We’re a Nielsen family!

If you’ve never watched television or you’ve lived under the proverbial rock for sixty years, you might have no idea what a Nielsen family is. Nielsen is a company that samples television viewing households to determine what television shows Americans are watching. Nielsen describes a Nielsen family as panelists that enrich their “… view of the marketplace and ensures that our research accurately reflects consumers' shopping and media habits.”

According to Nielsen Ratings TV History, the ratings service originated in 1930 to measure radio program audiences. In 1950, it evolved to measure television audiences.

Usually ratings are collected via metered sets in selected households. The target family receives a device that connects to the television set that transmits actual channel selections to the Nielsen headquarters on a daily basis.

A second collection method is the TV Viewing Diary. We received the TV Viewing Diary. It asks a variety of questions including race, gender and age of the household viewers, number of TVs in the home and method of broadcast signal (cable, dish or over-the-air).

The diary requests that we capture our viewings for seven, twenty four hour days. Nielsen wants to know who’s watching which program on what station. Also, if the TV is on and no one is watching, they’d like us to record this as well.

There’s a section at the back of the diary to list program information for shows that are recorded for viewing at a later time. If we watch a recorded show, we list it in the viewing log and annotate it as a recorded program. (We’re even listing shows we watch on Netflix and Hulu.)

We’re completing the diary for our most used television in the house. Nielsen asks that we keep a separate log of programs viewed on the other TVs (I created a spreadsheet to collect this data).

On the surface it’s seems like a lot of work, but it’s not.

When we received the diary, I thought of an episode of Night Court (I am unable to find the episode number) where a guy was on the witness stand and revealed that his family was a Nielsen family. He was upset because he and his family went out for the evening and didn’t watch a particular program. He believed his night out was the reason Punky Brewster was cancelled.

I’m not that obsessive, though I’ve been accused of taking the survey too seriously. It’s just that I subscribe to the theory that garbage in equals garbage out, so I’m trying to make the diary as accurate as possible. Besides, maybe my participation could get the Kardashians cancelled. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Has anyone else been involved in a Nielsen survey? Let me know how it went for you.

New Spy Plane on the Drawing Board

Courtesy Google Images

Fans of Marvel Comics’ X-Men are familiar with the team’s SR-71 Blackbird. However, marvel-movies.wikia.com surmises that movie franchise dropped the term Blackbird in favor of the X-Jet. X-MEN FILMS speculates that the X-Jet will make an appearance in X-Men: Days of Future Past due out in May, 2014.

When I was a kid, I didn’t realize the Blackbird was a real plane. I just thought it looked really cool!

The Blackbird is an actual stealth aircraft developed by Lockheed Martin. According to Lockheed Martin.com, the Blackbird (so named because it was painted black to help dissipate heat) was conceived by a team of developers at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works® in Burbank,California.

The first iteration of the Blackbird is the A-12 which had its maiden flight on April 30, 1962.

The next production model Blackbird is the SR-71 whose maiden flight was December 22, 1964.

SR-71 Courtesy Google Images

According to U2SR71Patches.co, the Blackbirds operated out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan from March 9, 1968 to January 21, 1990. When I was stationed in Japan in 1982 I never had an opportunity to view an SR-71 up close. But the locals always seemed to know when a bird was preparing for takeoff. Many Japanese lined the outer perimeter of the runway, off base property, and photographed a plane as it launched.

SR -71.org says the SR-71 had its final flight in October 1999.

Skunk Works® is in the process of developing the next generation of spy plane, and you know what? It looks really cool!

SR-72 Courtesy Google Images

Lockheed has dubbed the plane the SR-72. ExtremeTech.com reports that conceptually, it will about 100 feet long, unpiloted, and reach an altitude of 80,000 feet. It will be capable of traveling at 4,567 miles per hour—Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound. Holy crap! That’s faster than anything that isn’t attached to a rocket.

I can envision the military applications. The obvious use being aerial reconnaissance. ExtremeTech.com states that if the SR-72 were deployed aboard aircraft carriers, we’d have what would essentially be a giant drone that could provide surveillance of any part of the world in about an hour. The technology used to propel the SR-72 has the capability of reaching Mach 10 (7,612 miles per hour). The website also reports that Lockheed hasn’t secured funding, but still hopes to have one built for test by 2030.

I wonder if there are commercial applications. Imagine getting from Los Angeles to New York in about 30 minutes … that … would be cool!

What do you think? What applications are there for a craft that can travel at Mach 6 and beyond? Is it possible an SR-72 will replace the SR-71 X-Jet in future X-Men movies?

Copper to Clean Smog

According to Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, there are 100 easy ways you can improve the environment. For example, to conserve energy in your home you can use warm or cold water instead of hot water to wash clothes, or you can lower the thermostat on your water heater to 120 degrees.

Remember my October 2012 post Not Captain Kangaroo’s Green Jeans? I wrote about the possibility of wearing jeans sprayed with microscopic particles of titanium oxide as a pollution buster. Researchers are continuously attempting to find innovative ways to cleanse the environment. The jeans are still under research but we may be changing the way we dress in the future.

So what’s the latest idea?

Treehugger.com reports that Dutch artist/designer, Daan Roosegaarde, has developed a device that he hopes will suck the smog from the atmosphere. His idea is to bury copper coils in the ground and use an electrostatic charge to attract the smog particles to the coils. Gizmodo.com states that once the particles are pulled from the sky they can be compressed and repurposed.

The theory is sound. According to Pocket-lint.com, scientists at the University of Delft in The Netherlands have cleared the air of one cubic meter in a five cubic meter room.

Beijing smog – Courtesy Google Images

It would be impractical to try and build a smog-sucker large enough to clear an entire city. Therefore, Roosegaarde plans to install the system in a section of a city park in Beijing, China, and clear a small sector of Beijing sky. According to Gizmodo.com, the device should be able to create a 22,500 square foot area of clear sky and Roosegaarde, hopes it will show the locals what life could be like without the pollutants.

Beijing is among the smoggiest cities in the world. I’m sure any relief would probably be welcomed.

How cool would it be if technology advanced to the point where we could build super-sized smog suckers? I know this isn’t a solution to the problem of air pollution but in combination with prevention efforts, maybe my grandkids’ kids won’t have to worry about wearing respirators to play outside.

I wonder, could the copper coil/electrical currents have adverse effects on other parts of the environment? Is clean air a pie in the sky dream?