String Tech

It's a pity that Hitler and his gang were such a bunch of vicious, xenophobic bastards.

In an idle moment - of which I have many - I went looking for details of the V-1 flying bomb: the world's first cruise missile. I'm building a 3D model. The stuff I found is extraordinary. There's loads of info on the Web, and though it's fragmentary there's enough to piece together the workings of almost every item in the device.

I was particularly interested in the guidance system. Pictures usually just show a jumble of shapes, and I'd always assumed they used a crude, valve-based equivalent the sort of thing we'd used today. No: there are no active electrical components in it, unless you count the gyro motors and a couple of solenoids - which I don't.

They did the entire control system pneumatically! Pressure is provided by two wire-wound compressed-air balloons. When the course drifts and the gyro tilts, it squeezes one of two pressure lines feeding either side of a piston in a differential cylinder. This pressure imbalance causes the piston to push the rudder left or right. A more delicate barometer arrangement does the same thing to ailerons on the tailplane for altitude. Amazing!

And then there's the pulse-jet itself. No moving parts except a few hundred little spring-steel flaps, and running cheap and dirty wartime gasoline, it was still so good that the US spent ages duplicating it to make a cruise of their own. It developed 3kN of thrust, enough to deliver nearly 1,000 kilos of Amatol the 250 clicks to London.

(A bunch of guys in a Californian extreme sports/dangerous fun group got hold of an original vane assembly and managed to duplicate it using NC machines. They use it for making horribly loud 50Hz noises.)

Many spectacular inventions came out of WWII - the Japanese intercontinental balloon bombs must be the cutest - but the V 1 and 2 are both serious paradigm-shifting technology. Because it practically gave birth to the Space Age, the V2 gets all the credit, but the V-1 solved some horrendous problems using technology we wouldn't touch today. While we can be glad that the Nazis bit off more than they could chew, if you squint a bit you can kinda see why they thought the Germans were a super-race.

Atheist 13 Meme

My turn:
Q1. How would you define "atheism"?
A range of opinions from lack of belief in a god, all the way to firm conviction that there is no god. That's me on the end there.

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?
Proud to be a third-generation atheist.

Q3. How would you describe "Intelligent Design", using only one word?
Drivel

Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?
Artificial intelligence for its long-term goals. Particle physics for its emerging results.

Q5. If you could change one thing about the "atheist community", what would it be and why?
More dangerous. Armed, perhaps - to reduce the chances of a repeat of the sort of attack visited on Pharyngula and the like.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said "I'm joining the clergy", what would be your first response?
Perform a retroactive abortion.

Q7. What's your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?
A 'favourite inaccuracy'? I don't think I have one.

And it appears to be impossible to refute even the simplest errors in a way that convinces them. After all these years of refutation, the average theist still believes that atheism implies complete amorality.

Q8. What's your most "controversial" (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?
Most atheists ultimately see some place for religion even in an atheist world. I think the stuff is too dangerous to exist, even in moderation. One slip and they'd be burning heretics again. I say wipe it out completely, using education and taxes.

Q9. Of the "Four Horsemen" (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?
I've been Dawkins' No.1 fan for many decades. I'm a very deep admirer of Chris Hitchens, though. His grasp of language is so precise it enables him to see nuances in concepts that other sometimes conflate.

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?
With the entire span of time to choose from: Emperor Constantine and his dizzy mum. Or Abraham, perhaps.

Contemporaries only, it could be any senior politician, anywhere.

CD

Microsoft Firefox!

This is just bloody wonderful!

They've picked up everything I've ever disliked about the Seattle monster.

CD

A Comment! And Stupid, Evil Companies.

Gee – a comment! I didn’t think it would happen. Not that it matters much: this blog appears to be the best-kept secret on the Web. My fault: I’ve done nothing to publicise it; and no-one would be interested anyway, so why bother.

And yes - thanks for the observation: giant IT corporations are indeed evil. I think I could even add some more detail:

All giant corporations are evil, because all giant corporations are stupid. I reckon the aggregate intelligence of an organisation is inversely proportional to the number of lines of communication that exist within it. A two-man operation will be ½ as intelligent as the average intelligence of the employees.

So by the time you reach 40,000-employee monsters like the one I just left (!), the corporation acts as though it has the brain of a sea-slug. Anything simultaneously that stupid and that powerful will inevitably be evil – as anyone who has met a stupid powerful person will confirm.

There’s another factor specific to IT companies, and I’ve personally witnessed this on more than one occasion. As a small technology company becomes increasingly successful and bigger, its turnover increases too. Accountants, lawyers and marketing people become increasingly important to its operation.

In its early days, tech companies are headed and lead by technologists: coders, engineers, hackers and nerds. The financial, legal and marketing people are seen as hangers-on, and they’re neither particularly liked nor very powerful. As time goes by, however, and the daily business of the company becomes more concerned with money than with technology, the power balance inevitably shifts toward the hangers-on, and the technologists fade into the background. As the company becomes more compartmentalised, the people who started and nurtured the organisation from birth are sidelined into a separate and separated ‘Technical Department’, while the former ‘bean counters and salesmen’ control the running.

This process usually culminates in a palace coup, with varying degrees of bloodiness. Venture capitalists and banks will side with the finance department, and their influence can make the difference. The company founder is bought off with large sums. A new CEO is appointed, along with a new Board of Directors. The transformation is complete, the former technological princes are confined to their backroom department, and the company becomes just like all the others.

Zune Picture

Andrew Orlowski at The Register asked for more Parody pictures of the forthcoming Microsoft Zune - supposedly the device that will kill the iPod. So I drew this.

I certainly hope that Zune doesn't kill iPod, simply because it's bound to be a lesser and crappier item in every way - as are all Microsoft's thefts. That, however, doesn't tend to stop MS' dominance of almost everything they touch.

It's horrible. Look at MS Messenger, for instance: there was this terrific thing called ICQ, free and superb, an peer-to-peer so you didn't have to rely on some central server. Devoid of ads and other tricks to sell you stuff you don't want - and hardly anyone knew about or used it.

Along comes MS and pushes out Messenger, and now everyone does instant messenging - except that you're at MS' mercy for the service, and all your stuff goes via their servers - a nightmare for security.

Over and over MS pushes out ripped-off ideas with lousy implementations, and over and over people buy into them. It's amazing.

Here's hoping this one won't go anywhere. I'm not very optimistic: MS can virtually afford to pay people to use it until they have the market share, and then they'll tighten the screws, and we'll all be screwed. Wanna bet Zune will launch with a pile of free music that - heh - only works on Zune?

UFO over Newbury

I was half-way up the drive when I saw it coming over the field. I'd been down on the road takling summertime pictures of the cows in the field, but it took me a moment to realise I had my camera.

And a few more moments while the damn thing warmed up after being switched on, and by that time it was going behind the trees. So I raced up the drive, and caught it just before it went behind the house.

By the time I'd rounded the corner, all that was left was a vanishing dot, which vanished completely by the time I got the camera up.

One shot! And I was convinced I'd blown it. But I hadn't. It doesn't matter if the foreground is blurred - I tracked the UFO perfectly.

And now no-one will believe me, I suppose.

(Well, of course not! It's just a bit of 3D modelling and Photoshop work. I enjoyed it, though. If anyone ever actually reads this - any comments? Anything I could do to make it more realistic?)

CD

Darwinian Racism

There’s a very nasty-sounding bit of racism, apparently taken from Darwin's 'Descent of Man', that seems to be all over the Web. This is the quoted passage:

"At some future period... the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [negros] will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man (in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian), and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

Googling for a string of text taken from the above reveals that this quote is in use verbatim all over the Web, especially on Creationist websites, as anti-evolution propaganda: evolution is racist, apparently. Therefore all pro-evolutionists are racists. Who knew?

I decided to look this up, and went and got an ebook of 'Descent' from Project Gutenberg. I found the quoted passage, but there are some interesting differences between the propaganda quote and the original as written by Darwin, and in context.

The most blatant of these is the little [negros] (sic) in the agitprop. This appears to be a creationist insertion, and it's quite clearly incorrect. By 'anthropomorphous apes' Darwin is plainly referring simply to the apes with human shapes - tailless, and presumably given to bipedal walking: gorillas, chimps and the rest. Whether the insertion is a dirty trick or an honest mistake I have no idea, but it sets a nasty tone.

The rest of the paragraph is Darwin talking about, interestingly enough, 'missing links' - the gaps between one representative of a species and another - with particular reference to humans and other primates:

“The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies--between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae--between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

(Italics are mine, to distinguish the quoted bit)

Darwin's line on 'savage races' is a little jarring today, but is hardly remarkable in context and at the time. Members of the soi-disant 'civilised races' travelled to foreign lands, and met people who dressed in skins if at all, ate bark, bugs, lizards and leaves, and spent a lot of time killing each other - living, in other words, a life that they saw as intermediate between animals and their own. These observers were already accustomed to a stratified, hierarchical society of royals, nobles, gentlemen, servants and slaves. Small wonder that at the time they saw the indigenous people of these strange lands as lower orders of humanity, some more animal than man. They had no reason to suppose that the descendants of these savages could ever approach their level of sophistication. Even their (white) servants back home showed no such ability, David Copperfield notwithstanding.

(Perhaps the British should have remembered that when the civilised Romans arrived, they were no more than 'savages' themselves - living in straw huts and caves, and painting themselves blue.)

The antagonism that existed between the Civilised and the Savage was hardly one-sided: there tended to be little affection between the groups, for any number of reasons, notably distaste and envy respectively. Aggression was frequent, as were outright wars between indigenous peoples and invading settlers. Explorers and settlers routinely marched into countries and began displacing the locals, and slaughtering them if they objected. African, Australian, Asian and American indigenous peoples all suffered the same fate. Darwin was hardly alone in believing (though not, you'll notice, necessarily advocating) that this would end in the extermination of the Savages. He believed - as the paragraph describes - that this was a natural process by which intra-species gaps were widened.

One interesting factor is that his prediction has essentially come to pass: the 'savages' are indeed almost extinct throughout the world. Instead of being entirely exterminated, however, The remains of their cultures have mostly chosen to adopt the ways of the 'civilised': wearing T-shirts, smoking Marlboros, drinking Coke and watching TV. Quite what Darwin would have made of this convergence, and which group won the battle, is hard to say.

CD