Greetings, All -- Is a Blogger supposed to be cool, in control, ready for anything, come what may? If so, we are so far out of our league that we should find other work, as they say. We received a little note from an agency of the Government that must be sorted out. The hot breath of income tax preparation time, if not on our neck, is fogging the windows. We are very pleased with the completed renovation work in our bedroom, but every time we check a block, two or three more seem to wriggle onto the desk. Well, to heck with it. Let's have some fun with a little reading that we have enjoyed recently.
It's probably a sure bet that a large portion of our loyal readers keep cats as members of the family. The March issue of The Atlantic has a thought-provoking or hate piece about your lurking house cat. Author Kathleen McAuliffe has taken an interesting stroll through research on a certain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, found in the feces of infected cats. For nigh onto a century, physicians warn pregnant women "to avoid cat litter boxes" because T. gondii can infect them and the fetus they are carrying. The disease, toxoplasmosis, is serious.
That may not be news, but a lifetime of research by Czech scientist, Jaroslav Flegr, was certainly news to us! He has found that rodents infected with T. gondii are changed in a variety of ways. Many of these new traits tend to render the rodents easier for cats to capture. McAuliffe raises the ante when she delves into the possibility that "car crashes, suicides and mental disorder such as schizophrenia" may be caused by this microbe. This is a must read article, Folks. Make your own decision, but read "How Your Cat is Making You Crazy" first.
Holding to the thread of microorganisms, a very interesting and graphic article appeared in the February issue of Physics Today, published by the American Institute of Physics. The thrust of the article is that irradiation of food is not only safe, but FDA has can be shown that absent such sterilization, it can be exceedingly difficult to remove such microbes as E. coli. An electron micrograph of a lettuce leaf on a micrometer scale (an average human hair is in the range of 100 micrometers) resolves several E. coli snugly embedded in a crevice much too small to accomodate a human hair. With food-borne diseases increasingly frequent, the nation should ignore hysterical rejection of science-based safety measures.
If you have not yet read the articles presented here, we hope that you will take the time to look them over. We would enjoy the opportunity to read and respond to your comments on any or all of them.
Best wishes on Leap Day, Billy Hawkfinder
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
The Great Depression Recalled: Part 2
(Continued from Part 1)
We were young when President Roosevelt broadcast his “Fireside Chats” promising better days to come. As we rode our bikes around town, we saw people working on government projects that we liked. We enjoyed using those that were completed, but worried about the "skeleton" buildings of the infant University of Miami. They remained incomplete for lack of funding until after WW-II and the demands of the GI Bill of Rights emerged.
People seemed to agree with what FDR said and did. Once, however, we heard an adult blame a series of atrocious tennis shots squarely on his “damn New Deal tennis racket.” A few people called recovery programs “socialistic” or “un-American.” As kids, of course, we did not understand the important issues underlying such comments.
Dear Reader, please do not allow these narrow childhood recollections of that horrible time to mislead you. People who were hungry were in pain for themselves, surely, but they were in agony because of their inability to succor their children. They cringed as the hated flapping sound of shoes in need of half-soling echoed from empty storefronts. We were among the fortunate ones for whom basic needs were always fulfilled. For us, things seemed OK. This was far from the case for homeless and jobless families until, once again, they found work building the muscle and sinew of the Allied war boot that ground the dictators into the dirt.
Let us continue our work to avoid such a catastrophe, Billy Hawkfinder
Then as now, families found pleasure in CCC -built public projects such as Matheson Hammock Park Biscayne Bay . Stood up 37 days after Roosevelt ’s inauguration, the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camped in tents and rough barracks in woodlands and rural areas all over the nation. A few veterans of the Spanish-American War and WW-I plus unemployed, fit young men, aged 18-26, enlisted for renewable six-month terms. The Corps topped out at 300,000. Needs of members, including health care, were provided. They were paid a small wage, a portion required to be sent home. “CCC boys,” as we knew them, had planted more than 3 billion trees and devoted one and a quarter million man-days to flood and other disaster relief by 1941. Their handiwork remains visible throughout the nation.
In the summer of 1935, our family motored up into the backwoods of Virginia CCC boys working with picks, shovels and some heavy equipment. Beside, below and high above us, the magnificent Skyline Drive was being hewn out of the Blue Ridge Mountains . Running more than 100 scenic miles, this national treasure is enjoyed today by millions of American families.
A few years later, we traveled the unique Overseas Highway, built after the vicious September 1935 hurricane destroyed the railroad that had run along its right-of-way and killed many people and CCC workers on the Upper Keys. The PWA (Public Works Administration) helped jurisdictions in Florida Key West
People seemed to agree with what FDR said and did. Once, however, we heard an adult blame a series of atrocious tennis shots squarely on his “damn New Deal tennis racket.” A few people called recovery programs “socialistic” or “un-American.” As kids, of course, we did not understand the important issues underlying such comments.
Dear Reader, please do not allow these narrow childhood recollections of that horrible time to mislead you. People who were hungry were in pain for themselves, surely, but they were in agony because of their inability to succor their children. They cringed as the hated flapping sound of shoes in need of half-soling echoed from empty storefronts. We were among the fortunate ones for whom basic needs were always fulfilled. For us, things seemed OK. This was far from the case for homeless and jobless families until, once again, they found work building the muscle and sinew of the Allied war boot that ground the dictators into the dirt.
Let us continue our work to avoid such a catastrophe, Billy Hawkfinder
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The Great Depression Recalled: Part One
President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt rode his open convertible into Miami Bayfront Park
Children shared campaign excitement as Roosevelt sought to unseat President Hoover. “Happy days are here again” was played incessantly on the radio and by bands serenading crowds supporting FDR. Many youngsters had mixed emotions about the election because grownups were saying, “If Hoover is re-elected, grass will grow in the streets.” The picture was interesting, but could we still ride our bikes, we wondered?
Overheard conversations created concern, but kids could not really tell which families were being hurt by “Old Man Depression.” We noticed that some classmates could not pay small sums for things in school. No one seemed to go without, though. We came to know that our selfless teachers often shared their meager resources with our less fortunate classmates.
Families may conceal their difficulties, but New Deal publicists saw to it that their candle was never under a bushel. In our town, a red, white and blue WPA (Works Progress Administration) sign backstopped work crews constructing our badly needed Fire-Police Station. Some seventy years later, plans are afoot to convert that magnificent building, built of quarried Miami Miami
In numerous post offices and court houses, WPA artists were employed to adorn interior walls with art deco murals and tile mosaics, some of them key attractions today. Other WPA programs employed clerks, archivists and students to preserve genealogical records that still bring eureka moments to family researchers. WPA mathematicians, equipped with then state-of-the-art electromechanical desk calculators, labored to create very accurate 12-place tables of logarithms and other mathematical functions. During WW-II, such math tables helped assure the accuracy of U.S.
End Part 1
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Valentine's Days Gone By
Greetings, All -- At breakfast this morning, my spouse and I reminisced about how exciting Valentine's Day was when we were in primary school. We were hundreds of miles apart, but were immersed in the Southern social mileau. It may have been the same in Ohio and Wisconsin because our little snow-bird schoolmates never seemed surprised about anything we did. In turn, they treated us to such wonders as displays of red and yellow Fall leaves that we had never before seen.
Days before the magical Fourteenth of February, all of the youngsters in our neighborhood were deep in thought, pondering to whom (think plural) they would pass Valentines. This was not for discussion with parents, of course, but was an exceedingly private contemplation of deserving chums, boys and girls.
The local ten-cent stores, Kresses, Woolworths and others, plus the drug stores all sold packages of paper lace, colored construction paper, heart stickers and most desirable of all, actual Valentine Cards, many with moving parts. Cupid's bow and arrow could be rotated to point upward or horizontally. These cards with their envelopes cost up to five-cents apiece, a king's ransom. They were reserved for very, very special people.
After decisions were made, cards carefully fabricated and addressing done, there came the night before Valentine's Day. After dark, hordes of youngsters ran all over the neighborhoods, avoiding identification to the maximum possible extent. They dropped cards into mailboxes, rang doorbells and ran like the dickens to keep their secret. My spouse pointed out that many children tripped over obstacles on the lawns that were invisible in the darkness. Many skinned knees testified to such activity.
The excitement continued in home room the next morning. Every class had made a Valentine Box with appropriately colorful designs and a slot in the top. Before the bell rang, the box was stuffed with exciting paper. It was soon opened and the messages of secret affection distributed with great hubbub and excitement. Can you imagine how much fun that was! We barely finished dealing with Cupid before it became time for Washington's Birthday and hatcheted trees to appear on the scene. What a great life!
We trust that each of you had a Valentine's Day filled with child-like love and happiness. It would not be a bad a idea for all of us to try that every day of the year. As you likely have deduced, we are hopeless romantics, but are solidly planted in the reality of here and now. Past times are fun to remember,but so will these days be some tomorrow.
Best wishes, Billy Hawkfinder
Days before the magical Fourteenth of February, all of the youngsters in our neighborhood were deep in thought, pondering to whom (think plural) they would pass Valentines. This was not for discussion with parents, of course, but was an exceedingly private contemplation of deserving chums, boys and girls.
The local ten-cent stores, Kresses, Woolworths and others, plus the drug stores all sold packages of paper lace, colored construction paper, heart stickers and most desirable of all, actual Valentine Cards, many with moving parts. Cupid's bow and arrow could be rotated to point upward or horizontally. These cards with their envelopes cost up to five-cents apiece, a king's ransom. They were reserved for very, very special people.
After decisions were made, cards carefully fabricated and addressing done, there came the night before Valentine's Day. After dark, hordes of youngsters ran all over the neighborhoods, avoiding identification to the maximum possible extent. They dropped cards into mailboxes, rang doorbells and ran like the dickens to keep their secret. My spouse pointed out that many children tripped over obstacles on the lawns that were invisible in the darkness. Many skinned knees testified to such activity.
The excitement continued in home room the next morning. Every class had made a Valentine Box with appropriately colorful designs and a slot in the top. Before the bell rang, the box was stuffed with exciting paper. It was soon opened and the messages of secret affection distributed with great hubbub and excitement. Can you imagine how much fun that was! We barely finished dealing with Cupid before it became time for Washington's Birthday and hatcheted trees to appear on the scene. What a great life!
We trust that each of you had a Valentine's Day filled with child-like love and happiness. It would not be a bad a idea for all of us to try that every day of the year. As you likely have deduced, we are hopeless romantics, but are solidly planted in the reality of here and now. Past times are fun to remember,but so will these days be some tomorrow.
Best wishes, Billy Hawkfinder
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Military Occupation of Japan
Greetings, All -- A piece in Military History magazine about the days when General Douglas MacArthur was the American Proconsul in postwar Japan, brought back a flood of memories. We were members of the Occupation Team stationed at Atsugi Air Base. The opening photograph in the article showed the General's personal aircraft of the time. In common with the series, it was named "Bataan," after the peninsula that become the last redoubt of General "Skinny" Wainwright who took command after the President had ordered General MacArthur to evacuate to Australia.
It was those events that gave rise to his famous pledge, "I shall return!" Return he did with a huge naval flotilla and armies of fighting GIs and Marines. Japanese General Yamashita, in command of the notorious "Death March" in which many thousands of U.S. and Filipino troops were murdered, was also known as "The Tiger of Malaya" for his earlier conquest of the peninsula and the island fortress, Singapore. At the ceremony aboard U.S.S. Missouri at anchor in Tokyo Bay, despite the ravages of malnutrition while a prisoner of war, General Wainright held himself erect and accepted Japan's unconditional surrender. The disgraced Yamashita was hanged later following his conviction of war crimes by an Allied court. The Japanese surrender delegation is shown in an official photograph.
We served as the S-3 Sergeant in the 872nd Engineer Aviation Battalion ("Strip Work is our Speciality.) We were in the Eighth U.S. Army assigned to the 5th Army Air Force. Our job was to build, renovate and maintain air fields in the Tokyo-Yokohama area. Japanese aircraft were far lighter than most, if not all, U.S. types. The first step in avoiding permanent damage to runway and hardstand surfaces was to cover them with PSP, Pierced Steel Planking. It was ingeniously designed to be assembled like a tile floor, but was connected one to the other by steel clips. The clips were placed by hand and hammered into position. A collateral "advantage" of installing PSP was heavily damaged fingers.
Elsewhere on this page, we have placed a photograph of Billy himself, dressed in fatigues, Army work clothes of the day. The snapshot was taken by Army 1st Lt. John A. Dacy, a real sailor man with whom we attended high school. John has passed away. He left school a little early and signed on as an Ordinary Seaman on a gasoline tanker running from the Gulf of Mexico to Dharan in the Persian Gulf, the reverse of much of today's shipping.
John survived his dangerous voyage through submarine-infested waters and was commissioned in the Army's quite large smaller-craft logistics Navy. His assignment at the time of the snapshot was in Yokohama Harbor as skipper of Miss Em, an Army Air Force crash boat converted to service of the Commanding General, Eighth Army. The craft was named after the General's spouse. John had a nifty boat and we had an equally nifty Jeep. We devised many highly productive outings based on those makings.
Perhaps there will be more at another time. Best wishes, Billy
It was those events that gave rise to his famous pledge, "I shall return!" Return he did with a huge naval flotilla and armies of fighting GIs and Marines. Japanese General Yamashita, in command of the notorious "Death March" in which many thousands of U.S. and Filipino troops were murdered, was also known as "The Tiger of Malaya" for his earlier conquest of the peninsula and the island fortress, Singapore. At the ceremony aboard U.S.S. Missouri at anchor in Tokyo Bay, despite the ravages of malnutrition while a prisoner of war, General Wainright held himself erect and accepted Japan's unconditional surrender. The disgraced Yamashita was hanged later following his conviction of war crimes by an Allied court. The Japanese surrender delegation is shown in an official photograph.
We served as the S-3 Sergeant in the 872nd Engineer Aviation Battalion ("Strip Work is our Speciality.) We were in the Eighth U.S. Army assigned to the 5th Army Air Force. Our job was to build, renovate and maintain air fields in the Tokyo-Yokohama area. Japanese aircraft were far lighter than most, if not all, U.S. types. The first step in avoiding permanent damage to runway and hardstand surfaces was to cover them with PSP, Pierced Steel Planking. It was ingeniously designed to be assembled like a tile floor, but was connected one to the other by steel clips. The clips were placed by hand and hammered into position. A collateral "advantage" of installing PSP was heavily damaged fingers.
Elsewhere on this page, we have placed a photograph of Billy himself, dressed in fatigues, Army work clothes of the day. The snapshot was taken by Army 1st Lt. John A. Dacy, a real sailor man with whom we attended high school. John has passed away. He left school a little early and signed on as an Ordinary Seaman on a gasoline tanker running from the Gulf of Mexico to Dharan in the Persian Gulf, the reverse of much of today's shipping.
John survived his dangerous voyage through submarine-infested waters and was commissioned in the Army's quite large smaller-craft logistics Navy. His assignment at the time of the snapshot was in Yokohama Harbor as skipper of Miss Em, an Army Air Force crash boat converted to service of the Commanding General, Eighth Army. The craft was named after the General's spouse. John had a nifty boat and we had an equally nifty Jeep. We devised many highly productive outings based on those makings.
Perhaps there will be more at another time. Best wishes, Billy
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
The Time of the Robots?
Greetings, All -- As news of lethal military strikes by unoccupied air vehicles fills the airways, there can be little doubt that man and machine are working together effectively even over great distances. Increasingly capable machines present simpler interfaces to human controllers by taking on board more perceptive sensors integrated with powerful software. The signs are clear: Humankind is making techno-leaps into the Time of the Robots.
Analogous to the UAV human/machine teams, a robotic office receptionist service called AnyLobby is available from AnyBots company. An intelligent, robotic machine, QB, is capable of performing a variety of office tasks with support as needed from a human being located anywhere within Internet-shot of the lobby. Author Evan Ackerman provides additional details in his piece, "Anybots now offering AnyLobby Robotic Staffing Service," appearing in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Spectrum magazine. Note that this robot is offering jobs, not taking them.
That is not the case for NASA's Robonaut 2 and Spheres robots now seeking business opportunities as described by Ackerman in Spectrum's Robots Aboard the International Space Station. The article contains a video that lays out the ambitions of the robots and their Astronaut trainer. This is a serious effort to put robots into dangerous environments, sparing their human counterparts the risks.
Evan Ackerman next takes us into the laboratories of The University of Pennsylvania through an amazing video demonstration. In the article, "Swarming Quadrotors Get Nano-ized", the flying robots gang up, perform unbelieveable maneuvers and "sound . . . like a swarm of giant angry bees." He points out that each quadrotor can be tossed into the air and immediately orient itself. We wonder what it would be like if one seriously offended a crew of these little guys!
For his offering in the world of robotic magic, Ackerman collected a rich stew of a half dozen quite imaginative videos. Some have serious messages for human beings and, perhaps, for the growing population of robots. Also appearing in Spectrum, this great collection is entitled "Video Friday: Dancing Robots, Sumo Robots, War Robots, and More." We found that these extraordinary videos raised our consciousness. We trust that you will find them similarly opening new vistas for you.
We hope that this excellent presentation by Mr. Ackerman has not tried your patience. In our work, we are ever focused on estimating the most probable directions that technology will take as our future unfolds. Surely, robots will become increasingly capable with time. We have long wondered whether there will come a time when robots themselves will become able to develop ever more capable robots. Whether that is an original thought or seeded by one of our magnificent science fiction authors, I do not recall. Whatever its origin, I have no doubt that Humanity, unless we are very careful and provident, will one future day find itself Mano-a-mano in a fight for survival with its own creations.
Best wishes, Billy Hawkfinder
Analogous to the UAV human/machine teams, a robotic office receptionist service called AnyLobby is available from AnyBots company. An intelligent, robotic machine, QB, is capable of performing a variety of office tasks with support as needed from a human being located anywhere within Internet-shot of the lobby. Author Evan Ackerman provides additional details in his piece, "Anybots now offering AnyLobby Robotic Staffing Service," appearing in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Spectrum magazine. Note that this robot is offering jobs, not taking them.
That is not the case for NASA's Robonaut 2 and Spheres robots now seeking business opportunities as described by Ackerman in Spectrum's Robots Aboard the International Space Station. The article contains a video that lays out the ambitions of the robots and their Astronaut trainer. This is a serious effort to put robots into dangerous environments, sparing their human counterparts the risks.
Evan Ackerman next takes us into the laboratories of The University of Pennsylvania through an amazing video demonstration. In the article, "Swarming Quadrotors Get Nano-ized", the flying robots gang up, perform unbelieveable maneuvers and "sound . . . like a swarm of giant angry bees." He points out that each quadrotor can be tossed into the air and immediately orient itself. We wonder what it would be like if one seriously offended a crew of these little guys!
For his offering in the world of robotic magic, Ackerman collected a rich stew of a half dozen quite imaginative videos. Some have serious messages for human beings and, perhaps, for the growing population of robots. Also appearing in Spectrum, this great collection is entitled "Video Friday: Dancing Robots, Sumo Robots, War Robots, and More." We found that these extraordinary videos raised our consciousness. We trust that you will find them similarly opening new vistas for you.
We hope that this excellent presentation by Mr. Ackerman has not tried your patience. In our work, we are ever focused on estimating the most probable directions that technology will take as our future unfolds. Surely, robots will become increasingly capable with time. We have long wondered whether there will come a time when robots themselves will become able to develop ever more capable robots. Whether that is an original thought or seeded by one of our magnificent science fiction authors, I do not recall. Whatever its origin, I have no doubt that Humanity, unless we are very careful and provident, will one future day find itself Mano-a-mano in a fight for survival with its own creations.
Best wishes, Billy Hawkfinder
Sunday, February 5, 2012
A Bit of Job Creation
Greetings, All -- The TV Talking Heads are burning air in efforts to outdo one another with points and counter-points on who can best accelerate job creation. There is not a person in our great nation who does not hope that available jobs grow in number day-by-day, week-by-week. Billy Hawkfinder is included in that count.
We have all heard reports of job openings with no qualified takers in sight. That may be true to an extent, but it is tough for us to believe some of the stories. We know and know of many solidly qualified citizens who have maintained their skills while looking for matching positions for months with no luck.
A piece in The New York Times, Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class, published on January 21st this year, however, proves that such problems do exist. It underscored a gross shortage of qualified workers and manufacturing facilities to take on Apple's forecasted huge projects in the U.S. Authors Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher related the essence of a dinner conversation between the President and Apple Boss Steven Jobs that took place in February 2011.
"'Why can't that work come home?', the President asked." The answer referred to the huge surge capacity available in China in terms of engineers, production workers and facilities. Also, the concentration of supplier factories there was stated to be unmatched anywhere in the U.S. We are speaking here of great numbers of available trained people.
Companies sometimes must turn down important opportunitites for lack of capacity. In our experience, a major military supplier was asked by a key general officer to take on an immediate task of designing and building an intercontinental missile. The executive to whom he spoke was forced to turn down a multi-billion dollar busines opportunity because he could not guarantee to assign 125 appropriately qualified engineers to the program by the following Monday morning. Sounds strange, but it is true.
Today, there are high expectations for job creation in the biofuels and renewable chemicals field. In Jim Lane's Biofuels Digest, a recent article projects that as many as 2.4 to 8.15 million man-years of labor could be required to replace "10 percent of gasoline consumption with ethanol [ethyl alcohol] made from agricultural waste." These jobs in construction, operations, waste collection and transportation, it is projected, could be created between today and 2030, a rudimentary average of 300,000 employees during the period.
We all know that domestic oil and gas production and transportation also offers significant employment as fracking and offshore operations grow from their present levels. Indeed, in the laboratories and factories of our nation, floods of new products requiring trained and motivated people are in development and production. We join you in the hope that employment grows at an increasing rate and, of great importance, that our education and training capacities will quickly rise to the challenge.
Best wishes, Billy Hawkfinder
We have all heard reports of job openings with no qualified takers in sight. That may be true to an extent, but it is tough for us to believe some of the stories. We know and know of many solidly qualified citizens who have maintained their skills while looking for matching positions for months with no luck.
A piece in The New York Times, Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class, published on January 21st this year, however, proves that such problems do exist. It underscored a gross shortage of qualified workers and manufacturing facilities to take on Apple's forecasted huge projects in the U.S. Authors Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher related the essence of a dinner conversation between the President and Apple Boss Steven Jobs that took place in February 2011.
"'Why can't that work come home?', the President asked." The answer referred to the huge surge capacity available in China in terms of engineers, production workers and facilities. Also, the concentration of supplier factories there was stated to be unmatched anywhere in the U.S. We are speaking here of great numbers of available trained people.
Companies sometimes must turn down important opportunitites for lack of capacity. In our experience, a major military supplier was asked by a key general officer to take on an immediate task of designing and building an intercontinental missile. The executive to whom he spoke was forced to turn down a multi-billion dollar busines opportunity because he could not guarantee to assign 125 appropriately qualified engineers to the program by the following Monday morning. Sounds strange, but it is true.
Today, there are high expectations for job creation in the biofuels and renewable chemicals field. In Jim Lane's Biofuels Digest, a recent article projects that as many as 2.4 to 8.15 million man-years of labor could be required to replace "10 percent of gasoline consumption with ethanol [ethyl alcohol] made from agricultural waste." These jobs in construction, operations, waste collection and transportation, it is projected, could be created between today and 2030, a rudimentary average of 300,000 employees during the period.
We all know that domestic oil and gas production and transportation also offers significant employment as fracking and offshore operations grow from their present levels. Indeed, in the laboratories and factories of our nation, floods of new products requiring trained and motivated people are in development and production. We join you in the hope that employment grows at an increasing rate and, of great importance, that our education and training capacities will quickly rise to the challenge.
Best wishes, Billy Hawkfinder
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