Fan Behavior

I’m working on an electronic design that includes a fan to exhaust warm air, and a filter on the air intake to keep the electronics from getting covered in dust. The finished project will be placed in a somewhat dirty room that is quite remote from where I will be monitoring the equipment. I want to sense whether the filter is dirty enough to restrict air flow. Of course I can (and will be) monitoring temperatures, but I’m looking for something that’s a more direct measure of air flow.

I had an idea: that there should be a difference in fan speed between a clean filter and a dirty filter. The fan speed should go down, I thought, if the filter was clogged up (as it would be working harder, kind of like a car going uphill). So I decided to test this thought out. I connected a small fan (an 80 mm “case fan") to 12 VDC, and monitored its RPM. Sitting on my desk, this fan rotated at just under 4,500 RPM. Then I put a piece of cardboard across the intake side of the fan, expecting the RPM to go down, though I didn’t know by how much. The RPM with the cardboard completely blocking the intake was 4,700 RPM — it went up! This effect was completely repeatable…

Does anyone know the explanation for this?

Flaming Paris

For the past seven nights in a row, Paris has been burning. You’d never know it from the MSM, but riots and other disturbances have been steadily escalating. Last night, over 100 cars were burned, a shopping center set ablaze and destroyed, people were injured, public and private property vandalized, and even a police station briefly taken over. French politicians are in full crisis mode, right up to Chirac. Gateway Pundit has been running a series of must-read posts on these events. The rioters are Islamic youths, primarily young men. The excuse: the deaths of two teenagers a week ago, electrocuted, we’re told, as they fled from police.

What’s really going on?

I have no personal knowledge of the situation in Paris, but I have researched several dozen sources over the past week. I was taken by surprise by the riots in Paris, so I wanted to understand how such a thing could happen. After all this research, I conclude there are two major factors underlying the explosion of violence in Paris:

1. French policies that discourage integration of immigrant communities, and encourage the development of “enclaves” of foreign culture. These policies almost certainly derive from widely held racist views, no matter how the French intellectuals dress them up. For example, European elites, in talking about the Islamic ghettos that dot the European scene, will pat themselves on the back and say things like: “We’re sooooo superior to the U.S. — we’re tolerant of the Islamic culture here, and we let them freely recreate these islands of Islamic culture within Europe.” Really? Here’s another view (mine): you’re all smug racists, convinced of your own superiority (over everybody, including Muslims and Americans), and the only way you’re going to tolerate alien cultures and ways of thinking is to bottle them all up in some place where they won’t offend your sense of propriety. Like a nice Islamic slum.

2. French economic policies, resulting in very few available jobs (which go first to the “real” Frenchmen, of course) and a massive public dole. The direct result of these policies is a large unemployed population in the isolated immigrant communities — people with no way up, no incentive to leave, and lots of anger. If you wanted to design a volatile situation, this might be what you end up with.

So what’s the answer? Darned if I know! I suppose it’s possible that somehow the French people will wake up some day, and take some concrete action to deal with the situation. But who knows what that action would be? I’m not sure we’d like it all that much. For instance, suppose their reaction was to throw all the Islamic people out of France? That’s millions of people at this point…we’d have a massive humanitarian problem then, and of course the anger and volatility of the situation would only increase. I can imagine good outcomes as well, though they don’t seem very likely: the French could vote out their entire corrupt government and replace it with an honest, pragmatic one. I don’t think I’ll live that long <smile>…

If there’s any good in this situation at all, it’s this: events like this are probably the only thing that could shock the European people and political structure into actually helping America in the war on terror…

Ship Tracker

This site keeps track of a large number of ships in near realtime, using GPS as the source of positon data. There are facilities for finding ships by name, call sign, and more. I’m not sure what fraction of ships are participating, but when you look at the world map it’s clearly quite a large number of vessels.

Having spent time at sea myself (in the U.S. Navy), I can easily imagine how wonderful this web site must be for the friends and relatives of the cargo ships' crew members. Anytime they want to, they can see exactly where their loved ones are.

And of course there are numerous practical uses as well: identifying ships in the way of storms, or those nearby someone who needs help, and so on.

This is a terrific example of several technologies (GPS, web, radio in this case) being used together in a novel way to provide a capability I’m sure nobody anticipated even just a few years ago…

Stereo Image

This is not an anaglyph, and you don’t need any special glasses to view it. You just need to learn how to view it, and most people don’t find it very difficult — just a little weird. Here’s how you view it:

First, sit a comfortable viewing distance from the screen, as close as you can without straining your eyes to focus on the picture.

Then orient yourself so that the border between the two pictures at right is directly in front of your eyes, both vertically and horizontally.

Easy so far — but now comes the tricky part. “Cross” your eyes until you see three pictures, instead of two. You will probably have to move your head slightly, and change the amount you’ve crossed your eyes, to get everything to line up, but when you do, the center picture of the three will be a 3D picture with full depth — it kind of “pops” right out of the screen, visually.

This works much better with the larger view you get when you click on the little photo…

A Dog, A Rope

It doesn’t take much to make our dogs outragously, completely-out-of-control happy. Here Lea (our seven year old female field spaniel) is playing with a rope — and having an absurd amount of fun with such a simple toy!

These pictures were taking just before daybreak yesterday, as we left our house for our morning walk. That’s contributing to this dogly joy, of course. Also adding to it: the “rope” in question is actually a horse lead that we use for a leash — and the dogs know that leashes mean walks.

It doesn’t seem to matter how often or how regularly we go on our walks. Each one is a new occasion for dogly joy; they never tire of them and the walks never become just a routine. They sure make being happy look easy…

Elect Iraq

Details of the Iraqi political process are remarkably absent from the reports of our MSM — and that’s a real shame, because watching the Iraqi experiment in democracy is going to be interesting, no matter what the outcome. Fortunately a number of blogs are filling in for the failures of the MSM.

Publius Pundit reports that the party structures in Iraq are evolving in interesting and complex ways, reflecting the integration of the Sunni Arab politicians into the overall political process (now that the Constitution has been approved, this is really a necessity from their perspective) and the dis-integration of the radical Shiite Arab politicians. Both of these developments are very encouraging for the eventual success of democracy in Iraq. And both of these developments put the lie to those who proclaimed (before the Iraq war) that “Arabs aren’t ready for democracy.” The Iraqis don’t seem to be having a lot of trouble understand the subtleties of their flavor of democracy…

From Publius Pundit:

...it is worth emphasizing that the Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the other grand ayatollahs are not endorsing a political party or coalition this time. I’ve long held a positive view of Sistani’s role in this process, going back to shortly after the fall of Saddam, but this is a good thing. It was good that Sistani endorsed the United Iraqi Alliance list back in January to get the process rolling, but the Shia don’t need guidance on this now.

BTW, the girl in the photo above right is holding a card that says “Elect Iraq.” Elect Iraq, not some particular person or party. Someone over there understands the real power of democracy, and has found powerful way to express it in just two words…

Meanwhile, over at Iraq the Model, Omar reports on a citizen’s committee formed to influence the political process to press for civil rights and what I’ll call “quality in government” (now that almost sounds silly as I write that <smile>). Or, as Omar puts it himself (I’m assuming that by “community” he means “committee":

The basic theme of the community is to take a promise from politicians, civil society activists and MPs (current or running for office) to preserve and protect the rights and freedoms every Iraqi citizen is supposed to enjoy under the new constitution and under the internationally recognized conventions and laws and to work to introduce amendments in the constitution whenever believed necessary for the protection of these rights and freedoms.

The founders of the community named five main points in the constitution that require urgent reconsideration…

Consider how much has to be working for such a thing to take place — it’s a very encouraging train of thought. It indicates to me a rather deep understanding of the democratic political process. It also represents a most refreshing departure from politics-by-explosives…

Take a moment to read these two blogger’s posts: you’ll find them much more observant and useful than the blather the MSM is pouring into America’s ears and brains! As usual, click on either photo for a larger view…

Alito

Alito is exactly the kind of judge that conservatives wanted Bush to nominate in the first place — and he’s exactly the kind of judge that liberals didn’t want him to nominate.

Based on what I’ve read over the past few days, Judge Alito looks good to me, but then, I’m no expert on such matters. However, from a purely political perspective this nominee looks like a winner from every direction. The liberals will have to make up their mind whether they’re going to take their opposition all the way to a filibuster. If they do not, Alito will be easily confirmed — a good political outcome from my perspective. If they do take it to filibuster, then we’re going to have a rousing political battle which I think is almost certainly going to end up with the liberals backing down (a good outcome) or the “nuclear option” being taken, taking away the privilege of filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (also a good outcome). The only bad outcome, politically, would be if the liberals managed to filibuster successfully, without the nuclear option being taken — and it’s hard for me to imagine a way for them to pull that off.

So I’m quite happy with this nomination; count me as a firm supporter on this one, as opposed to being neutral on Harriet Miers. Again, this is from purely a political perspective, as I don’t know enough about Judge Alito to have an independent opinon of his qualifications for the job.

Hope

Despite the MSM’s incessant bleating about all the awful news from Iraq (killed! explosions! bombs! riots!), there really is a lot of progress in Iraq. The military blogs written by soldiers actually in Iraq complain bitterly about the wrong-headed picture painted by the MSM — just short of outright lies (usually), but very much omitting much that is true. The Iraqi blogs express similar sentiments about news coverage, and are much better informed and realistic about the political situation. Strategy Page is reliably level-headed and observant; reporting the world (including Iraq) as one might imagine a soldier would want it reported: fact-based, analytical, unbiased (good and bad news is equally well covered). They’ve got a post today that is full of detail about the improving capabilities of the Iraqi military and police forces — very encouraging, on the whole. It concludes:

From Strategy Page:

The Iraqi battalions are able to make terrorist attacks much more costly, for the terrorists. Thus the recent terrorist attack on the Palestinian hotel, resulted in over a dozen terrorist personnel killed or captured because of prompt action by Iraqi soldiers and police. As a result of this, two more trends are in evidence. First, more and more of the terrorist activity is moving outside of heavily policed Baghdad, to smaller towns where there are fewer security personnel. Second, more Sunni Arabs are giving up on plans for any quick take over of the government. These Kurdish and Shia Arab police and army officers were not supposed to show up so quickly, if ever. But there they are.

If these trends continue, this is very good news indeed! Let us hope the Iraqi forces can push the terrorist forces way back — say, to Iran and Syria…

Friends

Aren’t these just the sweetest photos?

My favorite is the black and white kitties, leaning into each other with their tails “hugging”. What’s yours?
Click on any of them for a larger view…

Handling Adversity

This is so true! They always ask at the doctor’s office why you are there and you say in front of others what’s wrong and sometimes it’s embarrassing.

There’s nothing worse than a Doctor’s Receptionist who insists you tell her what is wrong with you in a room full of other patients. I know most of us have experienced this, and I love the way this old guy handled it:

An 86-year-old man walked into a crowded Doctor’s Waiting Room. As he approached the desk, the Receptionist said, “Yes sir, what are you seeing the Doctor for today?"

"There’s something wrong with my dick,” he replied. The Receptionist became irritated and said, “You shouldn’t come into a crowded Doctor’s Room and say things like that."

"Why not? You asked me what was wrong and I told you,” he said.

The Receptionist replied, “You’ve obviously caused some embarrassment in this room full of people. You should have said there is something wrong with your ear or something and then discussed the problem further with the Doctor in private."

The man replied, “You shouldn’t ask people things in a room full of others, if the answer could embarrass anyone."

The man walked out, waited several minutes and then re-entered.

The Receptionist smiled smugly and asked, “Yes?"

"There’s something wrong with my ear,” he stated.

The Receptionist nodded approvingly and smiled, knowing he had taken her advice. “And what is wrong with your ear, Sir?"

"I can’t piss out of it,” the man replied.

The Waiting Room erupted in laughter

Old and Fast

This gets even funnier the older you are!

An elderly man in North Carolina had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back, fixed up nice; picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees. The pond was properly shaped and fixed up for swimming when it was built.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn’t been there for a while, and look it over. He grabbed a five gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond.

He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end.

One of the women shouted to him, “We’re not coming out until you leave!"

The old man frowned, “I didn’t come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked.” Holding the bucket up he said, “I’m here to feed the alligator."

Moral: Old men can still think fast.

Optical Illusion

This is one of the better visual illusions I’ve seen…

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink.

If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you’re lucky!

It’s amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don’t disappear.

This should be proof enough — we don’t always see what we think we see.

Hillary

Offered without comment, for your entertainment:

“Hillary Clinton’s 506-page memoirs have come out. So much of her personality shines through, that in the end, you, too, will want to sleep with an intern.” — Craig Kilborn

In Hillary Clinton’s new book 'Living History,' Hillary details what it was like meeting Bill Clinton, falling in love with him, getting married, and living a passionate, wonderful life as husband and wife. Then on page two, the trouble starts.” — Jay Leno

“In the book she says when Bill told her he was having an affair, she said 'I could hardly breathe, I was gulping for air.' No, I’m sorry, that’s what Monica said.” — David Letterman

“Hillary Clinton, our junior senator from New York, announced that she has no intentions of ever, ever running for office of the President of the United States. Her husband, Bill Clinton, is bitterly disappointed. He is crushed. There go his dreams of becoming a two-impeachment family.” — David Letterman

“Last night, Senator Hillary Clinton hosted her first party in her new home in Washington. People said it was a lot like the parties she used to host at the White House. In fact, even the furniture was the same.” — Jay Leno

“Senator Hillary Clinton is attacking President Bush for breaking his campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions, saying a promise made, a promise broken. And then out of habit, she demanded that Bush spend the night on the couch.” — Craig Kilborn

“CNN found that Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America. Women admire her because she’s strong and successful. Men admire her because she allows her husband to cheat and get away with It.” — Jay Leno

“Hilary Clinton is the junior senator from the great state of New York. When they swore her in, she used the Clinton family Bible… the one with only seven commandments!” — David Letterman

Halloween Ponders

Halloween has never been a big deal for Debbie and I — we have no children, and the holiday doesn’t hold any intrinsic attraction for either of us. When we lived in the “big city” (Chula Vista, affectionately known by residents as “Chulajuana” because of its proximity and resemblance to Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border), every Halloween we would have a bunch of kids show up at our door. Typically they’d be in store-bought costumes, which is iconic for me for how the holiday has been debased and twisted from an interesting and engaging family experience into a kind of plastic, shallow, and essentially meaningless experience for all. But some of the kids were cute, and especially with the younger ones there was adventure in it. So we participated with the obligatory bags of candy and surprised expressions when we answered the door. Actually, Debbie mostly did that, while I hid somewhere deep in the house.

Now that we’ve moved out of the city and into a rural area, things have changed on several fronts. Our house is so out-of-the-way that nobody sends their kids up here trick-or-treating. We’ve literally never had a trick-or-treater knock upon our door. The first couple of years we lived out here, conditioned by our Chulajuana experience, we were prepared with candy, etc. But no one ever showed, and then we had to figure out how to dispose of the horrible confections we’d bought. But I’ve noticed one other change, as well, and pondered its meaning: an interesting fraction of the trick-or-treaters I’ve seen while driving through our valley are in obviously homemade costumes.

My first thought, upon observing this, was that it probably reflected the relative poverty of the residents out our way (average incomes out here are clearly quite a bit lower than in the 'burbs of San Diego County). But then on reflection I think that’s not the case. Another piece of evidence: it’s also true that we have a high proportion of families who home-school their kids — and you certainly don’t elect to home-school to save money. From these and other observations, I conclude that what’s really happening is that very generally the folks out here have a different set of values with respect to their kids. They’re more engaged with them, and devote more of their attention to them.

And they often make their own Halloween costumes, presumably with their kids (and the homemade costumes I’ve seen sure look like the kids were involved!). One of the many reasons why I love living where we do…

Skywalk

When I first saw an email describing the Grand Canyon Skywalk, I suspected a hoax — a good artist could create this, even if there were no plans to build it. But this is for real, researched by Snopes and found to be true. You can read more about it on the Hualapai Nation’s web site. From their description:

The Glass Bridge Construction of the Skywalk began March of 2004 and is estimated to be completed by early 2006.

Upon completion, the Glass Bridge will be suspended 4,000 feet above the Colorado River on the very edge of the Grand Canyon. On May 2005, the final test was conducted and the stucture passed engineering requirements by 400 percent, enabling it to withstand the weight of 71 fully loaded Boeing 747 airplanes (more that 71 million pounds). The bridge will be able to sustain winds in excess of 100 miles per hour from 8 different directions, as well as an 8.0 magnitude earthquake within 50 miles. More than one million pounds of steel will go into the construction of the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

I would love to walk on that thing!

Click on the photo for a larger view…

Dewy Webs

Wandering up the hill on our morning walk, we saw lots and lots of these non-orb spider’s webs in the chaparral shrubs. We had a heavy dew last night, so the webs were chock-a-block full of dew drops. If you caught them at just the right angle with respect to the sun, you got a brilliant rainbow effect — quite spectacular!

But I have to wonder what the poor little cold-blooded spiders think of all this dew. Do they like waking up with their “house” flooded? Is it a good thing or a bad thing to a spider. I have nary a clue…

Click on the photo for a larger view.

Needles

As we left for our walk this morning, sun just rising, I caught these dew drops hanging from the needles of the Italian Stone Pines that line our driveway.

Click on the photo for a larger view…

Dilbert Blog

Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert, every nerd’s favorite cartoon) has started a blog. Naturally it’s called the “Dilbert Blog”.

His latest post is a ponder on how one would go about being a good looter (one hopes this is with tongue firmly in cheek). He describes his plan and then says:

There’s a good chance I’d be killed by the hurricane before I did any quality looting, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take for free pants that aren’t my size.

Are you laughing? If not, you’re just not a Dilbert kind of person. My personal research tells me that there is a strict dichotomy when it comes to appreciating Scott Adams' humor.

Me? I was ROFL (rolling on the floor, laughing)!

The 2000 Party

If you truly believed that the deaths of 2000 American soldiers in Iraq was unjustified, and you decided to demonstrate to promote your belief — would you also think it was appropriate to have a party atmosphere at that demonstration?

I would not. As it happens, I support our actions in Iraq and I believe that the high cost (in every sense) of the war in Iraq is worth it: for the protection of the rest of us, and for the betterment of mankind. But I respect those with opposing opinions on this matter, if those opinions were arrived at by some means other than Michael Moore, Barbara Streisand, George Soros, and other such sources of anti-enlightenment. And I would even think a demonstration — somber, sober, respectful — at a milestone, however arbitrary, such as the 2000th death in Iraq, was appropriate for people with such views.

But a party? A celebration? That’s just awful!

You can see zombie’s page here (with more photos if you can stand them).

Tip of the hat to Little Green Footballs…

Iranic Quandary

What do you do with a country that openly proclaims that another country should be “wiped off the map"? The man at right is Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad (click for a slightly larger view). He is a radical Moslem zealot, widely believed to be one of the principals in the taking of American hostages in Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Here’s what he actually said yesterday:

From the Asia Times:

"Once, his eminency Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini - leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution], stated that the illegal regime of the Pahlavis must go, and it happened. Then he said the Soviet empire would disappear, and it happened. He also said that this evil man Saddam [Hussein] must be punished, and we see that he is under trial in his country. His eminency also said that the occupation regime of Qods [Jerusalem, or Israel] must be wiped off from the map of the world, and with the help of the Almighty, we shall soon experience a world without America and Zionism, notwithstanding those who doubt."

Remember, this is the President of Iran. There are others within Iran with power and influence are aren’t quite so overtly and publicly radical, but there’s every reason to believe that President Ahmadinejad accurately represents the true beliefs and world views of the other Iranian leaders — most especially because without their support he couldn’t possibly occupy the position he now does.

From Strategy Page:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Moslems everywhere to work towards the destruction of Israel. Usually, such sentiments are not uttered publicly by senior officials, but left to local journalists and junior officials. This statement caused an international uproar, which will soon pass.

So what’s the right way to respond to such a statement from the leader of a country? Condemnation, certainly, and at least from some quarters that condemnation was almost instantly forthcoming. The usual suspects were silent. But what else? My personal take is that such inflammatory rhetoric is unfortunate, and is not helping the progress of peace in the Middle East — but if the rhetoric wasn’t followed up by tangible action, then no response other than condemnation is called for.

But … from what I can read, Iran is following up the rhetoric with action, albeit covert and denied action. Iran stands accused of actively supporting and fomenting terrorism, most especially in Iraq. If we are certain that Iran is a state supporting terrorism, then I believe direct action by the U.S. is called for — to protect our own safety. Then it boils down to what actions can and should be taken, and here I’d have to know a lot more about the situation on the ground over there to be able to venture an opinion. I can only hope that our government is (a) better informed that I, and (b) is actively working on an action program to get Iran under control…