Best E-mails of the Week 1/12/03
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There is an Iraq war theme running through this week's emails I think. We start with a cool puzzle you put together with your mouse: A holiday greeting |
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A bit chauvinistic, but funny nonetheless Customers
will be able to withdraw cash without leaving their MALE PROCEDURE FEMALE PROCEDURE A LETTER FROM A
FARMER, Now in the Marines
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The Last Word
Subject: Fwd: Might is not always right! >
> > The following is an actual radio conversation of a US
naval ship |
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What is an oxymoron?
36. Happily married
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Many of you have wondered why a computer crashes. It is usually very
technical but maybe this will help. Dr. Seuss Explains Why Computers
Sometimes Crash.
(Read this to yourself aloud ) If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort, and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report. If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash! If the label on the cable on the table at your house says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol, that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse; then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang! When the copy on your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk, and the macro code instructions cause unnecessary risk, then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom! |
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We'll be hearing a lot about Orville and Wilbur this December 17 marking their centennial of flying a self powered machine heavier than air. These brothers were great - inventive boys from a solid family, and eventually classic engineers who had to do research without the internet or even telephone. They would write to the Smithsonian Museum for contacts who had information, and the Smithsonian would reply. The brothers aged 32 and 36 in 1903 admired the German Otto Lilienthal who first glided down hills until he crashed and died. They moved from Dayton Ohio (go Buckeyes) to Kitty Hawk where the sand and wind were favorable. Each time they tested their own glider, they took notes and performed calculations to improve it. They researched shipping books in the Dayton library to learn about water propellers, but there was no theory published, just empirical test results, so they tested their own propeller designs in their wind tunnel. To avoid gyroscopic forces, two propellers were used to cancel each other out. A giant chain drive like on a bicycle was configured in a figure eight to reverse drive the two propellers. It was encased in tubes. They wanted to buy an 8 horsepower engine weighing less than 200 pounds to power their first airplane, and wrote to several car makers, but none would supply it. So the Wright Brothers built it themselves in their Dayton bicycle shop. (They disliked cars and once remarked that they had a patentable idea to build a sheet under a car to catch all the nuts and bolts that would fall off the early models!) The famous gas engine initially supplied 16hp, and after a minute settled to 12 hp weighing only 152 pounds. The engine sat to the right while the pilot counterbalanced the weight by lying down just left of center. In the first flight on December 14, older brother Wilbur won the coin toss, and piloted first. The plane took off along a 60' monorail into 25 mile per hour wind. It lifted on its own power for about 3 seconds going up too steeply and then down. The five witness helpers watched history in the making. Three days later in favorable wind, Orville piloted it further, for 12 seconds establishing the first time a self propelled machine lifted itself off the ground and landed at the same elevation. Then they flew for 59 seconds over 800 feet. Later that day, a wind gust picked up the Wright Flyer, and broke it apart as the men tried to hold it down, but it had been photographed first in the famous picture seen below.
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Pete
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