March 2004

Sailor Superstitions

Sailors have always been a superstitious lot, dating back 3000 years. Superstitions were a way to help deal with the utter helplessness sailors felt when being confronted by the incredible powers of the sea. Over the years, a great number of rituals and myths have evolved in which sailors believe and follow to "help" them safely make passages. This is a good summary page on sailor superstitions. Another page that lists superstitions and customs of the sea, page also delves into mythology. Shakespeare wrote of the sea in The Tempest. A page that deals with today about renaming a boat (ignore the psychic malarchy). Gemstones are surrounded by superstition and common beliefs. Lastly, let's not forget cat superstitions.

Sailors
Sailors have attributed superstitions to almost all aspects of their work and life on the sea. One of the common traits of superstitious belief is that the subject matter of the superstition usually involves some uncertainty and because of our desire to feel secure, we create superstitions to account for all the possible outcomes, thereby minimizing our lack of control (or making us feel as though we have reduced the risk). This concept can be seen most clearly in the sailing profession and is largely due to the uncontrollable weather that the sailors life and work is powerless before. The job, more so in the past than in the present and in the days of pirates, was a very dangerous one and the slightest mistake could spell disaster for all on board. To deter any type of dangerous action and behavior, superstitions could serve as a warning and therefore minimize future calamities. It also brought comfort to passengers and crew.

Renaming a Boat
I was visiting your site because I am buying a boat with a name that I would like to change.  A person I work with asked me if I was superstitious and I told him, "ABSOLUTLY!"
I was raised around boats and there are things that are done and things that are not done.  Most have been covered but here are the ones that I live buy.
Never name your boat for your wife...... She will win it in the divorce.
Never name your boat for your kids, something bad will happen to them on the water.

Moblogging

Thefeature.com is a website about the mobile (wireless) industry and the internet. Textually.org is a blog that covers the latest news on texting or short messaging (SMS) and multimedia messaging (MMS). Thefeature has an article on moblogging.

Moblogging, or weblogging from a mobile device, is one of the big buzzwords in wireless business. A new moblog portal is announced at least once a month, with each one claiming to be more feature rich or easier to use or just cooler than the one before it. Moblogging has been a hit with the digerati and the younger generations- the people who were already entrenched in PC-based weblogging and have become the content producers of the Web. It was an obvious advancement for these groups- they already blogged, now they could do it from virtually anywhere.

Rockets - the sport

The Fly Rjockets site was developed to introduce you to all aspects of rockets and rocketry. Inside you'll find easy to understand information for the beginner, information on local clubs and national organizations, a vast array of rocketry vendors, and links to other great rocketry web sites. Enjoy an inspiring, educational, family hobby with an un-paralleled safety record. This page explains how rockets work.

Model Rockets are usually simple. They have a set of fins, a body tube, a nosecone, a parachute for recovery and a rocket motor to make it go. The motor burns and propels the rocket, the propellant in the motor burns out, the rocket coasts upwards and finally arcs over at the peak of its flight (apogee) where a small ejection charge pops the parachute out so the rocket can float back to earth safely. Model rockets are constructed of cardboard, plastic, and balsa wood and are fueled by commercially manufactured single-use rocket motors. Some of the electronics used in High Power Rockets are also employed in model rockets.

Gracenote

Gracenote is recognized as the industry standard for music recognition services. Its services are available in virtually any device that plays digital music, including media players, home stereos, MP3 players, car stereos - even wireless devices. Their information services are used by leading media players including AOL's WinAmp, Apple's iTunes, RealNetwork's RealOne Player; and consumer electronics manufacturers including Pioneer, Phillips and Sony. A page that lists the software partners, left bar navigates the different platforms. An interesting page of 62 FAQ's.

The Gracenote CDDB® Music Recognition Service is an Internet-based service we license to developers of software CD players, CD burners, MP3 players and encoders, catalogers, and other applications. The service lets these developers display artist, title, tracklist, and other music-related information automatically and instantly in their applications.

For example, when you insert a music CD in your computer, the software player application on your computer uses our service to first identify the CD, and then display the artist, title, tracklist, and other information to you instantly.  Most commercial music CDs do not contain any of this information on the CD itself.  That's why we created the service.

One of the most interesting features of the service is that it provides a forum for exchange of music information between fans. If you see an error in the data for a favorite CD, or the data is incomplete, or the service does not recognize the CD at all, you can submit changes or additions to the database maintained by the service. In turn, you benefit from the processed submissions from the millions of other fans who have ever used the service. In addition, Gracenote staff are constantly entering and correcting disc entries by hand and working with artists and labels to let them enter and edit information on the CDs they publish.

Literature

Literary Kicks is a website that brings writers together. It is devoted to the "alternative" literary scene. Site allows members of the LitKicks community to post well-written articles under various movements (genres). I liked this article on the Beat Generation: a history of the editing and promoting.

The past decade has seen a revival of interest in the writers and poets of the Beat Generation. From CD box sets of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and others reading their respective works, to movies like The Source and The Last Time I Committed Suicide, to a boom in critical works dealing with topics ranging from Beat Buddhism to Beat cinema, the Beats have become "hip" again. The widespread attention, covering the commercial and the scholarly, has revisited the Beats both as serious writers and as cultural icons. But little study has been made of the Beats not only as the producers of a body of written work, but as the publishers and promoters of that work. This is an overlooked, but important aspect of the history of the Beats, for without being all three, the Beats might not be the subject of dissertations and GAP ads today.

The question arises, just what brought about the need for these presses and magazines? Part of the answer is straightforward: the literary/political/cultural views of many of the Beat writers did not mirror those of more established literary magazines, mainstream publishers or the media. Their writing was in some respects socio-political and artistic commentary on the nature of American society and culture at mid-century‹focusing, directly or indirectly, on what they perceived to be the militarization and conservativism of 1950s America.

Complimenting above article is how Jazz and the Beat Generation are interwoven. I found this article on ubo, titled Jazz: A cool Duel, thoughts of Freddie Fisher and Jon Hendricks.

As the Beat movement was getting underway, bebop was already going strong, especially in New York City, where 52nd Street was bustling with activity in jazz clubs up and down its length. Bebop was an innovative style of jazz which saw its heyday in the '40s, characterized by smaller combos as opposed to big bands and a larger focus on virtuosity. Bebop's renaissance came about in the heart of New York City, where musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Miles Davis were ushering in a new era for jazz music.

Why did jazz suddenly become such a driving force behind the writings of the Beat authors? What similarities can we find between jazz musicians and the Beats? Perhaps the most obvious comparison we can make is indicated by the very word "beat".

"The word 'beat' was primarily in use after World War II by jazz musicians and hustlers as a slang term meaning down and out, or poor and exhausted". Kerouac went on to twist the meaning of the term "beat" to serve his own purposes, explaining that it meant "beatitude, not beat up. You feel this. You feel it in a beat, in jazz real cool jazz". The Beat authors borrowed many other terms from the jazz/hipster slang of the '40s, peppering their works with words such as "square", "cats", "nowhere", and "dig". But jazz meant much more than just a vocabulary to the Beat writers. To them, jazz was a way of life, a completely different way to approach the creative process.

Sayings

Terrific site if sayings interest you. It explains what the expression means and where it possibly originated from. What does pipe dream mean?

Pipe dream - impossible fanciful hope or plans

Despite its comfortable modern associations this was originally a reference to the pipe-smoking of opium and to the fantasies it produces. Opium used to be a legal drug in the form of laudanum.

Military

War Time Journal is an on-line military resource for researchers, hobbyists, military professionals and all others with an interest in military history, science and defense. My journey thru this portal. In Weapons and Technoloy, I clicked unmanned vehicles. Machine Brain interested me and in fighting robots section I clicked Military Robots. I clicked a few links on that page, which just gave mainly military contractor sites with photos. Finally found an interesting page; COMBATT: Trucks and Technologies of the Future.

As America motors its current military fleet in the war in Iraq, the U.S. Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM), the National Automotive Center (NAC), along with the "Big Three" automakers, branches of the military, and other federal government agencies are at near-completion of a 14-million dollar project, designing military trucks of the future.

The COMmercially BAsed Tactical Truck (COMBATT) initiative started four years ago and is a collaborative venture between TACOM 's NAC and DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation, with a goal to develop military vehicles off of an existing commercial truck platform, with enhanced off-road mobility, improved durability, and state-of-the-art technologies, as well as lowered cost and upkeep. Requirements are for a light tactical truck remanufactured to Army specifications for carrying troops and cargo, which could be used as a replacement, in some applications, for the current volume military vehicle, the HMMWV or "HUMVEE".

Dr. Galapagos

Flexploring.com has a science question section for Kids; Ask Dr. Galapagos. He answers questions in a humorous way that keeps everybodies interest.

Dear Dr. Galapagos,
I have heard people say that it is aerodynamically impossible for bees to fly.
They say that bees are violating the laws of aerodynamics when they fly.
Apparently the bees get away with this because they have never studied law.
Hoping to learn,
Puzzled in Peoria

Answer to Question Number 1:
There seems to be two questions in that question.
First, is it aerodynamically impossible for bees to fly;
and secondly, do bees study law?

Let 's discuss law first.
It is my learned and not humble opinion (I know more than almost anybody), that bees do not study much of anything in the way of law or physics.  This is because they come into this world already knowing all there is to know about being a bee (this "automatic" type of knowledge is often called instinct by big word using scientists)...............