Category Archives: Sailing

Energy, History, Sailing, Security

US Navy Doom and Gloom

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The War Nerd has nothing good to say about the state of the US Navy in a story called This Is How the Carriers Will Die

You know that Garmin satnav you use to find the nearest Thai place when the in-laws are visiting? If you were the Navy brass, that should have scared you to death. The Mac on your kid’s bedroom desk should have scared you. Every time electronics got smaller, cheaper and more efficient, the carrier became more of a death trap. Every time stealth tech jumped another step, the carrier was more obviously a bad idea. Smaller, cooler-running engines: another bad sign for the carrier. Every single change in technology in the past half a century has had “Stop building carriers!” written all over it. And nobody in the navy brass paid any attention.

The lesson here is the same one all of you suckers should have learned from watching the financial news this year: the people at the top are just as dumb as you are, just meaner and greedier. And that goes for the ones running the US surface fleet as much as it does for the GM or Chrysler honchos. Hell, they even look the same. Take that Wagoner ass who just got the boot from GM and put him in a tailored uniform and he could walk on as an admiral in any officer’s club from Guam to Diego Garcia. You have to stop thinking somebody up there is looking out for you.

Remember that one sentence, get it branded onto your arm: “Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.”

Recommendations are found in the analysis of middle-east combat:

The difference between the Israeli navy and ours is simple: the Israelis learned their lesson and switched to smaller, lighter missile craft. No more ocean-going muscle cars to act like giant magnetized targets. The newer Israeli boats are small enough that when you lose one, like they did in the 2006 war to land-based Hezbollah surface to surface missiles, you don’t suffer 100 casualties.

Got that? No more muscle cars. This is amazing stuff to think about as I find Americans who continue to emphasize “go big” as the best measure of success. The clear lesson is to go efficient, or maybe even to go small, or face a predictable catastrophe.

History, Sailing, Security

Pirate Google

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A site has launched as a form of dissent to the Pirate Bay case. Pirate Google provides torrent file search using a simple Google custom search.

You can do this with any regular Google search by appending your query with filetype:torrent. This technique can be used for any type of file supported by Google.

The intention of this site is to demonstrate the double standard that was exemplified in the recent Pirate Bay Trial. Sites such as Google offer much the same functionality as The Pirate Bay and other Bit Torrent sites but are not targeted by media conglomerates such as the IFPI as they have the political and legal clout to defend themselves unlike these small independent sites.

The logic is obviously and perhaps intentionally thin, such as the fact that Google usually just points a search back to a Pirate Bay URL. Nonetheless, it poses a good question. If you aid in a search for data, are you complicit when unauthorized access to that data is successful? Maybe complicit is not the right word because it includes a notion of awareness. Aiding and abetting could be a better phrase, since it separates awareness. Philosophy courses must be a barrel of fun today compared to the Hume, Locke, Buber, etc. textbook examples I used to have to process.

Colorful logo. How long before this starts turning up on t-shirts, let alone boats in the Aden Straits?

Sailing, Security

Magic of Sled Dogs

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The metabolic strategy of sled dogs is a mystery, as reported by the New York Times

Dr. Michael S. Davis, an associate professor of veterinary physiology at Oklahoma State University and an animal exercise researcher, said: “Before the race, the dogs’ metabolic makeup is similar to humans. Then suddenly they throw a switch — we don’t know what it is yet — that reverses all of that. In a 24-hour period, they go back to the same type of metabolic baseline you see in resting subjects. But it’s while they are running 100 miles a day.”

Humans get tired after repeated strenuous activity that depletes fat stores. We have to shut down and rest. The dogs seem to escape this, which is why DARPA has funded Davis to figure out why and how.

If Dr. Davis and the Texas A&M researchers identify the biomarker, or “switch,” that could help the military understand and develop ways to control and prevent the physiological effects of fatigue in strenuous cases like combat.

“Soldiers’ duties often require extreme exertion, which causes them to become fatigued,” Jan Walker of Darpa wrote in an e-mail message. “Severe fatigue can result in a compromised immune system, making soldiers more susceptible to illness or injury.”

Although this sounds magical, Dominique Grandjean (DVM, PhD, HDR Colonel, Chief veterinarian, Paris Fire Brigade Professor, Alfort National Veterinary School Head of Canine Breeding and Sport Medicine Unit) gave a presentation called “Racing sled dogs most frequent health problems” that might suggest otherwise. It lists the top five reasons given for dropping dogs during Iditarod and the number one slot is fatigue. Slide 12 says “Stress a key word for sled dogs” and calls out metabolic stress as well as cellular stress. Later in the presentation she discusses early fatigue. Thus, even if they can harness the magic of sled dogs DARPA still will need to deal with fatigue and stress symptoms.