The Great Emu War

For my last blog post of the semester I decided I would write about one of the funniest moments in history in my opinion. During the 1930's in Australia, a certain species of flightless bird was causing a bit of a headache for local farmers. The emu, a bird native to the area, had been damaging the crops of the farmers in the area for decades and in 1932 the farmers decided to fight back. The local agrarians enlisted the help of Major G.P.W Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery to devise a way to curtail the threat. In regular army fashion the Major decided that the best way to take care of the emu, was with good old fashioned machine guns. This is how this panned out, the Major, accompanied by two of Australia's finest carrying machine guns started out into the bush in early November to hunt the bird. After searching for the emu for hours eventually the soldiers found a few a few hundred yards away. The soldiers fired on the birds, which did nothing other than scare them away, much to the dismay of the men. After repeating this a few times the Major decided to mount one of the guns on a truck to give chase to the birds. Since this is 1932, this idea was not as glamorous as it sounds, as the truck only made the gun less accurate. After weeks of searching however the soldiers discovered a large flock of the bird, and decided to try and ambush the emu. In position, the birds were spooked into rushing their position. The soldiers waited until they were in point blank range, then started to unload their guns on the birds. Instead of mass destruction of the species, the guns jammed after about 12 had been killed and the rest scattered. The men, disheartened gave up their mission, and faced international ridicule for their mission. After a number of other similar attempts, the Great Emu War was deemed a failure by every party involved, except the emu, who were victorious. I think my favorite quote from the who experience was from an ornithologist, Dominic Serventy; “The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month.”

http://www.emugigs.com/emuwar/

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4508317

An Interesting Story

So here is my take at an interesting story, it should be just as appealing as the one told in class. Once upon a time, there was a philosopher who was thinking to himself, "I wonder how a person can be once upon a time?" At that point the philosopher realized that this phase is simply a convoluted way of saying, at one point. He thought to himself, " Librarians all over the world, are confusing the children, perverting our future and at one point this was considered to be a good idea." Once the philosopher noticed this, he took it upon himself to make sure that not a single child would be confused by Victorian era English ever again, until the end of time. He posted up in libraries, coffee shops and outside houses; watching, waiting for someone's mother to pick up a children's book or start watching a Star War's movie. But this was to no avail however as the irony of the event soon become evident. That a philosopher, whose job it is to think about ironic statements and events; did not realize that stalking families like this would be akin to stalking. And then everybody died, and the earth was red as blood., bunnies.

History of Virginia Tech

For this weeks post I thought that it would be interesting to discuss briefly the history of our school up to the present day. Virginia Tech can trace its history back to 1892, when the Virginia General Assembly purchased the buildings of the Preston and Olin Institute with the intent to begin a school. This was made possible by funds from the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act; which budgeted federal money for the creation of land-grant colleges. The land was turned into a military school called Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. When the school was first opened, it did not resemble a traditional four year institution, instead the school served as a military school; the military tradition lives on today in the form of the corp of cadets. As attendance increased the president John McBryde organized the curriculum into that of a four year college and soon after the name was changed to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. The new name happened to be a bit too long, so soon after the name was shortened to Virginia Polytechnic Institute. In the years that followed the 1896 name change, VPI experimented with partnerships with other colleges as well as changing the mandatory corp of cadet requirement for male students from all four years to only two. During the tenure of T. Marshall Hahn, the president from 1962 to 1974, VPI experienced rapid growth as a college. Hahn had the goal of turning the school into a major research institution, and to achieve this authorized the the construction of new buildings as well as increasing the student body by about 1000 students a year. Hahn is also credited with opening the corp of cadets to women, making VPI the first college in the nation to do so. Towards the end of the 20th century, Virginia Polytechnic Institute official changed it's name to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Today, this name is shortened to Virginia Tech because the full name is just too long.


http://www.unirel.vt.edu/history/

Electric Car Conversions

    A new trend is gaining speed among the mechanically savvy, one that allows them to spend less time at gas stations. Turning gasoline powered automobiles into electric powered cars is a hobby that saves tinkerers money. This interest in electric cars is a combination of multiple events; rising gas prices, environmental concern, or simply curiosity are turning car owners with a little know how, and a few spare bucks into electric car owners.
    The process is somewhat straightforward for a gear-head. First, anything that can be removed typically is, this includes; the engine, radiator, gas tank, spare tire and back seats. This "stripping" of the car brings the weight down, and this is one important aspect of an electric car. The lighter the car, the longer the drives that can be made, as excess weight drains the batteries faster.
    Secondly, a number of supplies must be either bought, salvaged or traded for. This is not an exhaustive list, but it includes a number of car batteries, the more the better, an electric engine, some circuity supplies, and a lot of wiring. These supplies are the basic requirements to have an electric car, however some builders spend more money on purposed lithium ion batteries designed for such cars.
    The next step is to put everything together and is the most complex. The are not very many guides for this sort of thing, they can be found but they are not tailored to different models of car; most of them are just for the wiring. What is difficult about this step is managing to fit all of the parts in the car. Depending on your build, there could be upwards of 8 car batteries that have to fit somewhere. With them in place, the engine is typically attached to the existing transmission with a conversion plate. The final piece that needs to be added is the circuity aspect. These can be ordered from a company or hand designed, it is up to the builder. What these do is turn the "raw" supply of power contained in the car batteries into a controlled, regulated flow of energy.
    With everything in place, it's time to go driving. These cars have a recharge time of anywhere from 12hours to a number of days, it depends on the quality and quantity of the batteries. A typical build will be some kind of manual car, with 8 car batteries, which holds 96 volts of energy to power the car. These cars can drive anywhere from a few miles to upwards of 50 miles before a recharge is needed, it all depends on how the car is driven, faster speeds drain the batteries faster. There is one thing that I have neglected to mention that makes electric cars superior to gas cars for performance, acceleration.  Electric cars have some of the fastest 0-60 times of ANY automobile, for instance the Audi e-Tron has a 0-60 time of 4.8 seconds, tied with a BMW 325i.



http://www.audiusa.com/us/brand/en/exp/progress/Concept_Vehicles/audi_e_tron.html
http://www.zeroto60times.com/BMW-Bimmer-0-60-mph-Times.html
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/electric-car7.htm
"2 years on a high school electric vehicle team."

1984

So as some of y'all know, I have been re-reading one of my favorite books of all time, 1984 by George Orwell. I first read this novel in the 11th grade in high school, and at the time did not take the time to enjoy it as much as I would have liked seeing as I had to read a few chapters a day. This time I was able to take my time and read a little at a time and focus more on the little details. If you haven't read the book, it is one of the classics in dystopian fiction. The story was written after the 2nd world war, and is somewhat of a warning from Orwell about how he thought the world might be in 1984 if communism continued to sweep the globe. 1984 follows a period of time in the life of the protagonist of Winston Smith, a member of The Party in a fictitious country called Oceania. The Party is the ruling body of Oceania, which is the combination of the America's, Great Britain and a few various other nations. The Party is led by the mysterious Big Brother, an ominous person who keeps a watchful eye on all of Oceania's citizens. Winston is what amounts to an "average joe" in this society and at the point in his life where the novel follows him, he is wrestling with the question of whether or not life was always so controlled. Citizens, or comrades as the are called, are under constant surveillance from The Party, and most actions that are contradicting to Party laws, carry a death sentence. These laws, or principles of INGSOC, which is short for English Socialism in the language of the novel, are in place to effectively make it impossible to rebel against The Party and Big Brother. Telescreens, which are televisions that watch you as you watch them, are a fixture in any party members house. They allow Big Brother to watch any comrade, at any time, for any reason. This invasion of privacy is so encompassing that there is a principle of INGSOC banning "thoughtcrime" or the act of simply thinking thoughts that are against party doctrine. Without going into too many details, Winston ends up discovering the reason for such invasion in the lives of others, and the reason why Big Brother is forever. If you are bored this summer I would highly recommend this book, as it entertains the reader while at the same time makes you aware of what life could be like if government becomes too big.



"1984 by George Orwell"

My Problem with the American Political System

            So ever since I was a little boy, I have been told about how America is the greatest country on earth, land of the free home of the brave. What my patriotic teachers should have been telling me was that America was the greatest country on earth and that my generation is responsible for turning us around. Ever since the end of the Cold War, America has been on a slow decline, economically and in both foreign and domestic policies. You can point fingers at Democrats and Republicans but it is not going to fix anything. The truth is, that our nation is being governed by a system that while being revolutionary in the 18^th century, is outdated. I bet you didn’t know that Thomas Jefferson had intended the United States Constitution be rewritten every 19 years, believing that “the dead should not rule the living.” While he did not write the Constitution, that was James Madison; his point is still valid; American’s today are not supposed to be governed by a set of 200 year old rules. Since there have been no major changes in American politics, 200 years of the same old process has bred an oil that can loosen up the political machine, money. Today politics is as much about swapping money as it is about being an old white male. The reason that we the people are getting the rug pulled out from under us is because the average politician today is just that an average politician. So when a law is written by Lamar Smith, and by written I mean paid to introduce a bill that was written by the largest players in the entertainment industry, that threatens the existence of a free internet; two things that are apparent. A, his political action committee received a large donation from the entertainment industry, and B, Lamar Smith doesn’t know anything about how the internet works. SOPA would have allowed the government to watch the internet activity of any American, without their knowledge with the purpose of catching citizens, who download music illegally, a major breach of our basic rights. What would turn America around is not electing more politicians, what we need are people who are knowledgeable. Experts in fields should be writing our nations policies, because they know what the problems are, and that years of throwing money at issues only makes them worse. What we need are scientists, educators, mathematicians, engineers and doctors running this nation instead of “career politicians.” These are people whose job it is to solve problems, so I’m not saying they would fix America but they would probably do a better job than what we have now.


http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_newc.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

Forgetting Joseph Kony

What you see above this text is a screenshot of something that is truly as interesting as it is scary. It is a graph of the amount of times that "Kony" was searched in Google. For those of you who are unfamiliar the Kony that is being searched is the Joseph Kony or the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. The LRA are infamous for taking children and forcing them to serve as soldiers in this man's army. Horrendous right? It is, he is terrible person who should be brought to justice and something truly needs to be done to stop him. Well this is what is interesting about this graph, and what is interesting is that this trend of spiking and then dropping back to almost nothing a month later was also common on other websites, Facebook, Twitter as well as major news outlets were all full of statuses, tweets and stories about Kony and his child soldiers. Why I bring this up is to make the point that it was everywhere, everyone knew about Kony and the LRA even if they couldn't point to Uganda on a map. There was a mass influx in every form of media on this topic, and then as fast as it blew up, it died out. You can see how a week after the spike, the Google searches are back to almost pre-spike levels, people just we're not searching for info on this man anymore. This whole experience could almost be the topic of a doctoral thesis in psychology, how the internet has desensitized us as humans. We are becoming inundated with knowledge every time we get online and it may not be a good thing for us. We have the attention span of goldfish nowadays, this Kony thing is not an isolated incidence. Remember the Fukushima reactor in Japan, or the Deep-water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf? Both had similar trends, an immediate explosion of attention, interest, and donations and then it's as if it never happened. I'm sure that if you were in the middle of these disasters you wouldn't be so apathetic, but the fact that we are able to know that terrible things are happening in the world, want to help in some way and then as soon as the news stops covering the story, forget it even happened is extremely alarming. Just thought that maybe you all may have your own thoughts on this, feel free to share.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony