Talking of Trebuchets....
MLG
<mor...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk> writes
>I favour the moving cantilever myself...here's hoping it get built in
>time!
Well, she said, replying to her own post, that was tres cool. (Both got
built, both fired, both were successful - the simpler one, weighted main
pole on wheels, was the only one finished by the deadline, so it 'won'.
The cantilevered box filled with wet sand, which I thought far more ...
well, beautiful, did get there in the end.)
There was such an elegance to those machines. The moment of release was
quite... well, orgasmic.
Mind you, no matter how cool it looked, nothing would persuade me to tie
myself to one and get chucked across a field - no matter *how* big the
net was.
--
Morgan
Come to the edge, he said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them...
... and they flew. Guillaume Apollinaire
MLG
showing a stonkingly good documentary on the building of two rival
historical-theory designs of *mega* trebuchets.
If you're online (9.40pm) and you are in the UK, and you have C4 - get
off line now for the exciting denouement!
I favour the moving cantilever myself...here's hoping it get built in
time!
MLG
<grid...@mindspring.com> writes
>
>As a former infantryman, let me assure all that if faced with one
>of those puppies, I would *not* remain long on that wall.
I suspect you would have been joining me as I sneaked out of the
battlements and tried very hard to set fire to the constructions waaaay
before they got to firing capacity.
Martha H Adams
elastic rope to catch you, have lately been playing with a trebuchet throwing
*people*. This turned up in the television news two or three weeks ago. It
occurred to me I am not a candidate for trebuchet tossing; but one woman was
and she turned up on the news earlier this week. She came down at the edge
of the catching net and she fell off it. Broken pelvis.
I feel really puzzled what to make of such activity. To say "Don't do that"
feels puritanical. To get involved and go do it myself, feels crazy.
However, if someone wants to write up a story about this is how the hero
gets over the castle wall, I'd be interested to read it and see how the
author gets the hero out alive.
Cheers -- Martha Adams
Stevie Gamble
writes:
>Subject: Re: Talking of Trebuchets....
>From: m...@world.std.com (Martha H Adams)
>Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 11:57:14 GMT
I believe the Dangerous Sports Club does attract some non-English people as
well, though I am baffled at the idea of tying myself to a long piece of
elastic for fun. The closest fictional treatment I've come across is a short
story about Modesty Blaise - a mostly cartoon heroine who does also appear in
more traditional form- involving getting a character over the Berlin Wall with
the assistance of a Circus human cannon firer. (Trebuchets are definitely
catchier ...). I've been trying to think of a similarly implausible SF escape,
but without much success.
M
I
L
D
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
Smuggling Tully in a cargo can (CJ Cherryh's Chanur books) across the docks is
both clever and believable. In fact she's good on containers generally:
"Exploding rocks you ... (expletives deleted)".
Anyone with better candidates?
Stevie Gamble
Climbing Rocks.
mike stone
>Those remarkable people in England who gave us jumping off bridges with an
>elastic rope to catch you,
I don't think we invented it so much as discovered it.
As a boy in the 1950s or early 60s, I recall seeing a documentry (by one of the
Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now call
"bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems you
had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you had
to jump from
Does anyone else remember this ?
--
Mike Stone - Peterborough England
"The English people are like the English beer.
Froth on top, dregs at the bottom, the middle excellent" - Voltaire
Dave Weingart
>As a boy in the 1950s or early 60s, I recall seeing a documentry (by one of the
>Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now call
>"bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems you
>had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you had
>to jump from
>
>Does anyone else remember this ?
Not the documentary, but ISTR similar films when bungee jumping got popular
here as well.
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK Consonance 2001! Urban Tapestry!
mailto:phyd...@liii.com Mike Stein! Oh, yeah, and some guy
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux named Dave Wein-something-or-other.
ICQ 57055207 http://www.consonance.org
MLG
<mws...@aol.com> writes
>>From: m...@world.std.com (Martha H Adams)
>
>>Those remarkable people in England who gave us jumping off bridges with an
>>elastic rope to catch you,
>
>I don't think we invented it so much as discovered it.
>
>Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now call
>"bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems you
>had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you had
>to jump from
>
>Does anyone else remember this ?
Oh yes, clearly. They used vine and creepers for the rope, tied around
ankles. Without 'bounce' the G-forces as they hit the end of the rope
were tremendous, and that was part of the ritual. Choosing which height
of cliff to jump from was part of proving your manhood, as well as
actually surviving the drop.
Kip Williams
>
> In article <20000602130140...@ng-bk1.aol.com>, mike stone
> <mws...@aol.com> writes
> >>From: m...@world.std.com (Martha H Adams)
> >
> >>Those remarkable people in England who gave us jumping off bridges with an
> >>elastic rope to catch you,
> >
> >I don't think we invented it so much as discovered it.
> >
> >As a boy in the 1950s or early 60s, I recall seeing a documentry (by one of the
> >Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now call
> >"bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems you
> >had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you had
> >to jump from
> >
> >Does anyone else remember this ?
>
> Oh yes, clearly. They used vine and creepers for the rope, tied around
> ankles. Without 'bounce' the G-forces as they hit the end of the rope
> were tremendous, and that was part of the ritual. Choosing which height
> of cliff to jump from was part of proving your manhood, as well as
> actually surviving the drop.
I also saw it with nightmarish towers of native scaffolding that
looked like they'd fall right over once you got to the top anyway.
And they had to calculate the length of that flexible rope so you
ended up with your face just about ready to "scuse me while I kiss
the ground," so to speak. So I never really envied people in other
lands, because they all had these horrid trials to go through. Lucky
for me I was too close to my horrid trial that I didn't really know
what it was when I was going through it. (High school.)
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Ed Dravecky III
> An earlier test trebuchet, apparently made using modern materials, was
> shown chucking a piano. And one of those fireball things, which looked
> horrible nasty when it hit. The other designer was French, but he
> wasn't shown hurling cows...
The folks on "Northern Exposure" did a piano first.
Chris, the character building the trebuchet, had planned to fling
a Real Live Cow as an artistic statement until finding out from
the town's film buff that Monty Python had already done it,
albeit with a fake cow. This plot twist ended much agonizing
over the fate of the cow and resulted in hypnotically beautiful
footage of the piano in flight at episode's end. A must see.
--
Ed Dravecky III
webminion of http://www.deathsheep.com
Richard Horton
On 02 Jun 2000 17:01:40 GMT, mws...@aol.com (mike stone) wrote:
>As a boy in the 1950s or early 60s, I recall seeing a documentry (by one of the
>Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now call
>"bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems you
>had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you had
>to jump from
I remember reading about this in National Geographic. Early '70s, it
would have been.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Jordin Kare
> Those remarkable people in England who gave us jumping off bridges with an
> elastic rope to catch you, have lately been playing with a trebuchet throwing
> *people*. This turned up in the television news two or three weeks ago. It
> occurred to me I am not a candidate for trebuchet tossing; but one woman was
> and she turned up on the news earlier this week. She came down at the edge
> of the catching net and she fell off it. Broken pelvis.
>
> I feel really puzzled what to make of such activity. To say "Don't do that"
> feels puritanical. To get involved and go do it myself, feels crazy.
I don't see the problem. There are any number of things that people do
for fun/thrills that I personally think are crazy. Betting on horse
races, for instance. A subset of them are potentially crippling or
fatal. But as long as they have insurance or adequate wealth (so I don't
end up paying their medical bills), hey, it's (sometimes literally) their
funeral....
> However, if someone wants to write up a story about this is how the hero
> gets over the castle wall, I'd be interested to read it and see how the
> author gets the hero out alive.
Well, in one of the Modesty Blaise novels, an uncooperative spy was
extracted from East Germany by firing him over the Wall, unconscious,
using the cannon from a "Human Cannonball" circus act. The crew manning
the catch net was disguised, IIRC, as a film crew, until a couple of the
microphone booms or some such were pulled apart to open the net. Does
that count?
(Of course, Peter O'Donnell came up with some truly amazing
theoretically-possible-but-not-bloody-likely escapades in those books. I
think my favorite was Willie Garvin being dropped out of an airplane while
tied to a chair, without a parachute, and surviving by entering a snowbank
chair-first at a shallow angle....then being kept from freezing by coming
to a stop in the middle of a flock of sheep that had sheltered under the
snowbank!
Jordin Kare
Doug Wickstrom
excited the ether to say:
>(Of course, Peter O'Donnell came up with some truly amazing
>theoretically-possible-but-not-bloody-likely escapades in those books. I
>think my favorite was Willie Garvin being dropped out of an airplane while
>tied to a chair, without a parachute, and surviving by entering a snowbank
>chair-first at a shallow angle....then being kept from freezing by coming
>to a stop in the middle of a flock of sheep that had sheltered under the
>snowbank!
At least part of this was based in fact. It was semi-routine
during WWII for the Soviets to drop small groups of commandos
without parachutes from the wings of IL-2s which were flying at
very low level. Snow banks were necessary for this to be
effective, so this was obviously a winter-only evolution, but it
did happen.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
--Albert Einstein
mike stone
>mws...@aol.com (mike stone) wrote:
>
>>As a boy in the 1950s or early 60s, I recall seeing a documentry (by one of
>the
>>Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now
>call
>>"bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems
>you
>>had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you
>had
>>to jump from
>
>I remember reading about this in National Geographic. Early '70s, it
>would have been.
I don't suppose you recall exactly *where* it took place? I think of it as
somewhere in Polynesia, but that's just a guess based on hazy three or four
decade-old recollections
Doug Wickstrom
the ether to say:
>>From: Richard Horton rrho...@prodigy.net
>
>>mws...@aol.com (mike stone) wrote:
>>
>>>As a boy in the 1950s or early 60s, I recall seeing a documentry (by one of
>>the
>>>Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now
>>call
>>>"bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems
>>you
>>>had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you
>>had
>>>to jump from
>>
>>I remember reading about this in National Geographic. Early '70s, it
>>would have been.
>
>I don't suppose you recall exactly *where* it took place? I think of it as
>somewhere in Polynesia, but that's just a guess based on hazy three or four
>decade-old recollections
New Guinea?
--
Doug Wickstrom
"I think it [Western civilization] would be a good idea." --Mohandas K. Ghandi
Richard Horton
On 03 Jun 2000 08:08:54 GMT, mws...@aol.com (mike stone) wrote:
>I don't suppose you recall exactly *where* it took place? I think of it as
>somewhere in Polynesia, but that's just a guess based on hazy three or four
>decade-old recollections
That's about as close as my hazy recollections can get, too. It might
have been on New Guinea itself. (Is that too big an island to count
as part of Polynesia?)
My parents have all my old National Geographics, so I can't check.
P Nielsen Hayden
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Doug Wickstrom
>"I think it [Western civilization] would be a good idea." --Mohandas K. Ghandi
I think spelling Gandhi's name correctly would be a good idea.
(Yes, it's transliterated from a non-Roman alphabet, and yes, there's a
correct way to spell it anyway.)
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Marty Cantor
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>
> On 03 Jun 2000 08:08:54 GMT, mws...@aol.com (mike stone) wrote:
>
> >I don't suppose you recall exactly *where* it took place? I think of
it as
> >somewhere in Polynesia, but that's just a guess based on hazy three
or four
> >decade-old recollections
>
> That's about as close as my hazy recollections can get, too. It might
> have been on New Guinea itself. (Is that too big an island to count
> as part of Polynesia?)
The Nit-pickers Liberation Front has to weigh in here and point out
that New Guinea (part of Papua-New Guinea) is in Melanesia, not
Polynesia.
--
Marty Cantor
marty...@netzero.net
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Richard Horton
>The Nit-pickers Liberation Front has to weigh in here and point out
>that New Guinea (part of Papua-New Guinea) is in Melanesia, not
>Polynesia.
Thanks. I kind of thought New Guinea wasn't part of Polynesia, but I
couldn't think of what its island group was called.
Doug Berry
flapped its wings, causing jtk...@ibm.net (Jordin Kare) to write:
>(Of course, Peter O'Donnell came up with some truly amazing
>theoretically-possible-but-not-bloody-likely escapades in those books. I
>think my favorite was Willie Garvin being dropped out of an airplane while
>tied to a chair, without a parachute, and surviving by entering a snowbank
>chair-first at a shallow angle....then being kept from freezing by coming
>to a stop in the middle of a flock of sheep that had sheltered under the
>snowbank!
A WWII British tailgunner survived a fall from 38,000 feet with
nothing more than a twisted ankle. He hit snow-covered pine
trees along a heavy slope, which absorbed his fall.
--
Douglas E. Berry grid...@mindspring.com
http://gridlore.home.mindspring.com/
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as
when they do it from religious conviction."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pense'es, #894.
Nancy Lebovitz
>
>I also saw it with nightmarish towers of native scaffolding that
>looked like they'd fall right over once you got to the top anyway.
>And they had to calculate the length of that flexible rope so you
>ended up with your face just about ready to "scuse me while I kiss
>the ground," so to speak. So I never really envied people in other
>lands, because they all had these horrid trials to go through. Lucky
>for me I was too close to my horrid trial that I didn't really know
>what it was when I was going through it. (High school.)
>
in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
The calligraphic button website is up!
Marty Cantor
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> In article <393829D9...@home.com>, Kip Williams
<ki...@home.com> wrote:
> >
> I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from
living
> in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>
I do believe that getting a driving license is the equivalent of an
initiation ritual for males in our culture.
MLG
<na...@unix3.netaxs.com> writes
>I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from living
>in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
I wonder if the adolescents miss out though? Not, I hasten to add, from
throwing themselves off cliffs, but from the lack of ritualised movement
into adulthood... Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make an awful
lot of sense to me.
Avram Grumer
<mor...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <8hb8jl$2...@netaxs.com>, Nancy Lebovitz
> <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> writes
>
> >I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from
> >living in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>
> I wonder if the adolescents miss out though? Not, I hasten to add,
> from throwing themselves off cliffs, but from the lack of ritualised
> movement into adulthood... Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make
> an awful lot of sense to me.
Mine didn't much to me. Sure, I got a big party and a bunch of money, but
afterwards it was the same life as before. Still had to take the same bus
to the same school with the same classes.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of
dysfunctional relationships.
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <8hb8jl$2...@netaxs.com>, Nancy Lebovitz
> <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> writes
>>I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from living
>>in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>
> I wonder if the adolescents miss out though? Not, I hasten to add, from
> throwing themselves off cliffs, but from the lack of ritualised movement
> into adulthood... Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make an awful
> lot of sense to me.
I had one, and I knew it was *supposed* to be a ritual movement into
adulthood, but it didn't do it for me.
Jewish ritual was not a part of my daily life, aside from the bar mitzvah
itself. So it's not like there was this crowd of people treating me
differently the next day.
As I've posted, it was a fine excuse for a very large party. But nothing
was different afterward.
Now, applying to college and then going, *there's* an initiation ritual.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Mike Kozlowski
Marty Cantor <marty...@netzero.net> wrote:
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>
>> I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from living
>> in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>>
>initiation ritual for males in our culture.
Never really felt like one to me. It was ultimately a lot more convenient
than having to hit my parents up for rides all the time, but it wasn't
something that made me think that now I was an adult.
I'd probably pick either my first job, or going away to college as the
moments when I stopped being a kid. Which means that our culture's
ceremonies of initiation are job interviews and college applications...
--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mkozlows/
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<grid...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 05:25:14 GMT, a butterfly in Costa Rica
>flapped its wings, causing jtk...@ibm.net (Jordin Kare) to write:
>
>
>>(Of course, Peter O'Donnell came up with some truly amazing
>>theoretically-possible-but-not-bloody-likely escapades in those books. I
>>think my favorite was Willie Garvin being dropped out of an airplane while
>>tied to a chair, without a parachute, and surviving by entering a snowbank
>>chair-first at a shallow angle....then being kept from freezing by coming
>>to a stop in the middle of a flock of sheep that had sheltered under the
>>snowbank!
>
>A WWII British tailgunner survived a fall from 38,000 feet with
>nothing more than a twisted ankle. He hit snow-covered pine
>trees along a heavy slope, which absorbed his fall.
I read *quite* a similar story about a stewardess on a Yugoslav
Airlines (JAT) flight. She fell from 10,000 metres (ca. 30,000 feet)
on snow-covered pines and just broke her leg. Sometime during the
Seventies.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
DavidBilek
>Doug Berry <grid...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>>A WWII British tailgunner survived a fall from 38,000 feet with
>>nothing more than a twisted ankle. He hit snow-covered pine
>>trees along a heavy slope, which absorbed his fall.
>
>I read *quite* a similar story about a stewardess on a Yugoslav
>Airlines (JAT) flight. She fell from 10,000 metres (ca. 30,000 feet)
>on snow-covered pines and just broke her leg. Sometime during the
>Seventies.
Reading stats like this is always impressive, but thinking about it, is
surviving a fall from 35,000 feet any more impressive than surviving a fall
from 500 feet? You reach terminal velocity either way, assuming you're
not tucking in your arms and *trying* to fall quickly...
(What I've read indicates terminal velocity is between 100 and 140mph
for an average adult falling belly-first with their arms out...)
-David
mike stone
> thinking about it, is
>surviving a fall from 35,000 feet any more impressive than surviving a fall
>from 500 feet? You reach terminal velocity either way, assuming you're
>not tucking in your arms and *trying* to fall quickly...
Sounds like the one about the Gurkhas.
Their CO sought volunteers for an op wich would involve jumping from 2000 feet.
After a moment of silence the sergeant came forward and asked whether they
could first try jumping drom 500 feet to get in practice
The CO pointed out that this would not leave time for their parachutes to open,
at which the sergeant looked very relieved and said. "Ah, we misunderstood. We
did not realise that we were to have parachutes"
mike stone
>I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from living
>in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
I wouldn't feel that much of a loss, if it were *true*. But it ain't, unless
you were homeschooled
Ray Radlein
>
> I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from
> living in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
Ours just don't (usually) involve lions.
Instead, they involve safer pursuits such as hurtling around in
barely-controlled one-ton lumps of metal.
- Ray R.
--
**********************************************************************
"If memory serves me right, rain on your wedding day is considered
by everyone to be a good omen..." - Chairman Kaga, "Ironic Chef"
Ray Radlein - r...@learnlink.emory.edu
homepage coming soon! wooo, wooo.
**********************************************************************
Nancy Lebovitz
mike stone <mws...@aol.com> wrote:
>>From: na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>
>>I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from living
>>in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>
>you were homeschooled
I wasn't.
I'll have to contemplate whether junior high and high school should be
counted as rituals and/or superstition. You might have a point.
Rachael Lininger
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>MLG <mor...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I wonder if the adolescents miss out though? Not, I hasten to add, from
>> throwing themselves off cliffs, but from the lack of ritualised movement
>> into adulthood... Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make an awful
>> lot of sense to me.
>
>I had one, and I knew it was *supposed* to be a ritual movement into
>adulthood, but it didn't do it for me.
>
>Jewish ritual was not a part of my daily life, aside from the bar mitzvah
>itself. So it's not like there was this crowd of people treating me
>differently the next day.
I suspect that some of that is due to the fact that, here and now,
legally, thirteen isn't any kind of adulthood. It's a passage into More Of
The Same. I think that recognizing thirteen-year-olds as adults is
somewhat dubious _because_ of the legal issues. Actually, that's the same
reason I think trying juveniles as adults for crimes is wrong. Minors do
not have the basic human right to Get Out Of This Intolerable Situation.
>As I've posted, it was a fine excuse for a very large party. But nothing
>was different afterward.
>
>Now, applying to college and then going, *there's* an initiation ritual.
Well, for people who do it. It seems to me that, voting having fallen by
the wayside for many young people, the closest thing to a ritual passage
we have is being able to drink legally.
Rachael
--
Rachael Lininger | "Victrola homes are happiest."
rac...@dd-b.net | --Atlantic Monthly, 1922
mike stone
><mor...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>> I wonder if the adolescents miss out though? Not, I hasten to add, from
>>> throwing themselves off cliffs, but from the lack of ritualised movement
>>> into adulthood... Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make an awful
>>> lot of sense to me.
>>
>>I had one, and I knew it was *supposed* to be a ritual movement into
>>adulthood, but it didn't do it for me.
>>
>>Jewish ritual was not a part of my daily life, aside from the bar mitzvah
>>itself. So it's not like there was this crowd of people treating me
>>differently the next day.
>
>I suspect that some of that is due to the fact that, here and now,
>legally, thirteen isn't any kind of adulthood. It's a passage into More Of
>The Same. I think that recognizing thirteen-year-olds as adults is
>somewhat dubious _because_ of the legal issues. Actually, that's the same
>reason I think trying juveniles as adults for crimes is wrong. Minors do
>not have the basic human right to Get Out Of This Intolerable Situation.
>
>>As I've posted, it was a fine excuse for a very large party. But nothing
>>was different afterward.
>>
>>Now, applying to college and then going, *there's* an initiation ritual.
>
>Well, for people who do it. It seems to me that, voting having fallen by
>the wayside for many young people, the closest thing to a ritual passage
>we have is being able to drink legally.
There *is* a more genuine rite of passage for young Latter-day Saints. At
(usually) around 19 or so they are supposed to go away for two years on their
Missions. In practice, however, only about one in three does so
Richard Kennaway
> There *is* a more genuine rite of passage for young Latter-day Saints. At
> (usually) around 19 or so they are supposed to go away for two years on their
> Missions. In practice, however, only about one in three does so
In stories, the young man who goes on a Mission discovers his True Self
and comes back changed. Does anything of the sort generally happen in
the case of the LDS? Can one tell the difference between those who went
and those who didn't?
-- Richard Kennaway
P Nielsen Hayden
My in-laws are all Mormons, most of them have been on missions, and for all
my problems with Mormon belief and Mormon culture, it seems to me that the
experience is frequently broadening.
I dunno about "discovering one's True Self." But it seems to me there are
worse coming-of-age practices than sending young adults to fend for
themselves in a foreign place, charged with the task of making some kind of
genuine human contact with the locals.
Keep in mind, when you see the pair of guys in white shirts coming toward
your door, that they tend to save the _really_ smart ones for missions
outside the English-speaking world, because those are the ones they can put
through their accelerated language training.
P Nielsen Hayden
P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>Keep in mind, when you see the pair of guys in white shirts coming toward
>your door, that they tend to save the _really_ smart ones for missions
>outside the English-speaking world, because those are the ones they can put
>through their accelerated language training.
(Just as a footnote, it should be noted that there are female Mormon
missionaries, and moreover, given that the LDS church's greatest rate of
growth is in non-English-speaking countries, I suppose I should say they
save the really smart ones for missions outside their home language area.)
(The deal, as I understand it, is that young Mormon men in good standing are
expected to do a two-year mission as soon as possible after high school.
Everyone else, male and female, is welcome to apply to do one any time.
Teresa's grandparents did one in their early 80s, just to keep in fighting
trim, I guess.)
Loren MacGregor
>
> (The deal, as I understand it, is that young Mormon men in good standing are
> expected to do a two-year mission as soon as possible after high school.
> Everyone else, male and female, is welcome to apply to do one any time.
> Teresa's grandparents did one in their early 80s, just to keep in fighting
> trim, I guess.)
Has Teresa or have you ever talked to Wilum Pugmire about his Mormon
experiences?
-- LJM
mike stone
>In stories, the young man who goes on a Mission discovers his True Self
>and comes back changed. Does anything of the sort generally happen in
>the case of the LDS? Can one tell the difference between those who went
>and those who didn't?
"Discovers his true self" may be laying it on a bit thick, but imho they do
benefit to some degree.To my eyes,anyway, our returned missionaries here in
Peterborough seem more mature than their contemporaries who didn't serve, but I
wouldn't like to say how much of that is directly *caused* by the Mission. Of
the three whom I have known both before and after, at least two (and perhaps
all) were already more mature than average before they left
mike stone
>Keep in mind, when you see the pair of guys in white shirts coming toward
>your door, that they tend to save the _really_ smart ones for missions
>outside the English-speaking world, because those are the ones they can put
>through their accelerated language training.
Which can come in very handy later. From what I can gather, when it comes to
learning foreign languages the average American is even worse than the average
Englishman - and that's saying something. I have heard that for positions
requiring a foreign language. some companies rely quite a lot on their LDS
staff
mike stone
>The deal, as I understand it, is that young Mormon men in good standing are
>expected to do a two-year mission as soon as possible after high school.
>Everyone else, male and female, is welcome to apply to do one any time.
>Teresa's grandparents did one in their early 80s, just to keep in fighting
>trim, I guess.
They mainly divide into two categories.
The "Youth Mission" is mostly done between age 19 (the earliest allowed) and
the late 20s. At the other end of the scale, we have members (usually married
couples) who serve after tey have retired.
Those members of working age don't usually serve missions in the conventional
sense. It is assumed that they will have work and damily responsibilities,and
will be increasing the Church's membership another way, by raising Mormon kids.
As a 52-year-old bachelor (I diodn't join the Church till I was 47) it looks as
though I will fail in that particular duty, but I may eventually do a "Temple
Mission" working at the London Temple. Ther are a number of more specialised
forms of missionary work like that
Geri Sullivan
>
> In article <8hbifs$e4n$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> >
>
> Well, for people who do it. It seems to me that, voting having fallen by
> the wayside for many young people, the closest thing to a ritual passage
> we have is being able to drink legally.
One of my high school girlfriends marked her 18th birthday by donating
blood on that day, since she could do it without needing her parent's
permission as she had at a younger age. That was a long time ago, but it
still impresses me as a cool thing for her to have done.
Geri
--
Geri Sullivan g...@toad-hall.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Dick said, 'Oh, Baby. Where is the cookie
for Spot? Where is the one for Spot?'"
John Richards
>
> >From: m...@world.std.com (Martha H Adams)
>
> >Those remarkable people in England who gave us jumping off bridges with an
> >elastic rope to catch you,
>
> I don't think we invented it so much as discovered it.
>
> As a boy in the 1950s or early 60s, I recall seeing a documentry (by one of the
> Attenbroughs iirc) From some place in the South Seas (?) where what we now call
> "bungee jumping" was used as a sort of manhood ritual for the boys. Seems you
> had a choice about when you did it, but the older you were the higher you had
> to jump from
>
> Does anyone else remember this ?
David Attenborough uses that film as his best example on how to lie on
camera without meaning to. After they showed the film for the first time
a student 'phoned up the BBC and asked if they could borrow a copy.
Being, at the time, willing to help Attenborough had the natural history
department send a tape off. Some time later he gota copy of the paper
that had been written using this tape. It appeared that the student had
been using the tape to measure the amount of stress the human body could
stand by timing the drop from the moment the chap jumped off the tower
to the moment that the vine arrested his fall and used these figures to
work out the force that these people could stand without having serious
amounts of body part company with each other.
It was with some sadness that Attenborough wrote back pointing out that
the jump in the film did include at least two cuts (close up at top and
bottom and long shot for fall) and consequently all the timings he had
taken were useless.
--
JFW Richards South Hants Science Fiction Group
Portsmouth, Hants 2nd and 4th Tuesdays
England. UK. The Magpie, Fratton Road, Portsmouth
mike stone
I don't suppose you recall where and when the film was made. Most people who've
replied seem to think it was probably New Guinea, but no-one's sure.
Also the year if you can. You seem better acquainted with it than anyone else
who has called in
Mary Kay Kare
(mike stone) wrote:
> >From: p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden)
>
> >The deal, as I understand it, is that young Mormon men in good standing are
> >expected to do a two-year mission as soon as possible after high school.
> >Everyone else, male and female, is welcome to apply to do one any time.
> >Teresa's grandparents did one in their early 80s, just to keep in fighting
> >trim, I guess.
>
> They mainly divide into two categories.
>
> The "Youth Mission" is mostly done between age 19 (the earliest allowed) and
> the late 20s. At the other end of the scale, we have members (usually married
> couples) who serve after tey have retired.
>
This also very nearly describes the types volunteers at the local hospital
where I volunteer. Mostly they are high school kids racking up volunteer
credits for college applications or retired folks. There are a few, like
me, in the middle age-wise, mostly women who don't work and don't have
kids. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense that those who have not
yet acquired family responsibilities and those whose families are grown
(or who like me don't have kids) would be those available for Missions,
volunteering and the like.
MK
--
Member:
fwa
Evil Elitist Fannish Conspiracy
RASFF Fire, Usage, and Whinge Brigade
Worldwide TAFF Cabal (there is no cabal)
MLG
<mws...@aol.com> writes
>Also the year if you can. You seem better acquainted with it than anyone else
>who has called in
If you really need to know, call the BBC in Bristol.
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey
> I believe the Dangerous Sports Club does attract some non-English people as
> well, though I am baffled at the idea of tying myself to a long piece of
> elastic for fun. The closest fictional treatment I've come across is a short
> story about Modesty Blaise - a mostly cartoon heroine who does also appear in
> more traditional form- involving getting a character over the Berlin Wall with
> the assistance of a Circus human cannon firer. (Trebuchets are definitely
> catchier ...). I've been trying to think of a similarly implausible SF escape,
> but without much success.
How about Reverse Bungee Jumping?
Were Dejanews not crippled, I could find my previous writings about the
following "implausible escape;" but I'll make do.
Robert Fulton, a colorful 20th-century American inventor (who may or may not
be related to the steamboat guy), cooked up an unusual rescue apparatus in
the Fifties.
A stranded person on the ground dons a harness and inflates a helium
balloon. It rises, trailing a rope attached to the harness.
A specially equipped airplane finds the balloon and snags its rope in a
"catcher" apparatus. As the plane flies past, the person is lifted from the
ground and towed into the air behind it. Then the crew reels in the rope
and welcomes the rescued person aboard.
Those who have ridden the Skyhook say it was exhilirating. I'm surprised it
hasn't become a sport yet. Maybe in the 21st century.
The most spectacular use of Fulton's Skyhook was "Operation Coldfeet" in
1962. Soviet scientists had abandoned a research station on a floating ice
island in the Arctic Ocean as its airfield deteriorated. The U.S. Navy
wanted a look at this, but it was outside the range of helicopters. Two
guys parachuted to the island, ransacked the station for anything of
intelligence value, and were extracted by a CIA B-17. (The same plane
appeared several years later snatching James Bond's Skyhook in
*Thunderball*.)
There was an effort to rescue a guy from a prison in Southeast Asia, but in
training, the practice mannequin kept smashing into the walls of the
practice prisonyard, so perhaps it's just as well that this mission was
cancelled.
A good article on this appeared in the CIA's journal *Studies in
Intelligence* in 1995: <http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/95unclass/Leary.html>.
A longer version of the story, including more detail on Fulton's life, is
in the book *Project Coldfeet : Secret Mission to a Soviet Ice Station* by
William M. Leary and Leonard A. LeSchack.
I got interested in Robert Fulton through my studies of flying automobiles.
He designed the Airphibian, a roadable aircraft with folding wings, in the
1940s. It worked fairly well, but never went into production; Molt Taylor,
designer of the better-known Aerocar, acknowledged that Fulton's design
inspired his own thinking.
Last week on 30 May, National Public Radio's *Morning Edition* aired a
profile of Fulton, who's now 91, on the occasion of a new art book being
published. As a young man in the 1930s, he traveled around the world, more
or less, on a motorcycle, wielding a 16mm movie camera. (I told you he was
colorful.) Art-world people have discovered this film and made a new
documentary and a nice book of stills from it. I found the sound clip on
www.npr.org at
<http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=05/30/2000&PrgID=3>. It
doesn't say much about the Skyhook, but you may find it interesting anyway.
--
Bill Higgins | "I shop at the Bob and Ray
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory | Giant Overstocked Surplus
Bitnet: Sic transit gloria mundi | Warehouse in one convenient
Internet: HIG...@FNAL.FNAL.GOV | location and save money besides
SPAN/Hepnet: 43009::HIGGINS | being open every evening until 9."
Doug Wickstrom
<hig...@fnal.gov> excited the ether to say:
>How about Reverse Bungee Jumping?
>
>Were Dejanews not crippled, I could find my previous writings about the
>following "implausible escape;" but I'll make do.
>
>Robert Fulton, a colorful 20th-century American inventor (who may or may not
>be related to the steamboat guy), cooked up an unusual rescue apparatus in
>the Fifties.
Definitely related to the steamboat guy. Great-grandson, I
believe.
The Skyhook (officially designated "aerial recovery system") was
manufactured by All American Engineering, and was standard
equipment on several US Air Force aircraft, the most notable of
them being the HC-130H and HC-130P air-sea rescue versions of the
Hercules, and the MC-130E Combat Talon special operations version
of the same aircraft. The primary operational use was not in
personnel recovery operations (in fact, I don't know of a single
rescue conducted this way, though there were feasibility tests)
but for aerial recovery of reconnaissance satellite film packages
dropped from orbit. The Cook ARD-17 electric tracker, the
antenna of which was mounted under a large blister on the upper
fuselage of the HC-130H/P, was used to direct the pilot towards
the package, which would deploy a parachute as it descended. The
snag, actually a vee-shaped steel bar mounted on the nose of the
aircraft (and necessitating an unusual and really awkward to
handle nose radome) would catch the parachute risers; the hook,
depending from the aft cargo ramp would catch the package as it
streamed beneath the fuselage, and the whole thing would be
winched into the aircraft.
There were some operational problems. For one thing, the
parachutes didn't always open, for another, the tracker didn't
always track, and finally, a lot of the rendezvous were a case of
"missed it by that much." I have no idea how many of these were
deliberate misses, but I will note that a successful snatch often
resulted in a rather awkward problem for the Hercules crew, that
of getting the parachute off the front of the airplane.
_Normally_, once the risers were cut, it would just slip over the
top. There was always a chance, however, if it was caught too
high....
I work with a guy who used to fly these missions out of Hickam
AFB, HI. I'll have to ask him sometime if he ever deliberately
missed.
The main difference, BTW, between the HC-130P and the MC-130P
Combat Shadow, appears to be the removal of the ARD-17 and the
AAE aerial recovery system from the latter. As I said, they were
never used for combat rescue. Long range helicopters are a
better idea.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Quin tu istanc orationem hinc veterem atque antiquam amoves?"
--Plautus, "Miles Gloriosus"
Rob Hansen
<dshe...@netcom6.netcom.com> wrote:
>"David G. Bell" (db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>> An earlier test trebuchet, apparently made using modern materials, was
>> shown chucking a piano. And one of those fireball things, which looked
>> horrible nasty when it hit. The other designer was French, but he
>> wasn't shown hurling cows...
>
>The folks on "Northern Exposure" did a piano first.
>
>Chris, the character building the trebuchet, had planned to fling
>a Real Live Cow as an artistic statement until finding out from
>the town's film buff that Monty Python had already done it,
>albeit with a fake cow. This plot twist ended much agonizing
>over the fate of the cow and resulted in hypnotically beautiful
>footage of the piano in flight at episode's end. A must see.
A fine episode of a fine show.
Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
need to get something into orbit?
--
Rob Hansen
================================================
My Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
Feminists Against Censorship:
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/
Mary Kay Kare
r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
> Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
> ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
> need to get something into orbit?
> --
Jordin's traveling right now but I've forwarded this interesting question
to him. I know they're studying big guns as launch systems, but I haven't
heard about any big trebuchets. Yet.
mike weber
typed
:
>In article <812ojsklkvgb72rf8...@4ax.com>,
>r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
>>
>> Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
>> ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
>> need to get something into orbit?
>> --
>Jordin's traveling right now but I've forwarded this interesting question
>to him. I know they're studying big guns as launch systems, but I haven't
>heard about any big trebuchets. Yet.
>
using a trebuchet.
--
"I long ago come to the conclusion that everything in life is
six-to-five against." -- Damon Runyon
<mike weber> <kras...@mindspring.com>
Ambitious Incomplete web site: http://weberworld.virtualave.net
mike stone
>Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
>ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
>need to get something into orbit?
This requires a velocity of abt 4.9 miles per second
Ignoring air resistance, the counterweight would have to drop from a height of
two earth radii - call it 8000 miles. So the "tower" or whatever you call it,
supporting the midpoint of the beam, would have to be 4000 miles high, and the
beam itself 8000 miles long
Omega
<anga...@sympatico.ca> writes
>
>I was once met on the street by a couple of missionary mormons --
>young, intensely scrubbed, suits in hot muggy Kingston in July, even
>if it was duskish, an obvious hatred of any hair longer than about 3
>cm, and matched terribly earnest expressions. For those of you who've
>met me, it's perhaps pertinent that they were maybe five eight each
>and skinny.
>
>They asked me if I had considered God, or my faith, or something like
>that; I don't recall exactly.
>
>I told them I was Asatru.
>
>"Asatru? What's that?" in a fairly pronounced Midwest accent.
>
>"I sacrifice to Thor."
>
><bug eyes>
>
><pause>
>
><hasty pattering of departing feet>
>
>I have sometimes wondered if those two got sent to Kingston because it
>was a relatively normal place.
>
That was the reaction I was hoping to get from the two that stopped me
on the way to the shops one Sunday morning in Edinburgh. It was the
usual opening and I replied "Sorry, I'm Pagan." hoping that they would
give up. No, I had to get the broadminded one. She looked at me with
delight and said "Oh, wonderful, I've been hoping to meet one" and kept
me talking for the next ten to fifteen minutes. By the time I'd managed
to get away (sometimes I can be too polite for my own good) and got
along the road the shops had shut and I was stuck without any milk until
Monday.
For those wondering why anyone would possibly be hoping or expecting to
meet a Pagan in the middle of Edinburgh It was near Beltain and I was
walking past Calton hill (where they hold the fire every year).
--
Omega
"Ecumenicism. Getting to know the opposite sects"
Harry Payne
Kip Williams
> How about Reverse Bungee Jumping?
Is that where you're up on a high platform with a bungee cord around
your waist, and the other end is attached to the ground?
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
mike stone
>
>>Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
>>ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
>>need to get something into orbit?
>
>This requires a velocity of abt 4.9 miles per second
>
>Ignoring air resistance, the counterweight would have to drop from a height
>of
>two earth radii - call it 8000 miles. So the "tower" or whatever you call it,
>supporting the midpoint of the beam, would have to be 4000 miles high, and
>the
>beam itself 8000 miles long
>
Sorry, I goofed - It would only be about 6000 miles. Here goes
The velocity V required to project a body to height H (which would also be that
obtained by a body falling *from* H) is derived from the formula
H = 2gR^2 / (2gR-V^2) where R + the Earth's radius
V ( = Orbital Velocity *at* H) = (gR ^ 0.5 ) . (R/H) ^ 0.5 = ((gR^2)/H) ^ 0.5
giving
H = 2gR^2 / (2gR - (gR ^ 2)/H)) = 2R^2 / (2R - (R^2)/H) so that
H(2R - (R^2)/H) = 2R^2 --> 2RH - R^2 = 2R^2 ---> 2RH = 3R^2
Hence H = 3R/2 ie approx 6000 miles . The mid-point of the trebuchet would have
to be 3000 miles above the Earth's surface
It may be noted that this value of 1.5 planetary radii holds good for *any*
planet. Hence to put a rock in orbit round the Moon would require a 1500-mile
trebuchet, round Mars a 3000 mile one, and for Jupiter a 66,000 mile one (!!)
Kate Schaefer
>In article <YaKuZrBD...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk>, MLG
><mor...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> In article <8hb8jl$2...@netaxs.com>, Nancy Lebovitz
>> <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> writes
>>
>> >I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from
>> >living in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>>
>> from throwing themselves off cliffs, but from the lack of ritualised
>> movement into adulthood... Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make
>> an awful lot of sense to me.
>
>afterwards it was the same life as before. Still had to take the same bus
>to the same school with the same classes.
Yeah, enlightenment is like that, too.
Mark Jones
<nims...@worldnet.att.net> spake thusly:
>On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 05:25:14 GMT, jtk...@ibm.net (Jordin Kare)
>excited the ether to say:
>
>>(Of course, Peter O'Donnell came up with some truly amazing
>>theoretically-possible-but-not-bloody-likely escapades in those books. I
>>think my favorite was Willie Garvin being dropped out of an airplane while
>>tied to a chair, without a parachute, and surviving by entering a snowbank
>>chair-first at a shallow angle....then being kept from freezing by coming
>>to a stop in the middle of a flock of sheep that had sheltered under the
>>snowbank!
>
>At least part of this was based in fact. It was semi-routine
>during WWII for the Soviets to drop small groups of commandos
>without parachutes from the wings of IL-2s which were flying at
>very low level. Snow banks were necessary for this to be
>effective, so this was obviously a winter-only evolution, but it
>did happen.
I've read about several of these miraculous events. But I don't
think they negate the point--Willie's survival was nonetheless a
theoretically-but-not-bloody-likely event.
My favorite James Bond escape sequence was from one of the Roger
Moore (shudder) films, in which Mr. Bond is unceremoniously hurled
out of a plane without a parachute. I remember thinking, "Bond is
good--but he can't fly!"
I was afeared that the scriptwriter would resort to something
incredibly stupid, like a mini-parachute cleverly hidden beneath his
suit jacket for Just Such Emergencies (tm). Fortunately, they
didn't. Instead, Bond just made himself as aerodynamic as possible,
and fell faster than the spreadeagled skydiving bad guys below him,
caught one, beat him up and took _his_ parachute.
(This gag has turned up several times since in other movies and tv
shows, but that first time it was a real surprise.)
"You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some
higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because
they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged."
-Michael Shirley
Bernard Peek
<kras...@mindspring.com> writes
>On Mon, 05 Jun 2000 21:14:21 GMT, ka...@sirius.com (Mary Kay Kare)
>typed
>:
>>In article <812ojsklkvgb72rf8...@4ax.com>,
>>r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
>>> need to get something into orbit?
>>Jordin's traveling right now but I've forwarded this interesting question
>>to him. I know they're studying big guns as launch systems, but I haven't
>>heard about any big trebuchets. Yet.
>>
>I shudder to think of the impulse involved in rest-to-orbital velocity
>using a trebuchet.
I'm trying to work out how to build a multi-stage trebuchet. I think it
involves several devices not entirely unlike giant tennis rackets.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
b...@shrdlu.co.uk
b...@shrdlu.org.uk
mike stone
>Sorry, I goofed - It would only be about 6000 miles. Here goes
>
>The velocity V required to project a body to height H (which would also be
>that
>obtained by a body falling *from* H) is derived from the formula
>H = 2gR^2 / (2gR-V^2) where R + the Earth's radius
>
>V ( = Orbital Velocity *at* H) = (gR ^ 0.5 ) . (R/H) ^ 0.5 = ((gR^2)/H) ^ 0.5
>
I don't know if anyone has noticed yet, but I have of course made a schoolboy
howler in that second equation. It should of course be V =
(gR^0.5).((R/(R+H))^0.5) = ((gR^2)/(R+H))^0.5
Entirely my own fault of course. If I try to do computations like that at
*midnight*, I richly deserve anything I get. Hopefully I'll get back shortly
with a corrected result, if some kind soul doesn't do it first
Doug Wickstrom
the ether to say:
>>From: mws...@aol.com (mike stone)
>
>>Sorry, I goofed - It would only be about 6000 miles. Here goes
>>
>>The velocity V required to project a body to height H (which would also be
>>that
>>obtained by a body falling *from* H) is derived from the formula
>
>>H = 2gR^2 / (2gR-V^2) where R + the Earth's radius
>>
>>V ( = Orbital Velocity *at* H) = (gR ^ 0.5 ) . (R/H) ^ 0.5 = ((gR^2)/H) ^ 0.5
>>
>
>I don't know if anyone has noticed yet, but I have of course made a schoolboy
>howler in that second equation. It should of course be V =
>(gR^0.5).((R/(R+H))^0.5) = ((gR^2)/(R+H))^0.5
>
>Entirely my own fault of course. If I try to do computations like that at
>*midnight*, I richly deserve anything I get. Hopefully I'll get back shortly
>with a corrected result, if some kind soul doesn't do it first
It seems to me, that if one could build a trebuchet that large,
that the upper reaches are already effectively in orbit. 3,000
miles up is certainly high enough to be a menace to orbital
navigation for all practical orbits but geo-synchronous.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take
possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends-the
nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are
ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate it and plunder it."
--Friedrich Engels
mike stone
>It seems to me, that if one could build a trebuchet that large,
>that the upper reaches are already effectively in orbit. 3,000
>miles up is certainly high enough to be a menace to orbital
>navigation for all practical orbits but geo-synchronous.
No - you are in *space*, but not in orbit (see Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise"
on this point) . If you dropped a screwdriver from the top of the trebuchet, it
would not "orbit" with you but fall straight back to earth - and probably make
an impressive crater whan it landed. Same goes for *you* if you lost your
footing
mike stone
>>
>>V ( = Orbital Velocity *at* H) = (gR ^ 0.5 ) . (R/H) ^ 0.5 = ((gR^2)/H) ^
>0.5
>>
>
>I don't know if anyone has noticed yet, but I have of course made a schoolboy
>howler in that second equation. It should of course be V =
>(gR^0.5).((R/(R+H))^0.5) = ((gR^2)/(R+H))^0.5
>
>Entirely my own fault of course. If I try to do computations like that at
>*midnight*, I richly deserve anything I get. Hopefully I'll get back shortly
>with a corrected result, if some kind soul doesn't do it first
OK - here goes *again* We now have
H = 2gR^2 / ((2gR - (gR^2)/(R+H)))
= 2R/ (2 - R/(R+H))
If we use the Earth's radius as our unit of length, so that R=1, then
H = 2/ (2 - 1/(1+H) ) = 2/ ((2H+1)/(1+H)) = (2H+2)/(2H+1) so that
2H^2 + H = 2H+2 giving
2H^2 - H - 2 = 0 which (if I can still solve a quadratic equation) gives
H = (1 + 17^0.5)/4 = approx 1.28 Earth radii = abt 5120 miles
This would still hold for all bodies, giving abt 1280 miles for the Moon, 2550
for Mars and 56,300 in the rather theoretical case of Jupiter
There! That's my final word on the matter. If anyone thinks I'm still wrong
they can jolly well do the calculations themselves. So there!
Laura Haywood-Cory
>>> >I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from
>>> >living in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
My unofficial initiation ritual was menarche at age 11. I did feel
different afterward, but the feeling was more akin to "mortified" and
"incredibly embarrassed" than anything else. I wish it had been otherwise.
-Laura
--
Laura Haywood-Cory
Research Triangle SF Society - http://www.rtsfs.org
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill - monthly sf meetings
Trinoc-coN - http://www.trinoc-con.org
the Triangle's sf conference, 9/29-10/1/2000
Philip Chee
>I dunno about "discovering one's True Self." But it seems to me there are
>worse coming-of-age practices than sending young adults to fend for
>themselves in a foreign place, charged with the task of making some kind of
>genuine human contact with the locals.
>
>Keep in mind, when you see the pair of guys in white shirts coming toward
>your door, that they tend to save the _really_ smart ones for missions
>outside the English-speaking world, because those are the ones they can put
>through their accelerated language training.
I don't know about the "smart" bit though. The ones we get spend an
aweful lot of time cycling around in the mid day sun. Rabid canines and
all that. They also tend to be more decadent (compared with descriptions
here in rasff). The shirts they wear actually come in pastel shades!
Phil
---=====================================================================---
Philip Chee: Tasek Corporation Berhad, P.O.Box 254, 30908 Ipoh, MALAYSIA
e-mail: phi...@aleytys.pc.my Voice:+60-5-545-1011 Fax:+60-5-547-3932
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
---
ž 20276.30 ž Programmers don't repeat themselves, they LOOP
Patrick Connors
: On 2 Jun 2000 23:17:10 GMT, Ed Dravecky III
: <dshe...@netcom6.netcom.com> wrote:
: >"David G. Bell" (db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: >> An earlier test trebuchet, apparently made using modern materials, was
: >> shown chucking a piano. And one of those fireball things, which looked
: >> horrible nasty when it hit. The other designer was French, but he
: >> wasn't shown hurling cows...
: >
: >The folks on "Northern Exposure" did a piano first.
: >
: >Chris, the character building the trebuchet, had planned to fling
: >a Real Live Cow as an artistic statement until finding out from
: >the town's film buff that Monty Python had already done it,
: >albeit with a fake cow. This plot twist ended much agonizing
: >over the fate of the cow and resulted in hypnotically beautiful
: >footage of the piano in flight at episode's end. A must see.
: A fine episode of a fine show.
: Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
: ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
: need to get something into orbit?
: --
Oh, don't *do* that to me...
H'mmm...
Can I cheat and put it on a high mountain on the Equator?
--
Patrick Connors |
| What if the Hokey-Pokey -is- what it's all about?
|
Mary Kay Kare
<lgha...@email.unc.edu> wrote:
> Apologies; original attribution lost:
>
> >>> >I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from
> >>> >living in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>
> My unofficial initiation ritual was menarche at age 11. I did feel
> different afterward, but the feeling was more akin to "mortified" and
> "incredibly embarrassed" than anything else. I wish it had been otherwise.
>
Actuall, it's a lot better these days for many girls. I know of some
families who actually celebrate it. I don't think my sister did for my
niece, (who was only 10!) but she's pretty matter of fact about it.
Mary Kay Kare
> I don't know about the "smart" bit though. The ones we get spend an
> aweful lot of time cycling around in the mid day sun. Rabid canines and
> all that. They also tend to be more decadent (compared with descriptions
> here in rasff). The shirts they wear actually come in pastel shades!
>
Yeah, I saw a couple of them, in long sleeved white shirts, bicycling
around this past weekend. And we're having a heat wave...
Mary Kay Kare
<p...@primenet.com> wrote:
That's not cheating. That's what some of the laser launch scenarios use
as well.
Mary Kay Kare
last night. He was working under deadline all weekend and had to fly to
Seattle early Monday morning with 3 hours sleep, but here's his reply.
Begin Jordin's response:
He's wrong, but I don't have time/energy to correct him tonight. If you
want to post a quick note saying I said he's wrong, just say:
Jordin Says Two Words: "Lever Arm".
At slightly greater length, but *very* roughly:
The falling weight is heavy and on a short arm; the projectile is
(relatively) light and on a long arm, so it moves a lot faster than the
weight. The equation he wants is
1/2 m v^2 = M g h
where m is the projectile mass, M is the trebuchet weight, v is orbital
velocity (8 km/s) and h is the tower height.
h = m/M * v^2/2g v^2/2g = 3.2 x 10^6 m or 3200 km
If M/m = 100 (10 ton weight, 100 kg projectile) you'd need a 32 km tall
tower. If M/m = 10,000, you only need a tower 320 meters (~1000 ft)
tall.
BUT
since a trebuchet is a simple lever, you have to have a lever arm ratio
that's somewhere close to M/m (I think offhand it's l/L = 1/2 M/m, where
l/L is the long arm over the short arm).
So you need a "throwing arm" that's 1600 km long!
You could, however, build a more complicated machine that used a falling
weight to throw a payload into orbit. That's what the Grand Canyon
Catapult is -- using pulleys instead of a lever. More on that another
time....
Jordin
MK again:
All this after a full days work on 3 hours sleep, with no reference
books. When Jordin does this kind of thing I marvel not only at the
amount of knowledge in that slightly balding head, but at the depth of
understanding of the universe and how it works that allows him to do
this. And I find it really sexy. Am I crazy or just fannish?
Doug Wickstrom
Chee) excited the ether to say:
>In article <slrn8jm3o...@pnh-0.dsl.speakeasy.net> p...@panix.com writes:
>
>>I dunno about "discovering one's True Self." But it seems to me there are
>>worse coming-of-age practices than sending young adults to fend for
>>themselves in a foreign place, charged with the task of making some kind of
>>genuine human contact with the locals.
>>
>>Keep in mind, when you see the pair of guys in white shirts coming toward
>>your door, that they tend to save the _really_ smart ones for missions
>>outside the English-speaking world, because those are the ones they can put
>>through their accelerated language training.
>
>I don't know about the "smart" bit though. The ones we get spend an
>aweful lot of time cycling around in the mid day sun. Rabid canines and
>all that. They also tend to be more decadent (compared with descriptions
>here in rasff). The shirts they wear actually come in pastel shades!
Met one in Japan wearing plaid. No, he wasn't dead.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Necessity is a dangerous plea for the privilege of power; especially when the
sole judge of it is the power pretending it." --Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
Dave Weingart
>this. And I find it really sexy. Am I crazy or just fannish?
There's a difference?
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK Consonance 2001! Urban Tapestry!
mailto:phyd...@liii.com Mike Stein! Oh, yeah, and some guy
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux named Dave Wein-something-or-other.
ICQ 57055207 http://www.consonance.org
Karen Cooper
Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
> I dunno about "discovering one's True Self." But it seems to me there are
> worse coming-of-age practices than sending young adults to fend for
> themselves in a foreign place, charged with the task of making some kind of
> genuine human contact with the locals.
This is basically why we are shipping my kids to Europe for the summer.
I expect that they will make most of their contact with others on the
hostel circuit, but I don't think that's all bad, either.
Karen. [they're getting nervous about the trip; that's a good sign]
Dave Weingart
>families who actually celebrate it. I don't think my sister did for my
>niece, (who was only 10!) but she's pretty matter of fact about it.
I wonder. My oldest is 9, almost old enough for that first wet dream.
PARTY TIME!
Rob Hansen
>Rob Hansen <r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>: Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
>: ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
>: need to get something into orbit?
>: --
>
>Oh, don't *do* that to me...
>
>H'mmm...
>
>
>Can I cheat and put it on a high mountain on the Equator?
Well, as long as Arthur C.Clarke will let you, why not?
Colette Reap
>When Jordin does this kind of thing I marvel not only at the
>amount of knowledge in that slightly balding head, but at the depth of
>understanding of the universe and how it works that allows him to do
>this. And I find it really sexy. Am I crazy or just fannish?
>
Certainly not crazy - or at least if you are then so am I for exactly
the same reasons - wrt my husband, I hasten to add!
Intelligence _is_ the ultimate aphrodisiac :-)
--
Colette
Sue Mason
>on the way to the shops one Sunday morning in Edinburgh. It was the
>usual opening and I replied "Sorry, I'm Pagan." hoping that they would
>give up. No, I had to get the broadminded one. She looked at me with
>delight and said "Oh, wonderful, I've been hoping to meet one" and kept
>me talking for the next ten to fifteen minutes. By the time I'd managed
>to get away (sometimes I can be too polite for my own good) and got
>along the road the shops had shut and I was stuck without any milk until
>Monday.
>
>For those wondering why anyone would possibly be hoping or expecting to
>meet a Pagan in the middle of Edinburgh It was near Beltain and I was
>walking past Calton hill (where they hold the fire every year).
"Go away, I'm a witch." usualy works for me.
(Even though I'm not - I'm near enough to scare them.)
Sue Mason
s...@arctic-fox.freeserve.co.uk
Dragons, unicorns and pagan designs in wood at
http//:www.plokta.com/woodlore/
David G. Bell
<20000605182350...@ng-bk1.aol.com>
mws...@aol.com "mike stone" wrote:
> >From: Rob Hansen r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk
>
> >Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
> >ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
> >need to get something into orbit?
>
> This requires a velocity of abt 4.9 miles per second
>
> Ignoring air resistance, the counterweight would have to drop from a height of
> two earth radii - call it 8000 miles. So the "tower" or whatever you call it,
> supporting the midpoint of the beam, would have to be 4000 miles high, and the
> beam itself 8000 miles long
Around 30 MJ per kilogram.
If the counterweight dropped a hundred metres it would need to mass 3
tonnes per kilogram of payload, plus whatever was needed to accelerate
the boom. (Gravitational potential energy of the counterweight
converted to kinetic energy of the projectile)
The counterweight would reach a maximum speed of about 44 m/s. So the
long end of the boom would have to be about 180 times longer -- which is
18 kilometres. (Leverage)
The materials required would be somewhat exotic.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Copyright 2000 David G. Bell
David G. Bell
b...@shrdlu.com "Bernard Peek" wrote:
> In article <393c26af...@news.mindspring.com>, mike weber
> <kras...@mindspring.com> writes
> >On Mon, 05 Jun 2000 21:14:21 GMT, ka...@sirius.com (Mary Kay Kare)
> >typed
> >:
> >>In article <812ojsklkvgb72rf8...@4ax.com>,
> >>r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
> >>> ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
> >>> need to get something into orbit?
> >>> --
> >>Jordin's traveling right now but I've forwarded this interesting question
> >>to him. I know they're studying big guns as launch systems, but I haven't
> >>heard about any big trebuchets. Yet.
> >>
> >I shudder to think of the impulse involved in rest-to-orbital velocity
> >using a trebuchet.
>
> I'm trying to work out how to build a multi-stage trebuchet. I think it
> involves several devices not entirely unlike giant tennis rackets.
I find myself wondering how Atom's strange aliens started their
exploration of space, and whether this might be the mystic secret of
Ghoodminton.
I can imagine the drawing...
mike weber
typed
:
>In article <8hiqon$q78$1...@news2.isis.unc.edu>, Laura Haywood-Cory
><lgha...@email.unc.edu> wrote:
>
>> Apologies; original attribution lost:
>>
>> >>> >I bet I'm not the only person here who doesn't feel any loss from
>> >>> >living in a culture that lacks initiation rituals for adolescents.
>>
>> My unofficial initiation ritual was menarche at age 11. I did feel
>> different afterward, but the feeling was more akin to "mortified" and
>> "incredibly embarrassed" than anything else. I wish it had been otherwise.
>>
>families who actually celebrate it. I don't think my sister did for my
>niece, (who was only 10!) but she's pretty matter of fact about it.
>
he struggled with how to have Luann tell her friend Bernice what was
going on without using language that some papers might object to.
Finally, he came up with the idea of Luan speaking a baloon containing
only a punctuation mark: "."
--
=============================================================
"They put manure in his well and they made him talk to lawyers!"
-- Cat Ballou
mike weber -- kras...@mindspring.com
Avram Grumer
> Avram Grumer wrote in message ...
> >In article <YaKuZrBD...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk>, MLG
> ><mor...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >> ...Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make
> >> an awful lot of sense to me.
> >
> >Mine didn't much to me. Sure, I got a big party and a bunch of money,
> >but afterwards it was the same life as before. Still had to take the
> >same bus to the same school with the same classes.
>
> Yeah, enlightenment is like that, too.
You get money for achieving enlightenment?
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death
your right to mis-attribute this quote to Voltaire.
Mary Kay Kare
col...@lspace.org wrote:
> ka...@sirius.com (Mary Kay Kare) wrote:
>
> >When Jordin does this kind of thing I marvel not only at the
> >amount of knowledge in that slightly balding head, but at the depth of
> >understanding of the universe and how it works that allows him to do
> >this. And I find it really sexy. Am I crazy or just fannish?
> >
> Certainly not crazy - or at least if you are then so am I for exactly
> the same reasons - wrt my husband, I hasten to add!
Hee hee. Well, you can lust after mine all you want, you just can't have him.
>
> Intelligence _is_ the ultimate aphrodisiac :-)
The first card I ever sent Jordin said that.
Doug Berry
sat down on Tue, 06 Jun 2000 13:32:13 -0500 to write:
>This is basically why we are shipping my kids to Europe for the summer.
>I expect that they will make most of their contact with others on the
>hostel circuit, but I don't think that's all bad, either.
How do I go about being adopted by you?
--
Douglas E. Berry grid...@mindspring.com
http://gridlore.home.mindspring.com/
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as
when they do it from religious conviction."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pense'es, #894.
Karen Cooper
<grid...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Karen Cooper <kar...@visi.com>, in a burst of mad inspiration,
> sat down on Tue, 06 Jun 2000 13:32:13 -0500 to write:
>
>
> >This is basically why we are shipping my kids to Europe for the summer.
> >I expect that they will make most of their contact with others on the
> >hostel circuit, but I don't think that's all bad, either.
>
> How do I go about being adopted by you?
I'm afraid the window of opportunity on that is closed. Sorry. Move
along.
Karen. [maybe I could get a hole in the head! That'd be better than
another kid!]
Kate Schaefer
>In article <8hhpk5$e8a$0...@216.39.131.213>, "Kate Schaefer" <ka...@oz.net>
wrote:
>
>> Avram Grumer wrote in message ...
>> >In article <YaKuZrBD...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk>, MLG
>> ><mor...@dreyfuss.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> ...Bar Mitzvahs (hope I spelt it right) make
>> >> an awful lot of sense to me.
>> >
>> >Mine didn't much to me. Sure, I got a big party and a bunch of money,
>> >but afterwards it was the same life as before. Still had to take the
>> >same bus to the same school with the same classes.
>>
>> Yeah, enlightenment is like that, too.
>
>You get money for achieving enlightenment?
Not necessarily, but if you do, you still have to take the same bus to the
Margaret Alia Denny
>
> Intelligence _is_ the ultimate aphrodisiac :-)
I collect buttons. Someone gave that to me on a button once. I looked
at it, and realized it spelled that last word "aphrodesiac."
The button is in my collection, but you won't catch me wearing it.
--
Alia / Copyright fno...@earthlink.net
Ligneous and petrous projectiles can potentially fracture my osseous
structure, but pejorative appellations will forever remain innocuous.
Marilee J. Layman
Mason) wrote:
>On Mon, 5 Jun 2000 22:00:50 +0100, Omega <Om...@menageri.demon.co.uk>
>>That was the reaction I was hoping to get from the two that stopped me
>>on the way to the shops one Sunday morning in Edinburgh. It was the
>>usual opening and I replied "Sorry, I'm Pagan." hoping that they would
>>give up. No, I had to get the broadminded one. She looked at me with
>>delight and said "Oh, wonderful, I've been hoping to meet one" and kept
>>me talking for the next ten to fifteen minutes. By the time I'd managed
>>to get away (sometimes I can be too polite for my own good) and got
>>along the road the shops had shut and I was stuck without any milk until
>>Monday.
>>
>>For those wondering why anyone would possibly be hoping or expecting to
>>meet a Pagan in the middle of Edinburgh It was near Beltain and I was
>>walking past Calton hill (where they hold the fire every year).
>
>
>"Go away, I'm a witch." usualy works for me.
>(Even though I'm not - I'm near enough to scare them.)
I always tell them they're breaking the law (and they are, the
development is marked no trespassing, no soliciting) and they usually
insist there's no signs out there.
--
Marilee J. Layman The Other*Worlds*Cafe
HOSTE...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group.
AOL Keyword: OWC http://www.webmoose.com/owc
Ray Radlein
>
> Avram Grumer wrote in message ...
> >"Kate Schaefer" <ka...@oz.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Avram Grumer wrote in message ...
> >> >
> >> >it was the same life as before. Still had to take the same
> >> >bus to the same school with the same classes.
> >>
> >> Yeah, enlightenment is like that, too.
> >
> >You get money for achieving enlightenment?
>
> Not necessarily, but if you do, you still have to take the same
> bus to the same school with the same classes.
So the problem with enlightenment is that there simply isn't *enough*
money in it.
- Ray R.
--
**********************************************************************
"If memory serves me right, rain on your wedding day is considered
by everyone to be a good omen..." - Chairman Kaga, "Ironic Chef"
Ray Radlein - r...@learnlink.emory.edu
homepage coming soon! wooo, wooo.
**********************************************************************
Omega
<s...@arctic-fox.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>>meet a Pagan in the middle of Edinburgh It was near Beltain and I was
>>walking past Calton hill (where they hold the fire every year).
>
>
>"Go away, I'm a witch." usualy works for me.
>(Even though I'm not - I'm near enough to scare them.)
Somehow I don't think it would have worked on this pair.
--
Omega
"Sensible men are all of the same religion"
"And pray, what is that?" inquired the prince
"Sensible men never tell."
Benjamin Disraeli
Eileen Lufkin
news:slrn8jmbhr....@localhost.localdomain...
> "I sacrifice to Thor."
What sorts of sacrifices does Thor want?
--
Eileen Lufkin
Avedon Carol
(P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>On Sun, 4 Jun 2000 22:27:48 +0100,
> Richard Kennaway <ar...@dircon.co.uk> wrote:
>>In stories, the young man who goes on a Mission discovers his True Self
>>and comes back changed. Does anything of the sort generally happen in
>>the case of the LDS? Can one tell the difference between those who went
>>and those who didn't?
>
>My in-laws are all Mormons, most of them have been on missions, and for all
>my problems with Mormon belief and Mormon culture, it seems to me that the
>experience is frequently broadening.
Going to a foreign country changed my life. I now know that the
answer to the question, "What are you?" is, "American".
>I dunno about "discovering one's True Self." But it seems to me there are
>worse coming-of-age practices than sending young adults to fend for
>themselves in a foreign place, charged with the task of making some kind of
>genuine human contact with the locals.
I have to agree. People who have never been anywhere are probably
fine if they keep on not going anywhere and don't meet anyone who has,
but they are a pain in the ass for the rest of us.
>Keep in mind, when you see the pair of guys in white shirts coming toward
>your door, that they tend to save the _really_ smart ones for missions
>outside the English-speaking world, because those are the ones they can put
>through their accelerated language training.
Boy, does _that_ ever explain things.
Avedon Carol
db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk ("David G. Bell") wrote:
> b...@shrdlu.com "Bernard Peek" wrote:
>> <kras...@mindspring.com> writes
>> >ka...@sirius.com (Mary Kay Kare)typed
>> >>r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk wrote:
>> >>> Incidentally, assuming no problems with material strength and the
>> >>> ability to make it as large as required, how big a trebuchet would you
>> >>> need to get something into orbit?
>> >>>
>> >>Jordin's traveling right now but I've forwarded this interesting question
>> >>to him. I know they're studying big guns as launch systems, but I haven't
>> >>heard about any big trebuchets. Yet.
>> >>
>> >I shudder to think of the impulse involved in rest-to-orbital velocity
>> >using a trebuchet.
>>
>> I'm trying to work out how to build a multi-stage trebuchet. I think it
>> involves several devices not entirely unlike giant tennis rackets.
>
>I find myself wondering how Atom's strange aliens started their
>exploration of space, and whether this might be the mystic secret of
>Ghoodminton.
>
>I can imagine the drawing...
I like it better than a beer can tower to the moon, but I'm worried
about the platform....
Kip Williams
>
> "Graydon" <anga...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:slrn8jmbhr....@localhost.localdomain...
>
> > "I sacrifice to Thor."
>
> What sorts of sacrifices does Thor want?
They say if you have a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Terry L. Smith
: On 2 Jun 2000, Stevie Gamble wrote:
:> I believe the Dangerous Sports Club does attract some non-English people
:> as well, though I am baffled at the idea of tying myself to a long
:> piece of elastic for fun. The closest fictional treatment I've come
:> across is a short
:> story about Modesty Blaise - a mostly cartoon heroine who does also appear
:> in more traditional form- involving getting a character over the Berlin
:> Wall with
:> the assistance of a Circus human cannon firer. (Trebuchets are definitely
:> catchier ...).
:> I've been trying to think of a similarly implausible SF escape,
:> but without much success.
: How about Reverse Bungee Jumping?
: Were Dejanews not crippled, I could find my previous writings about the
: following "implausible escape;" but I'll make do.
: Robert Fulton, a colorful 20th-century American inventor (who may or may not
: be related to the steamboat guy), cooked up an unusual rescue apparatus in
: the Fifties.
: A stranded person on the ground dons a harness and inflates a helium
: balloon. It rises, trailing a rope attached to the harness.
: A specially equipped airplane finds the balloon and snags its rope in a
: "catcher" apparatus. As the plane flies past, the person is lifted from the
: ground and towed into the air behind it. Then the crew reels in the rope
: and welcomes the rescued person aboard.
: Those who have ridden the Skyhook say it was exhilirating. I'm surprised it
: hasn't become a sport yet. Maybe in the 21st century.
: The most spectacular use of Fulton's Skyhook was "Operation Coldfeet" in
: 1962. Soviet scientists had abandoned a research station on a floating ice
: island in the Arctic Ocean as its airfield deteriorated. The U.S. Navy
: wanted a look at this, but it was outside the range of helicopters. Two
: guys parachuted to the island, ransacked the station for anything of
: intelligence value, and were extracted by a CIA B-17. (The same plane
: appeared several years later snatching James Bond's Skyhook in
: *Thunderball*.)
Back in the early 1980's, the US Forest Service had some slurry-
bomber fire-fighting aircraft based at the Alamogordo, New Mexico
airport (such as it was). I dunno if they still have a facility
there or not, but back then, at least two of the planes they were
using were B-17's, on lease, IIRC, from "Black Hills Aviation."
They were absolutely gorgeous planes, well cared for, well maintained.
One of them was, I think, traded to the Smithsonian for one, perhaps
two, aircraft with larger tank capacity. Before it was shipped out,
it was pretty much stripped, and de-painted down to silver; I
had several chances to explore the insides of this aircraft, as
the work was in progress. I don't know the history of that particular
plane, even by unsubstantiated rumor.
The other plane, however, continued to earn her own living as
a fire-fighter, for at least sevreral more years.
I got to know the co-pilot and chief mechanic of that particular
plane; he was a nice guy, who really loved the ole bird. Sometimes
he'd give me a call, say, "We're gonna bomb the wind-sock today,
wanna come watch?" So I would, and then we'd migrate to the little
coffee shoppe, and he'd tell stories.
One of those stories was that that *particular* plane had been
one of the ones fitted out for the experimental "bungie rescue"
operation stuff that the CIA had been into. The plane was of very
late manufacture, had never seen action in WWII, and, as it was
in perfect condition, was selected as a survivor, and had not
been scrapped, as so many were, or used as a drone-target at
White Sands, or some other place...
The original maintenance manual was still with the plane, as were
most of the original fittings and so on. I was permitted to
crawl around on the inside of that aircraft, too, and it was
rather claustrophobic on the inside, due to the slurry tanks.
The cockpit was *impressive*. All those dials...
My pal had lots of stories, lots of anecdotes, said that no matter
*how* expert the pilot was, he'd never *quite* manage to get all
of those engines exactly in sync, which accounted for the distinctive
sound of the B-17 ... and he did recount, in some detail, legends
of the "bungie" ecperiments. He said that some of them had
been carried out in either South, or Central America, I forget
which.
He'd done a lot of research on B-17's in general, and was a
fascinating tale-spinner. I've no idea how many of the tales were true,
of course. I did like him, though, and I came to really like his
pretty plane. One afternoon, I watched, through binocs, the
Old Lady quite expertly extinguish a brush-fire in the foothills
of the nearby mountains. *That* was *impressive*. And scary,
too...
That particular B-17 continued on as a slurry-bomber, one of the
very last of her type actually working for a living, instead of
being an exhibit, airworthy or otherwise, of some aviation
museum, for some years after I left that area. I don't know
what evenutally happened to it; I did try to research it using
some of the books on B-17's and their history, but never found
out for sure. (I heard a rumor that it had been destroyed in
a crash, shortly before it had been scheduled for retirement,
when a youmg member of the family who owned, or possibly managed,
"Black Hills Aviation" (or was it "Evergreen" ? both were involved,
somehow) decided he'd like to learn to fly an old "warbird." I
hope that is not true.)
I wonder if that plane could have been the one you mention.
: A good article on this appeared in the CIA's journal *Studies in
: Intelligence* in 1995:
: <http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/95unclass/Leary.html>.
: A longer version of the story, including more detail on Fulton's life, is
: in the book *Project Coldfeet : Secret Mission to a Soviet Ice Station* by
: William M. Leary and Leonard A. LeSchack.
Thanks for the information; I'll check into that.
"Comin' in on a wing and a prayer ... "
_ Old Song
- M.Q.S., Cdr. C'mell, KPS AKA The Lady in Green
... during that same time span, the third filght of the shuttle
"Columbia" made a landing at the airstrip out in the Tularosa
Basin, near Alamogordo; a friend of mine had the car-rental
concession at the airport then, and needed some extra help due to
the assorted throngs arriving for the event. So she lemming-ed/
gophered me. (Not that I minded.)
One of the things she got me to do was take a cars out to Holloman AFB,
pick up astronauts who were scheduled to assist (fly the little
"escort" jets, stuff like that), and then return with them to the rental-
base at the airport (since I had to return for more trips).
One of the arrivees was Rick Hauck
http://vesuviusjsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/hauck.htm
who turned out to be very pleasant, and liked to chat. (He had not
at that time flown, but later captained the first flight subsequent
to the "Challenger" disaster.)
I decided he was my kinda guy when, after finishing the car-
rental paperwork, he walked out along the taxi-strip to the
area where the B-17 was parked. I'd already gone out, to pay
my respects and admire the Old Girl yet again; he joined me
there, and we watched the sunset paint her rose and gold.
After a few moments of pleasant companionable silence, he said,
"My God, that *is* a *lovely* airplane."
There wasn't much I could say to that, but "Yup."
Then we left, and that's the end of that story.
--
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
| M.Q.S. c/o T.L.S | "Don't play with that! You have no idea where |
| tls...@netcom.com | it's been..." -- Speaker to Elevators |
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
Terry L. Smith
(Following up for a correction on bungled URL)
Terry L. Smith <tls...@netcom19.netcom.com> wrote:
~ snip lotsa stuff about bungie aircraft and such-all ~
: One of the things she got me to do was take a cars out to Holloman AFB,
: pick up astronauts who were scheduled to assist (fly the little
: "escort" jets, stuff like that), and then return with them to the rental-
: base at the airport (since I had to return for more trips).
: One of the arrivees was Rick Hauck
: http://vesuviusjsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/hauck.htm
Make that:
http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/hauck.htm
: who turned out to be very pleasant, and liked to chat. (He had not
: at that time flown, but later captained the first flight subsequent
: to the "Challenger" disaster.)
Sorry about missing the "."
" E
F P
T O Z
[...] "
- thingie I need to take a look at, and soon, probably
- M.Q.S., Cdr. C'mell, KPS AKA The Lady in Green
... sheesh. I can't proofread for nada these days.
Sandra Bond
>>on the way to the shops one Sunday morning in Edinburgh. It was the
>>usual opening and I replied "Sorry, I'm Pagan." hoping that they would
>>give up. No, I had to get the broadminded one. She looked at me with
>>delight and said "Oh, wonderful, I've been hoping to meet one" and kept
>>me talking for the next ten to fifteen minutes. By the time I'd managed
>>to get away (sometimes I can be too polite for my own good) and got
>>along the road the shops had shut and I was stuck without any milk until
>>Monday.
>>
>>meet a Pagan in the middle of Edinburgh It was near Beltain and I was
>>walking past Calton hill (where they hold the fire every year).
>
>
>"Go away, I'm a witch." usualy works for me.
>(Even though I'm not - I'm near enough to scare them.)
Joy Hilbert used to use this with the addendum "... and I'll fucking hex
you."
Sandra
--
"After I die, I shall return to Earth as gatekeeper of a bordello,
and I won't let any of you -- not a one of you -- enter."
(-- Arturo Toscanini)
///sandra bond: san...@ho-street.demon.co.uk////weber&lindsay for GUFF!///
Terry L. Smith
: "David G. Bell" (db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk) wrote:
:> An earlier test trebuchet, apparently made using modern materials, was
:> shown chucking a piano. And one of those fireball things, which looked
:> horrible nasty when it hit. The other designer was French, but he
:> wasn't shown hurling cows...
: The folks on "Northern Exposure" did a piano first.
: Chris, the character building the trebuchet, had planned to fling
: a Real Live Cow as an artistic statement until finding out from
: the town's film buff that Monty Python had already done it,
: albeit with a fake cow. This plot twist ended much agonizing
: over the fate of the cow and resulted in hypnotically beautiful
: footage of the piano in flight at episode's end. A must see.
Oh yes, that was one of their best.
Didn't Danny Kaye (or perhaps Glynis Johns and some friends)
fling rather a lot of Bad Guys off castle parapets, in "The
Court Jester?"
Dwarf Bad Guys, maybe?
And wasn't there some flinging of "Greek Fire" from ships,
using kinda teensy trebuchets, in some 1950's or '80'a action-adventure
movie? I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Harryhausen "Jason and the
Argonauts." but I can't think what else it might have been...
Or was that in "The Long Ships" ... ? (Which was a pretty
nifty ridiculous movie, IIRC, what with Widmark and Tamblyn _et
alia_ hamming it up, Poitier cheweing every bit of scenery around,
and the beautiful ships, ... not to mention "the Mare of
Death," or whatever that ghastly contraption was called... That's
maybe even a more fun "viking" movie than "The Thirteenth
Warrior," since it's sillier.)
"Yea, verily, yea!"
- Thronged Knights, TKJ
- M.Q.S., Cdr. C'mell, KPS AKA The Lady in Green
... whatever happened to "dwarf tossing," I wonder.
And is it true that "Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf," died
recently? Inspiring minds want to know.
(sent to alt.books.tom-holt, because someone there might be
interested, and aft-s, same reason)