Tag Archives: science

What if…

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Many of my conservative friends used to tell me that the government kept secret kill lists and secret tracking lists, following us by our cell phone GPS signals and Internet usage so the government could arrest or kill us at any time — I would either keep quiet and think they were being a bit paranoid or try to reason that it was too costly for the government (let alone private companies like Google) to track so many people.

The Snowden leaks proved them right and me wrong.

What if the other things my conservative friends and family tell me are true?

For instance:

  • Are Bill and Hitler Clinton longterm Soviet communist/socialists sleeper cells?
  • Is President Obama secretly following a Black Panther/Islamic agenda?
  • Is Ronald Reagan the greatest U.S. President ever?
  • Are we living in an Animal Farm world where some pigs think they’re more equal than others now that they’re on the podium, getting there by promising a more equal world until they got their hands in the till?
  • Will the banking and financial sectors, which were barely slapped on the wrists for causing the Great Recession, cause another economic meltdown because they feel invincible now that they’re “too big to fail”?
  • Are urbanites planning to steal land from the ruralites, incarcerating and killing those that get in the way of corporate greed to own all the means of food production and oil/mineral reserves?
  • Are corporations like Monsanto trying to own all the seeds that feed the people, in cahoots with a “star chamber” to control the whole population?
  • Was Obama brainwashed by Chinese communism when he lived in Indonesia?
  • Do we live in a dystopian technocratic society where our leaders with no formal military ethics training kill their own people using push-button, remote-control drones without getting blood on their hands?
  • Do cell phones cause longterm cancer?
  • How exactly does fluoridated water work on the brain?
  • Are cell phone towers secretly sending massive brain control signals?
  • Are mosquito control spraying programs the localised version of “chemtrails”?
  • Do the FBI and CIA create false files on people so they are kept in constant fear that they can be arrested at any time for any reason whatsoever and shipped to secret torture sites out of the country and out of the view of the American public, thus making the American people more accepting of socialist programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act?
  • Do large corporations purposely keep employee wages so low that they’re forced to rely on the government for food and thus unwilling to revolt against a suppressive government?
  • Is there a list of more conservative fears I could find to investigate these questions I never took seriously before Edward Snowden opened my eyes to the reality that “just because you don’t believe they’re tracking you doesn’t mean they aren’t”?
  • Does the UN stockpile weapons in your city in anticipation of largescale riot control when food and water become scarce, driving prices out of reach of most people?
  • Are government scientists secretly developing a Soylent Green program to convert huge numbers of incarcerated people, arrested for the flimsiest of reasons, including being upset because the police raided the wrong apartment/house, into food when the time is right?
  • Could a teacher really be so drunk on vodka that she could get by with walking the school hallways wearing no pants?

In this Brave New Post-1984 World, anything is possible, even the repurposed use of Pinkerton-type “detectives” to track and keep people in line. Anyone think the Anti-Pinkerton Act is valid anymore?

Thank goodness I know that Richard Nixon was the greatest U.S. President who ever lived!

On days like this, finding ways to entertain myself is endlessly fun!

[On a side note, while typing this up, I got a call (“Hello. This Rachel from cardholder services…”) that the Caller ID said was from my own phone number.  How funny is that? (And how easy it is to create your own Caller ID info, if you know how.)]

Correction to a previous post

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Wanted to correct a previous post, which reflected my poor memory about the founder of ADS Environmental Services.

Here, forewith, is Peter Petroff’s proper CV (source):

Peter Dimitroff Petroff, a NASA engineer and later an inventor whose enterprises developed heart-monitoring equipment and originated the digital wristwatch 30 years ago, died Feb. 27 at his home in Huntsville, Ala. He was 83. . .

He went into business on his own in 1968, founding Care Electrics, a high-technology company that developed a wireless heart monitor for hospital use. The venture evolved into Electro/Data, which created the prototype of the digital watch.

Marketed by the Hamilton Watch Company as the Pulsar, the odd-looking device sold for $2,100 in 1971.

Of course, there had been mechanical digital watches long before, but the Pulsar was electronic with a red LED readout.

More

THERE is a widespread belief in Bulgaria that the country has never been able to keep its best offspring because they always leave to find a better place to make a living. Unfortunately, one can easily share this view, as most of the Bulgarians that have introduced anything of importance to the world have been from among those that left their homeland. Perhaps this is not such a problem, as long as Bulgarians do not forget those that brought the fame.

Following this line of thought, one name that was long ago forgotten in Bulgaria was that of Peter Petroff (Petar Petrov), and only the news of his death brought his name back to the minds of Bulgarians.

Peter Dimitroff Petroff, 83, an engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and an inventor whose enterprises developed a heart monitor and the digital wristwatch 30 years ago, died on February 27 at his home in Huntsville, Alabama. He was a native of Bulgaria who moved to Canada and then to the US after World War 2, and in 1968 founded Care Electrics, a high-tech company that developed a wireless heart monitor for hospitals. The company became Electro/Data, which created the prototype of the digital watch. Marketed by the Hamilton Watch Company as the Pulsar, it sold for $2100 in 1971.

Petroff was born in the Bulgarian village of Brestovitsa, and, while almost nothing is known of his life in Bulgaria, his later existence was marked with the name of a great inventor. He was born on October 21, 1919 to the family of Dimitar Petrov, a priest of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and his wife Vasillia. After attending a religious seminary, Petroff enlisted in the French Foreign legion in October 1939.

He was captured by the Germans while defending the French Maginot Line in 1940, and sent to a German Prisoner Of War camp in Poland. He returned to Bulgaria in March 1941 and became an officer in the Bulgarian Army. His duties included being a palace guard to King Boris III of Bulgaria and participating in the Honour Guard for the funeral of Turkey’s President, Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

In 1944, he moved to Germany to study engineering at the University of Munich.

He graduated from Darmstadt and Stuttgart universities with a master’s degree in electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering. While in Germany he also studied his life long passion, naval architecture, and designed and built the first of over 60 boats in 1947.

Petroff arrived in Toronto in 1951 via wartime France and Germany. He worked on arctic engineering and construction projects for the US Air Force at Goose Bay, Labrador, and Thule, Greenland.

He went to Indochina in 1956 for assignments in bridge and power plant construction. Three years later, he sailed a 65-foot catamaran of his own design to Melbourne, Florida, where he joined the space projects carried out by a precursor of the Harris Corporation. He helped design systems for early weather and communications satellites and organised the company’s semiconductor division.

Moving to Huntsville in 1963, Petroff was recruited by Wernher von Braun to work on the new Saturn rocket for the Apollo space programme. During that period, his employers were NASA, and Boeing and Northrop, its contractors.

In 1975, Petroff and his sons founded ADS Environmental Services, a maker of computerised pollution monitoring equipment for the world market. He sold his interest in the company in 1995 but rejoined his sons as a consultant for Time Domain.

Petroff received numerous honours and awards throughout his professional career. His most unique distinction was to be officially declared an Enemy of the People by the communist regime in Bulgaria, for which he received a death sentence in absentia. The sentence was later lifted.

He continued his lifelong interest in boat design and naval architecture by renovating the Gemini II. The boat also served as the base of operation for Lee Taylor’s successful assault on the world water speed record on Lake Guntersville in 1967. In 1991, he moved the Gemini II to the US Virgin Islands. It was donated to charity two years ago and now serves as a floating orphanage in Central America.

In its obituary for Peter Petroff, The New York Times quoted Ralph Petroff, one of his sons, who said it was ironic that his father had died a peaceful death.

“He always laughed at danger and he laughed at death. He should have never made it to his 83rd birthday, let alone his 20th,” Ralph Petroff said. “I guess if you were to combine Indiana Jones with Thomas Edison, the result would be Peter Petroff.”

And his wikipedia entry:

Peter Petroff (Born in Brestovitsa, Bulgaria, October 21, 1919 – Died in Huntsville, Alabama, United States, February 27, 2003[1]) was a Bulgarian American inventor, engineer, NASA scientist, and adventurer. He was instrumental in the evolution of the NASA space program. Among his many accomplishments, Petroff developed the world’s first computerized pollution monitoring system and telemetry devices for the world’s first weather and communications satellites. Petroff helped develop the world’s first digital watch[1] and the world’s first wireless heart monitor, and many other important devices and methods. Petroff founded Care Electronics, Inc. which was acquired by Electro-Data, Inc. of Garland, Texas in the fall of 1971.

Petroff Point on Brabant Island in Antarctica is named for Petroff.[2]

References

  1. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/obituaries/09PETR.html The New York Times: Peter D. Petroff Dies at 83.
  2. Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica: Petrov Point.

 

And his NY Times obit, if you’re interested.

Only as strong as our weakest link

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

I am back alone in the sunroom, meditating upon the organisation of states of energy that surround this structure and expose solar energy-converting appendages we say are green leaves.

When I sat down on my grandfather’s chair to write, I moved an instruction manual for a GWFSM4GP FMS GP Simulator to keep it from sliding off the fake mahogany Chinese storage chest, which in turn pushed a solar panel-charged battery compartment attached to two LED lights (i.e., solar spotlight) into a spider’s web.

The spider, smaller in total size than my thumbnail, spindly little thing, sometimes called a cellar or attic spider, started a gyration that caused the spider to spin like an acrobat in a sky-high rope dance, my own personal Cirque du Soleil performance.

There’s not a lot in the way of ready prey for spiders here in the sunroom so I often find the dead corpses of tiny spiders in dust-covered webs.

How much energy did that spider expend while pretending to be larger than it is in its circus act?

Dozens of trees, some only a few feet from our house, are large enough to cause significant damage to our domicile should they fall.

As I slip into meditative silence, I look back at the last couple of years of my life and marvel at yet another “midlife crisis” I experienced as I felt young again amongst the company of people in their 20s.

The world was mine, the universe a mere blip on the radar of territory to explore.

I wanted to shout from the treetops and sing in the shower.

But the moment passed and now I return to the simplicity of domestic bliss.

I see the fast-approaching date of my impending death and smile.

All is well.

I have achieved my personal goals.

I have enjoyed activities out of reach of my imagination.

I have helped send people into orbit of our planet aboard spacecraft.

Now I can meditate once again upon the happiness of being, no longer feeling inspired to boldly go where no man has gone before, content to watch blue-striped skinks skitter and scatter across hot asphalt roofs and a variety of spiders spread webs, hanging out and waiting for their next morsels, like me waiting for a thought to meditate upon in the World Wide Web.

Overthinking on the weekend

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

So, my wife jokes that she and I often overthink situations (such as my backyard privacy screen that I finally finished a year after designing a Rube Goldberg monstrosity and ended up with a simple double-thickness reed barrier).

But we drip tiny drops of Chinese water torture into a pail that pales in comparison to Roko’s basilisk — the thought that a future superintelligence will look back on those who did not help it exist or hindered its creation and doom them to eternal living torture!

A dose of three quarks daily

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

We praise competition, but practice merger and monopoly…. We praise business organization but condemn and prevent labor organization…. We give heavier and more certain sentences to bank robbers than to bank wreckers. We boast of business ethics but we give power and prestige to business [disruptors]…. Everybody is equal before the law, except … women, immigrants, poor people.… We ridicule politicians in general but honor all officeholders in particular and most of us would like to be elected to something ourselves. We think of voting as the basis of democracy, but … seldom find more than fifty per cent of eligible voters actually registering their ‘will.’… Democracy is one of our most cherished ideals, but we speak of upper and lower classes, ‘look down on’ many useful occupations, trace our genealogies…. We believe in the brotherhood of man, but we are full of racial, religious, economic, and numerous other prejudices and invidious distinctions. We value equality, but tolerate greater inequality of wealth and income than has ever existed in any other society…. We drape nude statues and suppress noble books…. We try to foster participative recreation, but most of it is passive, much of it vicious, and almost all of it flagrantly commercialized…. This is the age of science, but there is more belief in miracles, spirits, occultism, and providences than one would think possible…. Our scientific system produces a specialism that gives great prestige and great technical skill, but not always great wisdom…. The very triumphs of science produce an irrational, magic-minded faith in science….

Realize, now, that the article was written in 1935. The author was Read Bain, professor of sociology at Miami University in Ohio. As a founding editor of the American Sociological Review, he would become embroiled in early disputes between the “scientists” and “humanists” in his own discipline. He was thus involved in theorizing—and, in that spontaneous way of so many early- to mid-20th-century American academics—practicing in the mode of a “public intellectual,” that figure who today, apparently, is nowhere to be found.[i] In terms of Bain’s analysis as synopsized above, and even more to the point, in terms of the social critique it so earnestly propounds, what struck me when first reading it was how contemporary it sounded and how apt its reproaches were.

– See more at: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/#sthash.r4OiSwKH.dpuf