Interesting Stuff

Woah. Yesterday was bridge club again, and it was the highest turnout that we’ve had since I joined. We had 2 tables going pretty much the entire time. It’s not enough to play a “real” game of duplicate yet, but we at least had to start keeping score (with one table where the partnerships switch every hand, there’s not much point in keeping score). So… yeah. We had about 13 people show up over the course of the evening, and even kept playing past 1:00. Sherri and I were partners for much of the night, which was a bit weird. Over the summer, she played regularly with someone she met at home, and got the hang of his style. However, this was a bit different than the way I played, so we kept getting some of our signals crossed. Oh, well. When I have the opportunity to start getting competitive (which won’t be until next semester, due to Systems lab conflicting with the start of the Unit551 games), I’ll get a regular partner and we’ll work out all of our quirks. There were some pretty good hands, though, and I had a great time. Hopefully, we can get our Monday games going like this too.

Well, I watched the presidential debate tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with either candidate. Kerry pretty much just said “I have a plan” a lot (but not actually saying what sort of plan this was, or how it would work), while Bush dodged most of the questions (he didn’t answer the question about who he would put on the Supreme Court, he didn’t answer what mistakes he’s made or how he corrected them, he didn’t answer how he will protect people’s rights from the PATRIOT Act, etc).

In related news, my absentee ballot arrived today. I’ve found the notary on campus, so I’m pretty much set to vote. I had a bit of a scare last week when I opened my absentee ballot that I’d been saving for a while to realize that it was for the primary election, rather than the upcoming one. After panicking and firing some frantic emails to my dad, he got me straightened out, and explained how I should be getting another ballot soon.

Lets see… Stephen alerted me to the Stop-Loss provisions that have gone into legislature recently. They pretty much say that you can’t leave the armed forces for 3 months before or after your company is deployed. Since companies are pretty much deployed every 6 months, many people who were supposed to finish up their service have been forced to stay in the armed forces. A pretty good blog about it is here (the October 2 update Edit: this one). There’s a lot of shit going on in this country these days. I wish there was something I could do about it, but this kind of crap just seems so widespread. If anyone has an idea about how to actually get something done (note: this does not involve writing to my senator’s intern’s garbage can), I’d love to hear about it.

Sara came over tonight to play Scrabble. Kenny was going to play, too, but copped out at the last minute. It seems that my reign as “Scrabblemeister” around here is at an end. For the 2nd night in a row, I lost – 271 to 294. Partly, this was because I had horrible letters – roughly 2/3 of my hand was vowels the entire time. Partly, this was because Sara had some good words – with PET and BIB on the board, she got a double-word score on the Y:

 L
 U
 M
 PET
BY
I
B

She got 40 points that turn. And I had just started to tie up the game!

Partly, this is happening because I’m really not that good at Scrabble. I appear to be better than other people around here, but I don’t stand a chance against Mini, or even my parents. Well… I dunno. I’ve never seen my parents get a 7-letter word. Regardless, I’m not disappointed that Sara finally beat me. It was a good game.

Tonight, Rachel, Robert and I played Scrabble. Surprisingly, Rachel won! She got 200, I had 180, and Robert had 149. Rachel had a fantastic ending move – the way she went out of letters was to build off of OX:

PATH
O
X

It was a great way to end, since we had all been boxed in the entire game, and for the past many turns, we had been getting 2- and 3-letter words. I think a good time was had by all, though I seem to be losing my Scrabble edge. Hm…

This evening was our first official Bridge Club meeting of the year, and I think it went quite well. At 9:00, we only had 4 people – me, Carl, and two newbie frosh. As soon as they left, however, another newbie frosh showed up, as did Hadley, and later we got Carrie, Robin, Andrew, another newbie frosh, and Whitney. Usually, Sherri should also come, not counting anyone else who might show up. I think it’s gonna be a good year. Unit551 will be playing with us every Monday starting at 7:00 (lessons start at 6:30), but sadly I can’t make it until 8:00, so I can’t compete for Master Points. Argh! I can still play while I’m there, I just can’t compete until next semester.

So, yeah – bridge club Mondays and Thursdays at 9:00 in the 2nd story Case lounge on the west side of the building, and in November, Monday games will start going from 7:00-10:00. You should all come!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was invited to go see the SpaceShipOne launch by Chris Erikson. We were scheduled to leave at 3AM, so I tried to go to sleep early, so that I would be rested. However, I only got 1 or 2 hours; I just tossed and turned in my bed. At 3AM, we met in the East courtyard (I was the only non-Eastie), split into different cars, and left. It’s about 2 hours to get to Mojave from here. I say about 2 hours, because each of the three cars was delayed for a bit. One car had to stop and get gas. One car got lost for about 15 minutes. The car I was in got pulled over. Yeah, that’s right. at 4AM on a Wednesday morning, we were pulled over halfway from Claremont to Mojave (apparently we were going 88mph on a stretch of road with a 60mph speed limit). I’ve never been pulled over before, so I thought it was interesting, if not exactly exciting. I think that at first the cop thought we were doing something illegal, because we were hightailing it out of where ever we came from in the middle of the night on a weekday. He asked us where we were from, where we were going, and why we were going there. However, we convinced him that we really were just going to go see the launch. Chris got a ticket, but we weren’t stopped for very long. When we actually got there, we paid Chris’ share for parking ($20 per car). As luck would have it, our delays and various driving styles worked out perfectly, and we got all 3 cars to park literally next to each other. What luck! The National Guard (I think it was them – they were in camo fatigues, and had that military air to themselves) were all over, in charge of parking, crowd control, etc. We arrived around 5:30, and found a good spot by the runway. No one was allowed within 20 feet of the fence, and the fence was a good 30 feet from the runway, but we could still see everything really well. The crowd was surprisingly sparse – they were about 10 feet deep, but a very sparse 10 feet, involving beach towels, chairs, and all sorts of things (one guy who obviously expected a larger crowd brought a ladder so he could see over everyone). We had some food, hung out a while, and watched the sunrise. We also got to see a plane called Boomerang that Burt Rutan had built in 1995. It’s the oddest plane I’ve ever seen – it has 2 fuselages, one that holds 5 people and a propeller and engine, and one that just has an engine and propeller. To counteract this imbalance, the wings are different lengths. I’ve never seen an asymmetric plane! It was parked on the ground, and I got to go 2 feet from it.

The Scaled Composites website (SC designed and built SpaceShipOne) said that the launch was scheduled for 6:00, but I had heard on IRC the night before that it would be delayed until 7:00. So we hung around, and waited for a while. Apparently there was a VIP tent somewhere, where important people were giving speeches, and this was broadcast throughout the airport grounds on big speakers. The usual “What a grand occasion this is. We’d like to thank our sponsors, and everyone who helped…” sort of thing. At about 6:45, White Knight, carrying SpaceShipOne, came out onto the runway. What an amazing sight! It’s a lot smaller than I expected – WK is roughly the size of a school bus, and SS1 is as big as a large van. From reading stories in various newspapers, I had gotten the impression that WK was as big as a 747. At this point, I should probably include some background info.

For those of you who haven’t been following the whole X-Prize thing, the Ansari X-Prize is a competition to get a privately-funded craft to go into outer space (100km above sea level) carrying the equivalent of 3 people (SS1 had one person, life support for 3, and the equivalent weight of 2 people strapped into it), return to Earth safely, and repeat the feat in less than 2 weeks. Scaled Composites is a company founded by Burt Rutan, who is competing for the X-Prize. The craft, called SpaceShipOne, is carried by a specially designed airplane called Whight Knight to an altitude of 10 miles. WK then drops SS1, whose rockets fire, and SS1 goes into space. To keep from breaking on reentry into the atmosphere, SS1 has wings that fold backwards up above the plane, so that the fuselage takes the brunt of the heat. After falling for a while, the wings fold back into place, and SS1 glides to its landing. In June, this happened for the first time, and SpaceShipOne was the first privately built manned craft to go into space. The pilot was Mike Melville, who is a good friend of Burt Rutan, and had been the test pilot on several other, smaller flights.

Back to my story. Mike Melville was again going to pilot SS1, and he was in his seat when WK came out onto the runway. It slowly drove by everyone, and I got a bunch of pictures (when I develop them, I’ll probably find somewhere online to post them, but that might not be for a while). WK turned around at the end of the runway, and waited. A small, old prop plane took off first, and it circled around a bit to presumably get pictures for the press. It was also one of the chase planes. Then, a sleek, white, push prop took off (it was a 2nd chase plane). Finally, White Knight took off. The three of them circled higher and higher, until I lost them in the sky (after all, they were going up 10 miles). We all went back to the cars, and listened to the radio (some people in mission control were broadcasting what was going on on an AM station). Around an hour later, SS1 was ready to take off. We all got out of the van, and looked around. We figured it should be directly over us. However, after it began, it was clear to see that SS1 was actually several miles east of us. We couldn’t see the craft itself, but we could see the contrail that seemed to go on forever. And it was going fast. I don’t know how fast it was, but really, really fast. I know that on the way down, it broke mach 3, and this was faster. Wow. I’m impressed that Mike Melville could pilot it. We didn’t know it at the time, but apparently SS1 started spinning uncontrollably, and Mr. Melville shut off the engine early. However, it was still going fast enough that it did break into space (just not as high as initially expected). The feathering went flawlessly (that’s when the wings fold back), and Melville glided in for a smooth landing (this was maybe 20 minutes later). Sometime while I wasn’t watching, a military jet took off as a 3rd chase plane. The 3 chase planes and SS1 flew in a ridiculously close formation as SS1 came in to land. At first, I thought there were only 3 planes up there, because they were so close together! Just as SS1 landed, WK flew overhead very low. It was really neat, despite the noise. After WK landed, we decided that we should go, beat the crowd, and try to get back to Mudd in time for classes (we did – we got back at 10:30). As we were leaving, the chase planes were doing air-show-type formations. All in all, it was pretty neat.

SS1 is launching again on the morning of Monday, October 4, so you have one more chance if you want to go see it. I’m happy I saw it once, but I don’t think I’m going to go for the other launch (this will hopefully be the final launch for the X-Prize). I’ve got a roll of pictures which I should get developed soon. This was just amazing, and I think it’s even more incredible because this will be in the history books. 50 years from now, when many retired millionaires routinely go into space, they will look back on this and say, “this is the craft that started the whole thing.” I’m really glad I could be there.

This afternoon at ACM, I was invited to join some people to go see the launch! Whee! I’m going to be excited and giddy all night, until we leave at 3AM. It’ll be great. However, I fear I might not be so energetic at class tomorrow. That’s OK, though, because I get to see SpaceShipOne! Moreinfo when I get back.

My second cousin forwarded me a fascinating article about how extremist Islam ideals are spread (basically, it says that the Wahhabi version of the Koran has been embellished/revised to include all sorts of anti-Jewish and anti-Christian dogmas). I wonder if and how often other religious texts are used in this way? I know that Christians who try to convert Jews to Christianity often take bible quotes completely out of context, but I don’t think they make anything up. Likewise, many modern Jewish customs were created by misinterpreting older laws. But again, no blatant embellishments/lies. Huh. I’d be mildly interested in getting my hands on a real copy of the Koran and a Wahhabi copy to compare the two. But I certainly don’t have the time to do it. Oh, well. Still, it’s good to be aware of these things.

As a follow-up about the X-Prize, I just stumbled across this wonderful comment on Slashdot. I’ve never used IRC before, but I decided to learn so I could do this. With Linux, it’s really easy! I discovered that KDE even comes with an IRC client (Ksirc)! Whee! Hope to see you online Tuesday morning!

So, tonight we went bowling again. It was just Rami, Amanda, Travis, and me, so it was nice and small. However, we had some really good games! The first game, we all broke 100, which was pretty cool. We then had some lackluster games (I had one where I didn’t break 70). However, Amanda managed to get 162! This involved 5 strikes (3 of which were in a row) and 2 spares, though it also involved a zero frame (two gutter balls in a row). Wow. Go Amanda! Travis was close behind, setting a personal best at 151 (I think… it was 150-something). Though I did break 100 a couple other times, I didn’t have any spectacular scores like that. Eh, well. There’s always next time.

Well, despite my efforts to find a ride to see it (it’s only 75 miles away from school), it looks like I am going to miss Burt Rutan’s try for the Ansari X-Prize. Which is too bad, all in all. This is history being made. Not as big as the moon landing, but I’d say that this is as important as, say, the Mercury Missions. I think it would be absolutely awesome if I could go into space when I retire. That would be pretty sweet.

Not much else is going on, so I’m just gonna end this here (finally! a semi-short post!).

So… it just occurred to me that I should put some national news up here again. At the moment, I’m reading through an article about the job crunch in America. Despite what our current administration is saying, the economy is still in a recession. People are still losing their jobs, and the few new jobs that have been created pay significantly less than the old ones. This makes me worried, because in 2 short years, I will be out of here, and looking for employment (or grad school, if things continue like this). This appears to be particularly grim, as it appears as though Bush will win again.

I wish I could find it again, but I can’t, so I will describe an article I read in the Star Tribune over the summer. This guy took data about every election since the Republican party last reinvented itself (as I recall, this was in the 1940’s), and correlated the party in power with every conceivable economic factor – GDP, unemployment, average income, tariff rates, stock markets, jobs created, inflation rates, national debt increases, governmental spending, you name it. With perfect correlation, every indicator he looked at was better for the democrats than the republicans. He even tried letting the first year an administration was in power count for the previous administration (because the first year, you’re still feeling the effects of the previous group). However, this did not change the correlation at all. Either way, Democrats were better for the economy across the board. If you want a job in the next few years, vote democrat! For that matter, if you don’t want more of your civil liberties and “unalienable” rights violated, vote democrat. Granted, Kerry is a pretty bad candidate. However, Bush is quite possibly the worst president this country has ever had. This must not be allowed to continue!