Remembering Dennis Gobets

 We lost Dennis 13 years ago this month.  Something reminded me of him and I spent an hour going through his facebook page, which remains active as a memorial to this remarkable guy.

 

Dennis and I were born about a month apart in 1955.  My family had moved to Santa Clara in November '59 and my mom was looking for social contacts, so we went to the San Jose Unitarian Church.  As a 4 year old, I was sent to "Sunday School" while my parents went to the adult service.   There was a boy that seemed about my age next to an empty chair, so I sat in it.  He was named Dennis and we were fast friends.  After class, we went outside.  Dennis said "Oh, there are my parents" and pointed at my parents.  I was a little freaked out by this.   It turned out that my parents were talking to Dennis' parents, coffee cups in hand.  (Here's a joke:  There's a fork in the pathway to heaven, with a sign.  One path leads to Eternal bliss and salvation, the other leads to coffee and discussion.  You can always tell the Unitarians, because they're the ones that take the second path.)   Our families became lifelong friends. 

 

This picture was taken in 1962 at our then brand new house in Cupertino.   From left to right: My mom, Ursula Gobets, Arthur Gobets.  Mom's watering the grass, which was planted just a day or two earlier.  The '57 Chevy belonged to the neighbor.  I hope they sold it to a collector and it didn't end up as scrap.

 Dennis and I remained very good friends for most of our childhoods.  We'd often be deposited with the other's parents to be "babysat".   We went on numerous outings together.  We were both into trains, we both loved to explore and climb trees and other things.   Dennis was a little more of a risk-taker than I was, but I'd generally follow along.  I have a very strong memory of playing on a Steam Locomotive that was in a park somewhere on the peninsula. (I think this was SP "Pacific" #2472, which was subsequently restored to operation and is the founding centerpiece of the Golden Gate Railroad Museum).

 

All the gauges and levers in the cab had been removed and the firebox welded closed, but we could pretend pretty well.  A lot of our games did involve running around and climbing on various parts of the locomotive.   I remember it as a great jungle gym.  One of the games we played was "Casey Jones", and we had to jump off the locomotive into the sandbox below before we crashed and exploded.  Those driving wheels are 73 inches and the running board is at least a couple of feet higher, so the drop to the sandbox was 8 feet.  Dennis just did it, but I had to be coaxed. 

As we got older, we didn't need to be baby-sat so much, and as our homes were 5 miles apart, we fell partly out of touch.   The last time I saw him while we were kids was when he was playing "Teddy" in Sunnyvale High School's production of Arsenic and Old Lace.  He was fantastic in the role.  I've seen a few other productions of this play and Dennis was the best.  Not long later, I moved away, eventually to the Seattle area.  Dennis moved to the Santa Cruz area.   We interacted only a handful of times during the time that Dennis worked for Apple and I worked for Microsoft.  

We suddenly reconnected when Dennis' father and my mother were in the same hospital wing at the same time, in early 2001.   After that, we got together several times.  Dennis tried to recruit me in to E Clampus Vitus, and it almost worked...I support their historical activities, but I don't enjoy alcohol as much as seems to be required.  Facebook, I found, was a surprisingly good way for us boomers to reconnect, and Dennis and I monitored each other, and frequently commented on the other's activities.  The very last communication we had was his funny remark about a photo I'd taken.   Facebook reminded me that it was 13 years ago today, and that's what sent me into this nostalgia-dive.  

I happened to be visiting my Dad when Dennis' mom called to tell us that Dennis had died.  I was very shocked.    I'd been hoping to get together with him during the trip.  I unfortunately needed to get back to Seattle before the memorial and was very bummed to not be able to make it.

  

 

Firefly and the Bourne Identity

 The TV Show Firefly had (at least) three important threads that were left unresolved when the show was prematurely cancelled.  The movie, Serenity, tried to wind all these together.  I think it did a disservice to the backstory, although I do appreciate that they did it.

 The first is, what was the alliance trying to do to River and why do they want her back so much?

The second: What's the story behind Reverend Book?

The third: what's the story with the Reavers?

I think the big story behind the first two is that the alliance was trying to create a group of Super-Agents, with special talents and training, that can go into any situation either overtly or clandestinely, to bring about whatever outcome the Alliance leadership wants.  Reverend Book, I speculate, was a first draft of this, created and deployed during the war.  After the war ended,  he decided he wanted no part of this going forward, and the deal they worked out was that Book was to do something "out of the world for a time" and after that time--5 years almost certainly--he'd be allowed to live freely but be required to keep the secrets.

"The Operative", who we met in the movie, was the next generation of this.  He'd undergone physical and mental training.  I suspect we'd have met someone like him had the series been continued.

River was intended to be of the following generation.  Children who are ultra-smart and physically capable on their own, but would be given chemical and surgical enhancements along with the training to make them even more powerful.  But the people doing the training had not reckoned with a determined, competent, wealthy and loyal older brother, who was capable of breaking her out.  And once she was out, it took her a while to recover, perhaps requiring the assistance of the brother, but she was able to use her skills in new ways.  We saw this a little here and there, but I'm sure the plans for the second included River doing some amazing stuff.

 Note the similarity here with the back story behind "The Bourne Supremacy".  The hero there has been chemically enhanced and physically and mentally trained to be a superior agent.  In that case, it was mainly about extrajudicial killings, but I suspect that was a lot of what the alliance uses these Operatives for.  He himself explained that the mass slaughter he and his agents committed in the movie is well within his remit. 

The movie exerted strange pressures on the story.  Whedon surely wanted to get as much of this back story out, and he also wanted to bring those unfamiliar with Firefly along, so he worked out a way to integrate the River/Operative story with the Reaver story.   It works, but barely.  There was easily enough story there to fill two more seasons and not kill Book and Washburne.  

 ----

I've been watching the "Malfoid" Harry Potter fan fiction/AI videos.  The technical ability shown by some of these are incredible, but the authors range from childish to fairly good, but definitely not professional.  What could a talented writing and production team, like that which put together Firefly in the first place, do with these tools?  The original actors have all aged 25 years, and one of them has died.  There's no way they could play the same characters, aged only a few months.  Using the same sorts of video tools as the Malfoid folks have been, much could be done about a real second season.  The real actors could contribute voices and timing.  Apparently a great deal of the charisma of the original show was because the actors themselves got along exceptionally well and genuinely liked being with each other...and those relationships generated nuance that can not be written in.

Missouri to Columbia River Canal

 People who have never been there have suggested making a canal from the Missouri River to the Snake or Columbia River, which would, they think, make transcontinental ship traffic possible.  Here's one:

Here are some facts:  The Missouri River is only navigable up to Sioux City, Iowa, which is right where South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska  come together--in other words, less than half way across.  The part upstream of St Louis needs periodic dredging. 

The  Snake River is navigable up to Lewiston, Idaho, where it splits into several tributaries, all of which are way too small for anything much bigger than a ski boat.  And there are lots of waterfalls.  The connection on the map appears to be the Clark Fork river, which runs through some mighty rugged country.  I've driven alongside it for substantial mileage: turning it into navigable water is not a credible option.

 We already have many transcontinental routes which are vastly more practical than waterways.  They are called Railroads, and Interstate Highways.   It's important to realize that America stopped digging new navigable canals (e.g. the Erie Canal) pretty much as soon as railroads became viable--it was simply not economically competitive anymore.  Europe was much farther into their canal system at that point--it made sense to connect up canals, especially in northern and western europe, where the land is pretty flat.   Most of the canals dug in the last 150 years have been aqueducts--not for moving boats, but for moving the water itself. 

Metric Taps and Dies

 I just learned a powerful advantage that the metric system has over earlier systems.  Specifically, Taps and Dies.  When you're drilling a threaded hole in the SAE system, you need to look up in a chart what the correct size drill is, as it's not simple.  SAE uses two main systems for sizing tapped holes:  1/4" and bigger, the measurement is the bolt size, and then you have a number of threads per inch.  Smaller than 1/4", machine screw sizes are numbered 0000, 000, 00, 0, 1, 2...8, 9,10, 11, 12.   Every shop in America has a tap table, telling you what size drill to use for what size and pitch machine screw, and is it a sensible system?  No, they have numbered and lettered drills.  Some taps have the drill and clearances sizes etched on the tap, but they're often illegible and for the smaller sizes.

 Metric doesn't have this problem.  Metric screws are described by screw outer diameter and pitch length.  Standard 60 degree threads make the tap hole easy.  So an M8x1 screw is 8 mm in diameter and has threads 1 mm long.  So to drill a hole with 90% engagement, such as into plastic, you simply subtract the thread pitch from the diameter to get the hole size.  To get a clearance hole, you drill a hole a little larger than the thread outer diameter.  No tap table is needed. 

 It turns out that this is both a benefit and a curse.  You can get an amazing variety of metric taps and dies, where SAE has largely standardized on Coarse and Fine threads (UNC and UNF), which are of course different for different sized bolts.  The benefit of that is that the SAE has also made some strength definitions, which are enormously powerful if your bolt will be stressed highly.  Most metric tap and die sets will have roughly the equivalent of UNC and UNF, but you can get threads both finer and coarser. 

Colonies on the Moon

 We're about to go back to the moon for the first time since the 1970s, with the aim of having permanently occupied colonies.  Will this lead to people living their lives entirely on the moon?  Perhaps, but I don't think that will happen for a long time, if ever.  Sure, once we have enough people up there, life happens and some of them will die, and probably a few will be born.  But there are a lot of reasons the moon is not a good place for "settlements" as opposed to scientific research operations.

There are plenty of reasons a colony on the moon will be useful.  For example, radio noise from earth will be sharply reduced on the "back side" of the moon, the side that permanently faces away from earth.  This makes it an excellent place to install radio telescopes, includeing massive interferometers and gravity wave detectors.  But these things will operate almost entirely remotely.  The people who do construction and maintenance will live elsewhere--while on the moon, most likely deep underground.  I also think the moon will be a particularly useful place to mine for resources.  Lunar regolith is not terribly far from sterile earth soil, so it may prove useful for other applications in space--construction material for space stations for example, but in a much shallower gravity well than Earths.

Because the moon is well outside the protective magnetic field of the earth, people staying on the moon will be exposed to high levels of cosmic rays and other radiation, as well as high level of micrometeorite impacts.  People will need to live inside thick shells.  They can venture out inside thinner shells for a few hours, but they are taking a risk.  The lunar astronauts of the 1970s received a level of exposure comparable to a few medical X-Rays from that period, but the longest of them was only outside the earth's protection for 12 days.  People working outside for months on end will get sick.  They must spend as much of their time as possible deep underground, and when they need to be close, mostly do it from heavily shielded vehicles. 

The second problem is low gravity.   Our experiments so far have shown that exposure to microgravity does permanent damage.  The moon is not microgravity, but it is 1/6th of the earth's.  It's hard to imagine that not causing some damage.   One year is really too much for a human to be in zero G.  Let's guess it's 6 years for the moon.  This is plenty of time to get some real work on the moon, and even engage is real life there, but I'm pretty sure there will be a medical limit.

 I think we can compare it to the south pole.  There are lots of people who stay down there for a year, but they generally come back.  There's nobody that actually lives there, although the base is permanently occupied.  I happen to have two scientist friends who have over-wintered there.  They're both back in the US now.  There are lots of other bases in extreme places with similar, rotating crews, and I'm certain that the moon will join them.   

Self Defeating Code of Honor

Most of the Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire milleu maintains internal sense, although there's magic and other mysterious stuff.   But occasionally, deep illogic creates terrible, fatal battles for which there is really no need.  I'll cite two examples that really bother me. 

 The fight between Arthur Dayne and allies versus Ned Stark and his allies outside the Tower of Joy is just stupid.  Arthur Dayne had been ordered to protect Raegar's new wife Lyanna, who is also Ned Stark's sister.  His absence at the battle of the Trident may have cost Raegar his life, although Raegar had no way to know that.  Arthur Dayne fights Ned to the death, and Ned wins.   But this makes no sense.  Arthur Dayne is protecting Lyanna, who is Ned's sister.  Ned would never have caused Lyanna to come to harm.

The back story is that Lyanna had been betrothed to Ned's good friend, Robert Baratheon, and he was in love.  Raegar "stealing" Lyanna away was ostensibly the cause of the war.   When Robert found out that Lyanna had betrayed him, he might have killed her, and more likely her newborn son, so to some degree she did need protection.  But Ned would never have hurt her, even had his friend ordered him to.  When Arthur Dayne realized who it was that he was fighting, and that his prince had fallen, reason dictates that he should have renegotiated.   Ned and Arthur were itching for a fight, but this fight just stretches credibility.  Ultimately, they both wanted the same thing: Lyanna and her heir's survival.  A tiny bit of renegotiation would have changed things.

When I read the books, it was clear that Lyanna was dying in Childbirth, although it was never explicitly said.  That Jon Snow was the outcome of this childbirth already seemed pretty likely, and what Robert would have done with him.  Ned, for all his loyalty to Robert, was even more loyal to his family and would have protected Lyanna and Child, even against Robert.  

Sandor "the Hound" Clegane had been traveling with Arya.  He seemed to have a special care for the Stark girls, although his stated goal at the start was to "Sell" Arya to her aunt, Lyssa.  But Lyssa was murdered and they continued north.  By this point, Arya and Sandor had become good friends.  After arriving too late to deliver her to her mother and brother--murdered at the Red Wedding--they continued on, and stumbled into Brienne of Tarth and Podrick.  Once again, the goal of these two "teams" was entirely aligned--they wanted to protect the Stark Girls and deliver them to safety--a little discussion before starting to fight would have stopped the whole thing.

I'd hope that real fighters in these situations would have had a discussion and worked things out.  In both cases, there was honor at stake, but the people the promises had been made to were dead.   Loyalty to your "team" is important, but these incidents seem designed to show that there is always ambiguity as to which team you are on.   Human interrelations are always complex.    Picking teams almost never is.   Sports makes a terrible metaphor for these situations.  There were numerous cases of brothers fighting on opposing sides in the US civil war.  Lyanna's love and marriage with her families ostensible deepest enemy could have been turned into a huge alliance and improvement for the world, but stupid adherence to codes of honor prevented it. 

A lot of the fans of the show like to see the battles, and indeed these two were among the better ones.  There was a lot of clamoring for "Clegane-Bowl", and the showrunners acceded to it.   That one was less dumb.

 

Archimedes Mirror

Lot's of people have thought that the great Syricusian polymath Archimedes made a weapon capable of setting the sails of ships on fire from a distance.  There is no historical evidence of this--the story seems to come from the middle ages.   The Mythbusters, several times tried to repeat this stunt, and failed every time.   While I can see problems with the individual experiments, I think they got it right--for several practical reasons, Archimedes probably did not try to set sails on fire by using individual flat mirrors focused by hand.  He may have experimented with it, but like the mythbusters, failed at every attempt.

That said, it is definitely possible to set things afire with a large mirror focusing the suns rays.  You can buy a hand held cigarette lighter that works this way, and a larger mirror can generate a fire at a distance of a few feet.    An accurately enough focused mirror could definitely start a fire at a distance, but it needs to be pretty accurate.  It's remotely possible that the mechanics of Syracuse could have made such a mirror, but I'm certain that had Archimedes seen such a mirror under production, he would have noticed the optical magnification it would have provided, and he'd have invented a reflecting telescope within days. This obviously did not happen, so I don't think Syracuse made such a mirror.