Wednesday, October 10
I suffered brain freeze halfway through the opening credits.
Pretty like all Kyoani output, void of content like almost all Kyoani output.
No amoebas.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
12:30 AM
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Sure, easy for you to laugh about brain-eating amoebas, safely down in Australia. We're under attack by them up here in America.
No, really:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=brain-eating+amoeba&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn
My favorite headline: 'Brain-eating amoeba' unlikely here, experts say.
And as if the assault of brain-eating amoebas wasn't depressing enough, this morning I hear from Insty that Dr. Bussard's passed away. Oh well, the Polywell fusion power project goes on. At least he got it re-funded and under way again (with Congressional backing, according to rumor) before he passed away.
Posted by: TallDave at Wednesday, October 10 2007 10:42 AM (r1Ip+)
Shame about Dr Bussard. I've read about his recentwork on fusion power. I don't think it will work; the scaling factors he quoted looked out of whack to me. But for the relatively small amount of money involved, worth pursuing.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, October 10 2007 11:02 AM (PiXy!)
I give Polywell a 1 in 3 chance. Of course, if it works the way Bussard claimed, it changes the world considerably, not least because the mass-thrust ratio makes interplanetary travel a reality almost overnight. Then there's the small matter of reducing energy costs by an order of magnitude. Seems too good to be true, doesn't it?
According to Bussard, the scaling B^4*R^3 with R^2 losses. It does seem extraordinary that the gain can increase at the 5th power of the radius. If you haven't read his Valencia paper, I highly recommend it.
http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/2006-9%20IAC%20Paper.pdf
It is important to emphasize that there is nothing significantly new to be gained by further tests at sub-scale sizes (i.e. less than that needed for net power). This is an inherent consequence of the way in which the fusion power output (Pf) and system gain (Qf. ratio of fusion power to drive power) scale with the machine size (R) and electron-confining magnetic field (B). Fusion power scales as the fourth power of the B field and the cube of the size, thus Pf = (k1)B
4R3, while the unavoidable electron injection drive power loss scales as the surface area of the machine, thus is proportional to R2. Assuming the use of super-conductors for the magnetic field drive coils, the electron losses are the only major system losses. Then, the ratio of these two power parameters is the gain (Qf), which is thus seen to scale as Qf = (k2) B 4R3/R2 = (k2) B4R. Because of this B4R3 scaling of fusion output, which makes fusion power scale as the 7th power of size, and the corollary 5th power scaling of system gain, it is obvious that little can be gained short of building the next system at full-scale.
We'll know more when the WB-7 is built and tested. That's happening now; I would imagine results are done in no more than a year, no less than a few months. Then, I am told, if those results pan out, they will attempt to build a 100MW full-scale device, for about $200M, and then we'll find out for sure about scaling.
Bussard also mentions the gain scaling in his video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606
Posted by: TallDave at Wednesday, October 10 2007 12:03 PM (r1Ip+)
I've seen some character art for Clannad, and I found it disturbing. The faces were off; the eyes were too large and placed too low and wide.
Almost all anime characters have unrealistically large eyes; it's part of the style. But Clannad and a few other series like it take that to extremes that I find a bit repulsive. (Kanon did, too.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, October 10 2007 02:17 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, October 11 2007 10:00 AM (PiXy!)
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