Funmurphys: the Blog

Not Gone Yet

OK, I've gotten so many calls and emails begging me for one last post before leaving, I'm writing one last one.

"Universal healthcare" as in government funded, not as in open market, is pushed as a panacea in certain circles. These circles find it such an obviously superior solution, I rarely see any real supporting rationale for it (everybody else is doing it isn't a rationale that I, as the father of a teenage daughter, find real).

There are two main ways of allocating resources - one way that decreases the availability of the resource, and the other which increases the availability of the resource. Socialism, or single payer, or "universal healthcare" is the way that decreases the availability of the resource. This isn't a question of theory -- it's been empirically proven repeatedly. The free market is the way that increases the availability of the resource.

But healthcare is something too important to be left to the market you say. Or healthcare doesn't work like other goods because you have to have it inorder to live you say. Doesn't food meet those same requirements? Yet we allocate food in this country via the free market, and the crisis du jour is obesity. If we stopped allocating healthcare in this country via the current odd employer standing in for government system, and instead allocated healthcare via a free market, the crisis du jour would be longevity.

So Long, For Now

The Murphy Family is leaving shortly for the mountains. I'm looking forward to the trip - I need a vacation, and I need it bad. You'll have to survive the next few weeks without new material here, and the comments should be turned off in a few days (thanks Tanya!) so that the place isn't overrun with links to an assortment of vices you could easily find without the purveyors spamming my site while I'm away. I promise pictures when (OK sometime after) my return.

Forty Thousand Headmen

I haven't paid close attention to the Democratic convention, and doubt I will to the Republican one. One of the main reasons is that they don't matter. The nominee is a foregone conclusion, so all you have is a bunch of speeches in which politicians lay out a wonderful vision of why their guy should be elected. The problem is that the speeches are pretty much devoid of meaning. A long laundry list of ideas, visions and claims but no idea of the hierarchy of values of the candidate. I'm not claiming that these politicians are lying -- they aren't -- but the problem is when push comes to shove, which ideas, visions, and yes, values are more important?

You take a backseat to no one in defending America, and you take a back seat to no one in multi-national cooperation and alliance building. You see a clear danger to the security of America, so you take action. You begin to build that multinational alliance, but discover that the UN is willing to issue only threats, but not take action. What do you do? You discover that your allies agree that there is a problem, but think negotiation will resolve the issue without force. Do you negotiate, or use force? How long do you do negotiate before you use force? Just how do you balance the interests and desires of America against those of allies? Both are important, but how do you resolve the inevitable conflicts.

You can think of your own examples without trying too hard.

And it isn't just about politicians. I'm sure if you polled people, 98 out of a 100 would agree that honesty is important: you shouldn't lie. All 98 of those people have told a lie sometime in their life. They all had a good reason, good enough to do something they think would otherwise be wrong. No there would be a bunch of different reasons good enough, all the way from "if I told the truth I would be embarrassed" to "if I told the truth somebody would die". If you're trying to judge somebody's honesty, the question isn't whether they value honesty, but at what point do they start lying.

So if you want to hear a pleasing stream of platitudes, some delivered quite engagingly, tune into the convention. If you want an idea how people will balance competing values, look at their actions.

This And That

Comment Spam is starting to drive me nuts. Yes, I have MTBlacklist and I'm not afraid to use it. I think the answer is to sic pistol packing Tanya on them, though. I added a couple of sites to my blacklist this morning, and within five minutes I'd blocked seven comment attempts. My site traffic is up because now the little dears don't add one or two comments, they add ten or twelve. I'm sorry to say, but you can no longer use the word "poker" in the comments.

Yesterday I posted about Theresa Kerry, and now I'm the number seven search result for her at Yahoo! Isn't this blog thing great !?!

I'm not watching the Democratic Convention, and I hope to avoid the Republican one too. I think I'm with my fellow Americans on this one for a change.

Is it just me, but are the boys at Q and O adding posts faster than you can read them?

We were warned that The Passion of the Christ was going to increase anti-semitism, and it didn't. We were warned that concealed carry in Missouri would increase murders as traffic accidents and arguments over a can of peas wouldresult in wild west shootouts, and it didn't. I'm wondering why if the left worries about America being disliked in the world, they don't denounce Mikey Moore's 9-11 opus because it will increase anti-Americanism. Will Theresa Kerry tell the French to shove their un-Americanism? Hey, if the NYT could finally admit that they are indeed a liberal newspaper, anything is possible.

Compare and Contrast

In our never ending cycle of the scandal du jour, I'd like to take a look at a couple of recent ones. First up, Sandy Berger removing documents (and perhaps adding fake ones) from the National Archives. Sandy has offered the "I'm a chucklehead" defense. Look, nobody takes classified documents accidentally. The documents have brightly colored covers and back sheets, every page is distinctively marked, and a professional like Berger knows the rules about handling such documents. He knew exactly what he was doing -- we don't know what or why. But he was up to no good; he was trying to either cover his butt (most likely) or help the Kerry campaign. I think it would be a terrible precendence to laugh off both the mis-handling of classified documents or fail to consider he was putting his reputation above the safety of Americans.

And then there was Theresa Kerry's kerfuffle with a reporter. I don't think this is a big deal. Funny, but not a big deal. Yes, she's a hypocrite -- going on about civility and then going after a reporter -- but then we're all hypocrites. It's funny that the Democrats have been whining about being called un-American, and then she goes and calls people that. But the whole using the word and then not realizing it, well, I'm willing to cut her slack on that (although, again, very funny). She's not running for president -- her husband is. She goofed. No big deal.

I think it's interesting that a lot of the focus has gone into the "Shove it" part. I almost wonder if she didn't go back over and say it to deflect notice from her "un-American" remark. That's the goof. I think most Americans have no problem with somebody telling a reporter to "shove it" -- either the sentiment or the language. Most people are assuming that she went back over because she found out who the reporter was that questioned her; I think she may have gone back over because she found out she really did say "un-American".

But I think these two stories do point up the need to take what is serious seriously, and what is merely ironic laughingly. Partisans on the right will want to take Theresa Kerry's words in the worst possible way. Well, you're welcome to your paranoia. And for those who are partisans of the left, just remember that we're all human when somebody on the right goofs up. I think every American should take Berger's actions seriously. But we shouldn't make the avatar mistake - he isn't the represenative of all Democrats. The right shouldn't make him out to be, and the left shouldn't defend him because of that.

A More Full Transcript

There have been some shocking scandals recently what with Sandy Berger under investigation, Theresa Kerry telling off a reporter for doing his job, and Andrew Sullivan endorsing John Kerry for President because while Kerry may or may not support the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) banning gay marriage, he knows full well George W. supports it. Here at Funmurphys: the blog we've done some "real journalism" and discovered that the principals have been Dowdified - that is their quotes have had verbiage selectively removed to make a point the media wanted to make, but not one the speaker intended.

The abbreviated quotes:

"I inadvertently removed a few classified documents" -- Sandy Berger

"You're putting words in my mouth" -- Theresa Kerry

"The FMA wasn't everything" -- Andrew Sullivan

The full quotes:

"During the course of trying to deliberately remove every copy of a particular classified document, I inadvertently removed a few other classified documents"

"You're putting my words back into my mouth "

"The FMA wasn't everything, it was the only thing"

This post is based on what I thought was a (rare) pretty good comment of mine over at JustOneMinute

Food For Thought

Somebody searched the Washington Post website for the words let’s not David Broder and this blog was the number 1 result. Number 2 was a Washington post page, followed by a mixture of “real journalists” and blogs.

This is amazing. No, not that any blog would mention the amazingly boring David Broder, but that a blog with little traffic would beat out a newspaper at it’s own site on a search of it’s owncolumnist. It would like asking for a power tool at Home Depot and having the manager tell you could get the best deal on it at a T-shirt store down the street.

I wonder. Google stormed to the number one search engine with algorithms that rank blogs highly. They’ve tinkered with the formula, but blogs keep coming out on top. I wonder if they bought blogger because they noticed that using neutral yet relevant algorithms blogs kept coming out on top. Could it be Google figures even if they can't point you to the best match, they'll point you to somebody who can?

It's a common refrain among those bloggers who keep tabs on the media -- "Don't they know how to use Google?" And if they do, or even when searching newspaper sites, they keep coming across blogs. Is this the sort of thing that is causing a change in attitude within Big Media, as reported by Jeff Jarvis?

I'd much rather think about this kind of hit than all the ones I get looking for lady's hirsute pits.

Missouri Elections

Since Archpundit inexplicably covers only one race in Missouri, I figured I'd take up the slack for the rest of the state.

First up is St. Louis County executive. I’m limiting the choices to the big three: Charlie Dooley (D), Gene McNary (R), and Kurt Odenwald (R). All three strike me as nice men who mean well, and in the interest of full disclosure I’ll point out that in the distant past I have been to Gene McNary’s house where I was supplied with free food and drink. But for me, the race is pretty simple. I can’t tell the difference between Charlie at the helm of state and Buzz when he was secretly in the hospital, only Buzz got a lot more attention. Gene’s platform, near as I can tell, is the county was great when I ran it 50 years ago, and it will be great if you just put me back in charge. And Kurt’s centerpiece is a “redevelopment fund.” In other words, this race just makes you want to jangle your keys and chant “boring.” But I know who I’m voting for. Both Charlie and Gene strike me as the kind of guys who never had to worry about their weight one day of their lives. So I’m voting for the stout guy, yep, short and plump Kurt is my man.

For governor, the field is crowded, but again the reality is that only three have a shot: Matt Blunt (R), Claire McCaskill (D), and Bob Holden (D) the incumbent otherwise known as “one term Bob” – even by Democrats. Bob has all the charisma of a dead mackeral, and Claire apparently can be bought for $10,000 and a case of beer. All Matt has to do is sit back, watch Bob and Claire claw each other's eyes out, run the same ads they're running against each other, and coast to victory. OK, maybe people will vote for Karen Dee Lee Skelton-Memhardt on the theory that's really two people, but I think people with hyphenated last names are at a disadvantage in Missouri.

Kit Bond is up for re-election as senator this year. In the interest of full disclosure, I have an aunt who claims to have been Kit's nanny a long, long time ago. Sensing blood in the water, the democrats are running everybody, but the favorite to win the primary is Nancy Farmer. I always confuse her for Jill Farmer, a blonde babe who was a local TV consumer reporter before she retired to raise a family and appear in TV commercials. Jill replaced Mandy Murphey as the consumer reporter for Fox 2, another blonde babe but one who I dislike for two reasons - Mandy had a perpetually big smile which got in the way of stories where a big smile wasn't called for, and she misspelled "Murphy" so now I'm constantly encountering her fans who want to stick an 'e' in Murphy. If enough people confuse Nancy with Jill, she has a shot. Otherwise, Missourians will vote their interest - no other senator is as entertaining as Kit Bond, and he is ruthless in looking out for our local interests, the rest of the country can go hang.

Jay Nixon should win as Attorney General again - he's done a fine job and with challengers with names like Dewey Crepeau I don't see much danger for him.

The race for state treasurer is crowded - both because the current governor used the office as a stepping stone and the incumbent is running for an office without term limits. I have no idea who'll win nominations in this race. State Senator Anita Yeckel complained in a letter to the editor at the Post today because they described her legislative record as lackluster (I wonder what they called Russ Carnahan's?) by pointing out her many accomplishments as a legislator. What she misses is that the Post editorial board only cares about guns (against), gays (for), abortion (for), and God (against). Since her legislation had to do with overhauling banking and small business regulation, stamping out Meth labs, and brownfield development -- important stuff but not what they care about -- her record is "lackluster." My favorite, Al "convicted felon" Hanson is running for treasure instead of auditor. He'll probably get my vote again, but since it wasn't enough for a victory last time, I doubt it will be enough this time.

I expect Todd Akin to cruise to victory in the 2nd district as Gephardt and Clay swiped a lot of Democratic voters from the district during the 2000 redistricting to keep themselves from falling below 60% in their elections.

And now we come to the third district where the scramble is on to fill Dick Gephardt's old slot. I don't think a Republican could win in the district (see above paragraph). So Steve Stoll is my man in this race. Archpundit loves Jeff Smith. Frankly, I'm not impressed. Here's a guy who teaches political science at Washington University and what are the quotes he gets in the paper -- "Bush is a complete moron" and "Somewhere a village in Texas is missing it's idiot" (which is a Molly Ivins line). Impressive analysis, Professor. What's his big policy idea -- universal healthcare. Maybe he's brilliant and that's what it takes to win in the third. But for a guy of youth, intellegence, and boundless energy, it seems an old, stupid, and tired platform to run on.

There are two constitutional amendments on the primary ballot. The first is an amendment for the gambling industry (again) so that Rockaway Beach can have a casino. While I'm personally tired of amending the Missouri constitution every couple of years to extend gambling (first we had riverboat gambling, then slots, then boats in moats), they've all passed so I guess this one will pass too. Then every dried up old town will be asking for an amendment so they can have a casino. I guess this way some of the gambling money stays here in Missouri to pay for all the ads the industry floods us with to get the amendments.

The second amendment is to define marriage to be between a man and a women. I think it will pass in socially conservative Missouri. There was a big fight earlier between Holden and Blunt as to whether the vote should be held during the primary or the election - Holden hoping to get his base out for the primary and Blunt his base out for the election. Holden won in the Missouri Supreme court, so we'll be voting on it in the primary. Since I'm all for enshrining discrimination in the Constitution, I'm all for the amendment. If it pases, all the dowdy gays will move to Massachusetts or California while all the swinging gays will come here and gamble in Rockaway beach.

Missed Again

Tanya opens the floor to jokes; By the time I can post, she's cut the mic off. I'm keeping one in reserve, but here's one I wanted to post:

A wealthy old lady decided to go on a photo safari in Africa. She took her faithful welsh corgi along for company. One day, the corgi starts chasing butterflies and before long the corgi discovers that he is lost. So, wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch.

The corgi thinks, "OK, I'm in deep trouble now!" Then he noticed some bones on the ground close by, and immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the corgi exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here." Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid-stride, as a look of terror comes over him, and he slinks away into the trees.

"Whew," says the leopard. "That was close. That corgi nearly had me."

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection
from the leopard. So, off he goes.

But the corgi saw him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figured that something must be up. The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard.

The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine."

Now the corgi sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back, and thinks, "What am I going to do now?" But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet...and just when they get close enough to hear the corgi says...

"Where's that monkey? I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"

Everyone Gets a Promotion

I called my father and told him, "we've reconsidered: you're not just a good grandfather, you're a great grandfather." My stepdaughter Veronica and her husband Jeremy just had a new baby:

Austin Michael Pruitt
July 13, 2004 at 8pm
7lbs, 11 oz 19 inches

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
Leo J. Burke

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on"
Carl Sandburg

"Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Isn't Math Fun?

I try to read Best Of The Web daily. Earlier this week it ran an item about Math Hysteria, sparked by a math question asked of Jeb Bush. They printed the following reader's proof that 2=1:

Let a=1

Let b=1

Therefore a=b

Multiplying both sides by a gives a²=ab

Subtract 1 from the left and b (which equals 1) from the right: a²-1=ab-b

If you remember your quadratic equations, this factors to: (a+1)(a-1)=b(a-1)

Dividing both sides by a-1, we have a+1=b, or 1+1=1

Therefore 2=1

Needless to say, there is a problem with the proof, so the next day they ran a followup under the heading Of Subs, Screens and Springs where they said that about 200 readers wrote in a pointed out the proof was no good because they had divided by zero when they divided by (a-1).

Well.

I sent them the following email:

I can't believe you got 200 emails about your proof that 2 = 1 and nobody got it right. Everybody forgot their calculus while remembering their algebra. The real answer is that you proved that 1=1. You were fine up to:

but when you divided by (a-1) you incorrected evaluated the expression.

Since you weren't just dividing by zero, but dividing zero by zero, you should have used L'Hopital's rule (in case you didn't take calculus, you can see it here: http://www.math.hmc.edu/calculus/tutorials/lhopital/).

When you evaluate (a+1)(a-1)/(a-1) as a approaches 1, you take the derivative with respect to a which is (1)(1)/(1) or 1.

When you evaluate b(a-1)/(a-1) as a approaches 1 (again with the derivative), you have b(1)/(1), or b. So when you divide

by (a-1), as a approaches 1 you have

substituting 1 for b, we have:

Oddly enough, they didn't run a correction or my email. I'm crushed, but I'll still keep reading.

Christian Libertarian

Christian Libertarian - that's how Josh Claybourn describes himself. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I think that Christianity with its emphasis on faith is more libertarian than works (following the law) based religions.

What are the beliefs of Christianity (at least from my point of view) on law? Well, God does have laws. There are laws you have no choice about -- the physical laws that govern the universe. They are the same everywhere and universally obeyed by all of creation without any possible choice.

But there are also other laws, where we do have choice. Let's call them moral laws, and we can keep them, or we can break them. Up to this point, some other faiths would be agreeing with me. But here's where Christianity comes in -- nobody follows moral laws perfectly. We are all sinners is a basic Christian teaching. And what is the penalty for sin? Death. Now I happen to think that there are immediate consequences for vice and virtue, and there are defered consequences. But what's clear is, under God's law, every person on the planet has transgressed against God's moral laws, and the penalty for doing so is death. I see dead people, and they don't even realize they are dead.

So if we were to institute God's law as our own, we'd have to execute everybody on the planet. So really, what would be the point? And quite frankly, it seems awfully presumptious to pre-empt God. Since no man is saved by the law, why then should we try? And what would our plan of salvation be?

What then should our laws be based upon? Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is a good start. Human laws should be for our own use, not our own good. If God does not compel good, how and why should we, especially since our means are so much less. And as our means are so much less, so too should our laws be.

To be sure, there is overlap between God's moral law and what should be human laws - thou shalt not murder comes to mind. But who's going to enforce thou shalt not covet your neighbor's spouse or stuff? Or love God with all your heart, or love your neighbor as yourself? Jesus called out the last two as the wellsprings of all the commandments, and is there any real way to humanly enforce these laws?

Now don't take this to mean that I don't think following God's laws isn't important -- I just think that is between ourselves and God, with the help of our fellow children in Christ, not the local constable and magistrate. The law doesn't save. Repeat that after me: the law doesn't save -- Jesus saves. It's okay if humans don't outlaw everything that God does. By all means we should never shirk declaring what's right and what's wrong nor should we lose sight of the power of our example.

More Favorite Subject

Rand answered my musings below. What he's let on so far (I appreciate that he can't tell everything he knows) is intriguing. If you take the wing of the Busemann biplane, which is a theoretical model going back to the thirties (twenties?-- I took my Liepmann and Roshko home last night and left it there), at zero alpha and at discrete Mach numbers controlled by the geometry it has no wave drag as the shockwaves are completely contained within the two wings. Sadly, it also generates no lift at this condition because of symmetry. I don't have a picture, but essentially the airfoils are very roughly triangular with the upper one flat on the top and the lower one flat on the bottom, so a chordwise view looks like a 2-D converging-diverging nozzle - or a De Laval nozzle. Interestingly, this nozzle is used mainly to accelerate subsonic to supersonic flow, or to achieve constant flow rates despite fluctuations in back-pressure (pressure downstream of the exit), or as rocket engine nozzles. Here though, the flow is already supersonic before entering.

In the Busemann biplane, the airflow is compressed beneath the upper wing and thus has higher pressures on the bottom that the top, which is lift. The bottom wing would operate in the exact same way, only upside down which leads to no net lift. The secret of lift at zero alpha is then to replace most of the lower wing with a jet of air with higher energy than ambient. While the lower wing would provide a small amount of negative lift, the upper wing due to its much larger area and much greater compression would provide far more positive lift. The question is, will this jet eliminate the shocks from the upper wing in the same way a correctly sized solid lower wing would? I don't know -- and even if theory tells you it's possible, that doesn't mean you could actually achieve such a state with real equipment in real life (which Rand is clear about himself).

One of the interesting things is that the wing would operate at a fixed Mach number without shocks. Since you couldn't vary the angle of attack, the only control of lift at cruise is altitude. Thus you'd fly a particular altitude for a particular weight -- once you got to your cruise Mach, the plane would either float up or down until it reached the altitude that its lift equaled its weight. Then it would float steadily upwards during cruise as it burned fuel.

Even if such a wing did work, life isn't all roses. You have the structural issues of making the wing, especially the lower one which will have to be small, hollow for this high energy air to flow through and out of, and strong enough to take the loads. And you still have the whole rest of the plane. What do you do about the shockwave the nose of the aircraft generates? I know it can be mitigated by high fineness ratio, but not eliminated. I suppose the nose shape could be such that the shock only went upward. If not, this shock also has implications for wing placement - the wing will most likely operate without shocks in a very narrow Mach range. Behing the nose shock the Mach number will be lower than in front of it, and unless you can design this wing to also handle have a region through a shockwave, the wing will have to be completly behind the shock. There are also control surfaces to worry about. It's fine to have your wing produce constant lift, but control surfaces have to be able to vary their forces and moments. You'd get shocks and wave drag off of them. You could use engine thrust vector control, but you'd need it in all three axes.

I think you still have a problem in getting to cruise. This wing wouldn't be particularly good at subsonic flight, and I'm not sure you could put flaps in the wing without causing problems at cruise. Thrust vector control would help again here, but you sizing the wing for takeoff and climb versus cruise would be a problem. And because the wing design allows for zero wave drag only at certain supersonic Mach numbers, you'd still have to blast your way through the transonic drag wall at high angle of attack. My engineering judgement tells me that such a transport, when all said in done, will have more expensive acquistion and operating costs than current subsonic transports. High enough to outweigh the benefits of faster travel

So what I see is a fairly straightforward science problem -- will this semi-solid Busemann biplane wing design eliminate wave drag -- coupled with a host of engineering problems. And really, this is the sort of thing NASA should be all over. Start the funding off to assess the science problem first, and then if it looks feasible, start on the engineering problems. Solving engineering problems is what puts the joy into engineering.

A Favorite Topic

Aerodynamics. I know everybody loves the subject. OK, it put food on my table for a long time and I have to admit that after a few years away I grow nostalgic. I came across a a post that was a followup to an argument in the comments at Transterrestial Musings about shockwaves, which led me to an article by Rand Simberg at TechCentralStation about a company that was trying to develop vehicles that could fly supersonically without shockwaves.

Let's say you eliminate or reduce the shockwaves associated with supersonic flight to the point that noise isn't an issue. Drag is still the enemy (drag is always the enemy to an aerodynamicist). And by that I mean, even if you have the same drag coefficient at supersonic as you do at subsonic -- your drag, and thus fuel consumption, will increase substantially. Drag increases as the square of the velocity, so if you go twice as fast, the drag is four times higher. Your increased velocity isn't enough to offset this, but it does help; in this case, assuming an engine (not necessarily the same one) with the same efficiency at the higher speed as the lower speed, the fuel consumption per mile will be double at twice the speed.

Next up is the concern Rand raises about high flight. I'm not convinced this goes away. Not only does drag go up as the square of the velocity; so does lift. So what you say? The problem is that for maximum range, you want to fly at your max L/D or lift over drag. But at cruise, lift is fixed -- it's the weight of the airplane. At a given velocity, you'll fly at an angle of attack based on your weight since lift is also a function of angle of attack. And your L/D is a function of angle of attack - and generally, your max L/D is going to occur at a high angle of attack, close to the onset of stall. So for range, you want the smallest wing possible - so you can cruise at your max L/D. The only way to control angle of attack for a constant velocity, constant weight is to control altitude - the higher the altitude, the higher the angle of attack. This is why planes perform step climbs during their flights - as they burn fuel and lose weight, they have to climb to keep their angle of attack, and thus their L/D, up. (Ideally you'd climb constantly, but air traffic control doesn't allow this.) So all things being equal, if you're flying twice as fast, you want a wing with a quarter of the area. But you also have to be able to fly low and slow, since that's where you start out. So you if you fly twice as fast at cruise, you have to either develop high lift devices (e.g. flaps) that are four times more effective (not likely), or you have to have more wing than is optimum for cruise and fly higher to compensate (and you probably still won't be as good as subsonic transport). When you throw in that the kind of design that will not create shockwaves will have poor subsonic performance, I'm understating the case. So yes, if you didn't have to worry about takeoff and climb to cruise, you could put on a smaller wing (or whatever you call your lift device) and fly lower.

While you might be able to have a more conventional engine placement, I'm not sure what kind of engines you're going to use. Given that there are no shocks, or only weak ones, will you need scramjets - engines that work with supersonic airflow? Or will you somehow slow the airflow to subsonic for the engines without shocks? The SR-71, which flies the kind of speed profiles we're talking about uses a hybrid turbojet/ramjet engine. Will something similar be needed? I know the design is pretty old, but those engines gulp fuel at low speeds.

In the comments, one of Rand's critics claimed Newton's Laws cause shocks, which led into a long digression over the rocket thrust equation. Let me just note the proper equations are Navier-Stokes, and no I'm not going to discuss them much here beyond noting that my fellow students and I were impressed by my fluid dynamics professor who could write the darn things out from memory - including various coordinate systems and assumptions (inviscid, incompressible, etc.) It may well be that you can formulate designs and circumstances where you don't get shockwaves in supersonic flight; I just don't know how real they are.

What is interesting to me was the connection of the shockwave to circulation. Let's take a step back. Current theory (and practice) tells us that if you have a blunt leading edge, you get a strong shock in front of the leading edge with high drag. If you have a sharp leading edge, you get a weak attached oblique shock with much lower drag. The claim is that with enough leading edge sharpness and the proper contouring behind, you can fly supersonically without shockwaves, except circulation (flow around the airfoil) which produces lift elimates the shockless effect. Why would this be? Well, without lift on a sharp symmetric airfoil the stagnation point would the the leading edge. If you add circulation, perhaps you move the stagnation point so that it is no longer on the leading edge. Could this be the problem? The flow splits at the stagnation point (that's where it stops), and if it isn't sharp where it splits, you get a shockwave? If that is the case, well, we're screwed. No amount of adding in balancing circulation downstream will matter, and adding it to the flow over the wing to cancel it out will mean an end to the lift from the wing. Now you could make an unsymmetrical airfoil such that at the cruise condition the stagnation point is on the sharp point of the airfoil, but you'd have shockwave drag getting to that point (or if you had to fly off design point.)

In a nutshell, I don't think it will work, and even if it does, you still have to be able to mass produce it. But that's the fun of engineering -- solving difficult problems, especially the ones you don't see the answer to when you start.

Will this revolutionize air transport? Well, Rand is clearly right that it will have a better chance than what's come before, but I don't know if that will be enough. Unless you increase engine efficiency, you'll have twice the fuel consumption at cruise and fly higher than currently. So the question is, is there a large enough market of people willing to pay higher prices for faster flights? And that may be the largest uncertainty; you won't know the answer until you've actually built the planes and put them into operation.

UPDATE: Rand has posted a response that provides more information. Some of my thoughts are obsolete at this point.

Memories Of The Way It Was

The chow hall staff part of this entry by Donald Sensing reminds me of my time in Pakistan (see the pictures -- be thankful you can't smell them, unlike Lileks' soap) when one of my government co-travellers wouldn't tip the waiters in the hotel (the Karachi Holiday Inn) for breakfast because the cost was included as part of the stay. We all put down 10 rupees (a little over 50 cents at the time) but Terry. If they did something special like get you watermelon, we'd throw down 15 or 20 rupies (about a buck). Terry never tipped a red rupee at breakfast, was stingy at lunch and dinner, was demanding and abusive at all times, and never could figure out why he got such lousy service and the rest of us, polite, thankful for goodies, and relentless tippers, got such good service. If we ordered the same thing two times in a row at a meal, the waiters would place that order as soon as our fannies hit the leather. Even when we ordered something different, we'd be finished with our meal and Terry wouldn't have his yet. No matter how many times we urged him to tip and be nice, he couldn't draw the connection between his behavior and its results.

Terry complained about the food in Susie Wong's -- the hotel's Chinese restaurant -- which was delicious, but Terry claimed it wasn't authentic because it wasn't like the Chinese food back home in Milwaukee. Now when I say he complained, I mean he'd complain to us and then berate the staff. He complained about the music as well, until one evening he brought his own tape for them to play. For what ever reason, the replay was a bit slow, with all the notes flattened, and it sounded terrible. After a little bit, Terry blew up, berated the waiter some more, and we avoided eating with him as much as we could.

Amazing Race 5

This week the latest Amazing Race debuted. In the first show, you're just getting to know the contestants, but at an hour and a half, I think we got a good look at them. So of course my favorite is the father/daughter team of Jim and Marsha -- they get along, Jim didn't seem to be slowed by the injury to his knee he got from falling at the pier at the start that took 20 something stiches to close, and Marsha is a law student and NFL cheerleader. My least favorite -- the evil humpty dumpty clones Marshal and Lance.

After the Tuetonic partners, Reichen and Chip, won the last race, for the first time CBS doesn't have any gays on the show. Instead, we have a little person, Charla, who's certainly got spunk, and wears better than her cousin Mirna. In past shows, there were always some tough young male teams that did well, but this year forgoes that risk and gives us mostly male/female teams. So far, so good -- only one really annoying team, and no powerhouses you know will be in the top three. But there is still time for a Flo or Ian to emerge.

Speaking of past Amazing Race contestants, the incomperable Kevin and Drew have a show on Discovery (thursday at 9PM CST). I saw most of the first half and it was good: the buddies are at an allegator wrestling farm. The second half they were harvesting cranberries. Apparently they travel around the country in an RV doing odd jobs -- sounds like The Simple Life 2 with funny bald guys instead of annoying spoiled chicks.

Mighty Casey

This weeks entry for Picture Envy

Oh The Indignity

I got my hair cut last night. If it would grow long without annoying me, I'd let it grow forever. It isn't just the waste of half an hour to an hour getting it cut that bugs me. The stylist (sadly, the noble profession of barber appears dead, and long ago I made peace with that reality) didn't just do the normal hair; she removed the hair that grows on my ears, in my ears, trimmed my mustache, and even trimmed my eyebrows. At least she didn't go up my nose, but I know it won't be long before that indignity arrives. And at the end comes the mirror ritual -- oh they claim it's so you can see what kind of job they did in the back, but no barber ever did that to me. Nope, it's to remind you of the Al Gore spot, so you can see how much it's grown since the last haircut. The cruelest cut of all - as a man ages, the hair grows ever more luxurient where nobody wants it, but retreats from just where you want it. When I told my loving spouse about all the extra removal, she asked why they didn't go after my back while they were at it.

What Rot? That Rot!

The LA times finally issues a correction about Paul Bremmer's farewell address - he gave one, the LA times reported he hadn't.

What's telling for me is their reason for not knowing -- it wasn't publicized to the Western press. In other words, because the CPA didn't give them a press release and a transcript, the press covering Iraq had no idea that he gave a farewell address. The press that purports to have their finger on the pulse of Iraq for us hasn't a clue, and doesn't realize it. Next time you read about how the Iraqis feel or what they think or what is going on in Iraq, just remember this.

And since this appeared in a "news analysis" piece, let me remind you, "news analysis" is just a fancy word for "opinion" that deliberately tries to make you think its actual news.

That's one of the rots in modern journalism - the lack of investigative ability and the reliance on handouts -- from "sources", from organizations, even from readers. Far too often a story is generated by the source, not the press. A think tank or advocacy organization (e.g. The Center for Science in the Public Interest) issues a press release about a study, and poof instant story that relies on the press release. I was amazed to discover through Google how many stories are created this way, and how reliant they are on the press release, with no critical examination of what lies behind the press release. Oh, perhaps the token "critic", but face value belief in the way the story is written. And then you go to the organization's web site, and you read the press release, and you see how much of the "story" is a verbatim copy of the press release, and then you read the substance behind the press release, and you realize how much of the context is missing, or how many of the caveats are missing, or how laughably "scientific" the study is, and you realize you've been duped.

Or a "source" drops a dime and settles a score, and a hit piece appears, and if you know anything about the situation you know it's a hit piece, but the reporter either doesn't care (heck, the response is a whole nother story that will fall in your lap) or doesn't know enough to know better.

There is a world of difference between an organization that relies on "facts" handed to it, and an organization that goes out and uncovers the facts themselves. And since news organizations don't fact check in any meaningful sense, what we have is a press that purports to keep us informed but simply provides us with information that particular people and organizations want us to see for their own reasons. The whole breast implant scare was cooked up by the journalist trial lawer complex to poison jury pools -- journalists used stories pre-packaged by trial lawyers copmplete with fake science but real anecdote.

And this is what passes for journalism. And this is why I no longer believe a word written in the paper other than direct quotes -- and even then I'm not sure.

Without a dialtone you can fool yourself

Perhaps you have experienced this: a long silence in a cell phone conversation leads you to believe that what you said is so profound you have put the listener into an crisis of existential doubt or contemplation of heretofore unrecognized vistas of possibility. Hey, it could happen. More likely the connection has dropped. There has to be a new word for this, the mistaken sensation of having delivered a profound remark when it was just a line drop. This can occur on any communications medium that doesn't have a dial tone (e.g. most cell phone connections, many VoIP (Voice-over-IP or Internet telephony) and some instant message systems) when the long silence following your last statement (or lack of interruption) leads you to believe you have your audience enthralled.

And for some other ways that you can fool yourself take a look at Harvard's Your Disease Risk (hat tip to Research Buzz and figure out where your diet/lifestyle have put you in the various lotteries for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and stroke. In a health context you might interpret the flatline EEG as the dialtone, but determining who answers or who you answer to after "hearing it" is an exercise I leave for the reader.

What Is Truth

It used to be that "military intelligence" was the standard cite for an oxymoron. "Journalism ethics" has taken over.

On day 3, a quagmire was declared. Ever since Saddam government's collapsed, the situation has been worsening, the insurgency intensifying. I used to wonder how much worse it can get. I used to think it was slanted reporting by the media. But now I see that only 18% of Iraqis think it can get any worse, while 64% think it can only get better. Well, that's one interpretation of the numbers.

Oozy Rat In A Sanitary Zoo

Jonah G at The Corner reprints an email my father could have sent (if he sent email, that is):

Dear Jonah - When you say "trial lawyers," I think you mean "plaintiffs' attorneys." Or more specifically, "contingent fee plaintiffs' attorneys." I'm a "trial lawyer," but I hardly think you'd object to what I do all day long - defend corporate clients from malicious and baseless lawsuits filed by overzealous plaintiffs' attorneys. So, when you say "trial lawyers," be careful - you may be alienating an innocent sector of your NRO readership.

The phrase the Corner (and the GOP) is looking for is "ambulence chaser" (scum sucking pigdog isn't specific enough).

Ma Is As Selfless As I Am

This is why I hate to leave town: As soon as I do, Busymom blows into town and has a ball without me. She has her pictures up already, and I haven't even downloaded mine yet. That's the difference between moms and dads in a nutshell: they tell you how busy they are by listing what they've already accomplished, we tell you how busy we are by listing what we still have to accomplish.

No Lemons, No Melon

I hope you had a great 4th of July, I know I did. The Murphy Family spent the long weekend at the lake, Lake of the Ozarks that is, and had fun morning, noon, and night. Having fun sure is exhausting and I haven't fully recovered days later. We were celebrating the Declaration of Independence properly, as we were aggressively pursuing happiness. Our friends the Fischers invited us down to watch fireworks on the lake and ride around in their boat -- how could we refuse? We wound up watching the fireworks from their boat anchored in the cove they were staying at. Most of the fireworks were provided by Red Oak resort, but a nearby marina, various other enterprises and individuals shot of plenty as well. There were so many from every direction, you didn't know where to look.

Too Hot To Hoot

In honor of the 4th of July when blogging will be light and fun will be heavy, I direct you to Lady Liberty.

Long may she stand!