U and you

A day or so ago Glenn Reynolds posted about depleted uranium (U), which has been a bee in many bonnets for some time. I'm not naive enough to think that the issue will go away, because too many professional liars find it convenient. But I've cast pearls before swine before, so what follows is some information about uranium in the environment, from Nature's Building Blocks by John Emsley.

The fact is that uranium really isn't that uncommon. It's alleged to be the reason for the continuing heat in the earth's core, which may in fact be a huge reactor. Its decay is the source of radon which can concentrate in homes (you know, the ones that are too tightly sealed because they're trying to save energy so we'll quit building nuclear power plants). Just ask this guy, whose house was so full of radon that he was contaminating his work site at the Limerick nuclear power plant in PA (the link is a PDF several pages long, but it's informative and probably contrary to your expectations).

And this uranium is primordial - it was there long before there were bomb tests or any other anthropic means of mass distribution of radioactive isotopes. Every life form on the planet has been exposed to it from day 1, so every life form inherently can deal with radiological impacts to greater or lesser degrees. And the variance is such that tree-huggers in Colorado will get more dose in their lifetimes just from living there than I ever did in a 10 year career working at nuclear power plants (and that includes trips into the drywells dressed up in rubber sucking air through a tube).

OK, just how common is it? In seawater it's about 3 parts per billion, and in the earth's crust it's about 2 ppb. It's more common than silver and mercury combined.

Is uranium toxic? Sure, if you get enough of it in the right places. But a little doesn't hurt, and you're already eating 1-2 micrograms of it daily. In excess it can mess up your kidneys by forming salts that will block its tubules. The soluble forms can be absorbed through the skin but are also readily excreted. If inhaled it is bad for your lungs, but then it's so dense that it's hard to get the stuff airborne.

So if you're around the dust for a while you might suffer the above? Not necessarily. You don't have to look far for examples - consider Nobel laureate Marie Curie and her husband Pierre. This woman worked with radioactive substances long before there was any concept of industrial hygiene:

Sometimes they could not do their processing outdoors, so the noxious gases had to be let out through the open windows. The only furniture were old, worn pine tables where Marie worked with her costly radium fractions. Since they did not have any shelter in which to store their precious products the latter were arranged on tables and boards. Marie could remember the joy they felt when they came into the shed at night, seeing "from all sides the feebly luminous silhouettes" of the products of their work. The dangerous gases of which Marie speaks contained, among other things, radon - the radioactive gas which is a matter of concern to us today since small amounts are emitted from certain kinds of building materials. Wilhelm Ostwald, the highly respected German chemist, who was one of the first to realize the importance of the Curies' research, traveled from Berlin to Paris to see how they worked. Neither Pierre nor Marie was at home. He wrote: "At my earnest request, I was shown the laboratory where radium had been discovered shortly before.... It was a cross between a stable and a potato shed, and if I had not seen the worktable and items of chemical apparatus, I would have thought that I was been played a practical joke."

They did suffer health effects:

In actual fact Pierre was ill. His legs shook so that at times he found it hard to stand upright. He was in much pain. He consulted a doctor who diagnosed neurasthenia and prescribed strychnine. And the skin on Marie's fingers was cracked and scarred. Both of them constantly suffered from fatigue. They evidently had no idea that radiation could have a detrimental effect on their general state of health. Pierre, who liked to say that radium had a million times stronger radioactivity than uranium, often carried a sample in his waistcoat pocket to show his friends. Marie liked to have a little radium salt by her bed that shone in the darkness. The papers they left behind them give off pronounced radioactivity. If today at the Bibliothèque Nationale you want to consult the three black notebooks in which their work from December 1897 and the three following years is recorded, you have to sign a certificate that you do so at your own risk.

The dose rates she received had to have been astronomical. And as a bonus, she was hounded by the French press for an alleged affair and she suffered from anti-Semitism without even being Jewish. But this frail woman later had a healthy child and died in 1934 at age 67.

There's no question that having the DU around increases the amount of radiation in the vicinity. But it's interesting to note that the complaints never mention actual dose rates - they just say the rates are X% greater than "background". It makes the numbers look more impressive to be sure, but IMO those truly concerned with dose rates would present the impact in those terms instead rather than just "increases in background". It makes quite a difference - the two are related, but much more loosely than you might suspect, and in a way that makes the DU sound thousands of times worse than it is.

So forget about the DU already. And for extra credit, smack the next guy who tries to make an issue out of it.

How the Towers Fell on the Discovery Channel

Collapse: How the Towers Fell
60 min.
Investigators attempt to determine the exact causes of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11. Included: structural details. (VCR Plus+ 949610)

Rating: TV-PG
Content: Violence
Category: Documentary
Release Year: 2003

Additional Airings
Date Time Channel VCR Plus+
Monday, 8 0:00 AM 36 DSC 777953
Sunday, 14 6:00 PM 36 DSC 977559

Why bother?

A Jewish fable relates that a man stood at the gates of Sodom and cried out against sin. He implored men to repent and change their ways. As things got progressively worse, he continued to cry out his warning. When it looked absolutely hopeless, a passerby asked him why he still bothered. He answered, 'I used to cry out so that men would change their ways. Now I cry out so that they won't change me!

Blackout background

Courtesy of IEEE we have some general background and a sequence of events.

Don't get tired of this issue...

A new way to transport and store natural gas?

From Technology Review:

Nearly 95 percent of the known gas fields in the world are too small to justify the costs required pipe the gas to a plant, turn it into a liquid, and then transport it on specially equipped tankers.

But a handful of researchers have an idea that could make these fields worth mining: rather than figure out cheaper ways to transport this cleaner-burning energy source from point A to point B as a liquid, why not change natural gas into a solid substance that’s easier and cheaper to transport?

Japanese researchers Hajime Kanda at Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding in Tokyo and Yasuhara Nakajima of Japan's National Maritime Research Instititute think they’ve found a solution with the aid of hydrates, solid crystals in which natural gas—composed chiefly of methane—is caged inside of water molecules.

For decades, researchers have been looking for ways to gather these crystals from their deep-ocean deposits and reap what they expect could be a natural gas harvest. Kanda and Nakajima are taking an opposite approach. Rather than extracting methane from hydrates, they want to turn methane into hydrates—essentially, transforming the colorless and odorless gas into small pellets that can be easily stored, transported, and eventually turned back into natural gas. A few months ago Mitsui, in partnership with Osaka University, opened a demonstration plant near Tokyo to promote the concept and show that it works. If the Mitsui’s process proves feasible and economical, many untapped natural gas deposits could become vital energy sources.

Changing natural gas into a hydrate form for cheaper transport gained attention in the early 1990s. Norwegian petroleum engineers first proposed the idea after comparing the transport economics of liquid natural gas to natural gas hydrates, knowing that hydrates could store large amounts of natural gas in a small space. “More than 180 standard cubic feet of gas can be stored in one cubic foot of hydrate," says Rudy Rogers, professor of chemical engineering at Mississippi State University, and an authority on industrial use of gas hydrates.

Another major advantage: “transporting natural gas as hydrates can be done at higher temperature and lower pressure than liquid natural gas, and the risk of ignition in transport is much lower,” explains Hugh Guthrie, who studies natural gas at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, WV. Much of the high cost of liquid natural gas comes from temperature and pressure demands on piping, shipping, and storage facilities.

Could cheap natural gas powered vehicles follow? This will be an interesting technology to watch.

New Source Review - what it really means

Per Lynne Kiesling:

Much of the angst regarding the revisions to the NSR process flows from a lack of perspective. Perhaps an example of the EPA’s revised approach to NSR applied to a residential scenario will help "clear the air".

The owners of an older home notice that their water heater has begun to leak and must be replaced. While shopping for a new water heater, they discover that new water heaters of the same storage capacity and energy input are available with higher efficiencies than their old unit and that these higher efficiency water heaters would thus use less energy to produce the same amount of hot water and cost less money to operate. They decide to purchase one of the more efficient water heaters.

However, the salesman then hands them a copy of an EPA document entitled “Homeowners’ Guide to NSR Compliance”. The homeowners read the guide and learn that, if they replace their old water heater with a more efficient water heater of the same storage capacity and energy input, they will also be required to bring all other aspects of their home and its energy using equipment into compliance with current codes and standards. This would involve replacing their existing heating and cooling system with a new system which meets the minimum efficiency standards established by the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act (NAECA) and perhaps also their current clothes washer and dryer, range, refrigerator, etc. It would also require that they replace their current windows or add storm windows, increase the insulation levels in their walls and ceilings, renew caulking and weather stripping and take other energy conservation measures required by the codes in their state and/or city.

On further reflection, the homeowners decide that the extra operating cost of the new, but lower efficiency, water heater is not so bad compared with the cost of bringing their entire home into compliance with current codes and standards all at once. This decision does not make their home less energy efficient than it was before, but it does leave it less efficient than it might otherwise have been, at least until the next time the water heater requires replacement.

Always jump a gun...

Here's an interesting post from Dipnut. Not that he doesn't have other good stuff, but I can't link it all...

Baby one more time...

According to Drudge, "Britney comes out swinging for Bush". And they weren't talking about her next costume:

Britney Spears came out swinging for President Bush on Wednesday during an interview with CNN's Tucker Carlson.

CARLSON: A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?

SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.

CARLSON: Do you trust this president?

SPEARS: Yes, I do.

CARLSON: Excellent. Do you think he's going to win again?

SPEARS: I don't know. I don't know that.

END

Saraya

Here is a tribute to an obscure New Jersey hair band I liked. They disappeared suddenly in the early 1990's long ahead of the mass extinction that followed. Near as I can tell lead singer Sandi Saraya is a soccer mom now.

US National DanceSport Championships are in Miami this week

Any DanceSport junkies out there? The US Championships are in Hollywood, FL this week. You've already missed one day - hurry up and get down there. It's a chance to see pros from around the world, such as Christopher Hawkins and Hazel Newberry.

Go Dan and Nicole!

Call me "Tomato Can"

Ya know, winning isn't everything. And all too often the winners fail to admire the one thing that makes winning possible. Losers.

I know this firsthand. You see, on Saturday I was in a dance competition in Dayton, OH in which I participated in 5 events. In each event I had exactly one opponent - the same guy each time. And I lost every time. I guess a spin doctor would say I came in second 5 times and the other guy finished next to last.

I stayed until the bitter end to watch the awards being presented and found that my nemesis also won an award for being the best student. Ha! The same thing happened to me in St. Louis last March - a guy beat me every time we competed and won the best student award.

That made me wonder - if they hadn't been able to run up the score against me, would they have won the awards? Can I trade on this and get my opponents to pay my expenses and entry fees from now on?

Hey, it's not so strange - some have made a career out of it. Ever heard of Mouse Strauss? He was a boxer who said "I was the first and only fighter who ever tried to make an art out of being an Opponent...I never trained, but I knew I had enough in the tank to go three rounds. I always tested their chin, but if I couldn't knock 'em out, I'd look for a soft spot in the canvas, wait for a big punch and close my eyes."

And then there's Red Klotz and the Washington Generals. They were a team that traveled with the Harlem Globetrotters to provide competition, and of course they and their predecessors almost always lost.

So make me an offer...

Test your crime IQ

Now think a minute - if you were going to steal something and didn't want to get caught, what would be the last thing you'd steal? I think Kathy Kinsley has the answer. Good grief, if this guy were a doctor he'd be doing appendix transplants.

Flash your lights, get a ticket?

Flashing headlights on your car is a handy signal for several purposes. It's a handy way to show people where you parked. If you have a security remote for your car, it's a way of telling you that you have just locked your car, or alarming if someone tries to break in. If you're driving, it's a courtesy to people who are passing you when they are pulling a trailer so they can know when they can pull over. And it's a classic way of warning oncoming drivers that there's a speed trap ahead.

Which is why flashing your lights can get you busted in Cleveland. A cop says "Basically they are obstructing our duty and our job to enforce the law."

Well cry me a river. I thought that the idea was public safety, not revenue for municipalities and excuses to jack up insurance rates. Flashing lights as noted above contributes to public safety, and I've actually had cops flash brights at me as a warning when I was speeding. And some municipalities have been notorious for funding themselves via speeding tickets or other predatory behavior against drivers passing through, such as Ludowici, GA, and Fruithurst, AL. Many others are listed here. (But the forces of justice are fighting back, and sometimes they win).

As for insurance rates, well...if traffic law enforcement were more uniform things would be different. And if you get a ticket and can't keep it off your driving record, you must not have tried.

Gosh, I seem to have wandered off topic - surely that hasn't happened before. Anyway, IMO this light flashing prohibition is pretty dim.

Meet the California governor candidates

...at XLRQ.

"You will always be my baby"

From this.

For computer pros only

Should you get certified? This article offers some data.

But where are the kangaroos?

Count on Beth for a little of everything. Here are some of her photos from the Pittsburgh Zoo, and an interesting Photoshop contest.

Make that 5

No more Zippo Tricks, per Misanthropyst. I'm guessing I really didn't need 555 flaming tricks that can be done with Zippo lighters, but I'm sure that somehow our culture is thus impoverished.

"I have to thank Ed Meese for saving my life"

Blogs are great, but don't drop those magazine subscriptions just yet. Before I continue with an excerpt from National Review On Dead Tree, would you care to guess who said the above?

Maybe no one remembers the fall of 1984, when Vanessa Williams was Miss America, and a photographer released some earlier nudes of her to Penthouse magazine. At the time it was widely distributed and quite a scandal, involving as it did "America's Sweetheart" nude with another woman. One picture in particular had Ms. Williams squatting and the other woman's face to her buttocks - someone at the construction site where I was working at the time photocopied and distributed this picture with the caption "Miss America Duck Call".

What's less well known is that there was another controversial pictorial in that same issue. The centerfold's name was Nora Kuzma, and she was not yet 18 years of age when the photos were published. She posed under her nom de porn, "Traci Lords". She also starred in a number of porn films too, where she capitalized on her jailbait looks. When she was discovered to be underaged it caused some consternation. Ms. Lords left the porn biz but has continued her acting career.

And now, on to the NRODT cite:

The 1986 "Meese Commission" report on pornography is notorious, a catalyst for First Amendment hysteria from liberals and civil libertarians -- "chilling effect" and the like. But Traci Lords, former child-porn star, has a different take. In her new memoir, Lords recounts how a federal raid ended her "career" at age 18 and turned her life as a junkie and "prostitute" (what she considers life as a porn star) around. In an interview about the book, Lords recently said, "I have to thank Ed Meese for saving my life." We know vindication when we see it.

I'll admit that there are probably better sources of news about your favorite former porn stars, but see what you're missing? So subscribe to NRODT today, and maybe they'll get rid of some of those @#$!# ads.

Why no WMD discoveries?

Jay Bryant, the Optimate, has a theory.

Biased reporting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumers would have to foot a $100 billion bill to upgrade the nation's rickety electric transmission grid but could reap five-fold savings from cheaper power costs, according to an industry report released on Monday.

Why do they present it this way? It's as if someone thinks there is something illegitimate about recovering the costs of upgrading transmission facilities.

Later they noted the "five-fold savings". How often do you get a deal like that? Why don't we see a headline like "Transmission line upgrades offer consumers 5 to 1 return"?

Now let's look at the organizations quoted. The Electric Power Research Institute is identified as "a utility-funded group", and the Edison Electric Institute is identified as "the biggest U.S. utility lobbying group". The Consumer Federation of America has no such characterization. I wonder why?

Oh, here they are. Can someone explain to me why a group nominally about consumerism is pushing gun control? Isn't that just a little outside the scope of consumerism?

They're not even in the scope of the truth - "Contrary to public opinion, historians, scholars, and most importantly the courts, have virtually all concluded that: the Second Amendment was designed to protect state organized militias rather than the individual right to n a gun." This and other things out them as another lefty interest group posing as a public interest group, yet they escape such identification in the article.

Did they forget to mention something?

Glenn Reynolds links to this story about a man's eyesight being restored via stem cells.

Just "stem cells"? No, adult stem cells. They can be given from a live donor, and in this case the donor doesn't even lose his sight. There is more here.

Pardon my suspicions, but IMO if this had required embryonic stem cells, ie had required killing human embryos to work, the article would have said so explicitly.

The largest remaining statue of Lenin?

It might be.

And believe it or not, it's not in Berkeley. I guess he must have been too moderate for them.

Race Scandal!

From Drudge

BLACK WOMAN 'OFFERED WHITE LIMBS AFTER AMPUTATION OP'
Sun Aug 24 2003 19:55:50 ET

A black woman who is to undergo a foot amputation was initially offered a white artificial replacement because they were cheaper, a hospital admitted tonight.

The unnamed woman from Calcot near Reading, Berkshire, is yet to undergo the operation and health chiefs have now backed down and offered her prosthetics matching her own skin colour after she complained.

The Royal Berkshire and Battle Hospitals NHS Trust said only white artificial limbs had been initially made available.

A Trust spokeswoman said: "She was originally told she would have to pay more for any other colour, but that has now been resolved."

She said the complication of having no less than six separate NHS Primary Care Trusts in the county had made funding difficult, but said following discussions, money had been made available.

"We accept responsibility for this patient's care and for the provision of her prosthetics. We will be working together with the Primary Health Care Trusts to address this issue and to clarify funding for future cases."

A spokesperson for the Disability Rights Commission said tonight: "It is an absolute disgrace that the NHS hasn't made suitable provision for a black disabled person. Disabled people shouldn't have to put up with a one size fits all attitude.

"In this day and age they should be entitled to the same choices as non disabled people in the services they receive."

I guess a white artificial foot would have looked too unnatural, huh? Good grief, how many should they stock? IMO she certainly ought not expect any better unless she's spending her own money, and she lives under socialized medicine.

I guess these guys are in trouble too. It looks like they only have one shade of falsie. Paging Jesse Jackson...

No comment

Hot linked from here.

Music musings

VH1 is on in the background and they just played something by a band I hadn't heard of before - Robert Randolph and the Family Band. It's the first time I've ever seen a black dude play a pedal steel guitar. And he's doing a pretty good job of it too.

It's funny how some instruments get pigeonholed with certain kinds of music. A pedal steel offers all kinds of possibilities, but doesn't seem to appear outside country music. You might think a banjo was only good for bluegrass and country until you hear Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Mandolins seem stuck in Italian and country music. Besides Kansas and John Mellencamp you don't hear much violin outside classical or country music, or maybe easy listening stuff. Accordions often are portrayed as geeky, but they kick butt in zydeco music and tangos. Sitars have shown up on stuff like the Stones' "Paint It, Black" and BJ Thomas' version of "Hooked on a Feeling", but that's about it.

Instruments do come and go in popular music. A century ago guitars were just rhythm instruments, and not particularly respectable ones at that, but the advent of pickups, amplifiers and players like Charlie Christian changed that. And maybe I don't listen to the right stuff, but it seems like brass and woodwinds are disappearing from pop.

But nothing ever quite goes away. It'll just wind up at the National Music Museum in South Dakota. Take a virtual tour here.

The next best thing to guest blogging

Dodd Harris has been busy, to the point of even guest blogging at Insignificant Thoughts. So I thought "Hey, if he's that doggoned industrious, I'll have him blog for me too!"

So here we have Dodd on his own site about lawlessness at the EPA.

Then he presents the Democrat's Dictionary, which ultimately came from The Hand of Munger.

Then at Insignificant Thoughts he notes a change in the tune of the Democrats (surprise!) now that California cities are the most polluted in the country.

Oh yeah, still at I. T. he notes how Bush has reversed another asinine Clinton administration decision in hope of reducing forest fires. But the site of a speech about it had to be moved because of - can you see this coming? - a forest fire.

I guess this must be what a law firm partner feels like, living off an associate's work...

And you missed it

Tonight there was a benefit dance at the Indianapolis Ballroom Company. After a few hours of public dancing, they put on a show featuring Dan Rutherford and Nicole Carroll and Gert and Kirsty Roslender. They were a trip.

Dan and Nicole are partners in American Rhythm, and currently they are #2 in the nation. IBC is their home studio and they put on a terrific show with cha chas, a rumba and some swing. I was trying to force myself to learn something from watching Dan, but if you've seen Nicole perform you know that isn't easy. It was very fast and energetic, and they didn't get to the top of their profession without knowing how to put on a show.

Gert and Kirsty alternated with them. They compete professionally in International Standard and have done so around the world. Since then they've settled in the US from their native country (Estonia?) and now they're on the staff at IBC. If memory serves they did a waltz, a tango, a foxtrot and something that looked like a combo of jive and quickstep. Standard is more subdued and elegant than Rhythm or International Latin or even American Smooth IMO. But even if you aren't into it you can appreciate seeing people doing something very well and very effortlessly.

I don't know how much they raised yet. But it was a very worthy cause...

Moral dilemma?

Imagine this little scenario. Charlie Manson escapes from prison. He calls the Associated Press and says "Do you want a scoop? Follow me to [address withheld] tomorrow night. We'll butcher some people and write slogans on the wall with their blood, just like old times. You can cover it live!"

If you're from the AP, what do you do?

This item from Little Green Footballs hints at the answer.

Public service message

Friends don't let friends wear polyester.

Fun with condoms

This is a recurring theme here at NWA, for which this is the latest inspiration.

Today's exercise is set in a foreign country where a deadly venereal disease is raging. Three horny UN bureaucrats have found themselves a hooker to share, but they don't trust her or each other, and they find that they only have two condoms.

We all know that the UN can't solve problems without American help. Your challenge - show how all of the bureaucrats can get laid using just the two condoms without exposing either themselves or the hooker to "body fluids".

Note - this post is for entertainment purposes only, and does not reflect the personal practices or predilections of any of the editorial staff of NWA.

Thought crime

...as documented by Tim Blair.

More energy infrastructure

Beldar tells of the guys who keep the high wires humming and throws in a little justice too.

Energy infrastructure

Sure, talk about beefing up the grid and generating capacity. But don't forget that we need the manufacturing, management and personnel infrastructure to make the components we want. And these have been withering on the vine for years.

For instance, once a ~15,000HP synchronous motor failed on us at a nuke site where I worked. I can't remember how much it weighed, but it took a special hauler over special roads to get it off the site. Road and bridges that could handle it were few and far between, and its size required special permits. The result was that for about every mile between it and its destination, it had to travel about 5.

But where to take it? Without consistent sales of big generators, the factory space, engineers, shop personnel, fixtures, and other facilities get retired, reassigned or scrapped. In our case we needed to have the windings redone after which the transformer had be be immersed in a tank of some special compound with high resistivity and dielectric strength. As it turned out, only two facilities in North America could handle the job, and one was in Canada.

That's just about replacement parts. What about designing and installing new power plants, distribution lines and other facilities? You need to have a number of companies with the expertise to do this, and a reasonable guarantee of enough volume to justify them hiring, training and deploying their personnel and other resources. These are companies like Bechtel, Stone and Webster, Fluor, Westinghouse, Peter Kiewit, Siemens, GE, ABB, Hitachi,Flowserve, Sargent and Lundy, Black and Veatch, Burns and McDonnell and a few extraordinarily talented electric utilities like Exelon, Entergy and Duke Energy.

Well, so what if some graybeards retired - it's just management, right? After all, I hear that a good manager can manage *anything*. Not so. Compare the performance of William B. Derrickson in getting the St. Lucie nuclear power plant online in comparison to any other site under construction in the same time frame and see the difference. Yes, there is specific management expertise in getting nuclear and other big projects done, and if you think training employees is expensive, wait until you have to train management.

If you really want long lead time, try growing personnel. For the right price I'd go back into nuclear power, but a lot of talent has gone into other fields or retired. And that's not to mention all of the boilermakers, steamfitters, millwrights, electricians, instrument techs, ironworkers, carpenters, operating engineers, laborers and other craftsmen it takes. And that's just for power plants and new transmission lines - other needed energy related infrastructure improvements such as the building of new refineries and pipelines will place demands on the same talent pool.

But why should investors and managers invest the money needed to be able to take on projects like this? How will they know that they can get a return on their capital when regulations never stabilize and funding might disappear tomorrow because somebody thinks one of George Bush's associates is making too much money? We need true commitment from regulators and Congress if anything permanent is to happen.

So don't go thinking that we can just pass some laws and spend some money and everything else will fall into place. We've been dissipating our capital, labor and expertise for years through neglect and lack of investment, and it will take some time to recover.

Acidman is no Choirboy

...but Roscoe Rules! Yes, that's a very obscure reference to an old Joseph Wambaugh book. If you haven't been following the saga, well, let him tell it.

From those people who gave us "The Peter Principle"

Dr. Laurence J. Peter is long gone now, and citing him might qualify as a sign of age. But in his time, around the late 60's or so, he had a very popular book called "The Peter Principle". He was the guy who claimed that people rise in an organization to their "level of incompetence" - until they reach a job they are not qualified to do. Over time, every job is filled this way, and that's why things go down the tubes.

Dr. Peter's original inspiration was from his days as a teacher in Canada. He was frustrated with the incompetence in his local district, so he sent a bundle of application materials to apply for a position with another district. Then they were sent back to him - they could not be accepted because he had not insured them. But if he would send them again, with insurance... It was then that he decided that incompetence was not localized.

Now Instapundit points to Colby Cosh here. Just read it - I can't do it justice.

Of course it's not just the Canucks. The state of IL once refused to license an electric car because it hadn't passed an emissions test. Read about that and more here.

Why did so many nuclear power plants shut down?

I've read various explanations why as many as 22 reactors shut down during the blackout. I haven't verified the number, but I know why they shut down. Because of Federal regulations.

This isn't to question the Federal regulations in this regard - they're heavy-handed, but I don't have any better ideas. And it shows just how much of a safety margin we have with the current generation of nuclear power plants.

It's been a few years, so I don't recall all the details, and these will vary from plant to plant as described in a licensing document known as the "technical specifications". If I recall correctly, a plant had to be in cold shutdown within a fairly short time after the loss of offsite power. Cold shutdown means basically that the plant is not "critical" (no sustained nuclear reaction is taking place) and is depressurized, and essentially is in a state where it requires the minimal amount of effort and power to control it. This is as opposed to a "hot shutdown", in which the reactor isn't delivering any steam to the turbine, but would be ready to if you opened the valves isolating the reactor building.

It's much like the distinction between having your car shut off and having it idle. Except that startup on a nuclear power plant is a much more time-consuming process. Part of this is because it takes time to warm large metal objects several hundred degrees without causing thermal distortion or other problems, and these problems are also found at fossil powered plants. Others are caused by the presence of components unique to nuclear power plants, such as hydrogen recombiners and a boiling water reactor's offgas system. The rest is caused by regulations. It doesn't take too long to come back up after a hot shutdown, but it'll take a day or so to come back up after a cold shutdown.

So why does a nuclear power plant need offsite power? Actually it doesn't, any more than you absolutely need to have a fire extinguisher. Again, regulations require a combination of batteries and other forms of stored energy (diesel fuel and compressed air, for instance) to make sure that the plant can deliver enough power by itself to maintain cold shutdown conditions and support emergency loads. What's more, there are redundant supplies - either of two huge generators per unit can do the job by themselves.

One example was a TVA plant that was never completed, with two 1300MW reactors. It had four 16 cylinder turbocharged diesel generators, (two per unit), each of which was designed to provide about 7.5MW. They were started with compressed air, and enough was stored to start them multiple times. For fuel, they had 4 tanks each embedded in concrete which were on the order of 10 feet in diameter and at least 60' long, and a specified amount of fuel was available in all of them at all times when they were considered available. Because of the compressed air and battery power, the diesels could be started without any offsite power available.

How big is such a beast? The cylinders were 17" across - most of you reading could get inside them.

How much is 7.5MW? Let's say you used 1000 kWh on your last monthly electric bill. A generator that size generates that much energy in 8 minutes, and there were two of them per unit.

If I recall correctly, the source of all these regulations is Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations - see part of it here.

More power stuff

This from Rob Sama about alternative power distribution arrangements is via Instapundit.

Another look at breasts

That was the idea anyway, until he got busted. But let this guy tell it.

What's with women who get hysterical about stuff like this? Fortunately they aren't all that way - here's some wisdom written by a broad.

If a liberal does it, is it still hypocrisy?

I missed this when it was fresh, but it's too good not to post. So via Dodd, I present this example of rich liberals in action.

Blackout catchall

Glenn Reynolds has some data about relaying and metering from an old electrical engineer here.

When I was in engineering school, about all the electrical engineering majors were chipheads. That is, they wanted to do the sexier low-power microprocessor type stuff rather than the big more dangerous power generation, transmission and distribution work. I wonder if we have a shortage of qualified people for that.

Rich Hailey writes some relevant stuff here, and Steven Den Beste writes on blackout recovery here and and why another "great idea" won't work here. Sparkey makes some interesting observations related to power distribution and peak loading here.

Steve Verdon has good stuff here, here and here. They're actually successive posts, so you can hit the last one and work your way down.

Volokh Conspirator Tyler Cowen points us to an analysis of a cascading failure here. It's not light reading.

You should always check Lynne Kiesling about energy related issues, and she has an incredible set of links.

Amy Ridenour notes how some radical greens are simply opposed to power, period, here. Such people simply don't deserve a place at the table when public policy decisions are being made.

This from Central Maine Power might be interesting.

Of course NWA has offered discussions of energy issues many many times, such as here and two more items further down the page, and several others. Consumer energy conservation issues are here and here.

And soon I'll be writing about reactive power and why it takes so long to start up a power plant (with emphasis on nukes). Yippee!

Hitler was a Leftist

Right here.

Incidentally, "Nazi" is short for the German phrase for "National Socialist German Worker's Party". Hmm - now why would someone who was a "fascist" pick a name like that?

Religious spam?

Oh no - I just got a spam with the title line "Divine will?"

Not them too...

A message from the Blaster Worm

"billy gates why do you make this possible ? Stop making money and fix your software!!"

No comment

Jack Ass is dead.

And it's gonna happen again...

I'm talking about the blackout. Waddaya mean, what blackout?

And the fundamentals haven't changed. So expect more, as predicted here. So I was off a year - picky picky...

The Spicer massacre

In which some of my ancestors were killed by Indians. Read about it here.

Nuclear power plants overheating?

What does the temperature of rivers have to do with operating nuclear power plants? Does it make them more likely to have problems?

Actually the river temperature problem is not specific to nuclear power plants. Fossil-fueled plants have exactly the same problem - they reject heat to water, the water is rejected to rivers, and life in the rivers can be harmed by high local or average temperatures caused by discharges from the plant.

The amount of heat they have to reject varies directly with their power output - twice the power, twice the heat to dump. With the high temperatures in Europe now, the power output demand is high, so the plants are dumping as much heat as they can.

Also, the more heat they dump, the greater the difference in the temperature (delta T) between the water coming in and the water going out. A given temperature coming in implies a particular temperature going out if the plant's power output is the same.

But now the cooling water sources are getting hotter even as the delta T's are at their peaks with the high power output. The result - the temperature of the water going back to the environment is higher than normal. And in the US there are regulations about how high that temperature can go legally. Presumably the Europeans have similar requirements.

I don't know if the temperature specs are appropriate or not. There is no question that too much heat is bad for rivers and lakes though. And if the high heat is combined with lowered river flow or lake levels, then the peak temperatures in the wild resulting from plant operation get even worse yet. So whether a specific regulation is appropriate or not, the idea is that at some point things get out of hand. (The flip side of this is that the fishing can be good all year at rivers and lakes downstream from power plant discharges).

So what can be done when discharge temperatures get too high? Assuming that the plants must operate within the regulations, then the only thing they can control is the delta T - how many degrees the cooling water is heated flowing across the plant. And they do that by reducing the power output at the plant. Which means less power for the consumers.

You might wonder why power plants must reject heat at all. Good question. Thermodynamics geniuses long ago noted that just as you can't turn a cow completely into steak, you couldn't turn heat completely into mechanical (and ultimately electrical) energy. You always wind up having to throw out some of it. Actually, most of it - well over half at contemporary fossil power plants, and more yet at nukes. It all depends on the plant's operating temperatures - the higher it is, the more efficiently the plant converts heat into power. (uh, yes, the above is somewhat simplified)

To get rid of the rejected heat, power plants use a number of big heat exchangers. The biggest by far will be the main condenser. To give you an idea of the size, the main condenser at Clinton Power Station (CPS) in Clinton, IL, is supplied with raw cooling water from Lake Clinton by two 10' pipes, and I believe the flow rate is about 180,000 gallons per minute per pipe (I'm working from a 15 year old memory, so I could be significantly off on the flow rate)(yes, I'm a PE who once worked at the plant).

This water doesn't go anywhere near the reactors. That water is in a separate loop flowing through the tubes of the condenser at a boiling water reactor like CPS, and water that seconds before was in the reactor is condensed on the other side. At a PWR like the French plants, the reactor water doesn't leave the containment building, so the cooling water is even more isolated from the reactor water. But even at the BWRs, the reactor water side is at a lower pressure (actually, a vacuum), so any leaks are from the cooling water into the plant and not vice versa. Given that such leaks increase the quantity of radwaste and water treatment volume, which are expensive to process, management deals with them rapidly by finding and plugging leaking tubes.

Whoops, what if there's a major leak - will they flood the insides of the plant? CPS had redundant alarms designed to detect flooding bright and early so the pumps sending the water into the plant could be shut off. This would be accompanied by low turbine vacuum alarms, high flow rates through the cooling water system, more current draw on the condenser cooling water pumps, and possibly high turbine vibration alarms, so operations people would know something was amiss rapidly. The plant has a very large volume, so there is plenty of time to react to problems. (as for natural flooding, that's addressed during siting).

But if you shut off this condenser cooling water, how do you keep the plant cool? No problem - the operators would trip the reactor, and entirely separate systems for keeping the reactor cool under emergency conditions would be used to bring the reactor to a cold shutdown. The systems that do this are redundant, are not subject to common failures, are served by redundant power supplies, are located inside very heavy buildings with reinforced concrete walls at least a foot thick between them and anything that might harm them, and are designed to withstand earthquakes too. And the QA is very strict.

What if the operators don't know what to do? They do. They get a tremendous amount of training, including work as teams on simulators built to mimic the plants down to tiny details. Staffing levels are maintained at no less thanand working hours are limited to maintain alertness.

What if the systems aren't ready to go when needed? They'd better be in service ready to go as required by their Technical Specifications, or else we're talking fines, shutdowns or worse. Verification includes periodic "surveillance tests", such as testing onsite diesel generators to assure that they start up, reach operating speed and voltage and pick up load in the proper sequence.

How do you know the systems perform as designed? Because they were tested to design requirements as a condition of getting an operating license. At CPS that happened around 1987. From that point onward configuration control is tight, and proposed changes are analyzed at great length before implementation.

I could go on with the questions and answers - there are several shelf feet of books on file for every operating reactor in the US devoted to stuff like this. Since 9/11 they may be less accessible, but you can probably see them for a plant near you if you are interested.

Even the most trivial events get tons of bad publicity for nuclear power plants. Nuclear power executives know that the more they goof the more they get inspected, and they know that shutdowns are incredibly expensive, so they know to keep their noses clean. And they're awfully picky about the personnel that they permit to operate multibillion dollar investments.

So the bottom line is that the lead of the story, speaking as it did of "overheating at nuclear power plants", was not about nuclear power safety as it might have appeared. The plants are as safe as they always have been.

Meet Jenna Jameson

Right here.

She's on E! network tonight talking about her history. Of her first heterosexual porn movie, she notes that the man sweated on her and she said she had to quit the scene because the dripping sweat grossed her out.

Horse abuse?

I'm not exactly Joe PETA, but some things are too much. This might be an example:

Three of the jockeys who were hurt in a five-horse collision at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club suffered fractures, 10News reported.

The spill occurred about 4 p.m. Monday during the track's fourth daily race. Three of the five horses involved were later euthanized.


Jockey Jose Silva was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, where it was discovered he had a fractured vertebrae, according to 10News. Anthony Lovato was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas, also with a fractured vertebrae. Jockey Tyler Baze suffered foot fractures and was treated at a nearby hospital.

"I've been around here for 40 years and I can't remember anything like this," Dan Smith, media director at Del Mar, said.

Yep, you'd better get rid of those horses in a hurry. We wouldn't want to get caught drugging them, now would we?

No, I'm not claiming that any of the horses were drugged - things happen. The stress in a race horse's legs is incredible, and occasionally they just break.

But horses have pain just like the rest of us - enough to make them stop doing something painful unless they're drugged. And I saw the results of abuse at a quarter horse race about 20 years ago in IL.

It was about a 400 yard race, the last one of the day. The horses were just a few lengths out of the gates when one of them broke both forelegs simultaneously. It somersaulted, rolling over the jockey. The rest of the horses finished the race.

How do I know the horse broke both legs? Because it got back up on its hind legs and the stumps, its lower forelegs flopping in front of it, as if it were trying to finish the race. And judging from the crowd, I wasn't the only one who hadn't seen anything like it.

A few minutes later a vet was on the scene and they put the horse down. Then an endloader carried the horse to a pit on the far end of the site and dumped it. For two cents they could have had the trainer too.

Green for thee but not for me

IMO today's Democrats are beneath contempt, but there are things I have to admire. For instance, they have to have something on the ball to manage to get votes both from blacks and the unions.

Another mismatch is working class people and rich environmentalists. Greens are the moral descendants of the wardens who would have peasants killed for eating the King's deer. And today, if they had their way, the greens would ruin the economy by making entire industries noncompetitive.

Greens know that, and to compensate have created asinine concepts like "environmental racism" to tie these odd couples together. You see, it seems that some of them claim that when waste disposers site undesirable neighbors like toxic waste dumps, they base their decisions more heavily on their proximity to minority groups than on considerations like distance from the source, cost of the land, etc.

Has Jane Galt found a real example of environmental racism?

BOSTON - The rich and famous have long flocked to the beaches of Cape Cod and the island seclusion of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket — a land of sailboats and quaint vacation homes.

Now some of these celebrities want to make sure wind turbines don't become a part of the scenery.

They are fighting a proposed $700 million wind farm in the Nantucket Sound that would provide electricity to thousands of homes in the area, saying the giant turbines will mar the landscape of one of the nation's most pristine areas.

Awwww. I wonder if any of them ever traveled to the Netherlands to see the windmills? I don't have census data handy, but I'll bet that those islanders aren't exactly a United Nations of ethnic diversity - isn't that alone a good enough reason to force them to accept the windmills? Even if it affects people like Patrick "I never worked a [bleeping] day of my life" Kennedy.

I'll confess that I'd be amused if the windpower is put right smack in front of some rich liberal's mansion. But really now, the fact is that good sites are limited in number and location. There is an opportunity cost associated with keeping such sites unavailable, and it should be borne by those getting the corresponding benefits.

So let there be a special NIMBY charge on power bills for those who would rather have scenery than for the rest of us to have power. And make it sting.

Was Moussaoui the 20th hijacker?...or the 25th?

Brendan Miniter wants to know in today's Opinion Journal.

Geriatric lesbianism

Oh, just read it.

Jack the Stripper

Bitter - the newspaper isn't the worst that you face.

In six incidents reported to police since late June, a male intruder entered the apartments of women and, in several cases, cut off or removed their clothing as they slept. None of the women were hurt. In the most recent episode, during the early morning of Aug. 6, the man removed clothing from two women sleeping in an off-campus apartment.

I seem to recall a weirdo at some college who used to crawl under the tables in the campus library and paint women's toenails, and another (from Tampa?) who went around pouring tomato juice on women's heads. Google failed me on references though.

The world's smallest violin....

It's bad enough that I was here in Indy yesterday night while the usual suspects and media personality Dodd Harris were up to no good in St. Louis - even Susanna made it there by phone. And now here I sit with two new dirty jokes and nobody handy to share them with.

For The Children. Really

Democrats will do anything for children except defend their right to be born or to have mothers stay at home with them. The former has been done to death. Now Here Rich Lowry writes of a book taking on the latter.

The book is Day Care Deception, by Brian C. Robertson. The link offers a number of bullet points from the book. No, I haven't read the book, but I probably will.

Expect out-and-out hysteria from the left against the data and conclusions in this book.

Putting your money where your mouth is

Glenn Reynolds speaks of James Abourezk as " an exceptionally dumb former US Senator" for suing a blogger who called Abourezk a traitor.

Can Abourezk sue me for calling him "litigious"?

A visit to North Korea

There's a very interesting account here, along with lots of pictures.

Stolen from Freddie, whose site probably is not safe for work unless your boss is Larry Flynt.

Alright, I fixed the link now.

The pinstriped peril

I've been around long enough to have made a few observations about institutions. Number 1 is that when they consist of transients and lifers, like colleges (students vs. faculty) or govt agencies (political nominees vs. civil servants), the lifers end up running the show. Number 2 is that regulatory organizations get "captured" by those they are to monitor and often end up putting the interests of the regulated above those who are to be protected from them. The latter is in part influenced by the fact that the monitored organizations are in a position to reward their regulators while they serve (which is illegal) or afterwards (which usually is not illegal, and is also common). Number 3 is that they have political views and interests of their own independent of those who found or support them, and tend to react to events in a ways that maximizes their power and influence. Nothing controversial so far, right?

OK, now apply these ideas to the US Department of State and you must conclude 1) politicians will not be able to control it very well, 2) The same department is likely to be more sympathetic to the needs of foreign govts than to our own. 3) Its institutional self-interest isn't always allied with those of the rest of the US govt.

Hmm, does it follow that we can't trust our State Department?

That's probably a bit strong. But as a minimum it means that we must keep a close eye on it, and that is borne out by experience. For instance we do know that there have been Communists in the State Department since way back in FDR's time, and if any group has interests contrary to those of the US, that's the one. And we've seen some disconcerting behavior for some time recently, as Joe Mowbray has documented in many places. Here is his latest piece, and a forthcoming book.

Scumbag?

Thus spake Meryl Yourish about Charles Lindbergh in the comments to this post. Yep, Lucky Lindy - the guy who flew "The Spirit of St. Louis" across the Atlantic in 1927 and became an international hero. I'm guessing he didn't start supporting WWII soon enough to suit her, but who knows?

Now let's consider another VIP from the period. He had a St. Louis of his own. That is, a German ship named the St. Louis had 900-odd Jews aboard who were seeking asylum.

Anyway, the Jews aboard originally sought asylum in Cuba, but the Cubans reneged. What did the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt do?

As the St. Louis slowly sailed past the land of the free and the home of the brave, the US send Coast Guard cutters to make certain that the potential immigrants were not able to swim ashore to take refuge in the USA. During this time, Washington and the State Department ignored the situation of the St. Louis, even though the saga was reported in the local press. It seemed that to admit 900 refugees destined for Hitler's gas ovens would harm the security of the "mighty" USA.

Sanctuary was eventually found for the refugees in Britain, France, Belgium and Holland. Although the story may have a happy ending, at this point, the lesson was not lost on Hitler who saw America's unwillingness to help as a sign of weakness.

Unfortunately, those alternate locations weren't good enough for some, who wound up in Nazi death camps anyway. But some good came out of it - FDR could avoid charges that some Jews might draw him into conflict with Germany.< /sarcasm>

Ms. Yourish is Jewish and justly proud of it. If it's anti-Semitic she's all over it. Which makes me wonder - if Lindbergh was a "scumbag", I wonder what she thinks of FDR?

More "gay marriage" stuff

Bryan Preston has two good posts in succession on marriage Communist style and gay marriage.

That this is even an issue IMO is revolting. That tiny subsegment of our population which consists of gays who want to call themselves married is so utterly selfish that they would endanger one of the most fundamental and important institutions in our society so they can save on some legal paperwork. Fairness my eye.

The last straw

I don't miss the word "gay". I've unilaterally decided to quit saying "fabulous". But as a long-standing, true-blue frustrated fan of Chicago professional sports, by God, they can't have "Da Bears".

Pearls before swine

Dean Esmay points to this, the zillionth case of a woman putting up with who appears to be a world-class prick, and a commenter who offers some suggestions.

I don't know if "Handsome"'s comments are so valuable though. Some women are just drama queens, and if you don't make the hell for them they'll make it themselves or find someone who will. Be her friend if you want, but no more unless you're into living the drama yourself.

The Battle of the Grand Canyon

Do you give money to the American Civil Liberties Union? Congratulations - here is an example of what you're fighting against - the terrifying spectacle of plaques bearing Psalms at the Grand Canyon.

It is worth noting that no Jewish or Christian organization has ever protested the Hindu names of some of the peaks in the Grand Canyon, and no religious group would ever oppose posting American Indian sayings at such a place. Once again, the secular left shows itself to be far more intolerant than the religious right.

The marriage debate

See the blog here.

If we must debate, let's at least be honest with it. This is not about gay rights or civil rights. Nobody else has a right to get married either.

And not all gays are in favor of gay marriage, either.

For a great comeback, look here.

And here's a link to "What marriage is for", by Maggie Gallagher.

Truckers and technology

It makes sense that truckers are the most well-connected travelers on the road. They need to stay in touch with the trucking company and with family. Also, they increasingly use Web-based services that help them find loads to drive home and avoid deadheading, or driving an empty trailer—every trucker's worst nightmare since those miles produce no revenue. In an attempt to remedy this situation, companies such as The Internet Truckstop, Insight Technology and On Time Media have set up Web-based load matching services. A trucker can log on to these sites, enter the city where he will be dropping off a load and the city to which he needs to return. The system will then tell him of any loads that need to be hauled between those cities. It gets sophisticated. For example, if a load is being dropped in Orlando and the trucker needs to go to New York, the system may find an Orlando-Memphis load, followed by a Memphis-Cleveland load and then a Cleveland-New York load.

Some IT investors follow the online movements of truckers closely because they are not traditionally thought of as early adopters of technology. Like travelers who pull over to eat where the truckers do, investors feel a sense of comfort once a technology becomes viable at truck stops. According to Jack Vonder Heide, president of Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based Technology Briefing Centers, 18-wheeler operators have led the way in road testing technologies that have filtered down to consumers. He notes a laundry list of technologies used today, including cell phones, ruggedized notebooks, touch screens, discount long-distance services, self-serve gas pumps, "and, lest we forget the past, CB radios."

Via Technology Review (may require subscription).

MCJ has moved

...from here to here.

So what are you reading this for? Go over there already!

But I'm sure he meant well

Paul Craig Roberts has an item about Mao's atrocities against his own citizens here.

But Mao was a Communist, and thus beloved of the left. And if you want the left to get all huffy, all you have to do is question a) their motives, or b) their patriotism. Why so touchy?

I just want them to question why people would question these things, and if there's any possibility that such questions are based on something besides reactionary politics.

English usage

We don't "pay" for tax cuts. We "pay" for government programs.

Thank you.

Gay rock

A million cable channels and I'm on Music Choice? The "Power Rock" station just got through playing something by Queen, and now it's "Nobody's Hero" by Rush. They're begging for a post.

Not being a student of gay culture, I only occasionally pick up on gay performers or themes in music. I don't look for either for sure, and it really makes no difference as long as everyone can leave everyone else alone (which means keep your cotton-pickin' hands off the institution of marriage, but that's another post). So there's no telling what has escaped my notice.

When a band names itself Queen, well, you have to wonder why. And in fact their lead singer Freddy Mercury died of AIDS some years back. Dying of AIDS doesn't mean you're gay, but there wasn't much doubt about Freddie. Whether any of the rest of them were gay I don't know, and I did follow them to an extent. Guitarist Brian May in particular - did interesting things with guitars and was into astronomy.

If Rod Stewart was gay, it sure was a waste of fine women when he married Alana Hamilton and Rachel Hunter. I only mention him because of his song "The Killing of Georgie", which got a little airplay when I was in college.

We can't forget the Kinks and "Lola".

I usually avoided synthy dance music, which was most of what I recall hearing from George Michael. How romantic, sneaking off somewhere in a park to have sex with someone you love.

Oh yeah, Judas Priest. I wasn't exactly shocked to hear that lead singer Rob Halford was gay, but I'm suspecting many others were. He couldn't be - he sang heavy metal! Ha, they're playing a Priest song now.

Look what I found on the Halford link - a book:

Rock on the Wild Side : Gay Male Images in Popular Music of the Rock Era by Wayne Studer
What #1 hit by Elvis Presley contained a blatant suggestion of male-male sex--way back in 1957? Which Beatles songs allude to homosexuality? Can you name two Top 20 hits about drag queens? What smash from 1974 has been called "the greatest gay love song ever written?" Which popular rock songs are tainted by homophobia? Which country songs refer to gay people? And who are some of the openly gay performers who've succeeded in the world of rock music?

The answers to these and countless other fascinating questions can be found in Rock on the Wild Side, an entertaining and informative look at more than 200 songs of the "Rock Era" that describe gay men or express various attitude about gayness. Your record, tape or CD collection may never sound quite the same again. Illustrated with more than two dozen photos of such stars/groups as Boy George, David Bowie, Elton John, Kinks, Kitchens of Distinction, Johnny Mathis, Queen, Lou Reed, Tom Robinson, Romanovsky & Phillips, Rupaul, Village People, Tom Wilson Weinberg, Flirtations, Pet Shop Boys...

I haven't heard of all of them, but the rest aren't surprises.

We can't forget the women of course. Everybody has heard of Melissa Etheridge. Somehow I'd like to dislike KD LANG, but she sure can sing. I don't know about the Indigo Girls.

Lookie here - people trying to ban t. A. T. u. in the UK and in NZ. I'm guessing that what busts them isn't whether they are lesbians or not, but the fact that making out onstage in their underwear seems to be pretty much their whole act. IE they're promoting something besides their music.

The list of successful gay musicians could go on forever. From this it's pretty clear that gays can succeed anywhere in the music business. I for one couldn't give a fat rat's patootie about the musician's private life if they don't make it an issue themselves.

Know thyself

"California is the most progressive state in the union," said Flynt, 61. "I don't think anyone here will have a problem with a smut peddler as governor."

Go Larry go! Maybe if enough lowlives like him can get elected, we can convince a lot of otherwise sane people that governments are not the place to look for responsible solutions to social problems.

Via C-Log, which should be a regular stop.

Right on

Via Richard Bennett and Luke Ford:

Unless you think hard about political questions in our culture, you are liberal by default. You have to think your way out of liberalism. - Heather McDonald

I will quibble this far - who says you have to think hard?

So what's my excuse?

Blogspot is no longer the Scourge of Charles Austin, our Sine Qua Non Pundit - he's shacking up with Andrea Harris and Tim Blair here. He's even considering putting in a blogroll!

And they call it the Guardian?

It's just the place for a guide to profanity, the Insultmonger, and fish porn

Club one for me, would ya?

Acidman knows how to deal with environmentalists.

And if he's on your Christmas list, get him this.

Blogwars

Hey, what kind of name is "Little Miss Attila", anyway?

It needs gender correction, but I just can't see touching the original masterpiece, so imagine it's a she. With that I present Charlie Daniels:

"Well, you may not know it, but this man's a spy
He's an undercover agent for the FBI
And he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan."

He was still bent over, holdin' on to his knee
But everyone else was lookin' and listenin' to me
And I layed it on thicker and heavier as I went
I said; "Would you beleive this man has gone as far
As tearin' Wallace stickers off the bumpers of cars
And he voted for George McGovern for president."

"He's a friend of them long-haired, hippie type, pinko fags
I betcha he's even got a Commie flag
Tacked up on the wall, inside of his garage
He's a snake in the grass, I tell ya guys
He may look dumb, but that's just a disguise
He's a mastermind in the ways of espionage."

Inland shipbuilding

Some of you heathens haven't heard of Evansville, IN. It is kind of isolated - a small outpost of civilization between Indianapolis, St. Louis, Louisville, Memphis and Nashville right where US 41 crosses the Ohio River.

That corner of Indiana has more history than you might have suspected. Abraham Lincoln spent some time in the area in his childhood. The much-hooted initiative to decree the value of pi originated just to the west in Posey County. That naive old socialist Robert Owen tried and failed to set up his utopia nearby in New Harmony, IN. Some Japanese automaker (Toyota?) has a huge plant just a few miles north of town on US 41 - I think it's in Princeton. The first capital of IN, Corydon, is a ways to the east upriver. It is the home of the University of Southern Indiana and the University of Evansville, the latter of which lost their entire Purple Aces basketball team to a plane crash in 1977. Evansville area jocks include Andy Benes, Don Mattingly, Calbert Cheaney, Edd Roush, Gil Hodges, Scott Studwell, Bob Griese and Jerry Sloan.

Alright, I know some of this stuff because I did some consulting work down there a few years ago, and I'd learned that there was more to this stereotypical Middle American area than I had expected to find. But they still have surprises - now another proud son of the area, Dave Worley, notes that Evansville once had a shipyard that build LSTs.

French computer games

I don't read Lileks for the news, but he has some about French computer games. He even contributes a few of his own, such as

Medal of Honor: WW2. This was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Resistance. At its peak it had 400,000 members who logged on and did nothing. Then someone named “Yank44” signed on, and the system crashed when all 400,000 members attempted to remove the picture of Marshal Petain from the wall of their cottage.

I want this guy on my side...

The Bill Thomas apology

Some interesting backstory here from Rich Galen. It's the July 25th edition.

Standing link

Whatever Victor Davis Hansen writes, read it. Here's the most recent that I know of.

Paper ballots

Back when PCs first came out I had to get one. Then I had to figure out a way to make the PC do about anything I had been doing manually, and lamented that I couldn't put one in my pocket. Of course this meant that in addition to desktop PCs I had to have a portable computer (an old Kaypro running CP/M), a laptop (I'm on my 3rd one), and a PDA (my 3rd, and a 4th one could come soon). This has led to some absurd situations and I finally concluded that in fact computers weren't always the best tools for a job.

I'm thinking that that little epiphany has yet to occur to the people behind electronic voting. Good grief, if there's ever been a target for hacking or corruption, that's the one. A few scare stories, combined with public ignorance, would destroy confidence in the system almost immediately.

Glenn Reynolds has a few things to say about the good old fashioned paper ballots here. To that I would add that paper ballots would make it much more difficult to hack an election from overseas. We have enough dishonest voting as it is - I'm willing to suffer the inconvenience of going to a polling place in the US to minimize the possibility of guys like Jacques Chirac or Kim Jong Il influencing our elections on a large scale.

Bottoms up!

A toast to Susanna, whose surgery went well.

Can I write for the Taste Page too?

Here in WSJ Online (the taste page, no less) we hear that cow-pie bingo has invaded Atlantic City. The operator assures us "it can't be fixed".

Hmm. I'm thinking that as soon as it was on a square I liked, I'd set off some firecrackers or make a car backfire.

The latter seemed to work well with pigeons. A guy I knew some years ago assured me that during his 60's cruising days he and his buddies would regularly pass underneath a viaduct full of roosting pigeons. They'd wait until a convertible full of people they didn't like was behind them, then make their car backfire just as they cleared the viaduct. Yecch.

I wonder if this works with the Congress Avenue bats in Austin? You haven't heard of them? These people say watching them take off at sundown is one of the top 10 things to do in Austin.

This post seems to have deviated into the general area of animal defecation. Considering that I hope not to find my way back to this neighborhood for a while, I'll have to work in another anecdote. A relative had built a house on a long-vacant lot and found out that generations of dogs had been trained to relieve themselves there. In volume. He found this frustrating. One time he was outside with a beer bottle in his hand when a dog assumed the position not too far in front of him, as if to taunt him. He wound up and pitched that bottle so it glanced off the top of the dog's head.

Yeah, yeah, that's mean, what if someone did that to you, blah blah... Anyway, what made it funny was the dog's reaction. It attempted to run away without straightening up first, achieving a posture associated with Russian dancers. I guess you just had to be there.

The NWA style manual

It has come to my attention that some of y'all are screwing up in your basic English usage.

That's right, it's y'all. Oh, I still say 'you guys' once in a while, or even 'youse guys' if I'm in the right mood. It comes from living in a lot of different places, and they all say things in a lot of different ways.

Look at this page if you want to see how usage of various expressions varies geographically in the US. Here's an example:

64. What do you call the long sandwich that contains cold cuts, lettuce, and so on?
a. sub (77.15%)
b. grinder (2.87%)
c. hoagie (6.98%)
d. hero (5.18%)
e. poor boy (1.77%)
f. bomber (0.01%)
g. Italian sandwich (0.46%)
h. baguette (0.25%)
i. sarney (0.03%)
j. I have no word for this (0.91%)
k. other (4.41%)
(10708 respondents)

I guess they've never been to Florida, or else somebody would have said a Cuban sandwich. And I'm surprised Dagwood isn't on there somewhere. Anyway, I suppose it's a half-decent way to get an idea where someone comes from.

They left off some good ones though. I thought surely "y'all" would be on there, but I missed it if it was. They were probably too PC to include ethnicity, and too chicken to include anatomical features (some of my favorites are for "perineum").

Stolen from Eric Mulkowsky (must be a Polack or a bohunk) of Max Power.

"Death penalty"?

Yesterday Drudge pointed to a column entitled "BBC must not be a casualty of war". Fine. Once the idiots who set its contrary editorial policy are shown the door I'm sure everything will be fine.

What is it that gives some people the idea that for some of these things a corporation should be given "the death penalty"? They seem unaware that corporations themselves cannot be harmed, and they have no brains or morals. You can only harm their employees, pensioners, business partners and stockholders, and all of those might well be victims themselves. In any case, they are fluid, and there's no guarantee that the people who are harmed by a bankruptcy or other reverse are the ones who did the wrong or profited from it.

Symbolism can be important of course. I'm thinking that even if the National Socialist German Worker's Party still existed in Germany, no number of subsequent good works would have rehabilitated them. Hopefully some day the same fate will befall socialism and communism. But somehow I'm thinking that MCI WorldCom falls into a different moral category.

Now we have this, where people are questioning whether MCI should have any more federal contracts after the recent corporate shenanigans. They note that Enron and Arthur Anderson were both debarred from govt contracts - why not MCI too?

Well, for one, MCI controls valuable hard assets. Andersen did not, and I think Enron was organized such that hard assets were isolated from the divisions that did the mischief.

For another, it's easy to see if MCI is performing - did the call/data go through? Enron and Andersen OTOH depended on the trust and good will of their clients to stay in business - absent those, there was no reason to do business with them. (In particular, Andersen's business was credibility. The name had a long proud history, and a few years ago when their IT consulting business became a separate firm it tried to keep the Andersen name. Lucky for them they weren't willing to pay what the accountants wanted for use of the name. Goodbye Andersen Consulting, hello Accenture).

IMO the real reason why some are howling against MCI is that the Communications Workers of America want to unionize them. And like any other group dominated by the left, unions fight dirty - remember this? That's funny - I don't recall anyone suggesting that we put the United Food and Commercial Workers out of business even when they did things to endanger customer health so they could blame it on Food Lion.

Smart bandages

How about a bandage that not only covers the wound but tells you the germs on it? Right here on Technology Review.

The smart bandage is a thin sensor made of crystalline silicon and layers of porous silicon. The porous silicon is treated with a liquid that contains probe molecules engineered to bind to fat molecules found on the surface of specific bacteria. When the bandage is placed over an infected area, bacteria from the wound move into the porous silicon and attach themselves to the probe molecules, altering the optical properties of the silicon. Doctors illuminate the bandage with light from a handheld semiconductor laser device, and the bandage luminesces in a color that indicates the kind of bacteria that are present—red for E. coli, for example, or yellow for strep. With the immediate diagnosis of the culprit germs, doctors won’t have to wait for the results of laboratory cultures.

Fascism in reality

Juan Non-Volokh has it right here. Hint - there's nothing right-wing about it.

Yum

Anybody for a tongue transplant?

Maybe they'll become more common what with the health complications of tongue-piercing and the even weirder tongue-splitting phenomenon. Go ahead, click this and see pictures.

So you don't like John Derbyshire?

Hey, Derb's alright, I don't care what Andrew Sullivan says. He posted an interesting article on NRO today suggesting that American troops will be provoked into situations like Bloody Sunday.

But if you don't like him, you might enjoy seeing clips of him getting his butt kicked by Bruce Lee in Return of the Dragon. Honest - look right here.

Stolen from Charles Murtaugh, who no doubt must be embarrassed that my blog isn't linked on his sidebar.

Who's bright?

I won't deny that I can be an arrogant SOB at times. But I'm not proud of it. So I couldn't be one of the self-proclaimed "Brights" (I'm best described as what one commenter elsewhere called a "militant agnostic" - I don't know and you don't either).

Lately they've emerged, with the intellectually masturbatory name they granted themselves, claiming to be all but the saviors of society and for all their trouble being oppressed.

Such silliness is to be expected when you look at some of the other stuff they believe. But most troubling is the way many of them fail to understand their own faith - science.

I've written of such things numerous times before (1 2 3 4). The fact is that for all the good we have been able to do with science, we really don't know that much about ourselves, our ecosystem, our solar system, our universe, our history..... And what we do know is based on stretching a little data a long way. The proper reaction from those who love science thus is modesty, not vanity.

Yet we've had Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, two of the most insufferable people of our time, telling us implicitly that anyone who believes in anything supernatural is not "bright".

Based on what? That sliver of information we can derive via observation and logic.

If we had a million years' worth of observations and had fully analyzed them all, that would still only account for about 0.02% of the postulated life of the earth, and even less than that of the universe. And that has all been within that tiny chunk of the universe to which we have any sort of access. And that is via whatever limited means of detection we have - our senses and their extensions like microscopes, radio telescopes et al - to think that we can observe everything that is happening in the universe is an incredible leap of faith.

And logic itself is sorely limited - it appears otherwise only because there is so much work to be done in understanding our universe. Most fundamental of its limitations is that it has to start from some unquestioned postulates. To "prove" them is to use circular reasoning. To propose the wrong ones is to invalidate all that follows from them. Thus proposing them is a huge act of faith that goes unacknowledged by the "Brights" and their sympathizers. They claim "brightness" because they have arbitrarily ruled out some of these possible postulates.

Yet we have "brights" who can't know if they're seeing everything of relevance speaking with remarkable certainty of of "big bangs" requiring conditions never observed anywhere. We have "brights" who mock that which they cannot observe who are nonetheless willing to entertain theories that invoke unobservable "dark matter". We have "brights" who profess to understand science who take umbrage when a scientific theory (which is all science ever offers - there is no scientific "truth") like macroevolution is spoken of as being "just a theory". (That the person saying so is often clueless does not change this fact, and once science claims to produce "truth" it is no longer science.) A New Testament verse describes this perfectly: "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (KJV Romans 1:22)

Yet I'm willing to humor them, besotted by hubris as they may be. Maybe, as someone else has suggested, they'll feel better if they have their own symbol to identify themselves with. I humbly propose this: *

Why? To them it will suggest the sun, the brightest object in our sky.

And to the rest of us it suggests a perfect characterization for them.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Which of the angels was the brightest?

What did they expect?

Puerto Ricans protested against Navy exercises at Vieques. The Navy shut them down. What could be wrong with that?

Now the Navy has decided that the nearby Roosevelt Roads facility is no longer needed and will be shut down. So now the Puerto Ricans are bitching about that.

Via Right Wing News.

Will he?

Meet Allan Boyd, sole survivor of his family after 5 suicides.

Ladies: your dream man awaits

He's young, well off, and he's available because he just broke up with his last girl. Here's how he did it.

You want his picture too - look here.

Has Saddam heard about this?

If Saddam Hussein is still alive, I hope he's getting updates from the NY Times. Even now, some of his henchmen may be under torture, screaming "they're wrong - we did try to get the uranium in Africa!"

And I wonder if there have been any mysterious deaths or disappearances in France lately?

Tonsils - what good are they?

For a while in the middle of the last century it seemed like every kid had their tonsils taken out. I have to wonder what health impact it has had. This man had his objections to it.

Via Medpundit.

Remind me to keep the bathroom door locked

Not that I have anything to fear of course. Anyway, I'll bet this never happened to James Lileks.

Stolen from Daniel Drezner.

Totalitarians and soccer

As told by Harry.

Cooper Black: Behind the Typeface

As an engineer, I usually ask "how". This has me asking "why".

Stolen from Asparagirl.