Transitional Man's New Writeups

December 11, 2009 (dream)

2009-12-12T05:15:24Z

I'm at the theater and it's almost showtime. The band is warming up, sounds like Glenn Miller. Actors and stagehands are running around getting ready. I'm there for a reason, which seems reasonable. One of my customers is a theater chain, and I have worked on a theater's fire alarm during a show. Still, I don't have my tools, and I'm dressed in civvies. I find a man who looks remotely like Allan Jones from the Marx Brothers' classic film A Night at the Opera. I ask him what he wants me to do.

"Do? Why, you're the director!" With a wink he hands me a playbill. There is is right there in black and white, I am listed as the play's director.

Oh boy. My cell rings, it's my stepmother. "We're right outside," she says. "Now what is your part in this?"

Unwilling to tell her an outright lie, I tell her she'll see soon enough. The stagehands are all grinning at me, they know better. It's like the play's entire cast and crew has…

Five Years, Four Fronts (review)

2009-10-27T00:40:28Z

Military memoirs come in several varieties. Some are apologies, where a figure defends his decisions when he is perceived to have failed. Others are better suited as political rather then combat memoirs, such as the disappointing Panzer Commander by Colonel Hans von Luck. But the best memoirs take you there with the author, into combat when the bullets are flying and artillery shells turn forests into splinters. The best of these might very well be Charles B. MacDonald's Company Commander, a memoir of his time commanding two infantry companies in the latter stages of World War II. MacDonald became a professional historian and his memoirs are backed by the solid and determined research of a professional while remaining an intimate account of the tremendous pressure and responsibilities of a combat leader operating directly at the front, responsible directly for the lives of the men he worked with. But MacDonald wrote as a victor, a man who fought in a good war against a…

Triumph of the Will (place)

2009-09-14T21:57:16Z

When we look back at Leni Reifenstahl's classic propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, it is too easy to miss what it meant when it came out in 1935. Westerners today live in reasonably effective democracies. We view Adolph Hitler through the lens of history. We know who he was: shattered, burning cities and millions of bodies make his true nature emphatically clear. We are also reasonably fat, happy and comfortable. We are not the German people who saw that film, or attended the 1934 Congress of the Nazi Party. We aren't the people Hitler and Joseph Goebbels sought to influence. In the age of the steady-cam Reifenstahl's use of moving cameras, distorted perspective and the use of aerial photography are old hat to us, so we forget how revolutionary they were at the time. To understand what it means we need to travel back to Germany in 1935.

Imagine that you are twenty-four years old. Uncle Rolf who bounced you on his knee during the war now walks with a limp because…

Pliers (thing)

2009-08-26T02:30:27Z

Pliers are one of the most common tools available to the consumer or professional. Pliers are used to grip or turn things, and operate by squeezing them closed in your hand. There are several different types of pliers but the most common are slip-joint pliers, linesman's pliers, needlenose pliers and some people consider channel-locks to be a form of pliers. The most important job a set of pliers does is grip. The two sections are the reason that a single tool is referred to as a "pair of pliers".

Slip-joint pliers are what most people think about when they use the word "pliers". Slip-joint pliers consist of two sections held together by an axle that shifts between two positions. The have a flat tip that closes completely in the outer position and remains open about 5mm in in the inner position. The flat outer section is good for gripping square or flat sections. Just inside is a larger rounded section good for gripping rounded things, like…

July 22, 2009 (place)

2009-07-22T22:19:51Z

Today I learned that at least three states are planning to close their highway rest areas due to recent budgetary problems. Virginia will barricade half their rest areas. Vermont I understand plans to demolish several of the buildings.

Why?

Why does the closing of a rest area mandate closing the building or barricading the lot? Okay, the state can't afford the maintenance services, sewer and electric. Shut them off. Lock up the building and leave. The parking lot, presumably, still works and will work for some time without routine maintenance.

The thing is, the operative word is rest. Get off the road. Get out of the car. Take a walk. Need to take a leak? Most rest areas come equipped with these things called trees, and they have served both man and woman ever since there were men and women. Realistically we don't need architecturally interesting (or ugly) pavillions with an army of flush automatic-flush toilets and vending machines.…

four wheel drift (how-to)

2009-07-18T01:51:07Z

In racing, it is possible to exceed the grip available on all four tires and still keep your right foot planted. That occurs when a driver enters a four wheel drift. A four wheel drift occurs when the car is traveling on a controlled path but has temporarily exceeded all the available grip from his tires. Normally this occurs on a type of high speed corner known as a sweeper. Imagine a car negotiating an eighty degree bend at approximately 90MPH (140kph). Like at Turn 2 at Nelson Ledges Road Course. The car is following its trajectory but is sliding ever so slightly to the outside of the corner. Inside the car the driver will feel the car get 'lighter' almost as if it had 'stepped up' on a piece of ice. But he or she need not lift. What has happened is that the car has passed beyond its tires available slip angle. But the car is pointed correctly and has barely exceeded the limits of grip. If the car threatens to understeer off the…