I Don't Want To Set the World on Fire After the World Burns

Somehow I have ended up on the song "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire". I previously came across this song in the short Logorama. It was the song I needed to hear today. There are several straight version of this song on youtube, one of which is the just a shot of the 78 rpm record going a round and around. The version below is from the game Fallout 3. Anything involving nuclear war is not going to be positive.

Flying Robot Musicians

Three years ago I came across a video of Mario's Theme done with beer bottles and a R/C car. The music was "programed" by varying the spacing and liquid level of the bottles. In the above case it was created by programing robot quadrotors to interact with modified musical instruments. Bond's and Mario themes have seeped into pop culture's unconscious so need no introduction.

Broadcast Engineers Get Higher (video is available again)

One time in my youth my friends and I climbed a tower, that is to say they climbed a ladder contained within the tower and I didn't. I am not ashamed to write that this video made me scared, and physically sick. At the thread at AH.com where I got this video, This guy gets so high it has me scared, the link to the video merely said, "This link may not be suitable for all viewers". I was expecting something about Charlie Sheen, like the very funny Charlie Sheen Quotes As New Yorker Cartoons.

Looking at this I know how right I was to have some fear of heights. Acrophobia is not an irrational fear when you see the climbing conditions that these engineers have to deal with. A couple of years I blogged about a guy walking the Caminito del Rey, Extreme Hiking. That was pretty scary but this is worse. The other video was about an amazing trail this many people walk once as an adventure from their regular lives. This video is about guy doing something as part of his "regular life".

Video from Russel Brown of/at TheOnLineEngineer.Org.

Update 2012/2/11
Unfortunately the video is offline.
The image above is a frame grab from the video
showing the curve of the earth.

Update 

I have rediscovered this video, only the video,
 somebody took it and added "Spirit in the Sky".

New Car Kills Driver of Old Car

This is the first time have seen a car crash test with a antique car. When tests are done are done with production models or prototypes nothing much is lost. But this test has flushed a little piece of the past down the memory hole.

Mad Men Comparing Cars versus Trains

Mad Men On Trains from Rich Sommer

There is a theory that the only things that need to be actively and energetically sold are things that are bad deals. Another thought is that only things are profitable enough to support salesmen are going to sold by salesmen. I once knew a guy who made a good living selling cell phones back in the early '90's. Now cell phones are a commodity business and are not sold by salesmen. Mutual funds and whole life insurance

There is something else going on in this piece because companies may have different and mixed motives to be promote their brand, themselves or products. At such times companies may engage in advertising and marketing even when when they don't nurture a diverse ecosystem of commissioned sales.

Here is an interview with Vincent Kartheiser, Q&A: Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser on High-Speed Rail, where he discussed the above piece. There is a great scene in Yes, Minister, where where he meets three different civil servants, who in case of regulatory capture all champion different modes of transport (road, rail and air).

A Swiss Supervillian Datacenter

An anonymous commenter on my blogpost last year, "A Super Villain's Datacenter", sent me a link to another super villain server farm, Mount10. This one is is located in the Alps. In one of the Chung Kuo novels a super villain went to ground at a secret base high in the Alps.

Uranium By Mail Order

It is good to see that the Amazon is now competitive with Acme in the mad genius/starving coyote market segment. Amazon is selling uranium ore, not yellow cake or refined uranium. The people who bought this radioactive specimen also bought also bought Forbidden LEGO which has instructions on making weapons out of LEGO.

(link from An Engineer's Options & Futures)

Less Money for Space can Mean More Money for Space Science

An article in cnet suggests some bad news at NASA and its manned space missions, Reduced budget threatens manned space options. However I see the story in a slightly difference light. Without all the constraints on spacecraft design on the care and feeding of monkeys, sorry the life support for astronauts, a lot more science can be done. Space probes and mars lander and rover have provided so much more in real science than all the monkey make work projects.

A Supervillian's Datacenter

In a slashdot story, Will Silicon Valley Run Out of Data Center Space? Anonymous Coward linked to this article of a data center in Stockholm in a surplus nuclear bunker, The World's most super-designed data center - Fit for a James Bond Villain. This what CEO that paid for this site, sounding in no way a little nerdy, wanted.

“I’m personally a big fan of old science fiction movies. Especially ones from the 70s like Logan’s Run, Silent Running, Star Wars (especially The Empire Strikes Back) so these were an influence,“ said Karlung. “James Bond movies have also had an impact on the design. I was actually looking for the same outfit as the villain ‘Blofeld’ in Bond and even considered getting a white cat, but that might have been going a bit far!”

Scary German Robots

NEWS ALERT: Humans Behavior Cannot be fully Predicted

“To confuse the model with the world is to embrace a future disaster driven by the belief that humans obey mathematical rules.”

Emanuel Derman, Physicist employed
by Goldman Sachs quoted
In Modeling Risk, the Human Factor Was Left Out.

Lots of other ideologies/idealists have confronted this problem before. In other times and places reality/minds/bodies/memory have bent and distorted to fit perfection of the word. A worse fate than a couple of lost billions.

Mass versus Custom Manufacturing

In a AH.com discussion, AH Challenge: British Leyland Still Going Strong, Nick Sumner has an analysis of the decline of the British auto industry.

Was British dominance of Formula One racing in the 70s, 80s and 90s a symptom of the decline of the British volume car industry or part of the cause? In the 80s and 90s the manufacture of Formula One cars was by and large a British cottage industry.

I think it might be seen as a symptom because F1 would attract the best engineering talent - if that talent saw no future in the volume side of the industry then getting into F1 would be even more attractive than would generally be the case. This would of course cause a decline in the engineering talent pool available to the volume manufacturers.

On the other hand it might be seen as part of the cause - did so much design and engineering talent accrue to F1 that there was too little left over for the volume industry?

I'm not saying for a moment that F1 might be the principal cause of the decline of the British car industry - that would be bad management - but did it have an effect?

In the 1950s, Italian manufacturers won the annual Formula One constructor’s championship eight times. British and German manufacturers managed one win each. The British volume car industry was both strong and profitable.

In the 1960s British manufacturers won seven times, the Italians won twice and the French once. The British volume car industry began to falter finding foreign competition increasingly difficult to beat.

In the 1970s British manufacturers again won seven times, Ferrari taking the other three championships. The competitiveness and quality of British volume cars declined steeply, markets were lost abroad and foreign penetration of the home market increased.

In the 80s all 10 championships were won by British manufacturers. The British volume car industry continued its precipitous decline.

In the 90s British manufacturers won eight of the constructors championships, the remaining two, were one by Benetton formula which at that time was a British registered company. The Benetton cars were also manufactured in Britain so you could argue that once again it was a clean sweep across the decade for British manufacturers. The British volume car industry died.

Is there a link here?

Car Safety Then and Now

In the past day I have come across 2 radically different conceptions of auto safety and auto safety testing. Here is an attempt to use tires on bumpers. The test driver has no safety restraint and drives headlong into a brick wall. There is some sawdust for cushioning if he launched out of roofless the car. In another exercise Stephen Levitt of Feakonomics after looking at accidents reports suggests that car seats for are more dangerous than lap or shoulder seat belts for children 3+.

There are other approaches to car safety. The blog post before this suggests that you can avoid monsters, mobsters and ordinary psychos by driving a Smart car.

The Drains of Canada

The BLDGBLOG has an interview with urban spelunker Michael Cook. Read the interview then go to Michael blog Vanishing Point and look at sewers.

New Super Villain Base North of Norway

Svalbard Global Seed Bank.

More reports from National Geographic and a plan of the base.

What is going on here?

The History of F1, Shell & Ferrari

Periodic Table of Visualization

Visual-Literacy.org has put together this periodic table of visualizing information. The periodic table progresses from simple charts to complex metaphoric illustrations. Well worth a look.

Engineers Aboard

Listen to a an interview on NPR with a writer from an IEEE Spectum, the magazine of the engineering association IEEE. The engineer was outline many of the problems that associated iwth upgrading a 3rd world electrical grid before security concerns are dealt with. The writer went into detail in the interview and his article about the various impediments to building a functioning electrical net.

The photo is from a slideshow associated with this article.