View 650 November 21 - 28, 2010 (original) (raw)
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Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The hoop-la continues over the TSA "love pat" -- sexual assault -- routine body search -- procedures designed to make it so miserable for those refusing the new X-ray scanners. Of course we've invested a lot in those scanners, and that has to be justified, so the "persuasion" will continue; there's too much at stake. The Administration isn't going to give in. As to the X-ray machines themselves, I have yet to see much evidence that the dose per scan is significantly higher than 0.01 mrem per scan, and I know of none at all that it is greater than 0.1 mrem. Note we are discussing ionizing radiation, not UV. I have no figures on the UV dosage of the scanners (if any). Meanwhile, it is well known that flying at jet altitudes gives dosages in the order of 0.5 mrem per hour. That is ionizing radiation (UV doesn't penetrate the aircraft structure). Now if the X-ray scanners give as large as 0.1 mrem per dose (and there is zero evidence of that; I am assuming a worst case maintenance or operator error), then pilots might well object to the scan, but there is no real reason for casual passengers to do so.
Which is to say, the X-ray scan is less intrusive and less violation of basic rights than the general routine operations of the TSA have been from the moment it came into existence. My experiences with TSA have usually been pleasant enough -- I work at trying to be pleasant -- but even so I have been subjected to indignities, unprofessional behavior -- one TSA "officer" told me that if I wrote down her badge number I would be in violation and not allowed to fly -- and general boorishness. I hasten to say that isn't usual. Most of the TSA people were trying to be pleasant in an unpleasant situation. "We are only following orders." They're doing the best they can, given the caliber of people willing to make a career at working for TSA.
In operations research the important first step is to figure out what you are trying to accomplish: what is the goal of the organization. There is usually the stated goal, and the inferred goal. By inferred goal I mean what is the organization doing best? What goal is it actually accomplishing? Regarding the TSA the stated goal is to prevent contraband from getting aboard aircraft, this to be in aid of making the passengers more secure. The inferred goal is to convince the American people that they are subjects, not citizens, and security is preferable to personal liberty. TSA accomplished the inferred goal quite well; it's hard to see how they could do that much better. The stated goal can be questioned: perhaps it ought to have something to do with facilitating air travel, and maximizing the number of passengers who get to their destinations safely and on time. I see no sign that anyone is actually doing an analysis with that as the criterion.
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North Korea is shelling South Korea, but only a little bit on a small island. It's an act of war, but it will be ignored while we think of ways to bribe North Korea to stop doing that. And the beat goes on.And see below.
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OTEC and Other Energy X-Projects
Thanks to Rose for this:
: kinda nice to see something you wrote about happening
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/109939054.html
Lockheed Martin Corp., which plans to build a Hawaii electrical plant that produces energy by exploiting ocean temperature differences, said it has received another $4.4 million in federal grants to help advance the commercialization of the technology.
R, Rose
That caused me to write a short screed intended for a private conference, but then I got to thinking it was of more general interest.
That caused me to write a short screed intended for a private conference, but then I got to thinking it would be of interest to View readers, and I have edited it thus:
Perhaps reports of OTEC's demise were slightly exaggerated?
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/109939054.html
I have done no research on OTEC for 20 years, but when I was doing the series for American Legion on "America's Looming Energy Crisis" way back then I did quite a lot. I didn't see any show stoppers. The technology is simple enough that it was used in the Caribbean in about 1930 to furnish fresh water and some power for special operations. D'Arsonval was the engineer in charge, and while the plant didn't turn large profits, it does not seem to have been a financial disaster. The scale was small, something like 10 kW using 1920's turbine technologies.
Technologies have improved a lot since then. Of course there are only a few locations where OTEC might work -- I put large scale OTEC ops inmy stories in Tonga, where they have the conditions and need the power. I was probably also partly responsible for spiking some interest in the subject, and eventually there were Navy and DARPA x-project contracts, which is the appropriate way for the Federal Government to participate in development of new energy sources (as opposed to the subsidies paid for alcohol fuels, which even Al Gore now realizes was probably a mistake).
Anyway, OTEC continues to be looked at, as it should. As a power source for certain areas with the right conditions it still seems appropriate and possibly economic, unless someone knows of show stoppers I don't know about. I always did wonder if the Kona Coast was the right place for an X project, but I didn't look that hard and assumed those who funded the project did. That's not always a sound assumption, as I have found to my sorrow, and often what is said to be an X project turns out to be something entirely different like X-33 which set the development of recoverable spacecraft back 20 years.
It's been a while since I did hard research on new energy technology x-projects. Perhaps it's time.
My last hard-work assessment of "green" energy technologies was done in the 1980's, when I rated their importance for the future as:
Nuclear Fission
Nuclear fuel recovery/recycling
Nuclear Fission (breeder)
Bio-mass waste product combustion (a booster for coal and natural gas, not stand alone)
Space Solar Power as a long term future
Fusion
In about that order. As I recall back in those days Doc Bussard agreed with me but placed fusion considerably higher in the priority list. We did agree that if small scale fusion became economical it would probably dwarf all the others; the question was how long that would take. I was then and remain a bit sanguine about the claims of the fusion advocates: they have predicted commercial break-even technology "in about 30 years" since Jimmy Carter's time. (I didn't agree with Carter in cutting fusion research, but he was probably right to do that).
If we are forbidden to use nuclear energy to get out of the energy shortage, perhaps the best course would be a large x-project power plant (x-project: build the best we can build with technology existing a year after the contract is awarded; don't rely on something yet to be developed) for waste bio-mass supplemented power generation using either coal or natural gas as primary: in other words, see what we can make of thermal recycling. Of course that would probably emit CO2 like mad, and thus be unacceptable in today's scientific consensus.
What does that leave for a major US energy x-project? OTEC is a good idea, but it's not likely to save the world since the places you can use it tend to be places where it's hard to get the energy from there to somewhere that it's useful.
Perhaps a good reader discussion might be on what energy x-projects we would recommend in what order. I think we can get the result to be considered seriously by the relevant committees in the new House.
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The Dane-Geld
Rudyard Kipling
A.D. 980-1016
IT is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say:--
"We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:--
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:--
"We never pay _any_-one Dane-geld,
Nor matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
For the record, sometimes it makes sense to bribe nations far away. It encourages others to try the shakedown path, but for Empires with limited military resources, it's often cheaper to bribe than to fight. Of course an alternative is to bribe an ally or a puppet to go fight. When the Danes are on your soil, you fight (see Appius Cludius the Blind)
Nevertheless, most were well inclined to a peace, having already received one great defeat and fearing another from an additional force of the native Italians, now joining with Pyrrhus. At this point Appius Claudius, a man of great distinction, but who, because of his great age and loss of sight, had declined the fatigue of public business, after these propositions had been made by the king, hearing a report that the senate was ready to vote the conditions of peace, could not forbear, but commanding his servants to take him up, was carried in his chair through the forum to the senate-house. When he was set down at the door, his sons and sons-in-law took him up in their arms, and, walking close round about him, brought him into the senate. Out of reverence for so worthy a man, the whole assembly was respectfully silent.
And a little after raising up himself: "I bore," said he, "until this time, the misfortune of my eyes with some impatience, but now while I hear of these dishonourable motions and resolves of yours, destructive to the glory of Rome, it is my affliction, that being already blind, I am not deaf too. Where is now that discourse of yours that became famous in all the world, that if he, the great Alexander, had come into Italy, and dared to attack us when we were young men, and our fathers, who were then in their prime, he had not now been celebrated as invincible, but either flying hence, or falling here, had left Rome more glorious? You demonstrate now that all that was but foolish arrogance and vanity, by fearing Molossians and Chaonians, ever the Macedonian's prey, and by trembling at Pyrrhus who was himself but a humble servant to one of Alexander's life-guard, and comes here, not so much to assist the Greeks that inhabit among us, as to escape from his enemies at home, a wanderer about Italy, and yet dares to promise you the conquest of it all by that army which has not been able to preserve for him a little part of Macedon. Do not persuade yourselves that making him your friend is the way to send him back, it is the way rather to bring over other invaders from thence, contemning you as easy to be reduced, if Pyrrhus goes off without punishment for his outrages on you, but, on the contrary, with the reward of having enabled the Tarentines and Samnites to laugh at the Romans."
When Appius had done, eagerness for the war seized on every man, and Cineas was dismissed with this answer, that when Pyrrhus had withdrawn his forces out of Italy, then, if he pleased, they would treat with him about friendship and alliance, but while he stayed there in arms, they were resolved to prosecute the war against him with all their force, though he should have defeated a thousand Laevinuses. It is said that Cineas, while he was managing this affair, made it his business carefully to inspect the manners of the Romans, and to understand their methods of government, and having conversed with their noblest citizens, he afterwards told Pyrrhus, among other things, that the senate seemed to him an assembly of kings, and as for the people, he feared lest it might prove that they were fighting with a Lernaean hydra, for the consul had already raised twice as large an army as the former, and there were many times over the same number of Romans able to bear arms.
Plutarch
See also http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?
author=haaren&book=rome&story=appius
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David Nolan, RIP
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/us/23nolan.html?src=twrhp
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