Category Archives: Unfiled

The FBI is investigating a video from a Tennessee police car dashcam that shows police stripping a man naked and then beating and tasing him.

Now evidently he was out of parole, but overall this whole incident speaks of excessive.  None of the officers tried to express any restraint on their fellow officers.  Each was more than willing and complicit in their own actions and that of their fellow officers.

While officer safety is a concern, most certainly a man lying on the ground naked in the snow is not a threat worthy of beating and tasing, especially if you’re the individual responsible for stripping him.

The fact that 3 officers were all involved and all three mutually worked to abuse this individual instead of thinking the problem through given their superior numbers earns all 3 a place on the count.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 10

Just because a cop has the ability doesn’t mean he should, just like the rest of the civilian populace.

Incase you haven’t seen the video, here it is again.

This is getting a full mention again to be included in the count thanks to the idiotic words of the Canton City Council President Alan Schulman.

There is no question that the actions of that officer are unacceptable and totally irreprehensible.  Some have attempted to justify the actions of the officer as being acceptable including this individual.  I don’t know what planet these individuals live on that they can justify the actions of officer Roid Rage*.  Then again some people have so much blind faith in the government that they fail to remember that they are people as well, subject to the same stresses and emotions as the rest of us.  When they do remember that agents of the law are human they attempt to use it as an excuse, while the rest of us lowly peons are required to exercise self-control and self discipline.  If I exhibited behavior like that at my place of employment, bad day or not, my ass would be fired.  Why as an agent of the law are they granted a reprieve?  If anything they should be held to a higher standard as the trust and privileges they are given, including qualified immunity.

This is obviously a case of State Sponsored Criminal Acts, especially with the City Council President defending the actions of the individual.  An individual with a history of problems:

Canton’s internal affairs unit has investigated 16 complaints involving Harless dating back to 2000.

He was reprimanded in one 2003 case. Harless and another officer were exonerated of using excessive force, but were given a letter of reprimand for not activating the in-car video camera at the scene per department policy.

This man was obviously known to his superiors and department, yet they did absolutely nothing to restrain him or punish him.

State Sponsored Criminal Count : 7

*The name was coined by Weer’d, I find it a very applicable description of the officer.

H/T to Jay on the background info on the officer.

Time and time again I am hearing about TSA agents stealing from airline passengers.  They’ve been caught stealing cash, electronics, organizing thefts with their coworkers, and some have even busted for child pornography.  Now with the addition of the “Fast and Furious Scandal” we are finding that the government knowingly gave felons a clear background check even though they should have been stopped.  Our government provided arms to disqualified purchasers.  Given all of this information when I received an email today of yet another incident with the TSA I felt it was time to create something similar to the Dead Goblin Count. 

The rules are simple:

1. The person worked for the government, IE: TSA, DHS, FBI, BATFE, or any other part of the government, local, state or federal.
2. The person committed the crime while on duty, or his job provided access to commit the crime under color of law (see the pedophile above).
3. High level incidents such as the “Fast and Furious” incidents count.  Individual incidents involved in the same program can be counted separately.
4. Must have accompanying documentation with the submission.

To submit incidents, please use this form.  You can also recommend any additions or changes to the rules, I may or may not accept them.  Even if you don’t think it will fully meet the requirements above, most likely disqualifying factor is rule #2, send it anyway it will at least get an honorable mention. 

So here’s the first entry in the list goes to the one that finally pushed me to actually do it.

A Transportation Security Administration officer has been accused of stealing $22,000 worth of watches from passengers’ luggage at Los Angeles International Airport.

It’s good to know that the TSA agent was so busy stealing jewelry there is no way anything else could have slipped past him.  Yet another example of A Security Theater.  He joins the list of previously uncounted TSA agents stealing from passengers.

Thank god the TSA is here to protect us, who else would rifle through our luggage, sniffing our underwear and stealing jewelry.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 1 + 5(examples at top) = 6

In this part of the series I’m going to cover the basics of AC machinery.  More specifically I’m going to focus on synchronous machines, both in motor and generation aspects.  Synchronous generation is important since that is the production method used by most major power plants, from steam to hydro.  Why it’s used with be made more apparent at the end.

Basics of AC Machines:

If you’ve ever played with magnets you know that two magnets will try to turn to line up with one another.  In an AC machine that behavior is leveraged to cause the rotor (the rotating part of the machine) to chase proper alignment with the stator (the stationary part of the machine). 

If you remember that a moving magnetic field induces a current in a wire.  Just the same a current in a wire creates a magnetic field.  Here’s a quick side cut away of a simple 3 phase machine:

In the diagram current flows in the standard letter and out the prime, for example in A and out A’.  The math and details behind the magnetic forces and how it works as a motor isn’t going to be covered in detail.  The only understanding needed is that as a particular pole passes a wire it induces a current in a particular direction, the opposite pole causes current to flow in the opposite direction.  AC current switches direction constantly throughout it’s supply, this is because the poles on the magnet have switched direction for the other half of the cycle. 

The above example is a “2 pole” system displayed by the fact there are only two magnetic poles in use.  The mechanical rotational speed is directly tied to the electrical frequency.  This relationship is described by the following equation:

Which states that the electrical frequency in Hertz is the product of the speed of mechanical rotation in RPM and the number of poles in the rotor, divided by 120.

So for example a 2 pole generator producing a 60Hz signal is spinning at 3600 RPM.  We can increase the number of poles in the rotor to decrease the rotational speed required. In doing so we also increase the number of windings required as well.

The windings when wired together correctly produce a standard 60Hz signal.  The reason you would do this is it allows you to operate at a much lower mechanical frequency.  For instance the 4 pole system above would operate at 1800 RPM instead of the 3600 RPM of the two pole system.

Efficiency

No system is 100% efficient, thermodynamics guarantees this since we are converting energy from one form into another.  You have numerous losses that are caused by the following items:

1. Copper Losses, remember I mentioned that long wires have a voltage drop across  them, well in a generator/motor you have a very long wire that is coiled up.  There are losses that occur due to I²R in the generator.
2. Core losses, These are losses caused by limits of the metals within the motor regarding the magnetic fields.
3. Mechanical Losses: Friction in the machine causes losses, as will as windage which occurs because of air moving within the casing.
4. Stray Losses: Everything else not covered by the previous categories, by convention this is usually about 1% of full load.

Synchronous generators are so popular for generation because their design lends them to be considerably more efficient than any other design for generation.

Synchronous Machines

Synchronous machines are like what was described above, however their rotor contains a set of windings that are energized by a DC current.  IE they use an electro magnet to provide the magnetic field that the rotor uses to generate current in the stator windings.  These two sets of windings are referred to as field windings and armature windings.  Armature windings also referred to as stator windings is where the main voltage is induced, while the field windings produce the main magnetic field within the machine.

This DC current supplied to the field windings can be supplied by an external source through the use of slip rings and brushes, or it can be generated directly on the shaft of the machine. 

Synchronous machines are a very special type of motor as they are locked to the frequency of operation.  When starting a machine you synchronize it to the power system prior closing the circuit. Once locked with the power system it’s frequency is stabilized by the rest of the system.  In order to shift the frequency, it has to shift at ALL the machines, not just that one.  Prior to the machine being actually turned on though you must spin the machine up to speed by external means.

For instance say you were using the machine as a motor, you could NOT just supply power and expect it to spin at synchronous speed.  In the instance of using the machine as a motor, you short the armature winding, once this is done you allow the three phase AC to the field windings.  This will cause the rotor to begin spinning.  Once it is very close to synchronous speed remove the short supply current to the armature winding at which point it will synchronize with the system.

In the case of self starting generation, a pony motor is uses to bring the  generator to synchronous speed.  Once there a small current is applied to the armature winding and it is synchronized with the power system.  Once synchronized it is connected to the grid, at which point the armature windings are fully energized.  If the armature winding is energized prior to being connected to the grid, a very large voltage can be produced on the field windings.  Ultimately when you parallel the system, you want the same magnitude and frequency as the output for your generator.

Other than efficiency though the synchronous machine provides some other benefits in that you can adjust the power factor of the output of the generator.  For instance if you have a load that is leading the generator, you can back the generator off so that the leading load supplies power to other surrounding loads.  This is known as power factor correction.  It is done by altering the excitation current used for the armature.  Operating the generator in an over excited state to deal with a leading power factor, where you have a lagging load, can actually cause the generator to fail eventually due to overheating.

This ability to help correct power factor issues coupled with the high efficiency and constant speed operation leads many facilities to use it for generation.

Review:

So there was a quick run down on the most common AC machine, how it works and why it’s used.  Next week will be induction machines, these are becoming more prevalent in generation thanks to wind power.

Burger King is hiring. Do yourself a favour; do your department a favour; and do the rest of us a favour — find a job doing something else … before you cripple or maim an innocent "putting lumps" on them, or you "put ten rounds" into someone who doesn’t need killing.

You complete, utter and total jackass.

LawDog – What The Hell…?

[For those who haven’t seen the video, here it is: (Language makes it NSFW, if you do make sure you have headphones on.)

Normally I would have a nice long commentary of my thoughts on the subject, but I just am too severely enraged by the incident.  Seriously the thick necked Neanderthal of an idiot is nothing more than a high school bully who then went and got a badge and a gun.  This man should not be in law enforcement, he is not there to protect and serve, he is there to harass and intimidate.  May the legal system he supposedly represented come down upon him like a ton of bricks.  Then may an individual who ended up in jail because of him make that officer his bitch.

-B]

Dave does have some very sweet toys.

It appears that there is a new service out there catering to doing online background checks of potential employees.  Overall I don’t have much of a problem with this, a private company certainly has a right to use any information that it feels would affect performance in the workplace.  This new middleware company does the work to keep the employer from seeing information that could lead to other biases which are currently legislated against.  For example they make sure to strip off marital status, sexual orientation, religious views, etc.  What did catch my attention however was the following statement from the companies CEO.

Then it assembles a dossier with examples of professional honors and charitable work, along with negative information that meets specific criteria: online evidence of racist remarks; references to drugs; sexually explicit photos, text messages or videos; flagrant displays of weapons or bombs and clearly identifiable violent activity.

What’s wrong with that?  If the individual has broken no laws what is the issue.  If you dig through my website you will find many photos of firearms.  Numerous pictures of explosives going off.  As well as numerous articles involving self-defense, which is a violent response against someone doing violence against you.

Mr. Drucker said. “We also see flagrant displays of weapons. And we see a lot of illegal activity. Lots and lots of pictures of drug use.”

He recalled one man who had 15 pages of photos showing himself with various guns, including an assault rifle.

There’s that set of words, assault rifle.  Obviously this man is a puritan who is projecting his belief system on others and judging them based upon his world view.  There is nothing on my site which promotes illegal activity.  I have gone through extra effort to make sure I am legal and as a result have had myself placed on numerous government lists.  Why sir are you attempting to limit the employment of gun owners who are proud of their stance on gun rights?  I might advise Mr. Drucker to be quite careful since I’m sure if someone finds out that their ownership of firearms caused a negative report from his company and thusly resulted in missed employment opportunities, his company now carries the liability for the discriminatory action.  It might be quite difficult to prove, but eventually given enough people it can happen.

So it appears that the government bailouts of Chrysler cost the government taxpayer $1.3 billion.

Originally, the government committed a total of $12.5 billion to the struggling automaker, Old Chrysler, and the company’s newly formed Chrysler Group. Of those funds, $11.2 billion has been returned through principal repayments, interest and cancelled commitments, the Treasury said.

Isn’t it great to see people invest money that isn’t theirs so wisely. Frankly I’m very pissed off and want my 4 dollars and 33 cents back from the pocket of the ass-hats who said it would be a good investment. My money is not to be used and lost paying for some company to avoid failure. The whole point of investment involves risk vs reward. We have destroyed any and all risk in doing business. We have rewarded people for making poor decisions and sent the bill to the American taxpayer. If we look at what I’m actually owed as a taxpayer instead of just applying it to every citizen it’s about 10 bucks.

I do not pay taxes to give some ass-hat who couldn’t get himself a real job capital to play with. I would prefer to invest my own capital as I see fit since apparently the Treasury thinks a 10% loss is some how a good investment. Some claim that the recession would be even worse had they not done that. I fail to see how that is possible considering the chilling effect it had economically overall. There has been no major upshot of this other than bailing out a bunch of execs and giving them bonuses.

Ultimately though this result is completely unsurprising. It is unsurprising because what else would you expect someone to do when they hadn’t actually earned the money. They have no concept of the value or worth of it. If they loose it they can just go tax more from us right? That’s Obama’s solution to the deficit problem.

The real question is, why are we trusting people with the fruits of our labor who have no concept of it’s value or worth? It must be noted though that cash ultimately is worth nothing, even more so now that our governments solution is to print more.