in the interest of your interest and my curiosity, I poured through the archives to find the best and brightest posts of 2003, enjoy!
The year started off with some rehashing of old ideas. This seemed to be a theme as my posting tendencies continued from the previous year. I picked some ponies, and had the roof of the technology dome fall on me. Rounding out the first month of the year, this were riding high with "The Girl".
Columbia ate plasma in the upper atmosphere, and I officially decided going into Iraq was the right thing to do. Then the emotional daisy cutter hit and TOG no longer had "the girl". Thus February was designated the month of seclusion. Mr. Rogers died and the new plan for the World Trade Center site was announced.
Looking back, I’ve descovered that March was just a lot of fun, a lot of fun and Iraq stuff, that’s it. April was relatively uneventful as well, my first love fell to the likes of a diaper dandy. Then Roy went and Bill came. I reminded viewers that I hated them, and commented on my whipping boy, the BBC
May was my month of good ideas. I discovered the right course of action (with some help). And then I nearly discovered the meaning of life. I wrapped up the spring semester, and found my real problem with the media. I capped off the month with an essay on the healthcare system.
I initially pondered a move from blog*spot. Slamm'n Sammy wasn't slamm'n so Sammy slammed some floaties into his whooping stick and got slammed for it. My future passed before me. The world decided that we were fat, and I decided that I don’t care. The e-storm clouds were gathering, and TOG moved to his own top-level domain. Strom Thermond kicked the bucket, and I chronicled the NBA Draft. Top it all off with a batch of insomia and you’ve just relived my June.
July kicked off with Wamego in the news, and my un-web savvyness showed through in fine style. I educated you all on the ways to celebrate Independence Day, and tried to shed some light on the struggle for Iranian freedom. I continued my aural love affair, saved a ornithological friend, continued to harp about news that wasn’t, and left my teenage years.
August was transitional times. I started compiling a list of 100 things to do before I die, which I still haven’t finished. I got back to my geeky roots, and started the fall semester. I joined the cast of MDFP, and hilarity ensued. I ended the month on a positive note, by educating the masses on the phenomenon of butt heat.
September brought a reality check of what exactly it takes to be an aerospace engineer. And were all reminded of what exactly we are facing. We lost Johnny Cash, and I nearly lost the will to live. But hope remained and I learned to love again
October started off right, birthday style. But my beloved braves took it in the chin and made an early postseason exit. But I still had fun with miniluv’s positive blogging week. My academic life showed some...umm...life. Baseball justice was done when the Yankees lost the World Series. The economy turned out okay, and my professors found a new way to tick me off.
November was really just a series of continuing themes. School still sucked. Hippies were dumb. I discovered that the BBC was crappy 70 years ago. And as always, The Matrix ruled
December was...well...I don’t really know. But we all learned something I’m sure. I learned of my possible future unemployment, and my ideal future employer. You all learned why libertarians are the way we are, and that it’s not so bad after all. And I tried to educate you all on the ways of flight. And we all learned that the Lord of the Rings is quite possibly the most awesome thing in recorded history.
so there you have it, the abridged works of TOG’s 2003 season
Here’s to hope and a glorious 2004.
UPDATE: Links are fixed, I sucked it up the first time.
It is now the 31st of December, as you are well aware do to the nicely large text above this post. Aside from being the last day of the year, it's also been a full week since grades from my professors were due to the university offices. So taking all the preceding as fact, take a wild guess at whose full grades are not yet available to him, despite finishing his finals in said classes a full two weeks ago?
There is a down side to hating people you know. The holidays aren't much fun.
Having a holiday is nice, the actually act of observing a holiday is cool, but "the holidays" as an entity are crappy. Because you see, the only difference between "a holiday" and "the holidays" is the preferential social smattering that seem to surround my beloved times of joy.
The greatest part of "the holidays" is supposed to be gathering with your family and friends to enjoy each other’s company. Well, when you hate people that pretty much rules out the friends part, and chances are if you hate people, you tend to find your family a wee bit annoying, so that really no fun. So your joy time has now been reduced from the essence of human experience normally packaged to a perfectly normal holiday, to observing traditions of that said holiday. And really, wouldn't it make more sense if "the holidays" were actually about the holidays, instead of the social foolery that we associate them with now.
If friends and family were really that important, and you enjoyed their company so much, couldn't you meet with them on a bi-annual basis, alternating weekends, or just some obscure week in June when the weather is nicer and nobody has a cold, the flu, or sparring with the bubonic plague? Why must we all gather in the bleak of winter braving the treacherous roads of ice to subject our 20-year-old college students to the same round of questions from 9,000 different people about their life. Yes, college life is fine, Yes, I like home-cooked meals, No I don't keep in touch with all my high school buddies, I didn't keep in touch with them in high school so why start now? Why must you ask these things? Idle chatter is the bane of my existence, every time I hear I have to physically restrain my self from punching someone in their fugly face.
And really when you get right down to it, that's all "the holidays" are, an excuse for random idle chatter.
The website has been down for a few hours over the last week or so courtesy of host retardation. And there is nothing quite like having the most awesomest thing to post, and then not being able to do it. Anyway I'm not likely to care until significantly after Christmas.
So Mote It Be!
I'm horrible with dates, I can't remember them for the life of me. This of course is pertentent right now because Saturday was Kristi's 23rd Birthday.
So sorry of the belated salutations Kiki, we here at TOG's Thoughts pour a cold non-alcoholic one out for you with our 20-year old hands. Enjoy!
Apparently, unbeknownst to anyone else in the history of man kind, stress weakens resistance to illness. Someone should alarm the school of engieering, for they would surely never knowingly jeopardize the health of it's students.
editor note: yes the article is about AIDS, but think about it. Its common knowledge that stress can make you sick with the little just, so take the next logical step and imagine how bad it couldn screw you over with AIDS (pun most definately intended).
I just spent the entire day watching all three Lord of the Rings movies, the first two extended editions on DVD, and the third in theater (approx. 12 straight hours). And after some reflection I've come up with a simple 3-word sentence that most aptly describes them.
Best. Series. Ever.
Better than Matrix, better than your beloved Star Wars, and yes even better than Godfather. Return of the King is the best of the three, easy, and Two Towers was by favorite movie of the last 5 years. Peter Jackson's interpretation of Tolkien's vision is better than anyone could have possibly expected. If ROTK doesn't win the best picture Oscar, it'd be borderline blasphemy. Jackson should win too, he managed to convert what is most likely the most read, complicated, story ever written into a theatrical masterpiece nearly universally loved. Basically, what I'm just trying to say is, "Damn, that thing was good"
This Day in History:
courtesy of the Onion
I had originally planned to have Europe's famous song blaring in your ears right now, but because I'm inherently lazy you'll have to just imagine. 4 out of 5 finals lay in the gutter; one still looms large, from the original ODB, Dr. Roskam.
This is the last test he will ever give, so I can imagine him wallowing in the bastion of hate in preparation for the academic plunder he will disperse upon his peons, surely this signals the end of days and the beginning of his 10,000-year reign over the pantheons of Aerospace. The sea will run red with the ink from his discarded grading pens. All who do not submit will be stricken down with the sword of double book keeping, and the axe of no partial credit.
Death may befall me, but sleep will not.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
-- RCAF Flight-Lieutenant John Gillespie Magee Jr.
(1922-1941)
I had two finals yesterday (Propulsion and Structures). I have Circuits in 5 hours, Aerodynamics in 32 hours, and Flight Dynamics in 53 hours. I'm up down in a vain attempt to pass circuits, I've been at it since 4 p.m. and I don't show signs of stopping soon. I have all break to sleep, right now, knowledge must rain down apon me or Professors must have mercy, I need both, but neither will likely happen.
Oh the joys of Aerospace.
UPDATE (5:00 am): Still up. And apparently I left my only friend, my trusty Incan God powered TI-89, in the engineering library, because it's no where to be found here. I'm too tired to comprehend what this means yet.
UPDATER (5:08 am): Still up. I forgot to mention that Loral earned TOG's official toast of awesome sauce for studying with me until 1:30 even though she doesn't have the circuits test tomorrow.
UPDATEST (6:05 am): Still up. Finally near studying completion for circuits, good thing too since the test starts in 85 minutes. I know more than I have for any of my other circuits tests, but that's not saying much. On the bright side, I just need a 41.2% to pass the class, on the dark side getting a 41.2% on circuits tests has been difficult this semester. Time for a shower and some hot chocolate.
MORE UPDATEDNESS (6:50 am): Still up. I headed out the door toward my Circuits final...of doom!. Huzzah!
"Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return"
-Leonardo Da Vinci
the following is reprinted here without any permission what so ever from either the author or the orginal publisher, please don't sue me
Air Travel: Its Impact on the Way We Live and the Way We See Ourselves
Aviation, and air travel, has had a profound impact, both material and social, on American life. It has affected the way Americans live, the way they view themselves and the world around them, and the way they do business. Although difficult to measure, aviation's history suggests that it has contributed to widespread awareness of and connection to people and places very different from one's own.
Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly an airplane nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean solo, called flying a "godlike act." For all of history, humanity had seen the world from the ground. It had relied solely upon transportation that moved across the ground and over or around its obstacles. Rivers and rough terrain blocked wagons and cars, with bridges and tunnels providing only small windows. Ships were vulnerable to winds that whipped the ocean into waves.
When Orville and Wilbur Wright flew history's first airplane for 120 short feet (36-1/2 meters) in North Carolina in 1903, the significance of their new invention was of course not yet apparent. The first passenger planes, barely 20 years later, did little to change that view. Several airmail services flying for the Post Office added a few seats for extra revenue, but their planes were noisy, cold, and uncomfortable. They couldn't fly over mountains, so passengers took trains for part of their journey. Nor could these planes, such as the Ford Trimotor, carry enough seats to make passenger traffic profitable. The train was still the way to go.
But Americans watched airplanes help the Nation and its allies France and Britain win World War I. After the war, daredevil pilots appeared across America. They were called "barnstormers" because their stunts included flying small planes through open barns. According to journalist Thomas Petzinger, schools would close and workers would leave businesses, to watch these people perform. Americans were awed to see that humans could fly in machines and dive and bank like a swift falcon or eagle.
In 1927, Lindbergh's transatlantic flight captured America's imagination. Lindbergh, himself a barnstormer, flew a small airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, for 33 hours from New York to Paris. When his safe arrival in Paris was announced, league ballgames stopped, and radio announcers sobbed. Humans, who had always looked to the sky and stars with wonder, could now cross vast oceans with amazing speed by taking to the sky.
By the late 1930s, the airlines carried mail and passengers from coast to coast. The DC-3, a new airplane with powerful engines and an enclosed cabin, cut the cost of flying in half. It made airlines a profitable business. But at a cost of 5 cents per mile to transport one passenger, air travel was still expensive. Train travel cost only 1.3 cents per passenger mile and was still more comfortable. The average person usually couldn't afford to fly. But, according to aerospace writer T.A. Heppenheimer, a whole class of people, businessmen who put a money value on their time, could afford to fly on company expense accounts. They did, in soaring numbers.
Further developments during World War II sped the development of commercial aviation. Military airfields built for the war effort were afterwards sold to cities, which were eager to open their own commercial airports. Airplane manufacturers Douglas and Boeing built new airplanes with pressurized and heated cabins. Suddenly airplanes could fly above bad weather and mountains, where the air and thus the ride were smoother. In 1940, three million Americans flew. By 1956, 55 million flew.
In a country with a population of barely 150 million, large numbers of Americans were seeing the world from the air. Businessmen could meet with customers and partners and return home, in a fraction of the time required by ground travel. In a century where technological changes of all kinds were changing common expectations about life, medicines began to cure diseases, cars were beginning to make personal travel faster, electricity and plumbing simplified daily tasks and made daily life far more pleasant, the ability to fly was part of a growing sense of mastery over the world and control of one's destiny.
The first jet airliner, the Boeing 707, was introduced in 1959. It cut flying time between New York and London from twelve hours to six hours. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean had until recently required spending six days on a ship. By 1965, 95 percent of transatlantic travelers were crossing in the fast jets of Pan Am and European airlines such as British Overseas Air.
The average American had been inspired by the airplanes' role in America's success in winning World War II and protecting our country during the Cold War. Aviation became a primary symbol of the Nation's technological and imaginative prowess. Commercial airline travel became an economic powerhouse. By 1980, 400,000 people worked for the airlines, by 2000 the number was 750,000, more than worked in automobile manufacturing. Air travel also became incredibly safe. By the 1990s, a person was more likely to choke on one's meal than die in a plane accident.
But by the 1960s, air travelers were still mostly wealthy people and business people on expense accounts, who flew repeatedly. Most Americans could not afford to fly, to see their loved ones in other cities, or visit exciting vacation spots. We saw airplanes as part of daily life, from the ground.
In the 1970s and 1980's, a few visionary people began to open the skies to the average American with low fares. Since 1938, the Federal government had strictly regulated airline fares and routes. The government kept fares high to please airline investors and airline-employee unions. This policy kept airline costs high and priced air travel out of the reach of most Americans.
A Texas attorney named Herbert Kelleher figured out that if an airline flew just within a state, it would escape federal regulation. He founded Southwest Airlines, serving only Texas, in 1971. Backpackers, students, retirees, and even children commuting between divorced parents packed Southwest's Boeing 737s. Says Kelleher of the larger, high-cost airlines' failed attempts to destroy Southwest in court: "If Southwest didn't survive" and open the skies to the public, "something was very wrong about our whole system, about our whole society."
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter and Congress changed the situation drastically when they deregulated the airlines. Airlines could now choose their own routes and fares. Kelleher promptly expanded Southwest outside of Texas. By the 1990s, Southwest had become a national powerhouse. By the mid-1990s, the U.S. airline industry had, as Petzinger explains, "bifurcated" into two side-by-side airline industries.
First, there is the informal cartel of high-cost, large-network carriers such as American and United Airlines. They carry business people, and some leisure travelers, and fly the international routes. Second, there is the low-fare airline industry, of which Southwest, JetBlue, and AirTran are major players. Low-fare airlines vastly increase enplanements at airports nationwide, where the cartel would charge much higher fares.
Air traffic figures soared from 205 million in 1975 before deregulation, to 297 million in 1980 just after, to 638 million in 2000. By 1990, more adult Americans had flown than owned a car. But air travel's transformation from rarefied white-glove luxury to something like a public utility changed its public perception. "Though a novel experience" for millions of new travelers, according to Petzinger, "flying did not long remain a glamorous one for most. As something sold cheaply, flying was no longer something most people felt the slightest compulsion to dress up for, or otherwise regard with marvel." Families of the 1960s, he explained, would observe the airplanes they couldn't fly, from airport observation decks. By the 1990s, passengers booked tickets and endured overcrowded terminals.
Like the interstate highway system, airline travel has shrunk America's vast distances. Giant resorts such as Disney World in Orlando, and casinos in Las Vegas, teem with millions of visitors flown from hundreds, often thousands, of miles away. Air travel may no longer inspire, but it connects Americans of all economic means with their loved ones, with business partners, with customers, and vacations.
Along with highways, the Internet, and cable and satellite television, widely available air travel has helped connect Americans with the world outside of their own communities. And perhaps it has helped its citizens see themselves as members of a much larger world, with greater control over their destinies, than was possible for most people only 100 years ago.
- James C. Kruggel, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission
December 17, 1903. America Engineering at its finest.
Thursday is the 100th anniversary of Orville and Wilbur Wright's first flight. So we here at TOG's thoughts are holding a weeklong bath for that inaugural trip into the great wide open. All week I will be posting assorted flight sundries and pictures. So to start things off right, let's start things where they started off...right...Di Vinci!
Since I was in 4th grade, I knew what I wanted to with my life; Aerospace Engineering. Now as a junior in college, I'm making that dream more specific. I want to work for Scaled Composites. I know it's not going to happen for 5-10 years, but I now have my next goal.
If all these Liberal Arts clowns are lauded for being so idealistic and wanting to change the world, why can't I? Save the whales, rain forests, end domestic abuse, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, care for the poor? Good for you, but I'd rather work for the man who allowed us to circumnavigate the globe, who is making space flight routine. I can only imagine what else he's cooking up.
And what better place to work for a guy who hates people than the middle of the Mojave Desert?
A couple of posts over at miniluv, by Court and Mike about why libertarians and pseudo-libertarians tend to vote Republican. I count myself among the few, but I feel that the philosophy has been covered well by those two, so I'll give my very practical reasons for my right-of-center politics.
As a pseudo-libertarian, I like the Republicans for not taxing the bejesus out of me, and letting me own a gun; I like the Democrats for not outlawing every social practice that doesn't fit the mold. It all boils down to a simple edict, "My money is my money, and leave me the fudge alone" So why lean right? Because that’s where the threat is greater.
Over the past 50 years, the Supreme Court has stricken down law after law concerning the consensual activities of adults, with no end in site. On the other hand, if congress wanted to, they could take 90% of my money and spend it on the world most expensive bonfire, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. So the judicial system is protecting my left, so I can concentrate on protecting my own right.
Personally I hope both parties collapse under their own weight so that legitimate ideologies founded in philosophy could actually be heard. But since the pandering pork monkeys don't seem to be showing signs of weakness, I might as well try to keep as much of what’s mine as I can.
Quotes of Last Week:
"Now, what would the coefficient of viscosity be for honey? how about molasses? or syrup? Somewhere in a book these numbers are listed. What would it be for waffles?...I kid"
-Dr. Farohki
"What really messes up accelerometers is those damn gatling guns!"
-Dr. Roskam
looks like blogshares is down and out at least until somebody buys the thing. It's too bad really, I enjoyed being the CEO of a company, dastardly ripping off the public with pyramid schemes and insider trading for my own manical gain...umm...I mean giving back for the greater good through commited community service.
"hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling"
-Herman Mellville Moby Dick
Word on the street is that Engineering Computing Services is looking to take over all computer related facilities in Learned Hall. This is decidedly bad news for TOG, being as how they would basically be annexing my job. It's also not likely in the event that they take it all over, that I would be able to work for them in any capacity.
It's also a bad idea from an educational point of view. Three quarters of what I do is dealing with other Aerospace Students and the special computer needs they have. I have class with all the professors and students, and actually deal with their assorted electronic equipment needs on a daily basis. Our emergency-fix response time is about as long as it takes me to walk from my office to theirs. All of this will go away if ECS takes the reigns.
This would also topple my carefully stacked castle of cards. No Job means no money, no money means no tuition, no tuition means TOG abandons his life-long dream of an aerospace career before it even begins. Any hostile takeover would probably be completed over the summer. Financially, this would leave me one semester’s tuition, room and board short of graduation. More will surely come later, as they are going to announce their "secret" on Friday. We'll see.
Back in high school, I read Mending Wall by Robert Frost in English class, in which he utters that proverb. What does that have to do with anything? It's a witty title and that's what I do here, dispense wit of global proportions.
The real relevance? I just finished the U.N. report on the Israeli Fence. Filtering out all the 'damn the Zionists' hissy fit, it ain't too bad. I've long been an advocate of a big wall separating Palestine and Israel, but it seems to me that Israel got greedy. They tried to push the wall into Palestinian "territory" (there really aren't any internationally recognized borders), and tried to get all their far-reaching settlements in behind the wall. The wall deviates up to 20 km across that imaginary line, and they got called on it.
WWTOGD?
This would be a good time for diplomacy, when all that you are fighting for is a few acres of land, not the rights and lives of your citizens. Take one for the team and build the wall securely on your side of the line, then make the sucker 30 feet high with machine gun nests, barbed wire, sniper posts, legions of robotic laser monkeys, crocodile infested moats, dragon's cave, and whatever else you want. Then, as a government pay your citizens for the land they lost on the other side of the Wall. It's called imminent domain, and if it's legal for new highways, it's certainly legal for international security. When the UN comes wailing on you for the 'humanitarian crisis' you 'caused' tell them that they go find the UN owned fields-o-plenty and harvest the UN crops to feed the masses their damn selves, cause you don't feel like living in fear anymore. And after they’re done feeding the masses with their non-existent food, they can go back out into the middle of their non-existent field, and sit on it. 'Cause you don't want to bow to their multicultural circle jerk* anymore.
Rehashed from the past
because I really can't feel that bad for the adults who contract that disease
I'm all for helping the children, but not with MY money, be it through the UN or US Governments. I'll drop some change in the UNICEF box but honestly, I just don't care.