Made Right Here

Another link from VftP, "Made Right Here". Hmm, he's got the right idea....

Top 100 SF/Fantasy Titles?

Found on VftP, a list of the top 100 SF/fantasy books, apparently from an NPR poll. Ought to be able to glean some new items for my reading list....

Beam Deflection

Needing to reinforce the structure of my garage attic to support increased load, I'm trying to figure out what kind of member it needs to be and how big to support the relatively long span with minimal deflection. Since the span needs to be about 20 feet, I'm thinking it has to be a box beam, since that would allow for the use of shorter lumber in its construction.

Wikipedia has an entry for deflection so that this can be calculated, but I need to figure out the modulus of elasticity (E) and the area moment of inertia (I). I'd better do some more studying.

For regular joists, I found a calculator for maximum span as well.

The Secret History of Guns

Great article in The Atlantic on the history of firearms regulation in the United States.  Interesting how the 1968 Gun Control Act was fomented by the racist desire to prevent black people from possessing weapons as much as it was in reaction to the assassinations of MLK and JFK.

This bit is inspiring:

In February of 1967, Oakland police officers stopped a car carrying Newton, Seale, and several other Panthers with rifles and handguns. When one officer asked to see one of the guns, Newton refused. “I don’t have to give you anything but my identification, name, and address,” he insisted. This, too, he had learned in law school.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?” an officer responded.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?,” Newton replied indignantly. He told the officer that he and his friends had a legal right to have their firearms.

Newton got out of the car, still holding his rifle.

“What are you going to do with that gun?” asked one of the stunned policemen.

“What are you going to do with your gun?,” Newton replied.

By this time, the scene had drawn a crowd of onlookers. An officer told the bystanders to move on, but Newton shouted at them to stay. California law, he yelled, gave civilians a right to observe a police officer making an arrest, so long as they didn’t interfere. Newton played it up for the crowd. In a loud voice, he told the police officers, “If you try to shoot at me or if you try to take this gun, I’m going to shoot back at you, swine.” Although normally a black man with Newton’s attitude would quickly find himself handcuffed in the back of a police car, enough people had gathered on the street to discourage the officers from doing anything rash. Because they hadn’t committed any crime, the Panthers were allowed to go on their way.

The people who’d witnessed the scene were dumbstruck. Not even Bobby Seale could believe it. Right then, he said, he knew that Newton was the “baddest motherfucker in the world.” Newton’s message was clear: “The gun is where it’s at and about and in.” After the February incident, the Panthers began a regular practice of policing the police. Thanks to an army of new recruits inspired to join up when they heard about Newton’s bravado, groups of armed Panthers would drive around following police cars. When the police stopped a black person, the Panthers would stand off to the side and shout out legal advice.

However, Newton's entry in Wikipedia describes him as being a self-professed criminal. Still, I have a lot more respect for The Black Panthers now!

"An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage"

WSJ featured an article—by a black man, one Ralph Richard Banks—on the difficulties black women face in finding a spouse, and proposed that rather than looking within their race exclusively to consider marrying outside their race to broaden the base of eligible males in the near-term, but to ease the difficulties of finding in-race mates in the long-term.

From the article:

If many black women remain unmarried because they think they have too few options, some black men stay single because they think they have so many. The same numbers imbalance that makes life difficult for black women may be a source of power for black men. Why cash in, they reason, when it is so easy to continue to play?

...which perhaps describes the situation of a guy I know.

Others prefer black men because they don't think a relationship with a non-black man would work. They worry about rejection by a would-be spouse's family or the awkwardness of having to explain oneself to a non-black partner.

As one 31-year-old schoolteacher in D.C. told me, "It's easy to date a black man because he knows about my hair. He knows I don't wash it every day. He knows I'm going to put the scarf on [to keep it in place at night]." Discussions about hair may seem trivial, but for many black women, just the thought of having the "hair talk" makes them tired. It's emblematic of so much else they'd have to teach.

Interracial relationships aren't easy, since the downside is certain things you can't take for granted. But the plus side is that you can avoid the miscommunications that result from taking for granted things that weren't safe to assume.

By opening themselves to relationships with men of other races, black women would also lessen the power disparity that depresses the African-American marriage rate. As more black women expanded their options, black women as a group would have more leverage with black men. Even black women who remained unwilling to love across the color line would benefit from other black women's willingness to do so.

Interesting thesis, one that I as a "minority", if not a vested one, think valid.

Find Me a Dream

Perhaps it's just coincidence, but in the short story Find Me a Dream in Kurt Vonnegut's short story anthology Bagombo Snuff Box, one of the main characters is the widow of a famous trumpet player.  The implication was that he's a real figure, but is never named.

While browsing Betty Grable's entry on Wikipedia, I noticed that she was married to a trumpeter, and that the scant other details fit, that they had two daughters and that alcohol and infidelity plagued their marriage.  Of course Harry James lived, yet it's interesting to think that perhaps Vonnegut intended the widow character to be Betty Grable.

One of those weird things that results from reading Wikipedia late at night.