Michael Flynn's Blog, page 23

Much is Thereby Explained

From Dr. Boli's Illustrated Magazine



IN THE NEWS.

A disastrous fire in a suburban Virginia warehouse complex has destroyed “a significant portion” of the United States Government’s archive of Paperwork Reduction Act notices, according to a spokesman from the Bureau of Paperwork Reduction Act Compliance. Nearly five acres of warehouses just east of Leesburg were completely destroyed in the blaze, which burned out of control for at least a day and a half, fueled by more than three decades’ worth of dried paper stored in the buildings. According to the spokesman, as many as 10% of the government’s archived Paperwork Reduction Act notices may have perished. Efforts to replace the lost notices are already under way, and the Bureau has asked Congress for emergency funding, citing the requirement that each reissued notice be accompanied by a separate Paperwork Reduction Act notice explaining why it is being reissued.

Notes from the Untergang

Can these bones speak? 
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(Additional posts are also over there:
The Writing Life
Why Texas is Rich and California is Not

Eugenie Satterwaithe

Another excerpt from The Wreck of "The River of Stars"

This one is a retrospective on the career of Eugenie Satterwaithe, sailing master on the Riv'.

Pleased at the Movies: 42

TOF and the Incomparable Marge went to the movies today and saw 42.  No, not forty-two movies, a movie about Jackie Robinson, No. 42 for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Although a black man had played pro ball for the old Toledo Blue Stockings back in the early days of base ball, Robinson was the first in the modern era of Major League baseball.  His spirit and valor cannot be underestimated.

As TOF understands the story, the movie seems to have gotten it pretty much correct. Durocher's lecture; Chapman's vile hazing.  Bragan's change of heart.  Pee Wee Reese's magnificent gesture in Cincinnati.  The two major exceptions were that Dixie Walker, who had circulated a petition against playing with Robinson, actually grew to respect him, which the movie does not show.  The other is that Durocher's 1947 suspension was due to his association with gamblers, not due to a Catholic Youth Organization boycott threat over his adultery.

TOF grew up as a Brooklyn Dodger fan, favoring Duke Snider, who rookied the same year as Robinson, though less memorably.  By then, much of the 1947 team was gone - Reiser, Branca, Walker, et al. - cut Reese, Furillo, and Hodges were still in place.  Robinson by then was playing 3rd base instead of 1st.  It never occurred to TOF that there was anything strange about black men playing baseball.  In fact, TOF was a Pennsylvania boy and never saw or heard any of that Jim Crow crap until in college when he met a student from Baltimore.  The Incomparable Marge, however, grew up in Tulsa and 'whites only' water fountains and the like were the rule.  She once as a child tried to drink from a 'coloreds only' fountain and could not understand why she was prevented.  She was thirsty.

TOF gives the movie three approving nods of his head.  (The nod is my new rating system.)

Patron Saint of the Internet

Quotes of the Day

But isn’t objectivity an ideal? No: because the purpose of human knowledge—indeed, of human life itself—is not accuracy, and not even certainty; it is understanding.
-- John Lukacs

Our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.
-- C.S. Lewis

Finally, an old inspiring quote from the Late Dr. Jack Kevorkian, known with tender affection as Dr. Death.  Sometimes the mask slips, a little.

I feel it is only decent and fair to explain my ultimate aim . . . It is not simply to help suffering or doomed persons to kill themselves—that is merely the first step, an early distasteful professional obligation (now called medicide) . . . What I find most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first unpleasant step can help establish—in a word, obitiatry. [emph. added]

-- J. Kevorkian, Prescription: Medicide, p. 214

On the Exigencies of Translation

Cover art for the Wreck
prior to composition

While browsing through that well-known, though not well-sold, SF classic, The Wreck of "The River of Stars," TOF ran across the following line.

Beneath Grubb’s singlet she could mark the contours of his affection and so knew not only his longing, but how long it was.

A bit of archly lascivious punning.  Impelled by curiosity, TOF consulted Der Fluss der Sterne, where he found the line rendered thusly:

An Grubbs leichter Hose zeichneten sich die Konturen seiner Zuneigung ab - sie konnte nicht nur sein Verlangen erkennen, sondern wusste auch, wie groß es war.

At iGoogle, this back-translates as

At Grubbs lighter pants loomed the contours of his affection - she could not only recognize his desire, but also knew how big it was.

And then El Naufragio de "El Rio de las Estrellas," where it ran as follows:
More Here

Best Coin Ever Spent

h/t Mark Shea



He sure could write 'em.

It's the Time of Year That Makes You Want to Sing

It's the Time of Year That Makes You Want to Sing

Science in Drag

"...What a Drag it is to See You." That which is most perfected in aerodynamics, the maximum from which all aerodynamic designs take their being, is the Drag Equation, that than which nothing greater can be thought insofar as aerodynamics is concerned.  This equation, under certain realistic assumptions, equates the drag force, FD, with



ρ, the mass density of the fluid through which the object moves

A, the reference area

CD, the drag coefficient
v, the velocity of the object relative to the fluid

There is a certain beauty to this equation, TOF says redundantly.  Consider the equation for light intensity:

c, the speed of light in vacuum
n, the refractive index
ε_o, the vacuum permittivity
E, the complex amplitude of the electric field

A little thought reveals that the form of both equations is identical: one-half a constant times the square of a variable.  If we regard the three constants as one constant -- ρCDA = α, let's say -- the form reduces to ½αv², which is very like the formulae for...
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