random($foo) is the occassionally still updated blog of Leonard Lin. My pics are on Flickr, code is on Github. @lhl on Twitter. More »
Some travel this month and next. I went and read up on the TSA’s air travel guidelines (hey, clippers are ok, also, lighters and matches are ok (for carry-on, but not check-in) — interesting).
Orbitz had me filling about 3 screenfuls of crap and then after entering in my credit card number, gave me this message:
Because flight availability can change rapidly based on traveler demand, the flight you selected is no longer available. Please make another selection. (Message 150)
Unwinding after a very long night (and before I start working again), so I’m reading the 2000 Texas Republican Party Platform. Note, this is not a good way to unwind, unless you are a wing-nut religious psycho who hates the Constitution. Actually, there’s a lot that I can agree with in here, but enough sheer lunacy to make you cringe (realizing these people are in power). Some highlights:
(Note, there’s a lot of Christianity talk scattered about this thing as well, but honestly now, have they read the Consititution? No mention of Jesus or God anywhere in there. Have they read the Bill of Rights?)
That being said, it would be nice if Bush/DeLay and folks would have actually put their money where there mouth was in fiscal responsibility, the balanced budget, waste and fraud in gov’t contracts, unfunded mandates. Oh yeah, and “the election of a conservative Republican president who supports the constitution and the sovereignty of the United States.” Hah, boy did they get that one wrong.
According to the EIA, America consumed 20.0MMBD last year, with 45% of it, 8.9 MMBD in gasoline alone. According to the latest EPA reports, average car and trck fuel efficiency is at 20.8mpg (check out the trends, it’s gone down since peaking in the late 80’s thanks to SUVs).
A VW Lupo gets between 78-99mpg running on diesel or bio-diesel (its Polo TDI cousin avg’s about 70mpg. (hybrid technology might add a couple more percentage points, but I’d have to do more research). Today manufacturers could easily meet increasing CAFE standards simply by doing simple things tweaking rolling resistance and aerodynamics.
Now think about it. Today, gas in Los Angeles is about $2.40/gallon. If you were driving a car today that avg’d 20mpg, and switched to one that got 60mpg, you’re effective cost/gallon would drop to $0.80/gallon – I don’t think I can even remember when gas was that cheap. Now, lets say that all the people switching to more efficient vehicles (or just driving less) had a 25% impact on gasoline consumption, or a 11.5% impact on overall oil demand. Would that lower actual prices (bringing effective prices down even more?)
(If you’re driving w/ a new direct injection diesel, prices are already a bit cheaper at the pump [albeit for crap diesel], or you can make your own bio-diesel for about $0.50/gallon. (before factoring in the cost/mi argument used above).)
Of course, if you actually run the totals through the spreadsheet, as an individual, if you’re driving 10-15K/yr, you’re only going to save a couple thousand bucks… I’ll need to do some more calculations/thinking on this later.
Hello! It looks like I am receiving a host of new visitors, thanks to a link on Amazon’s new Plog page. A Plog, as near as I can tell, is a “personalized log,” and is like a “blog” except you can’t personalize it. Also, instead of you writing it and other people reading it, robots write it and you read it. Also, instead of being open to the world, only you can see it. But aside from that, it’s pretty much nothing like a blog.
Didn’t hear about the gipper shuffling off this mortal coil until this evening, when I stepped out. I was born in 1980; Ronald Reagan was President for practically my entire early childhood. It’s sort of weird when they start dropping off like that. Honestly, I haven’t really given it as much thought as I should perhaps, worth writing about sometime in the future, perhaps.
Of the commentary I’ve read, WolfDaddy’s reminiscence struck me the most:
Reagan and the 80s and AIDS are inseparable to me. The optimism he brought to a country disillusioned made me feel very hopeful as a young teenager when he first took office.
By the time he left said office I had changed, as had the gay world around me that I so had recently entered. After being forsaken by family and childhood friends, I had already lost about 25 close, new, friends to diseases far worse and far stranger than Alzheimer’s, and would lose close to 100 more by 1994. No one cared. The optimism was still there in the general public; it wasn’t meant for people like me. All we could see was horrible deaths and irrational fear, and worse, utter apathy from many of the people we looked up to in our youth.
That’s Reagan’s legacy, to me. His inaction and silence, his failure as a leader, led to great suffering, great death. I yet cannot imagine anyone gleefully celebrating the man’s own suffering in the last ten years of his life. To do so is to forget–or possibly to have never learned–the consequences of the decisions made during Reagan’s time.
Americans’ relationship to energy underlies and ties together most of today’s headlines.gas prices, Middle Eastern terrorism and war, the environment, suburban sprawl, traffic-clogged roadways, the obesity epidemic. Talking about changing the way that we think about and use energy would give Kerry an entry point into discussing just about every hot-button issue in American life today.
The more I look at Confluence, the more I like it. It has just about everything I want in a knowledge management tool (except the source code is $4,000).
It has ‘spaces‘ to subdivide data, profiles and groups, blogs (although only against spaces right now), comments, macros (uses Radeox) and, this is interesting, the ability to create ad-hoc heirarchies and to (this is great) create input templates (!!! yes, this is great!).
Things that would be nice: data type filtering, better delineation/customization of dashboard, taking the next step and allowing arbitrary relationship creation for pages, also subdividing nodes
In a slightly related note, I noticed that Brandeis’ IT site is running entirely on Twiki.
From the recent reading I’ve been doing, several things seem clear: we’re undeniably running low on fossil fuels, prices are only going to go up (increasing demand, finite decreasing supply), environmental impact suggests we need to switch to as soon as possible to a less dangerous power supply.
Bruce Sterling’s latest Viridian Note makes (sorry, Bruce, really peurile) jabs at James Lovelock’s suggestion that “Nuclear power is the only green solution.” The comments suffer from: conflating nuclear power w/ nuclear weapons, general ‘nukes are bad just because’ barbs, and complete lack of any alternative solution, constructive criticism, or well, any redeeming value at all.
As I understand it, the arguments against nuclear power:
It seems from the studies I’ve found is that even in light of cost of high capital costs (building, decommissioning) and waste disposal, nuclear power is price competitive with fossil fuels – and that’s before you factor in fossil fuels’ huge environmental/health costs.
As far as safety concerns, it seems that the reactors themselves are very safe. Modern (passive-safe) designs would seem to suggest that a Chernobyl-like, or even 3MI meltdown would be extremely unlikely assuming proper regulation/oversight. That being said, how secure would these be from terrorist threats (note, that reactors cannot under any circumstances explode like a nuclear bomb) and waste transport are probably two concerns that need to be given due consideration (and weighed to the alternatives).
As far as I can tell, the separation of weapons grade Plutonium (239) from nuclear reactors is a strawman argument. And, as far as acquiring, radioactive materials that could be used in “dirty bombs” (although I’d imagine it’d be much easier to get those materials from hospitals, research facilities, industrial sites?).
And lastly, the issue of radioactive waste. Permanent disposal is apparently still an open issue. The EPA has a site on how it is dealt w/ currently. The NEI also has a number of resources, specifically on the Yucca Mountain Project.
While low-level waste isn’t as big of a concern, high-level waste is a problem considering that the isotopes are highly radioactive and have extremely long half-lives (some upwards of 100,000yrs). It’s too bad that the IFR was cancelled, although fast-breeder and hybrid reactor designs offer the promise of dramatically reducing high-level radioactive waste to insignificant amounts. (commercial reprocessing is occurring)
Currently, via 103 operating reactors (89% utilization), nuclear power provides 21% of the nation’s electrical power. Renawable (including hydroelectric) provides 7%, which is pretty respectable. I’m still very much enamored with a national push for wind farms, although cost/kWH, predictability, and power transmissions are problems that might not be reliably overcome. (note: Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States.
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So, nuclear power isn’t perfect, and it’s a hard decision to make whether to go nuclear. That being said, w/ coal as the alternative (US is #1 in worldwide reserves of coal) and continued dependence on a rapidly dwindling oil supply, I think I’d be more likely to side w/ Lovelock.
(not trying to give short thrift to the ginormous benefits of increased efficiency/conservation, but I’m primarily doing an analysis of nuclear energy as production option here; even a significant [say, 30%, even 50%] savings wouldn’t bring us anywhere close to fossil-fuel independence)
Hmm, it’d be nice if the government would be more able/willing to provide central information (the ability to do arbitrary data comparisons, read pros and cons/ link to policy/discussions) would be really nice.
Links/resources:
Comparison of accident statistics in primary energy production.
(Electricity generation accounts for about 40% of total primary energy).
Fuel Immediate fatalities
1970-92Who? Normalised to deaths per TWy* electricity Coal 6400 workers 342 Natural gas 1200 workers & public 85 Hydro 4000 public 883 Nuclear 31 workers 8 *Basis: per million MWe operating for one year, not including plant construction, based on historic data which is unlikely to represent current safety levels in any of the industries concerned.
Source: Ball, Roberts & Simpson, Research Report #20, Centre for Environmental & Risk Management, University of East Anglia, 1994; Hirschberg et al, Paul Scherrer Institut, 1996; in: IAEA, Sustainable Development and Nuclear Power, 1997; Severe Accidents in the Energy Sector, Paul Scherrer Institut, 2001).