a source of constant irritation to the black nobility that the very country which is their citadel is also the engine room for the Christian message. I quite like that idea.

A beautiful allegory was the end of Matrix III, which many considered inferior to the mumbo-jumbo, new-ageist, first episode. Agent Smith and his clones, just as most people are also unwitting, mechanical agents of godless secularism and its inability to provide, leading inevitably to a sense of hopelessness and betrayal in its devotees who completely believed in the evolution and ultimate efficacy of machines as gods in their own right, along with god-free morality, only to be stymied at the last moment by the pesky and deeply annoying Real Power, Real Light, with its penchant for manifesting itself through weak and mortal man - just as Agent Smith and all the other misguided ones finally got theirs, so it is in the real world.

It’s David and Goliath, it’s Marvin the Paranoid Android and the huge battleship he opposed on the bridge between the two towers. It’s the real power, the metaphysical ‘soul’ if you like, present only as a hope in the heart, as a flickering candle in the Moriah wind. It’s the humble human spirit deep inside us. It will always win at the close of play, always … though it be seemingly down and out.

Good will triumph over evil for the simple reason that evil, though it make a huge racket in a tin can, wear fabulous costumes, sprout baseless, spiritually bereft, high sounding Nietzscheanism, issue countless missals, reports, think-tank recommendations and hold endless conferences and seminars for little result, appearing omnipotent, ubiquitous and invincible … is actually fundamentally flawed.

Look at the Soviet Union, look at the new UKSSR. For goodness sake – I go to the former Soviet Union twelve years, come back and find myself in the Soviet Union again. Look at non-President Obama’s brave new world he’s creating as the High Priest of the dark one – did you catch his first open attack on Christianity the other day?

Good and G-d are two very closely related words and admittedly, good isn’t exactly an exciting, rivetting concept - it just is.

I love the simple, primitive, superstitious faith of the pesky little people like myself because it annoys and sticks it up the temporal powers that be and exposes the twin gods of Science and Humanism [was there ever such a misnamed ‘ism’, having zero to do with the ultimate benefit of Mankind as a species] for the limited tools they are; it annoys the legions of rationalist disciples.

With their multi-trillion dollar technology, they still can’t snuff out an idea or get the world in order.

As Evie Nefertiti said, when the monster got his, courtesy of the spirit, at the end of The Mummy: ‘He’s mortal.’ Mortal means he can, theoretically at least, be defeated. We just need to find the way.

And as Jonesy said in Dad’s Army, concerning the mighty armies poised just across the English La Manche: ‘They don’t like it up ’em, they don’t, they don’t.’

As the hordes of socialists in the law, in the university professorships, at the top of the NHS, in the High Church, in Common Purpose, in key positions in education, await the inevitable coming together of the Grand Plan – lo, even in its implementation will be sewn the seeds of its defeat because it is fundamentally flawed and unsustainable.

Don’t get me wrong, one needs to also believe in the ability of technology to provide new solutions – just look at these ideas – there’s no point being a Luddite but to ignore the other, irrepressible, metaphysical side in implementing these excellent ideas is Tower of Babel all over again.

Why not combine the two and then you’re really cooking with gas?


Tuesday, May 12, 2009

[wordless tuesday] no words

[propaganda] predators, women and the ahl


Finding myself in a town not far away, I’ve decided to post this today rather than wait until tomorrow because I’d prefer to concentrate on the book, visiting and any fallout tomorrow.

Let’s face it, from the nastiness of Saturday and yesterday [stalker posts and comments passim], it appears the anti-higham lobby [AHL], of whom Azrael is their chairman or high priest, is getting active again. Why now?

There’s a threefold goal, according to his message yesterday – to see me ejected from Bloghounds, to see me run out of the blogosphere in shame [or at least shunned by one and all] and to nail the woman I’ve been supporting [which I suspect might be the real purpose]. This woman we’re speaking of has shown me nothing but support and kindness and I have feelings for her.

Reactions

This is the tenor of the reactions in my inbox so far:

‘I really don’t know why you’re giving this man a platform to make his wild accusations. You’d have been better off ignoring him.’

‘I don’t accept a word he says, I’m afraid, the man’s obviously unbalanced, I think I can make my own mind up ...’

‘James, what are you doing? XXXX by XXXX was thrown out of XXXX, he has no support except those who are so closely aligned to him that they have no choice but support him. Let it go, buddy.’

My friend also opined yesterday that they [the AHL] haven’t a hope in hell of touching her, she’s too hot for them and not even the police will support her stalker, so he chooses the soft target instead who doesn’t know how to go for the jugular.

I listened to these folks and see their point but the man did make specific accusations and these needed to be scotched once and for all. You see, there’s a new generation of readers now who didn’t see his destructive little game last year and it’s better they know whom they’re dealing with.

The people who sent those comments above are people of decency whom I don’t think fully understand the barrel scraping and gutter posting certain people are prepared to stoop to and so it did seem right to open up to the readers.

But this will certainly be the last post on the matter.

Spraying

The problem for the AHL is that they’re shooting wide of the mark thus far … so it’s time I helped them out a bit.

Firstly, my trilogy [tomorrow] has enough hot stuff in there to scorch me from here to kingdom come, as I wrote yesterday. Secondly, I’m going to show them two areas [below] where they’re wasting their time. Thirdly, I’ll give them a hot tip as to where they should actually be looking.

In return, I reserve the right to really go to town on each of them, one by one, showing just what ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ people we’re dealing with here.

University

You’re not going to get anywhere with the university line, AHL, there are documents before the Bloghounds committee now and those august three know the lie of the land. One further ‘document’ is the above photo and my case rests on those girls’ eyes. No group of females of 22/23 is going to give that look to someone whom all the girls knew to be a serial-sleaze. Female universities are hotbeds of gossip, after all. And by the way, the camera belongs to the red-headed girl. I don’t own one.

The women, in their 50s, who run such universities in Russia are ex-Soviet Union and to hold such a position for twenty years in a place like that with over 1200 girls and about 120 boys, a Dean and her offsiders are definitely not naïve do-gooders [although they’re good people inside]. They’re very astute, canny operators, used to navigating through a minefield of government regulations, fiercely protecting the reputation of the university and doing anything for their students, their charges. Women in positions of responsibility in both Britain and the U.S.A. would know precisely the nature of these ladies and they don’t suffer either fools or charlatans gladly.

The bloggers who’ve met me

This is possibly a more fruitful line. I’ve met, face to face, four fellow bloggers since leaving Russia. Apart from one initial blogpost by JHL, none of those four would post anything on me and I’m sure as hell not going to post anything on them, except positively. JHL still posts on my blog, the other three are more than welcome to and all are visitors to this site, as I am to them. We’ve had our differences of opinion but I only have 22 words for these people: ‘Thank you for your many kindnesses, which I most certainly shall make up to you, as and when it becomes possible again.’

My ex-girlfriend

To the AHL, she’s the one you should be pursuing and in her are rich pickings for you.

There are plans afoot for her to come over in late August and visit me, so I envisage a bloggers get-together in a pub in a central location like, say, Droitwich Spa or Worcester, I’ll see if she’d be willing to come along and meet you and you can ask whatever you like [she speaks near-perfect English, with a slight accent].

To give a small pen-sketch as to the essential problem with her – she’s provocative and divisive.

When she walks into a room, two things happen. The women detest her and the men start thinking thoughts they’d prefer their wives not to know. You understand, there are women of the sisterhood who enjoy each other’s company and then there are men-oriented women.

She’s the latter.

Furthermore, she’s bad for the man she’s with because everyone then looks at him [she prefers the more mature kind] and wonders. Once, she and her mother went into a café called Giuseppe, on the tree-lined street called Kryemlovskaya [Kremlin Street], looking for me but I’d already left and when I returned, I asked the girls behind the counter, ‘Did a beautiful blondinka come in here not long ago with her mother? They’re both very thin.’

One of the girls shook her head but another said, ‘Two sisters were in here asking for you.’

I asked, ‘Was one of them wearing glasses?’

‘Da.’

‘That was them,’ I answered. ‘Spasibo, dye’vushki.’

She’s cantankerous, capricious, always taking the opposite direction to wherever you want her to go, her ego’s the size of a planet but she’s also very, very shy in some ways and adores small animals and birds with broken wings whom she’ll take home and nurse back to health. At last count, I think there were six cats in that house.

If anyone hurts her, I’ll kill him. That’s the sort of loyalty she inspires in men and I’m still besotted by her, even now, as are a few others, I have to admit. She wrote to me not long ago, aching to see me again and vice-versa. One of the pics in the trilogy is actually a sketch of her.

So that’s where your best bet lies if you want to nail me because I plead absolutely guilty in advance and I’d love to see you try to handle her. 

Oh, one more thing. Once, she came to my university to meet up after work and I’ll never forget that scene in the foyer. I’d asked her to wait outside [it was early autumn] but she wasn’t having any of that – she never did as I asked. Now you’d understand that, with 900 girls of all shapes and sizes in that building, the local boys were always pressing to get in to meet them.

She walked in and how she got past the man on the door without a pass I still don’t know, she wasn’t even made up, that’s how confident she was and everyone turned and looked at her for about five seconds or watched form the corner of the eyes. I swear that was true.

Propaganda

So, off the pleasant topics and back to the nastiness. Joseph Goebbels learnt his propaganda techniques very well and invented one or two himself. The AHL have also learnt one or two tricks from Azrael and everyone concedes he’s a professional - one of the best in Britain, so he has a lot of people automatically accepting what he or they say.

I’d like to describe two of these techniques below, with your permission. Azrael himself describes it thus:

D---- calls me polished. Polished, because he knows me. Because he knows underneath that layer, I CAN be pretty cold booded and ruthless. Hey, I'm a salesman. Of COURSE I'm good. Think about it. Would a company pay me what they pay me if I wasn't????

Look, I'm good. Don't deny it. Damn good salesman. And I can't teach what I do. I can't. Of COURSE I have a strategy- the attack and lull strategy- but no matter how hard I try, no trainee can pick it up, you can either do what I do- you was born to do it- or you can't.

What wins is walking in thinking 'I'm going to close you down, mate. I'm going to cut off your options and you WILL do what I want.' I'm fairly blatant in my work. It;s WHY I'm the best. 'EVERYONE can be cozened or cowed, just pick your tool, but don't fuck up, because it really is, either or.'

Higham is the first to nod and concede – the man is good at what he does and he cuts a swathe through middle-aged women and young girls alike who have no defences, not to mention the men – not all men won’t have a bar of him.

That’s the sort of person we’re dealing with here.

The email technique

1. Decide whom you wish to close down, maybe someone who slighted you or someone who campaigned against you.

2. Check who’s your target’s most regular visitors and whom he counts on for support.

3. Start cozying up [to use his own word] to their blog, always be the first to come in with an intelligent, educated comment [women love that] and continue this for some time.

4. Somehow, email contact is made and it’s all very cozy and innocent for a while until he casually suggests they exchange phone numbers. he works best by voice and can better gauge the reaction at the other end of the line.

5. Now in a state of mutual ‘friendship’, he might ask, ‘What do you think of James?’ or some such. The blogger replies that James is OK, except maybe for this or that quirk. Our salesman jots that down and agrees that James is OK.

6. He writes to another blogger close to his target and says that Jane [let’s make up a name] is a bit worried about James doing this. he actually misrepresents what Jane said but not so far away that Jane would deny it. Jill [let’s make up another name], seeing the attestation of Jane as a mandate to herself open up, admits the thought had crossed her mind too about James.

7. When the dossier’s big enough [that’s what Azrael means by ‘accumulating evidence’], he now approaches all of them, saying things like, ‘You know, we really should do something about James.’

And so on. It’s a tried and trusted technique but you’d need to be a cold blooded, ruthless sociopath to use it.

Black is white technique

1. Take all the buzz words which have been used against you – sleaze, scumbag, sociopath, egotist, trouble-maker etc. – and write them all down. Also note the thrust of the allegations against you and internalize them in your mind.

2. Allow your natural tendency for denial full flourish and work yourself into a state where you truly believe you are the opposite of those things. It’s like method acting [De Niro and so on]. You can’t pull this off unless you can completely convince yourself that you are as pure as pure.

3. Now compose posts, emails and so on, projecting all of those things onto your object of hatred and dredging up any evidence you can from your dossiers in support of that [selected full emails, things the target might have written in posts etc.] and weave them into your narrative so that they appear to dovetail. It helps here if you’re not a bad writer. Azrael claims he is a far better writer than Higham, so that obviously qualifies him.

4. Act the innocent, for example, about phoning someone, claiming that she phoned you, not the other way round. It actually happened this way – he phoned, she phoned, he phoned, she phoned. Choose only the 2nd to 4th of those [with email support] and the impression given is entirely different to what the phone records say but hey, who checks phone records anyway? The punters you have in your pocket sure as hell don’t – they’ve already bought your story.

5. Now use the ‘little compliment’ technique on the women to sell them your version and with the men, you need to use the ‘hey, I’m a Brit like you, we’re men of the world’ approach, tailoring your manner to what you know will both please and convince the people you need to support you.

6. Knowing the target won’t let your comment stay in the comments section, email people copies and say, ‘This is what James didn’t want you to know.’ Climate of natural suspicion.

7. Send in your closest supporters to act as if they’re independent readers who have decided, on balance, to support Azrael and that ‘if readers knew what I know about James, you wouldn’t be supporting him’. They make vague references to the past.

8. Sit back and wait for the mutterings and murmurings to begin on blogposts all over the sphere, then act the injured innocent when you’re approached about ‘the truth of the matter’. Here you have to rely on the ‘damning with faint praise’ and ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’ technique and soon you have your result.

This is the heavy artillery.

These techniques are proven, they’ve been shown to work on the majority of punters who do not have their defences up. And who does have his/her defences up anyway? Azrael knows that most of you don’t really give a damn what Higham or anyone else does - your family, your work and you are the only focuses in your life, with perhaps a little blogging on the side.

So when he gets past your guard with his viper techniques, you never think you’ve been duped.

Some people though are in a line of business where they need to be awake to people like Azrael, e.g. insurance assessors, police. These people compare the demeanour of the target and compare it to the ‘too perfect’ technique of the predator and don’t buy his line.

They ask questions like, ‘Why would this Azrael suddenly pop up now? Why not earlier? Why would Higham react so savagely and at such length? What’s the most likely scenario here?’

The problem for the Azraels, Common Purposes and EUs of the world is that there really are astute people out there who can see through them. Azrael would answer that people can see through Higham, not the other way around but it was not Higham who dredged all this up again, was it? It was Azrael last week and on Saturday who reintroduced the trouble.

Higham himself was just trying to get on with his blogging at the time and will do so again as of tomorrow.

Whoa, you say – who’s going to invest that sort of time and effort for a largely unproductive result? The answer is - a psychopath who’s recently found himself a new job, now has the resources to do so, has infinite patience and a new goal in life.

[opera] elite test 2

To be a true member of Them, you’ll need to display an appreciation of opera. Supply the name of the composers from the initial letters:

1. Cosi fan tutte…..1790…..M
2. The Barber of Seville…..1816…..R
3. Aida…..1871…..V
4. Boris Godunov…..1874…..M
5. Carmen…..1875…..B

Answers

Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Mussorgsky, Bizet

Monday, May 11, 2009

[science and technology] second quiz

1. What does Cytology study?

2. Absolute zero, in Fahrenheit, is how many degrees below?

3. What is an eolic power station?

4. What is an Ishihara test used for?

5. What is panphobia?

Answers

The structure, function and life of cells, -459.7ºF, wind powered, to test for colour blindness, fear of everything

Sunday, May 10, 2009

[country quiz] five to test your geography

1. It is long and thin and near the coast. It actually elected a communist leader years ago and is next door to a country whose colours are light blue and white. It might sound cold but in fact it crosses many climactic regions from warm to cool.

2. This country is constantly living in danger – a geological fault line runs north south across its middle. It has spectacular mountains and hot springs and its capital is known for its white architecture and the multi-coloured roofs of its houses. It spends half the year under wet snow.

3. This country has many engineers, especially automotive, and likes causing wars which it doesn’t win. For centuries it was not even a country – it was a series of dukedoms, under one loose banner. In the south is a beautiful forest and it has many beautiful castles.

4. This country is long and sprawls across many islands, as well as half of another big island it disputes with its large southern neighbour. Bombings there have tarnished its image of exotic South East Asia. The wife of its former corrupt President was known for her thousands of pairs of shoes.

5. This country is hot and has an aging leader whom most of the world thinks is a madman who sponsors terrorists. It was the scene of huge battles in the Second World War, mainly between the British, Australians and Germans. From its desert you could sail across the large sea to Europe.

Answers

Chile, Iceland, Germany, The Philippines, Libya

[dark matter] and the limits of science


Electromagnetic radiation is often optical - the visible light you see with your eyes. But this is just one type of light energy. Electromagnetic radiation comes in many wavelengths: radio waves (the longest), infrared, optical, ultraviolet, X-rays and short gamma rays (the shortest, and also the highest form of energy. Galaxies, nebulae, stars, trees, microscopic bugs and anything else that can be observed glows with energy at one of these wavelengths.

In recent decades, researchers have become increasingly convinced that there is a vast amount of material in the universe that does not glow at all. This mysterious "dark matter" is believed by most scientists to be the most common stuff in the universe, perhaps making up 90 percent or more of the total mass. Researchers say the Coma Cluster of galaxies shows effects of gravity that can only be explained by the presence of some unseen dark matter.

Dark matter does not emit enough energy to be directly detected. But indirectly, researchers note its presence. Anything that has a mass exerts the force that we call gravity. Dark matter - or something that we have yet to find - exerts a gravitational pull on objects in and around distant galaxies, and even on light emitted by those objects, say scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

By measuring these mysterious effects of gravity, researchers determine how much "extra" gravity is present, and hence how much extra mass, or dark matter, must exist. In large clusters of galaxies, for example, scientists say that five to 10 times more material exists than can be accounted for by the stars and gas they find.

What is dark matter made of?

Normal matter - you, your computer and the air you breathe - is made of atoms, composed of protons, neutrons and electrons - "baryonic" matter. They suspect some dark matter is of the normal, baryonic variety. This might include brown dwarf stars and other objects that are simply too small, or too dim, to be seen from great distances.

But most dark matter is thought to be non-baryonic.

Glossary of wavelengths of light

Radio: Wavelengths longer than infrared and very low energy.
Infrared: Wavelengths longer than the red end of visible light and shorter than microwaves (roughly between 1 and 100 microns). Little infrared radiation reaches Earth's surface, but some can be observed by high-altitude aircraft or telescopes on tall mountains.
Optical/Visible: Electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths visible to the human eye. We perceive this radiation as colors ranging from red (longer wavelengths about 700 nanometers) to violet (shorter wavelengths about 400 nanometers).
Ultraviolet: Wavelengths shorter than the violet end of visible light. Earth's atmosphere blocks most ultraviolet light.
X-rays: Very short wavelengths and very high-energy; X-rays have shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet light but longer wavelengths than gamma rays.
Gamma rays: The highest energy, shortest wavelength electromagnetic radiation. Usually, they are thought of as any photons having energies greater than about 100 keV (kiloelectron volts).

[Robert Roy Britt, Understanding Dark Matter and Light Energy, 05 January 2001]

Science is the observation and explanation of the observable and recordable. The hegemony of science in most people’s minds is a desire to replace the eternal verities of the Judaeo-Christian tradition with that of another eternal verity – Science.

The ‘dial-in’ mentality, so beloved of the middle-aged male, especially one involved in the technology field, has inherent flaws if it does not take into account the dark matter, the metaphysical, the non-observable and unrecordable.

Someone said to me recently that if you don’t argue from within the laws of physics, you can argue anything you like without having to support it.

Well yes, that is so. If 90% or so of the matter in the universe is dark, then why can’t 90% or so of what actually exists out there, including G-d and Heaven, also be so? Why can’t it?

Our technophile rails against that because he finds terminology like ‘G-d’, ‘the heavenly host’ and ‘the holy spirit’ so unscientific that it has to, ipso facto, be:

WRONG.

By what logical process is something wrong if it is couched in distasteful terminology? If DK, for example, couches his arguments in an ocean of swearing, does that make them any less valid?

So, all power to the ‘giant lizards’ and ‘shape-shifters’, I say. The notion that the deity Science is omnipotent is now being so seriously eroded [see climate change and evolution] that even its most ardent supporters are being forced onto the back foot.

In an age where science and technology are attempting to stamp out the last vestiges of ‘superstition’, which they like to lump under one all-inclusive header ‘religion’, a pejorative term for verities and idiocies all thrown together on one funeral pyre, unfortunately for the technophiles, questions unexplainable by Science are appearing more and more.

This is the basis for Armageddon, as it was for Hesse’s war between men and machines in Steppenwolf. The technophile disciple of the indifferent god Science, the one who feels he is the most rational of all creatures, blindly denies the existence and influence of the metaphysical in the universe.

If he was a true scientist, he’d try to take it into account in his modelling of the cosmos, instead of spitting out the word ‘religion’ as some sort of logical end to all speculation over that which we cannot understand. Where does the Logos fit into his model, for example?

Man is not G-d – he’s just a very clever bunny, that’s all, with distinct physical and mental limitations, who’s learning all the time. Technological advances are wonderful, especially in the solution of problems in medicine, transport, provision of resources and so on. No argument there. But to provide a solution without taking into account disagreeable phenomena – that is a recipe for the ultimate failure of that solution.