Quotulatiousness

March 19, 2012

Illinois railfan photographer threatened with being added to terror watch list

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:17

Photography within 550 feet of a railway line is illegal in Illinois, according to a police deputy who likes to make up his own laws:

A man who was taking pictures near a train track in Illinois was confronted by a sheriff’s deputy who informed him that he was breaking the law, so therefore he had no choice but to report the photographer to Homeland Security.

The photographer, who describes himself as a disabled war veteran and former state worker, was left wondering if the deputy had any legal basis for adding him to a terrorist watch list.

[. . .]

RustyBug, who never states which sheriff’s department harassed him, said the deputy told him it was against the law to shoot within 550 feet from train tracks, which is complete hogwash.

RustyBug said he really wasn’t buying it, but he wasn’t sure either, which shows us the importance of knowing the law when it comes to photography because too many cops don’t know the law.

An unanticipated down-side to e-books

Filed under: Books, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:24

It’s possible that e-books actually make it harder to retain what we read:

I received a Kindle for my birthday, and enjoying “light reading,” in addition to the dense science I read for work, I immediately loaded it with mysteries by my favorite authors. But I soon found that I had difficulty recalling the names of characters from chapter to chapter. At first, I attributed the lapses to a scary reality of getting older — but then I discovered that I didn’t have this problem when I read paperbacks.

When I discussed my quirky recall with friends and colleagues, I found out I wasn’t the only one who suffered from “e-book moments.” Online, I discovered that Google’s Larry Page himself had concerns about research showing that on-screen reading is measurably slower than reading on paper.

This seems like a particularly troubling trend for academia, where digital books are slowly overtaking the heavy tomes I used to lug around. On many levels, e-books seem like better alternatives to textbooks — they can be easily updated and many formats allow readers to interact with the material more, with quizzes, video, audio and other multimedia to reinforce lessons. But some studies suggest that there may be significant advantages in printed books if your goal is to remember what you read long-term.

H/T to Tyler Cowen for the link.

Finland’s cold-cut warrior, RIP

Filed under: Economics, Europe, History, Media, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:13

The most unusual cold war hero died recently. Eero Iloniemi tells the story of Finland’s Väinö Purje and how his TV commercials featured in the Cold War in the Baltic:

While Purje is virtually unknown in the West his exploits are legendary in the Baltic States, especially in Estonia. Alo Lohmus of Estonia’s leading daily Postimees referred to Purje’s contribution to the Cold War as part of a ‘spiritual nuclear bomb’ that blew apart a corrupt system.

High praise, indeed, for a modest tradesman. That a butcher could gain such a position in a global conflict is one of the most curious chapters of Cold War history.

Due to its proximity to the Baltic Soviet republics, Finnish television broadcasts penetrated the Iron Curtain, into Estonia and on occasion Latvia. Purje, who was the star of Finnish retail chain Kesko’s food adverts, became a cult figure in Estonia. From 1974 to 1981 he featured in more than 100 television spots showcasing sausages and cutlets, all virtually unknown in the then Soviet republics.

The PR problem of NASA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Media, Politics, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:49

L. Neil Smith explains why and how NASA has managed to become so uninspiring (hint: it was deliberate).

The truth is, there are three kinds of people in the world, those to whom traveling to, landing on, settling, and terraforming the planet Mars requires no explanation, those for whom no explanation of any kind will ever suffice, and those who remain to be convinced.

Our job in that respect really amounts to putting the romance back into space exploration that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration carefully throttled out of it over the past half century. I think their secret motto was, “If you’re having any fun, you’re not doing it right.”

All that time, NASA and its supporters seemed to be asking desperately, why is the American public losing interest in what we’re doing? But the answer was in the mirror before them. In a desperate bid for false respectability, in a misplaced desire not to evoke visions of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or Captain Video, they ended up not evoking any visions at all, and thereby destroyed any reason for the average individual, the average man, woman, or child, to support their program.

I have also come to think — very reluctantly, believe me — that there has been a secret agenda, probably in echelons much higher than NASA itself, to prevent that average individual from ever getting into space, which may be why they opposed the whole “space tourism” idea so hysterically.

The beached corpse of a Caspian Sea Monster

Filed under: History, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

A LiveJournal post by Igor113 has lots of photos (and text in Russian) of a visit to the resting place of one of the most fascinating technological relics of the Soviet era — an Ekranoplan:

Google translate offers this as the introduction to Igor’s post:

Here are my hands and came up ekranoplana. Ya break a story about it for 3 or 4 parts: a winged-outside (1 or 2 parts), 2-winged inside the 3-winged dock.

In 1987 the water came, “Lun” the first ship of a series of missile-carrying combat WIG weighing 400 tons was the chief designer V.Kirillovyh. The ship was armed with three pairs of cruise missile 3M80 or 80M “Mosquito” (NATO membership designation SS-N-22 Sunburn). The second “Lun” is also being laid as a missile, but the outbreak of the conversion brought about changes, and planned to finish a rescue.

LTH:
Modification of the Lun
Wingspan, m 44.00
Length, m 73.80
Height, m ​​19.20
Wing area, m2 550.00
Weight, kg
Empty 243 000
maximum take-off 380 000
8 turbojet engine type NC-87
Thrust, kg 8 x 13 000
Maximum speed, km / h 500
Operational range, km 2000
The height of the flight on the screen, 5.1 m
Seaworthiness, 6.5 points
Crew 10
Armament: 6 IP ASM ZM-80 Mosquito

Wikipedia has more. In spite of the apparent derelict condition of the Lun, Wikipedia mentions plans to resume development in 2012.

Update: Charles Stross sent a tweet with a link to this satellite shot of the Lun in dry dock: http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=42.88184,47.65690&z=19&t=H

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