Cop Car's Beat

People are hard to hate close up. Move in. - Brené Brown

More from Slashdot.org - another tool for criminal defense?

Chimeric Mouse with Pups by Staff at NIMH's Transgenic Core Facility - http://intramural.nimh.nih.gov/tgc/photogallery.html, Public Domain, Link

 

When a DNA Test Says You're a Younger Man, Who Lives 5,000 Miles Away (nytimes.com) 56

Posted by msmash on Monday December 09, 2019 @02:30PM from the how-about-that dept.

After a bone marrow transplant, a man with leukemia found that his donor's DNA traveled to unexpected parts of his body. A crime lab is now studying the case. From a report: Three months after his bone marrow transplant, Chris Long of Reno, Nev., learned that the DNA in his blood had changed. It had all been replaced by the DNA of his donor, a German man he had exchanged just a handful of messages with. He'd been encouraged to test his blood by a colleague at the Sheriff's Office, where he worked. She had an inkling this might happen. It's the goal of the procedure, after all: Weak blood is replaced by healthy blood, and with it, the DNA it contains. But four years after his lifesaving procedure, it was not only Mr. Long's blood that was affected. Swabs of his lips and cheeks contained his DNA -- but also that of his donor.

Even more surprising to Mr. Long and other colleagues at the crime lab, all of the DNA in his semen belonged to his donor. "I thought that it was pretty incredible that I can disappear and someone else can appear," he said. Mr. Long had become a chimera, the technical term for the rare person with two sets of DNA. The word takes its name from a fire-breathing creature in Greek mythology composed of lion, goat and serpent parts. Doctors and forensic scientists have long known that certain medical procedures turn people into chimeras, but where exactly a donor's DNA shows up -- beyond blood -- has rarely been studied with criminal applications in mind.

 

Basic Rules for Aircraft Pilots

This is one of those mornings when I have no control over myself; thus, I'll post this listing that WichiDude emailed me in January 2005. One of us may well have posted it 'way back then. [I r-e-a-l-l-y need to finish reviewing the files on the backup CDs and get on with my life!]

• Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.
• You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal.
• The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world. It can just barely kill you.
• Blue water Navy truism: There are more planes in the ocean than there are submarines in the sky.
• If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- and, therefore, unsafe.
• When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.
• Without ammunition, NavAir and USAF would just be expensive flying clubs.
• I remember when sex was safe and flying was dangerous.
• If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.
• You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.
• Never fly in the same cockpit with someone braver than you.
• Just remember: If you crash because of weather, your funeral will be held on a sunny day.
• When a flight is proceeding incredibly well, something was forgotten.
• The three most common expressions (aka famous last words) in aviation are: "Why is it doing that?", "Where are we?", and "Uh oh."

Don't mess with an old woman

In readiness for recycling a bunch of old, backup CDs, I'm reviewing files on them. Included in those files are copies email correspondence from 2004-2005, during the months following my retirement from The Little Airplane Company. Those emails are to/from 10-20 of the people with whom I had worked.

I can't help sharing one of the sillier ones that I had received.

                                  

An old woman (OW) gets pulled over by a traffic officer for speeding...

OW: Is there a problem, Officer?

Officer: Ma'am, you were speeding.

OW: Oh, I see.

Officer: May I see your license, please?

OW: I'd give it to you but I don't have one.

Officer: You don't have one?

OW: No. I lost it four years ago - for drunk driving.

Officer: I see. May I see your vehicle registration papers, please?

OW: I'm sorry. I can't show them to you.

Officer: Why not?

OW: I stole this car - and I killed and hacked up the owner.

Officer: You what?!

OW: The body parts are in plastic bags in the trunk if you want to see them!

The traffic officer looks at the woman...slowly backs away to his car...calls for back up. Within minutes, five police cars circle the car. A senior officer (SO) slowly approaches the car, clasping his half-drawn gun.

SO: Ma'am, would you step out of your vehicle please?

The woman steps out of her vehicle.

OW: Is there a problem, Sir?

SO: The traffic officer tells me that you said you had stolen this car and murdered the owner.

OW: Me? Murdered the owner?

SO: Yes, Ma'am. Would you please open the trunk of your car?

The woman opens the trunk, revealing nothing but an empty trunk.

SO: Is this your car, Ma'am?

OW: It is.

Reaching into her car's glove compartment, the woman produces registration papers.

OW: Here are the registration papers.

The officer is stunned.

SO: The traffic officer tells me that you have no driver's license.

The woman digs into her handbag, pulls her driver's license out, and hands it to the senior officer. The senior officer examines the license, looking quite puzzled.

SO: Thank you, Ma'am. The traffic officer told me you didn't have a license, that you stole this car, and that you murdered and hacked up the owner. Why would he tell me that?

OW: I don't know. Hmm...I'll bet the liar told you I was speeding, too.

Don't mess with an old woman!

 

In memory of Dot Miller

Over the past several years, I'd lost track of an old friend from Panama City FL. I met Dot when I moved to Florida to work on the Rapid Runway Repair Program at Tyndall AFB (now more well-known for having been devastated by Hurricane Michael in 2018) in April, 1981. She, with a BA in Math from Ohio State University, was a Civil Service employee who specialized in AICUZ (Air Installation Compatible Use Zone) determinations. Thirteen years my senior and the mother of seven children, Dot was a sister redhead and we fell into an immediate easy friendship. In fact, she mothered the whole workforce in my office - they being, other than me, young men. The photo, below, shows her and another friend, Corinne, at a picnic we had during my last spring in Florida (1983).

I transferred to Albuquerque NM in June 1983. In January, 1984, Dot was sent to the Kirtland Air Force Base to do some work, so she stopped in to see me (photo of Dot, below). She later was sent to McConnell AFB, just up the road a few miles from our house; but, I've no photos from that trip - in about 2000.

The last time I saw Dot was after we had retired from our respective companies. I had been in Kansas since 1990 and she had moved to Ohio just a few months before Hunky Husband and I saw her on our way to Bogie's home. (Born in 1925, Dot continued to work for USAF as a consultant until 2008.)

I found Dot's obituary, online, just minutes ago. She had died in 2015.

I'll remember Dot with a story that she sent me by email just a few weeks before I saw her - at which time we and HH toured the National Museum of the United States Air Force (again!) in October, 2004 - photo of Dot & me at that time, below.

I apologize for the yelling in the following; but, that's how Dot sent the story to me!

9/1/2004

Subject: A Funny Story  

GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU SMILE.....   ESPECIALLY SINCE IT'S A TRUE STORY.

ON JULY 20, 1969, AS COMMANDER OF THE APOLLO 11 LUNAR MODULE, NEIL ARMSTRONG WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO SET FOOT ON THE MOON. HIS FIRST WORDS AFTER STEPPING ON THE MOON, "THAT'S ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND," WERE TELEVISED TO EARTH AND HEARD BY MILLIONS. BUT JUST BEFORE HE RE-ENTERED THE LANDER, HE MADE THE ENIGMATIC REMARK "GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY."

MANY PEOPLE AT NASA THOUGH IT WAS A CASUAL REMARK CONCERNING SOME RIVAL SOVIET COSMONAUT. HOWEVER, UPON CHECKING, THERE WAS NO GORSKY IN EITHER THE RUSSIAN OR AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAMS.

OVER THE YEARS MANY PEOPLE QUESTIONED ARMSTRONG AS TO WHAT THE "GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY... STATEMENT MEANT, BUT ARMSTRONG ALWAYS JUST SMILED.

ON JULY 5, 1995, IN TAMPA BAY, FLORIDA, WHILE ANSWERING QUESTIONS FOLLOWING A SPEECH, A REPORTER BROUGHT UP THE 26-YEAR-OLD QUESTION TO ARMSTRONG. THIS TIME HE FINALLY RESPONDED. MR. GORSKY HAD DIED, SO NEIL ARMSTRONG FELT HE COULD ANSWER THE QUESTION.

IN 1938 WHEN HE WAS A KID IN A SMALL MIDWEST TOWN, HE WAS PLAYING BASEBALL WITH A FRIEND IN THE BACKYARD. HIS FRIEND HIT THE BALL, WHICH LANDED IN HIS NEIGHBOUR'S YARD BY THE BEDROOM WINDOWS. HIS NEIGHBOURS WERE MR. AND MRS. GORSKY.

AS HE LEANED DOWN TO PICK UP THE BALL, YOUNG ARMSTRONG HEARD MRS. GORSKY SHOUTING AT MR. GORSKY.

"SEX! YOU WANT SEX?! YOU'LL GET SEX WHEN THE KID NEXT DOOR WALKS ON THE MOON!"

RIP, Dot Miller, you were a good friend!

Cleaning out the Clutter

A few months ago, I took Hunky Husband into our workshop to see what he wanted done with piles of stuff that were sitting about, not having been moved since we moved into this house 20 years ago. He didn't see anything without which he couldn't live, so I started getting rid of the stuff - partly through placing it in recycle/hazardous waste/ecycle, partly by taking it to Goodwill or the Disabled American Veteran resale shops, and partly through trashing. I made great progress in the first couple of weeks, then my time got diverted to other projects - and I forgot all about it.

Thursday, I decided to replace a towel ring in my bathroom with an 18"-long towel bar. To do this, I retrieved level, steel tape, screw drivers, hex drivers etcetera from the workshop (plus my drill and bits from my sewing room - don't ask!) In the process, I realized that there was still much "stuff" to get out of the workshop. Today, I've focused on getting rid of a large box of stuff that was sitting on the floor and, somehow, stumbled across some vacuum tubes. Well...I've long (perhaps 65 years) had a soft heart for vacuum tubes. But...they gotta go! We have only one piece of equipment that uses vacuum tubes and it, too, is on the "get rid of" list.

Above is a photo of the tubes - and a handful of crystals (at the bottom of the photo) that would be used in fixed-frequency radio frequency oscillators. Woo-hoo. Some of the vacuum tubes are possibly from among a large box of tubes that I bought (at the price of a month's rent) as a freshman in college. That would have been 1955-56. I'm smart enough, now, to realize that the guy who sold them to me had probably stolen them from the US Army (Ft Leonard Wood - near our school); but, I was naïve in those days. And, no, I had no real use for the vacuum tubes at the time, but they were cute! HH has told me that, having imbibed too much one evening during the months in which we dated, I regaled him with my design for a transmitter that I would build to use some of those tubes.

How did the towel bar installation go? Well, the towel bar came with plastic inserts for use in hollow-wall construction. As it happened, one end of the towel bar was to be situated into an area that had something inside the hollow wall. Since I was unsure what was inside that part of the wall and didn't wish to injure the sewer pipe that might possibly run through that area, I came up with a work-around. I used heftier plastic sleeves than had been supplied, cut them off at the pointy end, installed them to act as bearings on the drywall, and used shorter (and larger diameter) screws than had been supplied.

Since I am rarely forethoughtful enough to take "before" photos, I'll give a photo of another towel ring that is in that bathroom. The ring in the photo normally holds a clean wash cloth. The "after" photo shows the installed towel bar. A hand towel gets bunched up in the towel ring, slowing down drying of the towel. (Since the wash cloth that is kept in the towel ring is always dry, being replaced, daily, drying time is not an issue.) The towel bar is long enough that the towel can be spread out, if required, or another wash cloth would fit in the available space.

 

 
 

Week in Review - 2019Nov22

Hunky Husband's new desktop computer and monitor have been set up at his computer desk and the data from his old computer has been migrated. My new computer was delivered Tuesday afternoon while I was in the far back yard "supervising" the planting of two gingko trees. Fortunately, HH was at home to hear the doorbell ring and sign for the delivery. After carrying 10 gallons of water to each of the new trees, I was too pooped to worry about setting up my new computer and monitor (delivered 10 days ago) until after dinner.

As I had played "musical desks" with the old computer, setting it up on my non-computer desk where I had previously set up HH's old computer while draining it of data, I was able to install the new equipment on my computer desk without much fuss (photo, below). Having now transferred the data from the old computer to the new, the old computer now resides at the downstairs desk. Since, unlike HH's old computer, my old computer has no problem with the new cheapie speakers, it will do to play exercise videos for me.

INSERTION OF 11/26/2019 6:12PM - Only 7 days later

As expected, and much like HH's new computer, this computer processes lickety-split! I'm trying out using the new, flat-layout keyboard that came with the computer. It seems very strange and it is harder for me to work with the keyboard under the desktop - where I cannot see it. If, after a couple of months, I don't adjust well to the new keyboard, I shall re-install the old keyboard. It came with a computer that I purchased at least 10 years ago...perhaps 15. I do OK, already, in plain text inputting. It's the numbers and special keys that are hard for me to find - especially since the layout is slightly different from that to which I was accustomed. (Comparison of keyboards in photo, below - older keyboard at top of photo.)

Wednesday, since I was supposed to give the new gingko trees 20 gallons of water, each, I strung all three of our watering hoses together to stretch into the far back yard to complete the watering. While I was at it, I watered the walnut tree that was transplanted into the woods about three years ago, a couple of walnut saplings that I had planted in the near woods a few years ago (which have reached an astounding height of about 12" - yes, that is inches), a volunteer redbud, and the umbrella catalpa and pink dogwood trees that have been planted in what is now the edge of the woods within the past two years. Dragging around and coiling up 150' of watering hose made me as pooped as had the carrying buckets of water the 100+ feet from the house to the new gingko trees!

Halloween came late to our house and other tales of the week

Having finished the setup and downloading of software for Hunky Husband's new desktop computer (which he keeps under his computer desk), I removed the extraneous software from his old computer and "refreshed" his Windows 10 installation. Voile! HH's old computer is now a perfectly good computer that runs noticeably faster than does this computer. I kicked out all of our CD-playing equipment and replaced it with HH's old computer - to allow me to use it to play exercise videos. One catch: I'm having an issue with getting a compatible pair of speakers for the setup. I bought a cheap set of speakers that work perfectly well with this desktop, but don't work with HH's old computer. Hmmm...I guess I'll need to find a pair of good speakers for that setup. Since I play music through my desktop speakers, I don't want to use the cheap speakers with this computer.

Monday evening, reading a book and absent-mindedly eating a handful of almonds*, I bit down on an almond and dislodged the crown from my upper right-hand tooth. Crap! I washed it off, soaked it in an enzyme solution, and put it in a cup on my bathroom counter to be able to find it the next morning. Our next-door neighbor is my dentist, so I would go see him early in the day. By 8:00am, Tuesday, I was checking in at the front desk.

Fred couldn't see me, at all, that day; but, fortunately, his colleague could work me in at 9:20am. Oh! Did I forget to tell you that, came Tuesday morning the old crown had disappeared? Having searched every conceivable hiding place, I concluded that I had decided to put the crown on a facial tissue to dry...forgotten about having done so...and when I arose in the middle of the night to use the facilities (for which I do not turn on lights), absent-mindedly threw the tissue into the toilet. Thus, it would take the dentist a while to make a new crown.

Since I had over an hour to wait, I told the receptionist that I would walk over to the senior center (a few-minutes' walk, away) and return in time for the dentist's 9:20am opening. I had been on the treadmill at the senior center for but 9 minutes when my phone rang. The dentist would be free within a few minutes.

After a few minutes' x-ray and visual examination, it was determined that I should return on Wednesday when, fortuitously, the dentist would be able to work me in around his other patients. Thus, I spent 8:00am-11:30am Wednesday morning reclining in the dental chair while the dentist took digital measurements, milled the new crown, fitted the new crown, baked/glazed the new crown, and final-adjusted the new crown to the opening - which activities were periodically interrupted for the dentist to see another patient. Yeah! I no longer look like a left-over from Halloween!

During my last visit to the butcher's, I picked up a bottle of Jalapeno mustard. The little line of print (black on white toward the bottom of the bottle, above) says, "WARNING: This product has been known to make mouths water, eyes light up and hips wiggle!" At the end of the warning appears the graphic, below.

________________________

*    Not my first encounter with a tough almond. Forty or 50 years ago, I broke a tooth on a Jordan almond.

Three Body Problem

This artist's concept illustrates Kepler-47, the first transiting circumbinary system.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

One graduate-level course, alone, nearly convinced me to give up the study of physics altogether. I felt that I spent 30 years in a one-semester class on the three body problem; thus, I found the following item from Slashdot.org really interesting - if 50 years too late!

AI Cracks Centuries-Old 'Three Body Problem' In Under a Second (livescience.com) 122

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday November 09, 2019 @02:34PM from the matters-of-great-gravity dept.

 

Long-time Slashdot reader taiwanjohn shared this article from Live Science: The mind-bending calculations required to predict how three heavenly bodies orbit each other have baffled physicists since the time of Sir Isaac Newton. Now artificial intelligence (A.I.) has shown that it can solve the problem in a fraction of the time required by previous approaches.

Newton was the first to formulate the problem in the 17th century, but finding a simple way to solve it has proved incredibly difficult. The gravitational interactions between three celestial objects like planets, stars and moons result in a chaotic system -- one that is complex and highly sensitive to the starting positions of each body. Current approaches to solving these problems involve using software that can take weeks or even months to complete calculations. So researchers decided to see if a neural network -- a type of pattern recognizing A.I. that loosely mimics how the brain works -- could do better.

The algorithm they built provided accurate solutions up to 100 million times faster than the most advanced software program, known as Brutus. That could prove invaluable to astronomers trying to understand things like the behavior of star clusters and the broader evolution of the universe, said Chris Foley, a biostatistician at the University of Cambridge and co-author of a paper to the arXiv database, which has yet to be peer-reviewed.

 

Slashdot.org's wise saying of the day: "Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing."

Woods cleanup - Fall 2019

Benny and his crew, of JoJac's  Lawn & Tree Service, did their usual fine job, yesterday. I took "before" photos, but they were all blurred. I had thought the shutter speed fast enough that my shakiness wouldn't matter. Boy! Was I wrong! More activity in our woods shows Benny and his crew in action last April. I have them come out nearly every spring and fall.

Below is a photo that is the best I can give as a "before" shot. It was 31 days ago. It is before the cold snap made the trees lose their leaves and, indeed, before I had completed cutting down the trees that I sawed down, myself. There were only four or five trees left for Benny.

Below is a photo of Benny and his crew at work. The man at the left is grinding out the stumps of the trees that they and I had cut down. That is Benny lugging the cart full of logs up to the trailer. Shortly after this photo, Benny took over grinding stumps and sent his two guys to the dump - one with the truck full of chips, the other with a flat trailer full of logs. They ran out of space to put things - not unusual when they work here.

Below is the "after" photo that I took a few minutes ago.

As I told Benny, I'm already planning what I'll ask them to do next spring. My long-range plan is to get trees farther from our house - for fire safety. Some of those efforts were chronicled in Love it when a plan comes together, 18 months ago. I have a couple of gingko trees on order to be planted back about 40 feet beyond the bluebird nesting box (left side of photo). I also want to get some choke cherries back there. During the past couple of years I've transplanted a walnut and a catalpa tree back in the area closer to the creek.

Sometimes, the timing is perfect

While awaiting the arrival of the JoJac crew who are to do more cleanup work in our woods, today, I watched the podcast of the abort test of Boeing's Starliner Spacecraft, in real time. The best part starts at about 23:30 into the video. There had been a hold of about 15 minutes.