I'm available

If any of you oppressed people out there want me to accept a few million dollars on your behalf, I'm willing to help.

Credit card follies

It's been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. For my money, a liberal is a conservative who has dealt with credit card companies.

(Of course I just ranted about someone possibly signing on for dumb financing deals. Hey, I contain multitudes.)

First off, I know - if you have any reasonable alternative to carrying a credit card balance you probably ought to have your head examined. And there's plenty of fine print, which we consumers are tempted to skim over and generally fail to appreciate fully.

But now imagine that you make at leat a minimum payment on time, then you make the next payment 27 days later, and the credit card company (hereafter known as "thieves") charges you $29 for a late fee.

How did they explain that one? Bill due on 2nd, and I paid it on time (much more than the minimum due). I also paid again around the 5th of that month for the following payment. The billing cycle runs on the 13th, applying the payment on the 5th to the bill due on the 2nd along with the original on time payment, and produced another bill due on the 2nd of the next month. I pay again on the 5th of the next month online (the remaining balance), and wonder why it is that I'm showing a late fee on the bill. The CSRs tell me that this is the way it works.

Well, maybe I missed something in the paperwork. But really, it's not exactly a technological innovation to apply the payment after the 2nd to the following month, and it's certainly a rational expectation. Who would expect to be penalized for paying "too early"?

Imagine Joe Schmuck gets a credit card with his first payment due on 2/2. He pays at least minimum payment on 1/20, leaving a balance. He pays at least the minimum again on 2/5 expecting it to be applied to next bill. But thieves run billing cycle on 2/13, apply 2/5 payment to 2/2 and produce bill due 3/2. Joe pays for the third time on 3/5 intended for the bill he expects will be due on 4/2, but thieves treat it as late for 3/2. If he's not paying attention and continues to pay on the 5th, he'll get hit for a late fee every month, despite starting out current and paying at least the minimum at intervals of no more than a month. Sheesh, if that's how they treat a customer like that, what would they do to someone who actually paid *late*?

The thieves said they'll remove the late charge effective with the next bill. We'll see.

Then there's folly #2 with another den of thieves. Thieves send letter saying accept rate increase or account is disabled. Never mind a 10 year stable record with that company and no changes in my circumstances - CSR says "it's not you, it's us - it's a business decision".

That's OK, I make business decisions too. The twist is that if you don't bend over and take it, you can't use their website to make payments any more. There's no way to pay them locally, and they charge you if you pay them by phone. So those of us who don't get paper bills or who are on the road a lot and have a hard time catching up with our mail can just go to hell. So guess who won't be in my wallet?

Why is it...

...that when medical, drug or financial costs increase, the media busts the providers, but when college costs rise outrageously it's treated as inevitable?

Some local news show just boo-hooed for a girl who managed to run up $100,000 in loans to major in something as remunerative as art.

Nobody questioned her decision. Nobody questioned the college costs. Nope, just the $1000/month loan payments, which would be even higher if she made more money.

It might well be that she could have received a better deal for the college financing. But I dare suggest that anyone who'd accept some of these financing deals is too dumb to go to college anyway.

Another reason I'm glad I'm not a beetle

See this.

Somehow I'm not interested in ejaculating 10% of my body weight. For a 160lb man that would be about 2 gallons. Sperm banks would have to start hiring dairy farmers to handle the volume.

How long would it take to, um, deliver all that? Hmm, this is sounding better already. Being an engineer, I can't leave this alone.

The world's foremost authority claims that the average volume for an adult male is between 3 and 5cc (don't believe that old story about how they named the 80's band 10cc).

I can't seem to find a reference for how long the pumping or actual male orgasms last. So I'll assume that the orgasm and the pumping are of equal duration, and that this duration is 6 seconds, if only because it gives me a nice round numbers. Using 5cc for the volume I wind up with 50cc/minute flow rate for the average human male.

At that rate, how long would it take to deliver 2 gallons? Almost 3 hours!

Given that most of us can't run marathons, and that running one takes less time and probably happens at a lower heart rate and blood pressure, I'm guessing that most men wouldn't survive such an experience. Actually I don't know if the beetles do either, but there are plenty of other male critters that don't survive reproduction (the most depressing example probably being this.)

Alright, I've wasted enough time. May your sex never be fatal.

Gallery of mouse trap patents

History of Mousetraps - Gallery of Patents

Crazy Sexy Cancer

I guess if someone wants to curl up and die when they get lousy news from their doctor, it's their perfect right.

Kris Carr wasn't ready for that, and it looks like cancer isn't ready for her either. Her main site here, blog here. Or watch for broadcasts of her documentary on TLC.

She's just released a book about it and she's on tour too - she'll be in Chicago on 9/8 out by O'Hare.

Good for Scooter Libby

Fox reports that President Bush has commuted Lewis Libby's sentence so he won't have to go to prison.

He doesn't get off without penalties. But as usual any ranking Democrat within microphone range has had to assert their asininity.

I'll say this for Ted Kennedy - he more or less kept his mouth shut about the time the Dems were trying to screw Clarence Thomas. He knew that with his history it might not be a good idea.

Not so Hillary Clinton, the spouse of the man who pulled all sorts of pardon stunts on his last day in office. But she's a Democrat, so she knows the press has her back covered as long as it looks like she might beat the Republicans.

In a way Bush's low poll numbers are a sort of relief. There isn't much to lose, and if you're going to get negative press no matter what you do you might just as well do what you want.

Evolving journalism

My university had no journalism school. Thank God - we had enough idiots on campus as it was.

Are journalism students idiots? No?

Do they have no integrity? No?

Why should I believe that? You'd hope that on day 1 they'd learn about "editorializing" as opposed to "reporting", and learn that the former belonged on the editorial page.

Sheesh, I learned this as a scuzzy old allegedly sub-literate engineer - when you described situations, it was to be done in neutral language without advocacy.

Why the rant? This link by Glenn Reynolds, about a "Creation Museum" in Kentucky.

You prefer science to Genesis? Be thankful that this nation founded by Christians permits it. Here you can write biased BS as news, using what ought to be a simple news story about a museum to slam religious believers gratuitously.

Is this about "balance"? Fine. Then start quoting creationists in every science article. It's at least as fair and relevant as quoting detractors about the creation museum.

It certainly isn't about tolerance. It isn't about objectivity.

It's not even journalism.

Toxic Muslims

I happen to know that Muslims pass gas, and when they do it can be unpleasant.

But that's not because they're Muslim, or because they eat anything particularly weird. No, I reached this conclusion based on evidence that Muslims are human beings, and the rest of us do the same thing. Yeah, even you.

And now we hear that 13% of Muslims support suicide bombings under some circumstances. Scary, eh?

Really? Why? There is no context here. Do we have a corresponding figure for non-Muslims? Maybe we do - if so the linked post would have been a good place to present it.

Are there lunatic Muslims? Sure, just read the papers. But again, they're human beings too, and if the same poll were performed on non-Muslims the numbers might not be much different, because there are plenty of wackos to go around among the rest of us too.

So the 13% number is misleading without having a corresponding number for non-Muslims.

Why the title? The situation reminds me of earlier cancer scares that seemed to declare every known industrial chemical carcinogenic. But guess what happened when they started testing so-called "natural" substances too? Uh huh - lots of them are carcinogens too under the right circumstances.

Hat tip to SK, NA, HA, RM, and the many other Muslims I've known who wouldn't hurt a fly.

You call *that* an erection?

People who love buildings and other objects, right here, courtesy of Boing-Boing

The world's lamest expression

I propose "You always have to have the last word!" Has anyone ever said that without intending to have the last word themselves?

Pop ignorance

Mary Katharine Ham writes about it here

Nuclear plant trip via Internet?

Alright, I've been away from the nuclear biz for a few years now, but coverage of an event at TVA's Browns Ferry (BFNP) site sounds misleading to me. "Data storm" blamed for shutdown.

First, some background. Look here for information on boiling water reactors (BWR) in general. The players in this event were the reactor recirculation pumps (which tripped) and the condensate demineralizers ("polishers"). The net effect was as if kidney failure caused a seizure, which the doctors in the control room dealt with via manual scram (intentional shutdown of the reactor) from the control room.

Now, the doctors. Historically anyone who operates a reactor or directly supervises them needs a pretty exclusive credential as a "reactor operator" (RO) or "senior reactor operator" (SRO) per requirements from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, occasionally US-NRC). They receive this credential after intensive training on their plants both with books and with team drills using a control room that is a replica of their facility right down to the colors and shapes of the switches, buttons and displays. They can lose it, and of course the jobs that require it, by failing to act as required by training and procedure.

One tenet of reactor management is that shutdowns like this are dissected in detail, particularly automatic ones. For the latter you can bet that the operators on shift at the time will be asked why they didn't avoid the situation if possible, or else shut down the reactor themselves before the automatic logic took over. An unsatisfactory answer will be received as if a doctor at a malpractice trial had said "no, I didn't use anaesthetic because I figured the patient would pass out anyway from the pain".

Now let's talk about the reactor recirculation (RR) pumps. They're not found in pressurized water reactors (PWR), but they're familiar to fossil plant operators. The idea is to increase the coolant flow through the reactor, because that permits it to generate more power (think turbochargers).

There's always some flow under power operation, because steam is flowing out and feedwater is flowing in to maintain a constant level of coolant in the reactor well above the fuel. But if water is recirculated, you can have more flow through the core than what feedwater alone would provide, and this increases power output. And that power varies in proportion to the RR pump speed, so they have variable frequency drives to control their motors (at BFNP, anyway - more modern BWRs control recirc flow in other ways).

When you shut down a plant, the idea is to minimize its power production. Accordingly the RR pumps are shut down early in the process in the course of a planned shutdown of a BWR, and having the RR pumps unavailable for whatever reason (short of large leaks) does not affect reactor safety.

Now, the condensate polishers. They're typically located far from their reactor in the basement of the building which houses the turbine. They clean the reactor coolant, which in a BWR is demineralized water. By the time the water reaches a BWR's condensate polishers it has been through the condensate and feedwater systems, the reactor, the turbine, and the condenser, and along the way it has picked up contaminants from corrosion products and others. This means that you don't hang around the condensate polishers - they're "hot" radiologically.

They have no safety function. David Copperfield could make them all disappear and the plant could be shut down safely. You won't operate the plant that way for long, but nuclear safety regulations are not concerned with that - that's the owner's problem.

Also like kidneys, you have more CPs than you need. In normal operation you'll have as many running as it takes to support full power operation, and the others will either be out of service or being regenerated.

If CPs are the kidneys, the radwaste system is the bladder. CPs that I am familiar with contain tiny beads of special polymeric resins which preferentially absorb various ions, and they don't last forever - they're either regenerated or replaced at intervals. The analogy is left as an exercise.

Either process involves valve manipulations and other activities near the CPs. Automation of this saves radiation exposure to operators and forces use of the proper procedures. And nowadays the cool kids are using programmable logic controllers (PLC) to control such logic - what valve opens when, and for how long, in response to what measurement, etc.

PLCs are like highly proprietary computers with a very narrow focus and specialized I/O devices. They're much more reliable than PCs (thank God for that), and, being proprietary, they need not make compromises in the name of compatibility with other manufacturers. They can be programmed and can communicate like computers in various network topographies. They can drive or be driven by analog signals, switch and relay contacts or by signals sent over their network. They're compact and can be replaced by yanking cards out of a rack. And as a consequence they offer entirely new ways to fail.

I don't know the details of the configuration at BFNP, but it sounds fair to assume that the PLCs that control the CPs somehow share an information network with the reactor recirculation pumps. Otherwise how could the problem with the CPs impact the RR pumps?

Well, if so this interconnection is not quite as crazy as it may sound. For one, all of the systems in the power generation system must work in concert. Once a BWR is generating power, you manipulate control rods to a certain state as dictated by the nuclear engineering staff to optimize fuel consumption. Then you pretty much leave them there, and control power via the speed of the reactor recirc pumps. More power means more flow through the CPs, and they only tolerate so much flow, so whether automated or not the CP status is considered in the operation of the RR pumps.

I understand that BFNP was modified recently, which is probably when the PLCs were put in. These devices were in their infancy at the time these plants were originally designed and built, and BWR units built later still had traditional 4-20mA analog controllers and relay ladder logic for most systems. When the new design was proposed, I'm guessing that some old operators and engineers were saying "WTF? Nothing happens so fast with CPs that we can't deal with it manually and we don't need any strange new control systems with their new failure modes. This isn't some stealth bomber that simply can't be flown without computerized controls and which spends most of its time shut down anyway - what is this crap doing here?" At which time they found that they were troglodytes and were overruled.

But the bottom line is that nothing happened that impacted the public beyond reading about it in the paper. It cost TVA a bundle because shutdowns always do, planned or otherwise, so you can bet that they're looking really hard at preventing recurrences if only for the most venal capitalistic reasons. There'd better be some engineers and instrument techs burning serious midnight oil at the company that provided the PLCs and on the staff at BFNP. And you don't have to be a baseball fan to know that the most effective way to keep your errors down is to have fewer chances - nobody wants this to recur.

So why did we hear of a "data storm"? I don't like that formulation because it invites speculation that somehow the Internet was involved, and in turn, that someone from outside the plant could manipulate the plant to its detriment.

Yeah, fat chance. If I thought that were happening I'd throw a fit myself. No RO or SRO I ever met would stand for that - they're responsible for the plant, they have to know what's going on, and they'd raise Cain if anything that mattered could bypass them. And I can't imagine the NRC liking it.

The TVA spokesperson confirms the separation here:

"The integrated control system (ICS) network is not connected to the network outside the plant, but it is connected to a very large number of controllers and devices in the plant," Johnson said. "You can end up with a lot of information, and it appears to be more than it could handle."

That's not to say that no computers are ever attached to such control systems. Some are used to monitor and log various plant statuses to help in diagnosing problems and analyzing trips, and they are invaluable for this. But in my experience they are connected through isolators such that they could fail completely, short out, etc, without harming the original circuits. They don't control anything related to power production, and no safety related plant functionality is lost if such systems are unavailable.

Original link from Instapundit.

UPDATE: What's this, traffic? It must be a link back from Instapundit. Thanks, Glenn! Incidentally, I made some minor changes above to make it resemble English a bit more closely. I don't have to be literate, I'm an engineer!

40 years?

Most people can agree that pornography has no place in our schools. But then neither does this - a *40 year* sentence for allegedly exposing some middle school kids to porn via administratively uncontrolled popup ads?

Would they have asked Bill Clinton this?

Heavens, a Mormon is running for President! Lock up your daughters!

Although I haven't picked anyone else either, I'm not a Mitt Romney backer. And I've never lived among significant groups of Mormons. But the ones I have known have been good people, and I know BS when I hear it.

By now everyone has heard of Al Sharpton's latest asininity, about Mormons, but the corker has to be the SOB who asked Romney if he had slept with his wife before they got married.

Ah yes, nothing could be more significant in a politician than whether they're HYPOCRITES! And why not? It plays into the MSM's biases - non-lefties have higher standards, so they're more likely to fall short of them. Far better to elect the kinds of whorehopping degenerates you're likely to find as, say, senators from Massachusetts.

I'd like to flip this logic on its head. Let's ask the candidates "Are you a hypocrite? And if not, doesn't that mean that you have no meaningful standards at all for your conduct?"

As for Romney, what should he have said? Where are David Letterman's Top Ten List writers? I'm no Scrappleface, and I'm sure I won't come up with 10, but here goes:

"Why don't you save that question for the debates?"
"It depends on what the meaning of 'have sex' is"
"I was before it before I was against it"
"Yes, but I'm not a Democrat - I wouldn't pull out until the job was done"
"As many times as you have with your mother" (risky in more ways than one)
"I'm no Jack Kennedy"

Mickey Mouse competition

"Dancing with the Stars" just ended with a touch of justice - we're finally free of this year's winner of the Master P award, Billy Ray Cyrus. I can't see how anyone besides a Howard Stern fan could have ever voted for him based on his dancing skills. Heather Mills outperformed him for sure, but she was voted off two weeks ago. After Billy Ray who can they follow up with - Larry Flynt?

Oh no, not on ABC. We couldn't have a smut peddler on Disney's network.

Yes, Disney owns ABC. Disney also happens to purvey "Hannah Montana", a show starring....Billy Ray Cyrus! Who also records music on the Disney label. Somehow no one saw fit to acknowledge that, and this week host Tom Bergeron even prompted Billy Ray to mention his album.

Hmm, am I suggesting anything? Not yet. But I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest to find that the show had a production meeting every Tuesday morning with the producers, suits and the judges. There, like the producers of professional wrestling, they would decide what is to happen next in order to get and sustain high ratings. If they can work what amounts to a big commercial into what is nominally the entertainment part of the broadcast so much the better. How else to explain Billy Ray's scores from the *judges*?

Not convinced? How about that huge sloppy wet kiss they gave in the form of a retrospective of his time on the show? Yeah, he's "entertaining" to some, but then so is professional wrestling.

Of course the voters haven't distinguished themselves either, and I shudder at the thought that they might be using similar criteria to vote in *political* elections. Good grief, Joey Fatone finished next to last behind Ian Ziering?

Oh sure, it's cool to some to rip on Joey's former band, NSync, and Joey has probably rubbed some fans the wrong way. But if you want to watch Ian Ziering, I'm sure his old show is in reruns somewhere (and Billy Ray's show is in production still). If you don't like good dancing, fine - don't watch the show. Or at least don't vote, so the rest of us can see the better dancers.

Yeah, I'll keep watching. Likewise, sometimes I don't turn the channel when pro wrestling comes on. It doesn't have to be a competently judged contest or even honest competition to be entertaining.

Weaving gold into straw

Sometimes people don't appreciate how management can foul things up. Being here in Chicago, I use the 1990s Bulls as an example. Suppose Phil Jackson had benched Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and played BJ Armstrong at center and Ed Nealy at point guard. Would the Bulls have won 6 championships in 8 years that way?

Or perhaps Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense ought to be pulling a plow?

Now I have a journalism example too. It appears that incredibly gifted columnist/blogger/father James Lileks will now be a reporter.

Associated partisans

Greensburg, KS was obliterated by a super strong tornado a few days ago. And what did the Associated Press want to write about?

In Kansas, the governor said the state's response was limited by the shifting of emergency equipment, such as tents, trucks and semitrailers, to the war in Iraq.

"Not having the National Guard equipment, which used to be positioned in various parts of the state, to bring in immediately is really going to handicap this effort to rebuild," she said.

Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the adjutant general's office, which manages state resources during emergencies, said the state has a shortage of heavy equipment transport trailers, pallet-sized loading systems, Humvees, dump trucks and other large equipment that would be help move massive amount of debris.

"We are never at 100 percent because we are allocated a certain amount from the National Guard Bureau. With the war, we are much shorter than we would be. We have about 40 percent of what is allocated," Watson said.

And they say that *blogs* don't have editors. Is it news when a Democrat administration (funny how that detail was omitted) taking a cheap shot at the war in Iraq? If this is what passes for news reporting, why not add something like "Democrat leaders lost no time in politicizing yet another natural disaster in hopes of wringing advantage from the blood of the victims."

If the Red Cross or other private groups had programs for relief they went unmentioned. But we did read this:

City Administrator Steve Hewitt said his job Monday would be to get city government working again. He said he needed to find employees, get purchase orders out, pay employees and bills _ in short, create commerce again in Greensburg.

"Get government going _ that is our No. 1 priority," Hewitt said.

I would expect that someone who made a living from the govt would say that. But "create commerce again"? Sheesh, is the govt the only thing going in Greensburg? And does it belong in the article?

"Bring the convicts home!"

Rosie O'Donnell is a disgrace. Yet again.

Pro choice

The sex educators had some fun a couple of weeks ago at Jane Galt's. They decided that kids have to have it in our public schools, and that's all there is to it. The comments have been closed and this is too longwinded anyway, so here is my no doubt long-awaited take.

Sex education? Sure, there are plenty of things every human being ought to know about it. But perhaps the main one is simply discipline, whether you're talking keeping your hands off the interns , having sex in church, masturbating in a theater, soliciting gay sex in a public bathroom, a quickie in a car parked on the street or plenty of other things that can be and have been done with people who presumably know more than enough to avoid disease and unwanted pregnancy. Teaching restraint and manners is a lifetime job, and liberals throw a fit any time a public school tries to teach anything that smacks of an ideology other than their own secular religion that dares not speak its name. Yet even the liberals worship condoms, the use of which (or alternatives) requires discipline in itself and fails regularly enough even when used as directed.

And what of consequences of their actions? About the severest consequences modern kids ever suffer in daily life are perhaps losses at video games. Not everything can be reset and restarted, yet we have people trying to eliminate winning and losing from kids' lives lest they suffer a blow to their self-esteem. Yeah, far better than they should learn of consequences from maternity wards, abortion mills, public health clinics or cops. If we want kids to be responsible about sex, maybe we should teach them to be responsible, period. You can't expect it to be taught in schools, especially to kids who don't even have to do chores or earn money.

You also can't teach anybody much of anything practical in sex education. Well, besides unrolling condoms on bananas. That's not very practical unless they're holding the banana below the waist while they're hornier than goats with three testicles and the banana is subject to going bad any instant. And with young guys that might even be enough to end the show (for a couple of minutes, anyway).

When I was a kid there was no sex education in the public schools I attended, but there wasn't a force in the universe that could have stopped me from finding out everything I could on the subject. But knowing how and why sperm are discharged into a vagina didn't help me achieve same, or to get further opportunities if I ever succeeded.

Now what are schools for, anyway? They're publicly funded because we're interested in producing good citizens. Social engineering for sure, but it's intended to complement the parents, not displace them. They don't and shouldn't have the kids 24/7, so they can't teach the kinds of things that require 24/7 teaching (they can only counter them). And the things that require 24/7 teaching would be pretty much anything but the 3 Rs, history, science, vocational education and maybe PE.

What's more, why have the schools teach kids things that they're sure to pick up on their own if they're interested? IMO sex education falls in that category. Likewise with art and music - let the kids stay after school for that if they want it, or leave it as an elective for kids with acceptable achievement in the core subjects.

One of the best things people should be taught is to get the fundamentals right. Apparently liberal school reformers didn't get the news - like all liberals, they'd rather have govt institutions do dozens of things poorly than a few things right. So we clutter schools with irrelevant nonsense at the expense of fundamentals, like a would-be basketball player who can't dribble, pass or shoot but spends his time practicing slam-dunks.

Hey, if you want your kids to get sex education, teach them yourself. If you're not qualified, just how did you have kids, anyway? If you didn't know what caused them then, surely you've learned something since, right?

(Well alright, maybe you adopted the kid(s). Fine. Remind them that even though their mother didn't keep them, she didn't kill them, and maybe they ought to think about that if they ever contemplate an abortion.)

Face it, there simply aren't any good defensible reasons for requiring sex education in schools. There are some bad ones though. Like this. Even if we must require sex ed in the schools, there's no place for that - it's about promoting particular lifestyles, not any sort of essential knowledge.

Hey, I'm just being "pro-choice"...