IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

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

On occasion, I have noticed circumstances where a presentation, having been accepted by a customer or a client, may differ quite remarkably from fact. One such example came to my attention when as a teenager, I had a job as "Stage Electrician" at two summer camps , one camp for the boys and the other for the girls.

Each camp has a "social hall" with a stage, with stage lights and with a sound system that included a collection of Electro Voice 664 microphones.

The picture below is taken from    http://www.coutant.org/ev664/   in which there is descriptive text for this microphone that includes the phrase "Uniform from 60 to 15,000 Hz" as descriptive of the microphone's frequency response.

Camp personnel included a husband and wife, each of them a teacher, who informed me with great emphasis and pride that these microphones were the finest high fidelity microphones ever made.

I had found a folder in the electrician's tool shed with the microphone's specifications written out and I saw the frequency response. This microphone was not designed with high fidelity in mind. It was designed for public address service. However, since the lowest and highest frequencies to which it needed to respond were of children's voices during their weekly stage shows, these microphones were very well suited indeed.

How come? These microphones were always easily accessible to campers of all ages. Now and then a microphone would get dropped or bounced to the floor from some rather significant heights. None of them were ever damaged by such mishandling.

In hindsight, I think these microphones were rugged enough to have survived use as blacksmith hammers. In summer camp service, that was a major virtue indeed.

I never corrected what seemed to have been some misinformation that was deliberately conveyed to those two teachers. Someone before my tenure had chosen well and had also made the right political move(s) in getting these microphones accepted as something that they really were not.

Presentation had overshadowed fact.

I didn't care.

Purged Pictures - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

When e-mails arrive here, they almost always arrive with pictures deleted like seen here.

Why is this happening and how can I make it stop happening?

The 90# Scam - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C..

I got this e-mail warning from a trusted source.

Following the old adage to "trust but verify", I put 90# into Google and came up with this FCC web page:

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/dont-fall-90-telephone-scam

It looks real. The FCC page goes into greater detail, but the message is the same. The incoming call is a scam. Hang up!!

More generally, when someone telephones you, if you've picked up the call and you don't really know who they are, don't communicate anything. Especially, don't say anything that could be taken as an affirmative. Do NOT say "yes". Do NOT say "yeah". Do NOT say "okay". Do NOT say "uh-huh". Do not say anything. Do not DO or SAY anything at the caller's behest. Just hang up the call.

Just sayin', y'know?

Rubber Band Decay - John Dunn

Sometimes, we might notice the smallest things. Do they matter? Maybe or maybe not but still, I like to take notice. This is one such case.

Almost one year ago, I put something away with a rubber band wrapped around it. The object was flat but had rounded ends of maybe half an inch radius. The rubber band was placed as shown below.

I happened to pick it up yesterday and when I did, I noticed that something had happened to the rubber band. Where it had lain flat, the material was essentially okay but where it had been curved by the radius, the rubber band material was in a visible state of decay.

In these photographs, the rubber is stretched out just a little bit to make things more easily seen.

Clearly, the rubber band was on its way to breaking but I caught up with it before that could happen.

As I say, this was just an unexpected observation to be taken for what it is or isn't worth.

Driver in Self-Driving Uber Crash Charged with Homicide - John Dunn

Please see the following link:    Driver Charged With Homicide

 

Gyrotron Heat Ray and Blindness - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

The article excerpted below appeared today on Microsoft News at the following URL:

1)  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/safety-and-ethics-worries-sidelined-a-heat-ray-for-years-the-feds-asked-about-using-it-on-protesters/ar-BB198wpC?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=oie9fvrt

2)  From the above article we also read the following additional text:

3)  From the following URL, we read the text shown immediately below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrotron

4)  From the following search result URL, we read the text shown immediately below.

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=f3hjX9_uMcmc_QaipbDoAw&q=microwave+oven+eye+damage&oq=microwave+oven+eye+&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgIIADIGCAAQFhAeOg4ILhCxAxDHARCjAhCTAjoLCC4QsQMQxwEQowI6BQgAELEDOggIABCxAxCDAToFCC4QsQNQ9AFYsHJg7JUBaABwAHgAgAG0CogBjDGSAQc3LjUuNy00mAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab

Since there are no sensory nerves where cataracts get formed, eye damage brought about by heating will take place with little or no pain. Making use of this "heat ray" would seem to risk inflicting permanent eye damage to the subjects at whom it had been directed.

In my view, that renders such a device entirely inapproporate and improper as a tool for crowd control or as part of any response to any protesters.

The Left Earlobe Test - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I have developed what seems to be a simple yet profound means of ascertaining one's general state of medical well being. The key diagnostic parameter requiring diligent observation and analysis is the state of the left earlobe.

As long as the left earlobe remains firmly attached, the patient may be considered essentially well. However, any tendency of the left earlobe to exhibit detachment must be taken with great alarm for which medical attention must be summoned quickly.

I long ago presented this medical theory to my wife. Unfortunately, she has remained skeptical of its scientific validity even though her own left earlobe as well as my own have shown no signs of detachment within either of our spans of memory and we are both still functional.

Those two facts would seem to be incontrovertible proof.

It should be noted of course that examinations of the right earlobe yield no diagnostic evidence one way or the other. Further research into that issue might seem to be worthy of a grant.

Perhaps one day, experts at the Mayo Clinic may also discover left earlobe diagnostics and perhaps one day too, editors at The Lancet will accept my manuscript.

Until then ........

Oh, well.

Blue Zone Restricted Parking - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Please look at the two images below of restricted parking zones. In both cases, there is a wheelchair icon in the center of the stall with blue lines on both sides of the stall. There is no question that parking in these stalls is restricted to permit holders only.

Now look at this next image.

The parking stall on the left has one side line painted blue and the other painted white. Note that there is no wheelchair icon in between. I have been TOLD that the parking stall on the left is not restricted just to permit holders but please, do NOT believe in that misinformation!!

Please see the following image taken at a different location.

Here we see blue painted on one side and white painted on the other, but WITH a wheelchair icon in the center.

My interpretation is that a blue painted line on either side of a parking stall is indicative of a required permit for use of that stall, icon or not. Any car parked there would conceal the icon and a parking ticket would ensue just from observation of the painted lines alone.

Caveat parker.

New Covid-19 Cases - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I was looking at the Doonesbury cartoon for today, September 6, 2020 which can be seen at the following URL:               

https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/doonesbury/s-2405381

One of the panels from there was the following:

Okay then, this is just from a comic strip so I went elsewhere to see what I'd find and came to this URL:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/06/22/united-states-europe-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic-comparison-sanjay-gupta-ldn-vpx.cnn

What I found was this:

Pretty much the same story. The US is having far and away more new cases of the disease than the EU.

In my opinion, this is the history because of the willful ignorance and obstinate stupidity of an astonishingly large segment of the population of The United States.

We now have a new Trump favored advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, who has put forth what I have to assume to be his honest opinions which happen to fall in line with President Trump's positions. While Dr. Atlas has credentials which are immense and impressive,  Dr. Atlas is a neuroradiologist and as such is an expert in magnetic resonance imaging, but Dr. Atlas is not an epidemiologist.  He is offering what I assume are his honest opinions, but as a neuroradiologist, he is not credentialed in the proper medical field.

A power supply engineer is not the person I would turn to for expertise in 5G microwaves. Similarly, when  I had my last heart attack, I did not want my attending physician to be a highly qualified dermatologist.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is an epidemiologist from whom Trump seemingly does not want to hear.

President Reagan made very much the same mistake with regard to anti-missile defenses and "Star Wars". Wanting to be told that the system would work, he accepted input from Dr. Edward Teller that x-ray lasers suitable for satellite deployment would be imminently available.  It was precisely what President Reagan wanted to be told.

Dr. Teller was a world renowned theoretical physicist with impeccable credentials, but Dr. Teller was totally wrong in what I assume were his honestly expressed  statements to President Reagan. Dr. Teller was not an expert in electro-optics just as Dr. Atlas is not an expert in epidemiology.

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."  -  Ascribed to George Santayana, philosopher, 1863 - 1952.