Gadgets
Many people already have a GPS that is attached to the car. But a handheld GPS also has many uses and may in some cases be the more flexible alternative. Recently I retired my old Magellan for a Garmin Etrex 20. In some stores it comes bundled with a street and topo map that make it the equivalent of a car GPS on the road as well as on the trail, not bad for a device running to $170.
Of course the display is tiny. Nothing like a car GPS. But you can take it with you on overseas trips. Even if you don’t want to buy the detail maps for your overseas destination that go outside your bundled topos and street maps, the little Garmin comes with a “World Map” which identifies the highways and major roads of overseas cities. Don’t expect to find the smaller streets on it. But there’s a killer feature that largely overcomes this deficiency.
It is the ability to tie it into Google maps. If you’re in anyplace that Google Maps covers, you can transfer a found point by “sending it to your GPS”. And boom: it’s a waypoint on your Etrex 20 over its waterproofed USB cable. You can create your whole itinerary of waypoints in that way. This can be a tremendous advantage in a place where nobody either speakers or cares to speak English.
The data will go both ways. If you leave your GPS on (a pair of AAs last 25 hours continuous) you can play it back your route on Google Earth to see where you’ve been.
One interesting thing about the Garmins is that they read GLONASS satellites. So unless both the Russians and the Feds decide to shut down the world, you ought to get some signal from the heavens. In comparison to my old retired GPS the Garmin almost instantly gets its fix where the old device would chug along for 10 minutes. In literally seconds. So while it’s not one of these thing with a supergiant high gain antenna you don’t expect something about the size of a computer mouse to do that.
Eventually you’re going to run out of power for your elecronic devices. So the next thing I’ll get for trip to the woods is a solar charger. I haven’t tested any, but some models strap to a pack (or a car roof, one would imagine) and can run a laptop 30 minutes for every hour in the sunlit open. Either that or charge up your cellphone (or GPS) about 8 times over.
When you’re not in the woods you can use the battery attached to the solar panels as a reserve power source for your electronic devices, charging it instead from the plug and from that feeding your cell phone. That might take the sting off the $340 price tag. One is unlikely to charge up the cell phone in the woods that often. But there is considerable everyday utility to having a reserve power for your laptop, cellphone and oh, yes, the GPS, especially in places hit by hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters.
Of course the real benefit to having these devices they let you imagine yourself to be a 21st century Richard Hannay, pursued by sinister agents of a foreign power across the moors of Scotland. One man against the world. That may not or ever have been true. But then, what’s an imagination for?
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
I find that with the GZOne Commando smart phone, it’s hard to justify a separate GPS. I have stand alone mapping, via Google maps. The unit is waterproof and shockproof. What more do you need?
Most of the time the smartphone will require data connection to get the Google map. The advantage of a standalone is that it can refer to the mapping information it carries onboard.
In the cities, a smartphone with a good dataplan is better than a standalone GPS. But if you are in a foreign country, without data roaming or where perhaps such data downloads will be expensive, or perhaps out of coverage then the smartphone won’t have a map. It will still have the GPS coordinates though, if you know how to get them and therefore you can navigate to waypoints.
The other thing about a standalone is that if you are careful about using the battery, you can run it the whole day or days. You only need to re-orient yourself intermittently.
One last consideration about standalones is that they are designed for one-hand operation. The better devices run off a single pivoting button or quad-cursors with the power button close beside. This is kind of handy in close woods, where you might have the gizmo on a short lanyard off your packstrap. On. Orient. Off.
But for most people in cities in normal times, the GPS problem is met by a smartphone.
One of my brothers has a computer disguised as a cell phone. It is also a GPS and has a map for anywhere in America and parts of Canada. My cell won’t do any of that but it will fit in my shirt pocket. It also has a real strong vibrator, which doesn’t much matter to me but the Baptist girls seem to love. I say that because I have “Satisfaction” by benny benassi as my ring tone.
The ring tone goes
Push me
And just touch me
Until I can get my
Satisfaction.
http://audiko.net/ringtone/Benny+Benassi/satisfaction?ring=21175788
When it goes off while I’m in line inevitability some girl asks me “Does it vibrate too?” Since this is Southern Baptist country, I figure they are Baptist girls.
Rule 308; No mercy asked, none given.
I looked into the solar recharging devices but opted for a small portable hand crank for the go bag’s and I have an Earth Magnet Hand/Bike cranked generator for the home and several car batteries to store the juice, bought military grade compasses, topographical maps of everywhere I might want to go based on the possible scenario’s and everything else to get by for a month or so when it all go’s south… I worry more about the Family after it all collapses, me I’ve lived in the swamp for weeks, slept in tree’s, eat’n bushes and whatever was caught (with and without weapons) Family at best has gone camping for a week at most with clean water and modern potties nearby… Wife will most likely be the first to lose it, probable won’t survive the depression that will follow, boys will probable do fine but they’ve been spoiled too, gonna put a big crimp in the 19yr olds social life… Praying it really doesn’t get that bad, if it does hope it’s Rapture time not long after (I’ve gotten spoiled too)!
I see we’ve dropped into a survival thread rather than a walk in the woods post. In most cases a person can’t live alone. The key to making it through any crisis is having a human network. Collectively it is humanity that makes up society.
In a social collapse it isn’t that the concrete disintegrates. It is that institutions stop working. Banks, police stations or local governments. This is what really threatens people.
As long as a society’s bonds remain intact, it can survive almost anything but an asteroid strike. Therefore the role of gadgets should be seen in this light. Yes, you might have to duck out back for a while, but where are going? The key to surviving is to have a lot of places to go.
The role of GPS and a cell phone is to ensure you can get there. The most useful piece of disaster preparedness equipment is a notebook and a pencil. When the power goes down, you have no electronic database. You need addresses, directions, names, and most especially friends.
Therefore anyone who is really worried should basically create an informal group that he can fall back on when disaster or chaos strikes. There is nothing new in this. Back in the day these were called “neighbors”. When flood or raiders struck a village, you looked to your neighbors.
Today, who is your neighbor?
Probably not the guy in the apartment next door, unless you make an effort to get to know him, which may in fact be a good thing. If you are like most moderns, your neighbor may live across town. Your best buddy. The doctor you know may live in the opposite direction. Whatever. You neighbors are the guys who’ll help you in a pinch.
The role of gadgets is to ensure that you can assemble your community. What happens in a crisis — like a floor or disaster — is that sometimes the usual routes, the normal lines, the standard comms are down. This is normal.
If your gadget relies on the comms that are available in normal times, that might not be such a good plan. Probably the ultimate backup is a 1:250,000 topo map and a good compass. There’s your caveman GPS, wholly independent of GLONASS or any satellite.
I still remember navigating by map and compass. Visualizing the topo in my head. Looking for landmarks to get bearings on. Using a pencil stub to find your position by backbearing on them.
These are timeless skills. I was amazed to discover Filipino forestry graduates (four year course) who didn’t know how to walk along a compass bearing. I guess they never had to. This is probably the equivalent of the sliderule method of navigation, a useless skill like starting a fire with a pointed stick and rock.
In 2002 I bought a Garman Etrex Vista and spent four months backpacking the Sierra’s with it. I was kind of in overkill mode so I also bought the National Geographic Topo maps and overlaid the PCT and John Muir trails on it with details so it was always more than really necessary. I sent food and book caches forward along with extra batteries and repellant. Nonetheless, one day I was a few thousand feet above a valley, hard won elevation, and had to make a decision, follow the ridge or plunge down into another deep valley. I walked around a mile down the trail when I became suspicious that I might be going the wrong way. I checked my GPS and found that I indeed was about to spoil a days hike downward when my intended destination was along the ridge. No big deal but when you’re schlepping a big pack you hate to give up altitude. It was a great day.
I also used my GPS while sailing a great deal. I had an onboard GPS but it was nice to sit on the deck with my compass fitted glasses, a handheld VHF and a GPS in hand. I could use the built in flux gate compass to keep the track line while racing from Newport to Ensenada. If I fell overboard I was a self-contained communication center.
Especially fun since I learned all of that long after I had learned ded reckoning and celestial navigation. I haven’t done my walkabout yet this year but when I do… I will probably go sans electronics this time. Last time out I was really impressed with ultralight packers and want to give that a go.
I think some GPS manufacturer is missing a marketing tool by not having the voice assume an annoyed tone when you go past the recommended turn. “Whatsa matter, you don’t believe me?” Or a sultry woman who implies love and adventure when advising you of the next turn.
A sultry voice, a lonely man
A darkened road, late night
A woman’s voice, as only can
And everything’s all right
Turn here, she says, there’s more to come
That’s right, one quarter mile
I only make this call for some
I love your winsome smile
Oh no, you’re past, the turn was there
You’re gonna make me cry
I thought I’d found a man who’d care
Though just a voice am I
My daughter gave me a Garmon ETrex 10 that I will be taking it out to remote Big Bend in west Texas this weekend. This will be the first time that I have used it for anything other than GeoCaching a couple of times.
Big Bend is remote enough that there is no cell phone coverage and hardly any radio coverage either.
The Nokia smartphones are pretty good on the gps/navigation front. Compared to the other smartphones, that is. If you enable the feature, the Nokia nav app will download local maps applicable to your route and your surroundings in expectation that you will lose the cell network along the way.
I tried those solar battery chargers a few years ago, and the technology then was disappointing and did not deliver as advertised. I was using the Army issued ones, which may also have been subpar even then. I’d be curious to know if anybody has found that situation has improved.
You never know where a walk in the woods will take you.
The nuclear freeze tools tried to claim credit for Ronald Reagan’s Walk In the Woods with Gorbachev that lead to the INF Treaty.
It looks to me like our host has described the components of a do it yourself drone or strategic light plane system. Remember Mathias Rust? If the Chinese piss of the Japanese enough they could face thousands of attacks. Unlike in the totalitarian police states of China or the Mid-east, with fascist economies dependent on falsified accounting and corrupt and compliant trading partners, where all activities are monitored and nothing is spontaneous until a genuine revolution takes root, if a private citizen in Japan chooses to act and has like minded associates they could do a genuinely spontaneous action.
By The Way in the small world category, I know Australian Karen the Garmin GPS voice. A very nice and lovely lady and a talented musician.
Wretchard:
I’ve come across the same lack of basic land navigation skills with forestry folk around here too. They can tell you the full latin name of every species of flora you could ask for but couldn’t travel from point a to b in the bush without a fancy grant money GPS leading the way…Much less a compass and topo map. “Azimuth? Who’s that?”
Anyway, thanks for the recommendation on the GPS. I’ve been considering getting one for a while to develop a couple of caches and more precisely plot out local water and food resources. It looks like just the right match of features and price to suite my needs and the water resistance would also be useful for passage making and expanding my resource database to cover nearby islands as well. Sharing waypoints with my “community” would be very useful.
Me? I’ll just lay down and die. I can’t tolerate humidity. I hate being a burden. Nature seems like an enemy to me. Example: I almost sawed off my fingers on my left hand this weekend trying to trim some hedges. Deep gashes probably requiring stitches, but I hate doctors and fear that flesh eating bacteria tremendously. I sold my Hollywood Hills house and moved back to Michigan to save money in the coming apocalypse. Now that it’s near, I’m having second thoughts. I never had a hedge before. Never had a hedge trimmer before… Squirrels crawling every where, chewing holes in everything… I hear them in my attic at night. Every plant I touch gives me hives. If I didn’t lay down and die, I’m fully aware I’d be promptly killed anyway and in very short order. Who would want to listen to such a complainer???
I will preface my comments by saying that I have a business interest in the topic, so I have a clear bias.
I have found the nav systems / GPS embedded in my vehicles to be marginally useful. In the Audi, it gives me crappy directions most of the time and never seems to be aware of traffic congestion. The Lexus system is good functionally, but the graphics are ancient vector drawings and look kind of poor. The persistent nagging from both systems just annoys me. My biggest complaint about in vehicle systems is that they are in vehicle. I want to have it with me everywhere – whether on foot, on bike, in a plane, in a distant city in a rental car. So, the vehicle nav systems fail me.
I owned Garmin devices (various Nuvii) and they were OK – but it was yet another thing to charge and remember to carry with me. It wasn’t until I got an iPhone that I began to find “the answer”. There is an app for EVERYTHING that you might want to do. Flying (Foreflight), boating (Navionics), running (RunKeeper), biking, geocaching, golding, etc. Someone who is obsessive compulsive about an activity and a programming background has tried to fit that into an iPhone app.
The only problem with that is that the GPS inside the iPhone/iPad is just OK. It doesn’t work well at speed or altitude or far away from the cellular networks (it likes to use cell or wifi to estimate and confirm position). What I needed was a better performing GPS for the iPhone/iPad/iPod platform. Most of the good niche apps provide you with offline map caches, so you can use your iOS device with a GPS accessory – doesn’t matter if it is an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad WiFi (which does not have a built in GPS). There are 400 million iOS devices out there and about half of them have no GPS inside, but are otherwise capable of running the location based apps with offline map caches.
If you are going off the beaten path and want maps, I like using the Ulmon CityMaps2Go app – they have maps for most places in the world. I took a cruise through the Western Mediterranean last fall and downloaded maps of Corsica, Sardinia, Elba, Mallorca, Valencia, Barcelona, and Rome. I did a similar thing the prior summer on a cruise from Athens to Istanbul and plotted the whole trip with Navionics HD on an iPad. It was damn handy. For the GPS accessory, I used the Bad Elf GPS. Garmin just came out with one this Spring. Dual has one as well.
All in all, I have given myself over to the forces of Apple and really enjoy the apps available for the iOS platforms. Instead of a Jack of All Trades, Master of None general purpose GPS, the iOS platform with a high performance external GPS accessory and a collection of niche apps I end up with a device that Masters the Universe.
And I am anxiously awaiting my new iPhone 5 arriving this Friday. I was up at 2AM to order it last Friday.
Wait … Solar? In Scotland?
That’s alright, then. Your GPS will be warm.
On the subject of map reading and a compass…My favorite course in my MS curriculum was Orienteering, which had nothing to do with my engineering discipline. I took it in the fall with a hard core German instructor. We got lots of early snow in the mountains of Western New England that year. I remember sliding down steep mountainside trails, grabbing small trees periodically to slow/guide my descent in an effort to beat the competition, but not die in the process of trying. It was tremendous fun. To this day, whenever I travel overseas I take my orienteering compass with me. During one trip in Seoul years ago, a co-worker asked me why I had a compass. I said, in case the Norks invade, I need to know which way is south!
Ah!, to be young and healthy again. Someone much more clever then I once said something like ‘Youth is great, to bad it’s wasted on the young’. I have a GPS. It is ancient. It got as a freebe for ordering an Atlas/Globe combo. I kept it because it had a power connector that would mate with the one on my bike. Co-ink-see-dink, I think. anyway, it gives me a set of numbers when I use it. I don’t use it since my idea of camping is a Hotel 6 with a picture of a tree on the wall.
As far as survival, I’ve decided I’m too old to worry about it. Charles is correct. When the wheels come off, the sh1t hits the fan, the trumpet blows, etc, etc. I’m gonna be here, drinking a beer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvnL4dtqIY8&feature=related
Highlander, I don’t think you army guys are cleared for that sort of stuff.
11. monkeyfan; wretchard
I think it’s the same for young foresters everywhere. Surveying and navigation using hand held instruments is a lost art. (Art gets lost quite often but that would be painting a different picture.)
I drove to my nephews wedding last Friday at a place somewhere west of Frederick Maryland. I used his directions for part of the trip. 270 is so clogged on Fridays coming out of Washington DC that its best to take 255 north. So I did that until I started wandering around Frederick. Then when I’d had enough fun being lost, I plugged into my Garmin the address of the place of the wedding and zipped over there. I made the wedding with plenty of time to spare. So did the rest of the crowd of 300 or so people–their cars all neatly parked in rows on a grass lawn.
imho the GPS is an unsung major league change in the way civilization is done these days; I have always been able to find my way around. But imho large sections of the populace once spent a lot of time lost–getting from one place to another.
Boy Scouts expect a scout to be able to navigate with a topographical map and compass (it’s required for the rank of First Class). The scoutmaster in my son’s first troop used a hand held GPS navigation receiver while supervising the scouts practicing their map and compass technique. I’ve always used a prismatic compass with a topographical map (too cheap to buy a GPS receiver). However there have been times while backpacking (lost) when a GPS tool would have been very convenient, i.e. while in a forest that was so thick with trees that I could not see landmarks to triangulate from. Supposedly the GPS satellites are rad and EMP hardened (designed to survived nuclear war). However the hand held GPS receivers would be the first things to fry in the event of an EMP attack. The bad guys will launch an EMP attack eventually (it’s such an obvious thing to do). After that happens, knowing how to use a map and compass will once again be a very important skill.
An interesting geewiz about navigating with a magnetic compass is the technique will not work in certain parts of Australia, e.g. northern part of Western Australia. There’s so much iron in the ground in that part of Australia that the Earth’s magnetic field is effectively shielded out. To navigate in that part of Australia without a GPS, one must use a pocket watch and the Sun’s shadow.
Another geewiz, is the location of the Earth’s magnetic poles have been moving more rapidly lately and the Earth maybe on the verge of another magnetic pole swap (Geomagnetic reversal). The Earth does this from time to time for some random reason. The phenomena is quite interesting and more can be learned about it at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
The phenomena is actually used by geologists as a form of “carbon dating” for determining the age of rocks. While referring to the linked Wikipedia article, note the current magnetic era called the “Brunhes” has been going on for a fairly long time and we are overdue for a pole reversal. The linked article mentions that magnetic pole reversal maybe associated with climate change. It has been demonstrated that cosmic radiation flux does impact cloud formation and climate. Cosmic rays are partially shielded against by the Earth’s magnetic fields. The Wikipedia article also mentions that mass extinction events might also be associated with magnetic pole reversal. However this might be confusing cause and effect, i.e. the Earth got whacked by an asteroid that shutdown the Earth’s magnetic field while killing off most of the planet’s biology.
The ultimate gadget;
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/09/17/warp-drive-may-be-more-feasible-than-thought-scientists-say/
So when we open new planets, do we want to move there or send the Muslims?
I would even give up the snake dancer for a ride in a starship.
“The key to making it through any crisis is having a human network.”
GPS is only good if your friends can launch satellites, otherwise you may be a drone target. Most people can’t even make fire with sticks- they need tools bought from others to light one.
It seems like every gadget is dangerous. What should we do?
Off topic: Romney got caught being honest in saying that socialist leeches will always vote for Obama no matter what, refer to:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/09/17/romney_holds_presser_on_tapes_obamas_plan_attractive_to_those_who_dont_pay_taxes.html
Romney’s comment was the simple truth. However it’s annoying that Romney made the comment within hearing of one of David Corn’s operatives who secretly recorded the remark. David Corn of “Mother Jones” magazine is slightly left of Joseph Stalin (Corn occupies that gray area between moonbat and traitor) and one of the MSM’s foulest journalists. To have allowed such honest comments to be accessible to Corn showed poor judgment on Romney’s part and advanced the MSM’s current narrative that Romney’s campaign is incompetent.
stoicheion @ 20,
People have been talking about “warp drives” and worm holes since the 1970s. These concepts typically come from pathological solutions of Einstein’s field equations, e.g. an infinitely long rapidly rotating cylinder. Einstein’s field equations represent a model of reality but are not reality in itself. For example, the Pythagorean theorem can produce imaginary solutions that are mathematically correct but have nothing to do with physical reality. The concept of warp drives gets interesting only after it has been observed in a repeatable experiment.
For what it’s worth, I believe interstellar travel is possible but requires an enormous vehicle propelled by nuclear fusion that requires centuries to travel between star systems.
Stoicheon #16: Well, it is the “new Army” you know. Find some tired old transvestite to do the same thing and we might be able to get clearance for that….
Regarding your next comment, it sounds to me like an unecessary false choice. Somehow, I think that snake dancer has warp drive in her repetoire somewhere in those “ample nacelles.” Why choose one or the other when you can have both? :0)
Eggplant #19: Regarding magnetic reversals and mass extinctions, I am not sure that it is a case of confusing cause and effect. From what I remember, there have been far more magnetic reversals then there have been major mass extinction events. Traditionally, some of the really major events like the one at the Permian-Triassic boundary have been attributed to changes in clobal climate due to plate tectonics, volcanism, and the like. However, there has been some evidence over the years of impacts associated with the P-Tr boundary and the very late Devonian period, just before the Carboniferous. So it could be possible in the case of a large impactor.
On another note, back in college I picked up a used textbook on planetary landscapes and looked over the section on Mercury. I remebered the Carolis Basin from reading a Nat Geo on Mariner 10 when I was a kid, but had never noticed the jumbled terrain antipodal to the impact basin. I have long wondered if something like that could have set off the Deccan Traps, dating from the end of the Cretaceous Period, and roughly contemporaneous with the Chixulub impact. It would seem to me that on 10-mile wide object might be too small to have such an effect but have had no means to assess that either way. Looking at a few maps reconstructed from paleomagnitic data, it doesn’t look like the Indian Subcointinent was antipodal to Yucatan at that time, but these maps are always pretty rough, particularly when it comes to trying to pin down longitude.
The first time I used GPS, I borrowed a Trible Trimpack from work in 1990 (large 5 sided building) and took it up in my airplane. It lacked any built in maps, or for that matter built in anything. On the other hand, it did provide data on your “destination” that would have been useful if you were going to shoot a ballistic missile at it.
I was surprised that the data changed fast enough to allow real time guidance, rather than having to do “Turn 50 deg right, uh, and I am heading 010 deg so that is a compass heading of, uh, 270?”
It was a very useful exercise from the work standpoint. At that time we only had a partial constellation up so I was able to see what happened when I lost 3D coverage. After Desert Storm some people in the Pentagon were saying that GPS worked so well that maybe we did not even need a full constellation (Army and Navy saying “we don’t care what our altitude is), I was able to provide a specific example of what happens when you lose 3D as well as point out that you cannot expect to call Baghdad Tower and get an altimeter setting.
Yesterday I was using my GPS for Dummies that I bought for $91 a few years ago. Worked great, except that When I tried it in an airplane a while back it did not work at all – no roads close enough.
Re: Deccan traps – Everything I’ve read pretty much dismisses this but it seems so plausible. Take out a globe, and only guessing at tectonic drift, they’re not exactly antipodal, but pretty close. (maybe the drift is enough to impeach the theory, I just don’t know). According to estimated timelines, for what they’re worth, they are temporally very close in geologic terms, though many seem to place the eruption prior to impact. I also think the eruptions went on for a huge length of time (I may be mis-remembering, but I think over 100s thousands of years?) which seems to strongly suggest disparate forces at play if accurate. It seems like a collossal object with sufficient mass and inertia hitting the bullseye and transfering most of its kinetic energy directly into mantle rock could produce the necessary forces, but I’m no physicist…
Someone needs to develop a boot mounted device that charges batteries. A heel pump or rocker type sole that moves with each step driving a magnet into a coil creating a small shot of power, connected to batteries in a calf pouch or wires up the trouser. Then all you guys who can still walk can ‘charge on the go’.
ta
7@Walt said “I think some GPS manufacturer is missing a marketing tool by not having the voice assume an annoyed tone “.
Exactly! A mother in law mode!
jWarrior@29: Exactly! A mother in law mode!
Any of these voices – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHyRdRWGiuE
Never invite the evil octopus that Google is into your life.
I wonder how the markets will change and address our needs once the power goes out for good, and and we’re more on our own than ever.
Recharge? How about a solar panel and an attached mini generator that runs on 151. Or maybe just some dried grass…
I can see the globe from my front porch.
23. Eggplant
Re-read your Einstein. Faster then light speeds are NOT impossible. They just require an infinite amount of energy. Warp drives have long been popular with Sci Fi because The equation requires a physical object. Mass, remember. By wrapping an Alcubierre field around the object one separates it from the space/time continuum. It has no mass for Einstein to work on. Re-do your E=MC with M as zero. That field can then be accelerated to what ever speed one has the power for.
JPL achieving fusion makes it possible to generate the power. No, the problem has always been creating the field. It seems a clever young chap has figured out a way. What a bad time to have a half trained monkey as POTUS. Bad Timing. A few years earlier and Bush would have called off his wars to reach for the stars.
So, Alpha Centuri, Benards Star or Wolf 359? Alpha Centuri has one sun of the right type, but the highly eccentric orbit would make colonies difficult. Thought must be put into which direction has the best possibility of find more earths.
31. Muddy Cross; Google, like snake dancers, is entertaining. You just need to take precautions. With the snake dancer, one invests in preformed artificial sheep intestines. Condoms as the Greeks named them. With google it’s ghoastery. Type ‘ghostery’ into a search engine and follow the directions. Easier then sliding into a condom and much cheaper.
23. Eggplant
stoicheion @ 20,
People have been talking about “warp drives” and worm holes since the 1970s. These concepts typically come from pathological solutions of Einstein’s field equations, e.g. an infinitely long rapidly rotating cylinder. Einstein’s field equations represent a model of reality but are not reality in itself. For example, the Pythagorean theorem can produce imaginary solutions that are mathematically correct but have nothing to do with physical reality. The concept of warp drives gets interesting only after it has been observed in a repeatable experiment.
For what it’s worth, I believe interstellar travel is possible but requires an enormous vehicle propelled by nuclear fusion that requires centuries to travel between star systems.
……………
imho either you can’t go faster than the speed of light and there are worm holes. Or you can go faster than the speed of light and there are no worm holes. That’s just a syllogism. May not work. But God would not have created all those vast distances in the great beyond without also providing a way to cross them easily in human time.
Me, I’m increasingly of the opinion that the Amish are onto something.
My significant other acquired a automotive Garmin and we just used it on a trip from California to Nebraska.
I would describe the device as inaccurate. Road maps are a much better navigation instrument.
I have been using my Garmin Nuvi extensively in Southern California and trust it so much that I have altered some of my normal routes. It has an algorithm and measures miles better than I can surmise. I understand however that it does not know common traffic patterns, bad neighborhoods or think beyond calculating the shortest distance. I use it just as a pacifier to go to work just to see how I am doing on time. The funny thing is I bought it for my mom because she was getting worse and worse with her already atrocious sense of direction. Showed her how she could punch a button under favorites and no matter what it would show her the way home. Well I didn’t account for the fact that I was dealing with someone who did not know how to use a cell phone. Dementia is a bitch.
Are the Chinese and Iranians coordinating their pressure on the current Chaos? American Carriers all tied up in the ME so they can’t be of any real help to the Japanese? We (America) should be cruising a couple in and round Japan and the Philippines as a show of support. Now we have a Chinese General (one of their top ones) talking War and Nukes over the disputed Japanese islands, they (the islands) have been Japanese since the 1800’s not Chinese! Great setup to have three American Carrier groups come out of a 21 mile wide passage, put ya some of their latest copies of American nuclear class subs at that choke point and its “shoot’n Fish in a Barrel” or wait for them to come out if hostilities haven’t started, shadow them, staying within their screen… Just like they did 2(+/-) years ago, Chinese sub was only discovered after it surfaced (I think it cost the Admiral his command)!!! Ether our Military has gotten way over confident or Sloppy from our last ten years of war fighting success or it has been hallowed out far worse than we all know.
37. maineman
Me, I’m increasingly of the opinion that the Amish are onto something.
I believe it’s called rumspringa…
Highlander @ 25 said:
“From what I remember, there have been far more magnetic reversals then there have been major mass extinction events. Traditionally, some of the really major events like the one at the Permian-Triassic boundary have been attributed to changes in global climate due to plate tectonics, volcanism, and the like…. I have long wondered if something like that could have set off the Deccan Traps, dating from the end of the Cretaceous Period, and roughly contemporaneous with the Chixulub impact.”
I agree with you. Magnetic pole reversal might have an effect on climate but it would be relatively small (perhaps comparable to human influence upon the climate). Certainly the effect of a large impactor such as the Chixulub impact would be far greater.
The Deccan Traps are interesting. Refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps
Key quote from the linked article:
“It is postulated that the Deccan Traps eruption was associated with a deep mantle plume. ”
Now refer to the following link that shows an animated Gif file:
http://kartoweb.itc.nl/gondwana/gondwana_gif.html
You might have to horse with the animation and/or your browser a fair bit in order to get it to run. Barend Köbben wrote the software and website. Although I disagree with some minor details in the animation (for example, New Zealand is incorrect IMHO), the science and computer programming is brilliant. There is an MS-Windows executable of the animated Gif that is fun to play with. Also, the MS-Windows executable will run flawlessly under Wine on Linux. Unfortunately I do not have a link to the executable version.
For some goofy reason, Köbben has the Gif animation running backwards in time, i.e. it shows Gondwana assembling rather than disassembling. While running the animation, watch India as it passes over a deep mantle plume and you’ll see the Decca Traps forming. Note that these deep mantle plumes cause significant volcanic activity as different continental plates pass over them. I find this animation absolutely fascinating and have watched it repeatedly. It is interesting to speculate whether this mantle plume was caused by a large impactor. Also, it’s fun to fantasize about the various rift valleys that previously formed between India, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. Some of them must have been in the same league as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Valley. What a shame that such scenic beauty came into existence and then disappeared with nothing but dinosaurs and primitive mammals around to appreciate it.
stoicheion @ 35 said:
“Faster then light speeds are NOT impossible. They just require an infinite amount of energy.”
I suspect the requirement for infinite energy is pretty close to the definition of “impossible”.
Charles @ 36 said:
“… either you can’t go faster than the speed of light and there are worm holes. Or you can go faster than the speed of light and there are no worm holes. That’s just a syllogism. May not work. But God would not have created all those vast distances in the great beyond without also providing a way to cross them easily in human time.”
This touches upon one of my deepest fears, i.e. we live in a universe where interstellar travel is physically impossible. I refuse to accept this but my refusal to accept this maybe more emotional than rational.
The philosophial/theological implications behind this possibility are profound and beyond the scope of this thread.
I sit on the fence between agnosticism and Deism. Allowing myself to lean towards Deism, I find it very disturbing that the Creator would have deliberately designed our universe such that interstellar travel was impossible. I find this conclusion abhorrent because it would be evidence that the atheists are correct and our universe was indeed a consequence of some random event and not a designed artifact.
40. CharlesWhite
The rumor I heard was that the sub was spotted but NOT engaged. The Admiral decided to not kill the sub because he claimed he didn’t know who’s sub it was. He was court-martialed because his people knew what sub it was and ALL CVBG’s have an exclusion zone around them. Anything within that zone is supposed to be challenged or destroyed. SOP, most admirals ignore it, since the lawyers can claim it is an illegal order.
http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2006/11/uss-kitty-hawk-and-chinese-sub.html
There is the straight skinny from a bubblehead (submariner).
That is why Russian Bears fly alongside carriers taking pictures. IIRC, the ‘shoot them down’ order dates from JFK’s administration and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It might have been changed any time between then and now. One day some Admiral will wake up onery and order a plane shot down or a sub sank and then we will know. The problem in both the Islamic crescent and the Pacific Rim is that POTUS has no balls. The Man is a coward and when ever one of the worlds excessively numerous bad guys growls at him he wets his pants and runs and hides behind Power’s pants suit. There is a simple solution available for that on November 06, 2012.
Hard to follow your reasoning at the end there, Egg. How does the existence of something that mankind can imagine but not accomplish say anything at all about the existence or absence of an uncreated creator?
C.S. Lewis argued for the existence of God from the standpoint of desire, that we have no desires that we cannot satisfy and that the universal wish to know God — even if that knowing is to reject Him — must mean He exists.
You could apply this reasoning to the desire to move about in space, I suppose, but we can do that. I’m not clear that it’s justifiable to extend that thinking to our every whim about where and when we want go.
As a lifelong Boy Scout and Scoutmaster, I can’t help commenting. Yes, we do teach map & compass navigating, but mostly very basic (orienting a map, finding out where on the map you are, trail following). If you are trying to accurately find your way from point A to point B and you can’t march in a perfectly straight line you very quickly run into the problem of calculating distance, as in knowing exactly how many feet along your bearing you have traveled. Small errors add up (both distance and bearing) and you can find yourself very far from B with no idea of where you left A unless you blazed the trail.
Most successful cross-country navigation I have done was by landmark/position triangulation.
If you want a very good practical course in map and compass, your local Boy Scout store sells “The Compass Game” and there’s a very good course here (PDF) http://www.troop180.info/Troop180%20new%202%2027%2009/Document%20Library/OrienteeringDayPlan.pdf.
All that notwithstanding, a good handheld GPS is something I wouldn’t go out without.
W @ 5: “In most cases a person can’t live alone. The key to making it through any crisis is having a human network.”
Words of truth, for sure. However, let’s try a thought experiment. The power goes out worldwide, for whatever reason. The only thing available to drink in London is sewage; in Riyadh, salt water.
We live in a world of such specialization that even most farmers could not feed themselves without a steady stream of external inputs, from diesel to pesticides to steel tools. This contrasts dramatically with, say, US Civil War times, when much of the population could support themselves in a pinch. Obvious corollary is that a very large slice of the population is going to be dead within a few weeks of the Major Event. Then the survivors start to pool their specializations and get the world running again, albeit on only two cylinders for a long time.
In that kind of scenario, there could be a future for people who have prepared themselves to get out of the maelstorm and survive as individuals for about a month. Still, their long-term survival would depend on their ability thereafter to become useful members of a community.
stoicheion@43 The Admiral decided to not kill the sub because he claimed he didn’t know who’s sub it was.
That doesn’t sound right.
The reasons to not kill subs, shoot down planes, etc are
1. You give away too much information — they will just keep trying to make their ships stealthier until one day they don’t get sunk. At that point, they know they are undetected. Better to do nothing, and let them guess at our detection abilities.
2. We get information, too — when we know where they are we can fingerprint them, making them easier to locate later, when it counts.
3. It sets a lousy precedent. Instead, let the other guy set the bad precedents. That chinese sub that fired an ICBM off the coast off CA? Was it an act of war? Was it OK? Let’s say it is OK, not a provocation, just business as usual. That means it is OK for our boats to hang around near mainland China, too. Right?
maineman @ 44 asked:
“Hard to follow your reasoning at the end there, Egg. How does the existence of something that mankind can imagine but not accomplish say anything at all about the existence or absence of an uncreated creator?”
Attempting to answer your question directs the thread into the theological.
Summarizing briefly: The issue is “first cause”, who/what created god? Reply: God always existed. Counter: Universe always existed, why invoke god? Counter-counter: Universe is too elegant to have been the consequence of a random event. Thus a designer is required to explain the universe’s elegance. Response: Time maybe circular or meaningless outside the realm of our universe (The word “is” becomes undefined). Reply: Focus discussion to phenomena within our universe because language fails when attempting to describe phenomena beyond our universe. Dodge issue about creator outside of universe and focus on creation only, e.g. Is our universe an artifact? If our universe is an artifact, could it be the consequence of a lower order artifact? Argument: Our universe is one layer of a Matryoshka doll. Each layer within the Matryoshka doll came from an inner layer with a simpler Law of Physics that was less capable for universal creation. A creator within the less capable universe creates a slightly higher order universe with a more complex set of physical laws. Successive creations lead to more powerful creators resulting in more complex universes with richer Laws of Physics. The process continues until the system is so complex that it is indistinguishable from chaos. The cycle is complete and the process reverts back to primordial chaos.
That’s the back story. Interstellar travel is key because there is not enough time for a civilization to develop the technology of universal creation while living within a single solar system. It probably takes hundreds of millions of years to solve that puzzle. If the Laws of Physics prohibits interstellar travel then no civilization has the time to solve the puzzle of universal creation. There is no creator therefore the atheist are correct. At an emotional level, I reject this conclusion. I then grasp for straws trying to see how interstellar travel is possible.
sorry for interrupting:
“Beijing hints at bond attack on Japan
A senior advisor to the Chinese government has called for an attack on the Japanese bond market to precipitate a funding crisis and bring the country to its knees, unless Tokyo reverses its decision to nationalise the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/9551727/Beijing-hints-at-bond-attack-on-Japan.html
Eggplant, I appreciate the thoughtful response, but you’re right, further discussion would amount to hijacking the thread.
BC occasionally goes down this road, so I’ll wait for another time, but I offer for your consideration the following: I think the broken link in the chain of reasoning you present above is the false need to limit the focus to the creation. If by this you mean the material realm, then you are necessarily limiting consideration to the domain of science, scientism to be precise. At that point all you have is a hammer, so everything becomes a nail.
An elegant proof of the necessity of the nonmaterial and transcendent was outlined on these pages a few years back in response to a discussion about whether the mind can reside solely in the brain. Someday I’ll find my copy and trot it out again.
Maineman @ 50,
I’ve already exceeded my four comments (this is the last one). Also this is way off topic.
It maybe incorrect to assume universal creation is achievable only through a highly advanced technology. Our universe may have been deliberately designed to prohibit interstellar travel because the capability of universal creation is attainable with the technology derivable from the resources of a single planet. One can carry that line of reasoning to the next step that maybe technology is not required for this process? Maybe the answer is embedded in our DNA and the structure of our brain? Maybe the process can be achieved through deep meditation along the lines of Buddhism?
I’m very skeptical of that line of reasoning. What I’ve observed about technology is that it’s a huge multiplier. I can do things with computer simulation that are way beyond my mental ability, i.e. I use a computer to do technical problems just as I use a hydraulic jack to lift up my car. Creating a universe is the ultimate technical problem and would require an unimaginably advanced technology (it would be like magic).
Also beware of elegant proofs about Life, the Universe and Everything. Both Descartes and Spinoza wasted a significant fraction of their lifetimes chasing that illusion. We human beings need to evolve for a few more million years before we can attack that puzzle. That of course, raises the issue of “The Singularity” but I know when to stop and I’ll end here.
What an unruly and even naughty bunch of commenters here!
The subject of our Host, people, was freaking GPS technology.
And you’re busy arguing about the existence or non-existence of an almighty GOD?
When after all, the entire universe is simply a thought in the mind of the creator…
I can prove it, if you’ll give me a sec…
Hmmmm. I just had it all written out here a while ago.
…
Hold on…
42
GPS Shoes: Ruby Slippers 2.0
According to Inhabitat, there’s a GPS receiver on the heel of the left shoe that can be used to punch in an address, although they didn’t mention exactly how that’s done. Once it knows where you want to go, LEDs on the left shoe indicate the direction to take, while a line of LEDs on the right shoe provides a rough estimate of proximity to the destination.
http://technabob.com/blog/2012/09/15/gps-shoes-ruby-slippers-2-0/
#54 feeblemind
“GPS Shoes: Ruby Slippers 2.0”
Long ago, when the world was new, and I was making a living chasing felons on the streets; a new fashionable tennis shoe came out. It had a battery in each shoe, and with every impact when you ran, lights in the heels came on and sparkled.
Amongst “Urban Y’uts” of certain illegal social concatenations; these became popular as being counterculturally in vogue.
Until.
They noticed that when they were being chased after committing some miscreant act …. we could track them as they ran at night, drastically improving our catch average. It probably would have worked longer if we could have refrained from laughing at them once they were in cuffs.
Now you rarely see them in other than pre-school sizes.
For some reason, GPS shoes brought that story to mind.
Subotai Bahadur