Evening Wrap 4/30

Today's topic was airships.  Funny thing about airships.  They have definite advantages that should make them attractive as a transportation vehicle.  These vehicles could be superior to all known forms of transportation in terms of versatility, cost and safety. Yet, few seem to be interested.  It only goes to show you that people are often not rational.

Let's look over some stats for this month:

Out of over 200 posts for the month, the top post got 24 pageviews.  Most posts don't seem to register.

Monthly pageviews shatters monthly record.  But with 200 posts, it must have been heavy blogging.

Here's a map of the top ten pageviews by country

That's not an exhaustive list.  There are other countries not shown here.  This was the top ten in number of pageviews.  Sometimes I get more pageviews out of country than in the country.  I don't know what to make of that, but it may not be good.

But, there seems to be progress.  Yet it isn't exactly overwhelming.

It could be my choice of things to be interested in.  Such as airships.  Nobody likes them.  My interest in space.  Nobody likes space.  One of my most successful days was the day I put up a link to Sarah LaCroix's video.  She is a singer and musician.  I guess people like music, but there are other things going on.

Politics generates interest.  But I am critical of all politics.  That means I'm going against the tide in both directions.  If I was more partisan, it might help.  But that goes against the grain of what this blog is about.  It's about solutions, and I don't see politicians as offering any solutions to anything.

I guess people like money.  But I am skeptical of markets too.  Maybe telling the truth about things isn't popular.  People prefer fantasy rather than reality.  Offer them a dream and they'll take it.  Offer them the truth, and they'll run away from it.  Start a political fight, and that generates interest.  Try to calm things down and make some sense, and that just bores people.

Now, it may strike some as odd, my talk of reality, given my rather speculative posts about space.  But space just isn't popular.  But popularity doesn't equal truth.  Space doesn't have to be expensive, but that's what people believe.  Why do they believe that?  Politics.  But they like the politics better, even though it is destroying their lives right before their own eyes.

If this blog can't make it, it doesn't speak well of someone.  Is it me?  I'm not so sure about that.  I have some ideas that I will try going forward.  It may bring my numbers up.  But I am running out of ideas and time.

The Deltoid Pumpkinseed

Just finished reading this book.  I don't think I'll make a review out of it.  There are a few facts that I can relate here in connection to the Hindenberg airship, which I obtained from the book.

The Hindenberg was required to use hydrogen as its lifting gas.  It was designed for helium, but helium wouldn't be shipped because that was forbidden by the US government.  It seems that a lot bad memories were still too fresh in order to allow the Germans access to helium.  Airships were used in combat in World War I, and they were quite terrifying to the people of that time.  If helium was used instead of hydrogen, the ferocity of the fire may have been less.  By the way, the skin of the airship was also flammable, so that a fire may have been unavoidable at some time.  The hydrogen just made it a lot worse.   

Another fact about the Hindenberg was that it was being used for Nazi propaganda.  Despite its safety record as of that time, the spectacular nature of the disaster made it impossible to be useful for that purpose.  Also, given Hitler's nature, the very fact that it was a source of embarrassment for the regime made it quite vulnerable to the dictator's displeasure.

The airship was a very pleasurable way of traveling according to this book.  A milk bottle was set upside down and made an full trip across the ocean without being knocked over.  That's a very smooth ride that may not be possible on a modern plane.  Not to mention the fact that there was ample room to move around.  Nothing like flying in a glorified sardine can.  It flew at 75 miles an hour.  Not very fast, but compare this to a ship and it is fast even by today's standards.

What a pity to have such a fine flying machine delegated to the scrap heap because of one accident.  In addition, due to the whims of a mad dictator.  I was wondering, why not bring it back?  But this book wasn't about that.  Instead, it was about improving upon the concept of the airship.  It failed due to a lack of interest.  All of the tests of their new design for the airship were successful.  But nobody was interested.  Times change, perhaps now is the time?

A cautionary tale?  Any idea can blow up or be impractical.  But the Hindenberg had a spotless safety record before its mishap.  The concept is sound.  It should get another look.  But keep it out of the hands of people who would ask it to do more than what is necessary.  Remember the KISS principle.

Update:

About the airship in the book, here's a good synopsis of it here.  This post is about the Hindenberg, but the title is not.  Actually, the title was about the book which covered a few other airships besides the Deltoid Pumpkinseed.

Update:

There are a lot of interesting pics showing the accommodations of the Hindenberg.   Remember that this thing flew over 70 years ago.

Update:

Is this an animation or real? With the capabilities that exist today, you may not know for sure until you actually see one yourself in person.




Here's a model rigid airship narrated by a youngster



Finally, I found this pic of the "Pumpkin seed" airship. The book had no pics.

What will they think of next dept: Web Karaoke

A look around my browser stats yielded some info about browsers that I haven't heard of yet.  "Thunderbird" looks like a cousin of Firefox.  I went to the Firefox page and found the link to the video below.  I don't get it yet, but I'm looking.



A little poking around got me to this blog.  I think this may be too techie and you will have to be patient in order to understand it and use it.  Maybe you will want to go here first.


Update: approx 7:15 am

I just now decided that today will be a "vision quest" agenda.   Don't know what I'm looking for, but maybe I'll know it when I find it.

4/30: Morning, ya'll.

The usual preliminaries

Looks like my audience numbers are slipping a bit.  But the quality isn't.  I think the blog is getting better all the time.  I added another slideshow yesterday.  I asked Derek Shannon at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics if I could use his photos on his Picasa web album and he said sure thing.  So there it is, near the top of the page.

By the way, that's where they are working on Focus Fusion, which is what I've been writing about a lot lately.

I am particularly proud of my posts yesterday.  The Stalking Horse post was excellent analysis, don't care what anybody says.  Lady Gaga is top shelf, according to 300 million pageviews.  But, I can see some things about it that may bother some people, yes.   The think pieces were the way I wanted- short but hard hitting.

All in all, I feel good about it even if it isn't popular.  Yet.

Wrap 4/29

I got in all my agenda posts earlier than I thought I would.  Nice finish with the Lady Gaga post.  Actually it was a Michelle Phan post about Lady Gaga.  What struck me about the Gaga video was those eyes.  Phan showed how she did it.

Lady Gaga

I wondered how she got that look. I figured it was some kind of high tech deal with the video. Here's how it was done. By the way, this is in reference to her video "Bad Romance"

Stalking horse

A stalking horse candidate is meant to harm someone for the benefit of a third party while intending that connection to remain unknown.  It is a hunting term, which describes the use of a horse to stalk game, which become very alarmed at the appearance of people that they run away before a chance to take a shot.  The horse is used to screen the hunter from the animals, which aren't as alarmed by the horse as they would be by a man.

With respect to Donald Trump, I wonder if he is a stalking horse intended to harm the interests of another player or players in the political arena.  One could be the Tea Party, which appears to be suffering in the latest poll.  Guess who's getting connecting to racism, but the Tea Partiers themselves?  Now, Trump comes out with this birther stuff, and the Tea Party takes a hit in the polls, even though the Tea Party has nothing to do with Trump.  Could it be that Trump is working at the behest of the liberals who keep calling the Tea Party racist?  And wasn't the idea of birtherism a Hillary Clinton idea?  Why should Republicans laud anything that Trump says when he hasn't been a Republican in the past?  Trump could be a stalking horse to harm the Tea Party, and the beneficiary to this is the liberal Democrats.