Accessorize

Yes, yes, several thousand times a minute yes. Anybody who has ever watched the movie Predator has surely thought to themselves "I may not be the beefcake that Jessie 'The Body' Ventura is, but I'd still love to pack a minigun. What to do?" The answer, naturally, is let the car carry the load for you. If American automotive management and engineers showed this sort of innovation, we would definitely all have 100 m.p.g. flying cars to take us to work.

The Worst Math Joke You May Just Laugh At

I was walking to my desk early one morning when I saw the following sketch on a coworker's markerboard:This is just my re-creation, but it's a classic. If you get it, it's at least worth a chuckle. If you don't, you should feel very good about your priorities in life right now.

Pookie Power

This little buggy, according to http://www.defensetech.org/, was a solution to a problem during the Bush War of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It is known as a Pookie. The problem was that rebels were sowing mines along roads, and those roads needed to be cleared quickly to keep supplies and commercial goods flowing. This glorified go-cart uses special tires (racing slicks) to distribute the vehicle and driver weight widely and evenly, reducing the likelihood of detonating a mine under the vehicle, and if a mine did detonate, the relatively light armor was sloped to deflect the blast safely away from the drive. The assembly underneath is a mine detector, which I imagine was just an electromagnet capable of noting the metallic mines of that era. The design located many anti-vehicle mines in service, and is claimed to have never set off a pressure mine. Some were destroyed by electronically (remotely?) detonated mines, but even then only a single driver died due to one of those explosions because of the armor. Not too shabby for a cheap little buggy.



There is another insurgency underway, in case you haven't noticed. While the intensity of the war in Iraq has dropped off, a very similar problem was and is still faced by American forces. While the explosive devices placed by Iraqi insurgents were far more difficult to defeat, here is the American solution:

If that doesn't give you a warm, fuzzy, patriotic feeling I don't know what does. There is a 99% chance that the vehicle (this variant is known as a Cougar) in the picture survived the explosion. It's a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP. It's about as traditional of a solution to a tactical military problem as one will find. When the bad guys get bigger guns, upgrade your armor. The armor is now too heavy, so upgrade your suspension. The vehicle is now slow, get a bigger engine. It's a very incremental process, inching along while your opponent is also sharpening his tactics and tools. Oh, and they are horrendously expensive, difficult to maintain, and don't even fit down many streets or across some bridges.

I see a great deal of this in military ship design/building. Don't take any chances. Something that does just a little bit more but is far more expensive is preferable to something that is cheaper and almost performs as well, or is pricey and is going to be either an astronomical success or an utter failure. This mentality does make some sense when soldiers' lives are on the line, which was clearly the case when the U.S. rushed to buy MRAP's. But is it the best mindset to instill in your entire defense infrastructure? Play it safe, and don't ever worry about hitting a home run.

However, that is not the only solution. The British also have soldiers in Iraq, and in their area (which includes the urban hole of Basra), they specialized in precise raids with minimum firepower traded off for speed, speed, speed. This method is not guaranteed to be successful, but it points out that the closed-minded, single solution approach often embraced by the military and defense design establishment is faulty thinking. I watched a series of shock tests this week that brought that lesson home.

It's amazing what a 3000 pound hammer dropped onto a spring loaded fixture can prove. At hand was the question of whether a lightweight, flexible linkage could stop a tremendous load (momentarily up to 15 tons or so) at one end while being held in place by... a 3/8" roller assembly. It survived! How? The heretical use of materials the Navy often holds in disdain (titanium, precipitation hardened stainless steels...) and a willingness to take a little bit of a risk. I had the good fortune of working with the man who conceived of this and numerous other ingenious contraptions. Most involved intentionally stretching a linkage to make it work, and running numerous linkages off a single actuator, and other Swiss-watch mechanisms that others dismissed as "claptrap". Some of the designs even broke, or seized in place, or rusted away in seawater. But none failed so badly that the design couldn't be fixed, and the savings in space, money, and infrastructure compared to more traditional concepts were substantial. In the end, this particular invention of his passed the shock test and operated just fine when the dust settled. A few washers were bent, but what's a little stretching between friends?

It took the absolute mental saturation of gizmos, widgets, and mechanisms for a man to have the vision to create machines like this on a blank sheet of paper. It took the experience of working with his own hands on boats and cars and many hours of applied engineering analysis to know when intuition mattered more than numbers, and when something would just stretch or crack clean through. It took the guts for him to stand before critics and present his vision to others and overcome their stubborn resistance and fear of failure. And it took him being correct time and again before he was trusted with the reigns of multi-million dollar designs and given the chance to prove his mettle. His mind was agile, unbound by convention, and stubbornly entrenched when the Dork-meter was pegged. This is the sort of mind it takes to produce a Pookie, not an MRAP.

Where My Dogs At?

Barack Obama was not my choice for president. However, he is the man who was elected to be our president for the next 4 years, so I maintain that we need to make the most of what we've got. I already have a great possibility in mind. The First Family will, following tradition, choose a pet. This will most likely be a dog. There is one fantastic option here: One of Michael Vick's dogs! This assumes full rehabilitation and training of one of these mistreated dogs, of course, but out of the forty or so dogs taken into custody it seems certain that at least one could fit the bill. Think of what a strong message that sends about the treatment of animals! It's even the sort of rags to riches story that America prides itself in. Not to mention the ability of a majestic pit bull or other fighting dog to convey great qualities in a nation. Strength, loyalty, doggedness (forgive the pun), and, of course, ferocity towards the wicked. Does the White House need another terrier or spaniel? I think not. As an added bonus, it's one more opportunity to make the animal mistreating, gambling, tax-evading, false stament'ing Mike Vick look like a fool.