Posts by Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Collision vs other explaination

My bet is it's eroded from round...

Re: Sanctions @ Vladimir

I was only half-serious about it... :-)

But, look - Obama is already claiming credit for today's ceasefire agreement!

Re: Sanctions @ I ain't Spartacus

I don't even disagree with you. It could all have been played differently by Russia, still on the brink but without crossing the diplomatic line. You know, pressure behind the scenes, covert threats, overt magnanimity and concessions etc.

But the current Russian diplomatic corps seems to be unable to play these games by the Western standards. They just seem to be passing the message from "siloviki" as it is and those latter - their whole mindset is different. They are used to issuing orders which do not get questioned, they think if they paint over the stars on tanks, no one will be able to find out where they are from etc.

Of course, that didn't fly with the lawyery kind of the Western diplomatic wrangling, which only further frustrated and pissed the "siloviki" off and made them more intransigent.

"Was Putin taken by surprise, and started helping it because he thought he had to? Or was it basically instigated by Russia? If the latter, then Putin and his team are idiots. If the former, then Russia is as tangled up in events as everyone else."

I think it's the former originally but then they started thinking in terms of tactical opportunities and building up the support of the rebels. Also, these kind of things, once they start you either have to push all-out to finish them quickly and the price be damned or they will turn into a never-ending partisan warfare which will infect all around it like in Syria.

"And you can't blame the Ukrainian government for trying to quickly chuck the Russian invaders out, before the crisis spirals totally out of control."

Oh, for this I can blame them alright. Only a complete moron would not have been able to see where it would all end up. Were they getting instructions from their US advisers? Quite possibly - I can see certain signatures - first call the protesters "terrorists", then "we don't negotiate with terrorists", then "conduct anti-terrorist operation".

Re: Sanctions @John Savard

"Cuba and North Korea are hardly examples of countries with strong economies."

True. But they are examples of regimes propped up by sanctions. Both would have collapsed long time ago otherwise.

Re: Sanctions

USSR was simply a continuation of the Russian Empire. Every empire breaks up at some stage and that is always a painful process. Of all people, the Brits are in the best position to understand this as they have gone through that process themselves and not so long ago. It is also unfair, IMHO, to blame Russians for regretting the passing of their empire. But they will get over it eventually.

Also, every empire leaves long lasting cultural and economic ties between former members after its breakup. This is also the case with the Russian Empire-USSR and the special ties between the former USSR countries will remain and the West won't be able to sever them.

"Those sanctions are like e-mails from business to business asking business if, perhaps, they could do something about the shit happening. Putin is a prick, and only Russian business is strong enough to get rid of him, eventually."

Yes, this is how the sanctions are being sold to the Western public (or at least the British one) but it's totally fanciful.

Nobody in the Russian business has the power, individually or collectively, to dictate to or influence Putin. Only 3 or 4 people in the whole country can talk to him more or less as equals and they would not be affected by any sanctions.

Re: Sanctions @ I ain't Spartacus

These are all valid concerns you list. I don't have definitive answers to that, except that there is still and still will be a lot of support for Russia (if not for Putin) among the general Ukrainian population and when the economic hardships will start to bite - will even Western support for the current government keep it from falling?

"I still don't undersand what the plan was."

You are not alone. But I actually think there wasn't a plan.

The Crimea was probably an overreaction but who knows? By doing that, Russia may well have spared its 2 million or so population from the destruction that fell upon Donetsk and Lugansk.

There I also don't think that Putin expected Kiev to shell the cities, I think he was confident they will negotiate once Poroshenko got through the elections. I thought so myself actually, or hoped.

Re: Hurting russia is easy

"Russia can't sell that gas to anyone else, as it hasn't got the LNG infrastructure or pipelines to anywhere else yet. That's a huge chunk of its exports and government revenue at risk. It would cause a massive depression in their economy, which is already in recession."

That is true but that is going to happen, sanctions or not. Russia let Gazprom be totally complacent and blind to the possible market risks and it will have to pay for this short-sightedness.

"Were I the Ukraine government I'd think about mining the gas pipeline, Russia stopped delivering to them 2 months ago anyway. As well as threaten to blow up the Nordstream pipeline, which carries most of the rest."

Well, if there is a sure way of getting Russian tanks rolling over Khreschatik Avenue in Kiev ASAP - that's certainly it.

Re: Sanctions @ I ain't Spartacus

"Sanctions can work. Iran is negotiating over its nuclear program, because it wants access to Western finance and capital markets - and access to parts for its oil industry."

Arguably, the Iranian sanctions roll-back is happening because the US has reached the end of the line with them. Their maneuvering space has shrunk to the choice between going to war with Iran or finding a way to lift the sanctions without losing the face.

Re: Sanctions @Vladimir Plouzhnikov

"It's a shitty situation caused by an arrogant prick (and it doesn't reflect well on the average russian IMO, if the prick Putin's getting more popular)."

This may be a subject for a protracted philosophical discussion on the nature of humanity and how easily it often allows itself to be seduced by a combination of misplaced pride, sense of inferiority and interference by outsiders but that is our nature and it must be taken into account by the leaders if they want to claim their adequacy for the job.

I only want to additionally note that the Western public is in no way immune to any of that and in my experience has grown much more susceptible to propaganda and manipulation than the Russians. The public in Russia may be currently drunk on the resurgence of the national idea but even so, they are generally able to tell propaganda when they see it much more readily than people in the West.

"do we pick 1 or 2 or 3, and if 3 then which sub-option of 3?"

About your multiple choice decision tree - I may obviously be biased due to my connections to both Russia and Ukraine but here is my reading of the situation:

Russia suspects, for good reasons, that the coup in Ukraine has been influenced and sponsored by the West, mostly by the US. Ukraine is a highly corrupt country that never really built the proper state institutions since its formation after the exit from the USSR. You pays your moneys, you gets your votes - hence the US admitting spending over USD 5 billion on "democracy" in Ukraine is a bit of a giveaway.

Russia's main concern, also well justified, is that Ukraine will be absorbed into NATO which will disrupt the whole Russian military structure and doctrine as it will suddenly bring an expansionist military alliance to its totally unprotected border with Ukraine.

Ukraine is a deeply divided country with some Western regions formerly being parts of or aligned with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland etc and the East formerly being a part of Russia. There are cultural and religious divisions. Since the break up of the USSR the country was largely dominated by "oligarchs" from the East. With the Western support, the Western "oligarchy" will wage a business war of revenge (confiscating assets etc) on their Eastern rivals, which will possibly result in a protracted civil strife. Nobody wants that on their border, Russia being no exception.

People in the West are all hung up on Putin but it needs to be understood that no Russian government (Putin, USSR, Czarist) would have sat on their hands simply watching the situation developing.

Russia will not let go of Ukraine for the reasons I outlined and sanctions will not deter it, therefore, the only practical solution to this is for the government in Kiev to stop their "anti-terrorist operation" (which is a disgrace by all accounts) and negotiate with the East and with Russia a settlement. Quite what that might be I don't know, but it will consist of some concession on autonomous powers, some guarantee of retaining influence by the East-Ukrainian "oligarchs" and some undertakings to Russia that Ukraine will not be joining NATO.

Re: "We've all done these things"

But I have no embarrassing bits!

I mean, all bits are objects of equal pride and joy!!1!

Re: So does this mean...

Correction: you will know it's there when the house next door is suddenly flattened and then you hear the sonic boom :-)

Re: Because thats what sea life wants!

"take down *hundreds* of incoming Chinese/Russian/etc ICBMs"

They would say so, wouldn't they? Especially to the Poles, to whom they want to flog their missile defence systems, no?

"Hey, dude, quick, see those scary Russians? They're gonna get ya! But you've lucked out here dude - I have just the right thing for ya here!"

What can I say? - caveat emptor! :-)

Re: I don't get it @Tom 64

"In the context of shkval's energy use, I can't see the relevance."

Wasn't the original question - why not shoot through the air instead of through the water? When you are in a sub at depth, this is simply not an option.

"80 tonnes of water vapourised per second?"

But it's cavitation, not boiling. You don't need to heat the water to 100C or higher, you need to drop the local water pressure below the vapour pressure. Cavitation conditions are defined by cavitation number (the lower the better). You can lower it by limiting depth, by increasing the cavity pressure (by diverting some exhaust from the rocket engine into it) and by increasing velocity (its inversely proportional to velocity squared). Then, I'm not sure it's the entire hull displacement volume of water that is being vapourised - only the volume of the cavity minus the volume of the vessel.

It appears that for very low cavitation numbers (high speeds, in the region of 1,000 m/s) and for certain hull shapes and aspect ratios the volumetric drag falls dramatically (orders of magnitude), while at higher cavitation numbers (v=300m/s) same hull volume and aspect ratio the drag may only be 50% lower than for non-separating flow.

There are additional problems, of course, such as the loss of buoyancy etc but the whole thing is fairly fascinating...

Re: I don't get it @Tom 64

"Perfect question, and one that has bothered me since I heard about shkval in a new scientist article on supercavitation. I thought it so frigging absurd assumed initially it was a windup."

Shkval was designed for launch from submerged submarines, not from the surface vessels. Its primary role was to intercept enemy's torpedoes. Nuclear armed version was to penetrate the ASW screen of a carrier group. Makes sense in both cases.

"you're displacing about *80 tonnes of water a second*"

In supercavitation you are not displacing the water physically - you are evapourating and recondensing it behind you. Apparently, it takes less energy for that than shoving it away.

"It turns out shkval means 'squall' in english. I've noticed a lot of russian words do seem very closely related to english ones and I've no idea why"

In this case it is quite simple - when the Russian Navy was being developed by Peter the Great, he sent the future officers in great numbers for training abroad, in particular, to Britain - to train with the Royal Navy. So a lot of Russian naval terms have been borrowed from the British and Dutch terminology.

Re: And of course: To hell with the ocean environment

"We have issues of human and planetary survival at hand."

Yeah, that's why we want more scientific advances, not fewer, no?

Re: Bovine

It doesn't move relative to the cavity. When they talk about supersonic they really do mean supersonic in water. This is basically a marine warp drive.

You'll have to unlock it first.

Re: Look at the BIOS

Overwritten 25ms after the Big Bang?

I don't suppose the universe is designed for multiple reboots. Let's hope we can avoid BSOD here...

I like to look at the entire Universe as possibly being one big computer simulation.

In fact, simulation or not, the Universe does seem to act as a computer. Especially, if quantisation of space-time is confirmed it will make it that much more plausible.

Basically, if you count each quantum number of each particle as a bit of information and you define a few simple laws on how they are to interact, then you can create a grid of discrete cells - be they a processor registers or memory cells, depends on your budget - and calculate each local interaction every cycle, which on macro basis will automatically produce "observable" Universe which we see today.

The speed of light will then be defined by the maximum processing speed of this machine and if mass is the quantity taking most power to process, then as you calculate a group of fast moving particles as they go from cell to cell, if the particles have a rest mass they will become more and more difficult to calculate and you will start skipping cycles on their interaction in favour of keeping them moving. So, they will look to the outside cells as if their local time has slowed down in relativistic fashion, so to say.

This is just a thought experiment. I am not crazy enough (yet) to claim this is the actual reality. But it might be. Or not.

I'll watch this space in the meantime...

Oi, look - my eyes are just hologram...

Or is it a twist in my sobriety?

Seems just as appropriate...

Re: The contract

Bring to an orgasm 98% of the time? It's a typo.

Five sigma confidence to qualify, no less.

Re: this sounds like a "you won a $1M dollar, just sign here" deal

I'd go there for a holiday. Just to check it out, you know. But I don't think I'll get the permission from me wife...

Re: cannibalism

They should be careful then.

With the first drop of my blood in their veins their faces might convulse in vulgar pains...

Re: Department of H and HS is looking for national security threats?

What do you mean - "no longer"?