IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Covid and Complacency - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

In my parents' era, there were no antibiotics. Terrible diseases were commonplace. They were often dangerous and even lethal. An inner ear infection for example, still a common occurence, could spread into surrounding head areas. Such an infection beset one of my aunts who then developed mastoiditis, an infection of the mastoid bone. The infection was spreading into her skull which required corrective surgery that left her with epilepsy. In that era, mastoid scars were well known.

Musician Fats Waller died in 1943 of a bacterial infection which might have been treatable with penicillin had that drug been available. It became available just two years after his death.

Polio was a terror. My mother contracted polio at age seventeen. She recovered, but her right hand was left withered. During my own childhood, polio infections were still common. I remember seeing films of paralyzed children confined to iron lungs, large cylindrical machines that made possible their breathing.

When the Salk vaccine and then the Sabin vaccine became available against polio, everyone got vaccinated. There was no such thing as an anti-vaxxer. The collective memory of what polio could do compelled vaccination compliance so that today, the ailment is virtually unknown.

Similarly, DPT vaccinations are universal. Diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus are no longer common either, thank heavens.

Many people today grew up in an era so free of those terrible diseases that they have become complacent, even arrogantly complacent, about disease. People have developed a false sense of security and invulnerability and have fallen prey to falsehoods being promulgated, often in my opinion, by persons with malevolent intentions who falsely praise their own personal virtues.

Genuinely held anti-vaccination sentiments are based on dismal unawareness of the horrors that vaccinations can avert. The attitude of "YOU don't know what you're talking about so YOU are not going to tell ME what to do." has cost lives. It has cost a lot of lives.

Sadly, it looks like it will cost many more lives.

Surviving Time Travel - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

We're often presented with stories that involve time travel.  The "grandfather paradox" has often been discussed in connection with that.

Think of Alley Oop being sent on all kinds of time travel adventures by Dr. Wonmug for example. One point that seems to be overlooked is the issue of where would one also have to physically travel through space if one were travelling through time and wished to survive the experience.

We are told that the earth orbits the sun, the sun orbits the center of the galaxy and the galaxy itself is travelling toward "the great attractor" which cannot be seen from here because it is on the other side of the galactic core.

If you were to travel through time but not through space, you would suddenly find yourself in an airless and empty void. Most people would acknowledge that the resulting health effects would be deleterious.

Also, your grandpa could be many parsecs away.

Tera Chip - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

IEEE Spectrum for July 2021, page 12, has the article "Supersize AI > Cerebras's silicon-wafer-size chip boasts 2.6 trillion transistors", authored by Samuel K. Moore. It's also the cover picture article for the July 2021 issue.

Having recently read that the Hubble space telescope seems to have shown that there are two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, this chip's transistor count is even more impressive.

A quick look at some numbers for the WSE-2 device described in the article is an entertaining exercise:

Making a blithe and probably inaccurate assumption that the entire area consists of transistors, dividing the 46225 square millimeters by 2.6 trillion gives a ballpark estimate of the area per transistor and an order of magnitude feel for each transistor's dimensions.

Think now of Texas Instruments' series of 54/74 TTL integrated circuits of roughly the year 1966. Back then the SN5400 was four two-input NAND gates, the SN5410 was three three-input NAND gates and so forth. When engineers at Texas Instruments decided to develop the SN5490 decade counter, some upper management types were afraid of going forward with that because the device would be far more complex and risky than the small-scale parts already being produced.

Of course, the SN5490 and lots of other chips were hugely successful, but just think for a while about what half a century has wrought in semiconductor technology.

At my age, I'm not going to see another half century, but somebody will.

Paging Captain Kirk.

An Early Life Lesson - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I had braces on my teeth during elementary school for which my mother would set up orthodontist appointments for after school, always at 3:15 PM. That timing was unfortunate as follows:

It took about five minutes to get from the school to the orthodontist's office, but if I did that, I would always be scolded for not having brushed my teeth before arriving, even though there was no way to accomplish that at the school. If I went home first to get my teeth clean, by the time I got back to the orthodontist's office, I would be scolded by the orthodontist and later again by my mother for having been way late for my 3:15 appointment.

Every appointment always landed me in hot water, one way or the other. This happened over and over and over and ..... and when I tried to present the problem to my mother, all she would say was "We're on an early schedule!!" which seemed to be an absolute household imperative that would  overwhelm and override any and all other considerations. Ergo, she would keep on setting up those same orthodontic appointments for 3:15 PM and I would keep on getting into trouble.

It was an early life lesson. It taught that I should now and then expect to endure and would be required to accept and cope with unsatisfiable demands. The further lesson was that the demanders could be adamant and that there would be no correction, no resolution, no remedy so: "Suck it up, Junior."

At least in the end, the orthodonture worked.

Foolishness - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Somehow, we've managed to survive to the present day despite having encountered a lot of foolishness. Now and then though, I wonder how.

Fool 1:

Somebody whom I once had the misfortune to know in college told me that fire ants secrete Vitamin C.

Yep! Those ants secrete formic acid and "as everyone knows", that stuff is Vitamin C. Of course, Vitamin C is really ascorbic acid but this fool was irreversibly and adamantly insistent with his misinformation.

On another day, this same fool came along carrying a glass jar filled with sugar cubes. He said that the sugar cubes were laced with LSD and asked if anybody wanted one. I said there were only two possibilities. Either there really was LSD in those sugar cubes in which case the guy was a sh.....k or there wasn't any LSD in those sugar cubes in which case the guy was a sh.....k.

I never did find out which it was.

Fool 2:

Somebody else once told me that a Collins Radio transceiver called the KWM-2 had this wonderful design feature called "ALC" which he said stood for Automatic Loading Control. It was even printed in the KWM-2 instruction manual. Just open the book and there it is, "ALC", right there, clearly printed on glossy paper in irrefutable black and white.

Yep. According to this guy, Collins Radio had engineered the transmitter's RF output stage using a pair of 6146 beam power tetrodes working in class AB1 for which the grid drive and the pi-network plate tuning were automatically adjusted as required for whatever operating frequency you would set using just the VFO (Variable Frequency Oscillator) control knob. You didn't have to bother adjusting anything else.

My pointing out that "ALC" actually stood for Automatic Level Control and that he really needed to pay proper attention to amplifier tuning was simply dismissed as the unfortunate product of my own ignorance.

I never did find out how long a pair of 6146 tubes would last in there before their red-hot plates would collapse.

Fool 3:

I needed to telephone my wife at her work one day where she taught school. When I dialed and asked for her by name, the school's telephone receptionist told me there was no such person in the school. My wife's maiden surname, which she used professionally, was of one syllable which the school receptionist had misheard (Think of Stein versus Stern, Blum versus Bloom or Reed versus Ride.) and so I repeated the name very, very carefully, including its five letter spelling, and still this receptionist got it wrong and insisted that there was no such person in the school.

After yet another go around with the same outcome, I remembered the name of a someone else in the school's office and asked to speak with that person instead. That was accepted and I was transferred so I could pass along a message.

Later, my wife told me that she had actually been there in the office when I called and had wondered if the incoming caller might have been me. She got distracted by something else though and only when we later compared notes did we realize what that super-dense receptionist had done.

Now please see the following search result URL and wander around a bit through the various links:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=CPAC+vaccination&form=PRUSEN&ocid=oie9fvrt&mkt=en-us&httpsmsn=1&msnews=1&rec_search=1&refig=f3167445d7894f2b84d3a25c98c1b3ae&sp=-1&pq=cpac+vaccination&sc=1-16&qs=n&sk=&cvid=f3167445d7894f2b84d3a25c98c1b3ae

Then, with all of the above freshly in mind, have you met any anti-vaxxers lately?

Harmonica Trio - John Dunn, Consultant, AQmbertec, P.E., P.C.

If you're the right age, this link is going to SEND you!!

Harmonica Trio

This screen shot is taken from the above URL:

The truth be told, I recently stumbled into a whole slew of harmonica performances on YouTube which are really astonishing.

Have fun!

 

 

President Roosevelt's TV Set - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

We took a trip some years ago to Hyde Park, NY where we visited the home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In keeping with common tradition, let's refer to him as FDR.

We took an escorted tour along with a multitude of other visitors and it was fantastically interesting. In the course of that tour, we came to FDR's living room into which we could look from the doorway, but from which a movie-theater velvet rope barred entry. We could look, but we could not enter which suddenly became really frustrating.

Away from our viewing point at the far living room wall was FDR's television set which so far as I could tell, was the same kind of set which had been on display from RCA at the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing, NY.

I had once captured a screen shot of an RCA image of that television, but I wasn't able to find a present day URL for it:

Anyway, I wanted to take a really close look at that thing but the velvet rope was a very clear message of "No, you shall NOT."

I doubt if the set was in working order. NTSC television was just on its way out at the time in favor of HDTV and I doubt that anyone had turned FDR's set on in many years. Think of several decades of disuse of the electrolytic capacitors and perhaps several decades worth of accumulated dust in the high voltage section.

Still, the mirror was in view and the cabinet looked like it was well preserved.

I recommend the visit.

Old School and New (Mixed) - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

We were at the Nassau County Museum of Art today in Roslyn, NY and saw the "La Belle Epoque" exhibit which included several Tiffany lamps, always a delight to examine. This was just one of them:

It's beautiful, isn't it??

I looked a little closer like any self respecting engineer would and then I noticed something which was understandable, absolutely justified, proper and yet somehow appalling.

This lamp and all the others had been rewired with modern-day zip cord but even more startling was the following:

All of the incandescent light bulbs were now 2700°K color temperature LED bulbs.

The traditionalist in me tremored a little bit, but let's face it, the old power cords were probably not safe anymore, the LED bulbs run cooler I think that the original filament bulbs had run and when looking at this lamp, and the other lamps too, they looked really nice.

I let myself be pleased.

Two Lines - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Two lines that really set my nerves on edge are "Why should I have to ......" or the frequently heard "How come they get .....", always seeming to come from someone who thinks they're getting something less than their fair share of heaven only knows what, or that someone else is getting more than their fair share of that something.

I've known people who seem to keep ledgers in their heads. It's like there's some kind of adding machine that keeps working out a bottom line of some kind that keeps getting revised and which illustrates some sort of obviously uncorrected outrage while asking either overtly or implicitly: "Don't you agree with me?????"

I find I have precious little tolerance for such mindsets.

Mr. Malcontent from the gurney in the hospital is merely one example. I hear it coming from politicians, from elected officials and from wanna-be officials. One really angry voice caught my attention with (my paraphrase) "You think that??? You just wait 'till I get elected and you'll see what happens then!!!!"

Yes, threats are also part of the baggage.

A basic respect for civics and civility, a basic grasp that there are people out there who have different circumstances and different needs compared to one's own, these traits seem very much absent. That lack of respect seems to have roots.

My wife who taught school offered an interesting perspective. Many modern adults never learned in elementary school to stand in line in size places. That minimal failure of compliance has now escalated, expanded and in my words, has run amok with Covid-19 which has led to tragic results.

My urgent suggestion is that if you who are reading this have not been vaccinated, please get vaccinated.

Please don't be like the mother of two whom I read about in today's news who feared vaccination side effects, who did not get vaccinated, who then contracted the Delta variant of Covid-19, who was placed on a respirator for a month and who then died.

Please see: 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/a-missouri-woman-didnt-want-a-covid-19-vaccine-for-fear-of-side-effects-she-caught-the-delta-variant-and-died/ar-AALLjAZ

and:

https://patch.com/new-york/merrick/s/hnol2/rise-of-delta-variant-concerns-some-health-officials-poll?utm_term=article-slot-1&utm_source=newsletter-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Vaccination Refusal - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

It was once a common theme in sci-fi movies (mostly 1950s era) that aliens invading Earth would be driven off by humanity forsaking inter-societal hostilities in order to unite against the common enemy.

Today, we have actually endured such an alien invasion which goes by the name Covid-19. Has humanity united against it? The answer is NO. Dissent, partisanship, rumor, xenophobia and all manners of invented fears and falsehoods have inestimably diminished humanity's effort to repulse the invasion.

A recent news report cited a hospital at which all of the incoming Covid-19 patients then arriving were persons who had not received vaccination. Some of those patients were quite gravely ill. I do not recall if any of them had died, but the conclusion to be drawn was inescapable..  

You have the legal right to refuse vaccination, thus jeopardizing your own medical status, but you do NOT have the moral right nor the ethical right to refuse vaccination for whatever feeling of self-satisfaction you may gain from such refusal.

Your refusal not only places your own medical status in danger, it endangers the health and the lives of other people, of other members of this society, who share the same civic environment which you yourself occupy.

To those who have thus far refused vaccination:  You are capable of doing better.