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2. A Strangely Familiar Feeling: Musical Seizures

#81: April - May 2010 (Non-Fiction)
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Veneer

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Re: 2. A Strangely Familiar Feeling: Musical Seizures

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I have to check it out tonight. The Easter bus schedule is about to begin. Thanks for the tip.
“Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." Edward P. Tryon
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How do we know, what we know!

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Saffron, extreme thank yous are in order for the video. This is something that I have wrestled with for a long time. Just how accurate is anything we know? I work in engineering and people's lives depend on things that I know. When you start thinking about what you really know sometimes the awesome responsibility becomes frightening. (Fear not! Fortunately the things I work on are not in the public sphere but limited to test facilities at work--you need not worry that the brakes in your car were designed by Veneer!)

I keep one event always in my mind. It was the collapse of elevated walkways in a convention center in Kansas City sometime in the 1980s The original design called for a double deck walkway supported by a series of 40 foot long rods. The series of rods were sufficient to support both walkways. When it came time to actually build the center, 40 foot long rods were not available. So it was swapped with two readily available 20 foot rods. So what happened was that instead of one long rod supporting both walkways, they had two short rods supporting each walkway. (I am only looking at one rod, remember these were series of rods supporting the walkways.) At first blush this seems reasonable. But the walkway collapsed, why? In the original design one rod supported both walkways. Looking at the original design, the lower walkway was attached to the rod at the bottom, the upper walkway was attached to middle of the rod, and the rod was supported by a reinforced beam at the ceiling. On the modified design, the lower walkway was attached to the bottom of the lower rod, and the upper walkway was attached to the bottom of the upper rod. Fine, no problem yet. But here is the crux, the upper end of the lower rod was attached to the upper walkway. So now the lower attachment for the upper walkway was no longer supporting just the load of upper walkway, it was supporting the load of both walkways! The rods were changed but the beams were not. The beam in the upper walkway was subjected to twice the load that it was designed for and it failed resulting in the death and injury of many people. Had the upper walkway used a reinforced beam like the ceiling, there would have been no problem and a lot of people would still be alive today. This frightens the hell out of me because I could see myself easily making that same mistake. This kind of stuff haunts me! There is a account of of this tragedy here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Rege ... y_collapse

Going back to my speeding car, 90 millisecond transit time for the signal to travel from the retina to the brain--before processing. Turns out my 6 foot simplification is actually 15.8 feet. Something to think about for us lead footed Americans. At 90 miles an hour (not a totally uncommon speed on our freeways at times) your vehicle is moving 132 feet per second. The brake light comes on in the car in front of you. You have traveled 11.8 feet in the 90 milliseconds from the time that retina registered red until the message arrives in the visual cortex. You don't even know about the brake light and have moved 12 feet. Now your brain has to say "hmmmm red brake lights" and command old righty off the gas and on to the brake pedal. There is something to be said for speed limits.

His description of the baseball pitch was interesting to me. I was in Little League in 1960. Baseball was very important back then. Little League coaches, bless their hearts, like all coaches want to win, but they are stuck often with some pretty crappy players like me. Well the solution was to make sure the crappy kids never got a bat in their hand, so they rotated all the turds like me into right field until it was time to bat then they would rotate another kid in. Fortunately the parents really didn't show up at too many games so they could run the games pretty much with impunity. The end result of this was that in the entire season I got a bat in my hands once--the night my parents showed up at the game. I would have been just as happy to rotate out, but oh no my parents were there. Parents want to see their kid play. So put the poor bastard in the game to make his humiliation total and complete. The kid pitching was three years older than me, and one of the best pitchers in the league. I stand at the plate. The kid winds up, I see his arm moving, I see it stop, I hear a whooooOOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHHH THWACK! "Strike one!" What the hell happened? There was no ball! The kid didn't throw the ball--I saw no ball. I am stunned! While standing in a state of shock, I see the windup...whooooOOOOOSSSHHH THWACK! "Strike two!" No ball, there was no damned ball! I can't believe what is happening, and it is happening really quick. I see the windup.... wooo...I blindly swing with tears stinging my eyes...oooooOOOOSHHHHH THWACK! "Strike three, you're out!" I stood there in disbelief at plate. I wasn't stupid enough to believe that I was going to actually hit the ball, but I had an belief that I would at least see it. The next kid grabbed the bat out of my hand and mumbled something about move it loser. As an adult I think ahhh what the hell, but as an 11 year old kid I was devastated. Never cared for sports since.
“Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." Edward P. Tryon
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Saffron

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Re: 2. A Strangely Familiar Feeling: Musical Seizures

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Nice post, Veneer. Reading it put a smile on my face!
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