Lipids

A primer.

Interesting, and slightly dismaying. If true, the HDL/LDL ratio isn’t really important; all that really matters is the absolute LDL level. Still, a high ratio and reduction of total would reduce LDL. But the most important takeaway from a dietary standpoint is that you are not what you eat — there is little correlation between cholesterol intake and serum cholesterol. A failure to understand this over the decades has resulted in a lot of terrible dietary advice, including the kind that probably killed my father in the seventies.

OWS

In honor of their latest vileness, @SooperMexican has started a new hash tag: #HonestOWSchants

Plus, he’s hijacked another one: #NoNATO

So here’s my question. How does this differ from the usual Marxist/anarchist violent asininity that generally accompanies G-whatevernumber or NATO summits? It’s the same moronic thugs, and nothing new. Well, except for the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and top Democrats endorsed them.

Diagnosing Falcon

Well, as I expected, that didn’t take long:

Engine pressure anomaly traced to turbopump valve. Replacing on engine 5 and verifying no common mode. #DragonLaunch

So it’s a good thing it shut down — it could have resulted in a catastrophic engine failure in flight, something that SpaceX has theoretically designed for (they claim to have engine-out capability from liftoff, and sufficient inter-engine blast shielding to prevent fratricide), but probably doesn’t want to test, at least this early in the program. Also, they had no performance margin on this mission, so it probably would have meant an abort to a low orbit, and perhaps an inability to get to the ISS.

[Update a while later]

Here’s the story over at Popular Mechanics.

Spending Other Peoples’ Money

This is the kind of stupidity that occurs:

It didn’t make sense to buy the same size routers for a 1,800-student high school and a 100-student elementary school, according to administrators in the Department of Education’s technology division. The state is distributing 471 of the high-priced routers to schools.

“The WVDE asked if the size of the routers could vary based on the needs of a school,” said Liza Cordeiro, spokeswoman for the Department of Education. “At that time, it is our understanding that, for consistency and future expansion, the plan was to buy all the same size.”

Gianato said putting the same size router in every school was about “equal opportunity.”

“We wanted to make sure a student in McDowell County had the same opportunities as a student in Kanawha County or anywhere else,” he said. “A student in a school of 200 students should have the same opportunity as a student in a school with 2,000 students.”

Technologically illiterate idiocy.

A Successful Failure

As others have pointed out, the Falcon did exactly what it was supposed to do under the circumstances — it was a successful abort. It’s too bad that they have the three-day constraint for the next attempt. Hopefully there’s nothing wrong with the engine itself. They didn’t see this problem in the test firing a few days ago. But I wonder if there’s something about the geometry that causes the center engine to be a little higher pressure than the outer ones. If I were them, I’d be going back and looking at the pressures from previous flights and tests. If that’s the case, then the solution to this problem might be to just allow a slightly higher pressure on it.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the story from Spaceflight Now. Looks like if they have another scrub on Tuesday, they won’t have to wait another three days — they can try on Wednesday. If they launch Tuesday, that means a docking attempt on Friday, right in the middle of the ISDC.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!