Re: [FRIAM] vol 95, issue 97
On May 6, 2011, at 5:13 PM, Russell Standish wrote: Internet fora are ever thus. There has been plenty of modelling discussion, and other more philosophical discussion on complexity topics. But they aren't dominant :). Friam grew out of several roots, mainly the Bios Group and the 2000 Complex Systems Summer School where Steve G. and I met and began coffee meetings at the Downtown Subscription. We eventually grew enough to need a small list to decide the next meetings etc. From there it blossomed into an international list of folks of like mind. In 2000 complexity was a huge change in the way we think. Bottom up, tangible, evolving, surprise, etc all parts of the equation. On the last day of the summer school, we bought a casita here, and talked Sun Labs into my working both in Palo Alto and in Santa Fe, via the SFI business network. Very exciting! But we evolve and what was then novel is now accepted. Complexity is dropping out of the equation, replaced with a plethora of topics which seem to hang together to redefine complexity. Social networking, for example, wasn't even a buzz word then but then computational social sciences was just starting up. So we evolve. From the roots of Friam grew the Santa Fe Complex, which is very successful at forming effective and surprising projects. A project focus is complex in and of itself, but has many concerned about where's the complexity now? Go with the flow. So no wonder our conversations have also evolved. The delete key is but a click away! -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Fwd: JavaScript creator talks about the future
Re our earlier evolution-of-the-list discussion, here's the inventor of JavaScript discussing how to manage its evolution. It fits into a change at SFX in terms of how to do computing everywhere with the world's most deployed language. -- Owen Begin forwarded message: From: Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.net To: disc...@sfcomplex.org Subject: [sfx: Discuss] Fwd: JavaScript creator talks about the future From /. comes a pointer to an interesting discussion by Brendan Eich during the discussion of Coffee Script. Bottom line: get the developers involved in looking at new features, not just standard committees. Coffee Script Mozilla's Pythonic extensions are great examples. http://goo.gl/FnGne -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Firefox 4/Java Apps/Mac OSX
With the promise of better performance I just upgraded to FF 4.0.1 on my Mac (OSX 10.6.7). Is anyone experience horrible performance problems with subject combination - or is it just me? In particular: http://www.goproblems.com/prob.php3?yesjava=1id=9399 You don't need to know go: click anywhere on an empty space and a black stone should appear, then white etc. - it's taking way too long for me. Plus there should be a ghost stone under the mouse. FF v3.6 was fine. Safari v5.0.5 is too. Thanks, Robert Cordingley FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT
The videos are wonderful, and I thank Nick, and agree with his opinion. As for the Theory of Tornadoes, it seems that to date it's literally a case of God only knows! But mebbe Friam, too. I have 1/2 century background teaching grad fluid mechanics at Caltech, Stanford, and USC and have done a lot of meteorological field work, but really wouldn't try to discuss the subject. I jus' dunno. One should remember that what one sees is a LOT less than what one gets, because that's where the tracer happens to be. This I expressed vividly to my students in auto design, when we took pix of airflow near bluff vehicles on test tracks in the Mohave Desert. A'course there is a huge billowing plume that presages before, and persists long after the vehicle is over the horizon. I remind them that it was not the dust doing this, but the air, and an identical disturbance occurs invisibly whenever a body passes through air. To paraphrase, its bite is just as keen, although it is not seen! Makes one take car streamlining seriously. I actually hold patents on one of those drag shield things that goes on the cab of a tractor-trailer rig, that was developed on NSF funding at our test base near El Mirage in the Mohave. Does good things for fuel consumption. It would seem likely that the sense of the vorticity in a tornado is related to the shear and Coriolis Effect ( Gaspard-G, 1835), although which way, I know not. I was manager of a big DOE program called the Coriolis Project for three years, so dealt a little with that. Lotta spin on the ball, there, literally! For smaller scale vortical flow Coriolis does not apply. Some interesting anecdotes: In East Africa, delightful Kikuyu tricksters, stand right on the equatorial line and for a few shillings will show you the exit vortex from plastic bucket, then move it north over the line a few feet into t'other hemisphere and prove that it rotates in the opposite direction. We seen this! Well, it really does, but not because of Gaspard-Gustave. In the Libyan deserts Holy Men will attack a dust devil, with much imprecation and flailing of a broad sword - and kill it. It just drops to the ground! You can see this. With your own eyes. Allah is indeed great! According to Bagnold, a great Brit desertologist and fluid mechanicer, whom I have used for some of his results, the secret is to determine in advance what the sense of the vortex is, and then to enter it on the upwind side, at just the right distance from the core, and flail around . It works, too. Ralph Bagnold, soldier, explorer and scientist, whose monumental work I'm lucky to have and reference, was portrayed in The English Patient. Pity when one is better known for a movie than an important book! The subject of how wings work is a much vexed topic. I was interested in what Nick said, but for my part, I don't think it is like that , and I reckon the air doesn't think so either. Authors, profs, and pilots (and I have been all three) are usually wrong on this topic. I respect only real airfoil designers on this issue , and have a few honest-ta-God airfoils named after me, that can be seen on the internet and in books. They all worked much better than we expected. In fact they have carried, safely, many men and women to record heights. There's an article in the Smithsonian about the first airfoil I designed, in 195 5, that me delightfool, but authoritarian, Teutonic boss-fuhrer , Herr Doktor Oberst Gustave Von ---, refused to name after me. Well, it flew nobly for the RAF, carried nuclear payloads in the good old, bad old days and kept the Ruzskies at bay. Mebbe!. I have given up noting the incorrect theories on lift. Life too short for that, although if one restricts one's discussion to things one knows conversation gets pretty limited. I am content to simply observe what the air does, and weakly agree with it, much as my intellect may reject that pusillanimous attitude. A s an expert witness, I have frequently quoted: Theory crumbles before the Facts. Juries like it. But some years ago, while on the USC aero faculty, I decided to quit pointing out mistakes and publish my idea of the Truth. The paper (1996) is The Meaning of Lift , published as AIAA 34 th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, paper 96-1191. Funny thing is that, as a joke, I started calling it The Meaning of Life , and that has made it difficult to find by computer, but not by real people! Well, wot the Hell, for me and most of my fellow spirits up in the Big Blue, Lift IS Life! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA tel:(505)983-7728 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
Re: [FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT
Peter, Thanks for this interesting response. It would seem to be the last word on this subject, for a time. But we’ll see. I wonder if there is any chance you would make an electronic copy of your article available to the list? No reason for us all to continue to live in darkness. Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of plissa...@comcast.net Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2011 1:22 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: [FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT The videos are wonderful, and I thank Nick, and agree with his opinion. As for the Theory of Tornadoes, it seems that to date it's literally a case of God only knows! But mebbe Friam, too. I have 1/2 century background teaching grad fluid mechanics at Caltech, Stanford, and USC and have done a lot of meteorological field work, but really wouldn't try to discuss the subject. I jus' dunno. One should remember that what one sees is a LOT less than what one gets, because that's where the tracer happens to be. This I expressed vividly to my students in auto design, when we took pix of airflow near bluff vehicles on test tracks in the Mohave Desert. A'course there is a huge billowing plume that presages before, and persists long after the vehicle is over the horizon. I remind them that it was not the dust doing this, but the air, and an identical disturbance occurs invisibly whenever a body passes through air. To paraphrase, its bite is just as keen, although it is not seen! Makes one take car streamlining seriously. I actually hold patents on one of those drag shield things that goes on the cab of a tractor-trailer rig, that was developed on NSF funding at our test base near El Mirage in the Mohave. Does good things for fuel consumption. It would seem likely that the sense of the vorticity in a tornado is related to the shear and Coriolis Effect ( Gaspard-G, 1835), although which way, I know not. I was manager of a big DOE program called the Coriolis Project for three years, so dealt a little with that. Lotta spin on the ball, there, literally! For smaller scale vortical flow Coriolis does not apply. Some interesting anecdotes: In East Africa, delightful Kikuyu tricksters, stand right on the equatorial line and for a few shillings will show you the exit vortex from plastic bucket, then move it north over the line a few feet into t'other hemisphere and prove that it rotates in the opposite direction. We seen this! Well, it really does, but not because of Gaspard-Gustave. In the Libyan deserts Holy Men will attack a dust devil, with much imprecation and flailing of a broad sword - and kill it. It just drops to the ground! You can see this. With your own eyes. Allah is indeed great! According to Bagnold, a great Brit desertologist and fluid mechanicer, whom I have used for some of his results, the secret is to determine in advance what the sense of the vortex is, and then to enter it on the upwind side, at just the right distance from the core, and flail around . It works, too. Ralph Bagnold, soldier, explorer and scientist, whose monumental work I'm lucky to have and reference, was portrayed in The English Patient. Pity when one is better known for a movie than an important book! The subject of how wings work is a much vexed topic. I was interested in what Nick said, but for my part, I don't think it is like that , and I reckon the air doesn't think so either. Authors, profs, and pilots (and I have been all three) are usually wrong on this topic. I respect only real airfoil designers on this issue, and have a few honest-ta-God airfoils named after me, that can be seen on the internet and in books. They all worked much better than we expected. In fact they have carried, safely, many men and women to record heights. There's an article in the Smithsonian about the first airfoil I designed, in 1955, that me delightfool, but authoritarian, Teutonic boss-fuhrer, Herr Doktor Oberst Gustave Von ---, refused to name after me. Well, it flew nobly for the RAF, carried nuclear payloads in the good old, bad old days and kept the Ruzskies at bay. Mebbe!. I have given up noting the incorrect theories on lift. Life too short for that, although if one restricts one's discussion to things one knows conversation gets pretty limited. I am content to simply observe what the air does, and weakly agree with it, much as my intellect may reject that pusillanimous attitude. As an expert witness, I have frequently quoted: Theory crumbles before the Facts. Juries like it. But some years ago, while on the USC aero faculty, I decided to quit pointing out mistakes and publish my idea of the Truth. The paper (1996) is The Meaning of Lift, published as AIAA 34 th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, paper 96-1191. Funny thing is that, as a joke, I started calling it The Meaning of Life, and that has made it difficult to find
Re: [FRIAM] Firefox 4/Java Apps/Mac OSX
Works just fine in Internet Explorer 9. On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Robert J. Cordingley rob...@cirrillian.comwrote: With the promise of better performance I just upgraded to FF 4.0.1 on my Mac (OSX 10.6.7). Is anyone experience horrible performance problems with subject combination - or is it just me? In particular: http://www.goproblems.com/prob.php3?yesjava=1id=9399 You don't need to know go: click anywhere on an empty space and a black stone should appear, then white etc. - it's taking way too long for me. Plus there should be a ghost stone under the mouse. FF v3.6 was fine. Safari v5.0.5 is too. Thanks, Robert Cordingley FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- George Duncan georgeduncanart.com (505) 983-6895 Represented by ViVO Contemporary 725 Canyon Road Santa Fe, NM 87501 Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward. Soren Kierkegaard FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT
Peter - Fascinating. I too vote that you make available to the FRIAM alias your referenced paper so that we all can get the benefit of you wisdom on this. Grant On 5/7/11 1:22 PM, plissa...@comcast.net wrote: The videos are wonderful, and I thank Nick, and agree with his opinion. As for the Theory of Tornadoes, it seems that to date it's literally a case of God only knows! But mebbe Friam, too. I have 1/2 century background teaching grad fluid mechanics at Caltech, Stanford, and USC and have done a lot of meteorological field work, but really wouldn't try to discuss the subject. I jus' dunno. One should remember that what one sees is a LOT less than what one gets, because that's where the tracer happens to be. This I expressed vividly to my students in auto design, when we took pix of airflow near bluff vehicles on test tracks in the Mohave Desert. A'course there is a huge billowing plume that presages before, and persists long after the vehicle is over the horizon. I remind them that it was not the dust doing this, but the air, and an identical disturbance occurs invisibly whenever a body passes through air. To paraphrase, its bite is just as keen, although it is not seen! Makes one take car streamlining seriously. I actually hold patents on one of those drag shield things that goes on the cab of a tractor-trailer rig, that was developed on NSF funding at our test base near El Mirage in the Mohave. Does good things for fuel consumption. It would seem likely that the sense of the vorticity in a tornado is related to the _shear_ and _Coriolis_ Effect ( Gaspard-G, 1835), although which way, I know not. I was manager of a big DOE program called the Coriolis Project for three years, so dealt a little with that. Lotta spin on the ball, there, literally! For smaller scale vortical flow Coriolis does not apply. Some interesting anecdotes: In East Africa, delightful Kikuyu tricksters, stand right on the equatorial line and for a few shillings will show you the exit vortex from plastic bucket, then move it north over the line a few feet into t'other hemisphere and prove that it rotates in the opposite direction. We seen this! Well, it really does, but not because of Gaspard-Gustave. In the Libyan deserts Holy Men will attack a dust devil, with much imprecation and flailing of a broad sword - and kill it. It just drops to the ground! You can see this. With your own eyes. Allah is indeed great! According to Bagnold, a great Brit desertologist and fluid mechanicer, whom I have used for some of his results, the secret is to determine in advance what the sense of the vortex is, and then to enter it on the upwind side, at just the right distance from the core, and flail around . It works, too. Ralph Bagnold, soldier, explorer and scientist, whose monumental work I'm lucky to have and reference, was portrayed in The English Patient. Pity when one is better known for a movie than an important book! The subject of how wings work is a much vexed topic. I was interested in what Nick said, but for my part, I don't think it is like that , and I reckon the air doesn't think so either. Authors, profs, and pilots (and I have been all three) are usually wrong on this topic. I respect only real airfoil designers on this issue, and have a few honest-ta-God airfoils named after me, that can be seen on the internet and in books. They all worked much better than we expected. In fact they have carried, safely, many men and women to record heights. There's an article in the Smithsonian about the first airfoil I designed, in 1955, that me delightfool, but authoritarian, Teutonic boss-fuhrer, Herr Doktor Oberst Gustave Von ---, refused to name after me. Well, it flew nobly for the RAF, carried nuclear payloads in the good old, bad old days and kept the Ruzskies at bay. Mebbe!. I have given up noting the incorrect theories on lift. Life too short for that, although if one restricts one's discussion to things one knows conversation gets pretty limited. I am content to simply observe what the air does, and weakly agree with it, much as my intellect may reject that pusillanimous attitude. As an expert witness, I have frequently quoted: Theory crumbles before the Facts. Juries like it. But some years ago, while on the USC aero faculty, I decided to quit pointing out mistakes and publish my idea of the Truth. The paper (1996) is _The Meaning of Lift_, published as AIAA 34 th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, paper 96-1191. Funny thing is that, as a joke, I started calling it _The Meaning of Life_, and that has made it difficult to find by computer, but not by real people! Well, wot the Hell, for me and most of my fellow spirits up in the Big Blue, Lift IS Life! Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for. 1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
Re: [FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT
Right. Google doesn't know anything about it. Your search - *Plessaman The Meaning of Lift* - did not match any documents. Suggestions: - Make sure all words are spelled correctly. - Try different keywords. - Try more general keywords. - Try fewer keywords. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 * blog: *http://russabbott.blogspot.com/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ *_* On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Grant Holland grant.holland...@gmail.comwrote: Peter - Fascinating. I too vote that you make available to the FRIAM alias your referenced paper so that we all can get the benefit of you wisdom on this. Grant On 5/7/11 1:22 PM, plissa...@comcast.net wrote: The videos are wonderful, and I thank Nick, and agree with his opinion. As for the Theory of Tornadoes, it seems that to date it's literally a case of God only knows! But mebbe Friam, too. I have 1/2 century background teaching grad fluid mechanics at Caltech, Stanford, and USC and have done a lot of meteorological field work, but really wouldn't try to discuss the subject. I jus' dunno. One should remember that what one sees is a LOT less than what one gets, because that's where the tracer happens to be. This I expressed vividly to my students in auto design, when we took pix of airflow near bluff vehicles on test tracks in the Mohave Desert. A'course there is a huge billowing plume that presages before, and persists long after the vehicle is over the horizon. I remind them that it was not the dust doing this, but the air, and an identical disturbance occurs invisibly whenever a body passes through air. To paraphrase, its bite is just as keen, although it is not seen! Makes one take car streamlining seriously. I actually hold patents on one of those drag shield things that goes on the cab of a tractor-trailer rig, that was developed on NSF funding at our test base near El Mirage in the Mohave. Does good things for fuel consumption. It would seem likely that the sense of the vorticity in a tornado is related to the *shear* and *Coriolis* Effect ( Gaspard-G, 1835), although which way, I know not. I was manager of a big DOE program called the Coriolis Project for three years, so dealt a little with that. Lotta spin on the ball, there, literally! For smaller scale vortical flow Coriolis does not apply. Some interesting anecdotes: In East Africa, delightful Kikuyu tricksters, stand right on the equatorial line and for a few shillings will show you the exit vortex from plastic bucket, then move it north over the line a few feet into t'other hemisphere and prove that it rotates in the opposite direction. We seen this! Well, it really does, but not because of Gaspard-Gustave. In the Libyan deserts Holy Men will attack a dust devil, with much imprecation and flailing of a broad sword - and kill it. It just drops to the ground! You can see this. With your own eyes. Allah is indeed great! According to Bagnold, a great Brit desertologist and fluid mechanicer, whom I have used for some of his results, the secret is to determine in advance what the sense of the vortex is, and then to enter it on the upwind side, at just the right distance from the core, and flail around . It works, too. Ralph Bagnold, soldier, explorer and scientist, whose monumental work I'm lucky to have and reference, was portrayed in The English Patient. Pity when one is better known for a movie than an important book! The subject of how wings work is a much vexed topic. I was interested in what Nick said, but for my part, I don't think it is like that , and I reckon the air doesn't think so either. Authors, profs, and pilots (and I have been all three) are usually wrong on this topic. I respect only real airfoil designers on this issue, and have a few honest-ta-God airfoils named after me, that can be seen on the internet and in books. They all worked much better than we expected. In fact they have carried, safely, many men and women to record heights. There's an article in the Smithsonian about the first airfoil I designed, in 1955, that me delightfool, but authoritarian, Teutonic boss-fuhrer, Herr Doktor Oberst Gustave Von ---, refused to name after me. Well, it flew nobly for the RAF, carried nuclear payloads in the good old, bad old days and kept the Ruzskies at bay. Mebbe!. I have given up noting the incorrect theories on lift. Life too short for that, although if one restricts one's discussion to things one knows conversation gets pretty limited. I am content to simply observe what the air does, and weakly agree with it, much as my intellect may reject that pusillanimous attitude. As an expert witness, I have frequently quoted: Theory crumbles before the
[FRIAM] Modeling obfuscation (was - Terrorosity and it's Fruits)
I can't see that this posted, sorry if it is a duplicate Mohammed, Being totally unqualified to help you with this problem... it seems interesting to me because most models I know of this sort (social systems models) are about information acquisition and deployment. That is, the modeled critters try to find out stuff, and then they do actions dependent upon what they find. If we are modeling active obfuscation, then we would be doing the opposite - we would be modeling an information-hiding game. Of course, there is lots of game theory work on information hiding in two critter encounters (I'm thinking evolutionary-game-theory-looking-at-deception). I haven't seen anything, though, looking at distributed information hiding. The idea that you could create a system full of autonomous agents in which information ends up hidden, but no particular individuals have done the hiding, is kind of cool. Seems like the type of thing encryption guys could get into (or already are into, or have already moved past). Eric On Fri, May 6, 2011 10:05 PM, Mohammed El-Beltagy moham...@computer.org wrote: I have a question I would like to pose to the group in that regard: Can we model/simulate how in a democracy that is inherently open (as stated in the constitution: for the people, by the people etc..) there emerges decision masking structures emerge that actively obfuscate the participatory nature of the democratic decision making for their ends? FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT
Hi Russ, It's Peter Lissamen, and there is a great deal about him on google, and numerous references. Best wishes ... Dean Gerber --- On Sat, 5/7/11, Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com wrote: From: Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Cc: plissa...@comcast.net Date: Saturday, May 7, 2011, 6:24 PM Right. Google doesn't know anything about it. Your search - Plessaman The Meaning of Lift - did not match any documents. Suggestions:Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different keywords.Try more general keywords.Try fewer keywords. -- Russ Abbott _ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles Google voice: 747-999-5105 blog: http://russabbott.blogspot.com/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ _ On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Grant Holland grant.holland...@gmail.com wrote: Peter - Fascinating. I too vote that you make available to the FRIAM alias your referenced paper so that we all can get the benefit of you wisdom on this. Grant On 5/7/11 1:22 PM, plissa...@comcast.net wrote: The videos are wonderful, and I thank Nick, and agree with his opinion. As for the Theory of Tornadoes, it seems that to date it's literally a case of God only knows! But mebbe Friam, too. I have 1/2 century background teaching grad fluid mechanics at Caltech, Stanford, and USC and have done a lot of meteorological field work, but really wouldn't try to discuss the subject. I jus' dunno. One should remember that what one sees is a LOT less than what one gets, because that's where the tracer happens to be. This I expressed vividly to my students in auto design, when we took pix of airflow near bluff vehicles on test tracks in the Mohave Desert. A'course there is a huge billowing plume that presages before, and persists long after the vehicle is over the horizon. I remind them that it was not the dust doing this, but the air, and an identical disturbance occurs invisibly whenever a body passes through air. To paraphrase, its bite is just as keen, although it is not seen! Makes one take car streamlining seriously. I actually hold patents on one of those drag shield things that goes on the cab of a tractor-trailer rig, that was developed on NSF funding at our test base near El Mirage in the Mohave. Does good things for fuel consumption. It would seem likely that the sense of the vorticity in a tornado is related to the shear and Coriolis Effect ( Gaspard-G, 1835), although which way, I know not. I was manager of a big DOE program called the Coriolis Project for three years, so dealt a little with that. Lotta spin on the ball, there, literally! For smaller scale vortical flow Coriolis does not apply. Some interesting anecdotes: In East Africa, delightful Kikuyu tricksters, stand right on the equatorial line and for a few shillings will show you the exit vortex from plastic bucket, then move it north over the line a few feet into t'other hemisphere and prove that it rotates in the opposite direction. We seen this! Well, it really does, but not because of Gaspard-Gustave. In the Libyan deserts Holy Men will attack a dust devil, with much imprecation and flailing of a broad sword - and kill it. It just drops to the ground! You can see this. With your own eyes. Allah is indeed great! According to Bagnold, a great Brit desertologist and fluid mechanicer, whom I have used for some of his results, the secret is to determine in advance what the sense of the vortex is, and then to enter it on the upwind side, at just the right distance from the core, and flail around . It works, too. Ralph Bagnold, soldier, explorer and scientist, whose monumental work I'm lucky to have and reference, was portrayed in The English Patient. Pity when one is better known for a movie than an important book!
