ring_wraith's New Writeups

On Sleaze and College Athletics (essay)

2009-06-12T04:40:21Z

10 June, 2009 - USC men's basketball coach Tim Floyd has resigned in the wake of a recruiting scandal and player defections...

It occurs to me that the many E2 noders from outside of the US must be somewhat mystified on reading a news item like this. As, indeed, are many Americans whose enthusiasms don't include sports at our college level. Perhaps in this writeup I can shed some light on this phenomenon for this audience.

I don't believe that the way in which major sports are operated as a franchise by American institutions of higher learning is duplicated in any country outside the U.S. Cambridge University in the UK must have various sports clubs, for example, but it surely has nothing comparable to the sheer scale of, say, the Ohio State University football program. The OSU football stadium seats in excess of 100,000. The University of Michigan football stadium is currently undergoing renovations which will bring its seating capacity to…

an honest airplane (thing)

2009-04-29T04:48:15Z

The F-104 is a perfectly honest airplane. Make one mistake and it'll kill you.

...attributed to legendary Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier

It may seem strange to non pilots to hear a trait like honesty attached to an inanimate object like an airplane. What's that all about?

Honesty in an airplane refers to its flying characteristics in a very subjective way. Each pilot's notion of what honesty means in a plane differs, according to his or her preferences and experience.

In general, though, an honest airplane is one that doesn't do anything lethally surprising. It should enter no dangerous or uncontrollable flight regime without warning.

Typically, as a pilot, one might encounter this sort of thing at or near the point of aerodynamic stalling. A stall in an airplane, you may remember, has nothing to do with the plane's engine, but is instead the point at which the smooth, lift-producing airflow over the top of the plane's wing…

Brock's benefit (thing)

2008-08-09T05:12:23Z

...and other long-lost cultural points of reference...

North Sea, May 31, 1916. At the tail end of the British line of battle, HMS Agincourt begins firing full broadsides at the dim outline of the German High Seas Fleet, just emerging from the haze a few thousand yards southward. This weird dreadnought has no fewer than 14 12" guns, in 7 turrets, a larger number of main guns than any other ship in the six decade history of this type of warship. Several thousand yards away, observers on HMS Malaya briefly think the ship had blown up, a sight they'd seen twice earlier that day.

"...like a bloody Brock's Benefit, " says one.

I put my book down, bewildered. What the heck is a Brock's Benefit? I'd seen the term before, in several other accounts by British observers of spectacular explosions, at least up through WW II. In each case, it was evidently assumed that the meaning would just be universally understood, but, at…

Dubai Ports World: Eleven Thoughts (idea)

2006-02-27T00:10:46Z

A fellow noder, identity witheld, recently sent me a private message: "pardon me-- honest question-- as a reasonable conservative thinker....how could the bush white house had thought a massive sale of american ports to an ARAB group would not have gone this poorly??" So many thoughts, on different tangents, not all of which intersect... 1. I suppose I'm flattered to be thought of as a "reasonable conservative thinker." My perception of the overall political makeup of E2 is that not all here would even acknowledge the existence of such a creature. I'll not detail or defend my own politcal outlook here - suffice it to say that I'd be considered right of center by most. If you care, there's a more or less rambling screed I wrote a couple of years ago on my home node. If you're of the opinion that conservative = Christian fundamentalist wacko, feel free to skip reading the rest of this, go look up my 30 some-odd other writeups, and downvote them serially - and I salute your…

A-4 Skyhawk (thing)

2005-12-19T20:48:43Z

Heinemann's Hot-Rod

(AKA the "Scooter") Military aircraft design specification committees, being bureaucracies, have an eternal tendency to take all the numbers from an old specification, multiply by 1.5, and release these as the specification for the next generation aircraft. So it was during the depths of the Korean War in 1952, when the U.S. Navy released its requirements for a new attack plane. The Navy decided this could weigh as much as 30,000 lbs, in order to carry all the ordnance they wanted. The Douglas aircraft corporation (later McDonnell Douglas), in El Segundo, California put their best designer, a fellow named Ed Heinemann, on the project. Mr. Heinemann had a long and distinguished resume of very successful designs (e.g. the Douglas SBD Dauntless, the B-26 Invader, the AD Skyraider, and many others.) He had the sensation that this creeping "bigger, heavier, more complex, more expensive" progression was a dead end.…

Verbal Tic (idea)

2005-10-08T05:33:27Z

I often listen to sports talk radio as I drive in to work each morning. It's harmless, mindless background that doesn't detract from the attention that must be paid to driving, and doesn't make me homicidally furious like some other things I could be listening to. This morning, though, I found myself fixated on a lengthy interview with a former athlete turned analyst, who was "breaking down" (as they say) the upcoming weekend's action. I realized I had become riveted, rapt with fascination, counting the "You know what's" with which this fellow punctuated his answers to questions. I realized I was fixing on this to such an extent that I actually had no idea what he was really saying...or trying to say. I think I'm becoming more and more sensitive to, and irritated by, this type of verbial "tic", as I get older. On sports radio, of course, usually it's an athlete who just injects "you know" between every other pair of words in his answer. But the syndrome is certainly…