In Other News
It has been fours years since the Deepwater Horizon had its lethal blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that led to three months of crude oil gushing into the water.
CBS reports on Dr. Joye’s visit to the site of the blowout to check on the condition of the Gulf. Dr. Joye has proven to be the only credible source for information on the condition of the Gulf.
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While Australians may quietly resign when they get caught, one Canadian mayor can’t take the hint: Rob Ford launches re-election bid. The mayor of Toronto apparently doesn’t think his involvement with illegal drugs or his alcoholism are any reason not to be mayor of a large city. Who knows, the voters might agree with him.
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Now we’ll see if I’m any good as a political pundit because Chelsea Clinton has announced that she is pregnant. I’m on record as saying that I couldn’t visualize Hillary Clinton running for President if this happened, so now we’ll find out.
13 comments
I for one will be sad if Rob Ford loses his bid for re-election. It will eliminate a huge source of entertainment. Besides, he looks just like Governor Chris Christy and if people confuse the two, they’ll be less likely to vote for President Christy :).
LOL I’m with Badtux! 😀 I’d feel too sad for Jon Stewart! He’s lost so many fount’s of amusement already! 😉 LOL
I saw this and have to post it. It is a brilliant idea, and from a young student! And he’s quite right too, there is absolutely zero reason NOT to do this, and I don’t just mean in America, though being the land of the total Gunnuts… The poor kid will probably have an uphill battle! *shrug*
(It’s a large screencap of a post by the student. So it’s easiest to simply post a link to it:
It’s Pretty Ridiculous That This Isn’t a Thing Yet
It’s brilliant, simple and I know for a fact, effective (with a little training and regular drills), it’s hell of a lot safer than guns in the hands of people who don’t even like them (of course, the sociopathic NRA will have a different opinion on that), not to mention cheap! hmm… Perhaps there is some hope for the future yet. Of course, the kid is up against Congressmorons who’s ego & pride are bigger than Everest. And being upstaged by a teen isn’t going to go down well at all. Still… who knows. 😉 *shrug*
You mean they don’t already equip every classroom with a fire extinguisher? They sure as hell did when I was a kid, even in elementary schools. Maybe too many students pulled pranks with them and they removed them, but considering schools are probably the oldest and least well-maintained public buildings in the city, even putting aside terrorist incidents, they’re probably the most vulnerable to fire.
I still keep one in our kitchen at home, FWIW. The only terrorists we face are cats demanding food, but still…
Sorry, accidental double click!
Bryan,
Many thanks for the link to the piece on Dr. Joye. I’ll need to keep track of her work.
Kryten, I saw that yesterday. As someone who lectures at a university, I wonder if I should start carrying a fire extinguisher with me to class! 😉 or :-/
Best
Jim
Yeah Steve… I had to do a double-take at that! And a good WTF??! I remember we had them when I was in College so many years ago… So, I dunno! *shrug* Maybe that’s one of the Çongressmorons educational cost-cutting measures? You know… saving a couple hundred buck’s per school so when one burn’s down, it’s a million or so to rebuild it? They seem to be really good at that kind of “false economy” accounting. Morons.
Hi Jim. I think that might not be a bad idea. 😉 You can get those small portable ones, hang it from your belt! Might get a bit more cred from the students! LOL Could start a new trend! 😀 What do you lecture in, if you don’t mind my asking?
Bryan seems to have attracted several people who are or were involved in Education. 🙂 Even myself long ago. Curious… Like minded people I guess. 🙂
Having attended about a dozen different schools in the first 12 year of education, and another half dozen at the college level, I don’t remember any of them that did not have readily available fire extinguishers, and more than a few had fire hose stand pipes. Initially they were predominately soda-acid type, but they were modernized later to CO2 and/or powder types. We had Halons in the computer rooms.
The local fire officials should be asking pointed questions at this individual’s school board because a fire alarm at a school is an all-equipment response.
That kid isn’t wrong about the effects of that extinguisher, both the effects of the cloud, and its usefulness as a blunt instrument. They are damn handy in tropical settings for removing poisonous snakes, as well as chilling beer.
Kryten,
I teach the subject “Strobe Project Laboratory” at MIT. It is the class that was created by the late Prof. Harold “Doc” Edgerton of MIT, best known for his high-speed photos (such as one of a bullet going through an apple, or a drop of milk splashing like a crown, among many others).
Now, I need to find a fire extinguisher and a belt-holster for it!
Best
Jim
Yes, Jim, you on the other hand take pictures of bullets passing through colored sticks of chalk. 🙂
Some serious electronic circuit design to get the timing right for a picture like that, given the speeds involved.
It actually turns out to be easier than you might think! The trick is that the bullets we use are supersonic. That means that they have a shockwave — a sonic boom — attached to their nose that spreads out behind like the bow wave of a boat traveling through water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_bow_shockwave
So, put a microphone just below the camera’s line of sight. Shortly after the bullet passes over it, the shockwave hits the microphone, which gives a nice signal to fire the strobe.
If the bullet in the image is, say, two inches farther down range than you would like, move the microphone up range two inches and shoot again, getting the bullet pretty much where you want it!
(I didn’t invent this, BTW, Edgerton used it and his “microphone” was often a simple disk of piezoelectric material that creates a voltage spike when struck by the shockwave.)
Best
Jim
I’ve long been fascinated by stop-motion, strobe light and Kirlian photography. 🙂 When I was working for GD in the USA (most of the time based at GD HQ @ A Ave. Needham, near Cutler Park) we saw some demonstration movies of projectile impacts. 🙂
Were you at MIT in ’86? I remember going to lectures and classes @ MIT over the Charles River (hmmm… Massachusetts Ave. bridge I think?) I have fond memories of MA & Boston in particular. 🙂 I do definitely remember MIT was a huge campus! A large town in itself. You could have your entire family attending there, and never see them. 😀 I do sometimes wonder how much it’s changed since then. 🙂
One of the weapons I was trained on was the Steyr AMR (also known as IWS 2000). the projectile was a 15.2mm Steyr APFSDS (Armour piercing, fin stabilised, discarding sabot) sub-munition. The muzzle velocity was 1.55 km/second (5,085fps, mach 4.55), effective range (officially) of 2 km (1.25 miles) but was actually greater. 🙂 Would have been interesting to see stop-motion or impact photo’s of that, if it’s possible. 🙂
Yeah, I would have thought extinguishers would be standard in all classrooms. *shrug*
I was pretty good at designing high-speed circuits in the 80’s (well, high-speed for the 80’s! Not these days). LOL Won a couple awards in fact. 😉
Speaking of Halon in computer rooms… I was working in a secure data center in the 70’s (on a large Univac 1100 system), which was on the first floor. part of the security was an air-lock style short corridor for the entry way. Only one door could be open at a time, and only two people could be in the narrow corridor. Usually, there were only 6-10 people in the room, and if the fire alarm was activated, there was enough time to evacuate 12 people before the Halon gas was released. One day, we had visiting officials and a news crew, 18 people in all. The fire alarm went off, we (the regular workers there) looked at each other in horror! Myself and a supervisor told the visitors to exit via the door, grabbed a big heavy line printer, and rammed it though the plate glass window! We figured that if the rest of us stuck our heads out the window when the Halon was released, we’d be OK. Turned out to be a false alarm! LOL *shrug* How were we supposed to know? The company actually considered charging us for the damage! The reporters that were there told them they would get a very unfavorable news story since we saved their lives. Anyway, I quit that day. Morons.
Speaking of education, this was just sent to me. Hmmmm. And teachers wonder why students couldn’t care less. Seems some students have a good reason. But then, given the system… I can’t really blame the teachers either. *shrug*
So, how did he get the milk drop through the sound barrier? [Just kidding.]
I would over engineer it, simply because that’s the way I think. I would want to know what would happen before I pulled the trigger the first time, but I tend to be a bit obsessive compulsive.
At the college where I was a sysop. the safety office required a couple of rescue air packs in the computer area in case the extinguishers went off by accident, to give people time to get out.
They must have deleted the picture from the source, Kryten, because it is no longer appearing. Someone must have complained.