Interesting things

Drying clothes in Switzerland

kenritley

Switzerland is very similar to Germany in many regards. In one regard, the washing machines and drying machines are often kept in the basement of apartment buildings.

In my case, the apartment company furnishes the machines for the use of the residents.

Here is the room with the drying machines:

In America, the drying machines blast hot air through the clothes, and the warm humid air is vented directly to the outside. It’s tough on the clothes, and it requires the machines be placed in close proximity to an outside wall.

Here, normal air is blasted through the tumbling clothes. As it exits the machine it passes through a condensation chamber, and the water is condensed out of the air. Better on the clothes, and it means you can position the drying machine anywhere you like.

Here is a snap from the back that shows the water tubes that drain the condensation chambers into the water drainage in the building:

Amazing how time flies

kenritley

It‘s fair to say I stopped being an employed, practicing physicist in the year 2000, when I left the Max-Plack-Institute for Metals Research and joined Hewlett Packard Consulting & Integration.

According to Google Scholar I have published 45 „things“ that Google records in their list, most of them scientific papers but a few of them other things, such as proceedings of scientific conferences.

Nowadays, even more important than the number of articles that a scientist publishes is often the „citation index“ – or, the number of times another scientist has cited their work.  According to Google Scholar, here‘s what my citation index looks like over time:

The graph shows how many papers written by other scientists cited my work.

If you ask me, it‘s pretty incredible. Even though I have been publishing papers since the mid-1990‘s, and even though I stopped doing scientific research in the year 2000 – it seems the peak of my citations only occurred some years afterwards. There are lots of reasons for that – you have to pick things apart at the level of individual papers and collaborators – but I find it interesting nonetheless: if true more broadly, it means that scientists are not famous for what they do right now, but for what their work will lead to in a few years‘ time!

Those amazing Ritley’s: the world’s first panoramic photograph!

kenritley

Continuing the series, I am always surprised when I encounter someone who has not heard the name Ritley.

OK, maybe I am an exception – I have not yet made my mark. But . . .

Hardly a man, woman or child anywhere on the face of the planet has not heard of their stunning accomplishments. They are a family steeped in the tradition of excellence, whose capacity for profound intellectual thought is exceeded only by their talent to affect meaningful changes (which often border on the revolutionary) to the fundamental problems of global significance they selflessly tackle.

This snap is not just any snap. Now hanging in the world famous Smithsonian Institution (Record Number SIA Acc. 11-006 [MAH-3002]), in its very own case in its very own room, it is in fact what most historians universally agree is the world’s first selfie, taken during the 1990’s by Ken Ritley, using a real camera with real film, while visiting the Experimental Aircraft Association meeting in Osh-Kosh, Wisconsin:

And with this Ritley contribution, many decades ago, the panoramic photograph was born.

If you happen to one day make it to Washington DC, and if you have a bit of spare time to visit the Smithsonian Institution, just ask any docent to point you to the Ritley Room – a tiny room to be sure, but the only room in the entire museum to house just one artefact, the world’s first panoramic photograph!

One of my favorite projects – 4

kenritley

Continuing the series, as part of a large IT transformation that I helped drive, it was necessary for us to hire 20+ talented IT professionals. And add to that around 30 mostly Indian colleagues that were to join us to run the Transition and Transformation (T&T) program. And add to that at least two other large IT teams we wanted to consolidate. And because we had so many people, it was necessary for us to locate and rent a building dedicated to IT. So I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take off my IT transformation hat and put on my facilities management hat.

This blog series recollects a bit of the journey before too much time passes and I forget some of the more interesting details.

Ongoing third parties – coffee and drinks

The building we rented had three cafeterias: a large one with a full size refrigerator and a sink and enough place for seven or eight tables; a medium with with a full size refrigerator and a sink and enough space for three tables; and a small one with a half-size refrigerator and a sink and standing-room only.

This means we had a few luxury items to buy: plates and bowls and forks and knives and even miscellaneous things like bottle openers.

And we had a few necessary items to buy: fire extinguishers, first aid kits. It was also on my list to buy a portable, automatic heart defibrillator – but I never got around to it.

Being no expert in this area I really learned a lot from the professionals, especially my colleague Pascal who was a real facilities manager. We decided to explore having coffee, drinks, and even water delivered by an company specialized in this. (Yes, even water, because you get a water dispenser that must be kept current with plastic cups, a filter, plus a bottle to provide carbonated water on demand.)

The coffee service – which we later expanded to include vending machines – was an interesting learning experience for me. Essentially, you sign the contract and all the hardware and service is provided to you by the company. Additionally, someone from the company comes into the building daily to clean the machines and refill them if necessary. You pay the company on a pay-per-consumption basis. It is, quite literally, a plug-and-play service that even from my facilities management perspective could not have been easier.

Maybe pride goes before a fall, but nevertheless when I returned to the building several years later for a going-away celebration I could not help being a bit proud of what the cafeteria was stocked with, as this snap shows:

 

Testing Tweets

kenritley

Those amazing Ritley’s: the world’s first selfie

kenritley

Continuing the series, I am always surprised when I encounter someone who has not heard the name Ritley.

OK, maybe I am an exception – I have not yet made my mark. But . . .

Hardly a man, woman or child anywhere on the face of the planet has not heard of their stunning accomplishments. They are a family steeped in the tradition of excellence, whose capacity for profound intellectual thought is exceeded only by their talent to affect meaningful changes (which often border on the revolutionary) to the fundamental problems of global significance they selflessly tackle.

This snap is not just any snap. Now hanging in the world famous Smithsonian Institution (Record Number SIA Acc. 11-006 [MAH-3002]), in its very own case in its very own room, it is in fact what most historians universally agree is the world’s first selfie, taken during the 1970’s by Arlene Ritley, using a real camera with real film:

As a very small boy I remember seeing this snap for the first time and simply being amazed – turning the camera to take a snap of the person doing the snapping. “This is amazing and unbelievable!” I think I said.

And Mrs. Ritley turned to me with a warm smile, then she slowly raised her head and looked deep into the distance, saying to me – and I remember it well –  “Oh, glorious day upon us!” It seems Ritleys are always using expressions like that. “Remember this moment, my dear child, for I am calling this revolutionary technique a selfie, and I am hereby giving it freely to the world – just like generations of Ritleys have done – for the betterment of all mankind.”

And with this Ritley contribution, many decades ago, the selfie was born.

If you happen to one day make it to Washington DC, and if you have a bit of spare time to visit the Smithsonian Institution, just ask any docent to point you to the Ritley Room – a tiny room to be sure, but the only room in the entire museum to house just one artefact, the world’s first selfie!

Those amazing Ritley’s: the historical context

kenritley

I am always surprised when I encounter someone who has not heard the name Ritley.

The Ritleys.

OK, maybe I am an exception – I have not yet made my mark. But . . .

Hardly a man, woman or child anywhere on the face of the planet has not heard of their stunning accomplishments. They are a family steeped in the tradition of excellence, whose capacity for profound intellectual thought is exceeded only by their talent to affect meaningful changes (which often border on the revolutionary) to the fundamental problems of global significance they selflessly tackle.

For more than half of recorded history, the Ritleys have distinguished themselves by their extraordinary and selfless contributions to the welfare of mankind. This tradition was begun in southern Europe nearly fourteen centuries ago, by the inspired Roman emperor Licinius Ritleyus Magnus, who directed the finest scholars of that era to prepare a manuscript (the Constabular Codex) which could serve as constitution for a revolutionary new form of government, democracy. This Constabular Codex was borrowed and translated from Latin and used nearly vebatim in 1215 by King John of England, where it thereafter became more widely known as the Magna Carta. It is said to form the cornerstone of liberty and the chief defense against arbitrary and unjust rule.

The Magna Carta, an important document that transformed the European approach to government is almost an perfect transcription of the somewhat older Constabular Codex, written by the great Roman emperor Ritleyus Magnus.

Politics, natural philosophy, art, medicine . . . Each subsequent generation of Ritleys has pushed this legacy of excellence to an even more stunning degree. From the philosophical contributions of St. Ritley of Aquinas in 1428 (who, blind and deaf in his later years, communicated his thoughts to his next-door-neighbor Thomas, who wrote them down),

Shown with pen in hand, St. Thomas of Aquinas profited by transcribing the brilliant ideas from his next door neighbor, the much more famous St. Ritley of Aquinas

to the engineering accomplishments of Ewan MacRitley and his revolutionary device for sheering sheep in the Scottish Highlands (the sheep were skewered laterally through their midsection and spun at high speed, as upon a lathe) —

The very clean results obtained by shearing a sheep using the technique developed by Ewan MacRitley, by skewering the sheep then rotating them at high speed on a lathe. Unfortunately, certain physio-mechanical problems involving sheep and skewer are irreversible and have yet to be overcome.

there is no one alive in the world today who has not been touched, time and again, by the profound legacy this family has left to mankind.

And today, the tradition continues!

In subsequent blog posts I will share some revolutionary ideas that the modern generation of Ritleys has brought forth to the world.

The unbelievable Swiss blue clock mystery continues

kenritley

Continuing the series, just a few days ago I saw something.

This something was so incredible, so awful, so mind-boggingly complex that it very nearly made my brain explode!

Indeed, after seeing what I saw – and not being able to un-see it – I was forced to dismount my motorcycle and spend several long minutes in a hyper-catatonic state, until my brainwaves recovered.

And what did I see, you may ask?

Out in the middle of the Swiss countryside – so deep and far away from civilization that tourists would not even think of coming here (and indeed, most likely none of them would survive long, especially if they encountered any of the tough, unforgiving Swiss locals) – I saw a tiny village, almost microscopic in size, and in the middle of the village a tiny church.

But that is not what made my brain explore.

What made my brain explode was this: a big blue clock!

Now, gentle reader, most likely you are scratching your head and wondering why my brain exploded when, in all probability, yours did not.

I will tell you.

This is not the first example of a big blue clock in Switzerland. This is not the second example of a big blue clock in Switzerland. This is an example of many, many, many big blue clocks that adorn Swiss churches!  Here is an example from a few kilometers from where I live:

And here is an example from the “old town” part of the city of Winterthur:

This is not happenstance. This is not a coincidence. This is not luck – or chance – or a following moon. There must be a reason that so many Swiss churches are adorned with exactly the same blue clock face . . . and one day, I will find out!

Cold fusion: A LESSON from Kelvin Lynn, and a STORY

kenritley

Recently, my friend and mentor Kelvin Lynn for over 30 years passed away. In so many professional and personal ways I would not be who I am today without the strong positive influence of Kelvin. He mainly taught me it’s never about the subject or how you approach it, whatever that subject might be – it’s about the people you encounter on your journey and how you treat them. Recently, one of his other mentees Marc Weber – now a world renowned  physics professor in Washington – recounted some early stories of our first years with Kelvin. What follows below is one of those stories, namely, my own.

In 1989 I was a young 24-year-old aspiring physicist who wanted to change his specialty, and Kelvin spared no efforts to help me out, to help me find a new grad school, and invited me to Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, in New York, to work for him as a lab technician until things got settled. The first task he assigned to me: help him research „cold fusion,“ a phenomenon recently reported by two chemists in Utah, in which they claimed nuclear fusion (like in the sun) could be created with a little battery and an electrochemical cell.  I always guessed it was this combination of the Utah connection together with the promise of a Nobel prize that drove Kelvin‘s special passion to tackle this topic. But I don‘t think Kelvin worked on anything without passion – and for a brief while, this was at the top of his passion list.

First, an important lesson he taught me in the beginning. Like 99.9% of the physics community, I believed cold fusion was pseudo-science: a made-up lie or an egregious goof, not worth anyone‘s time to study further. Kelvin corrected me at once, and in a stern way to let me know how serious this was: not only did he say public opinion must not influence us in any way, but he told me our job as serious experimental scientists was exactly to investigate phenomena and, if they did not exist, absolutely prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Reproducibility was crucial in the process.

Those were two major lessons I’ve carried with me ever since.

But then, a funny story for anyone who knew how fast Kelvin could think and react. As part of our experiment we built a huge water bath the size of a large bathtub, and we filled it with electrochemical cells like they use for electric plating of metals. This was supposedly how cold fusion could be triggered, with a battery, inside of these cells. All the electrical power meant that our bathtub full of water was at a very warm and comfortable 70 – 80 degrees F, just like an aquarium. So as a creative-but-still-quite-juvenile 24-year-old I thought: wouldn‘t it be cool to add a few goldfish?  They would not disturb our experiment in any way, but our laboratory would be nicer with some pretty fish swimming around in the bathtub.

Here is a picture of me, in our Cold Fusion laboratory, holding one of our most precious cold fusion electrochemical cells. I had the priviledge of helping a real glassblower create this piece, which took nearly one full day.

So I went to the pet store together with another student, Peter Dull, to buy a few goldfish. (Peter also thought it would be a fun idea.)

Anyway, a day later and before Kelvin could find out about the fish, the Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory decided to personally visit our laboratory and experiment together with a group of BNL‘s highest ranked Senior Scientists. This was the first time Kelvin learned about or saw the fish.  The Director was shocked to see goldfish in a physics laboratory – as I recall, the Director screamed more than a few obscenities! The other Senior Scientists were similarly shocked. But Kelvin did not miss a beat! In a very calm voice he corrected the Director: cold fusion had the potential to be so dangerous to human life that we felt obligated to add the goldfish, to act as our canaries-in-the-mine in case any hazardous radiation was released!  Of course, neutrons were expected as a key signature from cold fusion (just like regular fusion).

Under pressure, Kelvin could sell anything, to anyone, at any time. So it was no surprise the Director and the Senior Scientists believed this – well, mostly –  and the talk quickly changed to more serious subjects.

By the way, Peter Dull was one of many, many of Kelvin‘s students went on to have a stunning international career. Now a medical doctor, Peter worked for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and was in charge of managing the SARS virus outbreak some years ago. And today Peter works directly for Bill Gates, in charge of all immunization research for the Gates Foundation. I never believed Kelvin picked superstars for his team – I am living proof of that. Rather, a few years working closely with Kelvin could turn some people like Peter and many, many others into superstars.

Kelvin Lynn paid forward the gift from one of his early teachers who noticed the spark of scientific curiosity in a kid running wild in the hills of South Dakota.

Epilogue: The goldfish became even more famous. Turning belly-up due to cold fusion would show their lighter color side. So a simple photo-detector would suffice rather than expensive neutron detectors. Well, as Nature will have it, the fish perished rapidly. It turns out, however, they did not succumb to neutron radiation but got entangled in the propeller of the water circulation system to keep the tank temperature homogeneous.

 

 

Strange Things – 1

kenritley

Every once in a while I encounter something strange and can’t identify it or its purpose – despite a bit of online investigation.

Here’s a good example. I took this snap just outside of the medieval walled village of Aigues-Mortes in the Camargue region of southern France:

No writing on it. Facing away from the parked cars – or else I’d naively think it is some type of electric charging station. The oval bit in the middle looks to be a cover with a hinge, but there is no obvious way to open it. Even Google Images could not help me out.

GUEST BLOG: Tasks I hate to do

kenritley

A guest blog, by Arlene Ritley

Everyone has something they hate to do around the house.  So those particular tasks are often put off until the need arises, or the funds are available to hire someone to do them.

My husband would rather have a root canal then do the dusting.  I, on the other hand like to dust.  And if I may say so, I do a great job with a dust cloth and a can or bottle of spray wax.  Proper way to dust is the one chore in my family that has been handed down from one generation to the next.

But to get back to the topic “tasks I hate to do”.  I have two tasks I absolutely hate to do and that is

  • Clean the oven
  • Clean the refrigerator

AH you say.  Only two tasks you hate to do.  Yes only two as I have, over the years, delegated more of these “hate to do” tasks to others in my family.

Cleaning the oven

Cleaning the oven is easy to do now if you own a self cleaning oven.

Not so easy to do if you do not have a self cleaning oven.  What I did years ago when stoves had to be cleaned by hand, was wipe up spills with a damp paper towel.  Then when my oven could no longer pass a sanitation inspection, for example my mother or mother-in-law were coming for an extended visit; I had no choice but to

SELL THE HOUSE

I actually did this twice during my early years.

Cleaning the refrigerator

Cleaning the refrigerator is a little more complicated and one I absolutely hate to do.

Take all the food out a shelf at a time.  Wash – Dry – Put the food back where it was, throwing out expired and unused bottles and jars.  Shelf, by shelf, by shelf.  That’s only the refrigerator.  You can’t forget the freezer.  But I found a way to get the task done.

A POWER OUTAGE!

One that lasted for a day and a half.  All the food went bad and had to be removed.  While my husband bagged up the food I cleaned and sanitized the entire refrigerator, in and out.  When I was finished my refrigerator sparkled like a diamond.  Power outages happen more frequently now with Global Warming.  When and if this happens again, you’ll know where I am and what I’m doing.

The moral of this story is . . .

     . . . delegate tasks you hate to do to someone else, then

     . . . find a creative and out of the box way to do the few tasks you hate.

 

This guest blog was submitted by Arlene Ritley, an editor with the Island Moon Newspaper – one of South Texas’s largest community newspapers.

Stay in your vehicle in Texas

kenritley

I can’t think of any other state than Texas that offers so many commercial opportunities via the drive-thru channel.

Here is a drive thru bank. You stay in your car, and real people (called bank tellers) pass money to you via pneumatic tubes:

America is highly segregated into areas that reflect the financial class of the residents. So here is a similar shot at a much fancier bank in a much more affluent neighborhood:

Need to hand in your cowboy boots for a good cleaning or a bit of repair, handy if you can stay in your three-axel, 6 wheel, 300 HP pickup truck to do it:

And last but not least, it does make a lot of sense that – particularly if you are sick – you stay in your automobile while you get your medication from the pharmacy:

Sadly, I don‘t have a snap to show, but some states have quite impressive drive thru liquor and beer stores. In Pennsylvania it was illegal to buy individual cans of beer – a case or 24 cans or bottles was the minimum size you could buy – so you‘d drive your car into what looked like a garage, where someone would load the beer into your car. Never seen one of these in Texas, however.

World’s most stupidest train

kenritley

Sometimes, I see things that are dumb.

Occasionally, I see things that are really, really dumb.

But every once in a very rare while, I see something that is so incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid that I really makes me question how something so ludicrous could even be thought of by mankind, much less implemented!

And here is one of those things, a little train that runs back and forth in Terminal A of the Detroit International Airport.

Here is what it looks like from the outside:

And, not being able to resist trying out something so incredibly stupid, here is what it looks like from the inside:

Now here comes what the famous magicians Penn and Teller call The Reveal, when I tell you why this is so stupid.

Many large airports have little automated trains – actually, one of the first was probably the train at the Dallas Fort-Worth airport, which I remember from back when I was a little kid.  Airports are huge but with well defined stopping places, so a train is an ideal way to get around.

But in this case, the train only plies Terminal A, from Gate 1 to Gate 70.  That is not a big distance to walk – with the rolling  floors, I think I required no more than about 7 minutes to walk / coast the distance.  But worse that than, this train has only three stops: at Gate 1, at Gate 35, and Gate 70. Plus the train is elevated.

So that means for anyone wanting to shave off a little time from their gate-to-gate journey . . . no way they can do this!  They have to schlep their luggage up to the platform, wait 5 minutes for the train, then take it to somewhere where, unless you are lucky, walking will be required anyway.

I could think of no usecase in which this train would save anyone any real time – and in fact, most of the people riding it seemed to be like me: curious folks with a four-hour layover and plenty of time to kill doing stupid things. And I could think of no usecase in which this train would benefit the mobility limited.

My best guess: this was a project intended to channel public money to the right private parties, such as the company the makes the train.

Newest addition

kenritley

The little banjo below on the left is my newest acquisition!

My Deering Calico (on the right) is a professional level instrument, but it‘s loud and weighs in at around 5 kg.  In fact, most non-experts are always surprised at the weight, but a banjo like this sports a so-called tone ring – a huge doughnut piece of bell metal that weighs several kgs and that gives the banjo its unique banjo twang.

My new Deering Artisan (on the left) lacks the tone ring and a few other components, so it weighs in at just less than 1 kg.

The main reason for the acquisition is two-fold: For a long time I have wanted a little travel banjo that I could take with me more easily. And this style of banjo is used for a very unique – but extremely challenging – style of banjo music known as clawhammer or frailing, and I thought it was finally time for me to learn!

One of my favorite projects – 3

kenritley

Continuing the series, as part of a large IT transformation that I helped drive, it was necessary for us to hire 20+ talented IT professionals. And add to that around 30 mostly Indian colleagues that were to join us to run the Transition and Transformation (T&T) program. And add to that at least two other large IT teams we wanAnd because we had so many people, it was necessary for us to locate and rent a building dedicated to IT. So I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take off my IT transformation hat and put on my facilities management hat.

This blog series recollects a bit of the journey before too much time passes and I forget some of the more interesting details.

Ongoing third parties

I’ve worn a few different hats in my life: cook in a restaurant, forklift truck driver, landscape gardener, and professional housepainter to name just a few of the most important ones. So it is not only fun but a privilege when life gives me the chance to establish working relationships with people in varied trades.

One of the most fun people I dealt with was the head of the cleaning service company we contracted. I won’t mention her name here, but anyway she is retired. She was around six-foot five feet tall, and when she first shook my hand she literally crushed it (no kidding, I could not play the banjo that day!). She was from Stuttgart – and I lived many years in Stuttgart – and if you know anything about the passions of the people Schwabia  – and I am saying this because they are great people – then you know that quite probably cleaning is the only topic more important on their scale of life than finance or even religion!

I learned a few things about cleaning.

One thing I learned, the cleaning contract is built around a very specific checklist or work to be done (wipe desk tops with damp cloth, clean outside of refrigerator, complete vacuum of carpet, spot vacuum of carpet for visible dirt, etc.) and how often each step is to be done (daily, weekly, monthly, on demand) and when (e.g. after working hours).

I also learned that after the contract was signed, at least in my case, the cleaning company assigned a dedicated resource to handle our cleaning needs. I hardly ever saw her, because she I don’t think she came to building until around midnight. And I also learned that she took a lot of pride in her work and very often cleaned up even when it was not clearly written in the contract.

I also learned that we had an obligation to provide a rather large room to store the cleaning materials (I never consider this when I did my original planning!). Think about it: vacuum and mop. But you’ll need a huge shelf space for the cleaning products and chemicals, as well as the consumables. Believe me, there are many, many more consumables than you might first think about!

And finally, the little stuff. Like most people, I’ve used toilets all my life, maybe not always exclusively, but usually when I had the chance and the need!  Also living in Asia I became rather proficient at Asian style squat toilets.

But in addition to my role to help drive the IT Transformation, I was as a facilities manager now, the and toilets were my responsibility, and this means all of them, both men’s and women’s (and the shower).

Now here are a few things you might not think about in this snap:

Think a little bit about the consumables. The little white dispenser is for alcohol – this needs to be discussed with the cleaning company, and you’ll need a part in your contract about how often its checked. And the other consumables – and there are more of them than you think: sanitary products, bags, toilet paper, soap, paper for drying your hands, bags to line the towel basket, bags to line the waste basket – and a few more I’ll let you figure out yourself!

And although it’s not shown here, the restrooms contained a spray bottle of a scented fragrance that periodically (few times a day) shot a burst of fresh scent into the room: which scent would you like? How often should it be checked? How often should it spray? Who checks that it sprays and who replaces the little battery when it‘s needed?

These were just a few of the challenges you face when you are a facilities manager!  It’s a bit overwhelming at first, but as time goes on you start to take these things in your stride!

 

Ask Mr. Tradecraft – 4

kenritley

Dear Mr. Tradecraft, So how did you meet Ken? – Spy Plying Outstanding Operator Knowledge

MrTradecraft

Dear SPOOK.

Communist China in the 1990’s. I was doing some TA work for a Middle Eastern client – Threat Assessment, arrive early, check out the opposition. Not ten minutes out of the hotel I spotted a 6-man surveillance team! Now here’s where you fall back on principles: it’s never a Red Zone until you confirm it’s a Red Zone. So after a few harrowing, blood-curdling bone-chilling minutes I realized there was indeed a team, but following a tall, bald American, not me. So I decided to hang back and watch the fun. Nobody, not even me, can evade a properly trained team that size.

But this dumb American! For the first hour he was clearly unaware of his situation. Don’t know what tipped him off – but after an hour he picked up the closest two. And then he did something amazing: he nonchalantly executed evasive pattern after evasive pattern (I counted four!), identifying each member of the team, and in less than 30 minutes he was absolutely, positively clear.

Here’s the thing: there was something about his body language that told me he was no operator. Followed up on him (had to, really, what he pulled off was a once-in-a-lifetime event) and learned he was a nuclear physicist – and not an operator, no training at all. That explained the team: nuclear physicists in China don’t go anywhere without surveillance. I told him – or better put, I counseled him months later, in a different Asian country, over steaming bowls of Bi Luo Chun tea – he has that raw talent that would easily take him to the upper echelons of our trade, if he ever so chose. More than sad – I would have been keen to have an apprentice of his natural caliber. But we keep in touch, and through his blog I get pro bono way to give back to an honorable trade.

Note from Ken: I’ve known him for years, but I never know when I’ll hear from him. Gladly, he’s back, not sure for how long, and I hope he has time to start emptying his mailbox.

After many decades, Mr. Tradecraft remains a much-sought-after operator for the most demanding contracts with governments, corporations, and private parties alike. He has over 30 years of international field experience that span the whole spectrum of clandestine services, from cut-outs, snatch-and-grabs, bag jobs, surveillance, to wet work — much of it spent in red zones. His retirement increasingly near, Ask Mr. Tradecraft is the pro bono way he gives back to the community. If you’d like to ask him a question, please submit it to Ken – but due to obvious reasons there may be a wait of many months before he can respond to your question.

 

Bubble architecture – 6

kenritley

The French have finally done it better!

Continuing the series, this is the bubble enclosed railway station of King’s Cross in London,

As you can see from my blog post here, this attempt at bubble architecture falls considerable short of what the French were able to achieve in Strasbourg, a masterpiece.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as global warming causes temperatures to rise, we’ll see more and more examples of this, just like frogs boiling to death in water that is very gradually heated.

Modified Silvester Method

kenritley

This is something you don’t see everyday!

Well, in fact, a sign like this giving basic instructions in CPR is probably something you do see everyday, such as this sign I saw in a train station in France:

But what you don’t see everyday is the part of the sign giving instructions in the use of the Modified Silvester Method:

I’d never heard about this before – so I looked it up. It is not a version of CPR (which affects the movement of blood) but rather artificial respiration (getting the lungs to inflate and deflate).  I am not sure if this method is actually taught or encouraged anymore, and the date on the sign points to its age:

 

The landscape of milk

kenritley

I’m currently in a project where I am designing and documenting various IT architectures and landscapes: organizational, applications, infrastructure.

So while in this very “IT landscape frame of mind” I stumbled across this very interesting diagram on Wikipedia,

I think it’s just brilliant!  I’ve always been interested in the vast number of milk products – even more so after living in Eastern Europe and Western Europe and seeing products (such as quark and saline cheese) that are not available in the U.S.

And it is wonderful that someone could classify all the milk products in this way, to create a very colorful and easy-to-understand visual taxonomy.

Ask Mr. Tradecraft – 3

kenritley

Dear Mr. Tradecraft,

I landed an upcoming assignment beginning 6 weeks from today, but for reasons I can‘t mention, I‘ll need to disguise myself. Any advice? – Disguised Operator Needs Good Lessons from Experts.

MrTradecraft

Dear DONGLE, Cancel the contract. I won‘t operate with a different persona without a minimum 4 months solid prep time, 24×7.  The hair, the clothes, the look, the speech – that‘s the easy bit. But the walk is the key. We all have our own natural walk, and learning to walk differently – to carry yourself differently – that‘s the hard bit. You’ll need a minimum of 4 months living the persona full time to develop the muscle memory, and to keep it throughout any stress situation.

Dear Mr. Tradecraft,

Ken has mentioned in his blog all the different areas you’ve worked in. What is the hardest and most challenging?– Secret Person Yearning

Dear SPY, The clandestine world has many specialties and sub-disciplines, but one stands far, far apart from the others: Cut-Out: getting a physical “thing” from Place A to Place B with absolutely, positively no trace-ability. Oh, I’ve dabbled in this from time to time, and I rarely turn down a straightforward contract. But for the big stuff – the political dossiers, the nuclear plans, the CD of videos showing CIA torture scenes – nothing less than a purebred, died-in-the-wool CU master will do. A top earner in this discipline easily earns fifty times what I bring down. But it takes decades of hard work and experience to get to this level. Today, there are only three well-known international, freelancing CU masters at this level. Four, if you count one in the Mossad.

Note from Ken: I’ve known him for years, but I never know when I’ll hear from him. Gladly, he’s back, not sure for how long, and I hope he has time to start emptying his mailbox.

After many decades, Mr. Tradecraft remains a much-sought-after operator for the most demanding contracts with governments, corporations, and private parties alike. He has over 30 years of international field experience that span the whole spectrum of clandestine services, from cut-outs, snatch-and-grabs, bag jobs, surveillance, to wet work — much of it spent in red zones. His retirement increasingly near, Ask Mr. Tradecraft is the pro bono way he gives back to the community. If you’d like to ask him a question, please submit it to Ken – but due to obvious reasons there may be a wait of many months before he can respond to your question.