Brendan

The truth is revealed

2005-10-09T05:28:04Z

Happy Halloween!

2004-11-01T06:02:19Z

Commemorative Drink for the Day

2004-10-02T05:00:07Z

In honor of our local party girl:

The Mt. St. Helens -- Volcanic paradise with a rural Washington flavor:

1 part Jack Daniels
1 part vodka
1 part amaretto
3 parts mango juice
2 parts passion fruit juice

Mix over glacial ice

Census (part 2)

2004-07-16T05:58:07Z

Continuing my analysis of the census data...

(Read Part 1 first, if you haven't already)...

So of course, the next thing I looked at were the ranks of the second largest cities by state. Here's what the top 10 of that list looks like:

2nd Largest City	State	Population
1. San Diego	California	1,266,753
2. San Antonio	Texas	1,214,725
3. Nashville-Davidson	Tennessee	544,765
4. Tucson	Arizona	507,658
5. Cleveland	Ohio	461,324
6. Tulsa	Oklahoma	387,807
7. Miami	Florida	376,815
8. Colorado Springs	Colorado	370,448
9. Saint Louis	Missouri	332,223
10. Pittsburgh	Pennsylvania	325,337

This makes a good list of the states with two or more population centers. Note that it's still mostly the same heavily populated states as the Largest Cities list, although Tennessee, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Missouri have broken onto the list with their two-each comparably-sized cities.

Note also that San Antonio has passed Dallas!

And then, looking at the bottom again:

2nd Largest City	State	Population
40. Rapid City	South Dakota	60,876
41. Missoula	Montana	60,722
42. Gaithersburg	Maryland	57,365
43. Bismarck	North Dakota	56,344
44. Casper	Wyoming	50,632
45. Huntington	West Virginia	49,533
46. Lewiston	Maine	35,922
47. Dover	Delaware	32,808
48. Juneau	Alaska	31,187
49. Rutland	Vermont	17,103

The first thing you probably noticed is that the list only goes to 49. This is because of the special case of Hawaii. Hawaii has no incorporated cities: all urban government and services are provided by the county governments there. The only population center there recognized by the Census Bureau is Honolulu, which is Hawaii's only entry on any of these lists. Note also that the Largest Cities list ended at 50, not 51. As the District of Columbia isn't a state, the rather large city of Washington doesn't make the lists either.

Another notable entry on this list is Gaithersburg, Maryland at #42. Maryland and Alaska are the only two states to have one city of over 200,000 population, and no other cities above 100,000. The nearly 11:1 ratio of population between Baltimore and Gaithersburg is the third largest between the two largest cities of any state. Only Illinois with a 17.7:1 ratio between Chicago and Aurora, and the anomalous New York City:Buffalo ratio of 28.4:1 are larger.

To be continued...

Random Census Geekery

2004-07-16T05:44:21Z

So, on looking at the 2003 U.S. census data, I decided to try to come up with some new way of looking at the data. This is what I finally came up with:

It's pretty obvious what the largest city in every state is, and in fact, with only a few notable exceptions, the top 10 cities in the list of Largest Cities by State looks a lot like a list of the largest cities in the United States, at least at first...

Largest City	State	Population
1. New York City	New York	8,085,742
2. Los Angeles	California	3,819,951
3. Chicago	Illinois	2,869,121
4. Houston	Texas	2,009,690
5. Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	1,479,339
6. Phoenix	Arizona	1,388,416
7. Detroit	Michigan	911,402
8. Indianapolis	Indiana	783,438
9. Jacksonville	Florida	773,781
10. Columbus	Ohio	728,432

It only starts to get marginally surprising after Detroit. #8 Indianapolis and #9 Jacksonville make the list by having huge city limits that encompass quite a bit of the surrounding population. #10 just thoroughly surprised me at least. I guess I hadn't noticed when Columbus had passed up Cleveland.

From there, there are the "average" cities in the middle of the pack. I resumed my analysis again with the smallest 10 largest cities in their respective states. Unsurprisingly, this reads like a rundown of rural and smaller states:

Largest City	State	Population
41. Sioux Falls	South Dakota	133,834
42. Columbia	South Carolina	117,357
43. Manchester	New Hampshire	108,871
44. Billings	Montana	95,220
45. Fargo	North Dakota	91,484
46. Wilmington	Delaware	72,051
47. Portland	Maine	63,635
48. Cheyenne	Wyoming	54,374
49. Charleston	West Virginia	51,394
50. Burlington	Vermont	39,148

The only minor surprise here is that Alaska isn't represented. But, at 270,951 inhabitants, Anchorage actually places well up the list comparatively.

To be continued...

Headlines

2004-06-09T06:08:50Z

I noted a headline in the Metro section of The Oregonian from May 31st. It read:

Portland Cases Fuel Rights Debate

Of course, you can read the story above with the third word as the verb as intended. Of course, with the second word as the verb, it becomes a story of the shady criminal type named Portland who's been seen surreptitiously observing the grounds of the Fuel Rights Debate. Or maybe the fourth word is the verb, and the "Portland Cases" company has produced a new fuel which has restored balance to the ongoing debate.

And now for something completely the same...

2004-02-21T06:34:44Z

OK, so I decided to attempt what many have attempted previously, and come up with a feasible Martian calendar. In doing so, I've attempted to avoid the impracticalities that I've seen earlier attempts get hung up on. I hope to come up with something that could actually be used for everyday purposes, as opposed to some of the more unusual calendars I've seen that ignore some pretty basic facts and traditions of human society. Anyway, here's my attempt:

THE SOL:

        A Martian sol (solar day) is roughly the same as an Earth day at roughly 24h 39m 35s, so this is already a nicely circadianly useful time period. When on Mars, use the Martian Sol as the standard unit of time when planning your daily schedule.

HOURS, MINUTES, SECONDS:

        This is where the trouble begins. The second is such a basic unit of scientific timekeeping, that a standard second has to be used throughout any sort of unified human civilization. You can't very well have engineers on Mars computing Newtons of thrust using a different-length second, so seconds MUST be uniform. There's no particular reason to maintain hours and minutes, though, as these are pretty arbitrary units based on ancient hybrid base-10/12 counting anyway. The Martian sol is 88775 seconds long. This number has prime factors of 5, 5, 53, and 67. Ugh.   If you were a masochist and had it in for wristwatch manufacturers, you could devise a clock with 25 "mars-hours" per sol, 53 "mars-minutes" per hour, and 67 seconds per "mars-minute", I suppose. A better suggestion would be to maintain the second for scientific measurements, and have a completely independent civil clock. Metric could be useful here, although a quasimetric might be useful as well. The metric option would be to base on the millisol would be 88.775 seconds long, which could be a useful analog to the minute. 50 millisols would be 73 minutes, which is close enough to an hour to serve the same sorts of purposes. A civil workday could be 350 millisols, with a 25 millisol lunch break.

        The quasimetric solution would be to divide these units in half. Half a millisol would be still useful and minute-like at 44.3875 seconds. If this was your base unit, you could have a clock which displayed 2000 of these units per day which would look somewhat reassuringly like an Earth clock, but when you saw it reading something like 14.82, there'd be no confusion over which it was. In this clock, Martian time zones would be 18 degrees of longitude wide.

THE WEEK:

        Let's face it. The seven-day week works, and is one of the few constants throughout history. The ratio of making 5 of these 7 to be work days also is about right. So with no compelling reason to change it, there should be a seven-sol week on Mars. The only thing that I think it is imperative NOT to keep are the names of the days. Those should be changed to avoid confusion with Earth days. The minimalist in me says go with Sunsol (ha!), Monsol, Tuessol, Wednesol, Thurssol, Frisol, Satursol. Those actually aren't too ludicrous. I'd avoid numbering the days of the week to avoid confusion with day numbers.

THE MONTH AND YEAR:

        The Martian year is 668.6 sols long (more on this later). The month really has no meaning on Mars, since the moons of Mars are so close to the planet that their orbital periods don't mark useful amounts of time. Martian calendars that I've seen tend to try to even out the lengths of the months, or dramatically synchronize the months to the days of the week or some such, taking advantage of such numerically nice concepts as that the Martian year divides nicely into four 167 day quarters. I believe that a better argument can be made for varying the lengths of the months. I've used a few basic principles to design the months: 1) The month on Mars is really only useful for human societal reasons. It gives little astronomical insight. 2) Humans are used to timekeeping periods in the approximate range of 24-35 days. 3) The Martian orbit is far more eccentric than the Earth's. On Earth, for instance, February is the only month that has to be significantly trimmed to account for the Earth moving faster near perihelion. If Martian months are to be equalized throughout the Martian seasons, a much greater effect needs to be accounted for. 4) It really isn't THAT much of an inconvenience to have the days of the week precess throughout the year.

Taking all this into account, I settled on a 22-month Martian year, beginning with the Martian northern hemisphere vernal equinox. As far as naming the months, I have no idea, although existing sequence sets such as months, planets, etc., should be avoided at all costs to prevent confusion. If I can come up with a good mythological/scientific/historical reference that contains a matching set of 22, I'd choose that, as long as a memorable order could be achieved. The interim names I'm using will correspond to the Hebrew alphabet, since that's the best set of 22 that I could come up with on short notice. It might be best in the long run to replace these with names relevant to Martian history. The months in order would be:

1 Alef (32 sols)
2 Bet (33 sols)
3 Gimel (32 sols)
4 Dalet (32 sols)
5 He (30 sols)
6 Vav (29 sols)
7 Zayin (30 sols)
8 Het (29 sols)
9 Tet (30 sols)
10 Yod (29 sols)
11 Kaf (28 sols)
12 Lamed (29 sols)
13 Mem (28 sols)
14 Nun (29 sols)
15 Samekh (28 sols)
16 Ayin (31 sols)
17 Pe (31 sols)
18 Tsadi (31 sols)
19 Qof (31 sols)
20 Resh (31/32 sols)
21 Shin (33 sols)
22 Tav (32 sols)

         For purely civil reasons, I have moved the start date of the year by moving the first two spring months to the end of the calendar for timekeeping purposes, and then timeshifted the entire calendar by 20 days. The 20 day timeshift is to keep the equinox and solstice always occuring in the same month, rather than oscillating between the beginning of one month and the end of another, and around the 21st of the month for analog with Earth. The solstices and equinoxes will occur under this calendar always at around integer numbers of months from each other as well. In the northern hemisphere the dates will be approximately as follows: summer solstice: He 21st, autumnal equinox: Kaf 21st, winter solstice: Ayin 21st, vernal equinox: Shin 21st. Moving two of the spring months to the end of the calendar, and thus putting the new year's date at a totally arbitrary point was to gain an added benefit of having the first 11 months of the year and the last 11 months of the year combined both be 334 sols long. Since the Martian year is so much longer than the Earth year, it will likely be civilly useful to break it down into two equal semesters. Another added benefit of choosing this number of months per year is that it makes the 22 Earth-months between Earth to Mars launch windows, and 8 Earth-month Hohmann transfer travel time to Mars analogous to 22 Mars-months between Mars to Earth launch windows, and 8 Martian-month Hohmann transfer travel time to Earth.

INTERCALATION:

        Based on the incredibly convenient Martian year length of 668.6 sols (nearly precisely), the intercalation can be a lot more simple than on earth. My first approach to this led me to rediscover the system previously developed by Aitken. Essentially, 6 extra sols must be added every 10 years. Aitken achieved this by making even years leap years of 669 sols, and every decadal year a double leap year of 670 sols. I don't like having three different year lengths, so I simply swapped the odds and evens. In my calendar, a leap year is every odd year, and every year evenly divisible by 10. Since the leap sol properly belongs to the Martian northern hemisphere winter, the leap sol will be an added Resh 32nd. No attempt is made to synchronize the calendar with Earth's. The two will simply precess against each others seasons.

THE EPOCH:

        So how do the years get numbered? The most obvious way is to not yet assign a year number. The first year should be following the first manned landing on Mars. Since we now know about 0, whatever year Mars is in when the landing happens will be Martian Year (MY) 0. The next (or previous, if less than 44 sols since the last one) northern hemisphere vernal equinox would then be set as Shin 21st, MY 0. On the Alef 1st (Martian New Year) following the landing, the year will become MY 1. Years before the landing year will be designated by negative numbers (e.g. MY -16).

SO WHAT SOL IS IT ON MARS TODAY?

Because no manned landing has yet been made on Mars, the Epoch has not been set, and it is impossible to say what Martian year it would currently be under my calendar. It is also impossible to say whether or not it is a leap year right now. However, we are currently about 20 sols before the Martian northern vernal equinox, so between Midnight and the Martian Date Line, it is currently Shin 1st!

More about Bush's Crazy Moon Plan

2004-01-15T07:08:20Z

OK, so if you haven't heard the actual details, check here.

While it's not as bad as I originally figured it would be, it's still not that well thoughtout. I'm feeling a bit generous right now, so I'll name the positive aspects first:

1. Having an overarching goal for NASA is a good thing. This will at least clear up the lack of focus that has dominated U.S. space efforts for the past 20 years or so.

2. There's not nearly as much retrenchment of manned flights as had been implied earlier in the media. This is a good thing. As our lunar experience shows, it's too easy to keep slipping once you scale back your efforts. We may have nearly tapped out many of the potentials of low earth orbit, but you at least need to be there to continue outward. An entirely new spacecraft won't be ready for flight for close to a decade at best, so we do need to continue with interim projects like the space station.

3. Increased funding of unmanned probes is a good thing. I still don't buy the concept put forward by some that unmanned probes are the be-all and end-all of the space program, but they are definitely invaluable in areas where its too remote to haul all the extra weight of life support, and areas where the environment is just ridiculously unsurvivable. Outer planets, comets, the sun and the surface of Venus are places where only robots make sense. But until we can create a probe that can think and act autonomously with human-like intelligence, there's still much to be gained by going as far as say the moon, Mars, or even some asteroids.

And now on to the bad:

1. As expected, no funding. And this is the part that's going to overwhelm any of the other points I can pick, because it simply means that this plan will come to nothing more than a mental exercise. The initial increase in funding for NASA is around $200 million per year. The rest of the "increase" is scavenged from other programs within the current NASA budget. You won't get to Mars on that. You won't even get to the moon on that. It's like asking for an all-expenses-paid cruise around the world with a pricetag under $500. It just won't happen. Too bad.
So in all likelihood, we're effectively likely to wind up at a $10 billion cut to the budget over the next five years.

2. The design of the Crew Exploration Vehicle is going to be forced to be bad due to the present constraints. It makes no sense to design a single vehicle for both short-duration shuttle-replacement space station flights and trips to Mars. If you design it big and bulky enough to support a 2-year Mars journey, with all the attendant life support, storage, redundancy and radiation shielding needs, then it's a total waste to repeatedly launch that much hardware for a simple one-week jaunt to LEO. If you design it as a passenger-only shuttle with multiple launch and landing potential, then you're using critical space and weight for things like aerodynamic surfaces which don't do squat on the way to Mars. I sure hope that they're talking about a modular design where there's a crew shuttle that docks to a space station or a Mars craft that's essentially a small space station strapped to some engines, otherwise, the lesson of the STS program is that they'll come up with something that excels at neither mission plan.

3. Why exactly does the moon figure into the Mars plans? I can see maybe running a moon-based Mars practice mission at the beginning of the program exactly once. Putting the spacecraft in a barycentric orbit to keep it relatively nearby while testing the ability of the spacecraft to operate in deep space has some justification. If you're doing that, you might even test your lander by going to the moon. But really there's nothing that even says that a lander optimized for Mars will work well on the moon, so this may not make sense right away either. What doesn't make sense at all is landing on the moon, then launching from there to Mars to take advantage of "the moon's lower gravity". This only makes sense if you have a fully-developed fuel depot on the moon that's using lunar sources of fuel. Otherwise you're just pointlessly burning fuel to decelerate and re-accelerate for your moon landing. If you're just storing fuel at the moonbase that from Earth to begin with, you haven't improved the potential energy situation at all. Better to just do it by orbital rendezvous. Developing a full mining and processing infrastructure on the moon is a goal for a century down the road or so. If we're waiting that long to go to Mars, then again, the plan is dishonest.

24-Hour Forecast

2003-10-16T03:48:31Z

Wed, October 15th, 11:00:00 PM CDT

Location: HELL

Overnight Low: 34 F

Increasing low-level clouds and a warm front moving through the lower Styx valley in the early morning hours should keep tonight's temperatures just above freezing throughout the hell area.

Tomorrow's high: 451 F

Fire showers throughout the mid-morning and early afternoon hours with a 60% chance of scattered brimstone.

Mandatory Political Link

2003-10-11T07:00:26Z

This pretty much sums up what I hate about the administration right now....

Nostalgia

2003-10-09T04:34:30Z

The news is nothing but depressing lately. I just can't help but noticing these days that nothing is as good as it used to be. All the modern inventions and everything just can't make everyone happy. Too bad we can't just go back to simpler times. Why, back in the Planck Era, or as I call it, the Good Old Centiattoyoctoseconds, things were so much better. We didn't have to worry about your modern school shootings, crack babies, video games, and Carrot Top. What do all these modern ills have in common? Well, matter for one. That's been nothing but a disaster from the beginning. You didn't have to worry about being carjacked, or blown up by terrorists or wiped out in a supernova before we had baryons, yet somehow we survived without Krispy Kremes and reality TV. And there were no territorial wars when the whole darn universe was less than 1.6 x 10^-33 centimeters across.

Electromagnetism is hailed as a modern marvel by nearly everyone, still that's no comfort when you're struck by lightning. Today's folk agree that the nuclear weak force can really ruin your day, but no one seems to ever do anything about it. I hear kids today whine, "But how could we live without the strong nuclear force holding our protons and neutrons together?"

It's *inconceivable* to them that somehow we once made due without any of those, and no classical gravitation either! Imagine that! No one today can even come up with a plausible quantum gravitational theory, that's how far removed we've become. It's a shame that we've forgotten this universe's roots, but I for one would love to go back.

Phase III begins

2003-10-08T05:49:07Z

Carl Weathers for governor.

First real entry!

2003-09-13T06:34:49Z

OK, so I've finally figured out that the best way to get me to actually write stuff here is to be drunk. Tonight I'm drinking my honorary shot for Johnny Cash. As a result, this pretty random entry:

Pet Peeve of the day: Journalists who convert units without mentioning that they're doing so.

I've noticed this in the newspapers a lot recently. It's sloppy, and I hate it. While articles dealing in natural contexts can be excused somewhat , I HATE it when this is done when talking about legalistically defined values. I can't remember a specific example right now, so I'll make up one that illustrates what I'm talking about. A typical example might be, in writing an article about France's highways: "Speed limits on the freeways (or "Autoroutes") in France are posted at 80.78 mph."

Arrrgh! No, there's a distinct difference between posting something at 130 kph and 80.78 mph! It's misleading to suggest that a statutory value has no tie to the units it was originally designed for. (Actually, now I seem to remember that the example I'm thinking of had something to do with the definition of a maritime or some other treaty boundary, obviously originally written in kilometers, but expressed in miles.) In any case, the ambiguity could be entirely eliminated by just saying something along the lines of, "Speed limits on the freeways (or "Autoroutes") in France are posted at 130 kilometers per hour (80.78 mph)." Is that too much to ask?

Whee.... Pointless!

2003-09-03T07:22:00Z

So now I finally have a picture! Damn I'm slow about this!

Let the fun begin

2003-07-22T04:51:30Z

Just kicking things off with the traditional
exploding toads.