advice for introverts

I'd say the basic definition of an introvert is someone who prefers to be alone if given the choice. After enough hostile encounters, I learned to be wary of others. Perhaps I was being timid, or fragile, or extreme. Being on guard all the time is tiresome. In the Army, Peace Corps, stand-up comedy, and other experiences, I've proven to myself I can handle social situations, so I no longer seek them. 

HAPPIER ALONE, Multi-Award Winning stop motion animation

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness

Better alone than with bad company, I like to say.

Proverbs 21:19

"Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife."

Being alone doesn't mean being lonely. It's a matter of pruning away or reducing relationships that don't add to your well-being. 

In my case, I ran out of patience for dealing with people who annoy me, especially when it was deliberate. That's been a frequent problem whenever I've been in group settings.

Consider your wants and needs, then satisfy them with minimal human interaction. It's an extreme solution, but it's worked for me. And if you grow tired of living that way, you can always modify your habits.

Try to respect and get respect from all. If you can't get respect from someone, avoid them. If you can't avoid them, make them afraid of you. Let aposematism be your guide. In nature, living things use odd coloring and other visual clues to show would be predators they are not worth attacking or eating.

Aposematic Coloration

My favorite introvert and MGTOW song:

Never let a woman in your life!

Eh, the last woman I let in my life brought me much joy, but we never moved in with each other. That was for the best.

A Day in the Life of a Japanese Hikikomori (Shut In)

Technology has made it much easier for introverts to socialize in ways that are comfortable for them. It's good to take advantage of that.

No man is an island said Donne long ago, but today, you can be something like that without being a hermit. 

Monty Python - Hermits

It's best to think of every relationship as a Venn diagram where the overlap represents your mutual benefits and interests. If there's no overlap, don't deal with that person. When there is an overlap, respect your differences with them. 

Remember that happiness is possible. Go placidly amidst the noise and the haste, as it says in the Desiderata.

Desiderata read by Leonard Nimoy (A powerful poem for challenging times)

If in a cynical mood, try the Deteriorata parody:

1972 National Lampoon - Deteriorata (Norman Rose, narrator / Melissa Manchester, vocal)

We are all flukes of the universe.

going through the motions - another public-school charade?

I read an article on NPR about a math teacher in Texas who improved attendance and test scores by incorporating hip hop music. Good for him, though I'm skeptical such techniques have much use in teaching math more complicated than arithmetic.

Texas teacher uses rap to make math fun

To get kids hooked on math, teacher brings rap music into the classroom : NPR

Jaime Escalante was in a similar situation but did not dumb things down or give up. 

Jaime Escalante - Wikipedia

Stand and Deliver (1988) - The Gigolo Problem Scene (4/9) | Movieclips

***

In 1974, he began to teach at Garfield High School. Escalante was initially so disheartened by the lack of preparation of his students that he called his former employer and asked for his old job back. Escalante eventually changed his mind about returning to work when he found twelve students willing to take an algebra class.[6]

Shortly after Escalante came to Garfield High School, its accreditation became threatened. Instead of gearing classes to poorly performing students, Escalante offered AP Calculus.[7] He had already earned the criticism of an administrator, who disapproved of his requiring the students to answer a homework question before being allowed into the classroom: "He said to 'Just get them inside.' I said, 'There is no teaching, no learning going on here. We are just baby-sitting.'"[8]

Determined to change the status quo, Escalante persuaded a few students that they could control their futures with the right education. He promised them that they could get jobs in engineering, electronics, and computers if they would learn math: "I'll teach you math and that's your language. With that, you're going to make it. You're going to college and sit in the first row, not the back because you're going to know more than anybody."[8]

***

Baby-sitting is being generous. My experience being a teacher in US schools was more like being a prison guard, but with less authority and respect. Parents should be the ones disciplining their children. 

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Sometimes cursing the darkness inspires someone to find and light a candle. 

designing a supercomputer cooled with heat exchangers

Below is a prototype I built myself. It attracted the attention of the FBI who came to my apartment to ask me about it. It was cooled with mineral oil which does not conduct electricity. The same oil has been used to cool high voltage transformers for over a century. 

Computers are about as small and cheap as they're ever going to be. Advances in software are few and far between. Thus, the only way left to improve performance is through better heat transfer. Oil immersion cooling is not a new idea, but it has yet to be embraced fully. See these cluster computers for examples:

World's Largest Raspberry Pi Cluster

Cheapest super computer in the world أرخص سوبر كمبيوتر في العالم

Cluster computing is a big part of the solution and was heavily advocated by computer pioneer Grace Hopper. She compared it to hitching multiple oxen to the same yoke if one was not strong enough to do the job alone. It's a similar idea to multiengine aircraft.

Microsoft did an interesting and successful experiment called Project Natick where they packed a data center into a waterproof shipping container and submerged it. 

Project Natick Phase 2

I think it could be better to combine the cooling power of oil and water used a shell and tube heat exchanger. Cold lake water could be pumped into the shell, and the heated cooling oil would be pumped through the tubes to keep it extra cold.

Shell And Tube Heat Exchanger Animation

There are many cold lakes in the continental US that could be used, and the water temperature would not change much even for the cooling needs of a very large supercomputer complex such as the one in Oak Ridge. It would also be cheaper in terms of water usage than the NSA data center complex in Bluffdale, Utah which is cooled by water evaporation. Mineral oil does not evaporate, and the volume and water temperature of most lakes stays constant.

The ideal location for a supercomputer complex cooled by heat exchangers would be on the shores of Lake Superior. Using freshwater eliminates many of problems brought on by sea salt and other complications such as tides and bad weather. The main risk would be water leaking into the oil, but it would settle to the bottom of computer tank because water is denser. 

If the complex was some distance below the water level of the lake, artesian pressure could be used instead of pumps to circulate the water. Instead returning the water to the lake, it would drain into a pond for evaporation. Al valve would be opened or closed to control the water level. The main drawback is maintenance, though I suppose that could done by divers depending on the size of the oil bath. 

In my experience, it will also be necessary to keep the oil bath covered. Insects are attracted to the oil and get stuck in it. These were the literal bugs I dealt with my oil-cooled computer. There were no adverse performance effects, but all the dead bugs were unsightly. 

Basically, the oil bath would be about the size of an Olympic swimming pool with a uniform depth of maybe five feet. A bundle of tubes carrying the cooling water would pass through the oil bath on one of its sides. On the bottom of the oil bath would be a layer of copper BBs or pennies to act as auxiliary heat sinks. In this way, the oil bath acts like the shell side a very large heat exchanger with the lake being the tube side. Another way to think of it is like the way a car radiator exchanges heat to cool an engine. 

CPUs and other such chips are designed to slow down once they reach a center temperature. But if the chips through better cooling never reach that temperature, there is no limit to the speed of the system clock. If something like Intel's terahertz processor was used with the cooling system described above, I can scarcely imagine how fast the computer would be. 

Intel TeraHertz - Wikipedia

There are all kinds of computer science problems thought to be unsolvable only because of the current limits of processing speed. This is the reason for all the work with quantum computers. However, those require technology that could be decades away if it is possible at all. 

List of unsolved problems in computer science - Wikipedia

Blowing air on a machine to cool it down is 19th century thinking. It is time to use mineral oil and heat exchangers. 

My NSA odyssey - recap after 4 years

This post will revisit some things I've discussed before. Below is a post with links to other one of relevance.

Derpetology: NSA Harassed Karen Stewart (Zersetzung, Gaslighting)

It's amusing that odyssey refers to a dangerous journey named after its sole survivor. That story has always spoken powerfully to me. About 4 years ago, I applied to be an NSA codebreaker after having spent the previous 2.5 years working for them as an Arabic linguist while in the Army. My application is still under consideration, though I doubt very much I'll ever get an offer for reasons I'll explain later.

In March of 2021, I suspected that NSA was spying on me and manipulating my electronics. I know for a fact they do this routinely because I watched them do it to others and read their reports about it. Later events confirmed that for me beyond a reasonable doubt. At first, I thought that perhaps they were trying to pacify and rehabilitate me or mold me into someone they found acceptable. Later, I concluded they were more likely trying silence, provoke, and discredit me. They've done such things before. See the case of William Binney for an example. 

I'd take a job if they offered one, though I have little enthusiasm for it now. The traffic near NSA HQ in Fort Meade would give me cancer of the soul. I'm open to using my abilities for the good of national security under any kind of arrangement. At heart, I'm still a patriotic man mostly. I've returned to welding after 4 years of hiatus. It's figuratively and literally more constructive than anything I did at NSA, or even my life in general, though I am always open to other possibilities. 

How odd it all turned out. I have all these exotic achievements under my belt: Eagle Scout, chemical engineering degree from a full scholarship, Peace Corps, Army, and NSA. If I was a smarter man, I'd have realized at a younger age that high achievement is often me with indifference, scorn, or jealousy. Schopenhauer had wise words on that:

Schopenhauer: Why Society Hates Intelligence | Counsels & Maxims 34

Even so, I don't regret my efforts at pursuing greatness. You find what you look for. A better way of phrasing that is you go on a journey to get what you want and find what you need along the way.  

There are times when I've pondered thoughts of revenge against my various tormentors. I try to remember that it's better to just move on and enjoy life. I have other, more important goals than getting even, becoming a father and homeowner chief among them. The truth always comes out in the end anyway, and the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.  

I don't like making threats or ultimatums, but I will note my abundant patience is finite. Hopefully it never runs out. In my experience, people won't leave you alone until you give them a compelling reason. I prefer to defeat my enemies by making them into friends. 

The harassment has dropped off greatly since 2023. It mostly consists of my internet mysteriously getting jammed and an inexplicable number of YouTube ads about living with schizophrenia. It's all so tiresome. Whatever. If they're trying to break me, it's not going to work. I've been through a lot more than most. 

Below is the strongest piece of evidence I have for what I've claimed. I made that video at my apartment in Augusta, Georgia in the spring of 2022. The same sequence of events happened every time I locked or unlocked my apartment door for weeks. 

At this point, I just want to be a free spirit living peace. 

REGRETROID - a YouTube comedy gem

REGRETROID - Starbomb 3D Animated Music Video (by Antony Manley)

Jumanji and other jungle adventure movies

The Great Monsoon | Jumanji | Voyage | With Captions

The Naked Prey (3/9) Movie CLIP - Run for Your Life (1966) HD

The Naked Jungle (1954) - Final scene [FR sub]

Tarzan the Fearless vs. Jungle Lion

Enough fiction. Now for some facts!

An Unbreakable Bond | The Lion Whisperer

MGTOW comedy - intentional and otherwise

Men: What to Expect from Marriage

Mom Discovers Sperm Donor’s Background Was a Lie

I think this screenshot says it all:

Women F**k Around & Find Out

Dutch Chad IMPREGNATES 1000 Women And The Women Took Him To Court To Stop Him Impregnating More

And now, the grand finale:

26 year old man swipes right 2 million times on Tinder in 5 years, gets only 1 date; internet says ‘even bots said no’ - Hindustan Times

Well, at least my online dating experience went a lot better than his.

incredible octopus camouflage and shape-shifting ability

Octopus Camouflage Mastery: The Most Incredible Animal on Earth

Huge Octopus Escapes Through Smallest Hole | The Dodo

Turn your hamster into a fighting machine!

Oh, how I laughed when I found this in 2006:

the secret password protected page on whitehouse.gov

Stumbled upon this during a directory walk:

Melania – The White House

I tried guessing the password, but alas my NSA training comes up short sometimes. 

My favorite Perry Bible Fellowship comics

There are some real gems in it. My favorites are Metamorph-assist, Suicide Train, and Cave Explorer.

Metamorph-Assist - The Perry Bible Fellowship

Suicide Train - The Perry Bible Fellowship

Cave Explorer - The Perry Bible Fellowship

English and Icelandic are the only Germanic languages with both "th" sounds

I supposed that list could be expanded to Faroese, etc. My point is all those are (or were) island languages. Thus, their relative isolation insulated them (pun intended, insula means island in Latin) from the changes underwent by German, Dutch, Swedish, etc.

There is probably something similar at work with Polynesian vs. other Austronesian languages. 

Not much of an insight but figured I'd share it. Arabic also has the same "th" sounds in the letters thaa ث and dhaal ذ, though those sounds are often substituted with daal د (d) and zayn ز (z) respectively. This makes sense as Arabia used to be fairly isolated from the rest of the world.

 

my favorite unconventional music - 8-bit, stepper motor, and more

He's a Pirate on stepper motors

Mario Paint Composer: Everytime We Touch by Cascada

The Floppotron: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Blue (Da Ba Dee) [8 Bit Tribute to Eiffel 65] - 8 Bit Universe

10 Iconic Guitar Riffs Played On The Hurdy Gurdy PART 1 (10k SUBSCRIBERS + WIN HELVETION MERCH!)

The Final Countdown - Europe (Vintage Cabaret Cover) ft. Gunhild Carling

And now, the grand finale:

CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music - Nigel Stanford

the cryptography of emojis

There are 3,790 Unicode emojis. That’s already more than enough for an ideographic writing system; literacy in Chinese requires only 2,000 symbols and hieroglyphics got by with 800. You could make a code out of emojis with enough left over to be letters and numbers. For greater security, you could mix in plaintext red herrings. NSA code breaker Perry Fellwock said you need to intercept about 100,000 words from an unknown language or cipher to break it. A secure communication system based on smartphones and emojis requires no special equipment and would require intense cryptanalysis to break even if every single message was intercepted and analyzed. Of course, that would require recognizing that the messages were in code in the first place. Steganography for the win.

During the Cold War, a certain country invented a clever, low-tech code that was never broken. They taught the code to people with good memories which eliminated the need to write anything down. Sometimes less is more. 

Emojis are already used as codewords in general and by various subcultures. Think eggplant. 

How Gen Z Uses Emoji: A Guide For Millennials | Dictionary.com

Derpetology: Words and other endangered species

Every generation thinks they invented language. I remember my grandpa once complaining about the slang usage of "cool" because it made no sense to him.  A code produced by a machine can be broken by a machine. That's how computers were invented. But only humans and other intelligent life can create and use language. 

It'll Happen To You! (The Simpsons)

I guess it's a good thing so few people know what a lipogram is. 

the smartest thing I ever heard from a public school teacher

I was in 7th grade and we were watching a video about reptiles. At one point, I interjected that crocodiles are stupid animals. The teacher looked at me and said "maybe, but they're good at what they do and have been around for a lot longer than we have." That was the day I learned that a good teacher knows when to make a student feel stupid.

In nature, it doesn't matter how big, small, weird, ugly, beautiful, cruel, kind, smart, or dumb a living thing is. Those are human labels. All that matters in biology is survival and reproduction. Here are  visual aids for that:

This Organism REPLICATED Tokyo’s Subway System #science #biomimicry #slimemold - YouTube

Dissecting A Bug | Starship Troopers | Voyage

How alligators survive in frozen water

Double standards in crime reporting - George Floyd, Rodney King, and the 2025 Cincinnati mob beating

This picture of George Floyd sparked nationwide riots which left dozens dead and caused billions in property damage:

Floyd argued and resisted the cops for about 10 minutes as they tried to put him in the back seat of their car. Here is a screenshot from the bodycam footage:

Full Bodycam Footage of George Floyd Arrest - YouTube

But the media only publicized the picture with Floyd on the ground. In a similar way, the only video publicized of Rodney King's arrest was when a group of cops were beating him after he led them on a chase and resisted arrest.

The viral video that set a city on fire

In contrast, the video of the 2025 Cincinnati mob beating was heavily censored by the mainstream media. You can watch it all here:

raw video

Here are screenshots which show a black man body slamming one of the white victims who was also repeatedly stomped on, kicked, and punched while on the ground: 

Now a black pastor in Cincinnati is saying the white victims instigated what is clearly a one-sided beatdown. 

Cincinnati 'Black Community Leaders' Demand White 'Instigator' Be ARRESTED - YouTube

In the not so good old days, black Americans were sometimes victims of white mob violence when the reverse was extremely rare. Was that cause and effect? I hope not, otherwise it will return. 

Duluth Lynchings, 1920 - the victims supposedly raped and robbed a white woman:

Mutilated body of Emmet Till after he was beaten to death by a gang of whites for supposedly harassing a white woman:

The Charleston church shooter wrote he was radicalized into killing blacks by reading reports of black on white crime.  

The solution is not to suppress such info. The US is a multiracial and multicultural country, and that is not going to change. People need to judge each other as individuals and resist their tribal instincts. 

 

use oleic acid as an insect repellent?

In Florida, where I live, cockroaches thrive. After discovering and killing several in my bathroom over the course of a few months, I decided to leave the corpse of one out as a warning to others rather than flush it down the toilet. I haven't caught a cockroach in my bathroom since. It turns out they release oleic acid when they die, and it repels other roaches. 

Oleic acid has the advantages of being biodegradable and even edible. It's the main ingredient in olive oil. In fact, olive oil is graded according to the percent of oleic acid it contains. It'd probably be cheaper to make oleic acid artificially than get it from olives, but I doubt there's a market for it. It's similar to the way margarine was suppressed.

The empirical formula of oleic acid is similar to the medicines cyclizine and clozapine, though the former has an chain structure and the latter have cyclic structures. Thus, I wonder if oleic acid could be turned into a medicine by giving it a ring structure and the other two could be turned into insect repellents by straightening them out. 

I used my own organic compound dictionary to research these possibilities.

Derpetology: Dictionary of Useful Organic Compounds and Medicines (450+ entries) - a continuing project

Oleic acid - Wikipedia

Cyclizine - Wikipedia

Clozapine - Wikipedia

Gruesomely Large Sarasota Pest Palmetto Bug (American Cockroach) Crawls into Your Trash Can

Bah, after braving the bugs of Africa, I have no fear of such pests. Cockroaches are nothing compared to swarms of siafu army ants, malaria mosquitoes, kumbikumbi flying termites, scorpions, and giant nephila pilipes spiders. That spider's body is as long as a stapler. 

warfare for dummies

it takes all kinds

The Rosewood Massacre happened close to where I live as did this scene. When word of the carnage spread, some whites stood up to stop it.

Rosewood Movie Clip - Bronson Doesn't Want You!

Rosewood massacre - Wikipedia

***

The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of black people and the destruction of a black town that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida, United States. At least six black people were killed, but eyewitness accounts suggested a higher death toll of 27 to 150. In addition, two white people were killed in self-defense by one of the victims. The town of Rosewood was destroyed in what contemporary news reports characterized as a race riot. Florida had an especially high number of lynchings of black men in the years before the massacre,[2] including the lynching of Charles Strong and the Perry massacre in 1922.

***

presented without comment

Couple Refuses ID, Turns Into Heated Standoff

How Requesting A Supervisor Turned Into 5 Felonies

Here’s How A Traffic Ticket Turned Into 3 Felonies

Dindu Nuffin compilation

Randy Marsh “I Thought This Was America” Compilation

The Sorrows of Pluto by Tim Kreider

This cartoon was drawn shortly after Pluto was demoted from being a planet back in 2006. 

My favorite Tim Kreider cartoon

He was kind enough to write back with fun sketches when I sent him a fan letter from Africa. It's sad that he seems to have sunk into obscurity. His website has been a ghost town for a while.

The Pain – When Will It End? - Wikipedia

internet gem - The Nietzsche Family Circus

The Nietzsche Family Circus

It's Family Circus cartoons paired with Nietzsche quotes.

My favorite shows a dotted line of Billy's path through the backyard while the caption intones "life is wandering without purpose".

Since I can't find that one, this will do as a substitute:

learn languages for free - 2 great online resources

I learned of this site while a student at DLI. My advice is to listen to the audio while reading the transcript. Then read the transcript out loud. For best results, transcribe the audio. 

Languages | LangMedia - Five College Center for World Languages

The Ilovelanguages channel has a good mix of modern, ancient, and fictional languages.

The Sound of the Ancient Egyptian language (Numbers, Words & Sample Text)

6 hours of Soviet animation - with English subtitles

6-Hours of Revolutionary Soviet Cartoons [USSR] [English Subbed & Timestamped] [1917-90]

4 chord songs and Emily Dickinson poems

4 Chords | Music Videos | The Axis Of Awesome

Emily Dickinson's Poems sung to the tune of the Gilligan's Island Theme Song.

The real landshark - the epaulette shark

From Australia, of course: 

Epaulette Shark Walks on Land

You can pet one at the Mote Aquarium in Sarasota, FL.

Derpetology: Mote Aquarium in Sarasota, FL

compare and contrast - perception vs reality

It can be a vicious cycle of distrust and aggression.

Black Parents Explain How to Deal with the Police | Cut

What Happens When You Rent a Car & Never Return - YouTube

Police Give Rebellious Woman a Lesson She Won't Forget

And now for a solution:

Chris Rock - How not to get your ass kicked by the police!

compare and contrast - Amish & Haiti

I've never heard of the Amish needing food or other aid. The Amish voluntarily forgo most technology, including electricity and cars. 

Time lapse: Building an Amish barn took only 10 hours for 30 men in Clinton, WI

Haiti's Poorest Village

Jiggers are parasitic fleas that infest human feet. It can be stopped by wearing flip flops.

Daniel Ombima's jigger digging 4K video - subscribe @.net and watch SUPER CLEAR vids

It's a bad idea to fight, argue with, or run from the cops

Illinois Mayor Thinks He's Above The Law - YouTube

Texas Police Helicopter Video Captures Shootout on Highway

One (Clever?) Way to Stop a Motorcycle Chase

The One Arrest That EVERY Cop Fears

Rich Doctor Thinks She's Above The Law

alligators vs fences - life finds a way

VIDEO: Alligator Climbs Fence In Florida

Giant alligator bends metal fence in Florida

Alligator Caught Struggling to Climb Over Fence

Jeff Goldblum Life Finds a Way Steven Spielberg Movie HD Jurassic Park Movie CLIP

Reading Rainbow - Chickens Aren't the Only Ones

I loved that book as a wee lad. Chickens aren't the only ones that lay eggs.

Reading Rainbow – Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones | S05E03 | 1987 VHS Rip | FreeClassics - YouTube

use a fungal computer to solve the integer factorization problem?

Two very intriguing ideas:

Towards fungal computer | Interface Focus

Factoring Integers With a Brain-Inspired Computer.pdf

Simulated Mars Mission - launch, landing, return

KSP Mars Ultra Direct: Ludicrous single launch to Mars in Real Solar System

Pulp Fiction, but it's in Sumerian

Pulp Fiction Sumerian dub - Copper Fiction (English and Sumerian subtitles)

A Boy and His Atom

A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie

The Molecular Shape of You - parody song

The Molecular Shape of You (Ed Sheeran Parody) | A Capella Science

Flight 93 was shot down by the US military - here's the proof - الكذب الكبير من امريكا

Below is a picture of Paige Brown. We worked together as Arabic linguists in section FGX3B23 at NSA. Not long after I met her in the summer of 2019, she came to me with a pained expression and asked, "is it OK to talk about classified information here?" Since we were almost at our desks inside the Whitelaw NSA building, I said yes. Then she said that Flight 93 was shot down by the US military. I wasn't surprised, but I also understood why a false narrative was propagated and why being told the truth pained her. I see no reason why she would lie or why the USAF instructor at Goodfellow AFB who told her would lie about it either. 24 years of lies is enough, and it is standard practice to declassify things after 25 years. 

There was no heroic last stand by the passengers. This is all the more obvious when I remember how cowardly Americans were during COVID. 

I have been reluctant to publicize this information. My rationale is explained here:

Derpetology: Was Flight 93 Shot Down?

Truth is stranger than fiction - Ted Striker and I

Like Ted Striker of Airplane!, I too was in the military and served in the Peace Corps in Africa, though I did not introduce basketball to the Malombo tribe.

Airplane!: The Malombo tribe. - YouTube

Giant Australian earthworm so big you can hear it tunneling underground

It's not quite Shai Hulud from Dune size though. Shai Hulud is garbled Arabic for "immortal thing".

Giant Gippsland Earthworm - YouTube

The lesson of the sci-fi novel The Tunnel

The Tunnel (Kellermann novel) - Wikipedia

In it, a multi-year project to link North America and Europe with a tunnel under the Atlantic eventually succeeds despite many setbacks. Unfortunately, by the time it is completed, transatlantic air travel is cheaper and faster, and so the tunnel is obsolete. 

From this, I assert that any technology that takes more than a few years to develop will probably be made obsolete by something else in the meantime. 

There is a similar lesson in the sci-fi short story Superiority. It describes a war between two futuristic civilizations where the one with better technology loses because the other side could build much greater amounts of simpler, cheaper, more reliable weapons.

Superiority (short story) - Wikipedia

***

"Superiority" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1951. It depicts an arms race during an interstellar war. It shows the side which is more technologically advanced being defeated, despite its apparent superiority, because of its willingness to discard old technology without having fully perfected the new. Meanwhile, the enemy steadily built up a far larger arsenal of weapons that while more primitive were also more reliable. The story was at one point required reading for an industrial design course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

***

proof the Pearl Harbor attack was allowed to happen

I understand the film from the Japanese perspective. That makes sense. But the footage from the American perspective indicates that cameras were set up in the right places beforehand. Movie cameras back then were large, expensive, and had to be operated manually. Thus, the US knew the date and time of the attack and was ready to record it well in advance. I'll add that the US had broken Japanese naval and diplomatic codes and thus knew an attack was imminent. 

WW2 - Attack on Pearl Harbor

best WW2 combat footage

WW2 - Iwo Jima Assault [Real Footage in Colour]

WW2 - The Battle of the Atlantic [Real Footage in Colour]

WW2: Real Footage, No Music, Pure Sound

the all-time most read posts on this blog

tough catfish - a desert walking one with armor and one that hunts pigeons

The Fish That Hunts Pigeons | Planet Earth II | BBC Earth - YouTube

"Armored Catfish: The Desert’s Hidden Survivor"

Polygon - Soviet film about a psychic tank

It reminds me of the psychic weapons in the video game Red Alert 2.

The film studio Soyuzmultfilm 1978 Polygon

More about the author of the original story:

Sever Gansovsky - Wikipedia

The circus elephant buried under Trinity Church in Shepherdstown, WV

I grew up a few miles away from Shepherdstown and went there often. My favorite bit of local lore is the circus elephant buried under a local church.

Trinity Church began as a log chapel in 1745

***

The Curious Tale of the Elephant Under the Church 

For many years a story has circulated regarding a circus elephant that is supposed 

to be buried under the church, and, in that the story is a part of the history of Trinity 

Church, this tale is included in this document.  As with many legends, stories and 

various other “tall tales”, the plot, while basically remaining the same, will have slight 

changes depending upon the teller.  The story outlined below is based on what is 

supposed to be the most reliable version. 

At the time of the excavation for the foundation of the new Church, around 1854, a 

traveling circus visited Shepherdstown. As with all visiting circuses, there was a fine 

parade of circus animals through the town.  Among the animals in the parade was a 

mother elephant accompanied by her baby.  As the elephants passed by the excavation 

for the foundation, for reasons not entirely clear, one of the elephants dropped dead.  

Here the story becomes murky.  Some say the mother elephant died, while others 

maintain the baby was the one called by the Grim Reaper.  Either way, there was one 

dead elephant, which was one major problem.  Where does one find a hole big enough 

to entomb an elephant?  The answer soon became obvious – put the carcass in the 

hole excavated for the church foundation.  The elephant, either the mother or baby, was 

put to rest, the hole covered and the foundation completed.  Problem solved! 

According to the legend, exactly one year later, the same circus, again, visited 

Shepherdstown, and, again, the circus elephants paraded past the church property.  As 

the parade passed the building site, an elephant stopped, and (depending who is 

relating this fascinating tale) an elephant, either the mother or the now adult baby, 

trumpeted mightily as a tribute to the mother, or baby, buried under the church. 

***

lucky astronomer catches glimpse of meteorite hitting moon

Astronomer catches meteorite smashing into the moon (video) | Space

intriguing Russian vehicle traverses land, snow, and water with ease

Испытание шнекового движителя, 1970 - YouTube

The cabin and engine sit on two large screws. It turns much the way a tank does by stopping propulsion one side. 

 

Tesla and wireless power transfer (magnifying transmitter)

His basic idea is that the right frequency of alternating current will match the earth's natural resonance and allow it to act as a conductor. He proved this by experiment.

Nikola Tesla | Biography, Facts, & Inventions | Britannica

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In Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he stayed from May 1899 until early 1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery—terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a certain electrical frequency. He also lit 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 40 km (25 miles) and created man-made lightning, producing flashes measuring 41 metres (135 feet). At one time he was certain he had received signals from another planet in his Colorado laboratory, a claim that was met with derision in some scientific journals.

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In his autobiography, he described a magnifying transmitter in detail. 

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I have been asked by the ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER to be quite explicit on this subject so that my young friends among the readers of the magazine will clearly understand the construction and operation of my "Magnifying Transmitter" and the purposes for which it is intended.  Well, then, in the first place, it is a resonant transformer with a secondary in which the parts, charged to a high potential, are of considerable area and arranged in space along ideal enveloping surfaces of very large radii of curvature, and at proper distances from one another thereby insuring a small electric surface density everywhere so that no leak can occur even if the conductor is bare.  It is suitable for any frequency, from a few to many thousands of cycles per second, and can be used in the production of currents of tremendous volume and moderate pressure, or of smaller amperage and immense electromotive force.  The maximum electric tension is merely dependent on the curvature of the surfaces on which the charged elements are situated and the area of the latter. 

Judging from my past experience, as much as 100,000,000 volts are perfectly practicable.  On the other hand currents of many thousands of amperes may be obtained in the antenna.  A plant of but very moderate dimensions is required for such performances.  Theoretically, a terminal of less than 90 feet in diameter is sufficient to develop an electromotive force of that magnitude while for antenna currents of from 2,000-4,000 amperes at the usual frequencies it need not be larger than 30 feet in diameter. 

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His complete autobiography is available here: 

My Inventions, by Nikola Tesla | Copyleft 2006

The best way to understand resonance is pushing someone on a swing. If you push at the right time, you keep the motion going and can even increase it.

Resonant frequency of a swing

A similar phenomenon caused the famous collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Because the wind happened to match the natural resonant frequency of the bridge, the bridge absorbed energy and began to swing wildly until it broke apart.

Tacoma Bridge Collapse: The Wobbliest Bridge in the World? (1940) | British Pathé - YouTube

If the earth can be made to act as a conductor, then it is wireless power transfer is possible much like the way radio, cell, and Wi-Fi signals work without direct connections. It's simply a matter of applying alternating current to the earth at the proper frequency and voltage. Depending on the power load, multiple stations would be needed to provide complete coverage for a given area. 

A tesla coil can already wirelessly transfer enough to power a light bulb. 

🍅 Mix: Dried cherry tomatoes + tesla coil #experiment #vegetables #physics

In a similar way, a receiver tuned to the right frequency could harvest electrical energy from the earth much like the way a sail catches wind.