Over the years I still tend to receive colognes and scents for gifts, so I’ve amassed quite the unmatched collection. It raised my eyebrow to see a short publication this morning that one of my favorite was “marketed to teenagers”. Being un-phased by advertising, meaning I like what I like without being told, I fancy this slightly chocolate-like “Axe” spray. Naturally, I had to read the article.
It [the news story] was critical of a “New York billionaire in a penthouse” who used this same product. Strange what people would find fault with. Both a rich guy and myself would likely appreciate a cologne that drove the gold-diggers and screw-ups away. A billionaire would likely prefer something that appealed to younger women, and I can identify with that. Why would he want to attract old women? It is common knowledge even the handsome and rich have exactly the same troubles as everyone else trying to find love later in life. All the beauty queens have become queen-sized without much to show for it. Older women are the strangest things ever created by God, the good ones have to be caught young and trained. The one in a hundred who manages to give men what they want is happy, the rest, well, look around and examine the divorce rate. Ask not what good men can do for older women. All this controversy over a can of perfume, really.
Have you ever seen an argument in a coin store? What is there to argue about? I know silver is down, if I had to cash in now it would be at a heavy loss. The operative clause being “if I had to”. I don’t. With speculation, one’s timing is everything. It’s not enough that one commodity should blast off. Others must remain steady long enough for the speculator to cash in. Not understanding this is how people lose their shirts in the marketplace. It’s not like the coin store was responsible for fluctuations.
I bundled up four layers and went to the H’wood library. Not for long, as even with my industrial strength earplugs, the noise level became intolerable. It isn’t just the ethnics in there assimilating everyone within earshot, for the staff have taken to shouting to each other and banging metal filing cabinets around. Thanks to being prepared, I was able to stand the place just long enough to get some trivia.
Did you know where the criteria came for HDTV resolution? Good old 35mm sprocket film. I’d thought it was the result of some pompous study on visual acuity. Nope, it is the lowest line-scanning density that matches movie theater sharpness. I found this [while I was] looking for data on Fritz X. All the research books in the library are post-Internet publications. Tons of shallow descriptions, no real depth. Useless for learning anything more than what you already had to know to get there.
A good example of the self-propagating nonsense in these “modern” books is their description of the Bunsen burner. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are probably reading the wrong blog, too. The texts all state the amount of combustion is controlled by varying the amount of air in the gas jet. That’s wrong. It is adjusted by the gas pressure, which you set with a stopcock. Once the gas is lit, all of it is going to burn when concentrated enough. To say otherwise is what you get when you hire English majors to proofread scientific material.
One great outcome of today has to do with the basics of the flip-flop circuit I’ve been studying for months now. The problem there is once again the available teaching material. Any educated person who reads it is going to spot there are several important unresolved key points. If each state depends on a former state, how did the first one get set? Only an dunce could overlook that point, and many have. Also, the term “latch” is kicked around, and same with the terms “set” and “reset”. I won’t go into it now. But what I found is, once again, the superiority of the British web.
A major difference with American publications is how errors don’t get fixed. If a web page or diagram is published wrong, in America it stays wrong because there is no financial incentive for the author to go back and fix it. I’ve noticed the Brit pages do tend to repair themselves over time. I was delighted to find that a passage which had originally confused me has not only been re-written, but it addressed the very points of confusion that had frustrated me. I had nothing to do with that revision, but somebody in England was listening.
You can read the same material as I read at All About Circuits. It may still not be all that straightforward for the beginner. The three points it cleared up for me were basics, but basics ignored by them damn Yankee authors. To anyone who’s been following along, the three important ideas are: 1) Hysteresis is not an error, but a useful memory state. 2) “Set” is not an input position, but a state where the Q output is on and the not-Q is off. 3) “Latch” is the condition when BOTH (or all) inputs are OFF. You can assume until I got these items cleared up, the American explanations had led me far astray.
ADDENDUM
The Avro Arrow mystery. That’s what I ran across while looking for the Fritz X mystery. The Avro was a reputedly advanced Canadian fighter aircraft that was mysteriously cancelled as it neared completion. Over the years I’ve heard explanations such as the government needed the money for the grain farmers, and theories of US sabotage. But those don’t explain why, in addition to cancellation, the prototypes were destroyed along with the machine jigs and assembly lines. Finally I’ve run across an explanation that fits.
The fact is at that time, several nations could already build faster strike fighters. The problem was the motors burned out after a few hundred hours. Canada had invented a way to make the parts that count out of titanium. In a sense, the Arrow did fly in considerable numbers. Years later, when a defector landed a Mig 25 in Japan, the inspectors found the answer—a virtual copycat airframe. Soviet spies had infiltrated the Avro plant.
This photo shows the Arrow and below it, the Foxbat, the only other Mach 3 fighter built in that era. Same size, weight, speed, performance, and inside, identical motor parts. And that is identical down to the titanium, which is really an alloy and as such can be exactly measured by spectrum analysis. The Mig 25 is a generation newer than the Arrow, but the ancestry is undeniable. Avro couldn’t keep a secret.This episode and things like it are part of my penchant for privacy. Whenever there is anybody in the vicinity starts talking equality, time to shield what you do from prying eyes. Doubly so, because the do-nothing is always the underdog. The lazy and unaccomplished always want to share, which sounds so nice and sweet. That’s how they get away with it. Fair warning: if for any reason you choose not to share, never turn your back on those scoundrels.
Nope, it is best to work in secrecy if you want to get ahead. I confirm that from personal experience. Most of my family is unaware I can type, write, or speak other languages. They do not even know I play electric bass or that I have university degrees. Why? Because if they had found out, they would interfere. How, some might ask, could family interfere with a degree? Pure, raw, peasant jealously, that’s how. You mean I never told you how my brother, upon finding out I was studying accounting, took to running chain saws inside the house the night before my exams? Are you SURE I never said anything? About that? It is so f*cked-up it sounds comical. But it is sadly most true.
With all this original typing I do, I should write a book.
