Category Archives: Science/Engineering

Hauntings: Air France Flight 447

Posted on December 7, 2012 | Comments Off on Hauntings: Air France Flight 447

Every now and then, an unwelcome vision pops into my mind from more than three years ago. It’s a conjured scene, quite unreal, a novelist’s informed imagination at work (or macabre play), of a water-filled plane full of air travelers strapped in their familiar airline seats, suspended in time, at the dark bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

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Posted in Obituaries, Science/Engineering, Weather/Climate

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The dead who guard Mount Everest

Posted on December 5, 2012 | Comments Off on The dead who guard Mount Everest

It’s always interesting the stuff journalists either deliberately cover up or simply choose not to report because it conflicts with the theme or some other aspect of the tale they’ve been assigned to write.

So that when one chooses to focus on those things that are rarely mentioned about a well-known place and also to photograph them, the shock can be profound. As it is here, with the dead mountain climbers whose colorfully-clothed corpses litter the summit and near-summit of Mount Everest.

Who knew? Very few.

Via Instapundit.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obituaries, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Flight Level 390, R.I.P.

Posted on November 9, 2012 | Comments Off on Flight Level 390, R.I.P.

I have no idea why the good airbus pilot Captain Dave is no longer in the blogging business. Whether he took his lyrical airline blog down or someone else forced him to. Either way it’s gone and we’ll all be a lot poorer without it. Adios, Dave. Keep the wings level.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering

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NOW they want to build a dike

Posted on November 3, 2012 | Comments Off on NOW they want to build a dike

If you can make it in the Big Apple, the outdated Frank Sinatra lyric has it, you can make it anywhere. Supposedly. Well, they had their chance and plenty of warnings from Gulf Coast hurricanes, but NYC is only now getting around to planning to make a harbor dike against hurricane storm surges. Now that the seahorse has left the aquarium.

It’s really not a big surprise for a city whose pols concern themselves with soda cup sizes and the fat content of fast food. This is, after all, the city of Windows on The Hole, the seven-story pit which, in addition to a new, nearby, mosque is still a memorial to Osama bin Laden, more than eleven years after the man-in-the-cave rearranged the NY skyline.

Turns out the subway wasn’t the only thing that Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge flooded with old sewage from the East River. Windows on The Hole got it also. And that was perfectly fitting.

Via Instapundit.

UPDATE:  Thanks to current environmental laws, however, it could take forever to build a dike. Same problem Windows On The Hole has, in addition to NYC’s modern Can’t-Do Spirit. Unless it involves soda cups, of course.

MORE:  Another part of the problem is the Democrat news media which is playing pattycake this time: “It’s like a Katrina rerun, with Obama as Bush, Bloomberg as Ray Nagin, and Staten Island as the 9th Ward. Only the press is going light on the President this time. . . ”

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, The War, Weather/Climate

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Combat iPhone

Posted on October 30, 2012 | Comments Off on Combat iPhone

This is what happens to an iPhone when three cars run over it. They’re obviously not battle hardened. In case you thought they were. On the other hand, dig this: the owner got it working again!

“Well it turns out that other than making my earside speaker a little fuzzy, my iPhone was perfectly repairable. Thanks uBreakIFix. You guys rock.”

Via Cobb.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering

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There’s a wolf in my fiddle

Posted on October 29, 2012 | Comments Off on There’s a wolf in my fiddle

Not a live wolf. No more than the bow’s “frog” is a live frog. How could one possibly fit a real wolf inside something with no more depth than a cigar box? No, I mean a wolf tone, so called because it’s supposed to remind you of the animal howling.

Well, not exactly. Not even a crying Israeli jackal, actually. Mine, which occurs on my $500 rental beginner’s violin when I bow a C natural in first position on the A string, is more wispy. Like an intermittent breeze ruffling tree leaves if I were to sustain it past four beats, which I try not to. It’s become a phobia of mine now.

I’d noticed the wispy breeze for months, no matter what corrective I made to bow speed, fingering, shoulder movement, thumb-on-the-frog, etc. So, the other day while trying out some new $500 bows to replace my chunky $30 student fiberglass, which I seem to have outgrown, I asked the shop pro to check it out.

He did, including in a higher position. He said it was a probable wolf, i.e. a sympathetic artificial overtone which could be due to the string or to the spruce-maple combination of the wooden violin itself.

Which cements my previous intention to return this Eastman beginner’s instrument around my one-year beginner’s anniversary in December and buy a new step-up one. I’ll probably get another Eastman, a 405 for around $1,200. And new strings, maybe expensive Dominants. But, first, I’ll be sure to check that C natural. And hope I can say adieu to the wolf. Forever.

UPDATE:  Well, now, this fellow says: “On a good violin with the traditional bass bar you tend to have a wolf tone on the B natural or C natural above A 440.” And he adds that’s especially so on the A string. I’m not sure my rental qualifies as “good,” but the wolf is right there.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering

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Slats and flaps

Posted on October 27, 2012 | Comments Off on Slats and flaps

Captain Dave not only is the kind of airline pilot that even someone who’s afraid of flying would enjoy flying with, he can also write really well. And this piece, probably tossed off with a minimum of rewriting at his Flight Level 390 blog (subtitle: America from the flight deck), is one of his best.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering

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