waagnfnp

[Note: I’d love to credit the source of this image, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where I found it!]

The plan was for the WAAGNFNP blog to run for one year, and it saddens me to inform you that we’re not quite going to be able to meet that goal.

I’d like to offer my sincerest thanks to my chief blog co-admins christian h. and JP Stormcrow for all their support, hard work, and friendship. Equally heartfelt thanks to James Killus and Kiera who stepped in to help when we needed them most.

To everyone who contributed posts: beyond thanks, let me just say that I’m so proud of the quality of what we’ve been able to do here and so touched by your participation that it feels like a mini-GNF going off in my heart.

To everyone who participated in the comments and made this so much fun, and to everyone who just lurked: thanks for being here in any way that you were. (Never forget: Gojira sees all!)

And although real-world life (stupid day jobs!) may be impeding on blog life, we assure you, as 3Tops is our witness, the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party lives on!

Oaktown Girl
Minister of Justice
WAAGNFNP

[Note: In light of the enormity of the firestorms happening in Southern California, we are reposting James’ Firestorms for those who missed it previously, or who have something more or new to say. And we send our very best wishes to those suffering from and fleeing from the flames.
-Oaktown Girl, Minister of Justice, WAAGNFNP]

So fires always produce an updraft. In truly big fires, the question becomes how the updraft interacts with the local weather. If the local winds are stronger than the updraft, and the fire is big, uncontrolled, and uncontained, you have a conflagration. If the fire creates its own winds, you have a firestorm.

*****************

If you try to light a match under micro-gravity conditions (we all got used to “zero-g” so some smarty pants had to go and call it “micro-gravity”) and just hold it in one place, it will self-extinguish. The match will use up enough of the oxygen in its surrounding volume of air to extinguish the flame. It doesn’t have to use up all the oxygen, either; most flames go out in air that still has enough O2 in it for people to breathe—barely.

Depending on the fuel, (e.g. hydrogen needs less oxygen to burn than methane does), the usual figure given is that 14%-16% oxygen is needed to sustain a fire. People can manage on a bit less; Biosphere II dropped below 14% before they pumped in some additional O2, but they didn’t have to contend with elevated CO2 levels; in fact, what they’d been losing was CO2, by absorption into their nice new concrete structure, with bacteria converting soil organics and O2 into CO2. They’d had a bit of a “slow burn.”

Your basic candle flame is fed fresh air by gravity, specifically, the air coming in to replace the hot gases that have become lighter than air in the hot flame. That’s called the “fire draft” and fireplaces exist to direct the fire draft upwards, so the smoke doesn’t choke the people warming themselves by the fire. The chimney/flue of the fireplace also accelerates the fire draft if you build it right, and both Ben Franklin and Benjamin Thompson, (Count Rumford), invented some tricks that are still in use.

So fires always produce an updraft. In truly big fires, the question becomes how the updraft interacts with the local weather. If the local winds are stronger than the updraft, and the fire is big, uncontrolled, and uncontained, you have a conflagration. If the fire creates its own winds, you have a firestorm.
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[Note: The Ministry of Justice had long been seeking a handy, portable, and effective means of “correction” and to aid in the re-education process. Bringing offenders only in need of modest correction all the way to MOJ HQ was neither cost nor time effective. We were therefore ecstatic when Party Patriot, Kiera, stepped forward a few months back and introduced The Trunk.
- Oaktown Girl, Minister of Justice.]

Howdy, folks. It’s your MOJ Sheriff Kiera, here to give you the lowdown on the criminal justice system – WAAGNFNP-style.

Basically, a crime in our community is whatever the Minister of Justice says it is. Since she is personally guided by Gojira and advised by 3Tops, I’m not going to question that (and I strongly suggest that you don’t either). Now, we all know that in an ideal blog, if you do the crime, you do the time. Here in WAAGNFNP land, “time” consists of being put in THE TRUNK, or in the case of repeat offenders, being RETRUNKED. In the case of someone the Minister of Justice thinks might be about to commit a crime (or for general attitudinal adjustments): PRE-TRUNKED.

Now, what is THE TRUNK, you ask? Well, it’s a trunk, of course, on a mid-sized car…at the moment, a Kia Optima. Why is this punishment? After all, a Kia’s trunk is fairly roomy so far as car trunks go. Sure. But you have to share that space with the Sheriff’s “stuff” (and sometimes a few rather large eggs – more on that later). Okay, so it’s a little crowded, big deal, you say. Ah…but that’s only half the punishment. The other half is the location of THE TRUNK.

THE TRUNK, and the car that it’s attached to, is normally parked almost dead center in the State of California. When people think California, they usually think palm trees, cool breezes, and surfing. But that’s only on the coast. This is the Central Valley, also called the San Joaquin Valley, which, before a massive irrigation system made it agriculture central, was divided between a desert (low desert) and the snow covered mountains (high desert) of the Sierra Nevadas…the range that ends in “Death Valley”. In the Sheriff’s part of the Central Valley, only 15 minutes of travel separate the two, making it very convenient for all-season correctional TRUNKING.

What does this mean to WAAGNFNP criminals?
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I had what you might call a rude awakening on a recent trip to San Diego where I enjoyed my first trip ever to the San Diego Zoo.

During the visit, we took the bus tour that gives you highlights of all of the species the zoo boasts, and provides what turns out to be a great deal of information on endangered species and conservation. I was shocked out of my complacency when the guide spoke about one critically endangered species that they had brought back from the brink of extinction. She said that they now had 14 breeding pairs that they would love to return to their natural habitat…if that natural habitat still existed.

These animals (some kind of grazing mammal that resembled a cross between an antelope, a goat, and a cow – I was so surprised by her statement that I’ve totally spaced on the name) are living in a tiny re-creation of their original ecosystem, and to keep the herd viable, are traded back and forth between other zoos, wild animal parks and refuges. There is no available habitat that they can be returned to because of the encroachment of man.

I’d always thought that the biggest danger that man posed to this planet was through pollution, waste of natural resources, and the byproducts of technology. Not so.
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In his intriguing, if overly verbose, article on “Capitalist democracy: elective affinity or beguiling illusion” (Daedalus, Summer 2007, pp. 5-13), John Dunn states:

“This much is clear: while in America, Tom Paine and James Madison both imagined that that a commercial society could coexist happily with a representative republic, others elsewhere, from Filippo Buonarroti and the first Duke of Wellington in the 1830s to the Guild Socialist G.D.H. Cole in the 1920s, were just as certain that the inequalities generated by the market economy were incompatible with a truly democratic republic. (p. 5)

To this latter position I would add not only generated but sustained for the benefit of some over others. In the article, John Dunn mentions aristocracy and monarchy as counterpoints to democracy, but fails to follow up on oligarchy, the far more relevant (in my opinion) form of aristocratic “ruling” behavior in a capitalist democracy, and a problem in Greek and Roman times as well. Can a group of leaders so constituted as to view their interests (esp. economic) as either constitutive of or superior to the general public be entrusted with power in a democracy?
Continue Reading »

New blog banner by longtime friend of the Minister of Justice, Serafin.

Comments welcome.

If you try to light a match under micro-gravity conditions (we all got used to “zero-g” so some smarty pants had to go and call it “micro-gravity”) and just hold it in one place, it will self-extinguish. The match will use up enough of the oxygen in its surrounding volume of air to extinguish the flame. It doesn’t have to use up all the oxygen, either; most flames go out in air that still has enough O2 in it for people to breathe—barely.

Depending on the fuel, (e.g. hydrogen needs less oxygen to burn than methane does), the usual figure given is that 14%-16% oxygen is needed to sustain a fire. People can manage on a bit less; Biosphere II dropped below 14% before they pumped in some additional O2, but they didn’t have to contend with elevated CO2 levels; in fact, what they’d been losing was CO2, by absorption into their nice new concrete structure, with bacteria converting soil organics and O2 into CO2. They’d had a bit of a “slow burn.”

Your basic candle flame is fed fresh air by gravity, specifically, the air coming in to replace the hot gases that have become lighter than air in the hot flame. That’s called the “fire draft” and fireplaces exist to direct the fire draft upwards, so the smoke doesn’t choke the people warming themselves by the fire. The chimney/flue of the fireplace also accelerates the fire draft if you build it right, and both Ben Franklin and Benjamin Thompson, (Count Rumford), invented some tricks that are still in use.

So fires always produce an updraft. In truly big fires, the question becomes how the updraft interacts with the local weather. If the local winds are stronger than the updraft, and the fire is big, uncontrolled, and uncontained, you have a conflagration. If the fire creates its own winds, you have a firestorm.
Continue Reading »

This post is about the GNF. That is to say, it is at one and the same time, silly, serious, sacred, and utterly beyond mortal comprehension. It tells about a remarkable event that became manifest on 4 December 2006 in the sacred habitat of 3Tops.

As you know, her most sublime visage is outside the East portal of Bergen Tunnel in Jersey City. Here’s a shot of the tunnel I took just s few days ago:

I was in that area on 4 December taking photographs just before sundown. I was standing near the mouth of the tunnel and looked in, as I had done many times before. This time I saw, to my great surprise, a yellow light shining some undetermined distance inside the tunnel, like this (note also the white light coming in from the far end of the tunnel, the Western end):

Please excuse the blur. I was far enough inside the tunnel that the light was fairly dim. I had no tripod to steady my hand for a long exposure, so things are a bit blurry. But the essential phenomenon is clearly visible: There is a light shining within the tunnel at some undetermined distance. I’d been to this tunnel several times, walked inside it too, and this was the first time I saw that light. Couldn’t figure out what it was, but guessed - against all logic - that there might be some kind of air shaft through which light was entering. (If THAT was it, then why hadn’t I seen it before? That question didn’t occur to me.)

So I walked into the tunnel to investigate, figuring that when I got below the shaft I would take a shot up through it. No shaft appeared. I did take this shot once I’d gotten well inside the tunnel to the point where the light seemed to hit the tunnel floor - say 50 or 60 yards.

You can see my shadow in the middle. Look how long it is. Count the number of ties my shadow crosses. Well, doing that’s difficult, they blur together further out and, of course, the shadow doesn’t start with my feet, more likely somewhere near my knees. But there are a goodly number of ties there, at a distance of, say, 16 inches from center to center. Whatever light that is, it’s hitting me at an oblique angle. It can’t possibly be coming in from an overhead shaft. It must have been coming in from behind me. But what light could that be? There are no street lights or other artificial lights in the area.
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About two weeks ago (I’m writing this on 23 July 2007) I was checking my Flickr account to see if anyone had commented on any of my photos. I hit paydirt. One PLASMA SLuGS (red ribbon for WAR} (yeah, all of it, including the little twiddly brace at the end) had made the following comment about one of my graffiti photographs: “please if u dont mind tell me where n how to get here.” Bingo!

As some of you party loyalists may know, I’ve been photographing local graffiti since last Fall. The visage of our fine and noble 3Tops is, in fact, one of the grafs I’d found, not to mention other WAAGNFNP notables, such as Toothy. Grafs, however, are generally illegal, and the people who paint them don’t leave contact information on them. Thus, while I now have hundreds, thousands even, of photographs of grafs within a mile or so of my apartment, I don’t know who painted them. And, since I have no roots in the area, I’ve got no social network through which I can track them down.

That’s one of the reason I’d started posting my photos to Flickr. I figured that some of the writers (a term of art) would see them and perhaps, one day, one of them would contact me about them. SLuGS is the first.

Of course, I told him where the picture was taken - in Jersey City, about a mile in from the Holland Tunnel near the old Bergen Tunnel. I also offered to take him on a tour of the local grafs. He took me up on my offer and showed up that Sunday afternoon with his wife, a backpack full of spray paint, and a Canon single-lens reflex camera. I revved up Google Earth and showed them where we were, where the grafs were, and off we went, with the intention of going into the Erie Cut.

On the way there SLuGS did a little painting, with both his wife and I snapping pictures:

That’s the SLuG, the identifying mark that he uses instead of the nickname that most writers use. It’s painted on the base of one of the columns supporting I78 as it comes down off the Jersey Heights (or the Jersey Palisades) and feeds into the Holland Tunnel. He’s done thousands of these here and there, mostly I’d guess in the New York City area, but other places as well. He’s been to Amsterdam and he’s made cooperative arrangements to get the PLASMA SLuG up all over.

Here’s an action shot:
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