4:12 am and the clock goes tick-tick-tick Musings

On Bowie, Avery and Submarines

David Bowie. I’ve spent more than a few hours listening to David Bowie songs and music over the years. Trying to pick anything favourite or a top 10 is fraught with difficulty, but I’d still pick the Station to Station album as my favourite, but I like bits of this and bits of that, and I don’t like bits of this and bits of that.

What I’m not about is attributing something to David Bowie that is based on my own feeling, you know the kind of thing that goes like “Bowie showed that it was ok to be ” because I’m sure that he didn’t get up in the morning and thing “you know what today I’m all in on to give them a lift.

What I’m also not about is in depth and over analysis of lyrics, particularly to his last album. I’m sure he wrote songs as songs, and whilst they might be based on personal experiences, thoughts and events I’m sure that for the main they’re just songs, again reading into them your interpretation might be a thing, in the most though I’ll sing along because I like the timbre of the prose.

I like music, I like bits of the Beatles, bits of Coldplay, bits of The cure, bits of The Rolling Stones, Bits of Status Quo, I listen to a lot of new music from unknown bands, but I still don’t like discordant Jazz, and opera just confuses and confounds me.

Steven Avery. Making a murderer. I’m going to start by suggesting that having read, like a lot of people, numerous police procedure novels, and seen numerous films based around police procedure, that we’re all experts on the 100% correct method of doing the policing procedure.

I pondered the lack of an actual crime scene, and no clear narrative about motive, I also couldn’t figure out how the confessions of Brendan Dassey are even allowed. I thought about the almost magical finding of the key to the car, and the even more magical built in the garage.  I’ve even read about the ‘missing’ or ‘not presented’ evidence about DNA from sweat under the hood of the car, a car that had the hood replaced, apparently, to disguise it, but still had the original licence plates, and window stickers in place.

But I think, going back to my original point, I think that people over-think and have high expectations of accuracy in police procedure and we underestimate the stupidity of criminals.

Submarines. It came as some surprise that World War II German U-boats generally had collapse depths in the range of 200 to 280 metres (660 to 920 feet), their normal range being 400-600 ft (120-180 m)

Modern nuclear attack submarines like the American Seawolf class are estimated to have a test depth of 490 m (1,600 ft), which would imply  a collapse depth of 730 m (2,400 ft)

So there is Design depth, Test Depth (where they are supposed to usually  operate under normal operating conditions) and Crush or Collapse depth.

Anyway I didn’t think that 500m meters was particularly deep for a billions of dollars piece of equipment. 400 meters is the length of a running track.

I also got to thinking about detecting submarines, and of course there is passive and active sonar, either you listen for noise, or you create a nice and listen for echoes. I also though could you detect them using magnetic detection,  called Magnetic anomaly detectors or some kind of electro-magnetic sensors, or even should the submarine be ‘cloaked’ or rubberised against that sort of thing a mass detector?

I also though about what would if a submarine was just to come to a stop at a depth, and achieve neutral buoyancy. Given modern subs are only limited by the amount of food they have on board how long can they remain in one point or drift with the natural currents, and even would they do such a thing?,  I’m sure they do or have.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Seas

Then of course I thought about the local hills and counters of land around here and abouts, and imagined the submarines  in relationship to the height of the land around. Like some kind of slow speed steel blimp floating around the valleys and hills. 400 meters is quite a big hill 🙂

Then I wondered why submarines didn’t have windows, because I’ve seen Voyage to the bottom of the seas, and that had windows, a headlight and a smaller submarine that launched from a moon pool.

I’m pretty sure it’s a documentary.