MORNING
Here’s part results of my sit-down-and-think time y’day. I know the picture is lousy and a new camera is in the budget for December. Many people might see me pointing at an old computer cooling fin, even if you can’t see the fins so well. But I see a potential variable capacitor. I’m not forgetting the trouble I had cutting fins much smaller than this. That’s why also in the budget is a scroll saw. (Now that’s a contorted sentence.) It’s a glass of cranberry juice, by the way. I dislike wine. But see how evenly spaced those cooling fins are and that trough already down the middle?
Get this, according to Guardian, the USB cable used to recharge e-Cigarettes has been found downloading malware onto the host computers. This could give smoking a bad name. Those people who are shocked that Nobel prizes can be bought at auction sales plainly do not understand that is not so much different than the real deal. There are 600,000 bridges in the USA. Cheerios was originally spelled “Cheerioats”. And typing “illuminati” backward plus the dot com will take you to the NSA website.
NOON
It’s still chilly out there. I’m no fan of the cold. This gave me time to review whatever happened to Mars Direct. This is the concept of sending a power plant to Mars in advance of a manned mission. The plant produces the fuel needed for the return leg from materials on the planet. I predicted the entrenched bureaucracy at NASA, the ass-clowns responsible for the disastrous Shuttle fiasco would fight back. They like their nice fancy jobs. I was right, but the need for a Mars mission remains.
Why the re-examination? Because Mars Direct was designed before the advent of 3D printers, and I mean good ones like shown in this photo. This unit is designed to print duplicates of human hearts imaged by sonograms so the surgeon can practice on a model before making any incision. Such printers could be adapted for interplanetary travel, and this represents major progress that has not yet been incorporated. (The idea is to take a printer along and print what you need once you arrive on Mars, instead of taking everything up there with you.)
Author's note: I know somebody out there must be working on this concept, but where are you? Whoever you are, please publish. Or hire me, I'll do the writing for you.
It seems the concept of Mars Direct has been splintered but still exists. A couple of our plastic pseudo-presidents have given it lip service, but final progress continues to be dependent on acceptance by NASA, a total conflict of interest.
That’s the crowd loudest to scream that people would lose their jobs and how would you like it if that happened to you? That’s bull. It has happened to me, several times. That’s why I regard having a job also creates a self-responsibility to have employable skills in case. If I always had to live and deal with that situation, so can the rest of them.
I know that means continual adaptation, but that is what progress is all about. When I got my swank job at the phone company, my first priority was to use their reimbursement program to attend evening school. And I didn’t see even one of my workmates in those lecture halls, I tell you that. Seven years, I went to school up to four evenings a week. And when the hammer fell, I just moved on to my next position while the rest went on to unemployment insurance.
And yes, I’ve often wondered what good I could have done the world if I’d gotten the education I wanted instead of the education I could afford. I know that exploration counts perseverance just as important as being smart. I think it safe to say as the mission historian, I could guarantee good daily reports. What would you say? Mars is only three years away and I can write in zero gravity just fine. Maybe help oil the robot or a few mid-course navigational calculations, type of thing.
I sure would go if the opportunity arose. The possibility of death doesn’t phase me. If the worst happens, I’d rather be out there than watching it on cable TV. We’ll get nowhere until the rot is scooped out to the core. As it stands, the only way out is to fire NASA and hire back one-by-one, on an as-needed basis. Some say such drastic action will lose all the accumulated intellectual assets and I say to them, “You’ve got to be joking.”
It trims the fat, that's what it does. The fat that eventually made Shuttle missions more costly than expendables. It takes oodles of lazy and unimaginative people to accomplish that. NASA lost its way and can never find it back. I say, “No more compromises.” Fire the lot. They've had their chance.
AFTERNOON
I went downtown. I don’t like winter, but I remain adapted to it. I had to take some cash out of the bank and thought to stop at the Starbucks. That’s always a mistake in Hollywood, that particular location is kind of slobby. It’s little things that add up, like despite special tables there is always somebody in a wheelchair blocking the door, or a couple of hand-talkers waving their arms, and all the women have had liposuction. Gum on the sidewalk and working-class overhead music.
I’ve been reading articles on the amplification role of transistors to find there is another field of skimpy information. They over-explain how the things work and how to build them, but not way to bias the input signal to make them work. This relates back to the antennas we built that didn’t work. I intend to connect them [the antennas] to an amplifier and see if maybe they do and we didn't know. Sure, I’d rather be out playing music at a lounge, but until that happy day, Fridays are not the time to come around here expecting a circus. A zoo maybe, but not a circus.
You find countless diagrams like the one nearby showing amplifier circuits, this one I chose to examine because it uses a 2N3904 transistor, and I have a box full. What I’m doing is poring over a few dozen of these to pick out the common areas. I’m going to spend a paragraph to say how I think this thing works for my own files, but follow along if you’ve ever been curious about transistors.
That capacitor called C1 is tiny, 0.1uF. That means speaking into the microphone rapidly (but very weakly) charges and discharges the plate. In turn, this causes a sympathetic signal on the other plate, which is connected to the base of Q1, the transistor. This base signal acts like a valve, controlling the much larger current (3 to 9 Volts) that flows through the transistor. That stronger voltage charges and discharges C2, hence you get amplification of the input signal. I am building this circuit as we speak. It’s amazing what you can get done when you don’t watch TV. What’s on tonight? I dunno, Family Feud?
Now some trivia, I’ve been listening to Mars-casts in the background. Did you know there are 58 landforms on that planet, which precisely matches the dry land on Earth. In other words, there are no surprises over there on a planet-wide scale. Nothing new and nothing left out. The hoopla is centered on the fact that some of those landforms can only be created, as far as we know, by flowing liquid. Mars is (. . . something, I dunno, this part got clipped off. Mars is cool. A hundred below zero. Fahrenheit.)
For the record, although I have only criticized NASA infrequently here, I was a total opponent of the the Shuttle program from the day it was announced back in the 70s. I instantly saw it for what it was, a cop-out. The NASA brass saw that a Mars mission could not be accomplished in the term of one president and chose something that could—thus abandoning their mandate. I go on record that I have always been an opponent of the Shuttle and its equally useless cousin, the Space Station. Gigantic wastes of money.
NIGHT
It’s hard to believe the degree to which censorship still exists in this world. Although I do believe there are times when censorship serves a purpose, such as not publishing the names of accused people unless they are convicted. But pictures in Playboy magazine? Here is a photo of Gabriella Brum as she appeared on a Playboy magazine cover in 1981 on the left, and as
There appear to be no current photos of Gabriella, now aged 52, available on the Internet. Only one other Miss World resigned, some Welsh lady, when it was found out she had concealed having an 18-month-old child. Again, I agree, because I remember when beauty contests were for virgins only. There is a lot to be said for that, though it won’t be me saying it.
ADDENDUM
Here is the answer to last evening's money question. Time's up. This is grade school arithmetic, gang. By grade school, I mean only arithmetic: add, subtract, multiply, divide. No higher math involved. If grade school material gives anyone a hard time, I've got bad news for them about the rest of life.
Here's the solution: The dealership wants 10% down, therefore adding that to the remaining principle must be the purchase price. This remaining principle is the true amount borrowed on which you pay interest at 4.99% APR. But the payments are monthly, not annually. For simplicity's sake, we'll make the monthly interest 4.99%/12, which is not precise, but the batteries on my financial calculator are dead. It works out to around .4158% per month.
It follows that if you make 60 payments of $233, you have paid back $13,980.00. Some of that is interest, the rest is principle. First, calculate the interest. Ah, that's where education comes into play. You can't just calculate 4.99% annually of $13,980 and divide by 60 payments. Because after you make the first payment, you no longer owe the full amount, and to complicate matters, that amount (the outstanding balance or "principle) changes by a different figure every month until you owe $0.
Here's the figures. The interest paid is $1,630.17. Subtract $13,980.00 - $1,630.17 = $12,389.43. The amount you borrowed as $12,389.43,call it $12,390.00. That amount is 90% of $13,722.00, which is therefore the amount you paid for the motorcycle. And if you look closely, that must be the absolute cheapest model on the lot and they are using it for advertising bait. QED.
Today’s Togla Treat
When you see it.
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