The Great Boston Molasses Disaster

 Today in 1919, a molasses storage tank in Boston's North End ruptured sending a 30' wave of molasses through the streets. It killed 21 people.

I have  done presentations on this accident with respect to Project Management issues and comparing issues then with similar issues today. It's an ongoing joke in construction that "You can get it fast, good or cheap. Pick any two". They opted to go for fast and cheap as they had to have it completed in time to receive a shipment of molasses that was then on the way. Short cuts were made. The tank was never filled with water to test for leaks and it leaked so badly that children in the area would get raw molasses of its side. The company painted it brown to hide the molasses stains. It was the worst industrial accident of its day and resulted in urban legends that exist up to today.

New Verb in my Vocabulary

I learned a new verb today - to storrow. "To storrow" is to drive your truck into a low overhead obstruction. The term was originated in Boston where this type of accident is common to drivers unfamiliar with the city and then try to drive box trucks on Storrow Drive. One web site has a collection of photographs from these accidents and it is amusing to see the results of driver idiocy. The link to the site is here.

I was a student in Boston for 5 years and I hated driving there. The streets are not laid out in typical block fashion and nothing meets at a right angle. Storrow Drive is a main thoroughfare that runs along the Charles River and is heavily travelled by folks heading into Boston and Cambridge. If you are heading to Boston, don't drive a large truck on Storrow Drive.

USS Cassin Young

If you visit "Old Ironsides" you get the bonus of a WW 2 destroyer as well: USS Cassin Young, DD 793.

Who was Cassin Young, you say? He was commander of the USS Vestal (AR 4), a repair ship that was moored inboard of the "Arizona" on Dec 7, 1941. He was blown off the deck by bombs but swam back to his ship, and in spite of taking on water from bomb damage, he moved the "Vestal" to shallow water and beached her to prevent her sinking. He was awarded the CMH for this action. He was then given command of the cruiser USS San Francisco (CA 38) but was killed at Guadalcanal.

You can only tour the decks but it's an interesting place to visit.

Arcin' and Sparkin'

The best show at Boston's Museum of Science is the electrical show. They have the worlds largest air insulated Van de Graaff generator and they do several free shows a day. The room is always full. The highlight of the show is when the presenter enters the Faraday Cage and lets the lightening bolts zap him.

More USS Constitution

Here are some more photos of "Old Ironsides" in drydock.

USS Constitution

The USS Constitution is currently in dry dock and tours are limited. All of her guns have been removed to lighten the deck load and her masts have been taken down. You cannot go below decks due to construction. I saw this barricade and sign just outside of the dry dock. Don't go swimming here or you might get shot.

USS Constitution

The USS Constitution, aka "Old Ironsides" is heading for dry dock for a 3 year refurbishment. I posted about her on my last visit to Boston. The link is here.

I happened to visit Boston on her last refurbishment. You get a very different perspective of the ship. First of all, they have to find guys who have skills no longer in fashion. Very few people are around that have the skills to repair a wooden sailing vessel. In the museum, they had a display of all the good luck coins that had been placed under her masts in previous refurbishments. Another interesting fact is how they get the wood to repair her. They get donations of Live Oak stumps that they then use to make her new timbers.

Even though she may not be available for boarding, it is still worth a visit if you happen to be in Boston.

Book Review - Field of Prey

It's been a long wait but John Sandford has done it again with a fast paced story featuring Lucas Davenport. This time he's chasing a serial killer who has been operating for years. The hunt is triggered when a body dump is discovered by teenagers looking for a place to park. The search for the killer stagnates until he kills a cop and then Lucas gets busy in earnest. The pace of the story slowly builds as small clues start to come together and Lucas is distracted by other ongoing investigations, but once you reach the half way point things take off and you should be prepared to stay up all night.

Boston Bomber Shootout

Information is finally starting to come out about the night the Boston Police Department had the shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers. If you followed some bloggers that witnessed the incident, you know that several rounds entered houses and could have injured civilians. NBC has a story about the shootout and it is worth reading.

Boston Police Rule 303A gives the actions to be followed after the use of lethal force. Section 11 covers the requirements for a Firearm Discharge Investigation Team. As far as I can tell, if a report was made, no information about it has been made public.

If you google the streets where the shootout happened, you can see that the brothers route of escape was limited and it should have been a simple matter to contain them. Instead, there was a mad minute with hundreds of rounds being fired. Most of the injuries to police were from friendly fire. I think the lesson here is that if you should find yourself in the vicinity of similar action, get cover and stay down and when you do break cover, do it carefully.

As a final comment, as someone who went to college in Boston during the Vietnam Era and saw several student riots, I can tell you that you did not mess with the Boston Tactical Police Force.

Old Iron Sides

At the end of Bostons Freedom Trail you will find the USS Constitution, the oldest naval vessel still in commission. No, she did not fight in the Revolutionary War but she provided naval power in the War of 1812. You can tour her decks guided by a Navy enlisted person in period uniform. Sometimes the Navy assigns a class of prospective CPOs to spend a week on her for "teambuilding". Every year, they take her out for a "turnaround". This is designed to place her other side to the dock to even out any wear and tear. There is a lottery that you can enter that selects a lucky group of people who will be allowed to be on board during that operation. Although I know my chances are minuscule I enter the lottery every year.

Here is a picture of Red Dog shooting one of her canons.

I noticed something odd about the canons and approached the guide after the crowd had moved away. Did he know that all of the canons had British markings on them? He did and told me that the canons were reproductions and that the British markings were a major error made during her restoration in the early 1900s.

Red Dog at the Waterworks Museum

Grandpa took D and I to the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum in Boston. It is a pumping station that pumps water from the reservoir across the street to a reservoir at a higher elevation so that water can flow by gravity to the City of Boston. It was built before 1900 and remained in operation until 1976. If you like old steam engines, this museum has three of them that drove big reciprocating pumps. This is a picture of me next to the mechanism that operated the steam valves on the Worthington-Snow horizontal engine.

The other two engines are big vertical engines that are three stories high. If you are in Boston, the museum is easy to get to. Take the "C" branch of the Green Line to Cleveland Circle (end of line) and then walk straight ahead for 1/2 mile. And best of all, the museum is free.

Red Dog at the Museum of Science

Grandpa took me and the boys to the Boston Museum of Science. While we were there we went to the electrical show. They have the worlds largest air insulated Van de Graaff generator and every hour they turn it on and send lightening bolts arcing through the air. At one point, they had a cute girl get into a Faraday Cage and then they shot lightening bolts at her. But she was perfectly safe. 

Slide Rules

We took our grandsons to visit the MIT Museum on our recent vacation. It seems the museum had a display of slide rules and I took the opportunity to teach the boys about an instrument that was now obsolete.

Slide rules make use of logarithms. When working with logarithms, the log of the product of two numbers is equal to the sum of the logs of each number. When Napier invented logarithms in the 1600s this rule was used to simplify arithmetic because the multiplication of large numbers could now be reduced to simple addition. I don't think they teach logarithms any more. Slide rules are just logarithmic scales inscribed on a ruler. You multiply and divide by adding or subtracting lengths on the ruler.

As an engineering student, my slide rule was my constant companion. Indeed, it was one way to identify who was an engineering student. Mine served me well through graduate school in 1974. At that time, calculators were making their way onto the market but they were very, very expensive. For a while, there was a controversy about allowing students to use calculators as it may give them an advantage over poorer students who could not afford one. That didn't last long as soon calculators became cheap.

Lots of stuff was designed and built using slide rules. The scale forced you to think about the accuracy of your calculation as the scale would get cramped in numbers above 5 and you couldn't carry too many decimal places. The term "slide rule accuracy" was a common benchmark. Today, an engineer can calculate out to 6 decimal places but it doesn't mean that his answer is any better than the guy with the slide rule. It also forced you to use scientific notation in order to keep track of the decimal place. A common multiple guess test trick was to provide answers differing only by a factor of 10 to see how well you managed the decimal point.

Slide rules are no longer manufactured. K&E, who made most of them, retired their dies and donated them to the MIT Museum. Knowing how to use them is a useful skill.

Book Review - Wonderland

Wonderland is the latest of the ghost written Spenser series. The Parker family selected Ace Atkins to write these under Robert's name. It was an excellent selection because I cannot tell the difference between their writing styles when Ace puts on his Robert Parker persona.

Wonderland was the name of an old (and now derelict) amusement park that was located on Revere Beach a little north of Boston. Revere Beach was the place to hang out back in the day. Spencer's friend Henry Cimoli has a condo on the beach. Henry, and his fellow condo owners, are being pressured to vacate their homes and Henry asks Spencer for some help. As is typical of any Spencer mystery, there is much more going on behind the scenes and Spencer, along with new side kick Zebulon Sixkill, jump into the mix of competing casino developers.

You will recall that Zebulon was introduced in the last book written by Robert Parker.

Bragging Rights

The private school my grandsons attend is one of several tracked by Duke University's Talent Identification Program. Part of the program is for the 7th graders to take the ACT. Middle grandson just got his scores back. He is scoring in the 99th percentile in all areas. That means he has scores that qualify him to enter some of the most elite universities in the country - in the 7th grade! Hell, he scored a 29 in math, some of which he hasn't even had yet! (Remember, these scores are compared to high school seniors)

My wife and I have been trying to convince the parental units that the two older boys need to take a trip up north to see grandpas roots. The Boston bomber worked against that plan but now I see the need to visit a few college campuses. Watch out MIT!

Boston Bomber Shootout

Instapundit had this link with pictures of the shootout. My first thought was that if those guys had a rifle, they had a perfect flanking shot at the bomber brothers. Sadly, all he had was an non-lethal iPhone. Then I scrolled down and saw the pictures of the holes in his wall. If you map out his orientation, it's pretty clear that the shot that made that hole was fired by the police. The fact that it went through second floor indicates some pretty poor shooting by the police. The fact that it traversed a couple of walls (exterior and interior) proves how powerful this round was. The condition of the car in the driveway is further testament to the number of wild rounds that were fired.

IMHO, there needs to be a review of the police shooting and command and control in this incident. We are all taught that we are personally responsible for any round that leaves our barrel. I am surprised that we didn't have any civilian friendly fire casualties during this shoot out.

The police tell us that they need armored vehicles and special SWAT equipment to deal with modern terrorists. If they have this equipment, my expectation is that they use their armor to advance on and capture the bad guys using only the firepower necessary. But it appears to me that they substituted an extended Mad Minute instead with many of their rounds going wild and endangering the civilian population.

The Boston Bombers, The Constitution, and You

I have a Canadian friend who crossed our northern border and became a citizen. During the Clinton administration a census taker knocked on his door and wanted to ask him the myriad of questions that the Democrats wanted answered. He responded by telling the hapless government employee that he had studied the Constitution in order to become a citizen (unlike most Americans) and the only thing he had to tell the government was how many people lived there....and nothing else.

I remembered that story as I watched SWAT teams searching houses in Watertown. I understand the need to find the bombers, but under what authority do the police enter and search your house? I believe that we should have an answer to that question. I thought it was just me until I saw this post by the Bayou Renaissance Man.

What if the government had a registry of all gun owners? You can bet that the database would have been used to identify houses with guns. What if the police decided they needed to secure those guns to keep them out of the hands of the bombers? Never happen you say? Well, that's what happened during Katrina, and even though the police lost their legal case, as far as I know, no guns confiscated during Katrina have been returned.

So, if you want to give up your constitutional rights and voluntarily allow the police into your home, that's up to you. Me, I'd try to limit their incursion to no more than 2 officers instead of the entire SWAT team and I'd go with them. What you do is up to you, but you should put some thought into your reaction because it very well might happen in your neighborhood.

Gender Bending

You may have seem the recent news article about Northeastern University banning Chick Fil-A from campus because they were deemed to be "anti-gay" because of the charities the company supports. You might be surprised to learn that this is not the first time the University was involved in gender bending controversies.

Back in the dim ages of 1970, when PE was just a wee engineering student who also played trombone in the university band, a fellow student and band member learned that there was no gender requirement for Winter Carnival Queen. Upon discovering this, one Everett Nau, a solid citizen from the State of Maine and a drummer, decided to enter the competition. NUB, the Northeastern University Band, sponsored him. (The band was deemed an extracurricular activity as the university had no music major. Therefore, we students were alowed to run the asylum and did pretty much as we pleased - within limits)

To make a long story short, Everett, complete with mutton chop sideburns, won the competition and the right to represent the university as Winter Carnival Queen. His accomplishment became renown throughout the land and also landed him a guest spot on the quiz show, "To Tell the Truth".

Some people have tried to rationalize our prank as a backlash to the womens' lib movement or as an offshoot of the anti-war protests going on at that time. In truth, it was nothing more than a few students poking fun at the university establishment while blowing off a little steam in Boston's dark winter days. As a result of our endeavors, the rules were changed in subsequent years to limit the field to female persons only.

In the picture below, guess who is Everett.

 

 

Massachusetts Concealed Carry

The above picture should be proof that Massachusetts did, at one time, allow the carrying of concealed weapons. And its a good thing they did because where would we be now if Paul Revere wasn't allowed to carry this pistol.

BOHICA

I think I mentioned the extra screening we received upon departing Boston. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was inherently wrong for a government pseudo-policeman to place his hands upon a minor child. So, I fired off an email to them via the TSA website. This is their response:


Thank you for your email message.

Every person, regardless of age, must undergo screening to proceed beyond the security checkpoint. Even babies must be individually screened. However, a passenger should not be asked to do anything that would separate the passenger from his or her child. Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) are taught to explain what they are doing during the screening process. They should also ask permission when doing something that might cause concern.

Please keep in mind that a TSA is required to check the source of all alarms and to follow all screening requirements. While a passenger or guardian may decline to permit a search, a passenger will not be permitted to board an aircraft unless the screening is properly completed.

With that said, your complaint is regarding screening at Boston Logan International Airport. We have forwarded a copy of your email to the Customer Service Manager at that airport. The Customer Service Manager is responsible for ensuring that the screener workforce adheres to TSA principles for professional processing.

We monitor the number and nature of complaints we receive to track trends and spot areas of concern that may require special attention. This ongoing process will enable us to ensure prompt, corrective action whenever we determine that security-screening policies need modification or specific employees or screener teams are the subjects of repeated complaints.

Again, the TSA offers sincere apologies for the discomfort you experienced while traveling and encourage you to check the latest information at www.tsa.gov.

We hope that this information is helpful.
TSA Contact Center

Basically, you are at the mercy of the TSA when you travel.