Clayton Cramer's Blog

Lack of Creativity in Hollywood

2013-06-17T12:49:00.001-06:00

I was at daughter's place for Father's Day last night, and a number of us were sitting around while my son-in-law, his brother, and my son, were watching a basketball game. One of the ads was a movie trailer that looked hopelessly predictable: black cop, white cop, learning to work together. As others were trashing its predictability, I suggested that perhaps someone could come up with a new idea on the buddy cop movie: instead of one black, one white, maybe one vampire, one zombie? After a bit more discussion, we concluded that to be truly creative, it should be a four man detective team:

a vampire
a zombie
a robot
a monkey in a bowtie

At least it would not make you think of Lethal Weapon 19.

Oxycodone Dreams

2013-06-17T07:08:00.002-06:00

I took oxycodone for several days for pain; the dreams were incredibly sad,when they weren't grossly brutal. One dream I had was so horrifying that I will not write it down, for fear that it might become the origins of a progressive political movement, rather like how Edward Abbey's The Monkey-Wrench Gang became the blueprint for an ecological terrorist group. The core idea of the dream makes genocide seem pretty humane by comparison.

The CT scan last week found a mass in my left kidney (not the one with the stone) that is likely just a simple cyst, but to be sure, the urologist has me scheduled for a dye contrast CT scan this morning. I still don't feel wonderful, but I think I am going to go back to work, just in case there are other parts of this process that will gobble up sick time later.

Weight Reduction Program Again

2013-06-14T18:35:00.003-06:00

Now that I am no longer focused on pain, I can resume focus on telescope weight reduction. The reason that I went with the solid tube was that the truss tube approach failed for two reasons:

1. The lower cage was made of a .125" thick piece of aluminum -- and it was simply not stiff enough. The truss was incredibly stiff, and exposed that the aluminum was flexing.

2. I stupidly decided that I should minimize weight of the tubes by putting the truss connectors at the very top of the bottom cage, and the very bottom of the top cage. Because most of the weight of the telescope was the mirror at the bottom of the bottom cage, it enhanced the flexibility problem of the aluminum tube.

The alternative solution is to use the Sonotube with the truss connector at or below the center of gravity of the lower cage. The Sonotube, after fiberglass reinforcement, weighs .37 lbs/.inch. The six truss connectors weight 2.6 ozs. each; the six aluminum tubes weigh .23 ozs./inch. By cutting out 53 inches of Sonotube, I lose 19.61 lbs. The truss connectors and tubes add 5.85 lbs. That's a net reduction of 13.76 lbs -- which would get the telescope below 50 lbs -- quite an improvement over what I had before I started the current project, and light enough for the Celestron CI-700 mount.

There remains one uncertainty: cutting 53 inches out of the middle of the tube may create problems with how to mount the Sonotube to the Losmandy dovetail plate. It will take about 20 inches of mounting plate to attach the telescope to the dovetail plate. I could stiffen a piece of aluminum C-channel (which would weigh only 2.83 lbs.) by bolting some 1/8" aluminum plate pieces into the C-channel. Alternatively, I could replace it with a piece of 1/4" steel plate that is only 2" wide (although that would be 6.5 lbs, losing some of the gain from going to trusses). I can't imagine a 1/4" piece of steel flexing enough to be a problem.

UPDATE: I can't really do anything yet. I am not supposed to lift any weight until the stent is removed.

Think I Have The PayPal Solved On the ScopeRoller Ordering Page

2013-06-14T17:16:00.002-06:00

It was a fairly minor change to the HTML, but it appears to be working now. It took PayPal long enough to get back to me, but they came up with a solution.

"It's Raining Stones!"

2013-06-14T12:21:00.001-06:00

That's what my urologist said yesterday during the consultation. Perhaps because the sudden hot weather of the last few weeks, he was getting an extraordinary number of kidney stone cases, as people are dehydrating. (In the nineteenth century, kidney and bladder stones were often associated with long sea voyages, because fresh water and even beer was in short supply.)

While I was waiting for my surgery, my wife was talking to a woman in the waiting room whose husband was getting a kidney stone removed as well. He is a runner, and was in the E/R a few days before. He ignored the "without fail see an urologist" instruction on the discharge form, out of fear of the misery of the surgery. But after a second visit to the E/R, he realized that there was no real choice.

I was surprised to find that kidney stones are one of the most common health problems in the U.S.:

Each year in the United States, people make more than a million visits to health care providers and more than 300,000 people go to emergency rooms for kidney stone problems.

There are a number of causes of kidney stones, and exactly what type of stone determines what sort of dietary changes are required:

Calcium Oxalate Stones

reducing sodium

reducing animal protein, such as meat, eggs, and fish

getting enough calcium from food or taking calcium supplements with food

avoiding foods high in oxalate, such as spinach, rhubarb, nuts, and wheat bran

Calcium Phosphate Stones

reducing sodium

reducing animal protein

getting enough calcium from food or taking calcium supplements with food

Uric Acid Stones

limiting animal protein

I'm not sure what kind of stone I had, but pretty everything that I eat is a problem, so the solution seems to be: drink more water:

Drinking enough fluids each day is the best way to help prevent most types of kidney stones. Health care providers recommend that a person drink 2 to 3 liters of fluid a day. People with cystine stones may need to drink even more. Though water is best, other fluids may also help prevent kidney stones, such as citrus drinks.

I keep a big Cato Institute mug on my desk at work; I think I am going to make a point of filling it at least three times a day, and finishing it three times a day. It makes you wonder how much of a dent in the cost of national health care we could make just getting people to drink more fluids, especially in the hot parts of the country. (In New York City, just to annoy Nanny Bloomberg -- more soft drinks that are low in sodium.)

Surgery Done

2013-06-13T21:48:00.001-06:00

I may have much to blog for a couple of days. The doctor was playing Space Invaders in my kidney. A stent all the way from penis to kidney; a fiber optics to see what he was doing; a laser to shatter the stone. It was apparently big enough and close enough to the kidney that he pushed the stone against the far wall, and shattered it into zillion little pieces.

UPDATE: I am no longer in any real pain, except where the stent comes out of my body, and when I urinate. This is a irriation caused by the stent, so I am off to get a couple prescriptions filled today which are supposed to alleviate this.

The urologist said that the mass in the left kidney is likely a cyst; 15% of men over 50 have them, and they are benign. He has scheduled a contrast dye CT to see if it has blood flow or not. If it has no blood flow, it's a cyst, ignore it. If it has blood flow...maybe something more serious.

Even though gallstones aren't his area of specialty, he says lots of people have gallstones without any health problems. I have never had any of the symptoms that would indicate a blockage. Unless there's symptoms, there's no need to take out the gall bladder.

Kidney Stone

2013-06-13T03:12:00.002-06:00

I was in a class titled Enterprise Architecture Fundamentals yesterday. About 4:10 PM, I suddenly felt very, very unwell, and in enormous pain. I left early, and as the pain kept increasing, I drove myself to the St. Luke's Emergency Room. The pain was in my lower right abdomen, and I was fiercely nauseated. It is the first time that I have been in an E/R for me since the mid-1980s.

My guess was appendicitis. The E/R physician ordered a CAT scan, because he suspected a kidney stone. This was a very good guess, and he did not even know that my daughter (who is so genetically similar to me that my wife says my genes just stomped her genes) has recently had kidney stones, too.

Anyway, it turned out to be a 7mm kidney stone. (The CAT scan also found gall stones in my gall bladder, but those are not causing any problems right now.) I now understand why my wife says that a kidney stone is definitely worse than giving birth. Wow.

It has not yet passed. I am supposed to go into a urologist today.

UPDATE: Reading the paperwork from the E/R gets worse. They also say that there is "mass" in my left kidney that needs to be examined, and that I should have my gall bladder removed.

Telescope Is Just Too Big

2013-06-11T22:52:00.001-06:00

I am about ready to give up on this. I had a Moon tonight, and I was able to get the finder aligned, but the telescope is just too heavy and long for this mount, and a mount that is adequate to the task costs about $6000. Maybe it is time to admit that this is just beyond the scope of what I can afford -- sort of like the Ferrari you get a steal deal on, until you find out what the tuneups cost.

I just posted an ad for the optical tube assembly on Cloudy Nights Classifieds for $1200, with this picture that I took through it a couple of years ago.

Life is too short to struggle with stuff like this. Perhaps I can use the money to buy a somewhat more reasonably sized telescope to put on the same mount.

UPDATE: The solid tube weighs 0.37 lbs./inch. Perhaps the truss tube scheme that turned out to be too stiff for the aluminum cage needs revisiting now that I have a much more solid tube which I could cut into an upper and lower cage. If I cut out 50 inches of the solid tube, that would save 18.66 lbs. The truss tubes and attachments weigh 5.85 lbs. Even if I had to use a 1/4" x 4" x 15" steel plate to attach the lower cage to the mount, that would still be a net savings of 9 lbs. It might make sense to go with longer truss tubes so that they were mounting at the center of gravity of the lower truss. If so, I could cut more like 60 inches out of the tube.

UPDATE 2: Darrell posted a comment but didn't want it published because it has his email in it. But that email is bouncing, so I can't email him! Darrell -- email at blogmail at my domain name (which is FirstnameLastname.com) so that I can get in touch.

Those Ricin Letters

2013-06-11T14:33:00.002-06:00

It turned out to not be an angry gun rights advocate, but a woman angry at her soon to be ex-husband. And here is a detailed account of the investigation: the woman was apparently a gun control advocate, trying to kill two birds with one stone: make gun advocates look bad; get her husband sent to prison.

I'm A Bit Mystified

2013-06-11T13:44:00.000-06:00

My stepmother-in-law died a few weeks back. Her will was written up by lawyers in Orange County, California -- but because she died in British Columbia, it appears that the will has to go through probate there. Unfortunately, British Columbia is severely backlogged, and they will require at least four months, a $200 filing fee, and hiring a Canadian lawyer, before they can issue the letter for the executor of the estate (a lawyer who is a cousin of my wife).

I am confused: shouldn't the state where the will was originally written, and when presumably has some sort of court of jurisdiction specified, take precedence over the location of the decedent's death? And doesn't this all pretty destroy most of the advantage of having a will?

UPDATE: It appears that while this was organized as a trust, when the money was put into Charles Schwab, it was not put in as a trust account, hence the complexity. Does anyone have a British Columbia probate attorney that they trust?

Welding Question

2013-06-10T09:22:00.001-06:00

This is a slightly embarrassing question to ask, because my father made his living as a welder most of the time that I was growing up -- but I never actually learned much about it from him. (It wasn't in a book from the library, so I wasn't much interested.) When welding two pieces of steel or aluminum together in a butt weld, what additional thickness can one expect the weld to add? Say you welded two pieces together that were 12" long each; how long would the final product be? My recollection from looking at welds, and from reading the Wikipedia page, suggests that welding might add 1/8" of an inch to the length.

We Needed A Long Hose....

2013-06-09T19:57:00.002-06:00

The telescope garage is beginning to get a dangerous growth of grasses around it, so it is time to do a weed barrier and rock, to reduce fire hazard. The particular weed killer we use, KillzAll, works best when sprayed with a hose -- but we did not have a long enough hose. I decided that it made more sense to buy a 100 foot hose to add to our current hose, rather than rent some sort of sprayer.

When we reached Horseshoe Hardware, there was a100 foot hose for $30 -- but it was labeled "light duty" for gardening. When something is labeled "light duty" I assume that means, "won't survive the season." When was the last time you saw anything sold as "light duty?"

But there was a 100 foot hose that claimed "Industrial Strength for Commercial Use" and 3/4" diameter interior. It had mental springs where it attaches to the faucet to prevent kinking there. It was also advertised as "500 psi burst strength." Obviously, we only have 65 psi water pressure, but my hope was that being 6 ply, it would resist expanding under pressure, allowing more pressure to get through the hose to the far end. It was also $75.

"Right tool for the job" is my motto, so I bought it. And it is indeed a very well-made garden tool. Even better: Gilmour makes it in America.

Why Do Never Have A Moon When You Need One?

2013-06-09T15:03:00.001-06:00

Okay, I solved the problem of the good finderscope being too close to the tube for me to look through by using a 3" x 2" piece of aluminum tubing. To reduce the weight a bit (and every ounce helps), I milled some holes in the top and bottom of it which also had the advantage of making it easier to tighten the screws that hold it to the main tube, and that hold the rings to the aluminum.

Lousy picture -- the HP Photosmart is just not enough aperture, even with a flash.

The downside is that more weight means I need more counterweights, and this has resulted in what can only be called an expedient counterweight solution:

The good news is that I need to rotate the entire tube assembly a bit to make it easier to use, and that will move some of the weight closer to the fulcrum, perhaps reducing the counterweight requirements a bit.

Now, as to the title: the problem is that getting the finderscope aligned with the main telescope is usually the most annoying part of setting up a telescope for me. The ideal way to do this is aim the telescope at the Moon; center the eyepiece on the Moon; then adjust the finderscope so that the Moon is centered. I could use any celestial object, but the field of view, even at low power on this beast, is tiny. The chances of finding something in the sky with the main scope, then adjusting the finderscope, are tiny. The Moon, because it produces so much sky glow, is surprisingly easy to find. And yes, I have aligned them using a radio tower five miles away -- and that isn't far enough to solve the parallax problem for such a powerful scope.

Unfortunately, new Moon was last night, so it may be a couple of days before I can get this straightened out.

I was thinking of abandoning the telescope tube rings, but then I realized that if I had some that were 1/2" thick, they would lower the position of the tube relative to the fulcrum by 1.5" -- which would reduce the counterweight requirements, as well as making it easier to adjust the telescope tube's position on the mount. I have contacted some gun rights acquaintances here in Horseshoe Bend that have a welding shop; I am going to look at cutting the hexagon out of aluminum, then having them weld the pieces together.

Still, it looks good.

"I Was Born This Way"

2013-06-09T14:38:00.006-06:00

June 9, 2013 American Thinker. I tried very hard to get more mainstream conservative publications to take this...

"Bad Guns"

2013-06-09T13:22:00.000-06:00

My friend Nicholas Johnson just blogged about the changing definition of "bad guns" and how nearly all guns have been on the list that needs to be banned over the last several decades.

PJMedia Article About Santa Monica College Murders Now Up

2013-06-09T13:20:00.004-06:00

The Santa Monica College Mass Murder: How Did It Happen?

The Mass Murder at Santa Monica College

2013-06-09T07:44:00.001-06:00

From June 9, 2013 CNN:

Police had contact with the gunman in 2006, but because he was a juvenile then, authorities couldn't release further information, Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said.

A law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN on Saturday that the gunman had suffered mental health issues. A few years ago, he was hospitalized for treatment after allegedly talking about harming someone, according to the official.

It's not clear whether the state government or his family committed him for treatment or whether he committed himself. It's also unclear under what circumstances he was released.

And yet California has had an assault weapon ban since 1989 (the year the shooter was born) and on transfers of high-capacity magazines since 2000 (when the shooter was eleven years old). It has required all firearms transfers to be done through a background check since 1991 (when the shooter was two) and it appears that the shooter had been committed at some point -- which is one of the things the California background check includes.

"It's Like a CGI Rainbow"

2013-06-08T23:00:00.004-06:00

We have had the most intense rainbows that I have ever seen at our new house. We had one on May 28th that was so shockingly intense -- in a way that the attached photos can only hint at -- that my son said that it did not look real: "It's like a CGI rainbow!" The following pictures have not been enhanced in any way -- straight out of the Pentax K10D. We had double rainbows that stretched unbroken from horizon to horizon.

This picture is especially amazing -- the violet end of the rainbow seemed to have some sort of multiple layers of color to it. I have never seen anything like this.

The rainbow is such an astonishingly beautiful and unexpected apparition: you can see why Genesis 9:12-17 describes the rainbow this way:

¹²And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

The B-36 Filght Engineer Panel

2013-06-08T09:38:00.000-06:00

One of the strangest planes to modern eyes is the B-36, an absolutely huge bomber originally designed to carry out Canada to Berlin bombing raids (in case Britain fell to the Nazis) and Hawaii to Japan bombing raids. By the time it was ready, its mission had changed: to carry the really big hydrogen bombs of the 1950s. Wikipedia describes it as the largest piston engine plane ever built. More than size, it used pusher propellers:

As you might expect, with six engines, the flight engineer's console was pretty impressive. Go here for a scrollable and zoomable image of it.

UPDATE: Castle Air Force Museum in California's Central Valley has one of these that I saw many years ago. One of my readers took these pictures of one at the Pima Air Museum in Tucson last month. (For some reason, I can't link to them directly.)

So Maybe The Ricin Letters Weren't About Gun Control....

2013-06-07T13:03:00.002-06:00

NBC News is reporting that the FBI has arrested a woman who told them her husband sent the letters -- but that they arrested her suggests that she was the sender, trying to cause trouble for hubby. (Wouldn't it be enough to burn dinner?) Something tells me that gun control was merely a ruse to get her husband in very serious trouble.

According to Hoyt Mentions My Brother Ron

2013-06-07T06:49:00.002-06:00

The blog According to Hoyt mentions My Brother Ron in a long meditation on libraries and reading.

UPDATE: The Smallest Minority also mentioned My Brother Ron as part of a discussion of the problem of mental illness, deinstitutionalization, and mass murder.

The Origins of Syria's Civil War

2013-06-06T13:27:00.000-06:00

David P. Goldman at PJMedia has a very thoughtful article about the agricultural economic and water shortage crises that are a big part of what has provoked the Syrian Civil War. Like me, he doesn't see any argument for U.S. intervention in this war.

Part of the answer to the first question is that Syria (like Egypt) as presently constituted simply is not viable as a country. Iraq might be viable, because it has enough oil to subsidize a largely uneducated, pre-modern population. As an economist and risk analyst (I ran Credit Strategy for Credit Suisse and all fixed income research for Bank of America), I do not believe that there is any way to stabilize either country. In the medium term, Turkey will lose national viability as well. I outlined some of the reasons for this view in my 2011 book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too).

Classic Schizophrenia Symptoms

2013-06-06T12:38:00.000-06:00

From June 6, 2013 Fox News Latino:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – After he said he heard voices coming through the television telling him to go to his mother's house and "get the clones out," a New Mexico man stabbed, severely beat and kidnapped his mother and another person, and then threw his mother off a bridge into the Rio Grande in broad daylight, according to a criminal complaint.

Martin Montano, 26, told detectives that he tossed his 61-year-old mother, Hope Montano, from a bridge in Albuquerque on Tuesday after stabbing and choking her at her home, the complaint said.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2013/06/06/nm-man-throws-mother-off-bridge-after-stabbing-her-claims-heard-voices/#ixzz2VSkM4vY2

Not the first time that Mantano has been in trouble with the law:

Records show that Montano was arrested in August 2012 for false imprisonment and battery against his mother. In that case, Montano was seen by officers restraining his mother from opening the door to allow police in and pushing her to the ground shouting, "you have demons in you."

Police said Montano's mother declined to give a written statement at the time but requested information on getting a protective order against her son.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2013/06/06/nm-man-throws-mother-off-bridge-after-stabbing-her-claims-heard-voices/#ixzz2VSkYESqV

You wonder what it costs to keep ignoring these problems, instead of providing the help that Montano clearly needed?

The Dual Layer Ring Approach Did Not Work

2013-06-06T09:10:00.002-06:00

At least the aluminum wasn't expensive to do an experiment. The difficulty is that it is hard to bend two pieces of aluminum precisely enough on a brake to make one a close fit to the other. Nor did I have any confidence that screwing them together would solve the problem, or produce an adequately stiff ring for such a heavy telescope.

I still think that a single 1/4" thick piece of aluminum might be sufficient, but there's no way to bend something that size with the equipment that I have, or that makes sense to buy, for a one time construction project.

In any case, until I can actually use the telescope, and verify that the optics are worth investing serious money in a carbon fiber composite tube, I am not going to spend more than $500 on tube rings.

Last night I discovered that trying to use a finderscope without crosshairs is nearly useless. This is a University Optics 8x50mm finder that was part of the original Dobsonian telescope. It looks like it was cobbled from parts; the diagonal looks like it might have been broken at one time, and been epoxied back together. I have not seen any UO finders of this type with eyepieces that lack crosshairs, so it is possible that this is just a standard .965" eyepiece that someone found and put into this finder. I have no idea what power this eyepiece gives with this finderscope, which may be why I am having trouble lining it up with the main scope -- perhaps it is a very narrow field of view.

New illuminated finders are pretty expensive, so I think rather than just abandon the Celestron 7x50mm straight-through illuminated finder, I will use a piece of aluminum rectangular tubing to raise the rings that hold it up several inches so that I can look through it without having to put my head through the tube.

If I can persuade myself that the optics are good enough, I'll spend the money on a carbon fiber composite tube. My wife would rather that I spend the money to buy something off-the-shelf -- but the price of off-the-shelf telescopes this size is approaching $8000 -- and they are generally 70 pounds or more -- simply too heavy for the Celestron CI-700 mount that I have. It makes more sense to buy a carbon fiber composite tube like this one, or from this maker in order to get the weight of the telescope between 60 pounds.

"A Pail of Air"

2013-06-05T16:26:00.002-06:00

A 1951 short science fiction story that made a powerful impression on me when I first read it. And even today.

UPDATE: Link fixed.