A fundamental principle in economics is that there are more wants than there are resources available to fill those wants. While there may be enough for everybody to have a little, there’s not enough for everyone to have as much as they want (read:I WANT IT ALL!!!). Doesn’t matter what “IT” is, there’s simply not enough currently available to go (all the way) around. So you need to get more.

First choice is go look for some more. (Well, for some groups, the FIRST option is to take some from other groups that already have some, but let’s set the military option aside for the moment and try a “friendlier” approach at the start.) Depending on what the resource is, it’s likely that you can find it SOMEWHERE just lying around. (Natural gas as an example is harder to come up with examples of, but even so there are occational times in certain locations where it is present at the surface without specialized equipment being required to get at it. Collecting and using this “natural” natural gas, on the other hand, might be problematic, but the principle holds). So, all you have to do is wander around long enough and far enough, find it, and take it back home.

Unless, of course, the source is located on the property of someone else who also want it…which goes back to the (for the moment ignored) military concept that possession is 99% of ownership. Negotiation might persuade the current possessor that their total utility (economic concept that provides a non-specific way to identify how to value different items in a meaningful way, so you really can compare apples to kumquats) would be enhanced if they “sell” you some of theirs. If the owner fully buys into the scarcity principle, they simply don’t have enough to let you have any, and you are forced to look elsewhere.

Look long enough and far enough, and you might find that there is no more just lying around for your acquisition and so you need to look outside the box for more.

So, what do you do if the resource you would like/want/need/lust after is underground? Well, historically, there’s a couple of ways to go about getting it.

You could dig a hole down until you find/reach it and take it back up the same hole. Some products (like dirt) are fairly effective in obtaining by this method. As the material is extracted, however, obtaining the next batch is further down, requiring extending the hole downward. Eventually you reach a point where you are working as hard (or harder) at simply making the hole as obtaining the material itself, and you have created a mine.

Dealing with all of the associated dangers and challenges of working underground (dark, lack of ventilation, water {too much or not enough}, finding reliable canary breeders, marauding dwarves, dragon caves…) makes mining a challenging process. And you also need to provide a creative way to deal with the other materials you encounter while obtaining the desired resource (say, the useless gold/silver/copper/coal/diamonds you run across in the middle of your dirt mine). Depending on the relative richness of a particular location, the actual amount of “junk” materials can be several orders of magnitude greater than the desired materials. Removing several tons of rock to obtain a few kilograms of the good stuff not only means you have to move several tons of rocks in the first place (tiring to exhausting, depending on your level of stamina) but you need to find a place to put it (annoying at first, totally exasperating later on as the further you go, the further you have to move this stuff, too).

An alternate method of extracting buried goods is to make the hole wider rather than deeper…a pit mine rather than a shaft mine. So, you start with a (relatively) shallow hole in the ground and as you find/collect the good stuff (and move the “not-so-good” stuff out of the way) you make the hole wider rather than deeper. Gravel and granite are commonly obtained this way. (Technically, I suspect “dirt” mines would also fall into this category as it’s usually a resource that is readily found in more shallow locations, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually visited a working dirt mine, so it’s just a guess.)

As the scale of the operation increases, you eventually end up with a strip mine, where you elongate a side and put the tailings at the ends. This is especially effective when the good stuff grows in rows (veins) and you can extract more in one (relative) direction than randomly wandering around hoping to get lucky. These kind of mines work basically by taking a mountain and moving it over to the left a few feet/yards/miles. (And it’s the same principle even when the mountain is hidden by being buried up to it’s peak in all directions with dirt…you can be standing on top of a mountain and be totally unaware, simply because you think the ground is level as far as you can see.)

So far, we looked at the process of getting access to the resource we wanted. It (eventually) required moving a lot of stuff we don’t want to get to what we do. A principal problem with this method of goods acquisition is what to do with the unwanted stuff. In the “best of all worlds” situation, you simply move it to another place you own and it’s only your “problem” (so to speak). However, it’s not likely you will be able to contain the residue the longer you work and the greater the scale of your operation. Eventually there will be collateral damage from your waste piles (a friend of mine lived a couple of miles from a municipal land fill [garbage dump]; he observed a change in his local climate as the heat coming off the pile would cause weather fronts to split over the site and the resulting amount of rainfall that fell on his property dropped over time) and a subsequent protest that you curb your activities (pitchforks and torches optional).

Much of the debate regarding remediation of current and former extraction sites involve what needs to be done, and more to the point, who should pay for it (NOT ME, is the claim of all parties involved). That there is ongoing damage seems clear, but the way of restoration is anything but.

Even more difficult to deal with is when the mining operation takes place in an urban environment.

This past weekend, an artist was detained and arrested while working on a mural in Detroit. The city commissioned him to make the mural and the police believed he was involved in vandalism. It came to my attention as a 30-second blurb on a local news broadcast (I live about 130 km WNW). Further research online brought up multiple other sources of information giving more details of what happened. Each source provided data, but each also gave spin on what was presented and how to “understand” what happened. The original news broadcast seemed to be saying the artist arrest was for the art. The article from a Detroit based media source said the arrest was not for the art, but rather for how the artist reacted to the authorities during their encounter.

When I grew up (last millennium), vandalism was bad. So was police harassment.

My greatest sense of sadness is not that this event occurred, or made the news. It is that there’s been an undermining of trust and respect for so long in our society that such an event seems inevitable rather than outrageous. We’ve been strip mining our society for so long, the detritus mountain avalanche that will wipe out our very existence seems a foregone conclusion. Except for the west coast.

Perhaps the “big one” will get them first.

Phred

post 83 of n

So, it’s been a while since I have been here (actually, a LONG while upon reflection) and a short back-story might be in order. I decided maybe 6 months ago to become more adept at drawing, thanks to my gaming friend Bill “WhiskeyKetchup” (not his real name…er, the Bill part is, but the WK part is his gaming nom de plume) and the skill he demonstrated in his hobby. He created one of those “adult” colouring books for his wife and I had serious doubts upon first examination…it was WAAAYYYY too good to have been made by hand. Looking at other works he did allowed me to change my opinion and see he was truly skilled at putting marks on paper in appropriate places.
I’ve wanted to do this (sort of…kinda…) for a long time without really giving it serious thought or effort. Until now, that is. I asked him if we could do a weekly challenge, draw the same thing and compare the results to provide incentive to improve (as well as actually DO the work). He agreed, and this is week 6 of the challenge.
Today, while doing laundry, I spent my typical session (45 minutes by the “focus@will” timer I use for background music) originally doing a warm-up exercise of drawing the same thing 20 times, building incremental improvements with each iteration. I did not get the second one done…

I was drawing the coffee mug that was sitting beside my drawing pad, the coffee cooling and decreasing in quantity over time. It was about a third of the way into the second drawing that the problem focused enough to result in a [small, but reasonably valuable pile of head-hair ripped from about temple high on both sides of my head] need to determine what was going on. It’s not like I’m making something up out of the depths of my soul, memory, or imagination…the blasted cup was sitting 14 inches from my right hand. So, why could I not draw the silly thing?

It also should be pointed out that one of my principle goals in this (longish-term endeavor) is to overcome the tendency to draw icons and to put what I actually see on the paper. I “know” what a coffee mug looks like, and could “draw” one in a moment, but in this time and place, the problem wasn’t with the mug, but the handle. In iconography drawing, the cup/mug always has the handle coming out of the side of the thing. On the table, it was rotated about 30 degrees toward me (clockwise as viewed from the top) and so I could see part of the outer face and part of the inner face (the handle was not a tube, but more of a rounded brick shape, roughly rectangular in cross section with the corners rounded off). It was driving me nuts, as it was also a highly glazed surface, so reflections were noticeable on both the mug and the handle, and it was also partially in the shade (where the light coming through the sky-light struck mostly the far edge but some hit the handle as well), so I was having no easy time with any of it.

Instead of being a warm-up exercise, it became an obsession of it’s own, devouring the full time the last load of clothes took in the dryer…and then some. Half a page of badly drawn cup handles later and I achieved only the first goal: finishing the coffee in the mug (drunken, not drawn). Even while driving home after folding clothes, my mind kept returning to the problem of drawing a twisting ribbon in 3-space on a 2-D page.

I “know” what I have to do…so why is it so hard to actually DO it?

I suspect that the problem lies within the scope of the explanation I heard many years ago, that the key difference artists have over mere mortals is the way they SEE the objects they draw. To the extent I can “train” myself to look at my subject in the same way an artist looks (that is, to see it the same way) it will be “easier” to make the needed marks on the paper with the stick in hand. To stop seeing a coffee mug handle and rather seeing a smooth curve bending over, then down and back a little…until it meets up with another curve which also bends in an interesting way and changes value as it moves over a little to the right, ending with a sweeping curve upwards… and so on.
Despite how “easy” this is, it is proving to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done…and re-done…and re-re-done…and erased and done over…and over…and…

And so, I’m home, several hours later, and still trying to recover from my brutal assault. At the very least, I have a badly bruised dignity and damaged self-worth. Yet, I suspect it is not going to be productive to file a police report on the mugging I took this morning…

Phred.

post 82 of n

I have watched enough National Geographic and Nature programs to understand how “natural selection” works. The predator approaches the herd, considers options, then sprints into action. The herd scatters and (if successful) the victorious apex hunter takes down the prey. Messy, but effective, and this permits the hunter to continue to survive another time period.

A rarely stated consequence of this interaction is the strength of both the hunter and hunted is enhanced in this exchange. The successful hunt provides energy and experience for the hunter and reinforces (or improves) the skill set used, not to mention providing food and satiety. The herd is strengthened as a result of the loss of one of it’s members by the loss of the (relatively) weakest member. For whatever reason of combination of reasons, the victim is at the lower end of ability within the group. Slower, older (or younger), lame, inattentive, whatever reasons combined to result in the chosen victim being unsuccessful in avoiding the attack, the remaining members of the group are better in aggregate by the removal of a less-capable member of their society.

Man does not play by these rules.

As a direct result of his ability to create tools, we are the only creatures on the planet that can (and do) choose to kill the best of another species rather than the “worst” available. The concept of acquiring a trophy for display is meaningless when survival and self preservation is at the root of a hunt. My deer hunting friends often talk about letting the pronghorns pass by in anticipation of a bigger rack to arrive. While arguably a larger amount of meat is available on the older, more developed 8+ point rack holders, it is less about filling the freezer than the space over the mantle. It is a source of pride as well as food to demonstrate one’s ability to kill the wiser veteran of the forest.

Were this a contest of capabilities, of strength versus speed, wisdom versus knowledge, there might be a global benefit gained by both species. The use of “superior” tools allows mankind to succeed simply by reaching out and touching one who’s weakness is simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Separated by hundreds of yards, it is no longer a matter of tooth and claw, of might or majesty but of a sliver of refined metal projected at speed over distance, with little or no warning and less ability to react. An “unearned” kill, so to speak.

As a result, man can take the best of a group, leaving the remaining members less able to cope and in the big picture, less likely to survive as a species. Were this limited to food animals, it would be disturbing and possibly wrong in a global ecology sense, that the overall strength of the planet as a whole is diminished by culling members from the upper echelon rather than the lower ranks. Of course, man is not limited in this way.

He also takes out his own kind.

I watched the news last evening. There was a story about the dramatic increase in the number of young people being killed as a result of violence in their vicinity. A mother spoke of her daughter sitting next to her and how she could not do anything to protect her as gunfire erupted in her area. The girl was not targeted, but died anyway, as a conflict between two groups unrelated to the victim attempted to “settle” a disagreement. Collateral damage as it were.

It seems reasonable were the two groups equipped with fists and claws, the mother might have been successful in saving her offspring. At the least she could have snatched her from the bench and ran, or interspersed her own body in the attack, shielding her daughter from the mob and giving the girl a chance to flee. BANG! Too late, no chance.

Is it possible that this outcome was the “correct” one in terms of the “law of the jungle”, “survival of the fittest” kind of view? Possibly, but hardly obvious. It is vastly more likely this is the global denigration of the species as a whole, removing a member from the middle rather than the bottom ranks.

Perhaps we lost another Einstein. We will never know.

What if this is a (rather common) isolated case, the exception rather than the rule. Surely mankind is better controlled than that, right? This was an unfortunate accident, to be lamented.

No, I suspect our ability to create tools capable of launching man outside of the food chain rules of power has given us a substantial leg-down in our capability to survive long term as a species. Weapons of destruction (mass or individual) make us less likely to advance in the evolutionary game.

How else can you explain how a four year old, incapable of making his or her own food, is able to take down the apex predator of the house with their own weapon…

It seems mankind is destined to go out, not with a whimper, but with a BANG!

Phred

post 79 of n

I saw a bumper sticker the other day, a different take than the form I usually see: “Lord, help me to be the kind of person my cat thinks I am ”

I understand the dog image. From what I know about cats, though….

…seems like the car  owner was setting the bar pretty low!
Phred 

There is a principle of movie watching that suggests (unless it is a documentary based completely in facts, and even then not totally) the first prerogative for enjoyment is to “suspend disbelief” in the presentation of events. That a rigid reliance on internal consistency or adherence to the generally understood and accepted nature of reality will result in a “less than satisfactory” result. Since movies are intentioned to provide entertainment rather than presenting brutal reality, there are certain “liberties” that can (will, perhaps must) be taken.

In the last thirty hours, I had the opportunity to go see two of the movies on my wait list, “Doctor Strange” and “Rogue One” at a couple of local theaters. My expectations and the degree of enjoyment I obtained from my viewings were approximately what I had expected, but the movie that exceeded my wildest expectations and the one that fell far short of what I would have expected from the title ended up being completely opposite of what I would have posted about last week.

Doctor Strange was taxing to watch. I have suggested to others that this movie would benefit from watching “Inception” at about six times the normal speed. I am glad I did not watch it in 3-D, as I suspect motion sickness might be a result (something I rarely experience). Unlike many of my friends, I do not have the comic-book background to know what the “back story” of the character is (frankly, one of the more compelling reasons to see the movie was simply that Benedict Cumberbatch was staring in it) so I really had nothing but a couple of trailers to base my opinion (or expectation) of the movie.

It was GREAT! Incredibly unbelievable” in terms of science and the current state of understanding, I happily left my belief at the door and enjoyed the movie. So much so I am seriously thinking of going back later this week and seeing it again. And it is possible a copy will end up in my (reasonably small and limited) movie collection.

The latest Star Wars movie, on the other hand, was one I had understood the back story well and was pretty sure I knew what to expect. It was almost exactly what I figured it would be, done well, and in keeping with the story in general. Yet, I doubt if I will ever see it again (and would feel little regret at a future loss) ranking it as one of the lesser movies I’ve watched in the last year. Why?

I spent a couple of hours wondering what it was about the Rogue One movie that was such a let down, especially in light of the history of attending Star War movies. I remember standing in lines extending down the block for a couple of them, and having to wait weeks before the number of sold out showings dropped enough to see the movies at convenient times (for you younger readers, there actually existed a time when there was only ONE movie screen in an theater, and in many of the smaller towns, there was only a single theater to go to! Really!). Finally, I decided one of the most significant reasons for my sense of disappointment derived by the amount of disbelief I was asked to accept.

Doctor Strange was magic and sorcery, completely removed from “reality” as we know it. (The Harry Potter movies followed along in this kind of vein, and were believably unbelievable, too.) Rogue One was the standard spaceship battles and (as a person who spent every Thursday evening with my dad watching the latest Star Trek episode) the level of disbelief expected was typical, yet too much this time.

Not counting the expected space battle noises (just ask Ripley and the Aliens if your screams in space can be heard) as a source of disappointment, I found the mechanics of the ship movements to be simply wrong this time (and perhaps forever going forward, as well). The kind of maneuvering that the fighters performed in (deep) space were reminiscent of the fighter battles of conventional aircraft. And this is exactly the problem… vacuum fails to exert lift and so space fighters either need to use exotic propulsion systems to make radical movements in three dimensions or use vector engines to provide thrust in each axis of movement. If the undisclosed method of radical direction change is indeed future tech unknown at this time, then why “fly” in the normal sense of the word? If you can change direction at will without inertia why not simply move sideways rather than roll and climb (like a plane would)?

It is a problem of inertia and momentum conversation that eventually bothered me the most. When the “hammerhead” ships caused the destruction of the battle cruiser (spoiler alert, sorry), I found the level of belief being injected into the moment too great for my brain to accept. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, that the physics of the ploy were actually in line with what science would suggest should happen. The problem was amount… to have any dreadnought sized ship moved sideways as a result of a side-mounted thruster such as depicted simply doesn’t work.

I was stationed on an aircraft carrier while in the Navy. These ships are big. Really big. They take a while to start and stop moving. And while a wind blowing against the side of such a ship can cause it to move sideways (sometimes a hazard while attempting precision maneuvers or coming alongside a pier to dock) it takes a lot of wind over a long time to shift it very far. Fully loaded tankers and freighter can take miles to come from full speed to an emergency stop.

Sorry, but there was just too much disbelief for me to believe this time. I think I will study how to cast spells for my next movie viewing.

Phred

(Extra Credit Question: if the rocket blast from the departing ship almost blew the protagonist off the landing dock, why did it not effect the rest of the bodies lying around, such as her dad? There were cases of crew members being blown off my ship by jet exhaust during flight ops…)

So it is nearly the end of 2016 and it’s been over a year since my last posting. There has been a lot of things that have happened since then, some were good, some bad, most were indifferent. I am not sure how much will (eventually) be posted, if any of it. I have passed through much darkness in the last year, best described by the term used by Douglas Adams. I have found myself in the “long, dark tea-time of the soul” as it were, and there seems to be a glint in the distance suggesting it is getting lighter here.

In any case, I have a few things to say, and should post them shortly. Part of my new year’s intentions (I gave up resolutions over a decade ago because they were so depressing, having been broken or forgotten within the first month of the year beginning) is to review all of my previous postings, to see what I was trying to say. More importantly, to determine who I was then (and if I am still the same person, or some stranger using the same name). I suspect I have changed, albeit too slowly for observation in real time. It is far too early to determine whether a change will be positive, negative, or some combination of the two. This, too, may be subject of further work…

For those of you who are kind enough to care, I extend my humble gratitude for your extreme patience and trust your wait will (eventually) prove out to have not been in vain.

Phred.