xkcd: Range Safety

[Lynn McGuire]

xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/

I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

Lynn

[Paul S Person]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Or a Range Mischief Officer?

Post by Lynn McGuire
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

[Dimensional Traveler]

Post by Paul S Person
On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Or a Range Mischief Officer?

How about the government agency from a 1940s-50s era short story who's
purpose was to sabotage and slow down the rest of the government because
it had become too efficient and fast so the voters didn't have time to
give input on bills before they were made law? I remember one of the
specific examples was waxing a floor to the point where government
messengers would slip and fall, delaying their deliveries.

[Paul S Person]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 10:12:20 -0800, Dimensional Traveler

Post by Dimensional Traveler

Post by Paul S Person
On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Or a Range Mischief Officer?

How about the government agency from a 1940s-50s era short story who's
purpose was to sabotage and slow down the rest of the government because
it had become too efficient and fast so the voters didn't have time to
give input on bills before they were made law? I remember one of the
specific examples was waxing a floor to the point where government
messengers would slip and fall, delaying their deliveries.

A year or two before I retired, the various bits of the IRS that used
the same chapter of the Internal Revenue Manual that we did got
together and decided to rewrite that chapter.

The goal being to actually make it usable with endless working aids
and SOPs and sticky notes and so on.

They were not allowed to do it. There was, it turned out, an office in
the IRS with its own chapter in the IRM and that chapter laid out how
the other chapters were to be written.

This, apparently, was to be as useless to the actual workers as
possible.

Instead, our group created a single computerized checklist that we
used instead. By the time I left it had not only the basic calls
covered, but about 30 special cases for us to identify and
instructions for how to handle them.

But it wasn't part of the IRM. Honor (or at least Stupidity) was
satisfied.

So the gummint agency you reference may not have been /entirely/
fictional. It may live on, at least in spirit.

[Robert Carnegie]

Post by Dimensional Traveler

Post by Paul S Person
On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Or a Range Mischief Officer?

How about the government agency from a 1940s-50s era short story who's
purpose was to sabotage and slow down the rest of the government because
it had become too efficient and fast so the voters didn't have time to
give input on bills before they were made law? I remember one of the
specific examples was waxing a floor to the point where government
messengers would slip and fall, delaying their deliveries.

I think that's Frank Herbert's "Bureau of Sabotage"
which was represented without being named in
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Matter_of_Traces>
in 1958, as described. Apparently a short satire.
Jorj X. McKie evidently appears in all the stories
in what Wikipedia calls the "ConSentiency universe"
and ISFDB calls the "Jorj McKie series".
<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?1063>

Being in addition this 1964 "novelette":
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tactful_Saboteur>

This 1970 novel:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_Star>

And this 1977 novel:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dosadi_Experiment>

[Jack Bohn]

Post by Robert Carnegie

Post by Dimensional Traveler
How about the government agency from a 1940s-50s era short story who's
purpose was to sabotage and slow down the rest of the government because
it had become too efficient and fast so the voters didn't have time to
give input on bills before they were made law? I remember one of the
specific examples was waxing a floor to the point where government
messengers would slip and fall, delaying their deliveries.

I think that's Frank Herbert's "Bureau of Sabotage"
which was represented without being named in
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Matter_of_Traces>
in 1958, as described. Apparently a short satire.
Jorj X. McKie evidently appears in all the stories
in what Wikipedia calls the "ConSentiency universe"
and ISFDB calls the "Jorj McKie series".
<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?1063>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tactful_Saboteur>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_Star>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dosadi_Experiment>

I've only seen the two novels, I wonder "The Tactful Saboteur" story has the explanation given above. Otherwise, the clearest background to the story may be the short essay "The ConSentiency and How It Got That Way" in the same issue of Galaxy as the first part of _The Dosadi Experiment."

[Robert Carnegie]

Post by Robert Carnegie

Post by Dimensional Traveler
How about the government agency from a 1940s-50s era short story who's
purpose was to sabotage and slow down the rest of the government because
it had become too efficient and fast so the voters didn't have time to
give input on bills before they were made law? I remember one of the
specific examples was waxing a floor to the point where government
messengers would slip and fall, delaying their deliveries.

I think that's Frank Herbert's "Bureau of Sabotage"
which was represented without being named in
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Matter_of_Traces>
in 1958, as described. Apparently a short satire.
Jorj X. McKie evidently appears in all the stories
in what Wikipedia calls the "ConSentiency universe"
and ISFDB calls the "Jorj McKie series".
<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?1063>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tactful_Saboteur>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_Star>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dosadi_Experiment>

I've only seen the two novels, I wonder "The Tactful Saboteur" story has the explanation given above. Otherwise, the clearest background to the story may be the short essay "The ConSentiency and How It Got That Way" in the same issue of Galaxy as the first part of _The Dosadi Experiment."

I overlooked that - it isn't listed with Jorj McKie.
<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?115900>
gives the title (in _Galaxy_ only) with a superscript
question mark (to me), I wonder why? The spelling?

[Jay E. Morris]

Post by Paul S Person
On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 17:33:14 -0600, Lynn McGuire

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Or a Range Mischief Officer?

Post by Lynn McGuire
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

Mischief went on in the control room but there was no officer
controlling it.

[Dave]

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
   https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
   https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876
Lynn

A guy I worked with at Condor Systems was in a bunker, somewhere, about
600 yards from the launch of a Delta II (if I remember correctly). The
Range Danger Officer was on site that day. They all thought they were
going to die.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

Someone in a rocketry forum I subscribe to suggested that the RSO is the
only person present who *isn't* an RDO.

[Quadibloc]

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

I'm sure you're correct. I suppose the joke is that the English
language makes it possible to combine words so that it's
as easy to express nonsensical concepts, like a "Range
Danger Officer", as it is to express sensible ones, like a
"Range Safety Officer".

Perhaps they think the situation would be improved if we
started speaking Navajo instead of English?

John Savard

[Paul S Person]

Post by Quadibloc

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

I'm sure you're correct. I suppose the joke is that the English
language makes it possible to combine words so that it's
as easy to express nonsensical concepts, like a "Range
Danger Officer", as it is to express sensible ones, like a
"Range Safety Officer".
Perhaps they think the situation would be improved if we
started speaking Navajo instead of English?

That almost sounds like an implicit claim that German could never form
such a word for some reason.

But, as I am not a native speaker of German, I do not feel like
commenting further.

[Thomas Koenig]

Post by Paul S Person

Post by Quadibloc

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

I'm sure you're correct. I suppose the joke is that the English
language makes it possible to combine words so that it's
as easy to express nonsensical concepts, like a "Range
Danger Officer", as it is to express sensible ones, like a
"Range Safety Officer".
Perhaps they think the situation would be improved if we
started speaking Navajo instead of English?

That almost sounds like an implicit claim that German could never form
such a word for some reason.

"safety officer" could usually be "Sicherheitsbeauftragter"
(person charged with safety), but because this is term with
legal meaning, it would usually not be concatenated with another
word - if specification was required, it would be something like
"Sicherheitsoffizier des Raketenschießplatzes" or whatever the
correct translation of "range" would be.

The "danger officer" would best be translated as
"Unsicherheitsbeauftragter", the person charged with absence
of security.

Post by Paul S Person
But, as I am not a native speaker of German, I do not feel like
commenting further.

Done ;-)

[Jack Bohn]

Post by Thomas Koenig

Post by Paul S Person

Post by Quadibloc

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.

I'm sure you're correct. I suppose the joke is that the English
language makes it possible to combine words so that it's
as easy to express nonsensical concepts, like a "Range
Danger Officer", as it is to express sensible ones, like a
"Range Safety Officer".

That almost sounds like an implicit claim that German could never form
such a word for some reason.

"safety officer" could usually be "Sicherheitsbeauftragter"
(person charged with safety), but because this is term with
legal meaning, it would usually not be concatenated with another
word - if specification was required, it would be something like
"Sicherheitsoffizier des Raketenschießplatzes" or whatever the
correct translation of "range" would be.
The "danger officer" would best be translated as
"Unsicherheitsbeauftragter", the person charged with absence
of security.

Which term, not having legal meaning, would, necessarily, be
concatenated to another word?
:)

Post by Thomas Koenig

Post by Paul S Person
But, as I am not a native speaker of German, I do not feel like
commenting further.

Ah, if I had such wisdom!

[Quadibloc]

Post by Paul S Person

Post by Quadibloc
Perhaps they think the situation would be improved if we
started speaking Navajo instead of English?

That almost sounds like an implicit claim that German could never form
such a word for some reason.

The reference is to the fact that Navajo is one of quite a number of
languages which has an "evidentiary system". That is, if you assert
a fact, the grammatical forms you must use will indicate if this
is something you saw, something you heard about from someone
else, something that is general knowledge, and so on.

This has led to assertions that Navajo is a language that it is
impossible to tell lies with.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

Post by Quadibloc

Post by Paul S Person

Post by Quadibloc
Perhaps they think the situation would be improved if we
started speaking Navajo instead of English?

That almost sounds like an implicit claim that German could never form
such a word for some reason.

The reference is to the fact that Navajo is one of quite a number of
languages which has an "evidentiary system". That is, if you assert
a fact, the grammatical forms you must use will indicate if this
is something you saw, something you heard about from someone
else, something that is general knowledge, and so on.
This has led to assertions that Navajo is a language that it is
impossible to tell lies with.

ObSF:

As soon as Ransom had finished, Weston continued.

"Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute.
It is not by tribal taboos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued
her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to civilization."

"He says," began Ransom, "that living creatures are stronger than the
question whether an act is bent or good - no, that cannot be right - he
says it is better to be alive and bent than to be dead - no - he says, he
says - I cannot say what he says, Oyarsa, in your language. But he goes
on to say that the only good thing is that there should be very many
creatures alive. He says there were many other animals before the
first men and the later ones were better than the earlier ones; but he
says the animals were not born because of what is said to the young
about bent and good action by their elders. And he says these animals
did not feel any pity."

- Out of the Silent Planet, C. S. Lewis

John Savard

[Christian Weisgerber]

Post by Quadibloc
The reference is to the fact that Navajo is one of quite a number of
languages which has an "evidentiary system". That is, if you assert
a fact, the grammatical forms you must use will indicate if this
is something you saw, something you heard about from someone
else, something that is general knowledge, and so on.
This has led to assertions that Navajo is a language that it is
impossible to tell lies with.

That's frightfully naive. Obviously a Navajo speaker can _lie_
about the evidentiality of an assertion.

[Quadibloc]

Post by Quadibloc
The reference is to the fact that Navajo is one of quite a number of
languages which has an "evidentiary system". That is, if you assert
a fact, the grammatical forms you must use will indicate if this
is something you saw, something you heard about from someone
else, something that is general knowledge, and so on.
This has led to assertions that Navajo is a language that it is
impossible to tell lies with.

That's frightfully naive. Obviously a Navajo speaker can _lie_
about the evidentiality of an assertion.

Yes, that's true. But perhaps it might be realistic to say that
languages with evidentiary systems make it a bit easier for
liars to get tripped up. Although, come to think of it, surely
in nearly every lie told in English, there is an intended
evidentiality even if it's not expressed verbally in it, so why
should an evidentiality system even manage to achieve
that?

Absent an evidentiality system in English, it wasn't clear
that I wasn't really making this claim about Navajo, I
was just repeating a claim that some people made
about it.

John Savard

[Chris Buckley]

Post by Quadibloc

Post by Quadibloc
The reference is to the fact that Navajo is one of quite a number of
languages which has an "evidentiary system". That is, if you assert
a fact, the grammatical forms you must use will indicate if this
is something you saw, something you heard about from someone
else, something that is general knowledge, and so on.
This has led to assertions that Navajo is a language that it is
impossible to tell lies with.

That's frightfully naive. Obviously a Navajo speaker can _lie_
about the evidentiality of an assertion.

Yes, that's true. But perhaps it might be realistic to say that
languages with evidentiary systems make it a bit easier for
liars to get tripped up. Although, come to think of it, surely
in nearly every lie told in English, there is an intended
evidentiality even if it's not expressed verbally in it, so why
should an evidentiality system even manage to achieve
that?
Absent an evidentiality system in English, it wasn't clear
that I wasn't really making this claim about Navajo, I
was just repeating a claim that some people made
about it.

I think somewhere along the way there was confusion between the
definitions or usage of "lie" and "deceive". You can "lie" in any
language; what makes the evidentiary languages different is the
difficulty to "deceive". It's much harder to say things that are
literally true, but intended to create a false impression in the
listener.

Chris

[Dorothy J Heydt]

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

[Hal Heydt]
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should
the problem recur.

[Kevrob]

Post by Dorothy J Heydt

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

[Hal Heydt]
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should
the problem recur.

I always liked Frank Thorne's "Danger Rangerette."

https://www.lastdodo.com/en/items/784737-the-erotic-worlds-of-frank-thorne-5

{No nudity, just cheesecake}

[Scott Lurndal]

On Tuesday, January 9, 2024 at 10:51:38=E2=80=AFAM UTC-5, Dorothy J Heydt w=

xkcd: Range Safety=20
https://xkcd.com/2876/=20
=20
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.=20
=20
Explained at:=20
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

[Hal Heydt]=20
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited=20
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and=20
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,=20
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should=20
the problem recur.

I always liked Frank Thorne's "Danger Rangerette."
https://www.lastdodo.com/en/items/784737-the-erotic-worlds-of-frank-thorne-=
5

Then there was Nick Danger....

[Paul S Person]

Post by Dorothy J Heydt

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

[Hal Heydt]
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should
the problem recur.

IIRC, the recent Mainland China military purge was motivated, in part,
by the discovery that a lot of /their/ rockets were fueled with ...
water.

Well, that certainly makes them /safe/.

[Christian Weisgerber]

Post by Paul S Person
IIRC, the recent Mainland China military purge was motivated, in part,
by the discovery that a lot of /their/ rockets were fueled with ...
water.

Something that is unlikely to ever be used makes an excellent target
for embezzlement. Who would ever notice that there's nothing behind
the Potemkin front?

I'm reminded of Michael Crichton's _Sphere_ (because I just mentioned
this over on the German group): When the occasion arises, the
handbook for alien first contact is taken from a report commissioned
by the government, whose author is quite appalled to discover this,
because given the low likelihood of the event he didn't take the
issue seriously and just made stuff up.

[Thomas Koenig]

Post by Dorothy J Heydt

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

[Hal Heydt]
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should
the problem recur.

What problem was that?

[Mad Hamish]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2024 20:03:47 -0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig

Post by Thomas Koenig

Post by Dorothy J Heydt

Post by Lynn McGuire
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876

[Hal Heydt]
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should
the problem recur.

What problem was that?

Difficult to aim at