Alien Space Bats in Scottdale

Well not really... But we did have S. M. Stirling in town today for a book signing at the Poisoned Pen. Stirling's latest book, The Scourge of God, was released on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I ordered my copy from Amazon and, thanks to hurricane Gustav, it is still sitting in Georgia somewhere. That's the Georgia next to Alabama, not Russia, for those of you who are wondering.

The Poisoned Pen is a nice independent locally owned bookstore in old town Scottsdale. The specialize in mysteries, but have a variety of authors come through.
If you are local, it's worth a visit.

Steve read a short passage from The Sword of the Lady from his Kindle, and answered a few questions from the crowd. There were only a dozen or so fans there, so I managed to get 5 books signed.

He was rather funny and engaging, it would be nice to get him as a Guest of Honor at one of the local cons. Last week at CopperCon would have been perfect, but the latest book was released the day AFTER the con.

The Speech

I have to say, I like Sarah Palin.

It was a very good speech. Not out of the ballpark, but definately someone you want batting for your team.

It was well delivered. It was snarky without being vitriolic. After the smear campaign of the past several days from the Dems and their media lapdogs they could have gone very negative. Instead they chose to use humor to give both Obama and the media some well deserved smackdown.

Palin has that Reagan touch of being able to be negative and funny at the same time, the Dems (especially after this weekend) have shown that they are only capable of slime.

I know it's not the function of the VP's speech, but I would have liked to see a bit more policy, especially energy policy, as that is Palin's strong suit. It's clear the delegates adore her. Some of them are probably thinking they have the ticket upside down.

Traditionally the VP speech is supposed to do 3 things:

1) Introduce yourself. Let the people, and the party know who you are.

2) Talk up your presidential candidate

3) Bash on the opposition.

Biden is in for trouble in the VP debate.

Palin

John McCain may have just won the election. He has been ahead in the polls for a week or two, but picking Sarah Palin could be the nail in the Democratic coffin.

The main stream media is going to spin this as a ploy for Hillary Voters. This is only partially true. The democrats won't admit it, but they do pay "identity" politics. And nominating a female VP will pull some of those voters away from the Obama/Biden ticket. My guess is that most of those voters will be too young to remember Geraldine Ferraro.

The real reason to pick Palin is three fold.

1) She excites the base. The "clinging to their guns and God" crowd is absolutely giddy. The folks who were saying "McCain 08, because I love my country more than I hate John McCain" are doing the little happy dance. Palin gives the religious right someone to vote FOR, instead of just against the other guy. Same for the Gunnies. The pro 2nd amendment crowd does not trust McCain, and they never will. Palin goes Moose hunting for God's sake.

2) Executive experience. It would be a lot better if she were a 2nd term governor instead of a 1st termer. Regardless, she has more executive experience than McCain, Obama, and Biden combined.

3) Energy and the economy. This election is not going to turn on Iraq. It is going to turn on the economy and energy. Palin spearheaded the construction of the largest natural gas pipeline in the country. One that when finished will provide Billions of cubic feet of Natural gas. Palin comes from Alaska, and Alaskans overwhelmingly want to drill in the barren wasteland that is ANWR.

This country needs a comprehensive energy plan. That means:
Drill here, drill now.
More nuclear plants
Solar Thermal
Distributed Solar Voltaic
Bio-ethanol

It also means cutting government spending. McCain has been a hawk on Pork and Earmarks, but Palin actually has a record of cutting government waste. Also of exposing government corruption. (Democratic AND Republican corruption)

4) Last, whether you like her or not, folks like Palin are the future of the GOP. I already hear people calling for a Palin/Jindal ticket in 2012. These folks are giddy. And again, they are doing the happy dance.

Sharing the Pie

Brigid has posted a most excellent screed on Sharing the Pie

Go read it, it's well written, and well said indeed.

I read Atlas Shrugged in college. To this day I buy up used copies at book stores and give them away. This is not an altruistic act, it is entirely self-serving. If you don't understand, then you need to read some Ayn Rand.

Socialists see the world as a zero-sum game. If a socialist wants a bigger piece of the pie, he needs to steal it from someone else. It would never occur to him to bake his own, or to do some other useful labor in trade.

Capitalists understand that when two people voluntarily exchange goods, both win, and the pie gets bigger. If both sides did not come out ahead, the exchange would not occur.

Thus when Michelle Obama says, "someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." She is a socialist. And socialism my friends is Evil with a capital E.

It is evil because it devalues human endeavor.
It is evil because it devalues basic human rights.
It is evil because it stands in stark opposition to the human right to property, from which all other rights derive.
It stands against privacy, and ,as needs must, against the right to life itself.

As soon as someone says that someone else is more worthy of the fruits of your labor than you are, Then you know where they stand:

They would take your property. They would take your privacy (for how else would they know what to take). They would take your right to self defense (for after all you might resist). Indeed they would take your life itself should you stand against them.

And that, my friends, is why they are Evil.

Oral Comprehensive Exams

So today was the Physics Oral Comprehensive exam. *Bleah*

I was supposed to give a 20 minute presentation on the research I did last semester, then open it up for questions. The presentation is to 3 members of the faculty.

20 minute talk 2 hour block of time. - It's a TRAP. I know it's a trap. It has to be a trap right?

Oh boy. It was an ambush alright.

I give the presentation, we talk a bit. They ask a question about holography (WTF?)

Then it goes most seriously pear shaped.

Tell us about the uncertainty principle:
Ok, well the uncertainty principle can be formulated several ways, the traditional the one that is used is that the uncertainty in position of a particle and the uncertainty in it's momentum must be on the order of h-bar over two or greater.

White it on the board:
Mark writes delta x delta y ~ h-bar/2

What do the symbols mean.
Mark explains

But what is delta x?:
It's the uncertainty in the position. Look if you measure the location of something, you can only measure it with arbitrary precision, what the uncertainty principle says is that no mater precise you measure x, it is impossible to measure p to a precision greater than that given by this relation. We can term it in terms of energy and time, so say for example we know how much energy a process takes, like say an electronic transition in an atom, then we can determine how long the process takes.

No, go back to the first one, what is delta x?:
Sir, I have no clue what you are asking.

You know there is a way to prove that relationship?:
I'm sure there is.

We then discussed other variables.

We then had a fine performance of Mark forgetting the Schroedinger Equation, and trying to derive the kinetic energy of a particle in the forbidden region past a barrier. Oh, and doing simple derivatives wrong.

I think I gained bonus points by explaining that if you took the barrier to a finite width, then that was the criterion for quantum tunneling, I then pushed on and gave the example of real world tunneling. Take two copper wires, expose them to air, they are no longer copper, they have a surface of copper oxide (which is an insulator). Put them together and current flows anyway. The electrons tunnel right through the barrier.

They changed the subject to asking me how a micro-channel plate works. I explain how it is manufactured, and how it works like a photomultiplier tube. I go on to talk about the way that the MCP is used in night vision goggles, proximity focus etc.

Discuss the vacuum levels achieved in the devices. They don't believe me. We discuss how said levels are achieved, they still don't believe me.

We discuss the energy band diagram of GaAs doped with Zinc. I draw in the acceptor levels and the fermi level. Dr. Bauer asks why the doping is so heavy, I eplain that it increases the photoeficiency.

He objects that it increases the bandgap:
yes sir, it does. But it also makes more electrons available for transitions, thus increasing the photoeficiency.

He does not appear to believe me, even though this is a fundamental property of the Fermi Level and every single theory of how electrons behave in materials.

I say look, as soon as you excite an electron to the conduction band, there is enough voltage here that the work function really doesn't matter. Further, just as in your lab, the surface is Ceasiated to reduce the electron affinity...

Ja, Ja, but...Dr. Bauer says that what he really wants to know is, when an electron strikes the surface, how do the other electrons come out:
Um, you mean the spectrum?

Yes:
Well, I don't know, I would presume that it is an Auger spectrum. (pronounced Au-je) Mark draws spectrum on board. Even if it was, there would be no way to measure it, as there is enough voltage here that the the original energy levels won't last long.

What do you know about Auger electrons:
Not much, I'm not an electron microscopist.

Auger Electrons are more than that:
Not Much. There is a strong spike at the original electron energy level, and a broad range of electrons of lower energy. The spike is from inelastic collisions and the rest is from multiple collisions.

Lets talk about statistical mechanics. What is the speed of the atoms in the atmosphere in this room:
*Blink* ... I have no idea...

If you had taken my 541 class you would know:
Well, in my class we spent most of our time doing Fermi and Bose-Einstein statistics.
I'm not used to thinking about large things like molecules.

Large? Molecules?:
Well, I'm used to dealing with photons and electrons, so yeah, molecules are large.

Do you know the speed of sound:
Think pause. You're going to hate this but, a bit over 1000 feet per second. At standard temperature and pressure. Mark waits while the board converts feet to meters in their heads. They say close enough.

I ask, did you say velocity or average velocity?

Very good. Well how would you find out?:
Well I would have to know the partition function.

Do you know kT at room temperature:
Sure it's 30 milli-electon volts... pause.. oh, well average energy is 3/2 kT. So Energy is 1/2 m v squared. So I can find it, I would need to know the mass of Nitrogen though. *I look around the room, no periodic table* uh oh.

Did I mention it's a trap?

We, go ahead and draw the periodic table:
*blink* *incredulous stare*

Oh just the first three rows:
Mark starts drawing, they comment it's a little odd, I say I left out the D-series and the actinides and lanthanides, I finally erase it and add a big gap for the D-series so that it looks more normal, I write in H, He, Li. I say Carbon has 4 P-shell electrons so it has to go here.

you put carbon in the wrong place:
What, oh, No carbon has four valance electrons, not P-shell electrons so it goes here, silicon goes here. I start drawing in roman numerals above the columns.

No go back and put in nitrogen:
I add nitrogen oxygen, fluorine. Start trying to figure out where neon goes.

no go back, what is the mass of nitrogen:
Well, Carbon is 12, so Nitrogen has to be 14. Call it one more proton and one more neutron, you can't do that in this part of the table. *points to lower portion* but up here it's safe enough to just figure one each.

That's why we asked:
Um, right. So Nitrogen is diatomic so N2 is 28 grams per Mol.

How much is that:
I write 28/6.022 x10^23.

So, to solve this I'd have to convert electron-volts to Joules, convert this to kilograms.

Never mind, do you know the Fermi energy of electrons in Copper:
*blink* Measured from the vacumm level?

No the Fermi energy:
Yes, but where are you measureing from? *Mark draws energy diagram on board. From here or here?

It's 7ev. Do you know how fast that is:
It's roughly a theth the speed of light.

Why do you say that?
Well I seem to recall that currents flow at about that velocity.

Well, if room temp is 35 milli-ev, then you can see it's rather fast:
Well yes?

They say something noncomitical about converting the energy to that of a photon:
Mark writes 1240 ev.nm on the board. This is one of my favorite numbers. Divide by 7 so. Call it roughly 180 nanometers. (I am not about to do long division on the board)

Pretty much at that point the ordeal ends as we have run out the clock.

*ARGH*

BTW, did I mention, "It's a TRAP"

Silver

I ordered one each of the goldismony.info Minutemen and Bull silver rounds from APMEX last weekend. The rounds showed up today. I also picked up some nifty 1/2 oz rounds that APMEX is selling. Not common to see 1/2 oz rounds at all. I am very pleased with APMEX's packaging and handling. All of the rounds came encased in a plastic sheath. You can see that the plastic is sized for a 1 oz round.

Space Ship One

Space Ship One

Words and Music © 2003 Mark E. Horning Rev. 11-06-04
Strum, reasonably fast, 4/4 Time, Capo 2


Chorus:
Did you hear they're building spaceships, in the California sun?
Reliable, and cheap to build, the race is all but won.
The doubters - they can stay behind, their day is all but done,
The rest of us are going to the stars.


They built her as a secret, but I know they built her well,
and have laid up carbon fiber in a strong epoxy shell.
Aluminum and fiberglass make her light enough to sail,
and she rides a hybrid rocket with no turbo-pumps to fail.

Oh she's built by Scaled Composites, and good old Burt Rutan,
and if anyone can do it, I know that those folks can.
And they built her under budget, with no taxpayer funds.
The first truly private spacecraft, so they call her Space Ship One.

Rpt Chorus-

High above the desert, at Edwards AFB,
The X-15 broke through the sky, the black of space to see.
And 40 odd years later, in those self-same very skies,
A rocket-powered ship will roar, as through the sky she flies.

Bridge:
A hundred years since Kitty Hawk,
And Will and Orville Wright.
She's the greatest aviation jewel,
in a century of Flight.


Well I know she won't make orbit, but she's over half way there.
And once you are in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
Give them another decade; they'll build cities on the moon.
The future starts tomorrow. Make way for Space Ship Two!

Rpt Chorus-


Pack your bags; we're going to the stars.

Ag

Stopped by Mesa Bullion and Coin yesterday and picked up 6 oz of Silver.
Nice shop, nice selection. Plenty of rounds in stock, decent selection of Gold as well. I even saw fractional Krugerrands which is a new one on me.