Misc

[zotz]

After a few minutes of searching for something which was too obvious not to exist, I found musicrename. It's about a page of Ruby which takes a whole pile of mp3s and oggs, renames them according to their ID tags (format tweakable to user's will) and sorts them into directories accordingly. A little temperamental about what it'll accept in the way of tagging, but it seems to do the bit of the job that Prokyon doesn't, so I'm happy.

Apparently Pat Buchanan has called Mark Felt a traitor. I think this says more about him than about Felt.

From this page (found via Gaiman) :

Getting killed because I’m an American, at home or overseas: bad. Spending money and resources to protect me from getting killed: good. Maintaining a strong military, at least until planetary utopia breaks out and there are free Jill Johnston posters for everyone: really good. Making all of that far harder, and increasing my likelihood of getting killed, because some politicians and pundits needed to “look tough”: really, really bad. Likelihood that I’m going to take my cues on “national security” from those politicians and pundits: low.

At times it all seems like some sort of Bizarro World faith-versus-works argument. Liberals wind up being the ones pointing out, endlessly, that national security is provided by actual practices, not just by holding your face right. Meanwhile popinjays like Joe Biden desperately file their chins to razor-sharpness in the probably vain hope that the electorate, having sometimes demonstrated a preference for strutting phonies, will mistake them for one.

Compare and (fail to) contrast with popular British ideas on criminal justice. Someone in the paper yesterday said he thought that Britain has the most vindictive society in Europe apart from Turkey. While hyperbolic, it's got the usual grain of truth. I like the phrase "faith-versus-works argument", but unfortunately I suspect that a fair number of people would buy into the Faith side and to hell with the works. Or, at least, they'd fail to see that their faith fails to guarantee results, or not realise that there was any important difference between intention and outcome. See also interminable arguments on judicial and penal policies with WD, archived by those nice Google people (but only if you don't value your sanity - I argued with him once, but I think I got away with it *twitch*).

A mail's just gone around work asking for some rabbit anti-sheep antibody. I can't quite get my head around the idea of a rabbit with a sheep infection. Maybe if they were very small sheep it would work. Or a very big rabbit.

The BBC's reporting that some historians have found a sketch allegedly made of a German Second World War A-bomb design. It's here. I don't suppose that someone with a little German[1] would care to tell me what the labels say? I've managed to figure the one that says "Plutonium" out already, though, so don't bother with that one.

Also, of course, it says Plutonium when the article implies they were after building a uranium bomb.

It looks a bit sus to me. The first thing that occurs to me is that it was drawn by someone who'd heard of cannon and implosion mechanisms but hadn't been told that they were entirely separate, because it looks to have both.

I don't think I want an epitaph. An unmarked grave, or one marked only by a tree, sounds more worthwhile.

[1] Go on. You know you want to.

Comments

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

Someone in the paper yesterday said he thought that Britain has the most vindictive society in Europe apart from Turkey

Which paper was this? if you don't mind. I read a sort of similar article in the Scotsman here.

[zotz]

It was in The Grauniad, I think.

Yes. Lord Bingham, the most senior Law Lord, in an interview printed yesterday. The full text is here and the relevant paragraph reads:

He also defends his fellow judges against accusations that they are too lenient. "In fact, we have one of the most punitive societies in western Europe outside Turkey," he insists. "We have more life-sentence prisoners in this country than in all the other old members of the European community put together, so the notion that this country is a soft touch when it comes to the sentencing of criminals is simply wrong. In any case, I happen to think that increasing sentences does very little to contribute to the control of crime."

[joexnz.livejournal.com]

forgive I'm from NZ
but why are you trying to save the rabbit in the first place
surely the point is to infect them all
even if that would stop the great easter bunny hunt
the 'heres a hectare, kill as many rabbits as you can over easter and then bring them all back so DOC can pluck their eyes out for census purposes' competition

[zotz]

why are you trying to save the rabbit in the first place

That wasn't in the mail, I'm afraid, so I don't know. I can only assume that it's of some scientific interest. Perhaps there's a danger of an antibiotic-resistant strain of sheep wreaking havoc in British hospitals?

[shaunotd.livejournal.com]

I forget the details, but that kind of thing is used in protein immunoassay techniques...nevboo could probably tell you more if you're interested.

[felishumanus.livejournal.com]

gah! the text is too small for me to make it out :(

[zotz]

No probs. Thanks for giving it a go.

[felishumanus.livejournal.com]

ah well atm i am sitting with it in adobe and a dictionary

so far i think the word above Plutonium means Casing...

from waht i can make out...

[felishumanus.livejournal.com]

I guess mst of these are technical owrds,so not in my dictionary
/= split in word as german can have words bugned together

RHS

Verachlick und Zeltzssisser
Verachtlich und
Contemptous and Tent/camp ??


LHS

-Refssleine
paper or section / ??cord
-Blei_lfriefezter
lead ??free??
-Fellschlratragnell
-Helzessbe fur AE/17/44
for AE/17/44
- Zisseverstellung
/ adjustment
-Stutzeltebe
-Stutzverstelfung but might be Stutverstellung which seems to mean:
Support adjustment
-Hoir mit Kestel
with boiler (Kessel)
-B?????
-Stutzverstelfung but might be Stutverstellung which seems to mean:
Support adjustment
-Stut_vetrele
Support
-Stutzverstelfung but might be Stutverstellung which seems to mean:
Support adjustment
-Deckmantel
Cover
-Plutonium
Plutonium
-Seltzetrule or Seltzebrebe
Rare/ piece of ship

right I'm hungry now!!

Re: from waht i can make out...

[felishumanus.livejournal.com]

oops got my rigth a nd left mixed up!

Re: from waht i can make out...

[zotz]

No problem. Thanks.

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Can't recall the name of the renamer/re-tagger I use, but it's in the utilities directory of my soulseek shares, and it's very good.

[zotz]

Will it create a new directory structure and make sure the files are all correctly located according to their tags?

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

yep

http://xdev.narod.ru/tagscan_e.htm

[zotz]

Not bad. I don't have Windows here, but otherwise it looks just the thing.

[zbyszek.livejournal.com]

The picture is printed too small for me to make out the writing, even when I enlarge it. Or perhaps my screen is crap. Certainly my eyesight isn't much cop. Sorry.

[zotz]

No problem. Thanks for trying.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Apparently Pat Buchanan has called Mark Felt a traitor. I think this says more about him than about Felt.

PM on Radio 4 this afternoon interviewed G. Gordon Liddy, who said that he considered Mark Felt to be as guilty as he (Liddy) was. Fucking unbelievable.

[zotz]

Liddy should have been capped when they had the chance. Felt, it seems, wrestled with his conscience afterwards. I don't get the feeling Liddy ever did.

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

I have to say, lumping Liddy and Felt into the same category here strikes me as increasingly discordant the longer I think about it. On one hand, you have a criminal who was trying to cover up his crimes and those of the most powerful man in America, and arguably the world. On the other hand, you have a law enforcement official who was stonewalled at every turn and who eventually turned to leaking information to the media to get some momentum on a crucial investigation. These aren't even remotely comparable crimes in my book.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I felt quite sick when Nixon died and we had to endure the increasingly hagiographic eulogies for him that almost completely overlooked the fact that he only avoided by impeached by virtue of having resigned and then being given amnesty by his successor.

(by pure coincidence, I've spent the past few days reading Michael Bishop's Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas, a Dickian homage featuring a post-Watergate Nixon (and self-styled King Richard) in his fifth term)

[zotz]

The latter isn't a crime, or shouldn't be. He obviously felt a conflict of loyalties, but what he did was clearly in the public interest. It's an unusual case of whistleblowing, but definitely counts.

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

The sanest version of Liddy's argument I've heard so far runs something like:

• All humans are sinners
  
• Mark Felt is human
  
• Therefore Mark Felt had better worry about getting right with Jesus, rather than attacking God-fearing Xian folk like the sainted Richard Milhouse Nixon
  

So to recap, Felt is a damned soul, and has been since Adam, so how could we possibly have believed him!?! It's hard to argue with air-tight reasoning like that.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Wow. Moving Liddy into the 'wacko' category as we speak. Mind you, he was already publicly voicing the conspiracy theory that the Democratic National Headquarters was a front for a call-girl ring, so he was pretty close to wacko as it stands. Some of the second-hand remarks about Liddy that Woodwood and Bernstein record in All the President's Men suggest that he was somewhat removed from reality at the time of Watergate as well.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

The drawing is definitely a fake. Plutonium cannot be used in gun-type mechanisms, the even-numbered isotopes in the core predetonate* and disassemble the critical mass before any significant amount of fission occurs in the main body of Pu-239.

The part labelled 'DeckMantel' is clearly intended to represent the Neutron Reflector (sometimes referred to as the 'Tamper', with dubious technical accuracy). This is made of beryllium - it's not an implosion shell - and is often larger than the Uranium core. It increases the amount of 'slow' neutrons passing through the core and allows you to use much less fissile material than the published 'bare metal sphere' critical mass.

So far, so good: what's missing in the diagram is the cavity in the Uranium core for the 'bullet', the hole through the neutron reflector it passes through, and the 'tamper' of beryllium behind the bullet that completes the reflector when the bullet is fired.

Also missing is the 'safing' pin that passes through the barrel of the gun and is removed when the weapon is armed; all the early-generation gun-type weapons that entered service with the superpowers, including the original 'Little Boy', have a crude mechanical interdiction device. Maybe the initial concept didn't include such a thing, but we've been shown a diagram that is so detailed as to include the structural components of the casing; surely this would show the safety interlocks and access point for arming the warhead! The propellant cartridge is a bit on the small side, too... and I see no evidence of a barometric fuse or radar altimeter to detonate the weapon. Maybe one of the squiggles is a timing device.

Nope, it's a fake.

*Predetonation is one of the reasons that plutonium from the civil fuel cycle is next to useless for a military programme: the longer you leave the fuel in the reactor, the more Pu-240 you get. Simple implosion devices have to be 93% pure Pu-239; you can get lower grade Pu to detonate but this needs a very sophisticated warhead configuration with tritium for fission-boosting. Supercomputer simulation and an extensive test programme are required to make this work. Alternately, you can do isotopic separation on the Plutonium but this is exactly the time-consuming and expensive process from the Uranium enrichment programme that you were hoping to avoid in the first place by using Pu. The USA did separate out a quantity of 'super-grade' Pu-239 at 99% isotopic purity but I am not aware that this moved beyond the research laboratory into a deployed weapon.

[zotz]

Very informative. Thank you.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to get hold of one for ages. Apparently some of the components are really difficult to buy.

[zotz]

Not as difficult as they might be, by some accounts. I heard from a bloke from a city council a few years ago that a lump of the dangerous stuff turned up in some scrap. Nobody noticed until after it was in the blast furnace. Interesting cleanup operation, I'd imagine.

Now, that sounds quite implausible, but as far as I know he was actually from the relevant council, and I know that a fuel rod was found in a British scrap yard more recently, having got there by an unknown route. he did say that they thought the scrap had originally come from Russia, but that doesn't really answer the question of what a lump of plutonium would have been doing in it.

[zotz]

Actually, a second search has found a reference here (immediately above "10th May"), so it's not just a tall story after all. Only a gram, though, so you'd need to search a lot of scrap to make yourself any sort of firecracker.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

It's not unheard of for cobalt to turn up in mixed scrap, usually from medical radiation sources.

But Plutonium! I can only hope that it's a used civil reactor fuel rod, which will contain Pu in gram quantities.

[zotz]

If there had been a large amount of uranium too, it would probably have been mentioned. If they analysed the furnace contents closely enough to estimate an amount that small, they'd have spotted any uranium.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Then they have components from either a civil fast breeder, or a weapon.

Either way, the isotope 'signature' in the Pu they extracted will identify the source. Probably even the batch. The question is, will the IAEA get the data? And will the original owner own up?