Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

December 23, 2004

Bull Moose

Filed under: General — Bunker @ 1:40 pm

This morning I took a vacation day, so I went in to Lago’s show rather than calling in. One of the topics was sacrifice during a time of war, and how the American people were asked to sacrifice during WW II. Jim also asked if I had ever read Bull Moose. Yes, I have. But not in some time. Jim had a link today, and I went to see about the topic at hand.

The issue is whether there should be grand Inaugural Balls and parties as there is each election. The folks at Bull Moose (The Democratic Leadership Council) believe not:

Official partying is entirely inappropriate while our brave troops are sacrificing life and limb for country.

I tend to agree. But I doubt any parties in Chevy Chase or Georgetown have been cancelled recently.

More than two months before Bill Clinton’s second inauguation, I was in DC. I had gone to see Slice graduate from the Marine Officer Training Course at Quantico, and took my wife for her first visit to what is one of my favorite cities. Unfortunately, we couldn’t visit the Capitol because of all the construction going on in preparation for the inauguration. I was inconvenienced and unable to visit my seat of government so that a single day’s activities could take place in expensive grandeur some time in the relatively distant future.

The cost estimate for this inauguration will be high, too (about $40 million). And that is the real issue. If the RNC picks up the tab, I have no complaint. But taxpayers should be spared. I’m sure that’s not the reason the DLC has in mind.

And in their “About” section, they recall my favorite President, Theodore Roosevelt (the original Bull Moose), and one of his best quotes:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Do you think the Democratic Leadership Council feels that way about Dubya? Not if you listen to what they say about Iraq.

Chrenkoff

Filed under: General — Bunker @ 5:17 am

Arthur Chrenkoff has posted what may be the last of his “Around the World in 80 Blogs.” When you put together all the good news coming from Iraq, and Afghanistan, it leaves little time for your own thoughts. I thank Arthur for taking on that task, and he has performed admirably–well enough that the major blogs and NRO have noticed and turned him into a celebrity. That amount of notoriety has a cost, as Arthur has found out first-hand.

Merry Christmas to Arthur and all my other friends in Oz!

December 22, 2004

Obvious Conclusion?

Filed under: International — Bunker @ 3:55 pm

I waited all day. Nobody else seems to have seen it. MSNBC’s Carl Roschelle could do no better than to ponder how a suicide bomber made it into a military facility.

My conclusion? The insurgents are finished.

Yesterday I mentioned Tet 1968. It was the last gasp of the Viet Cong and NVA. In the US, the media and activists acclaimed it as a resounding defeat for US forces, and proof we needed to pull out.

The suicide bomber and havoc he created will be reported in much the same way. The politicos on the left are already doing it.

But consider for just a second the weapon used. Where else is it used? Why?

The jihadists are on their last legs in Iraq. They have been reduced to the point they must use the same weapon used by Hamas to take on our forces. They can do little else.

Silent Night

Filed under: General — Bunker @ 3:35 pm

In the 1966 Simon and Garfunkel album “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme”, one track was not a tradition song. That track was 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night. Even though it was not a protest song, per se, it was taken on as one by the anti-war movement. The track had the duo singing the classic Christmas song, while a newsman read highlights of news in the background. And all the news involved anger and violence.

Ben Pfeiffer at Keys Radio here in Corpus Christi put together the following track as a modern version. The sense I now get from it is thanks and grace upon those who give up their Silent Night so that we may keep our own Holy Night here at home.

You can hear it at Homespun Blogger Radio. I also have a link to this feature, an ongoing effort, down the left column.

Boring Engineering Stuff

Filed under: Engineering — Bunker @ 10:16 am

I have had a pretty diverse career as a mechanical engineer, and mechanical engineering is as diverse a field as there is. I’ve had to use all the tools I learned (and had to relearn) in school. Calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, thermodynamics, gas dynamics, heat transfer, materials mechanics, power transfer, structures. I am amazed at how all the things Sir Isaac Newton deduced four hundred years ago are still valid, whether it be physics or mathematics. Newtonian Physics are still quite valid and useable here on earth, and most other places and situations in the universe.

At 26 he became a lecturer at Cambridge. Twenty-six. And his brilliance hadn’t really even been exposed at that time. I’ve known some very smart, even brilliant, people. Did any of them even come close to the mind of Newton? I doubt it. He couldn’t explain his thoughts on gravity with conventional mathematics techniques, so he invented Calculus–or discovered it, your choice. Damn.

I’ve been thinking about old Issac the last two weeks as I worked on some spreadsheets to simplify the thermodynamic calculations on turboshaft engines. Every jet engine operates on the premise of converting chemical energy into thermodynamic energy in the form of heat, pressure, and velocity. The basics are the same whether the engine is a turboshaft, turboprop, turbojet, turbofan (turbo as a function of a turbine within the engine), ramjet, scramjet, or pulse jet. There is a stoichiometry common for all with a single fuel, so the air/fuel mixture changes based on the heating value of that fuel. Beyond that, the relationships between the mixture and associated heat, pressure, and velocity are all constant. Newton’s Laws.

The internal geometry of an engine is designed to get the most efficient use of those relationships. That energy is converted to rotational power through a turbine for driving the compressor in all the turbine engines. Turboshaft and turboprop engines also have another turbine which extracts energy to drive a propeller or rotor system. In other types, the energy is converted to high momentum mass flow and nozzle expansion for thrust.

Okay, you’re now bored to tears.

The last two weeks I’ve been involved in correlating two engine test cells. A correlation is more or less a dynamic calibration of the data acquisition system. We take an engine which has been run in a manufacturer’s test cell, and compare specific parameters to those obtained in the candidate cell. We can then certify that the cell is providing accurate and repeatable data. That way we know that every engine we test is performing as indicated. The following is a single sheet of the correlation data comparison:

Chart

The lines are the limits we are allowed, and the data points must fall between them (as they do here).

The task can be quite frustrating. The equations, which derive from all that work Issac did those 400 years ago, get complex and involve conversions of data from things like inches of mercury to pounds per square inch gage to inches of water to pounds per square inch absolute. That’s just pressure. Fuel flow must be converted from Hertz (in a flowmeter) to a velocity, modified for specific gravity to calculate mass flow. All the test parameters are similarly confusing when looked at in the form of a spreadsheet equation. You know, twenty sets of parentheses and every math function available. It isn’t something most people want to be responsible for. Thus, this modification of a Dilbert cartoon from one of my compatriots:

Dilbert

Actually, I enjoy the challenge.

December 21, 2004

Mosul

Filed under: Politics — Bunker @ 6:55 pm

It is a sad day for many. That will not stop the “loyal” opposition from trying to use it to their advantage. Gary Hart has already been on television, making his play for another run at the White House.

Vietnam. It was the best of times. It was a time when very vocal activists took on Lyndon Johnson and won. They took him down, and then did what they could to shift the blame to Nixon. Do not be confused by the revisionist history of that war. The US, in spite of a military hamstrung by Johnson and MacNamara making tactical decisions from the Oval Office, won that war during Tet 1968. But you would never have known it watching television news. Nixon went to the Peace Talks (in Paris) to try and withdraw our forces. After months of delay for discussion of the shape of the table in the negotiating room, Nixon began bombing targets which were previously forbidden. The North Vietnamese agreed to a table shape. After the standard delay in negotiations, Nixon again bombed the North. The talks were finally concluded. During all this “diplomacy”, more Americans were killed than have died in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Gary Harts and Nancy Pelosis of this country remember those days with fondness. What are a few American soldiers’ lives when compared to the bigger story of turning Iraq into today’s Vietnam? They are determined to make it a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Vietnam was not really a war fought in Southeast Asia. It was fought on the streets of the United States and in the halls of power in Washington. The same thing is happening today. Our military can do great things and accomplish every task given them. That is not the issue. The issue is political power. Period. They cannot allow themselves to do what needs to be done to end the problems for our troops–present a unified front. If they do that, they feel they are admitting Bush was right.

They don’t have to admit that to support what we are trying to do. They can still oppose Dubya and Rumsfeld. Nobody is asking them to change that. But they must come out and say we will stick together and see this through. That is the only way to end the insurgency short of destroying entire cities. The jihadists thrive on recognition and support–active and passive, direct and indirect. The Democratic wannabes provide, at a minimum, passive and indirect support. And there are some in this country providing even more.

It has nothing to do with being against the war. The war is over. And it has nothing to do with wanting the attacks to end. They would abate, then disappear, if the jihadists didn’t think they could influence American public opinion enough to drive us out.

What is it that the Democrats want? They can’t say. They offer no options. They offer only complaints and criticism. They are on the outside looking in, so that’s a safe stance. They don’t have to make decisions. They don’t have to offer alternatives. They simply offer platitudes.

Americans die, and they don’t care.

Terror’s Children

Filed under: General — Bunker @ 5:19 pm

I watched this show on the Discovery-Times Channel this afternoon. Interesting. It was one where I could hear the anti-war crowd screaming in my head, “See! They would leave us alone if we left them alone!”

Really, it showed very clearly why we have to continue this fight, although the producer did a good job of not drawing any conclusions for his viewers.

The scene is Pakistan, and the protagonists are two young boys. One is an Afghan refugee whose family fled during the invasion because they were Taliban supporters. Some of the things the boy said made it very clear why they hate us. “They were killing Muslims!” “They wouldn’t even give us bread!” “I will go back and fight as soon as I am old enough!”

His hatred is extremely localized. Muslims were being killed. No logic involved here. Those same Muslims had been killing other Muslims for years. Yet I’m sure these are words he has heard from his father over and over. How can anyone believe he or others like him can be reasoned with?

The second boy is a student at a madrassa. He is taken to a swimming pool area and is aghast that there are both males and females cooling off in the same place. “They will all go to Hell.” Then he thinks about it and says, “I will probably go to Hell because I saw them there.”

Education is the only thing that will bring these people out of that mentality. But education cannot take hold or become universal until these attitudes are changed. Catch-22. And it will take more than a couple of years. It will take a couple of generations. We in the US have little patience. We want things to change immediately so we no longer have to think about them. We want to see the results, and see them now.

The recent election in Afghanistan means little to many here. Big deal–we have elections all the time. An election in Iraq next month will mean even less to those folks. It is just another sham perpetrated by the Bush Administration.

Little steps. Little steps. We must be content with little steps, because that is what it will take to change the anachronism that is the Middle East. I wish it could move faster myself, but I understand how easy it is for a culture that has something novel thrust upon it to revert. The NGOs have shown quite clearly that building a well means only that some will use it, and none will care for it unless the use of that well becomes a habit for the locals. It soon falls into disrepair. So it is with democracy. Too many nations in history have had representative government only to discard it in favor of a strongman as something “easier” to do. France went through that several times after the Revolution. The US is the exception.

Back in July, Dean Esmay asked if Conservatives would honor and support Kerry if he were to be elected:

Now here is my interesting question: I’ve made myself some friends among conservatives by speaking this way. But I do find myself wondering: how many of you on the right will embrace such a philosophy if John Kerry should carry the election in November?

I responded:

That unity of purpose is what we saw in the one or two days after 9/11, which dissolved quickly once people saw Dubya was looking too good to suit them. We cannot survive in this world operating that way. As long as Kerry, if elected, acts like a President I will support him as one. Too bad Dubya wasn’t given that opportunity.

If we are to make things better for all the groups in the Middle East that the activists constantly cry for, we must present to the world a unified vision. The election campaign is over. Can those groups now live up to the same pledge I made last summer?

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