Political Gastronomica : March 2007
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EPFs - and my experience in the early 90s
Just reading TPMmuckraker today and saw this article on the Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs) that were discussed in this article of the New York Times. What surprised me was the actual description of the device as seen here in this graphic (click on the graphic on the right) and my personal close experience with them.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, I was a newly minted engineer from Purdue, seeking jobs in the engineering world. I was a CS/EE and was talking to a number of companies. One of my trips to a company was to Honeywell in Minneapolis where I was introduced to the Advanced Weapons Group. I spent the day with one of the engineers who offered me a glimpse into two new weapons they were developing for the US Government and how they needed a good controls engineer to work on them. While I forgot the first one, the second one is quite familiar:
"You launch the projectile into the air ABOVE the target in a very high arc. The projectile deploys a parachute and begins its decent, scanning the terrain like a mini radar system. Once it determines its target, an explosive charge occurs behind the material and the shaping of the charge causes it to deform into a mortar-like object. This will then plunge through tanks and other defenses quite easily."
I remember the picture of the six inch steel wall that had been pierced by the projectile and how the engineer commented on how the shrapnel of the projectile was even more destructive within the enclosed environment, killing all of the combatants inside.
Suffice it to say, I did not take the job offer.
Tags: Explosively Formed Penetrators, EFP
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 3:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Florida moving on up...
I go to bed with one thought and awake to another. Reading the New York Times, I saw the following article on Florida's work on moving the date of their primary:
The Senate is taking more time to study the pros and cons, said Senator Jeremy Ring, a Democrat from Parkland who is sponsoring a Senate version of the proposal.
Still, Mr. Ring said the Senate would most "likely" endorse the leap to Jan. 29 by the time the legislative session ends in May. The Senate’s current bill calls for moving the primary to Feb. 19, but Mr. Ring said that date was serving as a placeholder while lawmakers debate the issue.
"Right now it looks like Jan. 29 would be more favorable," he said from Tallahassee. "One thing you can be sure of is that Florida will be relevant during the primaries."
Jeremy is a powerful force when it comes to his vision - I was proud to work with him in his run and think his vision on building up the back-benches for the Democrats is important. This move to bring the Florida primary up will increase Florida's influence in the process, one I also think is long overdue.
Here's to wishing the State Senate well in making the decision.
Tags: Jeremy Ring, Florida primary
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 3:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How to improve SEO/SEM without paying a dime!
Yes, after all of these posts about websites and opinions on political matters, a "how to" post. The inspiration comes from a conversation with my friend Howard Greenstein, CEO of Social Media Club who just came from a lecture where he was a panelist on SEO/SEM. Funnily enough, what he told me has been second nature to so many sites that most people forget, and do not think to improve once they have it. So, to help in the discussion, let me give you my quick-and-dirty list of "to-dos" for improving SEO/SEM.
Site Specific Improvements
These are a few of the design rules my teams use when we code candidate sites. We try to make sure that they try their best to follow them so that the page is highly search-engine friendly.
- Separate out content from style
This sounds funny, but the techies out there hear this as "no tables unless needed" and "use CSS". HTML stands for "hyper-text markup language" - which meant that the original purpose of HTML was to markup content/documents and identify what is what. For example, there is a TITLE, HEADING 1, HEADING 2, a form of quotation in BLOCKQUOTE and paragraphs (P).
The goal is to make the webpage machine readable rather than just pretty. Pretty goes into the CSS (if you look at Microsoft Word - there is something called Normal.dot, which is the source of what HEADING 1 and so on mean in your instance of Microsoft Word) not into the content. Make sure that this happens. The better you are at separating style from content, the more machine readable it is for google, Yahoo and so on. - Make sure your tags have meaning
Huh? This means that if the page is your candiate's bio page - make sure the TITLE tag says "Candidate Name - About Candidate", not just a standard template that says "Candidate Name". Additionally, your H1 and H2 tags should be appropriate (e.g. make the H1 tag be the major header "Candidate Biography" and the H2 tag be the subsections like "Candidate's Early Years" or "Candidate in the State House"). Think like a person who goes to google and wants to search your candidate's name and a particular aspect of the candidate. What would help stand out?
There are other tags to consider - but be sure to have your content in paragraph tags <p> rather than in tables with <br> tags. - Use tables for tabular data
This one is a little simpler - whenever you have table data, use a table! Think of the idea - if you are writing a document, you use Microsoft Word. If you are doing something that requires consistent table format for the data to make it easier to read, use Microsoft Excel. Same concept in web sites. - Use different metatags for each page
Again, something a little technical, but in each page, there are tags which look like <META> which are the description and keywords. Both of these meta tags are important and should be related to the content of the page they are in, rather than being the standard metatag for the entire site. - Make the words that are being linked from mean something
This is a simple one, but is so often forgotten. Case in point: how many sites have the inevitable click here link? If it said biography or "candidate X's position on global warming, the search engines would understand the relevant issue that comes after linking through. And with images that are linked onto, be sure that the alt value has relevant meaning to what will happen. - Refresh the content - frequently
This one sounds like a lot of work, but it simply means make sure your home page and your blog is refreshed with relevant content. google and Yahoo are hungry for new content - which is why blogs and newspapers are very "tasty" for google in terms of search. But in changing your content, you must focus on staying on message to ensure that your entire site is drawing people for the candidate AND the issues that matter.
And, with a blog, all of the above rules apply as well - and since blog software is essentially guaranteed formatting, you should have these rules hard-coded in so non-technical people have not a worry in the world. But, for these pages, you need tags (see Wikipedia:tags for more) for your content to help increase machine understanding of the content that is associated with the post. - Make a sitemap
This is a holdout from the past, where people used to manually build HTML pages with links to every page in the site. For the most part, few people go to the sitemap anymore - they still rely on the main navigation. But search engines are hungry for sitemaps - and go to where they are for better understanding.
For a better understanding of what they are and how to get one automatically generated for you, go to the Wikipedia:sitemap article.
Sounds funny to say, but these few steps will save you hundreds of dollars on your car insurance....oops, I mean to say on your SEO spend, and improve your ranking in the search engines immensely. Later on, I will discuss how to improve your site's relevance with external actions (getting links back to the site).
Tags: SEO, SEM, search engine optimization, search engine marketing
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Gotta love the "New York Post"
On the subway today and I happen to glance over at the seat next to me. Someone left a NYPost sitting there - and I decide to pass the time away, reading the articles. I forgot how insane this paper is (and how right-wing it can be) until I read the following article:
GLOBAL WARMING OIL BOON
March 19, 2007 -- HANOVER, N.H. - Global warming, blamed for melting polar bears' icy Arctic habitat, could be a boon to the shipping and oil industries in the far north, according to a new report.
The dramatic decrease in sea ice above the Arctic Circle means that formerly impenetrable shipping routes are now open or soon could be for much of the year, the U.S. Arctic Research Commission wrote in a report released last week at an Arctic-scientist summit in Hanover.
"[This will] significantly shorten global marine transportation routes," says the report, prepared for President Bush and Congress.
Beyond shipping, less sea ice means easier access for offshore oil exploration and drilling in the Arctic, which is thought to contain about 25 percent of the world's remaining oil and gas reserves, the report said.
But with increased prospecting for oil and gas, the report noted, the risk of spills also rises, spurring the need for new clean-up technologies.
Hey - finally, an upside to the melting ice caps! Easier for the tankers to get more oil to us and allow us to lower the price on oil (yeah, right!). Can someone please tell the editors at the NYPost that they need to get their priorities straight? I mean, really, a report on the positive effects of global warming? Well, it was a warm winter this year - and I throughly enjoyed the late snow this weekend in New York City. Did the Groundhog see his shadow this year?
Tags: Global Warming, New York Post
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 7:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
