You probably haven't heard of Silvis, IL. Back around the 1930's the locals didn't think too much of it either. When a bunch of Mexican section hands moved to the area to work on the Rock Island Line, this is where they were moved after city fathers determined that they could no longer live in boxcars in the railroad yard. So the boxcars and all went to unpaved Second Street.
The erstwhile Second Street is a block and a half long. But it contributed 84 men to WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. 8 of them didn't come back, and 1 won a Silver Star. No street of comparable size can boast of such a record of military service. That claim has stood up to rigorous research and been verified by the Department of Defense. Which is why, in 1967, it was renamed Hero Street.
The official web site goes into much more detail, especially about a monument they're raising money to build. Let's give these guys the recognition they deserve.
Saturday, May 11, 2002
Friday, May 10, 2002
Thursday, May 09, 2002
Wednesday, May 08, 2002
Affirmative action in practice
There has been some discussion elsewhere about John McWhorter, a professor at UC Berkeley. He dared to question affirmative action, and immediately he was pounced upon with allegations that he benefited from it.
So what if he did -may we not evaluate his statements on their own merits? "Well, he said 1+1=2, but can I trust him?"
Racial spoils systems are offensive inherently, but they become pernicious too when standards are bent to accomodate. I'm not sure that was the case with McWhorter. (It was true with Alan Bakke, though - his alternate, Patrick Chavis, has been maiming or killing his patients.)
Some years back I worked for a company with a highly placed black executive in the engineering department. After the Bakke decision and numerous others, I knew that this might not have anything to do with his talents. So I discreetly asked a few people who weren't known for parroting party lines. They were unanimous in their praise for him, and noted he had worked his way up from the control room. Belated apologies, Mr. Reed.
In the early 90's I went to the personnel office at the University of Illinois. I wasn't there to research social justice, but eventually I noticed that of the dozens of people I saw, I was the only white male there. Sure, it could have been a statistical anomaly....
Sometime in the 80's a relative sought a job as a state trooper in Illinois. He took a test and did fine relative to traditional standards. But he wasn't good enough for a white guy, and minorities with lower scores got in instead. Are they fine cops? Maybe so.
But when considering the propriety of affirmative action, you have to consider that this is a zero-sum game - you're creating losers. Is it just my imagination, or is this just never discussed?
So what if he did -may we not evaluate his statements on their own merits? "Well, he said 1+1=2, but can I trust him?"
Racial spoils systems are offensive inherently, but they become pernicious too when standards are bent to accomodate. I'm not sure that was the case with McWhorter. (It was true with Alan Bakke, though - his alternate, Patrick Chavis, has been maiming or killing his patients.)
Some years back I worked for a company with a highly placed black executive in the engineering department. After the Bakke decision and numerous others, I knew that this might not have anything to do with his talents. So I discreetly asked a few people who weren't known for parroting party lines. They were unanimous in their praise for him, and noted he had worked his way up from the control room. Belated apologies, Mr. Reed.
In the early 90's I went to the personnel office at the University of Illinois. I wasn't there to research social justice, but eventually I noticed that of the dozens of people I saw, I was the only white male there. Sure, it could have been a statistical anomaly....
Sometime in the 80's a relative sought a job as a state trooper in Illinois. He took a test and did fine relative to traditional standards. But he wasn't good enough for a white guy, and minorities with lower scores got in instead. Are they fine cops? Maybe so.
But when considering the propriety of affirmative action, you have to consider that this is a zero-sum game - you're creating losers. Is it just my imagination, or is this just never discussed?
Monday, May 06, 2002
Comment snafu
I understand that at least one person has discovered he is banned from my comments. I'm not sure how that happened, because to date I have not deliberately banned anyone. Nor have I intentionally deleted comments, but I know of at least 3 that are gone.
I could have fatfingered it, or it might have something to do with YACCS upgrades. In any case, I'm working on a fix, and my apologies in the meantime.
UPDATE: It should be fixed now. Upgrade your YACCS to get more control over stuff like this. I still don't know what happened to the 3 comments, and can't be sure I didn't lose more.
I could have fatfingered it, or it might have something to do with YACCS upgrades. In any case, I'm working on a fix, and my apologies in the meantime.
UPDATE: It should be fixed now. Upgrade your YACCS to get more control over stuff like this. I still don't know what happened to the 3 comments, and can't be sure I didn't lose more.
Doing my part
Tonight I'm going to go home, grab my guitar and kick out the jams for peace in the Middle East.
Creating a theory - part III
If you've been following this succession of posts, several of us have been discussing the theory of evolution on its own merits, without reference to religious alternatives. It can be awkward to follow, because the comments I am addressing below are found under another blog item here.
I must say, I admire Paul Orwin's faith in things unseen when he says "I think intelligent design theory is another incarnation of the 'God of the Gaps' theology, which will die a slow and painful death as the gaps are closed". This looks like antipathy to me - why?
Doug Turnbull notes that bacteria adapt to antibiotics, showing characteristics that weren't there before. And how does that happen? Is it totally dependent on random changes in the genome? That would appear to offer an infinite number of possibilities, which even bacteria are not prolific enough to generate. But if these mutations are not totally random, what guides them? How can a cell zero in on the most effective mutations in a finite time in order to survive?
I don't agree with DT's assessment of astrophysics under my criteria. Science deals in what is useful, not in what is true, and astrophysics has generated some useful results. What's more, much of it works with phenomena well known here on earth, such as relativity, red shifts, gravitation, etc. And the consequences of being wrong are not great in any case, with the possible exception of predictions of the life of the sun, or the paths of objects that might collide with the earth.
But on the edges, when it uses a century or two of observation to predict what will happen billions of years from now, it's dodgy and should be recognized as such. It's as if you were given a minute to observe a species unlike any on earth and expected to be able to tell how old it was and how much longer it would live.
As for the videotape comment, we'd ask for something like that for about anything else in the hard sciences. Don't tell me this reaction occurs, show me, and then another lab had better be able to duplicate it too. If I tried to beg off saying the process took too long, you might rightly think me a charlatan, or at best you might withhold judgment. Perhaps such standards are inappropriate in this setting, but there's nothing unfair in asking for demonstrations per se.
DT says this: "If you really think it's reasonable to believe that every species on earth now has always been present as it is to believe in the theory of evolution, then I'm not sure any argument is really possible." Maybe so, but that's not because I'm being unfair. I believe that those who postulate that some species weren't here from day one implicitly assume the burden of demonstrating that that is true.
As for extrapolation, I will dedicate an entire post to this later.
DT also says that evolution is the only testable hypothesis that explains said data. OK, what other hypotheses were tried and found wanting?
DT notes that certain sections of DNA don't seem to code for anything, and thus can be used as a timer of sorts based on rates of accumulations of mutations over time. How do we know that these sections don't code for anything? Genomes are very complex and we don't understand them yet. Are we now prepared to say that no use will ever be found for these sections that don't seem to code for anything under our present knowledge, and that these mutations don't serve some subtle determinate function unknown today?
I have read various books about chaos theory and have been amazed at some of the complex emergent behavior arising from unexpected places. I have to wonder what yet is to be found in the genome, and if it's possible that the diversity and resilience of life results from the emergence of behavior encoded in DNA from day 1.
The arguments that really floor me are the ones that attempt to use what could be called design features to disprove design arguments. As I see it, this amounts to postulating an omniscient, omnipotent Creator, and then arguing with Him - "ya shoulda done it this way!". I can be an arrogant SOB, but if I thought such a being existed, I'd happily defer to His judgment and would hope to learn from it. And I'd do a lot of experiments to figure out how He did things in hopes of staying on His good side or guessing what He might do next - science would be an essential part of my religious practice.
I'll ask religious people to abstain from commenting on this post (send me email if you want). I respect your beliefs, and you're welcome to comment elsewhere. But I have found that your presence in such discussions leads in unproductive directions, and I ask for your indulgence in this. Thank you for your understanding.
I must say, I admire Paul Orwin's faith in things unseen when he says "I think intelligent design theory is another incarnation of the 'God of the Gaps' theology, which will die a slow and painful death as the gaps are closed". This looks like antipathy to me - why?
Doug Turnbull notes that bacteria adapt to antibiotics, showing characteristics that weren't there before. And how does that happen? Is it totally dependent on random changes in the genome? That would appear to offer an infinite number of possibilities, which even bacteria are not prolific enough to generate. But if these mutations are not totally random, what guides them? How can a cell zero in on the most effective mutations in a finite time in order to survive?
I don't agree with DT's assessment of astrophysics under my criteria. Science deals in what is useful, not in what is true, and astrophysics has generated some useful results. What's more, much of it works with phenomena well known here on earth, such as relativity, red shifts, gravitation, etc. And the consequences of being wrong are not great in any case, with the possible exception of predictions of the life of the sun, or the paths of objects that might collide with the earth.
But on the edges, when it uses a century or two of observation to predict what will happen billions of years from now, it's dodgy and should be recognized as such. It's as if you were given a minute to observe a species unlike any on earth and expected to be able to tell how old it was and how much longer it would live.
As for the videotape comment, we'd ask for something like that for about anything else in the hard sciences. Don't tell me this reaction occurs, show me, and then another lab had better be able to duplicate it too. If I tried to beg off saying the process took too long, you might rightly think me a charlatan, or at best you might withhold judgment. Perhaps such standards are inappropriate in this setting, but there's nothing unfair in asking for demonstrations per se.
DT says this: "If you really think it's reasonable to believe that every species on earth now has always been present as it is to believe in the theory of evolution, then I'm not sure any argument is really possible." Maybe so, but that's not because I'm being unfair. I believe that those who postulate that some species weren't here from day one implicitly assume the burden of demonstrating that that is true.
As for extrapolation, I will dedicate an entire post to this later.
DT also says that evolution is the only testable hypothesis that explains said data. OK, what other hypotheses were tried and found wanting?
DT notes that certain sections of DNA don't seem to code for anything, and thus can be used as a timer of sorts based on rates of accumulations of mutations over time. How do we know that these sections don't code for anything? Genomes are very complex and we don't understand them yet. Are we now prepared to say that no use will ever be found for these sections that don't seem to code for anything under our present knowledge, and that these mutations don't serve some subtle determinate function unknown today?
I have read various books about chaos theory and have been amazed at some of the complex emergent behavior arising from unexpected places. I have to wonder what yet is to be found in the genome, and if it's possible that the diversity and resilience of life results from the emergence of behavior encoded in DNA from day 1.
The arguments that really floor me are the ones that attempt to use what could be called design features to disprove design arguments. As I see it, this amounts to postulating an omniscient, omnipotent Creator, and then arguing with Him - "ya shoulda done it this way!". I can be an arrogant SOB, but if I thought such a being existed, I'd happily defer to His judgment and would hope to learn from it. And I'd do a lot of experiments to figure out how He did things in hopes of staying on His good side or guessing what He might do next - science would be an essential part of my religious practice.
I'll ask religious people to abstain from commenting on this post (send me email if you want). I respect your beliefs, and you're welcome to comment elsewhere. But I have found that your presence in such discussions leads in unproductive directions, and I ask for your indulgence in this. Thank you for your understanding.
Sunday, May 05, 2002
Static electricity basics
I've been trying to come up with a blog-item length approach to this for a while. Let's see if this does any good. It will be simplified, perhaps too much - I'm sure people can find something to disagree with.
What is electricity? For our purposes today, we'll say it's a means of transmitting energy via electric charge differences.
OK, what's an electric charge? Physicists don't attempt to define this really. They just note that the smallest units of charge are protons and electrons, with arbitrarily labeled "positive" and "negative" charges respectively. Since electrons are easier to shake loose than protons are, for practical purposes electricity results from moving electrons.
Charged particles have their own electric fields, which exert forces when they interact with the electric fields of other objects. These forces are inversely proportional to the square of the difference between the particles - they get stronger rapidly as the particles get closer together. They tend to repel objects of like charge, and attract those of opposite charge. A result is that protons and electrons tend to stick together tightly into aggregates which as a whole carry no net charge, and getting electrons concentrated takes some "pressure".
If you've ever been zapped by static electricity, you have evidence that it's no big trick to get electrons loose. There will always be some running around, and this rate increases with temperature. But they are randomly distributed such that we can't take advantage of them for electric power.
It also makes a difference what substance we're talking about. The freedom of electrons to move within a particular substance varies over a broad range. The substances in which electrons move freely can be called "conductors", and are usually metallic. Substances that hold on to their electrons tightly are called "insulators". There are substances with intermediate properties known as "semiconductors", but that's another post.
The trick with electricity is to get these movable electrons directed and packed together long enough to make the resulting forces to do work for us.
A measure of the "packing" is the electric potential. This is sometimes called "voltage" because it is measured in volts (named for Alessandro Volta). Volts are a measure of the amount of energy stored per unit of charge.
These forces created by "packing" these electrons are significant. One of the reasons why electricity must be used as generated is that the demand is so large relative to the size of the devices it is practical to build to hold the electrical energy. Such devices, called capacitors, can literally blow up from the stresses if misused, and they're expensive in very large sizes. Thus when energy must be stored, it stored in a form other than electricity, then turned into electricity upon demand.
So how do you "pack" the electrons, and how do you get them to go where you want and do work? That'll be another in a series of blog items that'll be sure to thrill you. Stay tuned...
What is electricity? For our purposes today, we'll say it's a means of transmitting energy via electric charge differences.
OK, what's an electric charge? Physicists don't attempt to define this really. They just note that the smallest units of charge are protons and electrons, with arbitrarily labeled "positive" and "negative" charges respectively. Since electrons are easier to shake loose than protons are, for practical purposes electricity results from moving electrons.
Charged particles have their own electric fields, which exert forces when they interact with the electric fields of other objects. These forces are inversely proportional to the square of the difference between the particles - they get stronger rapidly as the particles get closer together. They tend to repel objects of like charge, and attract those of opposite charge. A result is that protons and electrons tend to stick together tightly into aggregates which as a whole carry no net charge, and getting electrons concentrated takes some "pressure".
If you've ever been zapped by static electricity, you have evidence that it's no big trick to get electrons loose. There will always be some running around, and this rate increases with temperature. But they are randomly distributed such that we can't take advantage of them for electric power.
It also makes a difference what substance we're talking about. The freedom of electrons to move within a particular substance varies over a broad range. The substances in which electrons move freely can be called "conductors", and are usually metallic. Substances that hold on to their electrons tightly are called "insulators". There are substances with intermediate properties known as "semiconductors", but that's another post.
The trick with electricity is to get these movable electrons directed and packed together long enough to make the resulting forces to do work for us.
A measure of the "packing" is the electric potential. This is sometimes called "voltage" because it is measured in volts (named for Alessandro Volta). Volts are a measure of the amount of energy stored per unit of charge.
These forces created by "packing" these electrons are significant. One of the reasons why electricity must be used as generated is that the demand is so large relative to the size of the devices it is practical to build to hold the electrical energy. Such devices, called capacitors, can literally blow up from the stresses if misused, and they're expensive in very large sizes. Thus when energy must be stored, it stored in a form other than electricity, then turned into electricity upon demand.
So how do you "pack" the electrons, and how do you get them to go where you want and do work? That'll be another in a series of blog items that'll be sure to thrill you. Stay tuned...
Fun with trojans
A relative of mine gets a little too crazy with her PC. Despite repeated warnings, she'll still open email attachments with alacrity. So I just spent the last 20 minutes on the phone figuring out how to deal with the consequences.
It was a Trojan. She doesn't have a firewall, but a recently updated virus scanner caught the thing in an email from a friend of hers. I don't use Norton AntiVirus myself, so I don't know the details, but apparently the software "quarantined" the trojan. (Backdoor.Autoupder). This trojan supposedly is not widely spread, but it's loose in central Illinois for sure.
You might wonder what the firewall would have done. This trojan apparently contacts external machines to load more objects, which can be used for much mischief. Unlike many others, products like ZoneAlarm test outgoing traffic along with incoming, so if a mysterious program looks for access to the Web, you can deny it. In that way, even if a trojan gets installed, it can't call back to the mother ship and announce its presence. Then your PC can't be used for such things as distributed denial of service attacks like this.
If you have a broadband and don't have a firewall, kindly post your street address and a picture. That way we can all find you and knock you silly until you get with the program. ZoneAlarm is a freebie. Get it. Now!
UPDATE: I'm getting a disturbing number of Google hits on this one. It's fairly new, so make sure your antivirus program is up to date. Or else Quana and I will come and get you...
It was a Trojan. She doesn't have a firewall, but a recently updated virus scanner caught the thing in an email from a friend of hers. I don't use Norton AntiVirus myself, so I don't know the details, but apparently the software "quarantined" the trojan. (Backdoor.Autoupder). This trojan supposedly is not widely spread, but it's loose in central Illinois for sure.
You might wonder what the firewall would have done. This trojan apparently contacts external machines to load more objects, which can be used for much mischief. Unlike many others, products like ZoneAlarm test outgoing traffic along with incoming, so if a mysterious program looks for access to the Web, you can deny it. In that way, even if a trojan gets installed, it can't call back to the mother ship and announce its presence. Then your PC can't be used for such things as distributed denial of service attacks like this.
If you have a broadband and don't have a firewall, kindly post your street address and a picture. That way we can all find you and knock you silly until you get with the program. ZoneAlarm is a freebie. Get it. Now!
UPDATE: I'm getting a disturbing number of Google hits on this one. It's fairly new, so make sure your antivirus program is up to date. Or else Quana and I will come and get you...
Hypothetical attack on a nuclear power plant
From Jane Galt's blog, the question has come up about what might happen if a US commercial nuclear power plant were struck by a 747 loaded with a fertilizer-type bomb as was used in OKC by Timothy McVeigh (who might have had ties to al-Qaeda via Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef).
So what do I know about this? I'm an engineer who spent 10+ years working on 4 different US commercial nuclear power plant sites (7 units - 2 PWRs and 5 BWRs, out of ~100 units). So I know a little about the hardware, the people, the procedures and the regulations. I'm a bit out of date because I haven't worked in the business for a while, but you'll pardon me for assuming that regulations haven't been lightening. And no new sites have begun construction since I was starved out. There's no conflict of interest because I no longer work in the business and I don't even own any stock, and as a mechanical engineer I can profit no matter what form of energy we use. Enough disclosures, let's get started.
Returning to the question, no Updated Final Safety Analysis Report that I have ever seen addresses planeloads of fertilizer bombs explicitly. I think you can guess why. There are provisions for "missile protection", such as uprooted trees, but these would not have the energy of the postulated planeload of fertilizer bombs.
I could go into a long discussion of this, as I'm sure you know by now. Nuclear power plants are not built like office buildings or even the Pentagon. You're talking at least a foot of reinforced concrete for the primary containment building, with a steel liner inside that. Outside that there's the secondary containment which is far less substantial but would soak up some shock.
And then what would happen? Possibly just an indefinitely long shutdown of the reactor while damage is assessed and repaired. They'd have to detonate the bomb just right before the crash dispersed it, and they'd have to hit a target that's substantially smaller than the WTC.
If primary containment were breached, then the reactor would have to be shut down, and hopefully the piping would be intact to do so. That is likely, because that piping, electrical and instrumentation systems within primary containment are built to handle nasty things like earthquakes, pipe whip, and internally generated missiles. And they are subject to "environmental qualification" for steam, high radiation levels, temperature, etc..
Control and power systems are required to be redundant and physically separated such that the same event (fire, explosion, whatever) is not likely to disable both divisions. That physical separation is a lot more concrete, fire barriers et al.
Ordinarily the containment buildings are on the opposite end of the plant from the power lines, so one would expect that there wouldn't be much physical damage to these. That suggests that offsite power would still be available. But let's shut it off anyway. And let's assume that any other units onsite are shut down, so they can't provide any power either. Then what?
There are still two redundant trains of onsite power, most likely diesel generators. They'll be sitting in separate seismically qualified buildings of reinforced concrete some distance away from the containment, with about 7 days worth of fuel in tanks that are probably buried in reinforced concrete underground. They're tested at least monthly to show that they'll pick up plant loads in a prescribed order to make sure that essential plant motors and controls receive power as necessary for a shutdown.
Back to the containment. Let's say it's Osama's lucky day and we've breached secondary containment, primary containment, and a few more feet of the reinforced concrete that makes up biological shielding, the drywell, or whatever other such facilities an individual plant might have (I can't speak for every design out there, but there's quite a bit of standardization because only 4 companies have reactors running and they're all regulated by the same Federal agency). We've breached the primary loop so severely that the reactor cannot be brought to a cold shutdown and we have a partial core meltdown a la TMI.
The bad news is that this will be worse radiologically than TMI. The good news is that TMI wasn't that bad. We're not talking Chernobyl here - the reactor internals don't contain tons of graphite to stoke a huge fire and form immense clouds of particulates (and we don't have a government that will tell everyone that nothing happened when an accident is visible from outer space. ) You'd be talking steam, short half-life isotopes of nitrogen, gaseous fission products generated inside the failed fuel rods, and possibly other radioactive nasties that can become airborne (I can't think of any, and they're probably so dense that they wouldn't go far).
Meanwhile the emergency plan is running balls to the wall. It's highly likely that some plant personnel might be lost in the initial explosion, but most of the essential personnel would be inside seismically qualified reinforced concrete buildings on the far side of the stricken containment building. Experienced operators, engineers and fire brigade personnel are evaluating the damage and responding, and relief shifts are coming in. Subject matter experts from around the country are a phone call away. Alarms are sounding, local, state, and federal authorities are notified, radiological experts scatter to measure the radiological impact, emergency personnel identify shut-ins and arrange to escort them out of the area, iodine pills will already have been distributed and will be available upon request, and then there's whatever the state itself might do in addition to the above. Emergency planning was one of the worst problems with TMI, and led to requirements to perform the above. And it's not pure window-dressing - the plants conduct drills with Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors onsite to evaluate them, and they'd damned well better do well unless the plant manager wants a black eye or worse.
So what happens to the environs? It'll take some cleanup, and there will probably be some lost life expectancy due to high radiation exposure to staff. Milk will be thrown away as a precaution. Offsite there could be more lost life expectancy, but that will take years to show up.
So where's the body count? Where's the symbolic value? IMO they'll hit something else because these plants just don't have the marquee value. They passed near Haddam Neck, Beaver Valley, Susquehanna, Peach Bottom, TMI and Indian Point the last time.
I'm sure I've left something out, working off the cuff like this - it's worth what you're paying for it. Questions are welcome.
So what do I know about this? I'm an engineer who spent 10+ years working on 4 different US commercial nuclear power plant sites (7 units - 2 PWRs and 5 BWRs, out of ~100 units). So I know a little about the hardware, the people, the procedures and the regulations. I'm a bit out of date because I haven't worked in the business for a while, but you'll pardon me for assuming that regulations haven't been lightening. And no new sites have begun construction since I was starved out. There's no conflict of interest because I no longer work in the business and I don't even own any stock, and as a mechanical engineer I can profit no matter what form of energy we use. Enough disclosures, let's get started.
Returning to the question, no Updated Final Safety Analysis Report that I have ever seen addresses planeloads of fertilizer bombs explicitly. I think you can guess why. There are provisions for "missile protection", such as uprooted trees, but these would not have the energy of the postulated planeload of fertilizer bombs.
I could go into a long discussion of this, as I'm sure you know by now. Nuclear power plants are not built like office buildings or even the Pentagon. You're talking at least a foot of reinforced concrete for the primary containment building, with a steel liner inside that. Outside that there's the secondary containment which is far less substantial but would soak up some shock.
And then what would happen? Possibly just an indefinitely long shutdown of the reactor while damage is assessed and repaired. They'd have to detonate the bomb just right before the crash dispersed it, and they'd have to hit a target that's substantially smaller than the WTC.
If primary containment were breached, then the reactor would have to be shut down, and hopefully the piping would be intact to do so. That is likely, because that piping, electrical and instrumentation systems within primary containment are built to handle nasty things like earthquakes, pipe whip, and internally generated missiles. And they are subject to "environmental qualification" for steam, high radiation levels, temperature, etc..
Control and power systems are required to be redundant and physically separated such that the same event (fire, explosion, whatever) is not likely to disable both divisions. That physical separation is a lot more concrete, fire barriers et al.
Ordinarily the containment buildings are on the opposite end of the plant from the power lines, so one would expect that there wouldn't be much physical damage to these. That suggests that offsite power would still be available. But let's shut it off anyway. And let's assume that any other units onsite are shut down, so they can't provide any power either. Then what?
There are still two redundant trains of onsite power, most likely diesel generators. They'll be sitting in separate seismically qualified buildings of reinforced concrete some distance away from the containment, with about 7 days worth of fuel in tanks that are probably buried in reinforced concrete underground. They're tested at least monthly to show that they'll pick up plant loads in a prescribed order to make sure that essential plant motors and controls receive power as necessary for a shutdown.
Back to the containment. Let's say it's Osama's lucky day and we've breached secondary containment, primary containment, and a few more feet of the reinforced concrete that makes up biological shielding, the drywell, or whatever other such facilities an individual plant might have (I can't speak for every design out there, but there's quite a bit of standardization because only 4 companies have reactors running and they're all regulated by the same Federal agency). We've breached the primary loop so severely that the reactor cannot be brought to a cold shutdown and we have a partial core meltdown a la TMI.
The bad news is that this will be worse radiologically than TMI. The good news is that TMI wasn't that bad. We're not talking Chernobyl here - the reactor internals don't contain tons of graphite to stoke a huge fire and form immense clouds of particulates (and we don't have a government that will tell everyone that nothing happened when an accident is visible from outer space. ) You'd be talking steam, short half-life isotopes of nitrogen, gaseous fission products generated inside the failed fuel rods, and possibly other radioactive nasties that can become airborne (I can't think of any, and they're probably so dense that they wouldn't go far).
Meanwhile the emergency plan is running balls to the wall. It's highly likely that some plant personnel might be lost in the initial explosion, but most of the essential personnel would be inside seismically qualified reinforced concrete buildings on the far side of the stricken containment building. Experienced operators, engineers and fire brigade personnel are evaluating the damage and responding, and relief shifts are coming in. Subject matter experts from around the country are a phone call away. Alarms are sounding, local, state, and federal authorities are notified, radiological experts scatter to measure the radiological impact, emergency personnel identify shut-ins and arrange to escort them out of the area, iodine pills will already have been distributed and will be available upon request, and then there's whatever the state itself might do in addition to the above. Emergency planning was one of the worst problems with TMI, and led to requirements to perform the above. And it's not pure window-dressing - the plants conduct drills with Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors onsite to evaluate them, and they'd damned well better do well unless the plant manager wants a black eye or worse.
So what happens to the environs? It'll take some cleanup, and there will probably be some lost life expectancy due to high radiation exposure to staff. Milk will be thrown away as a precaution. Offsite there could be more lost life expectancy, but that will take years to show up.
So where's the body count? Where's the symbolic value? IMO they'll hit something else because these plants just don't have the marquee value. They passed near Haddam Neck, Beaver Valley, Susquehanna, Peach Bottom, TMI and Indian Point the last time.
I'm sure I've left something out, working off the cuff like this - it's worth what you're paying for it. Questions are welcome.
Thursday, May 02, 2002
Creating a theory, part II
Another post below led to a number of comments, and I really can't do them justice in the space YACCS provides. So I'll address them here.
First a note: my scientific background is in the "hard sciences". I'm used to being able to whip something up in a lab. I understand that that commonly causes conflict of sorts, as John Maynard Smith noted in one of his books - he came from a hard science background to the study of evolutionary biology. If biologists must settle for lower standards of proof than I am used to, so be it.
Notice that my claims have been very modest, as noted here. I certainly didn't claim that no evolution of any form had ever occurred. What I wrote was "But until those discoveries are made and successfully peer-reviewed, claims that evolution progressed from the first life forms and culminated in the development of modern man remain speculation, which places them on par with creationism." That last clause might be controversial, but I don't see any problem with the rest of the statement. I will refer to this below as The Theory. And it's no straw man.
One problem I have with The Theory is in another post, about "what is a species?". Some of the definitions of species in the links (which no one has questioned) sound a lot like the Supreme Court definition of pornography - "I know it when I see it". Biologists may be trying to get a handle on something very slippery, but then that should tend to moderate claims, causing you to shy away from The Theory. Because if you can't even come up with a solid, universally applicable definition of a species, how can you ever say when speciation has occurred? If you're allowed to change the rules as you go, you can create circumstances in which evolutionary theory becomes unfalsifiable.
Mike Gannis asks several questions, one regarding the age of the earth. I'm agnostic. I really don't care much about the age of the earth, and I fail to see that it has much impact on my life or that of schoolkids. I'll just note that proof that the earth were fairly young would be bad news for The Theory, because it needs lots of time to work.
As for species in the fossil record, this goes back to the species definition problem again. We have found various fossil evidence that is found nowhere else in particular strata of the earth's crust, and various dating techniques give us an idea of how long ago these strata were deposited. If these species did not occur in earlier strata either, that would suggest that they had to have developed in a time period between that of the earlier strata. Or it might just mean that you haven't looked in the right places. That they haven't been found doesn't mean that they don't exist. I'll bet you a coelacanth that you'll find that some of those species were around if you look long enough.
We don't need The Theory to explain extinctions.
Apparently emergent species might be explained by migrations. I suppose if you looked in the Great Lakes and didn't know that sea lampreys already existed somewhere else, you might think that they had evolved there over the past century. Likewise for Corbicula, the obnoxious little clams that foul up heat exchangers and sprinkler systems.
The bottom line is that the claims for The Theory appear to have outrun the evidence. If you can't establish by exhaustion that certain species didn't exist before a certain point in time, tough luck - you don't have all the evidence you need. If it happens on long time scales, again, that's a problem for the proponents of The Theory to deal with before they make exorbitant claims - don't blame the rest of us.
Paul Orwin states that evolution is obvious on the scale of insects and microbial life. Other exceptional things happen to those critters too that cannot be applied to higher species, and again, what about that definition of species? Changes in color distributions, markings, etc, don't necessarily mean anything - they might just be expressions of other previously unsuspected capabilities of existing genotypes, and nobody is going to claim we have that figured out yet.
Incidentally, I'm not working from some sort of cheat book. I own books on all sides of this issue, and I've even read some of them, but I'm doing my own thinking and surfing here.
I would like to thank the participants for generally keeping the noise level down - I was prepared to cut messages ruthlessly if necessary, but that never became necessary despite the controversial subject.
First a note: my scientific background is in the "hard sciences". I'm used to being able to whip something up in a lab. I understand that that commonly causes conflict of sorts, as John Maynard Smith noted in one of his books - he came from a hard science background to the study of evolutionary biology. If biologists must settle for lower standards of proof than I am used to, so be it.
Notice that my claims have been very modest, as noted here. I certainly didn't claim that no evolution of any form had ever occurred. What I wrote was "But until those discoveries are made and successfully peer-reviewed, claims that evolution progressed from the first life forms and culminated in the development of modern man remain speculation, which places them on par with creationism." That last clause might be controversial, but I don't see any problem with the rest of the statement. I will refer to this below as The Theory. And it's no straw man.
One problem I have with The Theory is in another post, about "what is a species?". Some of the definitions of species in the links (which no one has questioned) sound a lot like the Supreme Court definition of pornography - "I know it when I see it". Biologists may be trying to get a handle on something very slippery, but then that should tend to moderate claims, causing you to shy away from The Theory. Because if you can't even come up with a solid, universally applicable definition of a species, how can you ever say when speciation has occurred? If you're allowed to change the rules as you go, you can create circumstances in which evolutionary theory becomes unfalsifiable.
Mike Gannis asks several questions, one regarding the age of the earth. I'm agnostic. I really don't care much about the age of the earth, and I fail to see that it has much impact on my life or that of schoolkids. I'll just note that proof that the earth were fairly young would be bad news for The Theory, because it needs lots of time to work.
As for species in the fossil record, this goes back to the species definition problem again. We have found various fossil evidence that is found nowhere else in particular strata of the earth's crust, and various dating techniques give us an idea of how long ago these strata were deposited. If these species did not occur in earlier strata either, that would suggest that they had to have developed in a time period between that of the earlier strata. Or it might just mean that you haven't looked in the right places. That they haven't been found doesn't mean that they don't exist. I'll bet you a coelacanth that you'll find that some of those species were around if you look long enough.
We don't need The Theory to explain extinctions.
Apparently emergent species might be explained by migrations. I suppose if you looked in the Great Lakes and didn't know that sea lampreys already existed somewhere else, you might think that they had evolved there over the past century. Likewise for Corbicula, the obnoxious little clams that foul up heat exchangers and sprinkler systems.
The bottom line is that the claims for The Theory appear to have outrun the evidence. If you can't establish by exhaustion that certain species didn't exist before a certain point in time, tough luck - you don't have all the evidence you need. If it happens on long time scales, again, that's a problem for the proponents of The Theory to deal with before they make exorbitant claims - don't blame the rest of us.
Paul Orwin states that evolution is obvious on the scale of insects and microbial life. Other exceptional things happen to those critters too that cannot be applied to higher species, and again, what about that definition of species? Changes in color distributions, markings, etc, don't necessarily mean anything - they might just be expressions of other previously unsuspected capabilities of existing genotypes, and nobody is going to claim we have that figured out yet.
Incidentally, I'm not working from some sort of cheat book. I own books on all sides of this issue, and I've even read some of them, but I'm doing my own thinking and surfing here.
I would like to thank the participants for generally keeping the noise level down - I was prepared to cut messages ruthlessly if necessary, but that never became necessary despite the controversial subject.
Just asking...
What would happen if we quit teaching evolution in public schools? Besides the media circus?
Is hate natural?
Will Rogers once said "I never met a man I didn't like". I don't know if he ever went to the Middle East or not.
I can understand having strong feelings about somebody for good or ill. About groups? - well, I think the Democrats should be taught how to blush, but I suppose we can spare them. Eco-radicals? I think they should be forced to live as they would have the rest of us live, but other than that and maybe hosing them off now and then I suppose I can leave them alone. That probably does it.
Except for those #$%^# Jews. Sheesh, they cut the foreskins off their own kids - imagine what they'd do to yours.
Alright, I'm kidding. But really, what's with anti-Semitism? Why is it that out of all the groups out there, Jews have been picked on so universally?
I could theorize about the Jews in particular, but the point is about hatred in general. Is it natural? That is, do we have a propensity built in? Or must it be cultivated?
I can understand having strong feelings about somebody for good or ill. About groups? - well, I think the Democrats should be taught how to blush, but I suppose we can spare them. Eco-radicals? I think they should be forced to live as they would have the rest of us live, but other than that and maybe hosing them off now and then I suppose I can leave them alone. That probably does it.
Except for those #$%^# Jews. Sheesh, they cut the foreskins off their own kids - imagine what they'd do to yours.
Alright, I'm kidding. But really, what's with anti-Semitism? Why is it that out of all the groups out there, Jews have been picked on so universally?
I could theorize about the Jews in particular, but the point is about hatred in general. Is it natural? That is, do we have a propensity built in? Or must it be cultivated?
Wednesday, May 01, 2002
You can do what?
When I was little I came across the paperwork that came with a box of tampons. I was an early reader but in other respects was another clueless little kid. So I thought they must be pretty cool - with them, you could swim, ride horses, climb trees.... I was disappointed when I found out more details, and I quit playing with those cool little cardboard telescopes too.
You're expecting a terrific segue here, I can tell. Well, lately I've been reading a bunch of resumes and interviewing the people. And they're not performing per my expectations.
By now I'm a reasonably experienced interviewer. I've been on the other side of the table many times as a contractor, so I can sympathize with the candidates. I've often interviewed people as part of a team, occasionally in the lead, without adverse comment. I do tend to talk fast, so I temper that, especially with people whose native language might not be English. I do what I can to loosen people up. I don't believe I am unfair or unrealistic.
I do expect command of technical material, however. Details, not generalities - the position in question is for an experienced contractor who's ready to go NOW. Nobody will ever be an exact fit, but if we want trainees we'll specify them.
You don't have to be able to recite manuals - I can't do it either. But if I ask you to, say, give me a SQL query to show me all the fields and records from an Oracle table named X (select * from x), I expect a snappy answer without prompting. After all, the position calls for knowledge of basic SQL, and we wouldn't even be talking if that hadn't been claimed on the resume, so what's the problem?
Another candidate did much better on those core skills, but tried to tap-dance past us on some more advanced skills. Hint - if you claim to know something about advanced statistics, have a clue about fundamentals like Χ2. If you claim Unix, I shouldn't be able to trip you up asking you how to list the files in a directory. Ad nauseam.
Candidates from contract firms should ordinarily be pre-screened or "teched" before a prospective client sees them. I had a really winner of one the other day - it's possible I was dealing with someone having a bad day, but I've never seen one that bad. This individual claimed significant experience with a special purpose Web information delivery tool that commands a substantial premium, but couldn't even tell me what it was for. Other topics were more of the same.
So do I have any interview tips? Relax. Don't try to snow me - if you don't know the answer, say so. Don't get rattled if you can't answer a question - we don't expect an exact fit, and we might well be asking you questions that go well above and beyond minimum requirements. Don't put anything on your resume/in a portfolio that you're not prepared to discuss in detail with a practitioner who might know it far better than you do. If I ask you for details, give me details, not generalities. If you can't remember the details, brush up on them before you show up - you want the job, don't you?
I suppose it would be cool to end this post with a tie back to the beginning, but I'm fresh out of tampon stories. But if you feel like sharing...
You're expecting a terrific segue here, I can tell. Well, lately I've been reading a bunch of resumes and interviewing the people. And they're not performing per my expectations.
By now I'm a reasonably experienced interviewer. I've been on the other side of the table many times as a contractor, so I can sympathize with the candidates. I've often interviewed people as part of a team, occasionally in the lead, without adverse comment. I do tend to talk fast, so I temper that, especially with people whose native language might not be English. I do what I can to loosen people up. I don't believe I am unfair or unrealistic.
I do expect command of technical material, however. Details, not generalities - the position in question is for an experienced contractor who's ready to go NOW. Nobody will ever be an exact fit, but if we want trainees we'll specify them.
You don't have to be able to recite manuals - I can't do it either. But if I ask you to, say, give me a SQL query to show me all the fields and records from an Oracle table named X (select * from x), I expect a snappy answer without prompting. After all, the position calls for knowledge of basic SQL, and we wouldn't even be talking if that hadn't been claimed on the resume, so what's the problem?
Another candidate did much better on those core skills, but tried to tap-dance past us on some more advanced skills. Hint - if you claim to know something about advanced statistics, have a clue about fundamentals like Χ2. If you claim Unix, I shouldn't be able to trip you up asking you how to list the files in a directory. Ad nauseam.
Candidates from contract firms should ordinarily be pre-screened or "teched" before a prospective client sees them. I had a really winner of one the other day - it's possible I was dealing with someone having a bad day, but I've never seen one that bad. This individual claimed significant experience with a special purpose Web information delivery tool that commands a substantial premium, but couldn't even tell me what it was for. Other topics were more of the same.
So do I have any interview tips? Relax. Don't try to snow me - if you don't know the answer, say so. Don't get rattled if you can't answer a question - we don't expect an exact fit, and we might well be asking you questions that go well above and beyond minimum requirements. Don't put anything on your resume/in a portfolio that you're not prepared to discuss in detail with a practitioner who might know it far better than you do. If I ask you for details, give me details, not generalities. If you can't remember the details, brush up on them before you show up - you want the job, don't you?
I suppose it would be cool to end this post with a tie back to the beginning, but I'm fresh out of tampon stories. But if you feel like sharing...
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Bye bye Bernie
Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers has resigned as CEO of WorldCom. It's been an interesting ride.
Mr. Ebbers was a Canadian who went to Mississippi to go to college as I recall. Later he wound up getting involved with a small company called LDDS, which he built into today's WorldCom.
He fought mightily to maintain high stock prices, then used the stock to acquire firm after firm, including MCI ("money coming in"). Then the regulators nixed his purchase of Sprint, and it's been downhill ever since.
I suppose the stock price will recover a little in the short term, but the next CEO has a lot of work to do.
Mr. Ebbers was a Canadian who went to Mississippi to go to college as I recall. Later he wound up getting involved with a small company called LDDS, which he built into today's WorldCom.
He fought mightily to maintain high stock prices, then used the stock to acquire firm after firm, including MCI ("money coming in"). Then the regulators nixed his purchase of Sprint, and it's been downhill ever since.
I suppose the stock price will recover a little in the short term, but the next CEO has a lot of work to do.
Sunday, April 28, 2002
Born to be gay?
Gays are made, not born. Or are they?
Near as I can tell gays are divided on this one. If gays are born, then that seems to be nature's imprimatur - they're 100% natural. This accounts for a gay anti-abortion group that fears that if the relevant genetic conditions are ever identified, that these will be used to identify gay fetuses - and abort them.
Anybody who has been watching blogs for a while has seen some fluidity in self-classification. Of those, my favorite is "bisexual celibacy". As if being straight couldn't be frustrating enough...
I believe that gays are made, not born. I suppose we could find some genetic component, but it's difficult to see just how something like this would be transmitted genetically. And but for "turkey basters" or other approaches (don't miss this one), it's kinda hard to gays to breed to carry on the relevant genetic configuration.
Alright, let the rumble begin.
Near as I can tell gays are divided on this one. If gays are born, then that seems to be nature's imprimatur - they're 100% natural. This accounts for a gay anti-abortion group that fears that if the relevant genetic conditions are ever identified, that these will be used to identify gay fetuses - and abort them.
Anybody who has been watching blogs for a while has seen some fluidity in self-classification. Of those, my favorite is "bisexual celibacy". As if being straight couldn't be frustrating enough...
I believe that gays are made, not born. I suppose we could find some genetic component, but it's difficult to see just how something like this would be transmitted genetically. And but for "turkey basters" or other approaches (don't miss this one), it's kinda hard to gays to breed to carry on the relevant genetic configuration.
Alright, let the rumble begin.
Saturday, April 27, 2002
Creating a theory
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.You could insert "science" instead of "philosophy" and be equally accurate. But science has been politicized, and shoddy science has sometimes been tolerated because it happened to offer comfort to a particular political outlook.
Today's case involves the theory of evolution, which provides comfort to antireligious people and is presented dogmatically as if there were no possible alternative. They may be right, but they shouldn't tolerate shoddy science in the process. To do so is to elevate dogma above science.
My experience in discussing evolution is that its dogmatic (as opposed to scientific) defenders claim that it explains the entire world of biology. But when I ask for examples of species changing from one to another, they can't deliver anything convincing.
Now Doug Turnbull has pointed out this and this to me as demonstrating that speciation has occurred. I suppose it's arguable by someone with a stronger biological background than my own, but I'll take it as a given.
Does this demonstrate evolution? Not yet. The only examples discussed for vertebrates are based on "morphology", which could well have put Chihuahuas and Rottweilers as different species. None of the examples were more than one step. The theory isn't complete until the entire chain is assembled.
And it gets harder toward the top as species are more complex and less prolific. The new species, which presumably cannot mate with their parents or siblings, must occur often enough so that they can find each other. And this must occur for enough generations to establish the new species. (whatever a species might be, that is).
And we've seen fraud here before, such as Piltdown man.
Perhaps these links will be discovered. But until those discoveries are made and successfully peer-reviewed, claims that evolution progressed from the first life forms and culminated in the development of modern man remain speculation, which places them on par with creationism.
Old time expressions
Much of my family goes a long time between generations. I'm a trailing end Baby Boomer/leading edge Gen X, but my father was about the right age for WWII, and his father was about right for the Spanish American War. Another generation back fought on the Yankee side of the Civil War, and there's only two more before you get to the Revolution when a forebear showed up from Wales.
One result of this is that the family has some fairly ancient expressions. Older uncles and aunts used to listen to Amos 'n' Andy or saw Al Jolson, and they would make reference to old pop culture like Fibber McGee's closet. But best of all were the folksier things I'd hear from my grandmother.
Consider "your tongue runs like the clatterbone in a goose's ass". Sometimes it was a duck, but the idea was that the person in question was loquacious. (she was right about the geese - you can look, I won't tell)
She had 8 kids at the time of the Depression, and most were still at home. Times were tough, but she always had an ace in the hole - "we can all get tin bills and pick shit with the chickens".
She usually lived in small towns where everything was everybody else's business. So I learned that, with respect to babies, "the first one can come anytime, and the rest take 9 months".
I was the youngest grandchild and lived nearby, so I spent a lot of time with her while I was little and she was still competent and mobile. She taught me how to play cards, like Dirty 8, rummy and canasta. She never gave up, either - I could be way ahead, but she'd say "I've seen sicker dogs get well". Little wonder the tough old girl lived to be 100.
One result of this is that the family has some fairly ancient expressions. Older uncles and aunts used to listen to Amos 'n' Andy or saw Al Jolson, and they would make reference to old pop culture like Fibber McGee's closet. But best of all were the folksier things I'd hear from my grandmother.
Consider "your tongue runs like the clatterbone in a goose's ass". Sometimes it was a duck, but the idea was that the person in question was loquacious. (she was right about the geese - you can look, I won't tell)
She had 8 kids at the time of the Depression, and most were still at home. Times were tough, but she always had an ace in the hole - "we can all get tin bills and pick shit with the chickens".
She usually lived in small towns where everything was everybody else's business. So I learned that, with respect to babies, "the first one can come anytime, and the rest take 9 months".
I was the youngest grandchild and lived nearby, so I spent a lot of time with her while I was little and she was still competent and mobile. She taught me how to play cards, like Dirty 8, rummy and canasta. She never gave up, either - I could be way ahead, but she'd say "I've seen sicker dogs get well". Little wonder the tough old girl lived to be 100.
Sexual harassment at Mitsubishi
Blogging generally isn't original reporting, and what I have to offer is hearsay. But I find it credible because I know my source very well, and it's consistent with my experience. And to my knowledge, no "name" journalist has ever investigated it from this side.
The Mitsubishi plant was built in the mid 80's northwest of Bloomington, IL just off I-74 on the way to Peoria. I'm from the general vicinity and they hired a number of engineers, so I made it my business to meet people who worked there.
Then came the sexual harassment suits. I was morbidly curious and wanted to hear the scuttlebutt, so I called my best source.
He said a number of the women involved were unproductive and had been in trouble for that reason. What's more, some women at the site were known to offer BJs or other favors to men who would cover their work for them.
Again, it's hearsay, and not much at that. But if it leads someone to do an honest substantial investigation it's worth something. I suspect that the real crime was that Mitsubishi didn't donate enough money to the Democratic Party.
The Mitsubishi plant was built in the mid 80's northwest of Bloomington, IL just off I-74 on the way to Peoria. I'm from the general vicinity and they hired a number of engineers, so I made it my business to meet people who worked there.
Then came the sexual harassment suits. I was morbidly curious and wanted to hear the scuttlebutt, so I called my best source.
He said a number of the women involved were unproductive and had been in trouble for that reason. What's more, some women at the site were known to offer BJs or other favors to men who would cover their work for them.
Again, it's hearsay, and not much at that. But if it leads someone to do an honest substantial investigation it's worth something. I suspect that the real crime was that Mitsubishi didn't donate enough money to the Democratic Party.
Justice is...
You know what last week's anti-globo protest needed? A homicide bomber. But it couldn't have happened, because all the suicidal losers are on their side.
Personally I favored a chemical approach. Spray them all with soap.
Personally I favored a chemical approach. Spray them all with soap.
Thursday, April 25, 2002
Wednesday, April 24, 2002
IRS vs. Hollywood?
Among the most fantastic things ever produced in Hollywood are their financial records. Practices are outrageous, and this isn't exactly unknown.
But has anyone ever heard of a studio being audited by the IRS? Maybe it has happened and I missed it. It sounds like it could be fun though, watching disgustingly rich people poormouthing, claiming that they're not making any money.
It would be politically dangerous to take on movie studios though. These guys put on elaborate fantasies for the public for a living, and politicians wouldn't stand a chance against them. We'd hear braying about the 1st Amendment too, charges of being "politically motivated", etc.
So for practical purposes, Hollywood is probably above the law.
But has anyone ever heard of a studio being audited by the IRS? Maybe it has happened and I missed it. It sounds like it could be fun though, watching disgustingly rich people poormouthing, claiming that they're not making any money.
It would be politically dangerous to take on movie studios though. These guys put on elaborate fantasies for the public for a living, and politicians wouldn't stand a chance against them. We'd hear braying about the 1st Amendment too, charges of being "politically motivated", etc.
So for practical purposes, Hollywood is probably above the law.
Don't forget a spoon
K will be 10 next week. God help us...
In honor of her birthday I started hunting down kid stuff like elephant jokes. And I had to know the rest of that obnoxious song that starts with "great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts". Heavens, we can't lose such a priceless piece of heritage die out.
In honor of her birthday I started hunting down kid stuff like elephant jokes. And I had to know the rest of that obnoxious song that starts with "great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts". Heavens, we can't lose such a priceless piece of heritage die out.
I'm thinking...
Neat stuff is incubating, but it's not ready for posting yet. Obviously that didn't stop me from posting some of what you see below, but we'll see about doing better. Anyway it'll probably be slow until Thursday night.
If it's more scientific stuff you're after, you can't go wrong with Stephen Den Beste, Rand Simberg, Jay Manifold, Charles Murtaugh, Paul Orwin, Derek Lowe and occasionally Douglas Turnbull.
Later...
If it's more scientific stuff you're after, you can't go wrong with Stephen Den Beste, Rand Simberg, Jay Manifold, Charles Murtaugh, Paul Orwin, Derek Lowe and occasionally Douglas Turnbull.
Later...
Sunday, April 21, 2002
Practical home energy conservation
Summer is coming, and with it comes a change in power demand. Say what?
Yes, it's your problem. Although can vary from place to place, the summertime is usually the peak season for electric power consumption. That means that unless all of us help to back off on power consumption, rates can go up significantly and we might even have brownouts or blackouts.
Fortunately it really isn't that hard to reduce. I'm not some left-wing anti-globo idiot trying to save the world - I just want you to try some simple things that will reduce your expenses and increase power reliability with minimal effort. Deal?
Let me start by noting that some of you have broadband vs. dialup Internet access. Here information is analogous to energy, and your bandwidth or data rate is analogous to power.
However, they behave differently at high load - broadband will limit you to the data rate you have paid for (or else some idiot downloading streaming porn video could bring down the Internet from an overload). Power lines OTOH will attempt to maintain line voltage in your wiring beyond ratings until problems occur, which is why we have breakers and fuses. And our white-knuckled porn fiend can record his favorites, but your power has to be "live" (forget about batteries - you can't afford it).
Breakers and fuses are designed to avoid fire hazards, not to control your power consumption. You don't want nuisance trips, so the power demands that they react to are significantly higher than what you are expected to use. If you trip a breaker, investigate now, and don't put pennies in fuseboxes in any dwelling you intend to continue living in.
Alright, a little science. Energy is what you are being billed for, and it is billed in kilowatt-hours (kWh). Power is the rate at which you are using energy. It is how many kilowatt-hours you use per hour, which works out to kilowatts (kW). A watt (W) is 1/1000 of a kilowatt. A lot of times calculations are simpler if we use watt-hours (Wh) - 1 Wh = 1/1000 kWh.
The amount you are charged per kWh will vary substantially, but is probably on the order of a dime a kilowatt-hour - $0.10/kWh, or $0.0001/Wh. Put another way, divide the total number of watt-hours of power you use by 10,000 and that's roughly your bill in dollars. If you can count to four and know your left from your right, you can handle this calculation - just scoot the decimal point to the left 4 places.
Alright, back to your consumption - how can you know what it is? Let's start with light bulbs. Every one has a watt rating. So to determine the power consumption of a bulb, multiply its watt number by the number of hours you run it in a month (which gives you watt-hours, or Wh), then slide the decimal point over 4 places to the left. Add all of these up and you know how much you're paying for lighting.
If the above is too much effort, at least realize that in the summertime you are paying for that light bulb's juice twice - once to light it, and once to suck out the added heat. So if your circumstances permit, use lower wattage bulbs for replacements in the summer, because you'll save power.
Other low effort things to do are to close the drapes - you might like the light, but you don't need it when you're not in the room, and you'll protect the carpet and furniture. Eat later and cooler - sandwiches, salads,... Cut your hair shorter, and trim or cut off your beard. Make sure your dryer is vented properly. Dress lighter. Cheat the thermostat up a little each week to see what you can stand. Soak in a tub. Drink more liquids. Cook outdoors on the grill - you pay for this power twice too. Shut off the TV and unnecessary lights. Take shorter and cooler showers, and generally avoid adding humidity to the air.
Or just go outside - your body is like a 100W light bulb or thereabouts in terms of the heat it adds to the room. Visit your neighbors and let them pay for the power...
I haven't hunted lately, but James Dulley has good website for practical information on energy conservation, and he's permalinked with the geek stuff to the lower right of this page. Check it out.
Yes, it's your problem. Although can vary from place to place, the summertime is usually the peak season for electric power consumption. That means that unless all of us help to back off on power consumption, rates can go up significantly and we might even have brownouts or blackouts.
Fortunately it really isn't that hard to reduce. I'm not some left-wing anti-globo idiot trying to save the world - I just want you to try some simple things that will reduce your expenses and increase power reliability with minimal effort. Deal?
Let me start by noting that some of you have broadband vs. dialup Internet access. Here information is analogous to energy, and your bandwidth or data rate is analogous to power.
However, they behave differently at high load - broadband will limit you to the data rate you have paid for (or else some idiot downloading streaming porn video could bring down the Internet from an overload). Power lines OTOH will attempt to maintain line voltage in your wiring beyond ratings until problems occur, which is why we have breakers and fuses. And our white-knuckled porn fiend can record his favorites, but your power has to be "live" (forget about batteries - you can't afford it).
Breakers and fuses are designed to avoid fire hazards, not to control your power consumption. You don't want nuisance trips, so the power demands that they react to are significantly higher than what you are expected to use. If you trip a breaker, investigate now, and don't put pennies in fuseboxes in any dwelling you intend to continue living in.
Alright, a little science. Energy is what you are being billed for, and it is billed in kilowatt-hours (kWh). Power is the rate at which you are using energy. It is how many kilowatt-hours you use per hour, which works out to kilowatts (kW). A watt (W) is 1/1000 of a kilowatt. A lot of times calculations are simpler if we use watt-hours (Wh) - 1 Wh = 1/1000 kWh.
The amount you are charged per kWh will vary substantially, but is probably on the order of a dime a kilowatt-hour - $0.10/kWh, or $0.0001/Wh. Put another way, divide the total number of watt-hours of power you use by 10,000 and that's roughly your bill in dollars. If you can count to four and know your left from your right, you can handle this calculation - just scoot the decimal point to the left 4 places.
Alright, back to your consumption - how can you know what it is? Let's start with light bulbs. Every one has a watt rating. So to determine the power consumption of a bulb, multiply its watt number by the number of hours you run it in a month (which gives you watt-hours, or Wh), then slide the decimal point over 4 places to the left. Add all of these up and you know how much you're paying for lighting.
If the above is too much effort, at least realize that in the summertime you are paying for that light bulb's juice twice - once to light it, and once to suck out the added heat. So if your circumstances permit, use lower wattage bulbs for replacements in the summer, because you'll save power.
Other low effort things to do are to close the drapes - you might like the light, but you don't need it when you're not in the room, and you'll protect the carpet and furniture. Eat later and cooler - sandwiches, salads,... Cut your hair shorter, and trim or cut off your beard. Make sure your dryer is vented properly. Dress lighter. Cheat the thermostat up a little each week to see what you can stand. Soak in a tub. Drink more liquids. Cook outdoors on the grill - you pay for this power twice too. Shut off the TV and unnecessary lights. Take shorter and cooler showers, and generally avoid adding humidity to the air.
Or just go outside - your body is like a 100W light bulb or thereabouts in terms of the heat it adds to the room. Visit your neighbors and let them pay for the power...
I haven't hunted lately, but James Dulley has good website for practical information on energy conservation, and he's permalinked with the geek stuff to the lower right of this page. Check it out.
What is a species?
This must be an easy question, right? Don't we teach this to high school kids everyday? Not so fast.
First let's start with the definition of a species at this link The point to be made is that the definition of species is incredibly muddy, even now that we're basing federal laws with nasty penalties upon it.
One popular definition of species that has been used in other blogs is Ernst Mayr's definition, from the link above:
But it would also seem to tell us that Laplanders, Eskimos, Arabs, Nigerians, Maoris, Yanomamo and others are in fact distinct species, and that's about as unPC as you can get. We dare not suggest that there is even such a thing as races, much less different species of humans.
OK, we can dance around this by insisting that the populations be able to breed successfully with others and have fertile offspring. All of the above can and do interbreed when they can get at each other, so that pulls all of us humans back into the same species again.
But what about the spotted owls? Has anyone ever tried to breed them with other owl species? Are they just another example of one larger owl species that happens to live in a particular type of environment? If so, why do they merit protection?
What do the feds say? From the PDF above:
Do we get to pick and choose definitions depending on whose ox is gored?
UPDATE: From the comments, the ESA definition of "species":
Count on the feds to muddy the waters further - now a species is a subspecies et al. OK, now what's a subspecies?
First let's start with the definition of a species at this link The point to be made is that the definition of species is incredibly muddy, even now that we're basing federal laws with nasty penalties upon it.
One popular definition of species that has been used in other blogs is Ernst Mayr's definition, from the link above:
Mayr (1940) defined species as "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups." Dobzhansky (1950) defined species as "the largest and most inclusive ... reproductive community of sexual and cross-fertilizing individuals which share a common gene pool."Hmm. This is convenient for those who would want to call a spotted owl distinctive enough to warrant Federal protection via the Endangered Species Act (ESA). (note-this is a PDF).
But it would also seem to tell us that Laplanders, Eskimos, Arabs, Nigerians, Maoris, Yanomamo and others are in fact distinct species, and that's about as unPC as you can get. We dare not suggest that there is even such a thing as races, much less different species of humans.
OK, we can dance around this by insisting that the populations be able to breed successfully with others and have fertile offspring. All of the above can and do interbreed when they can get at each other, so that pulls all of us humans back into the same species again.
But what about the spotted owls? Has anyone ever tried to breed them with other owl species? Are they just another example of one larger owl species that happens to live in a particular type of environment? If so, why do they merit protection?
What do the feds say? From the PDF above:
(6) The term ‘‘endangered species’’ means any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range other than a species of the Class Insecta determined by the Secretary to constitute a pest whose protection under the provisions of this Act would present an overwhelming and overriding risk to man.So it is no help.
Do we get to pick and choose definitions depending on whose ox is gored?
UPDATE: From the comments, the ESA definition of "species":
(16) The term ''species'' includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature."Thank you Mr. Logan. I guess that's why I'm not an attorney.
Count on the feds to muddy the waters further - now a species is a subspecies et al. OK, now what's a subspecies?
Blog bash envy
Here in flyover country I've had to read about blogganalia in NY twice, LA once or twice, SF, DC, the UK, and I think some Houstonians got together. Sheesh, I think even Knoxville got into the act with Glenn Reynolds hosting somebody.
I had to cancel a couple of weeks ago when I might otherwise have met some local talent (I'm in St. Louis for now). There are a few of us - Charles Austin, Christopher Johnson, Juan Gato, and Mark Nugent, and Stephen Green is in exile. But you can't expect so much from us - we're a much smaller market, and in periodic discussions with NY-based coworkers you'd think I was in Podunk.
What's Chicago's excuse? Surely there are enough bloggers, although the ones I can think of offhand are either away from home or aren't natives. Time it right and I might even be able to make it - surely nobody would want to miss that.
I had to cancel a couple of weeks ago when I might otherwise have met some local talent (I'm in St. Louis for now). There are a few of us - Charles Austin, Christopher Johnson, Juan Gato, and Mark Nugent, and Stephen Green is in exile. But you can't expect so much from us - we're a much smaller market, and in periodic discussions with NY-based coworkers you'd think I was in Podunk.
What's Chicago's excuse? Surely there are enough bloggers, although the ones I can think of offhand are either away from home or aren't natives. Time it right and I might even be able to make it - surely nobody would want to miss that.
Geeky jokes
For statistics, engineering, accounting, and economists. I could do lawyers, but where would I start?
I'm killing time waiting on something, so the above was intended to keep me busy without losing too much stomach lining. What am I waiting on? I'll keep my opinions to myself, but I'm glad I'm not a kitten.
I'm killing time waiting on something, so the above was intended to keep me busy without losing too much stomach lining. What am I waiting on? I'll keep my opinions to myself, but I'm glad I'm not a kitten.
PDA ramblings
I got my first PDA about 4 years ago or so. The gadget freak in me was crying out for one, but I made several trips to the store to convince myself that I really could write into it directly. It turned out to be easy to learn, so I was hooked and got a Palm III.
Supply definitely created its own demand here. All of a sudden all of the stuff I needed to remember could be tracked with minimal effort, and backed up with a few keystrokes. The memory volume was such that I kept about every address, phone number, or other trivial bit of information in it fairly effortlessly. Bye bye Day-Timers.
Then I met somebody who had a better one, and a camera to work with it. Shortly thereafter I dropped my Palm III and it never recovered. I took this very well because it was my excuse to make a beeline to the electronics store and buy the next one, with more RAM and more apps. And of course, the digital camera module.
The camera led me into sin because it was so easy to take candids - you could point it and nobody would know. But the resolution wasn't so great, and although it took color pictures, you couldn't display them well on a grainy grayscale screen before downloading. They took a fair amount of RAM too. That was an older technology though - I might have to take another look.
Then about a year and a half later the alarm function acted flaky on the new one. A saner person would have spent more time investigating, and eventually I figured out what the problem was - I had changed a setting inadvertantly. But no, I had lusted after the color devices and I wanted rechargeable batteries, so it was a Visor Prism for me.
I've only had it for a couple of months now, but now the Treo has come out. What do you know? - I just had some trouble with the Prism after dropping it...
Actually I really did - the charging system was acting funny. But a little surfing on Handspring's website and an in-charger soft reset fixed the problem, so my baby goes back on the road again. The worst thing about the Prism is that it's fatter and doesn't have the built-in flip cover, so it lives more dangerously in my shirt pocket - I make sure the screen faces my chest. But the battery recharges rapidly, and although the screen isn't as sharp as the ones on certain Sony Cliés, it's ok. The next gotta-have features are probably vibrating alarms, higher screen resolutions, and better printing/syncing capabilities.
Nowadays you can get shrinkwrapped apps easily - BugMe, PocketQuicken, a spreadsheet, AvantGo...life is good. If you want hardware some is probably available at a Best Buy or CompUSA. You can get phones, modems, GPS, Ethernet, barcode/mag card readers, games, electronic books (dictionaries, PDR, Bibles...), even a massager and power-napper. There are also full-sized foldup keyboards or the little thumb-keyboards like on a BlackBerry. I suppose a full-blown docking station can't be far off.
I've never tried the non-Palm alternatives. The day could come. But I expect the devices will be far more trouble-prone, and you don't want trouble with a PDA. It's just supposed to work flawlessly when you whip it out until it becomes second nature.
Supply definitely created its own demand here. All of a sudden all of the stuff I needed to remember could be tracked with minimal effort, and backed up with a few keystrokes. The memory volume was such that I kept about every address, phone number, or other trivial bit of information in it fairly effortlessly. Bye bye Day-Timers.
Then I met somebody who had a better one, and a camera to work with it. Shortly thereafter I dropped my Palm III and it never recovered. I took this very well because it was my excuse to make a beeline to the electronics store and buy the next one, with more RAM and more apps. And of course, the digital camera module.
The camera led me into sin because it was so easy to take candids - you could point it and nobody would know. But the resolution wasn't so great, and although it took color pictures, you couldn't display them well on a grainy grayscale screen before downloading. They took a fair amount of RAM too. That was an older technology though - I might have to take another look.
Then about a year and a half later the alarm function acted flaky on the new one. A saner person would have spent more time investigating, and eventually I figured out what the problem was - I had changed a setting inadvertantly. But no, I had lusted after the color devices and I wanted rechargeable batteries, so it was a Visor Prism for me.
I've only had it for a couple of months now, but now the Treo has come out. What do you know? - I just had some trouble with the Prism after dropping it...
Actually I really did - the charging system was acting funny. But a little surfing on Handspring's website and an in-charger soft reset fixed the problem, so my baby goes back on the road again. The worst thing about the Prism is that it's fatter and doesn't have the built-in flip cover, so it lives more dangerously in my shirt pocket - I make sure the screen faces my chest. But the battery recharges rapidly, and although the screen isn't as sharp as the ones on certain Sony Cliés, it's ok. The next gotta-have features are probably vibrating alarms, higher screen resolutions, and better printing/syncing capabilities.
Nowadays you can get shrinkwrapped apps easily - BugMe, PocketQuicken, a spreadsheet, AvantGo...life is good. If you want hardware some is probably available at a Best Buy or CompUSA. You can get phones, modems, GPS, Ethernet, barcode/mag card readers, games, electronic books (dictionaries, PDR, Bibles...), even a massager and power-napper. There are also full-sized foldup keyboards or the little thumb-keyboards like on a BlackBerry. I suppose a full-blown docking station can't be far off.
I've never tried the non-Palm alternatives. The day could come. But I expect the devices will be far more trouble-prone, and you don't want trouble with a PDA. It's just supposed to work flawlessly when you whip it out until it becomes second nature.
Friday, April 19, 2002
Infrared Imaging for Boobs
You look radiant tonight. You always do, as long as your body temperature is above absolute zero. You're radioactive too, but that's another post.
You are radiant because your body emits electromagnetic energy. Now bear with me as I start speaking in tongues for a few lines.
The amount of electromagnetic radiation you emit varies with the fourth power of your absolute temperature. This in large measure determines how "luminous" you are. The frequency of light which is strongest also varies with absolute temperature, and it determines your "color". The quotes are there because this radiation isn't bright enough to see nor at a frequency you can see, but otherwise it is analogous to the electromagnetic radiation we call visible light.
Of visible light, the color that corresponds to the lowest temperature and frequency is red. Light of still lower frequency is thus termed "infrared" ("beneath red").
Alright, so why do you care? Because there are devices that can detect this light, perceive color differences, and map the resulting distribution in color. Because these colors imply certain temperatures, we can use the instruments to detect both absolute temperatures and temperature differences, and at a distance to boot. How cool is that?
This technology has many applications. Consider your house, for instance. You can point a properly designed device at it and see slight temperature variations on the surface. Let's say it's winter - the spots that show as warmer might need more insulation or sealing to prevent the heat loss.
For other applications, consider the electric power generation business. This commonly involves work near very high voltages. Yet the transformers that manipulate these voltages need to be monitored for various conditions that can be detected by abnormal temperature distributions. Using infrared imaging, an engineer can see whether a transformer is working properly from a safe distance.
That's one of the reasons why we had a fancy infrared imaging device at a nuclear power plant where I once worked. We had just received it and were testing it in the office when a certain admin walked by. She was known for her light clothes and lack of undergarments, and she happened to position herself right where the device was pointed (honest!). Some of us happened to notice the resulting display and snickered as it displayed her, uh, temperature distribution. Just as we had thought...
A few years ago Sony introduced a camcorder which was designed to be sensitive to infrared rays, to permit using it under low-light conditions. It so happens that this feature can be used during the day too. And when it is, people wearing light enough clothes appear nude.
Of course the pervs hopped on this right away, and there are entire websites devoted to the resulting images. TechTV just got through warning us about this, and showed some images vivid enough that they felt the need to blur them.
In the interest of science, I went looking for some images to share. Durst you doubt my noble intentions? Check this out. This should be tame enough for any audience (but who knows what kind of bluenoses are out there).
What do you know? It turns out that cancers tend to run hotter than the surrounding tissue, and certain breast cancers can be detected through such infrared imaging. This might be especially effective for smaller-breasted women who have trouble with traditional mammograms.
Wasn't that just a huge steaming pile of enlightenment? Stay abreast of technology here on NWA...
You are radiant because your body emits electromagnetic energy. Now bear with me as I start speaking in tongues for a few lines.
The amount of electromagnetic radiation you emit varies with the fourth power of your absolute temperature. This in large measure determines how "luminous" you are. The frequency of light which is strongest also varies with absolute temperature, and it determines your "color". The quotes are there because this radiation isn't bright enough to see nor at a frequency you can see, but otherwise it is analogous to the electromagnetic radiation we call visible light.
Of visible light, the color that corresponds to the lowest temperature and frequency is red. Light of still lower frequency is thus termed "infrared" ("beneath red").
Alright, so why do you care? Because there are devices that can detect this light, perceive color differences, and map the resulting distribution in color. Because these colors imply certain temperatures, we can use the instruments to detect both absolute temperatures and temperature differences, and at a distance to boot. How cool is that?
This technology has many applications. Consider your house, for instance. You can point a properly designed device at it and see slight temperature variations on the surface. Let's say it's winter - the spots that show as warmer might need more insulation or sealing to prevent the heat loss.
For other applications, consider the electric power generation business. This commonly involves work near very high voltages. Yet the transformers that manipulate these voltages need to be monitored for various conditions that can be detected by abnormal temperature distributions. Using infrared imaging, an engineer can see whether a transformer is working properly from a safe distance.
That's one of the reasons why we had a fancy infrared imaging device at a nuclear power plant where I once worked. We had just received it and were testing it in the office when a certain admin walked by. She was known for her light clothes and lack of undergarments, and she happened to position herself right where the device was pointed (honest!). Some of us happened to notice the resulting display and snickered as it displayed her, uh, temperature distribution. Just as we had thought...
A few years ago Sony introduced a camcorder which was designed to be sensitive to infrared rays, to permit using it under low-light conditions. It so happens that this feature can be used during the day too. And when it is, people wearing light enough clothes appear nude.
Of course the pervs hopped on this right away, and there are entire websites devoted to the resulting images. TechTV just got through warning us about this, and showed some images vivid enough that they felt the need to blur them.
In the interest of science, I went looking for some images to share. Durst you doubt my noble intentions? Check this out. This should be tame enough for any audience (but who knows what kind of bluenoses are out there).
What do you know? It turns out that cancers tend to run hotter than the surrounding tissue, and certain breast cancers can be detected through such infrared imaging. This might be especially effective for smaller-breasted women who have trouble with traditional mammograms.
Wasn't that just a huge steaming pile of enlightenment? Stay abreast of technology here on NWA...
Thursday, April 18, 2002
Beneath trivia
You remember Leisure Suit Larry, right? He went on a number of adventures seeking women, with many misfortunes. Don't give up ladies, he's still on the market - Sierra is now packaging the whole Larry product line on 4 cds for about $40.
If you're a Larry geek, you know that his full name is Larry Laffer. Originally he was named for an employee of the company, but then that guy left. Creator Al Lowe figured he' d better rename Larry, so he went looking for a name. Who did he come across but economist Arthur Laffer...
If you're a Larry geek, you know that his full name is Larry Laffer. Originally he was named for an employee of the company, but then that guy left. Creator Al Lowe figured he' d better rename Larry, so he went looking for a name. Who did he come across but economist Arthur Laffer...
Notice
You'll note that this blog bears the inspired (?!) name "No Watermelons Allowed". It's a cryptic reference to the late Warren Brookes' characterization of certain environmentalists as "watermelons", because they were green on the outside and red on the inside.
Race hustlers often use similar constructs. If you're black on the outside and white on the inside, you're an "Oreo" or a "coconut". For Asians it's "bananas", and for Indians it's "apples". I guess the albinos are just out of luck.
Anyway, I note all of this because it occurred to me some time back that eventually some idiot might interpret the name of the blog as some sort of crypto-racism - that somehow the "watermelons" was a reference to blacks. I was reminded of this a day or so ago when this blog got a hit from a Google for "no blacks allowed".
Once upon a time I might have thought this far fetched, but then we have a couple of bloggers from Penn who could tell us stories about an incident that happened there in the early 1990's.
If anyone does show up looking for trouble, well, I'll write about what I want to write about, and that includes race and ethnic issues. If you're offended you probably deserve it. Neither racists nor race hustlers will find comfort here, and I like it like that.
Enough - we return to our previously scheduled rants.
Race hustlers often use similar constructs. If you're black on the outside and white on the inside, you're an "Oreo" or a "coconut". For Asians it's "bananas", and for Indians it's "apples". I guess the albinos are just out of luck.
Anyway, I note all of this because it occurred to me some time back that eventually some idiot might interpret the name of the blog as some sort of crypto-racism - that somehow the "watermelons" was a reference to blacks. I was reminded of this a day or so ago when this blog got a hit from a Google for "no blacks allowed".
Once upon a time I might have thought this far fetched, but then we have a couple of bloggers from Penn who could tell us stories about an incident that happened there in the early 1990's.
If anyone does show up looking for trouble, well, I'll write about what I want to write about, and that includes race and ethnic issues. If you're offended you probably deserve it. Neither racists nor race hustlers will find comfort here, and I like it like that.
Enough - we return to our previously scheduled rants.
Gallagher
Somewhere in blogland someone was writing about road rage. What is it about driving that makes all the rest of you behave that way? (Moi?)
That made me think of an old Gallagher routine. He proposed that we all be issued little dart guns that we could use to shoot other cars when they cut us off, slowed us down or otherwise acted obnoxious. Then when a state trooper saw a car with few of these stuck to it, he could pull them over and give them a ticket for being a jerk.
Oh come on, you must have heard of Gallagher. Well, now you have. And you can see why he's this blog's Official Comedian.
That made me think of an old Gallagher routine. He proposed that we all be issued little dart guns that we could use to shoot other cars when they cut us off, slowed us down or otherwise acted obnoxious. Then when a state trooper saw a car with few of these stuck to it, he could pull them over and give them a ticket for being a jerk.
Oh come on, you must have heard of Gallagher. Well, now you have. And you can see why he's this blog's Official Comedian.
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Politicized science
Peter Huber has written a number of excellent books. One of them is Galileo's Revenge - Junk Science in the Courtroom. This is where I first heard of N-rays.
You haven't heard of N rays? That's a good thing, because there aren't any. We've known that for close to 100 years now, but they were a hot research topic once. Even then it did seem awfully funny that the only people who seemed able to detect them were French.
Then there's Trofim Lysenko. His theories of genetics dovetailed well with Marxist thought. Too bad they held back Russian genetic science for decades.
But we Americans wouldn't politicize science, would we? Unfortunately, yes we would...
You haven't heard of N rays? That's a good thing, because there aren't any. We've known that for close to 100 years now, but they were a hot research topic once. Even then it did seem awfully funny that the only people who seemed able to detect them were French.
Then there's Trofim Lysenko. His theories of genetics dovetailed well with Marxist thought. Too bad they held back Russian genetic science for decades.
But we Americans wouldn't politicize science, would we? Unfortunately, yes we would...
Busting the big bang
Here's an example of politics creeping into the classroom in the name of science.
There are various theories of the origin of the universe. Of course there is creationism, which is not scientific because it is not falsifiable. That doesn't mean that it isn't what actually happened, but it does mean that there is a case for not presenting it in science classes.
What is usually taught is the "big bang" theory. There are problems with this theory too - experiments must be repeatable. If we can't create new universes, we can't buy off the "big bang" theory as scientific, though thousands of scientists might prefer it to creationism.
So it would seem that the appropriate thing to do in primary and secondary schools' science classes would be to confine instruction to scientific theories alone, which basically means leaving the origin of the universe as an unanswered question. This also provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that science cannot explain everything, even in principle. IMO science cannot be properly understood without noting its limitations, and failing to note them introduces the risk of turning science into a religion itself.
Unfortunately, this opportunity is usually squandered. Instead the big bang theory is taught, and efforts to give equal time to another non-scientific theory, creationism, are treated as the work of cranks.
This is not science, it is politics. I'll leave the issue of whether religion ought to be taught in public schools to the Supreme Court. But it's fair to say that if neither creationism nor alternative theories of the origin of the universe are scientific, then neither should be taught in science class. Under such circumstances teaching the big bang as if it negates religious claims is an unjustifiable affront to religious people.
There are various theories of the origin of the universe. Of course there is creationism, which is not scientific because it is not falsifiable. That doesn't mean that it isn't what actually happened, but it does mean that there is a case for not presenting it in science classes.
What is usually taught is the "big bang" theory. There are problems with this theory too - experiments must be repeatable. If we can't create new universes, we can't buy off the "big bang" theory as scientific, though thousands of scientists might prefer it to creationism.
So it would seem that the appropriate thing to do in primary and secondary schools' science classes would be to confine instruction to scientific theories alone, which basically means leaving the origin of the universe as an unanswered question. This also provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that science cannot explain everything, even in principle. IMO science cannot be properly understood without noting its limitations, and failing to note them introduces the risk of turning science into a religion itself.
Unfortunately, this opportunity is usually squandered. Instead the big bang theory is taught, and efforts to give equal time to another non-scientific theory, creationism, are treated as the work of cranks.
This is not science, it is politics. I'll leave the issue of whether religion ought to be taught in public schools to the Supreme Court. But it's fair to say that if neither creationism nor alternative theories of the origin of the universe are scientific, then neither should be taught in science class. Under such circumstances teaching the big bang as if it negates religious claims is an unjustifiable affront to religious people.
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Just because
Steven Den Beste says he is an atheist. And in this post he notes that he has arrived at some moral principles that are consistent with religious teachings, but via his own path. He questions a post of Amy Welborn's about moral instruction.
I would probably be better described as agnostic than atheist, but my own path is probably much like SDB's. I don't like the idea of someone handing me stone tablets and being told to believe. But the longer I live I find that I keep winding up in the same places those stone tablets pointed me to all along.
A "because I said so" approach to teaching morality won't appeal to a lot of us. We insist on finding our own ways. We might even think ourselves sophisticated for questioning what we might dismiss as dogma. And later, many of us find as I do that accepting what we were taught would have saved us much grief.
Arguably those most in need of moral instruction are children. I contend that they must be taught morality dogmatically. What's the alternative? Raising moral imbeciles.
If you don't believe me, ask why we teach math the way we do. We could show kids the numbers and wait for them to derive addition and multiplication tables, or let them figure out long division on their own. But we know the kids are not equally talented in the relevant reasoning, and are likely to need the results of such reasoning long before they're capable of the reasoning themselves.
The morally unsophisticated among us, such as children, must be prepared to treat certain moral conclusions as settled fact until they have the intellectual tools and experience needed to finish deriving them on their own. They must understand that the adults aren't kidding when they say "some day you'll understand".
And those who object to dogmas must understand that others need it to get jumpstarted. Newbies need rules, and they shouldn't be encouraged to break them until they know them and why they're there. Only then are they prepared to give or receive the kinds of explanations SDB writes of in his post.
So for early instruction, there's nothing wrong with what SDB would call dogma. As he notes, the elders of a healthy faith ought to be able to explain their beliefs articulately. But for kids, dogma is desirable and necessary.
And I think it's sad that some will find this controversial.
I would probably be better described as agnostic than atheist, but my own path is probably much like SDB's. I don't like the idea of someone handing me stone tablets and being told to believe. But the longer I live I find that I keep winding up in the same places those stone tablets pointed me to all along.
A "because I said so" approach to teaching morality won't appeal to a lot of us. We insist on finding our own ways. We might even think ourselves sophisticated for questioning what we might dismiss as dogma. And later, many of us find as I do that accepting what we were taught would have saved us much grief.
Arguably those most in need of moral instruction are children. I contend that they must be taught morality dogmatically. What's the alternative? Raising moral imbeciles.
If you don't believe me, ask why we teach math the way we do. We could show kids the numbers and wait for them to derive addition and multiplication tables, or let them figure out long division on their own. But we know the kids are not equally talented in the relevant reasoning, and are likely to need the results of such reasoning long before they're capable of the reasoning themselves.
The morally unsophisticated among us, such as children, must be prepared to treat certain moral conclusions as settled fact until they have the intellectual tools and experience needed to finish deriving them on their own. They must understand that the adults aren't kidding when they say "some day you'll understand".
And those who object to dogmas must understand that others need it to get jumpstarted. Newbies need rules, and they shouldn't be encouraged to break them until they know them and why they're there. Only then are they prepared to give or receive the kinds of explanations SDB writes of in his post.
So for early instruction, there's nothing wrong with what SDB would call dogma. As he notes, the elders of a healthy faith ought to be able to explain their beliefs articulately. But for kids, dogma is desirable and necessary.
And I think it's sad that some will find this controversial.
Taxes!
Turbo Tax accepted my electric return at 11:59. I'll try to beat that record next year.
Or maybe I should beat this individual instead. He says his $91K in taxes were a bargain. Compared to what? - my bet is that the same amount of money would have bought far more from the private sector, if in fact they were allowed to compete with the government. Our govt might not screw us as badly as it could, but that's true only because we keep an eye on it.
Meanwhile I saw "Mohr Sports", a show on ESPN with Jay Mohr. He had billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on. Cuban said he paid $200M in taxes. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's obscene by any measure. Nobody, but nobody, ought to pay anything even within a couple orders of magnitude of that.
If you don't agree, or think you are undertaxed, I have just the ticket for you. Send a gift to the feds.
Or maybe I should beat this individual instead. He says his $91K in taxes were a bargain. Compared to what? - my bet is that the same amount of money would have bought far more from the private sector, if in fact they were allowed to compete with the government. Our govt might not screw us as badly as it could, but that's true only because we keep an eye on it.
Meanwhile I saw "Mohr Sports", a show on ESPN with Jay Mohr. He had billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on. Cuban said he paid $200M in taxes. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's obscene by any measure. Nobody, but nobody, ought to pay anything even within a couple orders of magnitude of that.
If you don't agree, or think you are undertaxed, I have just the ticket for you. Send a gift to the feds.
Overkill
Techie types like me can fall in love with technology all out of proportion to its usefulness. I know I have to combat it. Otherwise I find myself building some fancy database app when what I really need is a box of index cards.
There's always someone to sell you a million dollar solution to a nickel problem, and some of the most egregious offenders are in medical sales. I recall reading about a 'penile turgidity monitor', used on impotent men to determine if they had erections while they slept - this could help determine if the problem was physical or mental. But you could replace it for most purposes with a piece of toilet paper and some tape. Check in the morning to see if it's broken so you know if the problem is in his head.
And then there's this from Science Daily by way of Poor Man:
Did I mention that I have this little app that turns my PC into an alarm clock that speaks several languages?
There's always someone to sell you a million dollar solution to a nickel problem, and some of the most egregious offenders are in medical sales. I recall reading about a 'penile turgidity monitor', used on impotent men to determine if they had erections while they slept - this could help determine if the problem was physical or mental. But you could replace it for most purposes with a piece of toilet paper and some tape. Check in the morning to see if it's broken so you know if the problem is in his head.
And then there's this from Science Daily by way of Poor Man:
"simple, cost effective method for extracting carbon dioxide directly from the air — which could allow sustained use of fossil fuels while avoiding potential global climate change."We already have this - it's called a "tree". This technology might well have practical use somewhere, but if it's CO2 reduction you want, we can go simpler and cheaper in most places.
Did I mention that I have this little app that turns my PC into an alarm clock that speaks several languages?
Sunday, April 14, 2002
If it feels good, do it
Was anything major left out of the Bill of Rights? I sometimes think that if it were rewritten, we'd wind up with an amendment that said "No law shall impact the right to have sex any time, any where, with any number of persons, beings and objects." There'd probably be another guaranteeing every woman from here to Alaska the means to have an abortion on her lunch hour within walking distance, but that's another rant.
Alright, what set this off? I read something that Dr. Paul Orwin wrote about AIDS in Africa. Dr. Charles Murtaugh had dared to suggest that promiscuity had something to do with the problem, and PO had noted immune suppression effects that might apply to make things worse.
OK so far. Then came something that probably was intended to be evenhanded but I still found remarkable:
OK, let's get down to basics - what spreads AIDS? In Africa health spending is minute, so you can forget about tainted blood products. That leaves needles and sex.
As for the needles, well, health spending in Africa is so low that they get reused. Thus what little medical care they get can be the source of AIDS itself. Michael Fumento writes about this in "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS". So here's where a liberal approach could help, but no - political correctness says that they must ship condoms instead, with the inherent storage, distribution, education, shelf life and failure rate problems. I guess they want to save the needles for junkies rather than innocents with diseases. Never mind effectiveness, as long as it makes them feel good.
Then there's sex. Let's suppose we stipulate that despite the poverty and lack of alternative amusement, the Africans aren't getting any more than the rest of us. That still leaves a practice that the women might get sore about: "dry sex". Don't try this at home, you selfish bastard. And realize that this practice will result in even higher condom failure rates if they are used.
And if they like it dry, well...never mind.
Now for an even more sacred cow: gay sex. In case you haven't read Fumento's book linked above, you can look at this instead, where a Ugandan politician claimed that his country had no gays. Fumento notes that there are plenty of gays in Africa, and they don't appear to be any more sexually continent there than they are here. And if you want to read about real excess, try "And the Band Played On", by the late Randy Shilts (he died of AIDS).
Why can't the liberals admit that indiscriminate sex has something to do with these problems? Knock 'em up, clap 'em up, kill 'em off, but nothing shall so much as discourage that inalienable unwritten right to get laid.
Alright, what set this off? I read something that Dr. Paul Orwin wrote about AIDS in Africa. Dr. Charles Murtaugh had dared to suggest that promiscuity had something to do with the problem, and PO had noted immune suppression effects that might apply to make things worse.
OK so far. Then came something that probably was intended to be evenhanded but I still found remarkable:
This explanation, of course, is not great news for social conservatives, who would like to believe that promiscuity or other societal factors are to blame, and therefore the solution lies there. It's also not great news for liberal activists, who would like to cure AIDS by handing out condoms or by ending poverty (that last bit would certainly help, although I think clean water is much more important. In effect, though, the primary responsibility for curbing or curing HIV/AIDS must be in the scientific community, and the research, both primary and drug and vaccine development, is of paramount importance.Before I start, do we agree that he has accurately characterized likely approaches of social conservatives and those of liberals?
OK, let's get down to basics - what spreads AIDS? In Africa health spending is minute, so you can forget about tainted blood products. That leaves needles and sex.
As for the needles, well, health spending in Africa is so low that they get reused. Thus what little medical care they get can be the source of AIDS itself. Michael Fumento writes about this in "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS". So here's where a liberal approach could help, but no - political correctness says that they must ship condoms instead, with the inherent storage, distribution, education, shelf life and failure rate problems. I guess they want to save the needles for junkies rather than innocents with diseases. Never mind effectiveness, as long as it makes them feel good.
Then there's sex. Let's suppose we stipulate that despite the poverty and lack of alternative amusement, the Africans aren't getting any more than the rest of us. That still leaves a practice that the women might get sore about: "dry sex". Don't try this at home, you selfish bastard. And realize that this practice will result in even higher condom failure rates if they are used.
And if they like it dry, well...never mind.
Now for an even more sacred cow: gay sex. In case you haven't read Fumento's book linked above, you can look at this instead, where a Ugandan politician claimed that his country had no gays. Fumento notes that there are plenty of gays in Africa, and they don't appear to be any more sexually continent there than they are here. And if you want to read about real excess, try "And the Band Played On", by the late Randy Shilts (he died of AIDS).
Why can't the liberals admit that indiscriminate sex has something to do with these problems? Knock 'em up, clap 'em up, kill 'em off, but nothing shall so much as discourage that inalienable unwritten right to get laid.
Well, it worked for phones...
I haven't posted anything about electric power lately, and I didn't do anything special for April Fool's Day. Maybe this will make amends.
Useful life of institutions
Maybe we can't be immortal, but we can set up institutions to maintain continuity.
However, it seems to me that institutions themselves ought to die at some point. Like humans, they lose their vitality, eventually merely existing out of nothing but inertia. And this life span might well be close to that of human beings.
One example would be the Tennessee Valley Authority. It was "born" during the New Deal, and I understand that it was very effective in those days. The bosses had vision and a sense of mission, and they hired people who fit that mold.
But by the time I showed up there in the early 80's, the place was a morgue. Any entrepreneurial spirit was gone from the organization through retirement or transfers. Civil service limitations compressed salaries to the point that nobody with any talent would stay even at the lower levels, and at higher levels it was ridiculous. The joke at headquarters was that they painted white stripes down the middle of the hallways so the people who left early wouldn't run into the ones who came in late.
The final insult was Jimmy Carter's inspired appointment of S. David Freeman to be one member of the three man board that managed TVA - Freeman was an antinuker, and TVA had 5 plants running and 12 under construction. Of those 12 (4 at Hartsville, TN; 2 at Surgoinsville, TN; 2 at Corinth, MS; 2 at Hollywood, AL; and 2 near Dayton, TN) only the last 2 listed were completed, and not until fairly recently.
Should TVA continue to exist? I lean toward privatization as much as possible. At least sell off the electrical generation and distribution assets to better managed nearby companies like Duke Power, the Southern Company, or American Electric Power.
TVA may have changed their ways by now - maybe Instapundit or Rich Hailey can tell us. But I suspect it's beyond redemption.
I have other nominations. NASA. The NAACP. The International Red Cross. The UN. The Nobel Prize committee. K mart.
Any other nominees?
However, it seems to me that institutions themselves ought to die at some point. Like humans, they lose their vitality, eventually merely existing out of nothing but inertia. And this life span might well be close to that of human beings.
One example would be the Tennessee Valley Authority. It was "born" during the New Deal, and I understand that it was very effective in those days. The bosses had vision and a sense of mission, and they hired people who fit that mold.
But by the time I showed up there in the early 80's, the place was a morgue. Any entrepreneurial spirit was gone from the organization through retirement or transfers. Civil service limitations compressed salaries to the point that nobody with any talent would stay even at the lower levels, and at higher levels it was ridiculous. The joke at headquarters was that they painted white stripes down the middle of the hallways so the people who left early wouldn't run into the ones who came in late.
The final insult was Jimmy Carter's inspired appointment of S. David Freeman to be one member of the three man board that managed TVA - Freeman was an antinuker, and TVA had 5 plants running and 12 under construction. Of those 12 (4 at Hartsville, TN; 2 at Surgoinsville, TN; 2 at Corinth, MS; 2 at Hollywood, AL; and 2 near Dayton, TN) only the last 2 listed were completed, and not until fairly recently.
Should TVA continue to exist? I lean toward privatization as much as possible. At least sell off the electrical generation and distribution assets to better managed nearby companies like Duke Power, the Southern Company, or American Electric Power.
TVA may have changed their ways by now - maybe Instapundit or Rich Hailey can tell us. But I suspect it's beyond redemption.
I have other nominations. NASA. The NAACP. The International Red Cross. The UN. The Nobel Prize committee. K mart.
Any other nominees?
Saturday, April 13, 2002
Thursday, April 11, 2002
Non embryonic stem cell breakthrough?
I'll be keeping an eye on this. An Australian man has had adult (non-embryonic) stem cells injected into his heart in hopes of regenerating the tissue. Saving this one life might save many more.
Long distance dedication
Glenn Reynolds has updated his links this week to include such worthies as Kolkata Libertarian Suman Palit, Dr. Frank, Susanna Cornett, Mindles H. Dreck, and even this humble blog. To commemorate this occasion, I offer this obscure oldie.
Blacks vs. Unions
The Democrats have one of the strangest coalitions ever assembled. Among the least compatible groups are blacks and unions.
There's a certain perverse respect involved in racial discrimination. After all, you wouldn't need to discriminate if you knew that the victim couldn't do that same job you were doing. You know damned well they can, and might even do it more cheaply.
That was the driving force behind apartheid. White labor didn't want to have to compete with local blacks, so they used the law to prevent them from being hired. (Do you suppose these are the "stupid white men" Michael Moore is talking about?)
There was a similar situation in the South with the Jim Crow laws. Guess which party enacted those laws? I'll give you a hint - Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
Don't get too smug, Yankees - guys like you passed the Davis-Bacon act:
There's a certain perverse respect involved in racial discrimination. After all, you wouldn't need to discriminate if you knew that the victim couldn't do that same job you were doing. You know damned well they can, and might even do it more cheaply.
That was the driving force behind apartheid. White labor didn't want to have to compete with local blacks, so they used the law to prevent them from being hired. (Do you suppose these are the "stupid white men" Michael Moore is talking about?)
There was a similar situation in the South with the Jim Crow laws. Guess which party enacted those laws? I'll give you a hint - Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
Don't get too smug, Yankees - guys like you passed the Davis-Bacon act:
The Davis-Bacon Act exemplified the protectionist laws of the first half of the twentieth century. The law originally was proposed in 1927 by Rep. Robert Bacon of Long Island, who was alarmed about low-paid black Southerners coming into his district and taking jobs away from white, unionized construction workers. By 1931, when the Depression intensified competition for scarce jobs, the law was enacted, requiring contractors to pay prevailing wages on all federal construction projects. The law removed the economic incentive to hire unskilled black laborers, and the black unemployment rate in the construction industry has remained far higher than the white rate ever sinceLabor leaders aren't as prominent as they once were, but they're still around. Can you name any that are black? Could this be evidence of discrimination? Shouldn't there be a quota? Where are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton?
Who's next?
I have never been a smoker, and I'm glad that I'm exposed to less smoke than before. But I'm not willing to make up statistics about the dangers of second-hand smoke or to demonize smokers, much less deny them employment. But I don't live in St. Cloud, FL, south of Orlando near Disney World.
The city of St. Cloud, FL, doesn't want to hire smokers. I wonder if they'll make an exception for the fire department.
I liked this, from a letter to the editor:
Keep an eye on a self-righteous crusader named John Banzhaf, coming soon to a TV near you. He's the most insufferable of the anti-smoking crowd, and he's already planning his next campaign after tobacco.
The city of St. Cloud, FL, doesn't want to hire smokers. I wonder if they'll make an exception for the fire department.
I liked this, from a letter to the editor:
May the city of St. Cloud be blessed with an abundance of employment applications from every hypertensive, diabetic, obese, HIV-positive, alcoholic, schizophrenic, manic-depressive, drug-dependent person in Central Florida.I've read of other municipalities that forbid smoking outdoors, and although I can't find a link just now, I thought Los Angeles had forbidden city workers from smoking on their own time.
Keep an eye on a self-righteous crusader named John Banzhaf, coming soon to a TV near you. He's the most insufferable of the anti-smoking crowd, and he's already planning his next campaign after tobacco.
Serendipity
The neat thing about looking stuff up on the Web is what you find along the way. I was trying to find more background on Paul Benedict on IMDB, then clicked his birth date. What do you know? - it brought up a huge list of people who were born, who died or who got married on that day.
OK, I edited the URL to April 10 and got this.
Peter McNicol is 48? He and Haley Joel Osment, John Madden, Lenin and Lew Wallace (the pride of Crawfordsville, IN) were born on this day.
Larry Linville died 2 years ago at 60 - he was Major Burns on M*A*S*H. Peoria, IL favorite Sam Kinison was killed in a car wreck on this date in 1992 - I was in a Peoria nightspot at the time (I must have been doing a deal), and they announced it and stopped the music.
Dennis Miller, Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall, Meredith Baxter Birney and David Birney, and Hermann Goering all got married on this date.
More useless information I'll remember...
OK, I edited the URL to April 10 and got this.
Peter McNicol is 48? He and Haley Joel Osment, John Madden, Lenin and Lew Wallace (the pride of Crawfordsville, IN) were born on this day.
Larry Linville died 2 years ago at 60 - he was Major Burns on M*A*S*H. Peoria, IL favorite Sam Kinison was killed in a car wreck on this date in 1992 - I was in a Peoria nightspot at the time (I must have been doing a deal), and they announced it and stopped the music.
Dennis Miller, Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall, Meredith Baxter Birney and David Birney, and Hermann Goering all got married on this date.
More useless information I'll remember...
Giants of Hollywood
I had read something about Rondo Hatton some years back, and for some reason it came popping back into my head today. Incidentally, I was nowhere near a mirror at the time.
Alright, who was Rondo Hatton? Supposedly he was a good-looking kid, and eventually he made his way to Hollywood.
Hatton wasn't the only actor with his particular gifts. There was also Paul Benedict, the neighbor across the hall in "The Jeffersons". And Richard Kiel, a villain from Bond flicks ("Jaws").
And don't forget the most famous of all, Andre Rene Rousimoff, who played in "The Princess Bride".
Rousimoff really was famous - just not as an actor. He was best known as a professional wrestler, "Andre the Giant".
Andre is dead now, so I can safely note that whatever his other strengths, he wasn't exactly a hottie in the looks department. Neither were any of the others, because they all had a strange disease called acromegaly.
Mercifully this condition is not common, yet here we have 4 actors with it. Hooray for Hollywood.
Alright, who was Rondo Hatton? Supposedly he was a good-looking kid, and eventually he made his way to Hollywood.
Hatton wasn't the only actor with his particular gifts. There was also Paul Benedict, the neighbor across the hall in "The Jeffersons". And Richard Kiel, a villain from Bond flicks ("Jaws").
And don't forget the most famous of all, Andre Rene Rousimoff, who played in "The Princess Bride".
Rousimoff really was famous - just not as an actor. He was best known as a professional wrestler, "Andre the Giant".
Andre is dead now, so I can safely note that whatever his other strengths, he wasn't exactly a hottie in the looks department. Neither were any of the others, because they all had a strange disease called acromegaly.
Mercifully this condition is not common, yet here we have 4 actors with it. Hooray for Hollywood.
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
Cheap plastic solar cells
Nothing like being timely - Quana posted this over a week ago. It's about a new way to make solar photovoltaic (PV) cells cheaply at a large scale, at the cost of efficiency.
Early practical solar cells were developed for the space program. Cost mattered little compared to the amount of power, the volume and the weight, and we didn't need tremendous amounts of it. This forced the development of technologies that were particularly efficient (but still only on the order of about 10%) but expensive and slow to fabricate.
Suppose you want to use PV to power houses? Now weight, bulk and efficiency are less important, but you want cheap, fast, and lots of it. Suddenly the old technologies are no longer appropriate.
Imagine if you could get as much of this stuff as you wanted, and cheaply. You could use it for roofing, siding, drapes, tarps, umbrellas... If it's less efficient than other technologies, who cares? - even if you only get 1% of the power the sun shines on it, that's more than you had without it.
But guess what it's made out of. Cadmium, which is highly toxic. And plastic (polymers), which might well be derived from petroleum.
Early practical solar cells were developed for the space program. Cost mattered little compared to the amount of power, the volume and the weight, and we didn't need tremendous amounts of it. This forced the development of technologies that were particularly efficient (but still only on the order of about 10%) but expensive and slow to fabricate.
Suppose you want to use PV to power houses? Now weight, bulk and efficiency are less important, but you want cheap, fast, and lots of it. Suddenly the old technologies are no longer appropriate.
Imagine if you could get as much of this stuff as you wanted, and cheaply. You could use it for roofing, siding, drapes, tarps, umbrellas... If it's less efficient than other technologies, who cares? - even if you only get 1% of the power the sun shines on it, that's more than you had without it.
But guess what it's made out of. Cadmium, which is highly toxic. And plastic (polymers), which might well be derived from petroleum.
Tuesday, April 09, 2002
Neuro linguistic programming?
Another person's behavior can be duplicated by studying what that person does inside their head (language, filters, programs, etc.) to produce results. NLP was initially created in 1975 by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who began modeling and duplicating the "magical results" of a few top communicators and therapists. Some of the first people to be studied included hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, gestalt therapist Fritz Perls and family therapist Virginia Satir.Using your brain is something we take for granted. You have to start using it long before you can be taught anything like a method for doing so. So how can you know that you went about learning to do these things most effectively? Are they instinctive, or 'hardwired'?
NLP practitioners believe that you give physical clues to the way you are thinking in various ways, particularly with eye movements. Not everyone is the same, but many people supposedly are as follows: if you are trying to remember how something looked or picture how something would look, you look upward. Remembering or imagining would have you looking straight ahead. Remembering or imagining a physical sensation leads the eyes downward. If you're remembering something, you might look to the left, but if you're imagining something you might look to the right.
So if you try to remember the last thing your lover said to you, you'd probably keep your eyes level and skewed to the left. If you pictured Yasser Arafat smoking Monica's famous cigar, you'd probably look upward and to the right.
An NLP expert watched kids taking a spelling test and accurately predicted who the best spellers were. How? He claimed to have observed clues about how the kids were thinking - where they sounding it out, or were they memorizing the way the word 'looked'? Not surprisingly, the latter group turned out to be far better spellers. Can things like this account for difference in performance in spelling, math, reading and others? Are people literally thinking about them the wrong way?
These things are very interesting to me because I am fascinated by human performance. Why doesn't Michael Jordan make every open shot? Why are we sharp some days and not on others? Why do some people take to a new dance step instantly while I look like Al Gore's choreographer? How can I play a guitar riff perfectly 50 times in a row and then foul it up? Why is there such a thing as 'aptitude'?
Maybe NLP can tell us why.
Learning styles
This is partly inspired by a comment Susanna made on an earlier post.
On my first job after engineering school I met a couple of men (a steamfitter foreman and an inspector) who had decided to become engineers themselves. They were taking calculus and physics at a local community college and having a hard time. So in return for a lot of free meals I whipped them into shape.
They had two totally different styles. The fitter foreman was Mr. Abstract - 1+1=2 was fine, but no story problems!. The inspector was Mr. Concrete - give him an apple in each hand and he'd know how many he had, but 1+1 would throw him. Well yeah, that's an exaggeration, but in fact I had to present things in drastically different ways to get the concepts across.
Ultimately both got A's in both classes for both semesters when I helped them. But in a real classroom one would probably outperform the other, with the decisive factor being who they drew for an instructor.
So which one was smarter? Does one of them belong in a 'slower' class?
On my first job after engineering school I met a couple of men (a steamfitter foreman and an inspector) who had decided to become engineers themselves. They were taking calculus and physics at a local community college and having a hard time. So in return for a lot of free meals I whipped them into shape.
They had two totally different styles. The fitter foreman was Mr. Abstract - 1+1=2 was fine, but no story problems!. The inspector was Mr. Concrete - give him an apple in each hand and he'd know how many he had, but 1+1 would throw him. Well yeah, that's an exaggeration, but in fact I had to present things in drastically different ways to get the concepts across.
Ultimately both got A's in both classes for both semesters when I helped them. But in a real classroom one would probably outperform the other, with the decisive factor being who they drew for an instructor.
So which one was smarter? Does one of them belong in a 'slower' class?
Monday, April 08, 2002
Buff brains?
I wonder, what are people doing with their brains most of the time? I suspect that most of the people I meet are intellectual couch potatoes, thinking only under duress. I wish you could tell who was smart just by looking at them (blondes excepted...).
Math in particular is of interest because so many otherwise sharp people seem to have trouble with it. Sorry folks, but most of math is about paying attention to what you are doing and following the rules, with about 1% inspiration. The occasional oddball geometry proof or differential equation may take a bit more ingenuity, but if you try enough things you'll probably get there. It definitely does not cause a taste for pocket protectors or loss of social skills - get over it.
But it seems like everyday math skills are going down the tubes, even after taking calculators into account. It's getting to be a political problem.
I don't suppose we'll ever have cheerleaders for the chess and math clubs or the debate squad. The day may never come when a young girl will look in the mirror and decide she's not smart enough. Maybe we'd be better off if they did.
Math in particular is of interest because so many otherwise sharp people seem to have trouble with it. Sorry folks, but most of math is about paying attention to what you are doing and following the rules, with about 1% inspiration. The occasional oddball geometry proof or differential equation may take a bit more ingenuity, but if you try enough things you'll probably get there. It definitely does not cause a taste for pocket protectors or loss of social skills - get over it.
But it seems like everyday math skills are going down the tubes, even after taking calculators into account. It's getting to be a political problem.
I don't suppose we'll ever have cheerleaders for the chess and math clubs or the debate squad. The day may never come when a young girl will look in the mirror and decide she's not smart enough. Maybe we'd be better off if they did.
Spam!
This morning has to be a personal best - 20 pieces of spam.
Even my mother has received an "enlarge your penis" email by now, so I was kind of smug...then I got mine today. It was from BiggerSizes@erect.com: where else? (with any luck, the spambots will pick up that email address and hammer him good)
Another offered to enlarge my breasts, which reminds me of a neato product I saw on TechTV the other day. Brava is a combination bra/vacuum pump that supposedly is good for a cup size or two using technology originally developed for penis enlargement (the latter supposedly doesn't work, but I wouldn't know). It's available for $2500 under a doctor's supervision. Warning - some graphics might not be appropriate for work.
Someone has forwarded me something forwarded 8 levels deep. Maybe you got it too - are you 98% or 2%? They stack the deck by taking advantage of the fact that the sum of the digits of any two-digit multiple of 9 is 9 itself.
Then there's the inspirational stuff, which is terrific for the first couple of times you receive it. This seems to be a woman thing - anything I've ever had forwarded from a man is usually locker room material, like that "why is the camel called the 'ship of the desert'?" joke from a while back. Not that the ladies haven't sent me some bad ones, usually involving some kind of man-abuse (q. - HOW MANY MEN DOES IT TAKE TO PUT A TOILET SEAT DOWN? a. -don't know....it never happened).
But I'm sure you have your own spam, so I'll leave you to it. Just don't forward it to me or Jane Galt
Even my mother has received an "enlarge your penis" email by now, so I was kind of smug...then I got mine today. It was from BiggerSizes@erect.com: where else? (with any luck, the spambots will pick up that email address and hammer him good)
Another offered to enlarge my breasts, which reminds me of a neato product I saw on TechTV the other day. Brava is a combination bra/vacuum pump that supposedly is good for a cup size or two using technology originally developed for penis enlargement (the latter supposedly doesn't work, but I wouldn't know). It's available for $2500 under a doctor's supervision. Warning - some graphics might not be appropriate for work.
Someone has forwarded me something forwarded 8 levels deep. Maybe you got it too - are you 98% or 2%? They stack the deck by taking advantage of the fact that the sum of the digits of any two-digit multiple of 9 is 9 itself.
Then there's the inspirational stuff, which is terrific for the first couple of times you receive it. This seems to be a woman thing - anything I've ever had forwarded from a man is usually locker room material, like that "why is the camel called the 'ship of the desert'?" joke from a while back. Not that the ladies haven't sent me some bad ones, usually involving some kind of man-abuse (q. - HOW MANY MEN DOES IT TAKE TO PUT A TOILET SEAT DOWN? a. -don't know....it never happened).
But I'm sure you have your own spam, so I'll leave you to it. Just don't forward it to me or Jane Galt
Math tricks
Find your own links for this if you want - I don't recall where I picked them up.
Any idiot can figure out whether a number is divisible by 2 - is it even? Put another way, if the last digit is divisible by 2, so is the whole number. For four, check the last 2 digits, for 8 check the last 3, ad nauseam. It works because 10 is divisible by 2.
What about 3? Add up the digits in the number. If the sum is divisible by 3, so is the original number. Is the sum of the digits too big? Repeat the process.
We covered 4. The rule for 5 is easy. 6 works if the number is even and divisible by 3. 9 works like 3, except the sum must be 9. 1 and 10 will be left as exercises.
What about 7? Beats me. But the decimals have an interesting property - they consist of a string of 142857. For 1/7, start with the 1 - .142857.... Start with the next smallest in the group for each successive increment of the numerator, thus 2/7=.285714..., 3/7=.428571..., and so forth.
Alright, I'm a geek. But this stuff can come in handy sometimes, even in a world where people don't even have to count out change anymore.
Wanna get hard-core? Try this. As I recall, the inventor was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, and worked out these methods to keep himself sane.
Any idiot can figure out whether a number is divisible by 2 - is it even? Put another way, if the last digit is divisible by 2, so is the whole number. For four, check the last 2 digits, for 8 check the last 3, ad nauseam. It works because 10 is divisible by 2.
What about 3? Add up the digits in the number. If the sum is divisible by 3, so is the original number. Is the sum of the digits too big? Repeat the process.
We covered 4. The rule for 5 is easy. 6 works if the number is even and divisible by 3. 9 works like 3, except the sum must be 9. 1 and 10 will be left as exercises.
What about 7? Beats me. But the decimals have an interesting property - they consist of a string of 142857. For 1/7, start with the 1 - .142857.... Start with the next smallest in the group for each successive increment of the numerator, thus 2/7=.285714..., 3/7=.428571..., and so forth.
Alright, I'm a geek. But this stuff can come in handy sometimes, even in a world where people don't even have to count out change anymore.
Wanna get hard-core? Try this. As I recall, the inventor was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, and worked out these methods to keep himself sane.
Sunday, April 07, 2002
The skinny on pro-ana
TechTV has a show called CyberCrime. The episode I just saw mentioned something about "pro-ana" websites. Apparently the 'ana' comes from anorexia nervosa, the eating disorder.
Alright, I was curious, so I went looking for some example sites. A lot of Google hits were not found, but here are some that were - message boards and personal sites.
Well, if your body isn't your own, I don't know what is. But surely nothing is less natural than starving yourself.
Apparently there is a concerted ongoing effort to shut down pro-ana sites. Should this be done? Are there legitimate free speech issues here?
I don't think so, unless the heavy hand of govt is involved. ISPs will bear the brunt of any abuse resulting from extremely controversial content and must be permitted to police themselves within contractual limits.
Even so, I'm not fully comfortable with hounding something off the Web.
Alright, I was curious, so I went looking for some example sites. A lot of Google hits were not found, but here are some that were - message boards and personal sites.
Well, if your body isn't your own, I don't know what is. But surely nothing is less natural than starving yourself.
Apparently there is a concerted ongoing effort to shut down pro-ana sites. Should this be done? Are there legitimate free speech issues here?
I don't think so, unless the heavy hand of govt is involved. ISPs will bear the brunt of any abuse resulting from extremely controversial content and must be permitted to police themselves within contractual limits.
Even so, I'm not fully comfortable with hounding something off the Web.
Gullible
Admit it, you abused your kid brother/sister/cousins. You probably told them stories about "the bogeyman" or put them up to do obnoxious things. Like sending them to Sunday school to ask "Can God make a rock so big that he can't pick it up?"
Greenhorns and apprentices get a lot of this too. They might be sent on missions to pick up some prop wash or a left-handed crescent wrench. After hours they might be taken on a snipe hunt.
A few years ago I found myself exposed to horses quite a bit and I learned a lot. I thought someone was pulling my leg when they told me that horses couldn't vomit and were extremely vulnerable to digestive problems. After seeing a couple of them hauled away on endloaders I became a believer.
Then someone told me you could make a seagull explode by feeding it Alka-Seltzer. Hmm - anybody who has parked near the ocean can see the appeal of this. After the horse experience, well...no, this had to be bogus. Here is confirmation from the ultimate source of everything worth knowing, Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope.
Yo, Hawspipe - any comments on the seagulls?
UPDATE - I guess horses can vomit after all. Yeah, I know - thank you for sharing.
Greenhorns and apprentices get a lot of this too. They might be sent on missions to pick up some prop wash or a left-handed crescent wrench. After hours they might be taken on a snipe hunt.
A few years ago I found myself exposed to horses quite a bit and I learned a lot. I thought someone was pulling my leg when they told me that horses couldn't vomit and were extremely vulnerable to digestive problems. After seeing a couple of them hauled away on endloaders I became a believer.
Then someone told me you could make a seagull explode by feeding it Alka-Seltzer. Hmm - anybody who has parked near the ocean can see the appeal of this. After the horse experience, well...no, this had to be bogus. Here is confirmation from the ultimate source of everything worth knowing, Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope.
Yo, Hawspipe - any comments on the seagulls?
UPDATE - I guess horses can vomit after all. Yeah, I know - thank you for sharing.
TMI at 23
The accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 happened just over 23 years ago. What, you didn't remember?
I guess that's a good thing. I wasn't looking for it, but I didn't see any press coverage either. If so, it's about time. Few events have been more overhyped.
I could try to explain exactly what happened at TMI, but it would take a lot of time and space and others have done it so well. This has terrific resources about the event, plant design, and even a little reactor simulation to play with. (I checked it - despite nasty accidents, you can win).
Here is a version of the event written by someone who does not have a technical background. It may be more digestible, but IMO it leaves much unexplained.
A few big picture observations are in order:
If anyone is interested on more detail or clarification, don't hesitate to ask. I never worked at TMI, but I worked at a site like it and three others besides.
I guess that's a good thing. I wasn't looking for it, but I didn't see any press coverage either. If so, it's about time. Few events have been more overhyped.
I could try to explain exactly what happened at TMI, but it would take a lot of time and space and others have done it so well. This has terrific resources about the event, plant design, and even a little reactor simulation to play with. (I checked it - despite nasty accidents, you can win).
Here is a version of the event written by someone who does not have a technical background. It may be more digestible, but IMO it leaves much unexplained.
A few big picture observations are in order:
- The sequence of events was implausible.
- About everything that could go wrong did.
- Piping layout, instrumentation and training issues and poor operations practices aggravated the problem and contributed to non-optimal decisions by operators.
- A huge explosion took place within the containment building.
- Part of the core melted down.
- Some radioactive material was released to the environment in a controlled fashion to avoid the potential of uncontrolled release.
- Despite it all, I have heard that TMI's environs received less dose from TMI than they were eventually to receive from the Chernobyl accident half a world away. I'm looking for a link for this.
- A bad Jane Fonda movie called "The China Syndrome" had opened the week before. It might have disappeared without a trace without this free publicity. So even the PR guys had lousy luck, and the public was given a warped view of the nuclear power industry that went unmatched until "The Simpsons".
- Major changes occurred in the aftermath involving plant design, operations, emergency planning and others, and were applied to existing plants as appropriate. Often this were done without any semblance of cost/benefit analysis, which drove the capital costs of nuclear power plants through the roof.
- This says:
The TMI-2 accident caused concerns about the possibility of radiation-induced health effects, principally cancer, in the area surrounding the plant. Because of those concerns, the Pennsylvania Department of Health for 18 years maintained a registry of more than 30,000 people who lived within five miles of Three Mile Island at the time of the accident. The state's registry was discontinued in mid 1997, without any evidence of unusual health trends in the area.
Indeed, more than a dozen major, independent health studies of the accident showed no evidence of any abnormal number of cancers around TMI years after the accident. The only detectable effect was psychological stress during and shortly after the accident.
If anyone is interested on more detail or clarification, don't hesitate to ask. I never worked at TMI, but I worked at a site like it and three others besides.
The saddest movie of all time...
I say it was "Cat Ballou". They had Jane Fonda on the gallows and didn't hang her...
What I should have done in college
I get a fair number of hits from Campus Nonsense (their URL has changed to www.campusnonsense.com). That always reminds me of my college days.
What a waste!
It's not as if I didn't learn anything. After graduation I could tell that I was better prepared for my career than graduates from other schools, and I passed professional exams on the initial tries with high scores.
But so much more was there for the taking. I went to one of the finest engineering schools in the country. It had incredible students, staff, facilities and other resources. And it depresses me to think of how many opportunities I wasted or didn't even recognize.
Maybe you have to work a lot to keep the money coming in. So did I. I also took big loads - during one fit of insanity during my junior year of engineering school I signed up for 23 hours of classes while working 2 part-time jobs. But even that might have been survivable if I had managed my time well, and there was still time to "hang out".
Well, you have to have a life, right? Sure. But how much? And can't it happen sometime when you aren't spending so much on college? If you really just want to goof off on someone else's dime, at least find a cheap school and leave a slot for someone with better use for it.
Respect your buddies' time too - don't lead people into sin, especially if you know they can't handle it. And anyone who does that to you is not good for you - surely you can find other friends.
You might think that grades aren't a big deal. Maybe not, for some of you. But I found out a few years after graduation than my mid-700 GRE scores weren't enough to get me into a local, comparatively little known engineering graduate program, because my grades didn't reflect my abilities. And it really wouldn't have taken that much effort to raise them significantly - I simply didn't do what was necessary, and didn't see the need.
Ah, grades, they're about sucking up, right? There's a case for that. And there's a certain number of SOBs out there teaching - I was in one large class where no one got an A, and I had another instructor who had given 60% D's or F's to another class. So some things are outside your control.
But that's no excuse for failing to show up to class, "borrowing" homework, and confining studying to allnighters before big tests. Every slacker work habit you develop here will have to be overcome when you get a real job.
Your professors are probably interesting people. Try to get to know some of them sincerely. You might like them, and even if you don't the day may come when you need a letter of recommendation or just some good advice. Your personal network starts here if it hasn't already.
I could go on for days with this. But I wonder - would I have done things differently if I had known then what I know now?
I'd like to think so. I just wish I'd had the chance to ignore the advice.
What a waste!
It's not as if I didn't learn anything. After graduation I could tell that I was better prepared for my career than graduates from other schools, and I passed professional exams on the initial tries with high scores.
But so much more was there for the taking. I went to one of the finest engineering schools in the country. It had incredible students, staff, facilities and other resources. And it depresses me to think of how many opportunities I wasted or didn't even recognize.
Maybe you have to work a lot to keep the money coming in. So did I. I also took big loads - during one fit of insanity during my junior year of engineering school I signed up for 23 hours of classes while working 2 part-time jobs. But even that might have been survivable if I had managed my time well, and there was still time to "hang out".
Well, you have to have a life, right? Sure. But how much? And can't it happen sometime when you aren't spending so much on college? If you really just want to goof off on someone else's dime, at least find a cheap school and leave a slot for someone with better use for it.
Respect your buddies' time too - don't lead people into sin, especially if you know they can't handle it. And anyone who does that to you is not good for you - surely you can find other friends.
You might think that grades aren't a big deal. Maybe not, for some of you. But I found out a few years after graduation than my mid-700 GRE scores weren't enough to get me into a local, comparatively little known engineering graduate program, because my grades didn't reflect my abilities. And it really wouldn't have taken that much effort to raise them significantly - I simply didn't do what was necessary, and didn't see the need.
Ah, grades, they're about sucking up, right? There's a case for that. And there's a certain number of SOBs out there teaching - I was in one large class where no one got an A, and I had another instructor who had given 60% D's or F's to another class. So some things are outside your control.
But that's no excuse for failing to show up to class, "borrowing" homework, and confining studying to allnighters before big tests. Every slacker work habit you develop here will have to be overcome when you get a real job.
Your professors are probably interesting people. Try to get to know some of them sincerely. You might like them, and even if you don't the day may come when you need a letter of recommendation or just some good advice. Your personal network starts here if it hasn't already.
I could go on for days with this. But I wonder - would I have done things differently if I had known then what I know now?
I'd like to think so. I just wish I'd had the chance to ignore the advice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)