How To Sharpen Your Philishave

Science without guidance is doubly madness.
Baltasar Gracian, The Science Of Success And The Art Of Prudence, Sec. 16

The Oracle of Ottawa is discovering that his "Thinking About Thinking" project was one of the wisest little undertakings that the Oracle of Ottawa has ever undertaken. It is an ever ongoing project where by the Oracle of Ottawa is seeking wisdom, methods and algorithms to solve any big and/or small problem. It has been quiet useful with some big problems and much to the Oracles surprise it also works very well on the little aggravating problems.

Philishave - 1962, and yes you can sharpen the heads!!

If there is one thing that the Oracle of Ottawa truly loves, it has to be quality. There is hardly anything left in the Oracles secure bunker remaining that is made in China. It has all been replaced with the best domestic made goods. Sometimes these can only be replaced by a very careful search at the local thrift stores. When was the last time that you owned a really good can opener that was stamped Made in the USA?

With personal use items the Oracle of Ottawa is even more obsessive. The Oracle only uses the best he can buy and he uses them forever. As I pound this little missive the Oracle has realized that he has used the same hairbrush daily since about 1975! I paid nearly ten bucks for the darn thing, Made in Germany, and the bristles are still as stiff as the day of purchase. Even more amazing is that the Oracle still has roughly the same amount of hair to daily pull the brush through!

It was about two weeks ago that the Oracle noticed that his wonderful Philishave was starting to miss some hair on the craggy places of my neck. It is a 3000 series rotary three head, that is going into at least it's second decade. Although money is no object the Oracle realized that the parts have probably been long discontinued. Then the "Thinking about Thinking" lessons kicked in. Let the Oracle of Ottawa share the solution with you Dear Reader...

It is common knowledge that the steel in the Philishave rotary heads is the best. The damn things last forever. Top quality. It would be a shame to throw it out, it just needs a strop! If I could just get some fine scouring agent into the heads for a minute the Oracle was sure that the problem would be solved. Then the Oracle spotted the tube of Crest toothpaste on the counter! That is all there is to it Dear Reader. Take a small blob of toothpaste and place it in the center of the three rotors. Then with your finger rub it directly into the separate rotary heads, as it is running. (No awkward dis-assembly required...)  Then wet your finger and gradually apply water until the toothpaste foams up. Rinse the heads and then dry.

And it works like a charm! Why the Oracle of Ottawa totally shocked himself. It is all just critical thinking and logic applied left to right, and sometimes right to left. Results will vary, but the Oracle of Ottawa is very pleased that he will be keeping his Philishave for at least another couple of decades...   

Solving Fusion - Excuse Me But...

For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error is an error.
Nasim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed Of Procrustes, p.72

The Oracle of Ottawa has been hearing that fusion is just around the corner since he was a teenager in the 1970's. And like the end of the world, and that Canada is going to run out of natural gas next year, the Oracle of Ottawa is still waiting. The only difference between then and now is that now the Oracle of Ottawa's bags are packed.

Tokamak - We just need a simpler tube?

 You wonder is what going on the world of big egg headed science. The Oracle of Ottawa has commented on this subject at least once before in this humble blog. Deep into the darkest night the Oracle thinks things. And when  it comes to fusion the Oracle wonders why mere mortals keep thinking that they can create a star process on earth. And then he thinks some more, and wonders why would you even want to do that?

Most mortals alive today at the time of this writing cannot even begin to visualize the sheer massive magnitude of the space, materials and utter sheer physical forces required for a star to kick into the fusion process. How much larger is our sun compared to the mass and volume of the earth? Well the suns diameter is 109 times greater then the earth, and it weighs 330,000 times more than the earth. And it has a surface temperature, that is on all the time, of about 5,500 degrees C! And somehow we are going to copy this awesome force on puny little earth. Give the Oracle of Ottawa a break.    

 And as the Oracle of Ottawa was watching another utterly futile piece of fusion propaganda on You Tube, he came to a rather startling realization. A Tokamak is nothing but a great big vacuum tube. How about the irony of that? Over half of the people living today have never even seen a vacuum tube, let alone know what it is. But the Oracle of Ottawa remembers them very well indeed. They were in everything once. And the really old fashioned tubes were honking large and ran very, very hot. Come to think of it, the whole point of this fusion thing is to boil water at around 100 degrees C. Why in hell do we need a process with a minimum temperature of 5,500 degrees? D'ohhh.....

Thomas Hobbes - A Mortal Flaw Discovered

I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to his Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authourise all his Actions in like manner. This done, the Multitude so united in one person, is called a COMMON - WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverntly) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XVII, p. 120 

It was just this Sunday morning past Dear Reader when the Oracle of Ottawa read the above passage from Thomas Hobbe's Leviathan, published in 1651, which is to this day considered to be the foundational work that describes the origin and construction of our contemporary societal institutions. Immediately the Oracle felt uncomfortable, that something was wrong, so wrong, in this key passage. He reread the passage again very slowly, and then it dawned on him in a flash!

Leviathan - Mortally flawed??

 Like a nuclear explosion going off in the Oracle of Ottawa's head he realized the serious fatal error within this key passage. It appears that the awesome passage of Hobbes which is the basis for most all societies of the world is most flawed since it breaks two of the Ten Commandments! Not not just any two of the ten but rather the first and second commandments! This is so critical as Hobbes uses scripture as an allegory and a metaphor to build the description of the body of the Leviathan!

 For all of the Oracles Dear Readers that need a little refresher, the first commandment states: I am the Lord thy God. The second commandment is: Thou shalt have no other Gods before me. The above passage, one of the key passages of Leviathan breaks the first commandment in spirit and it breaks the second commandment to the point of outright blasphemy! Now all the really sharp Readers out in the world, especially those in Germany, know that when an error is planted deep into a foundational construction or a set of measurements, the error will propagate slowly (i.e. in a linear fashion) at first and then it will propagate much later in a non-linear fashion.   

Once you come to terms with the monumental discovery you can rapidly understand the cause of all wars, calamities and other atrocities of history various. (Since two buried opposing powers cannot grind against themselves forever.)  All of a sudden Adam Smith and especially Karl Marx are all starting to come in ever so much more clearly. Buried deep within the constructs of our present societies, which all originate from Leviathan, there is buried an ever repeating time bomb, due to a misconstruction of logic that periodically goes off over the course of history. The humble blue collar Oracle of Ottawa has done his life's duty in discovering it and pointing it to you... Now work it! 

Another OLG Paradox Of Probability

In stochastic processes the future is not uniquely determined, but we have at least probability relations enabling us to make predictions.
William Feller, An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications, Third Edition, Vol. I, p. 420

The Oracle of Ottawa has the grand pleasure to be a resident of Ottawa, Ontario. And in the Province of Ontario we have a wonderful organization known as the Ontario Lottery And Gaming Corporation.  The OLG is a house of many games. One of the most interesting is a sports game known as Pools. It is just like an office sports pool that you play at work, but Pools is an office pool that has as its "subspace" the whole population of Ontario! (population, 13,505,900)

Lesson? - Probability is Spooky...

  As you can well imagine, things can get pretty exciting well into the NFL football season, where by one of the most popular bets in Ontario is the weekly series of NFL games. There can be up to 16 games, from Thursday night to Monday night. For five dollars you can take your best shot, straight up, and come Tuesday, the winner(s) are announced. If you can pick 14-16 NFL games, straight up, you could turn $5.00 into several hundred thousand dollars! And it being Canada, this will all be sweet and tax free.

HP-11C - Good tools are very important...

If the Oracle of Ottawa's old brain is working correctly, The weekly NFL Pool was the first and only Pool in the Province of Ontario. Then of course came the weekend NHL hockey Pool, then the MLB baseball Pool. With a hold back of any where from 40% - 60% the good old OLG ran with a really good thing until at the time of this writing, there are pools offered every day.  Which is proper and fitting, fair and wide open.

Most of the time, the results are to be totally expected. Such as the days when 14 baseball games are on the list, and the results are that only 2- 4 people were able to pick 12 of the 14 offered games. For this awesome feat, the reward can be several thousand dollars! This, for those that know of such things, fits the normal curve about just right. And tomorrow there will another list. Now remember, this is a pool, you do not have to get all the games right, you only have to be the punter or punters that gets the most games right, result, you get all the money, Sweet!  

William Feller - Awesome beyond words...

For example, early last week, there was a card offered of a mere 10 night MLB games. If you have tried it Dear Reader, you know that handicapping MLB baseball is all but impossible. But on this day one punter in Ontario got all 10 games, and in turn took all the pool money, which was north of $20,000 bucks Canadian, great work, if you can snag it!

On Thursday last was offered Card #99, it consisted of all the pre-season NFL games from August 15, 2013 to August 17, 2013 a small list of only 14 pre-season NFL games. If you think that major league baseball is hard to cap, you also know that regular season NFL games is an awesome feat of capping prowess. But who in heavens name would be crazy enough to even try to cap 14 pre-season NFL games? Surely a total impossibility?


Then the little fridge light came on in the Oracles brain, give it a random guess, by a very possible stroke of luck, the Oracle could possibly pick say 12 out of 14 games and share the prize with say at least six other randomizers. Well it was this fine Sunday morning when the Oracle checked his ticket and discovered that he only could guess 7 out of 14. Pure text book expectation. But the Oracle of Ottawa was shocked to discover that 66 punters in Ontario were able to predict 14 out of 14 pre-season NFL games!! The odds of performing such a feat of picking 14 of 14 games are 1: 16,384! That means that about 1,081,344 tickets at five bucks each would have to be sold, more or less. For a gross pot of $5,406,720 +/-. before withholding percentage of the house take, assuming 40%, would leave a prize pool about 3,244,032, which would have meant 66 prizes of $49,152! The actual prize that was awarded to these awesome subset of punters was a mere $555.30 each!! Hmmm...

This of course means, and makes very much sense, that only a very very small subset of the population of the Province of Ontario actually played. But excuse me! Sixty six people of this small subset were able to pick all 14 of 14 winners!???  While the greatest capper in America alive today Kenneth Massey, could only manage a paltry prediction of 10 out of 14!? If one was really cynical one would blurt out that the only way this could possibly happen is if you were somehow able to buy your tickets after all the games were actually played! But the Oracle of Ottawa wouldn't think of doing a nasty thing like that....

Ditching Java - All Java Software

When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.
James Gleick, The Information, p. 410

It all came to a head earlier this week. The Firefox browser was loading slower than a sloth crossing a freeway. But the real indication that something was very wrong was when the You-Tube videos would not not start playing right away. Or even worse, would suddenly stop at random for no good reason at all. Some thing was surely amiss. Ironically, the Oracle of Ottawa had been recently warned that all Java products were being strongly suspected of being "compromised", and that it would probably be a good idea to disable and rip everything out that had the name Java attached to it.

Bye - bye Duke!

Sure enough this proved to be excellent advice. It was discovered by the Oracle of Ottawa, using the jim dandy Process Explorer tool, what was exactly going on in my box while I was trying to get a You Tube video to go off at command. Every time the start button was pressed on the video player, a little war of processes started, culminating with the Microsoft Security Essentials going nuts trying to suppress something that started after the Java quick launcher was observed firing up repeatedly! 

Well that was all the evidence that the Oracle of Ottawa required. First all the Java add-ons of the Firefox browser (Version 21.0) were disabled. (Tools - Add - Ons)  Then the Oracle of Ottawa removed the latest version of Java that from habit he always kept up to date. Now it will take 24 - 48 hours for the system to completely settle after you do all this, but you will notice an improvement right away. Also if you know how, strip out all the now dead registry entries with the proper scan.

What ever the hell happened to cause this once great piece of software turn into a product that even Homeland Security will not allow on its browsers anywhere? A little digging will inform you quickly that Oracle Corporation is not the employee friendly place that it once was. There seems to be a lot of firing of Americans and no doubt Canadians, that are being replaced by hordes of temporary foreign workers from China! You can't make this stuff up. Ever since this trend has been taking hold, it seems that the platform became some one else's platform, if you follow the Oracles drift.

Every thing works awesome well now. My browser opens over 60% percent faster, and the You Tube is being enjoyed as before, before this spy platform of malware so rudely intruded upon the Oracles domain. Don't be shy, just rip it all out....   

Chris Hadfield? - Spare Me!

What can be shown cannot be said.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.1212

Space is just another busted flush. It all dawned on the Oracle of Ottawa today in a flash as he was driving about Ottawa on his Thursday routine. It was one of those truly ugly life realizations that just come onto you in their full ugly truth. Like when you finally realize that the wife is running around on you, or even worse, all the things you have believed in all your life are at last discovered to be nothing but a lie.

Chris Hadfield - Spare Me!!

The news on the CBC radio was stating that the voyage of Canada's mustached Pete was finally and mercifully coming to an end. Chris Hadfield seemed to have done everything in space. One more maudlin saccharine TV display and the Oracle of Ottawa was going to have to start storing air sick bags in the media viewing area of his secure bunker.  The whole thing seems to amount to we put a air type twit into space and all he could do was tweet.

Werner Von Braun with "friends" 1941

 The really sickening parts were the meet and greet with all the little brats in schools various across Canada attended usually by the creepy Prime Minister of the 'Harper Government'. Most of the little shits won't advance past their game boys. And a about a third of them, all the "new Canadians" can hardly wait until they are old enough to blow something like Chris Hadfield up and back to you know who. Allah carte if you catch the Oracles drift.

The other most sickening part of all this marketing crap was Chris Hadfield himself. There is just something about the man that creeps the Oracle of Ottawa right out. He just can't put his finger on it, but someday in some newspaper it will all be there on page six, bottom. Wait for it. The Canada Space Agency has a yearly budget of 488.7 million dollars. And all we can get is tweets.

The Oracle of Ottawa is old enough to be able to boast that he has watched all the history of modern space on the old vulgar media. Starting way back with the Mercury and Gemini programs. Also the Oracle of Ottawa also vividly remembers that July summer night in 1969 and the one giant step for mankind. That was a great time to be a young Canadian! We were building a Just Society then, now at the end of the space age we are ironically dismantling that same society. How weird is that?

Decades later when the Oracle of Ottawa finally started to think for himself, he went back into the history of mans climb into space. The reality of it all is not a very pretty story at all. All the great minds of the technology that kept the likes of Chris Hadfield in space was developed by a very special crew of lads from Nazi Germany. They were brought to the United States of America under an OSS operation that was called Operation Paperclip. It was a typical American Imperialist operation that was based on the offer of "take it or else we will prosecute you as a war criminal".  There were many notable names, including Werner Von Braun and the true father of the jet engine Hans von Ohain. There was another gentleman that worked on the development of the space suit that Chris Hadfield wears into space today. The data to design it came from volunteers of Nazi concentration camps that suffered horribly in crude but most effective data gathering. I will leave this name as an exercise for the reader. The CIA just about got away with it, but there was just one too many loose ends and proof that they couldn't bury.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, here in Canada today, as Chris Hadfield tweets, mothers of developmentally challenged children are abandoning there own sons and daughters at government offices and hospital emergency rooms. Can you imagine? In Canada!? We can't afford to support that stuff anymore, funding has been cut, you are welcome to find a free market solution for children that not even the "invisible hand" would touch. And Chris Hadfield sends another tweet...     

The Surface Area - Volume Paradox

Even simple surfaces can display surprisingly counterintuitive properties.
Eric W. Weisstein, CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics, (1st edition), p. 1763

It was while conducting research on the job of the "thinking about thinking" project that carried the Oracle of Ottawa to You Tube to observe a large number of videos on HHO production. As mentioned in earlier posts the Oracle marveled at the utter imagination and craft of the various home experimenters and builders, in their search of the most efficient machine to produce hydrogen and oxygen gas.

Gabriel's Horn - Finite volume - Infinite surface area...

Of all the time the Oracle spent in schools various, the one chemistry demonstration that I clearly remember is the one in grade 7 or 8 when the science teacher actually took the trouble to demonstrate the electrical decomposition of water. Using two test tubes and a dry cell lantern battery the teacher soon had a nice pile of hydrogen and oxygen gas in their respective tubes. After demonstrating to us visually that the chemistry text was indeed correct, in that, there was indeed twice as much hydrogen as oxygen we were asked to possibly put forward an explanation. The Oracle of Ottawa proposed simply that the oxygen atoms had much better union representation than the hydrogen atoms! Which earned a hearty laugh from the class.

The teacher than explained to use the correct answer; for every unit of water there must be two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom, because our Maker had engineered it that way. (of course this was a Catholic school....) Then he asked what would happen if the two gases were combined in the presence of a spark or open flame? Of course the Oracle of Ottawa at that time had no idea. So the teacher got two volunteers from the class. One had the hydrogen and another the oxygen test tube. A smoldering wick was lit. The tubes were turned slowly over and the hydrogen and oxygen escaped perfectly in unison to the open spark. KA - BOOM !! There was a white flame with a cherry pink edge and the cloud of mist was perfectly white! I can remember it all like yesterday. There is a shit load of energy, in hiding, in water.

 Now ponder this Dear Reader; You have a plate that measures 10 units by 10 units with a thickness of say 2 units. Calculate the volume, now calculate the exposed surface area in square units. Now cut the plate in half. Calculate the volume and the exposed surface area. Continue. In the words of William Shatner; how weird is that? The total surface area continues to increase, yet the total volume remains the same!

Now ponder this. You take a 1 cm.stainless steel rod, 10 cm. long to use as an electrode in your HHO machine or water decomposition experiment. Weigh the electrode, and then calculate the surface area. Now run you device and time how long it takes to generate say 10 ml. of hydrogen gas. Now substitute a stainless steel scouring pad for your honking stainless steel rod. Which electrode will generate more gas? What is the surface area of the scouring pad? What is the weight of the scouring pad compared to the honking rod?

Could it be Dear Reader that it is not about honking massy plates or about the amount of current, but rather the whole thing depends on exposed surface area? Feel free to let the Oracle of Ottawa know how that all works out for you.... Then ponder porous iron granules... 

The Contemporary Energy Paradox

A cipher has two meanings.
Blaise Pascal, Pensees, No. 520

Ever since the Oracle of Ottawa was a teenager in the 1970's, Canada has been running out of gas. Back then it was less than ten years of natural gas left. All of us Eastern Bastards were going to be left to freeze in the dark. At the time that was not very good news, especially if you were driving an Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale, with that small 455cubic inch Rocket motor. For all my European readers that would come out to around seven and a half litres.

Steam Locomotive - Efficiency about 6% (+ / -)

 Nothing has seemed to change today. We have reached peak oil production, but yet, the price of gasoline is about half of the cost of a litre of bottled water. And the natural gas in Canada? It seems there was a bit of an error made in the 1970's, and at present we have a glut of natural gas. It seems that there is ooddles of natural gas in just about all the rocks in Canada. And trust the Oracle of Ottawa on this one, we have more rocks in Canada than you can shake a stick at. It seems that all you have to do is drill deep enough and frack it hard enough and you will get gas bubbling up for decades out of just one boring well. Yes indeed, we are just starving for energy.

From all the hype and marketing of the corporate whores and their owned governments, it seems that we have been deposited by a just, fair and ever loving God into an energy scarce environment. This all has to do of course as punishment for our original sin, The Oracle of Ottawa can't tell you what that all entailed, the Oracle just wasn't around at that time. But we are destined to suffer through it, the Lord has willed it.

Our Creator has deposited human kind on a planet that is composed of over 70% water. Now of course water simply consists of Hydrogen and Oxygen in a pat 2:1 ratio. Have you ever seen hydrogen gas combined and ignited in the presence of oxygen gas? KA - BOOM!! No energy in that at all it seems according to the oil companies. Although NASA has seemed to see the whole matter differently when they are building ballistic missiles and hard on power trips into space. Twists on oxygen and hydrogen just seem to work fine for them....

Gas Turbine - Combined Cycle Efficiency >60%

On top of being dropped on a planet full of useless water, we also have the utter misfortune to be able to breathe the atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen. Now if you look into it dear reader, you will find that most every thing that goes KA - BOOM has nitrogen in it. But according to my lads at the garage, no energy there. Then there is all that sunshine that falls on most of the Earth every day without fail. Did you know dear reader that of all the sunshine that falls on the lower forty eight United States, not even the American people in all their energy guzzling wet dreams could even put a dent in it if they were able to convert all of it to a usable form. Stupid planet, no energy around at all it seems.

Due to fault by Noah or some other highly placed supporter of the Mosaic Law, the Earth did not come with climate control, it was an option, but somebody typed in the wrong code, you know, same shit, different millennia. The result was that we have these wild temperature differences in most oceans in the world, and all around the world. The potential is so big the Oracle of Ottawa has never even seen a world estimate, you should check out OTEC sometime when you have a chance.

Well, it really seems that if you are doing the capitalist square dance, you don't really get very far in it by asking to many, or rather, any questions. You accept what your so called "betters" tell you, keep your nose close to the never ending demands of the grind stone and be prepared to pay more. We are in an energy scarce environment...     

Kathleen 'Hurricane' Wynne Shames The 'Harper Government'

Force, not opinion, is queen of the world.
Blaise Pascal, Pensees, No. 421

Could it be? Could it really be true? Could the Province of Ontario actually have their own 'Hurricane Hazel' in Kathleen Wynne? The Oracle of Ottawa was hoping for the best, and so far the Oracle has been mightily impressed. Politically, Kathleen Wynne, is as slippery as a Calgary wildcatter soaked under his own gusher.

Kathleen 'Hurricane' Wynne

There have been a lot of days since the commencement of the 'Harper Government' train wreck, that the Oracle of Ottawa was so depressed with the direction that Canada was being taken that he simply couldn't write this blog or do much of anything else. But as the Oracle of Ottawa  has related recently, the 'Harper Government' has reached and passed the critical 'puke point' with the Canadian public. That is the point where all the standard hateful right wing shit would start to back up. The point where the 'Harper Government' would rudely discover, that after all, many Canadians do care.

For the 'Harper Government' it is all downhill from here on in. Just like that other wack ball conservative from back in the 1950's. Conservatives chasing political power is like a dog chasing a hub cap. The only way to break them of their insane habit is to stop the car. The dog is then infinitely confused. Just like the Conservatives in power. But the Oracle of Ottawa digresses...

The awesome good news of the day was heard on the CBC radio in the car this afternoon. It seems that the critical and world famous Experimental Lakes Area research station is going to be saved after all. It was slated for closure by the idiots of the 'Harper Government' to save a paltry two million dollars! The international condemnation has and will reduce the Canadian GNP by a more than a couple of beeps. Which if we had a finance minister that could understand it, is going to cost way more than two million dollars.

It seems that the Ontario Premier has rounded up some friends of the same mind, and has pulled the rug out from under the 'Harper Government'. The 'Harper Government' never suspected that any one would step up  for a stupid science lab way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. You could see the shock of Tony 'Two Tier' Clement in the media scrums. But the word on the Hill is that he is quiet glad it is all over, now his evenings are free again to catch up on the complete Flintstones cartoons that he recently acquired in DVD. For poor Tony, the Flintstones are the kind of scientific documentaries that he can really get his head around!

Of course, just as Kathleen Wynne was making the announcement, Tim 'Chain Gang' Hudak was on the media with how terrible an idea it is, to embarrass the 'Harper Government'. And really, where is Ontario going to get all of a crummy two million dollars!? It is great that poor Tim has a job now. He seems to make Kathleen Wynne look good at every turn, unfortunately for him though, the process seems to be totally one of the the reversible kind! But he will of course survive, conservatives love looking like idiots...

Of course there is a rumor going around Ottawa how the Ontario Premier is going to raise this chump change and a mountain more. It goes like this: So, you want to become a Private, Public Partner of the Ontario people,.....      

Some Thoughts On Laminar Flow

There is nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, p. 87

Laminar flow is one of the physical phenomena, with the most striking demonstrations, that we seem to know the least about. The Oracle of Ottawa has started coming across it over and over lately, while carrying on the "thinking about thinking" project. One of the most powerful demonstrations of it can usually be observed in water fountains that are in public buildings such as shopping malls and airports. There is one in Ottawa, at the Orleans shopping mall, where a laminar flow column of water goes nearly a hundred feet high in a perfect tube of water. Once you see it, you never forget it. Especially when it is surrounded by columns of water in turbulent flow.

Laminar flow(a) - Turbulent flow(b)

How this trick is achieved with water is strikingly easy. They insert a tube of tubes in the pipe of the laminar flow column. The Oracle of Ottawa finds it cosmically ironic that making the water (fluid) flow through what you would think be a constrictive construct would actually make the water flow super smooth, go figure, God does not only play dice, He / She has a morbid sense of humor to top it all off.

Even more weird is that if you look up laminar flow in a university physics text, even the extended version, laminar flow gets all of less than two of the texts one thousand plus pages! Laminar flow occurs in all liquids and in any fluid mechanics text, air is considered a fluid. The Oracle of Ottawa checked in some of the texts that he has on heat engines, and even in the newer texts, the authors admit that not much is known about laminar flow inside a heat engine of any type! The Oracle of Ottawa cannot help but think that there is a huge field of research here. And huge opportunities for major improvements in performance and efficiency with little up front cost. The Oracle of Ottawa may discuss a few these ideas in later posts...

All this weirdness was opened up by two Englishman of the nineteenth century; George Stokes and Osborne Reynolds. Now this Reynolds guy put all the magic of laminar flow in an equation that gives up the value of the Reynolds number. He also wrote a very weird book called The Sub-Mechanics of the Universe. And that is one read that the Oracle of Ottawa will have a look at in PDF format. He had some very out there ideas that would probably be very useful in the "thinking about thinking" project. The Oracle of Ottawa also finds it ironic that Reynolds life overlapped that of Karl Marx... Hmmm. There will be more on this insanely esoteric subject in the near future...

Look Ma! - A Gas Turbine!

Thinking itself is not a natural process like eating, but an acquired skill like playing the piano: how well one will think will depend primarily on how much of it one has already done.
Northrop Frye, On Education, p. 27

The Oracle of Ottawa's "thinking about thinking" project still continues anon. At this point there are no doubt many dear readers who are wondering how it is all going. And the Oracle of Ottawa has thought the time right to give a very forceful demonstration of the "method" in action, with proof in actual footage. Proof how powerful logical left to right critical thinking can be, just a simple algorithm to a complex goal. This demonstration shows how all types of people can work at a set goal without having ever met. And the incredible unexpected results this simple process can yield.

Challenge - Make one of these at home...

The gas turbine evolved out of the development of the jet engine which was invented by Hans von Ohain and Frank Whittle, of course the German guy got to all the milestones first, contrary to what all of us were taught in school here in North America. As is usual the German guy got the patent and the first jet powered airplane into the air and the Englishman got all the glory. Frank Whittle ended up in the United States at the US Naval Academy as a prof, while Hans von Ohain was brought to America like a captured skilled slave under Operation Paperclip. How do you like the history of your (our) country so far?

Any way, a jet turbine is a simple and yet a rather complex device that essentially compresses, ignites and exhausts a flow of air for the purpose of generating thrust. Although invented by individuals, they were developed by the near unlimited resources of nation states. But while the Oracle of Ottawa was watching engine porn on You-Tube there seems to be a standing challenge to build the simplest gas turbine possible. Otherwise known as the pop can turbine. You would think that was all pretty foolish, but when you start to check it out, you will soon be blown away by the utter craft and cleverness of the home garage-ist tinkerer. The Oracle of Ottawa simply finds it all staggering in its implications and to what is really possible in our near futures. If these guys are doing this in their garage...

The first video that really impressed the Oracle of Ottawa doesn't reach full operation, or compression, whereby it would run on its own power, but it is very impressive in that it truly is made out of tin cans! Damn! The experimenter got it just to the edge, you can see that he got way over 10,000 rpm(!), and a fine focus of the fireball, it is just on the verge of shifting to the high whine of a real engine coming to life. The Oracle has watched this quite a few times and every time he simply astounded....

And you don't have to search very hard for the guy that actually pulled it off! The second video is again simply astounding. Not only did this agent get the engine to run fully, but he has it all instrumented! And the Oracle of Ottawa can only wonder what his neighbors thought of the guy next door running a rotating engine at a mere 67,000 r.p.m.!! in the driveway! But that is the power of the "thinking about thinking" method, and it just blows the Oracle of Ottawa totally away.

Now the Oracle of Ottawa did "shop" way back in high school, and he was awesome at the drafting and machine shop, but the idea that someone could fabricate a working gas turbine or even a very near working one was just thought to be totally impossible. But with You-Tube and one person showing everybody else how he or she did it, and the next guy that makes a brilliant and elegant breakthrough, the Oracle of Ottawa never gets tired of that. The power of "thinking about thinking"... 

Engine Porn! - Another Internet Epidemic

When internal combustion engines were ultimately produced, the technology was based heavily on that of steam engines.
Richard Stone, Introduction to Internal Combustion Engines, Second Edition, p. 8

Suck, squeeze, bang and blow! Just reciting the mnemonic of the actions of the four stroke internal combustion engine makes the Oracle of Ottawa all tingly. And you bet, it is all for my own selfish gratification, all mine, to wallow in and enjoy for hours at a time. And of course, as in all pursuits of force and power, and the strokes that go with them, the Oracle of Ottawa has his fetish's. The Oracle of Ottawa loves the immense and full bulk of large prime movers, because torque is your friend. And the Oracle of Ottawa truly loves maturity and long lived elegance. There was never a clip of vintage steam and early internal combustion engines that the Oracle did not like.Of course the Oracle also really has a thing for the legacy creators of Germany and the rest of Europe. And the Oracle will readily admit that he swings both ways with respects to spark ignition (SI) and / or compression ignition (CI). Hey? We are all adults here aren't we?

Lenoir Engine - Lets try this....

 Just what is it about a lump of cast metal with cylinders that have pistons injected into them that makes so many men go nuts? What is it about the sound of a large Electro Motive Diesel starting right up on a cold morning that keeps you coming back for more and  more? Could it be that that Karl Jung was totally right when he suggested that large machines and engines have anima? The Oracle of Ottawa can assure you dear reader that it is especially true of ships, especially warships. A happy ship will be happy no matter who is on it, and a shit ship will be hell no matter who you put on it. But I digress.

The Oracle really started getting into engine porn due to You-Tube. The bastards! I constantly enjoy myself in a very secret way and to add insult to injury, I actually learned a ton of useful facts and information! Why it is getting so advanced, that the Oracle of Ottawa has actually dug up some texts on his book crawls, pertaining to the history and the stories of various developments. And much to the surprise of the Oracle you always read in any text on engines, whether it is modern or vintage, that at some point the author admits that what goes on in an engine of whatever kind is still not completely known! Imagine that?

As in all great inventions, that eventually change the world, science and its methods hardly had anything to do with it. This was brought home to the Oracle just last night when he re-watched The Secret Life of Machines - The Internal Combustion Engine, when Tim Hunkin  related the story of how Etienne Lenoir invented the first internal combustion engine by ripping out the steam feed pipe to a steam engine and replacing it with a tube from the gas lamp! There is no indication that he was holding an advanced text on fluid flow and thermodynamics at the time! So there! Just like Edison and the light bulb. Have idea, try idea, no matter how crazy science might say it is. That is how shit really gets done.

Now this method certainly didn't stop with the 19th century pioneers. A fascinating example occurs again in the 1980's when Keith Duckworth of  Cosworth Engineering when he and the lads developed the V6 and V8 turbo from scratch! Just enter the name(s) at You -Tube and you will find the documentary which the Oracle of Ottawa found utterly absorbing. Then after that you might want to check out the excellent videos from Nelsons Racing Engines, but, be warned, that shit is super hard core! They manufacture street engines that dyno out at over 1000 horse power!  

Seeing the rich expanses of the past, what ever does the future hold? The Oracle of Ottawa strongly suspects that we missed something really obvious. And it is going to be some "garage-ist" watching You-Tube videos and puttering in his basement workshop that is going to blow the doors of the 21st century wide freakin' open... 

New High Density Power Source - Wait For It...

The future often seems improbable until it happens.
William Greider, One World, Ready Or Not, p.91

One of the most important requirements for Western Civilization is a source of cheap power. The biggest problem today is that we have maxed out all the available old sources. We really need a new super source of cheap, clean, unlimited electrical power. In another moment of dangerous reflection the Oracle of Ottawa was pondering that time long ago when he first attempted to become a digital man. Yes, with my first notebook and a dial-up internet connection, the Oracle of Ottawa explored the brave new world that lay before him. One of the fun things that the Oracle of Ottawa used to love to do for a hearty laugh was go to You-Tube and watch the free energy videos. It was insane and just pathetic. At this time the Oracle of Ottawa was a very cynical young man, who knew that there was and never will be such a thing or break through...

Thomas Edison - Method! What Method?

 In this same recent moment of dangerous self reflection, the Oracle of Ottawa had a realization that several of the most important developments that we enjoy today were not discovered by the correct use of the scientific method and an extensive knowledge of the theory that was actually at work. They were discovered by accident! There are now even books that catalog these serendipity discoveries! And it is not as thin a book as you would think! Two of these greatest inventions (accidents?) are Viagra and the light bulb! 

The Oracle of Ottawa has always found the story of the light bulb the most interesting. The first practical light bulb was "invented" by Thomas Edison. The company that he founded still exists today, it is called General Electric! Now Thomas Edison had all of three months of formal education! Why even Jethro Bodine got to the dizzy heights of the sixth grade! Thomas Edison never even heard of the scientific method, let alone used it. Thomas Edison was the proponent of the simple brute force method of discovery. My favorite story is that while working on the light bulb he got stumped by what kind of wire or filament, that thing that glows inside the bulb, to use.  He simply made up a very long list of all the available candidates and tried every one of them and there combinations until he found the one that worked! The tungsten filament. The rest is just history now... You can still see that actual list that he used and made up. I think it is in the Smithsonian or the Edison Museum. 

The nut of the matter is that science doesn't always work the best in all situations. The Oracle of Ottawa now realizes that in certain kinds of problems that the You-Tube development lab method of seeing what the other guy is doing and then adding to it or taking some part of it away is very powerful indeed. Why the Oracle of Ottawa predicts that the next big energy breakthrough will happen and be developed by some guy, some where on Earth in a garage or a bedroom will be the next to launch tomorrows power technology. Now the Oracle of Ottawa knows that there are certain laws of physics that cannot be broken, but thinking about all the great inventions of the past, the idea is how to bend these laws, to get to the required goal.... 

Zero unity power, free power, unlimited power. That is all crazy talk, isn't it?

Ottawa "Sinkhole" - The Real Story...

There is a point at which a transformation has to take place.
Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, p. 640

Well it was another day that the Oracle of Ottawa was gratefully thanking his Maker that he was retired! There will be no two and a half hour commute for the Oracle of Ottawa, for endless weeks on end. Hasn't amalgamation been wonderful? Why look at the money you are saving! How could something like this even happen? Well, we will get into that...

Mohr's Circle - Too much information?

First of all let us clear up one large detail. What actually happened when that car drove into that large hole in the middle of Highway 174 was not a sinkhole! What actually happened was a structural failure. Big difference. The Oracle of Ottawa has provided a reference so that you can make an intelligent decision. Old school civil engineers would also remind you that a structural failure is also known as a "whole lot of law suites"!! But not to worry, the City of Ottawa doesn't have any of those pesky old school engineers left. They have all since been dismissed since amalgamation. Although they were always right, no one "liked them".

And who was that pathetic "pepsi" that was calling himself director of infrastructure? Was Jean-Guy a real engineer? I mean one that is presently in good standing with the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario? Did his story sound true to you dear tax payer? No? Sure sounded thin and made up off the cuff at the last moment to the Oracle of Ottawa.  Why don't you, dear taxpayer, call 311 and find out for yourself? Maybe the Mayors office could tell you all the required information...or not. And what about that pathetic Counsellor Bob "Low Rent" Monette? I am sure at the next municipal election those murderous feelings of frustration that you experienced today will come back very clearly...vote accordingly.

Well in the days of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa - Carleton something like this would have never happened. Back in the olden days before amalgamation the lads from RMOC actually checked over all and  every one of these structures more than once a year! Do you think that is being done today? Are you sure? Why don't you call 311 and ask... And especially this huge storm drain culvert that opened up on Highway 174... You could actually walk upright in this mother! You know it is huge when the car has actually, at the time of this writing, not yet been found! That is one Mother of a culvert!! Do ya think??

The top of the culvert was 2.5 metres under the roadway. If you look at the video below you will see that there is no bedding at all. They just literally  paved over the dirt in 1975. But back in 1975 Orleans was all but and still a rural community. The Ottawa Citizen has all the details, just Google it and read carefully, all very interesting. Now in 2012, it is a major part of Ottawa. The traffic on this roadway has increased exponentially since 1975, and you don't need the Oracle of Ottawa to describe the heavy truck traffic do you?  Didn't think so...

For all of you stakeholders, that actually have the required professional qualifications for your job, you know what a Mohr Circle is. And you of course will have no problem visualizing all those heavy truck tires as a bunch of rolling Mohr Circles... transmitting very high jolts of load that just hammered the top of  that, all but unprotected, culvert. Along with all those years of steady but sure salt seepage, the sucker finally packed in and failed. When you think about it, it is amazing it lasted this long... What!? Too much information?

If you thought today was bad dear stakeholder, you ain't seen nothing yet! You will be living in your crawling car for many weeks to come. And since you are nothing but a part of the New World Orders obedient and frightened workforce you will bitch but you won't dare make a peep that anyone else will hear, will you? You wouldn't dare start and or join a class action law suite would you? Didn't think so. God's Speed skid....         

This will be awesome for tourism, wont it? Look at all the money the City saved....

Failure Means You Are Just About There!

It is most important in creative science not to give up. If you are an optimist you will be willing to "try" more than if you are a pessimist.
Stanislaw Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, p.55

The month of March was very busy for the Oracle of Ottawa. The "Thinking About Thinking" project hit a rich vein.Yes indeed. I deployed elementary critical thought into a very elegant thought experiment, and then I postulated a very elegant hypothesis leading to a very simple lab experiment. The results were a total failure. 

Lorentz Transformation...

Many years ago when this happened to the Oracle of Ottawa he simply chalked it up to experience and moved on. This past algorithm has been wrong for all these years. This is what they teach in our schools and our universities. But, the Oracle of Ottawa had the recent self gained knowledge of the results of his intense "Thinking About Thinking" project to fall back on, this time. Instead of abandoning the idea totally, I turned the whole proposition on its head. Failure was turned into a very important, totally counterintuitive, discovery of the nature which is somewhat proprietary. The Oracle of Ottawa is still somewhat shaken at the nature of his discovery.

Quiet a lot of inspiration came from Stanislaw Ulam, and his book Adventures of a Mathematician. If you are involved or soon to embark on the creative sciences, I highly recommend it. You will find it endlessly inspirational. 

 It is the optimists that get all the glory. Even though they are not always the "smartest" or the most "gifted" people. On any given day the prize will go to the person, that will try one more time....