The End of the World

Or, at least that of the Northern Hemisphere, occurred in September of 2005. If you are in said hemisphere and didn't notice, it's for the same reason that stock market statistics have predicted nine out of the last three recessions. I have a friend who reliably, reasonably, and frequently predicts disasters. Normally they are disasters of the economic and military persuasion, but my friend is nothing if not ecumenical. In this case the disaster would have been the explosion of Yellowstone National Park, which, if you're not aware, is a giant volcano. How giant? Think thousands of times more destructive than Mount Saint Helens. Think several times more powerful than Mount Tambora, which was the largest eruption in the last couple of centuries. Plus, it's in a location guaranteed to do vastly more damage. If it were to erupt today, much of the United States and Canada would be covered in a blanket of volcanic ash from inches to metres thick.

Which brings me to the point of this blogitem: Energy. We will very shortly know for sure whether Yellowstone erupted today. (My bet is that it won't. I'll even give good odds.) But it will erupt eventually. It erupts (very) roughly every 600,000 years, and it has been (very) roughly that long since the last one. (I'll still give you good odds.) When it erupts, an enormous amount of energy will be released very quickly, enough to propel cubic miles of rock high in the sky. Where does that energy come from? Nuclear power!

Yes, natural uranium, and even the potassium in bananas yet ungrown is decaying under your feet. The reason that the center of the earth is hot is that radioactive minerals with multi-billion year half-lives are decaying, and in doing so are heating the earth. Unlike a sporting orb or other man-made spherical object, the earth has a lot of insulation, what with its being eight thousand miles in diameter and all. So it gets hotter and hotter. And occasionally that energy manifests itself on the surface by volcanic eruptions.

How much energy are we talking about? Let's grab a factoid from the web:

Explosive eruptions are best compared by recalculating the volume of erupted volcanic ash and pumice in terms of the original volume of molten rock (magma) released (shown in this diagram by orange spheres). On this basis, the 585 cubic miles (mi3) of magma that was erupted from Yellowstone 2.1 million years ago (Ma) was nearly 6,000 times greater than the volume released in the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens... (From Solcomhouse)

Let's say that this was spewed into the stratosphere, or about 8 miles high. How much energy does that require?

• A kilowatt hour will lift a 2.7 million pound weight one foot into the air.
  
• A cubic foot of rock weighs about 150 pounds.
  
• A cubic mile of rock is about 147 billion cubic feet, or about 22 trillion pounds
  
• So, to lift a cubic mile of rock one foot requires (22 trillion / 2.7 million ), or about 8 million kWh, the output of a large utility power plant for about 8 hours.

If it takes 8 hours to get this chunk of rock one foot up, it would take a full year's power output to make it to a thousand feet, and 40 years to get to the stratosphere. Of course, getting the other 584 cubic miles up there, too, would require that many additional power plants. The annual energy consumption of the world is about 16 million GWh. If all that electricity were harnessed to lift the rock that Yellowstone would spew into the stratosphere, it would only make it up to 3400 feet in a year, and require about 15 years to accomplish what the eruption would do in a minute.

But Wait!

Didn't you say that Yellowstone erupts only every 600,000 years? Yes, and I also implied that the amount of energy required to accomplish the rock-throwing part of the eruption would only require all the planet's power for only 15 years. While I don't mean to imply that throwing rocks is the only aspect of the Yellowstone energy budget, it clearly is a big one. So even if I'm off by an order of magnitude or so, you can see that while there's a lot of energy involved here, the old "titanic forces of nature" aren't that titanic!

If you think of Yellowstone as a big battery that's being slowly charged, and then is suddenly shorted out, you'll be using a poor metaphor but one that is nonetheless useful. At least in terms of quantity of energy, it would seem entirely reasonable that an ambitious engineering project might be able to drain the energy being built up in the Yellowstone supervolcano. If a cluster of geothermal power plants were built there, they would have about 256 million GWh of stored energy to draw on, and to dole out at the rate of, say, 1 million GWh per year, the equivalent of 100 or so utility power plants. Decreasing the stored energy would decrease the danger of eruption almost immediately, and the energy withdrawn would supply a good percentage of the power requirements of the United States.

So, once again I have solved a big problem and saved the world. And once again you (and I) are invited to ask: Is this another Richardian megalomaniacal delusion? Am I right and is the government purblind to have not yet begun this project? Or, for that matter, have they in fact begun it? If I were an expert on geothermal power with a degree in vulcanology, I might be able to answer that with some assurance. In fact I know almost nothing about either, which is why I'm thinking outside the caldera. Perhaps I'll violate the "no research" rule and get myself a clue or two. Someday soon.

A Valuable Safety Feature

My Toyota Prius has a navigation system. This system is a marvel of technology: Its DVD contains a road map for the entire USA. Although I still prefer the operation of the Argus moving map display that I also keep in the car, I am forced to admit that the Prius navigation map, even though it lacks aircraft navigation beacons and airport tower frequencies, has certain critical information by roadmaps, such as roads.

Not only does this navigation system provide a moving map of remarkable detail, it will also guide you to your destination with map annotations and voiced instructions. You can input your destination address by pressing different areas on its touch-sensitive screen, on which appear keyboards and cleverly-deduced city and street names. As I said it's a marvel of technology. And most remarkably, it's a thoughtful marvel. Let's say, for example, that while I'm driving I receive a call (on my of-course-hands-free cellphone) suggesting a meeting at a location.

FICTION: All I have to do is enter this location in the Prius navigation system and it will direct me there!

FACT: What I actually have to do is stop the car, enter this location in the Prius navigation system and it will direct me there!

Why the difference between fiction and fact? Why does the car insist on preventing me from entering the information while I'm driving? Safety! Yes, no matter where I might be, how fast I might be going, on whatever kind of road, including a limited-access highway with no shoulders and cranky commuters, I must stop the car before entering my destination. Thank you! I feel so much safer while those other cars are whizzing past!

Oh-oh. I hear the Mothers Against Data Entry gathering outside my house, and they have torches and pitchforks. I shall quickly conjure a passenger to enter the data. Nyah nyah! Now what's the argument? How is it unsafe to let my passenger enter the destination data? I am more than a match for MADE!

And, it would seem, more than a match for Toyota as well. As it often turns out, there are hidden menus, "Easter eggs," and hidden capabilities in programs, and the navigation system is no exception. People who have factory connections, or simply more spare time than anyone deserves, find these secrets and publicize them on the web. So, to enhance my safety even further, I can enter the destination data while moving, if only I first:

• Press the Menu button on the dash.
• If necessary, "Agree" to whatever the screen says, and press Menu again.
• Press the Volume button on the screen.
• Press the upper left corner of the screen.
• Press the lower left corner of the screen.
• Press the upper left corner of the screen.
• Press the lower left corner of the screen.

At which time another screen will appear, which screen has a number of "service" features. On this screen,

• Press and hold the Override button for a few seconds until a beep is emitted and "OVERRIDE" changes color.
• Press and hold the Back button.

How's that for enhanced safety! And, for my further convenience, this is not a permanent setting. Whenever the car is started up, one has to go through this procedure again.

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Responsible Blogging(TM)

I understand that this works on the '04 and '05 Prius, but not on the '06. I don't know if that's because Toyota changed how one accesses the feature or disabled it entirely. It is well known that the major cause of accidents is failure to pay attention, for whatever reason, while driving. Is disabling the data entry feature, thereby forcing the driver either to work around it, stop the car, or eschew use of the system, the best way to ensure a safer trip? Each of these has its plusses and minuses. I don't know, although I do know that the answer isn't an easy or even possible one to decide. So I'll end this item with my usual injunction: "Be Careful!"

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Follow-up 28 July 2006

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Pressing the GPS menu item in the Service screen offers up technical information on the GPS operation, including precise, to-the-second, GPS time. It can be used to time traffic lights, as described in this earlier blogitem.

A Time-Saving Sockret

In my diatribe a couple of weeks ago about how much time we waste doing things more often than seems necessary, I neglected to mention one tiny oasis of joy in my repetitious life. I am pleased to announce that I have fulfilled my sock requirements for, at the very least, the next decade. Given the dire statistics with which we're all familiar, it may be that I will never, ever, purchase another sock. And if I do, it will be a joyous occasion, rather than the irritation it had become before sockal enlightenment.

Sockal enlightenment! It came to me at the moment that I realized that a particular pair of socks was lasting for an unusually large number of wearings. I am one who subjects these versatile foot protectors to a greater than normal ordeal. I am fortunate in that my office environment is one that does not require shoes, and so when I arrive at work I remove them and galumph about in my socks during the day. As they have not yet developed self-healing properties, these socks tend to require replacement more often than the feet that give them their characteristic shape. Eventually they develop a second hole, and then a third, or more. Eventually, therefore, they become an embarrassment even to me, and must be discarded. I've always been puzzled about the natural lifespan of these paired garments; some last for only a few wearings, others as many as 30 or so. Their durability doesn't seem to be related to price, or to anything I do or don't do. My feet and my activities remain similar over a typical group of sock-lives. Long past are the days during which I'm exposed to the risk that a strategically fallen 74LS38 will puncture my sole (In 14 locations)! Fallen electronic components are much flatter now.

So there I was with a pair of long-lasting socks, and a revelation. If I had enough of these socks, I would have enough socks! Tautological as this may sound, it had never occurred to me that one could buy a lifetime's supply of socks, and thus alleviate one minor but perpetual irritation. As I thought about it more, I realized that I had not only the opportunity to save time, but an investment opportunity as well. Assume that the price of socks increases with the rate of inflation. If you were to invest the money you would otherwise spend on socks, you may beat inflation by a bit, but you have to pay tax not just on the amount you beat inflation but on the inflation as well. The IRS does not (yet) have a blank on any of their forms for you to enumerate the contents of your sock vault, and doesn't tax you on its contents. Furthermore, since you will eventually destroy them, they will have no residual value for which you may someday be called to account. Just as importantly, if you purchase socks-pairs by the hundred instead of by the each, you're in wholesale territory, and can get them for half price or less. What are the risks of this investment? Well, you could lose a foot in a tragic accident, in which case they'd last twice as long, or, of course, your need for socks could diminish with death, at which point your concern for your investment would concomitantly diminish. Another useful consideration: If you have multiple heirs, it's easier to divvy up remanent socks than it is, say, a house.

Unstated above, but probably obvious: This is not a prescription for everyone. For example, in quizzing a number of people, I have found that some, especially those of the female persuasion, will wear socks of different appearance on successive days. Somehow they have been inculcated with the notion that people look at their feet for reasons other than this kind of research. Ha! Not this guy person, and not most of my conspecifics. To paraphrase G. Stein, a sock is a sock, and that's the answer. If they're all the same, you don't have to match (or eccentrically de-match) them before selecting your ensemble for the day.

The amount of time I have saved on sock purchases alone over the past couple of years is easily sufficient to allow creation of several blogitems, not just this one. Profit! And I'm on the track of yet another clothing item that will benefit from this modus vivendi. I'll tell you what it is when I've secured a supply as I don't want to distort the market. Hint: you need them in co-ed swimming pools, and they are eventually rendered almost transparent by an excess of chlorine. I'm having my sockretary qualify potential vendors.

Wendy

I read somewhere that "Wendy" was a made-up name, from Peter Pan. Wikipedia has better information, as one might expect, but it doesn't matter since this is about a real Wendy, and her name is presumably not her fault. The Wendy in question is Wendy Waldman, a famous singer and songwriter. I am a fan. I have a number of her records, which term I use to denote the 12" vinyl disks that were in vogue a number of years ago. I came by these in the usual number-of-years-ago way, too. I either bought them from stores, found them in cut-out bins, or were given them by friends who were on promo lists. I had, I thought, all of her albums, the last of them being the 1987 gem "Letters Home."

Did I mention that I was a fan? I listened to these albums endlessly. I love her songwriting. I love her singing. I would consider writing one of those gushing encomia of her oeuvre with a bit of lit-crit thrown in about the lyrics, and suitable metaphors for her stunning delivery but for the fact that I've never done that and would rather practice in private. I still listen to these albums endlessly. So I hope Wendy will forgive me for what I did, ca. 2000: I went to Napster to look for Wendy Waldman music that I did not already possess. And I found some. Specifically, I found the song "Living is Good." I downloaded it from Napster. I listened to it and listened to it some more...

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I'm almost certain that I've mentioned that I'm a Wendy Waldman fan. So, I was surprised and interested when I encountered a long letter from her that was published in a recording magazine to which I subscribe. It appeared under this heading:

Mix magazine and I received numerous letters about my Oct. 2000 Insider Audio [Paul Lehrman] column, "Caught Napstering." Songwriter Wendy Waldman's response is, not surprisingly, the most articulate. Many other responses have followed, and they appear here as well.

Fortunately the original article and responses remain available, at least as of today. (And, despite my proven penchant for sending "letters to the editor," I did not participate and this grouping is Richard-free.) Wendy's letter, a passionate criticism of downloading, engendered no guilt in me since I legitimately possess her actual physical records. And since this was in the day before there were licensed online music stores, I did not have the option of purchasing "Living is Good" for $.99 or whatever.
Wendy, who had to my knowledge no recent solo albums, was in a band called Bryndle. Of course I owned the CD, which had come out in 1995. I'm not sure when I purchased it, or exactly when and where I discovered that they were working on a second album, but that notice inspired me to look it up on the internet. I found their web site, and in the process of trying to order the second Bryndle album, did my best to help Wendy with the groceries. Here's my letter to Bryndle's record company, which also manned the Waldman discography:

26 December 2001

Hi,

I would like to advance-order the new album, and possibly backorder the "Best of WW" album if it's going to become available again. Will you accept a backorder to save my trying to remember?

And while I'm asking questions:

I remember Ms. Waldman whining a year ago about Napster and its effect on writers. But what's the alternative if even she cannot/will not legitimately sell her own stuff? I have quite a few WW vinyl LPs and would happily buy any I don't have. I can't even find anything on eBay!

Anyway, looking forward to the new Bryndle. The previous CD was excellent, and I even got to see the band perform in NYC. Thanks,

Richard Factor

Who responded as follows:

>Hi,
>
>I would like to advance-order the new album, and possibly
>backorder the "Best of WW" album if it's going to become
>available again. Will you accept a backorder to save my
>trying to remember?

-- Hi Richard, You can certainly advance-order the new Bryndle CD;I've already started that process with a lot of orders. As for the Wendy Waldman CD, I'm not sure there's any plan to re-issue that for many (mostly cost-related) reasons.

Thanks for your interest.
Kenny

And there you have it! At least in the year 2000, ancient history in the DRM wars, you have an artist who complains about losing money to illegal downloads, but when offered money was unable to supply the goods. Of course the situation is somewhat different now, but the wars will continue since the situation is, as I pointed out yesterday, unsatisfactory from everyone's viewpoint.

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Ending, Happy, 2 ea.

This story (about the missing song) has a happy ending. In a spasm of organization, I put all of my digitized LPs on one computer after I got one with a large enough disk. In the process, I found that I did have the missing album, and I had simply neglected to transfer it to the same location as the rest.

This story (about DRM) I also expect to have a happy ending. It will take a while, though.

If Music Grew on Trees

There would be an enormous Beatles plantation in Brazil! Dani, California would be given over from growing Chili Peppers to Red Hot Chili Peppers. Nebraska flatlands could be indefinitely subdivided into as many plots as needed, and on them would grow all the oldies acts. 40 acres for the Jefferson Starship, 4 acres for Flo and Eddie, a few hundred square feet for Ford Theatre, and maybe a small garden for Appaloosa.

If music grew on trees, there would be an economic balance between the creators and the consumers. Musicians would grow their music and sell it. Consumers would buy it and consume it. If they want more, they would have to buy more. If a musician became very popular, he could invest his profits in growing more, and there would be more to consume. If people stopped buying, the musician would take a loss; if the music became more popular, he would make a killing and could use it to plant even more music trees, invest in other music farms, or just retire on the profits. And best of all, there would be no need for Digital Rights Management, "DRM."

You don't hear a lot about Digital Chocolate Management, do you? Chocolate follows the "grows on trees" model, and somehow everyone from the grower to the ultimate consumer (that would be me) is happy, or at least content with the situation. From time to time I will buy chocolate items, from the common (M&Ms) to the exotic (Teuscher Truffles) to the artisanal (Deb's Delectables). They somehow become consumed, and the larder is replenished by exchanging currency for the desired sweetmeat.

We (in this case, "the world") is going through a phase in which new economic "models" are trying to find a home. And, as capacious as the world may by, some of them are going to find themselves unwanted. They will establish a toehold somewhere, and ultimately be beat into submission, cast out, or simply ignored. The airlines* are going through this right now. And, although the DRM folks are having fun with their experiments, e.g., subscription music services, iTunes, and a host of hybrids, they are all doomed. Why? None of them satisfies the legitimate needs of either the producers or consumers. In addition, they violate the most basic of economic laws: "Supply and Demand," in which the unstated assumption — "scarcity" — doesn't apply. In effect, there is an infinite supply of music, and only a limited demand.

This is a blog, not a textbook, so I feel entitled to stop for now. And, although my typing fingers tend to develop their own volition when I start on this subject, I restrain them with difficulty and the promise that I will generate a lot of additional babble on the subject of DRM and music in the future. For example, tomorrow I think I shall tell a little story about Wendy.

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* My "evil airline scum" softkey had somehow become deprogrammed. I've fixed it now.

Another Power Glitch

I've been eager for a proper power failure so I can capture data on the PriUPS system for real, instead of showing test data. Sort of like shooting down a real enemy instead of a drone or test missile. The local power company came very close a couple of months ago. In that case, power remained off long enough to almost discharge the UPS battery to the point of allowing the Prius to power the house. But, as you can see in the graphs for that incident, AC came back on just a bit too soon.

Two nights ago, I had another genuine power failure. I was at work when I heard the fateful "AC Power Failure" in my own voice and I immediately looked at the telemetry to see what was going in. This one was a lot more scary! Here's the record:

Telemetry of a brief power failure at 19:47 EDST on Monday, 17 July 2006. (Click the graph for a full-resolution version.)

Note that about 43 minutes into the graph, at 19:47 local time, the yellow line, representing the charge of the UPS batteries, drops significantly, which indicates that the UPS was providing power. Although it's hard to see, the reason is that the blue line, the AC power input, had dropped out for a couple of 10-second intervals, and the house was without utility power. I would normally wait several minutes before positioning the Prius for connection to the UPS because power drop-outs are typically brief, as this one turned out to be. This 20-second power loss was no challenge to the UPS at all.

However, look at the blue line! Right after the drop out, it was showing an AC input voltage to the house of about 265 volts. This is 'way out of tolerance, and potentially damaging to electrical appliances. Looking further along the blue line, you can see that the AC input voltage was, in effect, oscillating around its 235V nominal value. In one case it reached 250V, again out of tolerance, although probably not dangerous for the minute or so it was at this level. I have never seen AC power line voltage swings like this. The timeline indicates that this was not a brief "surge" due to lightning, which my equipment probably wouldn't even measure due to its short duration. Rather, this was an unusual and serious instability of the AC power system.

I thought it would be valuable to document this event. Although it has nothing to do with the PriUPS per se, it points up the desirability of having a UPS for the house. All the equipment connected to the UPS would be completely unaffected by this surge, while appliances connected to the AC line might well have been damaged. Fortunately, nothing seems to have been destroyed this time.

I plan to refer the power company to this blogitem. I'm going to get in touch with them to inquire as to just what happened here, and will post a followup if I manage to obtain an explanation.

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Follow-up 20 July 2006
I called the power company and they had no record of the 265V surge, although they were aware of the dropout. I've been promised that they will look into it. More info as it becomes available.

A Soon-To-Be-Missed Opportunity

It is universally recognized that "proper tire inflation" is critical to achieving good gas mileage and vehicular safety. Exhortations to this effect appear in government publications and the assorted documents that come with your car and its tires. In case you forget the actual tire pressure you should be using, you can even find the recommended values inscribed on a label on the doorpost of your vehicle. Accordingly, we all carefully check our tire pressure frequently and adjust it to optimum. I do this, for example, every time I refill my lava lamp.

OK, so we almost never check our tire pressure. Even I, something of a mileage fanatic, occasionally do a walkaround and look at all four tires. If none is noticeably low, I forget about them for a couple of weeks. "Noticeably low" would probably mean that the tire pressure was deficient by over 20%. So much for good mileage! I doubt that you are any more assiduous than I am. And even if you are, your crappy manual tire pressure gauge is notoriously inaccurate. Try to get the same reading on successive measurements and see if you don't agree.

Tire and auto manufacturers together decide what the optimum pressure is for each vehicle and tire combination. Typically the pressure is given as a range, e.g., 30-32psi, or pounds per square inch. In percentage terms, this is a fairly wide range, which means that proper inflation isn't something that requires a precision manometer or standards lab to achieve. If you read the newsgroups devoted to various vehicle subjects, you will frequently find discussion threads where people are arguing that overinflating tires will increase mileage. I don't know if they are correct; I tend to believe that the manufacturers know what they are doing and that their recommendations are sound. What does happen with incorrect inflation?

• Extremely low: You have a flat tire!
  
• Very low: The tire is visibly deformed (partially flat) and will overheat very badly as soon as you start driving.
  
• Somewhat low: The tire will overheat and energy will be lost to this, resulting in worse mileage. It will also cause uneven wear and reduce the life of the tire.
  
• Normal: Even wear, expected gas mileage, no overheating.
  
• Somewhat high: Uneven wear resulting in reduced lifetime and harsh ride. Possibly slightly improved mileage.
  
• Very high: Although this applies more to truck tires, there is a lot of stored energy in the compressed air. The tire can literally explode with potentially lethal effect.

In other words, it's a good idea to have properly inflated tires. And it's a good idea to check your tire inflation, even though you and I are too lazy to do so.

Which brings me to the "missed opportunity" in the title. As an example of your government in action, there has been legislation that requires automobiles to provide an indication of "low tire pressure." This has been an optional feature on many vehicles for a long time; it will now be required. But unfortunately, the "indication," as is often the case, will be in the form of an "idiot light," which is the colloquial designation for a simple indication that "something is wrong" rather than any useful diagnostic. Incomprehensibly, simple readouts of quantities in common units seem to be beyond the imagination of vehicle designers. Thus, in many vehicles, we have an "oil" light and a "temperature" light, but their illumination gives no further information, much as the bizarre "check engine" light serves no useful purpose.

I personally would like to see a big panel of readouts for all of a vehicle's important functions, much as appears on an aircraft panel. However, I'm not sure that the expense would be warranted or that any significant number of drivers would be hypnotized by, for example, the EGT (exhaust gas temperature). However, in this age where almost every car has some sort of digital display, how much effort would it be to actually display the tire pressure, using a calibrated bar graph with a green "normal" region? The sensors in the tire surely would be capable of transmitting the pressure to, say, the nearest pound, which is roughly 3% the normal reading. 3% is not rocket science! The bar graph would show the tire pressure for each tire sequentially, or, if the car's display is large enough, for all at once. How much would this cost? Possibly nothing! If each sensor already specifies which tire it's associated with, and transmits the pressure number for the car computer to qualify as "OK" or "TOO LOW," then all one would need is to send its information to the display. If the sensors are less "sophisticated" then they would need to be upgraded. By not requiring at least that the sensors be capable of providing this information, our brave new legislation is accomplishing far less than it otherwise might, and an opportunity to remedy the problem will be years in the future.

I would cast my vote for the upgrade, even if it's part of an extra-cost package. By actually having an accessible display of tire pressure, I could:

• Carefully inflate the tires to the maximum of the "normal" range.
  
• Note if and when one or more is getting near the bottom of the normal range.
  
• Note if any tire seems to be losing pressure unusually fast, which would point to a possible safety problem.
  
• Note which tire is problematic, instead of having to investigate them all when the idiot light comes on.
  

Do I need to mention, Mr. Government, and Messrs. Auto Manufacturers, that this kind of information would also be helpful in keeping our country's gas consumption lower, while encouraging car owners to keep their vehicles better maintained? Not to mention placing any blame for suddenly reduced mileage on tire inflation rather than creating the assumption there's something wrong with the car?

For me and others of my ilk, it would also be entertaining: I like numerical instrument displays that give me things to contemplate and calculate while I'm driving. And, of course, it would mean I have to refill my lava lamp much less frequently.

Danger, Danger... Well Maybe Not

I occasionally amuse myself by writing to magazines to whine about nonsense. The nonsense can be theirs, that of their readers or the public, or, of course, mine. In this case, it was a letter (yes, a letter! By post!) to Science News to whine about a "problem" at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It seems that they had a tritium leak. Tritium is the isotope of hydrogen that is radioactive. To be sure, one would not like to be exposed to quantities of the stuff. However...

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Science News:
July 5, 1997
Letters Reactions to Brookhaven brouhaha

I just read that the Department of Energy is proposing to spend $25 million to clean up "low concentrations of radioactive tritium" in the soil around Brookhaven National Laboratory ("Science's Role in Shake-Up of DOE Lab," SN: 5/10/97, p. 284). Unlike many fission by-products with half-lives of thousands of years, tritium has a half-life of about 12 years. If the leak is stopped, the "problem" will go away by itself fairly quickly.

Since the leak has been occurring for 10 years and was just now noticed, maybe the "problem" can be ignored and the money spent on something more useful.

Richard Factor Kinnelon, N.J.

Brookhaven spokeswoman Mona Rowe says the tritiated water may be moving so slowly that, with dilution and natural decay, it's already reached equilibrium and won't get any higher at the farthest edge of the plume of contamination, which is still inside the perimeter of the laboratory site. If so, "from a technical perspective, it may be that no action is necessary," she says. "But we're not convinced of that yet." Moreover, she notes, the public, which has a say in cleanup decisions, may reject that option. -- J. Raloff

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"From a technical perspective, it may be that no action is necessary." In other words, I was right. (Probably - they did leave a weasel-size opening.) But the public "may reject that option." In other words, let's spend $25 million to do something unnecessary. Any guess which "public" will pay for this? Or will have paid for this? I think I'll send an email to Brookhaven spokeswoman Mona Rowe and find out. If I get a response I'll add it below. Good grief - I'm starting to act like a journalist!

Ms. Rowe kindly responded:

"The short answer is that the tritium plume that originated from the spent-fuel pool of the High Flux Beam Reactor has over time continued to attenuate as expected. The HFBR is now permanently shut down."

Which I take to mean that no expensive cleanup is or was necessary.

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Follow-up 05 Sept. 2006

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I usually read my Physics Today attentively. Clearly not attentively enough. David Marasco pointed out an item I had missed or forgotten:

...In short, a mob of torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding townfolk managed to shutdown a fine scientific instrument over the amount of radioactivity found in a tritium-powered exit sign. At taxpayer expense, of course.

Dueling Demos

It is my privilege to be in an area, or "market" as it's called in the advertising biz, with a great number of radio stations. Despite the seeming vast wasteland that is NYC radio, a number of stations have things to recommend them. For example the "classic rock" giant WAXQ plays the syndicated "Little Steven's Underground Garage" program. Despite the name, it's a rock and roll show rather than a background of footsteps with slap echo and menacing music. And the legendary Vin Scelsa has a Saturday night show on WFUV. However it is the smaller, regional stations that tend to be more fun to listen to on random weekdays. Two of my local stations are WDHA and WXPK (which styles itself "The Peak"). WDHA is in suburban New Jersey, WXPK in, as they put it, "New York's back yard," the affluent Westchester County. WDHA is closer to me and therefore has a stronger signal. But I can receive WXPK during most of my commute and tend to listen to it in the car.

WDHA is a pretty straightforward rock and roll station. WXPK has a more expansive R&R music format - they play a lot of current music, but also dip into more obscure oldies than does DHA. Both stations are part of "groups" and neither seems to be a hippie haven like those with which we were truly blessed in the late '60s through the '70s. Even so, they're both listenable, and XPK in particular delivers an oldie with which I'm unfamiliar every few hours, for which I silently congratulate them. But all of this is background and not the reason for this blogitem. (If you live in the area, WDHA is at 105.5MHz and WXPK at 107.1MHz. They both have web streams.)

The actual reason is that I wanted to have a brief babble about the differences in the advertisements on these two stations. Although I'm unaware of any enormous disparity in age or demographics, it would seem that WXPK listeners have far more ailments, both physical and social, than do those of WDHA. If you listen to DHA, you would kick yourself for not attending all of the assortment of bars and restaurants they tout. And you would have plenty of alternatives for buying a car and, especially, getting it repaired so you could get to these places. If you listen to WXPK, you would be unable to kick yourself because you would undoubtedly suffer horribly from plantar fasciitis, and conservative treatments wouldn't have worked. Therefore, you must go, immediately, for ESWT* to make your feet usable again. And that's just the start! Emergency hospital treatment? Heart attack? Cancer? Have they got the radiology center for you!

Another benefit of WXPK is that one is never more than minutes from an advertisement for a divorce lawyer. Speaking as someone who never made the same mistake once, I have no need for these ads any more than I have for the beer ads that make me feel guilty since I don't use the product. But listening to this station, one would think that Westchester County is an unhappy and very sickly place. (Did I mention the liability lawyers? Have you had an accident? It must be somebody else's fault!) To be fair, WDHA has run some ads for the local hospital. I understand it's a great place to be if you have a heart attack. But all in all, I think I'd rather patronize DHA's advertisers than those of WXPK.

If I had to guess at the real reason for this disparity, I would say that maybe WDHA listeners are somewhat younger than those of WXPK, and perhaps migrate from the bars and greasy spoons of the former to the hospitals and other medical treatments of the latter, perhaps as a result of the former's ads. And the divorce and tort lawyers? I don't think we're actually broke out here in suburban NJ, but if you're a doctor or lawyer who wants to specialize in problems of the rich, you'd better consider a move across the river.

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*Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy. You can see why they abbreviate it.

Annual Rituals

Somehow we have gotten it in our collective crania that activities must be repeated periodically. This is quite the bizarre assumption. What is there about the position of the earth in its orbit that requires us to "renew" our insurance at the same time every year, or every year at all? As we (I) get older and time telescopes, I progressively resent the time I waste on annual activities. I was contemplating this yesterday as I was dealing with an annual, 30-page government form that inevitably requires a kilobuck to produce and provides a remuneration of about $60 to the government, which $60 is almost certainly consumed by its review, filing, processing, and undoubtedly, shredding. Assuming there's any need for this exercise at all, would it not make sense to perform it less frequently? If it were a biennial task, I would save the kilobuck, and the government could buy the deluxe shredder, which would last four times as long since it would be of higher quality and have fewer forms to destroy.

When I picked up my new Prius last year, I was astonished to see that the inspection sticker sported a 2009 expiration date. It wasn't a mistake, because it was a printed sticker which couldn't possibly exist with a 2009 date unless it was intentional. Following this observation, I immediately realized that someone in the State of New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (which is what the Department of Motor Vehicles styles itself hereabouts) had an attack of logic. It probably went like this: Cars in NJ must be inspected every two years (which itself is momentous - it used to be every year). But this is a new car. New cars are still under warranty for at least two years, so it will be taken care of. Therefore, after two years it will pass inspection, so why inspect? Therefore, let's let the inspection go for four years! I can hear the originator of this idea conferring with his supervisor:

"Four years? But won't that reduce the work for our inspection stations? And won't that make our "customers" (averts face, gags) less miserable?"

Originator: "Yes sir, I do see the problem. I've got it! If we let the inspection be valid for four years, why don't we also force them to pay for registration for four years at the same time! They're spending many thousands of dollars on a new car - they'll hardly notice the rakeoff!"

Supervisor: "Good point, Fogerty*. Let's present it that way: We can get four years of registration payments and when the owner sells the car after two years, we can get the payment again from the new owner since we don't offer refunds!"

Notwithstanding the supervisory cynicism, it's a boon to motorists. I'd happily pay a higher registration fee to avoid inspection travail, and I've never kept a new car fewer than four years. People who trade cars in more often probably aren't paying attention to the extra few bucks, I assert with unjustified generality.

So why not extend this theory to other unpleasant governmental interactions, i.e., all of them? If one has an uncomplicated income tax situation, why fill out those IRS forms every year? Go by the last digit of the Social Security Number** - odd, do your taxes on odd years. Will this affect the commonweal? It shouldn't - most people pay small amounts or are owed small refunds. If the situation is otherwise, you can file every year voluntarily. Imagine that!

This concept could be extended to other functions easily. Why must I remember to pay my quarterly property taxes? Why not give a stack of four (or eight, if they think ahead) checks to the county clerk and have the clerk deposit them on the correct date. Would you believe they're not allowed to do this? Even more incredible, and far more local, I had a difficult time convincing our corporate administrative staff that we should offer a "permanent" subscription for one of our products. I noticed that people are forgetful about renewing and then are panicked when they don't have what they need. I suggested "Why don't we just get a continuous authorization, and then charge their credit card annually." Response? "But... but... but..."

I could carry on with this endlessly (and perhaps annually) but I hope it's obvious that, at least for non-biological activities, many are done by rote more frequently and with greater wastage of precious time than can be justified by their significance. In fact, I'm tempted to catalog these repetitive activities in a Riklblog bonus, and may do so even if it is a repetitive task. Time management must be pursued relentlessly, assuming there's any time left over after (daily) Periodic Table Bingo.

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*Not his real name. Unaccountably, the supervisor calls everyone Fogerty, even though he (the supervisor) doesn't actually exist.

**Keen observer that I am, I've noticed people asking for my "social." I've yet to devise a snappy response. Too many suggest themselves to pick one on the spur of the moment.

What's a Trillion to CNN?

Clearly CNN has remained untaunted for too long. Perhaps they have decided to get revenge on me for my previous complaints about their innumeracy and lack of rounding prowess by running this stunningly preposterous item. Or perhaps they picked up this dog's breakfast of ridiculous numbers verbatim from Reuters. Either way, they are to blame, and I shall be charging them, along with society, of course. Copyright be damned, it's a short article and almost every paragraph is afflicted with a greater or lesser howler. I quote it in its risibly erroneous entirety.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- A huge daisy-shaped shield that would block out light from parent stars could be used to find Earth-like planets in other solar systems, an American astronomer said on Wednesday.

I don't imagine he's proud to be an "American Astronomer" after reading how they described his project.

He and his team have designed a plastic "starshade" measuring 50 yards (45 meters) in diameter that would orbit in tandem with a trailing telescope and block out light from parent stars to enable scientists to map planetary systems.

Of course that's not exactly what it is. It's actually a pinhole lens with a 30-foot hole in the center. But what's a crucial detail or many? However, according to Google, which provides answers in seconds and doesn't require you to develop "sources," 50 yards = 45.72 meters, or properly rounding, 46 M. Not a critical or even significant error — I'm sure the 50 yards is a gross approximation (the "football field effect"), but why not get it right?

Finding other planets is very difficult because their parent stars are about 10 times brighter.

Well, yes, finding other planets is difficult, but not because they're one-tenth as bright. Spare me a moment for some geometry and astronomy, since I don't actually know the correct number. Let's do a first order approximation to compare the brightness of the earth to that of the sun.

The earth has a radius of 4,000 miles, and thus a circular area of about 50 million square miles. (Of course the earth is spherical, but we're talking about the effective area that intercepts sunlight.) The earth's distance from the sun is 93 million miles, and the sun radiates its energy in all directions, i.e., spherically. So the light intercepted by the earth is a percentage equal to the surface area of a sphere with a radius of 93 million miles, which is 1.08*10^17 square miles divided by 5*10^7 square miles. This would mean that the brightest the earth can be is about two billionths of the brightness of the "parent star." So their number is off by more than factor of a billion. The earth's "albedo" or reflectance is less than perfect, too, as presumably are those of planets around other stars. This, I think, makes the extreme difficulty of the task more apparent than the one-tenth mentioned in the article.

"We think this is a compelling concept, particularly because it can be built today with existing technology," said Professor Webster Cash of the University of Colorado."We will be able to study Earth-like planets tens of trillions of miles away and chemically analyze their atmospheres for signs of life," he added in a statement.The shield, which is known as the New Worlds Observer, is described in the journal Nature. It would be launched into an orbit about 1 trillion miles from Earth and then opened.

Look! Another trillion! The space shuttle orbits hundreds of miles above the earth. Our communications satellites orbit thousands of miles above the earth. The moon is about a quarter of a million miles up. The outer planets, which only a tiny number of probes have reached after decades of travel, are single-digit billions of miles away. But look! We're going to send this project a trillion miles, a good fraction of the distance to the nearest star, just to look for planets. I wish! If we could do that, or even a tiny fraction of that, we would have colonized the planets already and not just be looking for them. A trillion miles, incidentally, is about two light-months. At that distance, if we sent a command to the telescope it would receive it in two months and we'd get our reply two months later. Again I don't actually know the distance of the telescope's orbit, but it is most likely to be somewhere in the high thousands to the very low millions of miles. That's a factor of about one million off from the silly number in the article, the equivalent of provisioning the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria to borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor.

Three thrusters would be used to keep it steady while the telescope trailing thousands of miles behind follows light from distant planets as it hits the space shield. "The New Worlds Observer is actively being studied in academia, industry and government," Cash said in a letter to Nature. He added that if Earth-like planets exist, the starshade could find them within the next decade.

While they have missed the whole point of how the system works — it's a lens, not properly a shield, at least they've managed to produce a paragraph that has a number in it that isn't obviously wrong. The telescope is unlikely, for instance, to have three trillion thrusters Even so, I have no faith the "three" is correct after having seen the other bizarre numbers. I wonder how many thrusters it really has.

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So much for CNN.

Fortunately we have the stately Wall Street Journal (05 July 2006, page A17), whose journalists and editors meet a much higher standard, and produce far better researched items, such as this excerpt about the new Chinese train that travels at high altitude to Tibet.

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Follow-up 08 July 2006

I checked the original article and they fixed the orbit:"It would be launched into an orbit about 1 million miles from Earth and then opened."Which is what I said. Remarkably, or perhaps unremarkably, they did not fix the "10 times brighter." Maybe they will eventually correct that, too.

And, when I checked a day later, they "fixed" the brightness:"Finding other planets is very difficult because their parent stars are so much brighter."Whether their leaving out any numerical factor is ignorance or humility I won't attempt to guess.

I Won't Watch Video on My Cell Phone

There are three reasons for this, and I offer as always my free and gratuitous advice to the industry:

• I don't have a video-capable cellphone. You can ignore this reason. It's just me being patient.


• I have no interest in watching video on my cell phone. I don't even watch the teevee. Sports clips are of no interest to me, neither are music videos nor are any of the other glorious future features. I like to read. You can ignore this reason. It's just me being me.


• When I want to use my cellphone, I feel that having the battery charged and functional is important. I can't be alone in this desire! This is the one you might want to consider.

I carry a cellphone even though I almost never use it. I make and receive a couple of calls a month, mostly to coordinate activities and never to chat. My "plan" with its superfluity of "minutes" is a mockery of practicality. But when I do make or receive that couple of calls, I want the cellphone to work. I am acutely aware of battery lifetime, and I'm careful to keep the unit well-charged. If I were to use the 'phone for another purpose, e.g., watching videos, I would always be concerned that the battery wouldn't work when needed. Am I the only person with this concern? Almost certainly not! Is it easily alleviated? Yes! How? Two batteries: One for all the features, one for the cellphone. Will this make the product a little thicker and a little more expensive? Yes, unless you decide to cut the normal battery in appropriate fractions. Is it worth it? To me it would be! And, I suspect it would be to others as well, although they may not realize it 'til they've won some stupid handheld game and then can't call anyone to tell them about it.

Think of this as an opportunity: Sell two batteries instead of one when replacement time comes. Are there better solutions? Technically yes - you could simply have a single battery that would run only the 'phone after it was 2/3 discharged. Will this be psychologically satisfying? Perhaps to some, but I, fossil that I am, would prefer the security of a dedicated chunk of power for emergencies.

This has been free advice. For not-free, I'd be happy to attend a "focus group." I'll be the one with the cellphone with its non-personalized ringtone and monochrome screen firmly in his pocket.

The Unambitious Billionaire

Warren Buffett just promised to give 37 billion dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I'm so disappointed. Here we have the second richest person on the planet, a man who made this fortune pretty much by himself, and who benefited thousands of others along the way. He is by all accounts smart and sagacious. He claims to be in good health and there's no reason to doubt it. And he has $44,000,000,000 to call his own. Where is his ambition?

And for that matter, where is that of Larry Ellison of Oracle, and maybe even that of Bill Gates? Ellison was about to give a hundred million dollars to Harvard, and may yet, although he seems to be waffling because his buddy the ex-president of Harvard is now ex. And Bill. And I suppose, Melinda. And none of these people got rich overnight. They've had plenty of time to think about what they want to do with their money.

It is the enormous blessing of our capitalist system that this kind of wealth can be accumulated by individuals. $44*10^9 is about the same as the GDP of Serbia and Montenegro, #80 on the list by the IMF. (Not that I think that Buffett put them up to it, but Montenegro just split from the union, which would put them both lower on the list.) Unlike the 179 governments on the list, or the almost 100 countries whose GDP is less than Buffett's cash value, he isn't beholden to the masses. If a million farmers drive their tractors (OK, drive in hopelessly overloaded busses or just walk) up to his doorstep, he doesn't have to worry about being pitchforked to death unless he institutes reforms. And they can't belabor him anyway, because he (and we, unless he's bought them) have these oceans to stop them. So what does he do with this fabulous, almost incomprehensible although, thanks to the beauty of mathematics, easily expressible wealth? He gives it away!

Warren! Dude!

When you were growing up, didn't you have any boy dreams? Didn't you want to rule the world? Own a rocketship? Discover the meaning of everything? (There are plenty of other dreams I'm sure we boy people had that I elide in the name of decency, although as I mentioned, you claim to be in good health.) You can realize these dreams! You are not a government. You are not responsible to your constituents, except, I suppose to be sure not to sell all your stock at one time. So be careful there. But otherwise, you can do anything! Well, almost anything—it's probably too late to achieve immortality by living forever rather than through your works. Want to reopen the tunnel in Waxahachie and finish the Superconducting Super Collider? You can do it! With change left over for your own space program.

Paul Allen seems to have a bit of the right idea. He's buying himself some fine entertainment with his fortune. How about John Templeton? Whether you think his goal is silly or realistic, you've got to admit it's different, and he's having some fun. According to his biography, he gives away about $40 million a year. Ummm - that's only "million." And John Lazaridis, the BlackBerry guy, founded the Perimeter Institute, Something he was personally interested in doing. And Elon Musk does have his own space program. Warren: Of course it's none of my business what you decide to do with all those billions. And, again thanks to our system, it's nobody else's, either. I like science stuff, and if you by some chance change your mind and want to let me manage the money instead of having Bill's foundation take care of it, you have my assurance that, other than skimming off enough to maybe keep my pool a little warmer, I'll put it to what I consider good, non-selfish use.

I know one reason you gave it to Bill's foundation is that, well, he already had a foundation and you didn't. Good grief! That's his foundation - shouldn't you have your own? Shouldn't you turn your dreams into reality?

And You Other Billionaires...

Not every dream costs many billion dollars! Look at the Ansari "X Prize." Leverage! I'm sure many of you have dreams. I'm sure most of you worked really hard, and have been really lucky. Maybe you can translate that into something you've always wanted. There are any number of charities, diseases, and "causes" out there. Most of us are forced to support them out of practicality. But you are entitled to your own! Can we please have a little creativity and, yes, eccentricity, out there?

Happy Birthday, HP9825A Photo, and United States of America

I've told this story many times, but never committed it to blog. And today would be, if it were the 4th of July (for which there will be no blog), instead of the 3rd, for which this is it, the 30th anniversary of this story, or close to it. The story involves two cars — a Checker and a Mercedes — and a photograph. Here's the photo:

Marvel at its quality. This little snapshot has spent 30 years in a succession of wallets, all mine,

all carried every day. Imagine what you would look like after such a long strange trip.

The HP9825A was my first real computer. Although I had an HP9810A in 1970, it didn't have a "language." The 9825A used "hpl," in which one could actually write statements in compact ways, and have multiple statements per line. I miss the language, and I miss the computer. It was lacking certain features, such as a display that would show more than one line. For this I compensated with a terminal display kit (CRT not included,) purchased from New York City's first computer store at Polk's Hobby Shop, Stan Veit, proprietor. A story for another day.

Today's story is about a car accident. By calling it an accident I've already overdramatized this event. It would hardly have been considered an accident anywhere, and in New York City, where even legitimate fenderbenders are met with a shrug and/or a curse, this would have been ignored. Were it not for Participant B, a gentleman of the Japanese persuasion, who was driving his friend's clean, shiny, expensive Mercedes. (Participant A - this writer - was driving an old Checker. Think large yellow taxicab and you'll be correct, except it was grey and had no meter or passengers or jump seats.)

What happened? It was a blur of confusion! I was at the curb lane, making a left turn. That meant I had to go straight forward a bit before turning left. He was parallel to me, also making a left turn, and to accomplish same he would have to cut across my bow, so to speak, which is what he did. Ordinarily I would say "his fault" but he might well have assumed that my car was parked and so wasn't going to lurch into the intersection. He would, in this case, have been half right. I was parked, but not any more. We collided with each other at perhaps as much as a tenth of a mile per hour. There were no injuries! The Checker had no damage. Or if it did, it was indistinguishable from the pits, crinkles, dents, scratches, blotches, and the all-subsuming dings to which NYC cars are heir. The Mercedes was another story. It had sustained a true dent. It was easily a centimetre in diameter, perhaps a millimetre deep, and, if you looked closely, you might have seen a genuine scratch in its geometric center.

Not only was it not certain whose fault this accident was, it wasn't even certain who hit whom. More to the point, it didn't matter, since this event would have rated just a shoulder-shrug even if the participants had been a cabbie going off duty and a commuter trying to get into the Lincoln Tunnel after an hour wait. After scrutinizing the aftermath of this collision I was unlimbering my shoulders for the dismissive shrug when the other driver, exhibiting consternation, asserted that he would prefer to wait for the police.

Overlong as this is becoming, you will probably remember that this was a Japanese gentleman. He had little reason to Remember the 4th of July. I, who was on my way to Jeff's 4th of July BBQ and had every reason to remember it, and was a bit nonplussed by his request. Why? Because I knew it would be a long wait indeed. Why? Because the police, in the late afternoon on a hot 4th of July, are all at home in the Boroughs. What are they doing? They are BBQing at their own parties, and preparing to render safe the illegal fireworks they have thoughtfully confiscated from the neighborhood kids earlier that day and week. I don't imagine I need to explain the procedure. The number of police eager to "investigate" this "accident" could be numbered in the single digits, and that would be because they were on a punishment detail in the Bronx. Nonetheless, my accident buddy was within his rights and we begin exchanging the usual license and insurance information.

During this exchange, he explained how distressed he was because it was a friend's car, and how he was returning to Japan tomorrow. At this point whatever minimal tension I was experiencing departed. Not only was there nothing that could be considered an accident, the only person who cared was going to be half a world away before anyone found out. My inner Freberg emerged.

Wallet out, scrabbling among my driving documents, I spied my photograph of the HP9825A. "Look! Here's a picture of my computer! This was taken last summer..."

"Ah! Very nice. You have computer! They will be very important, you know!" In fact, his entire demeanor changed. I was no longer an American thug driving a disreputable vehicle, I was now a partner in a brave new future. Either that, or maybe he finally realized that he had a long, long, wait for a policeman. In any event, we concluded our document exchange and went our respective ways, mine being to a delightful BBQ in the 'burbs and his, I'm assuming, to apologize to his friend for the ding, hopefully in a way that required no sharp objects. Needless to say, that was the conclusion of this minor interlude.

It all turned out well. In fact, I enjoyed the suburban BBQ so much that when Jeff moved away and I myself moved to the 'burbs I decided to carry on the tradition. Which is why, while you are reading this blog, I'm most likely carrying cases of beverages, adult and otherwise, to the refrigerators and ice buckets various. And, since only a tiny handful of friends read this, you, most likely, are checking the weather and hoping it will be clement for tomorrow's festivities for which, of course, you RSVPed. Clement or otherwise, attending or otherwise, Happy Independence Day!

We Interrupt this Computer

I can be so naive. I got this incredible offer from Dell computers about a month ago. It was for a computer and a monitor for little more than the price of the computer (or the monitor) alone. The monitor included in the package was a 20.1 inch LCD, with a resolution of 1600 by 1200. As it happens, I already had a computer with two monitors with this resolution, but they were older monitors with wide bezels. Setting them up next to each other as I like to do gave me effectively a single screen of 3200 by 1200, but with the equivalent of a giant pillar in the middle. These new monitors on offer from Dell had much narrower bezels. Thinks: I could take advantage of the Dell deal on two computers and monitors, give my two old monitors individually to people at work with smaller ones, and sell the two new computers.

Turning thought balloons into deeds, I ordered two of the systems. I connected the two new monitors, luxuriated in their narrow-bezeled refulgence, devolved my two older monitors

Excuse me. A message just popped up to tell me that power surges from a thunderstorm can damage or destroy my computer and to take action to protect my computer. I'm being asked if I want "More details..." or to not see the message again. I think I've heard of thunderstorms, so I'll pass on this one.

upon their grateful recipients, and should have stopped there. I can be so naive. Despite the minimal cost of the new computers, I realized that they were at least twice as fast as anything I was already using, and stupidly decided to try one out.

Has this ever happened to you?

You go to an appliance store in search of a new refrigerator, select one, and have it delivered to your home. Upon removing the box, you find a sheet of paper with icons that direct you to either make sure it's right side up and to plug it into an outlet, or perhaps show you how to

Excuse me. A web service update is being installed and I'm being asked if I'd like to "Restart now..." or "Continue what I was doing" (Oddly, there is an ellipsis after "now" but not after "doing.") I'll "Continue what I was doing" if that's OK with the computer.

make a soapbox racer with the discarded box. (I'm not good with icons — too much brain taken up with learning to read, I guess.) After getting it set up, you open the freezer door and a pantograph arm pops out with a note asking if you'd like to subscribe to White Goods Times. You check the "No" box with a pen that is suddenly extruded from the icemaker opening in the door, and the arm withdraws. How odd was that! As you're about to put the Nutella and peanut butter in the refrigerator, a message suddenly blares from the open door: "NOTICE! The Shelves in this Refrigerator have been installed incorrectly. Please call our toll-free number and we will give you instructions on rearranging them. If you don't do this immediately your Nutella and possibly your peanut butter will be in danger."

But you're making progress - after rearranging the shelves the light finally comes on and the fridge seems to be getting colder.

If Only The Dell Computer Were that Simple

I can deal with pantograph arms. But the computer is more subtle. Every time I power it up there's another trial offer, "free" service, or other delight waiting for me. Competing for attention with them is the fact that there are 27 high priority Microsoft Windows XP updates that must be installed right away, which require multiple reboots, which, of course trigger more reminders about how much I'll love Quickbooks or AOL or McAfee (which won't leave me alone) or Music Match or Word Perfect Office or or or or or...

GO AWAY! ALL OF YOU! I BOUGHT THIS STUPID COMPUTER TO ...

Now that I think of it, I bought this stupid computer because I wanted the monitor. Using the computer was an afterthought. But if I mysteriously actually wanted a computer that I could use, I would be very cranky indeed at Dell, who could easily have made a "disk image" that had a fully upgraded version of Windows XP ready to go, and a small, tasteful, dialog with two check boxes:

[]Pester me mercilessly with special offers []Leave me alone to get some work done

but instead made the process of starting up a new computer take hours instead of a minute or so.

Do you suppose that the vendors of these supernumerary programs and services are paying Dell to waste my disk space and my time? Is that how Dell can give away the computer if you buy the monitor (or, to be sure, vice versa). I wonder what bizarre surprise awaits within the monitor! Maybe it's watching me and waiting for me to open the peanut butter so it can offer to sell me a different brand. Sometimes I'm so naive!

Ham Arguments (Part 1)

It's been said that academic arguments are particularly vicious because the stakes are so small. If that's so, consider how ungentlemanly and wild discussions over the fine points of amateur radio must get! Amateur radio operators have a long tradition of using Morse code (or "Morris Code" if you say "athalete") in their pursuits, and knowing "the Code" has until very recently been a prerequisite for obtaining a government-issued ham license. Governments and many hams have realized and recognized that Morse Code is no longer a critically needed or especially useful skill. Many national governments have dropped or are considering dropping the Code from the license requirements.

There are hundreds of thousands of hams in the United States. And a million or so throughout the world. It would be hard to find an active one who doesn't have an opinion about the subject. There are basically two crowds:

• I had to learn Morse to get my license, it's a valuable mode for emergency communications and sometimes the only one that can "get through" at all. Besides, having to learn the Code keeps the riffraff out of the hobby.


• I'm a nerd, I can use the internet, there are forms of digital transmission that are far more efficient than Morse, why should I have to learn this obsolete nonsense, and who are you calling riffraff anyway, old codger (or worse)?

It would be somewhat unfair to segregate these groups based on age. There are undoubtedly a number of people in the first group who are able to become vertical under their own power, and I'm sure I'll meet the other one some day. Yes, despite my relative codgerdom, I personally don't believe people should be required to learn Morse to get their ham licenses. That's not because I don't think there's value in Morse; rather it's because I'm not a "no riffraff" kind of guy. For better or better, there are people who can make major contributions to the hobby without ever using a key (or bug or paddle or nowadays a computerized Morse sender) in anger. And, not to be politically correct, it's a skill that is simply much easier for some people to learn than it is for others.

Whether or not the FCC drops the Morse requirement for getting a license, there is no prospect at all that using it will somehow be forbidden. There will be plenty of us who actually enjoy communicating in this arcane and arguably archaic mode, and we'll be able to babble to each other to our spleen's content until they pry our cold dead fingers from our keys.

As a special bonus for anyone who has actually read this far, I've made a little Morse Code sound file. Translated to English, it simply says "Bens best bent wire"(sic). If this speaks to you in rhythm and speaks to you in rhyme, you're either Sarah McLachlan or you might make a good candidate codger. If it doesn't, and even if you are riffraff, as far as I'm concerned you're welcome to join this great hobby. Of course you'll have to check with the FCC as well.

What Kind of Foot Are You?

Are you a leadfoot? I'm not and never was, although I wasn't entirely innocent of speeding. I could have been an arsenic foot or maybe a radium foot (each about half the density of lead, although, paradoxically much more deadly in the elemental realm than in that of velocity). Before I got my Prius I would drive pretty much like everyone else — just slow enough to be unlikely to get a ticket. A bit aggressive, a bit cranky, not unduly polite. As it says in my contact information, "Be careful! I drive like you do."

Why has this changed? Why do I drive at exactly the speed limit during most of my commute, and slightly below it in one segment? And no, It's not the cruel type of driving engaged in by the evil schnurgs who go excessively slowly in the left lane, or deliberately try to slow others down. I'm a good vehicular citizen. I change lanes to allow others to enter the highway. I make a space, if I can do so without using my brakes, to let others change lanes. I don't curse other drivers, no matter how benighted they may be. I'm slow, tedious, and inoffensive. What is there about the Prius that has engendered this (admittedly modest, in my case) change in the behavior of an American male driver?

I think that I've decided that the answer is "for entertainment." I could easily get away with a small lie here and assert it's "to save gas." In fact, my driving style is precisely that required to use a minimal amount of gasoline. By not using brakes and being careful with stored energy, both potential and kinetic, I routinely get the EPA mileage specified for the Prius, and occasionally better it. But I'm a reasonably honest person, occasionally even with myself, and I have to admit that a gas mileage obsession isn't of any great value, either to me or to the surrounding world. But unlike Jodie, I've found that trying my luck with the traffic police out of boredom more than spite* doesn't have the entertainment value of watching the glowing LCD display and urging that average MPG figure ever higher.

What are the trades-off? It costs me a little time. One minute and thirty seconds on average, as it happens, to trade arsenic for scandium:

Foot Element	Density	Time Saving per trip/year	Anxiety Level	Tickets/Year
Osmium	22.6 g/cm3	4.5 minutes/45 hours	Ultra	Many
Lead	11.35 g/cm3	3 minutes/30 hours	Modest+	One or two
Arsenic	5.72 g/cm3	1.5 minutes/15 hours	A bit	Usually none
Scandium	2.99 g/cm3	None	None	None
Hydrogen	1.0079 g/cm3	Negative	None, if awake	One or two

The hypothetical "Time Saving" is based on my driving schedule; for others it will obviously vary. I suppose it's also obvious that saving 45 hours per year isn't as valuable as it may seem, given that it's being saved it in tiny increments and evil Osmium Foot at least will be too shagged out after arriving to do more than try to relax for the saved time.

So what about the entertainment, then? In addition to the normal complement of displays and gauges, I have an Argus aircraft navigation display in the car. That's what allows me to time traffic lights since it displays GPS time as well as navigation data. It also provides altitude, which is otherwise unavailable from the Prius. When I commute, I'm continually switching and monitoring all the displays and readouts. And, of course, obsessing unnecessarily over the MPG display. Fortunately I have sufficient mental bandwidth left over to find my way to work, even with the help of the moving maps. I turn up the music, watch the glowing instruments, and at my legal speed, don't worry at all about the traffic police. A pleasant commute! I can't help wondering if people would drive less aggressively if someone offered a dashboard-mount lava lamp.

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Not being a car manufacturer, I feel no compulsion to add the standard "drive responsibly and don't speed." Although there is little doubt that accidents at higher speed are more likely to damage protoplasmic participants, that doesn't mean that speeding is necessarily going to cause an accident. As has long been obvious, and has been confirmed by a very recent study, the most important thing is to pay attention!

*Thank you, Lloyd Cole. Rattlesnakes is a great song!

My Good Deed

I don't like to use the telephone. In a future blogitem I shall peg the rantometer with a new diatribe about people who refuse to use email, but today I'm plagiarizing myself with an item I prepared for a friend who runs an internet business, mostly selling arts on eBay. I'm forever encouraging her to write FAQs to save time and correspondence. For this one, however, I volunteered to be cranky on her behalf:

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Why don't we use the telephone?

Only part of the answer is "we read faster than we listen, we think slower than we talk."

This is an internet business. The only reason we HAVE a telephone is for emergencies. We don't even use it for communicating with people in the same building! It's slow, inconvenient, imprecise, and just plain irritating. We're old fashioned enough to believe that when we're talking to someone on the telephone they deserve our complete attention. We're newfangled enough to realize that we can't spare our complete attention to anyone or anything. We're just too damn busy.

Here's another part of the answer:

Receiving telephone calls:

Everybody here is busy doing something. Whether it's packing/unpacking, listing goods, researching provenance, or just euphemizing in the bathroom, it's still something that needs to be done. The telephone is an interruption. If we have to answer the telephone, it means we're not doing something else that needs to be done.

Making telephone calls:

Are you hovering by the telephone waiting for our call? Of course not - you're in a different room, or perhaps in a different state. And you're probably in a different time zone. Do you want to be interrupted? Probably not. Do we want to wait for you to come to the phone? Do we want to wait to find the right party when someone else answers? Or to leave a message and play "phone tag"? Definitely not.

Receiving email:

We go to the computer when convenient, between other tasks. It may only take two minutes, or it may take half an hour, or even, when we have the luxury of sleep, several hours. But we get your email, and we answer it. No wasted time (beyond deleting the spam) and no interruptions.

Sending email:

Questions are typically one of three types:

• You have a question for which we have to do research. In that case, why have you wait while we fumble? Instead of wasting your time by putting you on hold, you can go about your business and we'll email when we have an answer. And when you have the answer, it will be in clear writing, with references, instead of in your scribbling, which is probably just as illegible as ours.


• It's one we've already answered once or a hundred times, e.g., "Why don't we use the telephone?" If we have the answer, we put it on our web site the first time, and never have to answer it again. If we did this by telephone, we could either play you a recording (boring for you) or read the web page to you (boring for both of us). Instead you're reading it here. Big time saver - you read faster than you listen, too.


• One whose answer would interest others, e.g., general questions about arts that our expertise can help resolve for you and might be of interest to the community as well. In that case, why not share the info?

In summary
There is almost never a reason to use the telephone in our business. It is an obsolete excrescence of the previous century, and one we embrace only in exigent circumstance, and with reluctance even then. If you need to contact us, please use email or, in the case of secure communication such as credit card number transmission, use our fax number (PLACE NUMBER HERE). You will receive a faster and more considered reply by email. (If you DO send a fax, please be sure to put your email address legibly on the fax.)

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I hope it worked for her. Certainly nobody ever calls me any more!

I Am SO Behind!

I just read an article on CNN entitled Rising gas prices fire up bloggers and I realized that although I'm a blogger, I haven't written a word about rising gas prices! And, if I seem fired up, it's just the summer sun asserting that my tan is insufficient. As you know I own a Prius, so gas prices aren't a big deal. Nonetheless, to hold up my end of the conversation and satisfy the blog search engines, let me add the largish heading

Rising Gas Prices!

so that I can be in the "in crowd," and, while I'm at it, tell a story.

The Story

Almost 15 years ago, my friend who used to be Evyan took over the soda route at my place of striving. She assumed this duty because we had a soda machine, but the people who refilled it seemed to have vanished. Rumors surrounding this sudden disappearance were rife and inventive, as you might imagine.

Evyan could be economical of expression. In fact, in recent years she has modified her moniker and is now known by a single syllable. But in those days, she was Evyan, and one night she refilled the machine and also raised the price of the soda cans by a dime. I asked her a question:

Q: Evyan, what shall I tell people when they ask why the price of soda has gone up?
A: "They have soda."

Hmmm. Seems I have written about rising gas prices after all.

Network Neutrality

What's the opposite of an oxymoron? I submit that "corporate greed" is a good example. Let's call it an "oxyoxy" and see if it catches on. Not that there's anything wrong with corporate greed. Corporations exist to make money, and if a little dissembling or obfuscation is helpful in the pursuit of same, one can hardly expect restraint. In recent weeks the spectacle of big and greedy corporations fighting each other for the ostensible benefit of the consumer on the issue of network neutrality has provided me a modicum of entertainment, which, I'm sure you've deduced, I'm about to share.

Just in case you're already tired of the discussion/argument/bloviation/rodomontade, I'll present a conclusion right away: It doesn't matter. You can go about your business now.

Still here?

May I use the phrase "Business Model?" That's what the argument is about:

• The telephone companies and cable companies connect to the individual customers. Their business model is to charge everyone on their system as much as they can — "what the traffic will bear" — to use bandwidth to connect to the internet or whatever other content the company offers or plans to offer.


• The big internet companies (Google, Microsoft, etc.,) are big customers of these guys. They pay a lot of money for a lot of bandwidth, and then dole out their content to individual internet users. In the aggregate, the bandwidth for which they pay is used; for any individual user the percentage of the used bandwidth is negligible and is used episodically.


• Individuals, "consumers," are tiny customers of the telcos, so tiny that we can only be considered in groups. We are promised a lot of bandwidth for a modest amount of money, and normally we get it. We are offered bizarre and incomprehensible "plans" because we are statistics. The statistics work because we cannot possibly consume the bandwidth we are offered without gluing our eyes open and watching movies on the computer 24/7.

Because of the way the internet grew up, there is a legal requirement that the internet providers, who would be called "common carriers" in an older context, treat all their customers bits the same. If you download a search page from Google, or this screed from the Riklblog, or a bootleg music file from wherever, the actual data is, by law, treated the same. Within the technical limitations of the equipment and the amount of bandwidth you and the provider of the bits have paid for, you will get those bits from the different sources at about the same rate.

What's Wrong With this System?

A big problem for the service providers is that there's essentially nothing wrong with it. If you live in a city or suburb in the USA, you can get "broadband" internet service for an affordable price. Maybe it's an "introductory offer" for $14.95 per month. Maybe you're too lazy or too busy to browbeat the cable company and they've raised the rate to $59.95 while you weren't paying attention. Either way, if you're using your internet connection for tens of hours per week, as many do, and sharing among several family members, as many do, you're paying pennies per hour. And, unless the provider has screwed up somehow, you're generally ecstatic with the speed of the service! How is that possible? Aren't you dealing with the telephone/cable company?

It's possible because your demands are so modest. A typical text page such as this blog, a search result, or a newspaper article may take up 10k bytes of storage and therefore that much network bandwidth (plus "overhead"). Notwithstanding all the computer thrashing that goes on at both ends, the actual transmission time of 10k bytes over a broadband network is a small fraction of one second. While it's unlikely that anyone would want to do so, all the entries in this blog could be downloaded in the time it took to read this paragraph. Email, by far the most popular internet activity, is essentially indifferent to bandwidth.

Text is a low-bandwidth activity, to be sure. How about music downloads? While it does take a noticeable amount of time to download a multi-megabyte music file, it doesn't take your time. Unless you are having a Stevie Nicks emergency, you can select what you want to download and the computer will do it while you, good planner that you are, are occupied otherwise. About once a week I go to the Yahoo music service, to which I subscribe, and select a number of songs for download. The actual process of downloading can take an hour or so, but all I care about is the time it takes me to make the selections.

So why the fuss, then? Everything is working, everyone is happy!

Not exactly. If customers are happy, then certainly the internet providers are doing something wrong, and therefore they're not happy. They have reached the same stage as the evil airline scum, with essentially identical, undifferentiated service, and no way to collect more money. When I do a web search I think of Google, not the cable company that transmits the web page. And if I won't think about them, then at least they should be able to get some of the money Google gets by sending me ads (which, of course, I don't think about either).

Ennutshellized, then, the telcos and cable companies want to be more than common carriers for internet data. First, they want to be able to build bigger, better, faster networks, provide "premium content," over the internet, and charge the recipient for the content. But, controversially, they also want to charge their big customers a special toll to provide their content at the new, higher speeds their networks allow. And they are lobbying the congress to change the rules, which at present don't allow them to do this.

Framing the Argument

Needless to say, the Googles and Microsofts don't want to pay an extra toll for faster data transmission. That would mean they have less money. And so, as frequently happens in arguments over who has more money and who has less, the conflict is framed in absolutes and in ideals.

• Google*: The Net must remain Free!


• Verizon: The Net must remain Free of Government Regulation!


• Consumer: What color is my state again?

Thank you for having read this far! But, remember, it wasn't necessary. As I said above, it doesn't matter. While framed in Constitutional terms, the argument is about business model. And as with the evil airline scum, who have suffered horribly (almost enough!) because their business model makes no sense, the desire of the telcos and cable companies to charge extra for premium delivery is a dead end. Why?

Nobody needs premium delivery. What they really need is freedom from blackmail. It is one thing to say "for extra payment we'll deliver your search page faster" and quite another to say "if you don't pay extra we'll hold up your search page delivery by 10 seconds." Not only would that cost the provider dearly in terms of the hardware to store all that data, it would create consternation to say the least among the customers who are indifferent to a tenth of a second wait but who would get cranky indeed with deliberate delays. So what if they're cranky? So they change providers, to the one who promises "no deliberate delays" by promising "faster connections" which is, after all, why they built the network. In other words, if the telcos are relieved of the obligation to treat everyone's bits the same, they will end up treating everyone's bits the same.

Which Side Are You On?

Regardless of the essential irrelevance of the outcome, this is America, and one must take a stand based on ideology. My stand, and it's a weak and flimsy plinth and definitely not art, is on the side of the telcos. First, remember the USDUC: The more rules we have, the more things go wrong. Next, I would like two fiber lines coming to my home. Anything that will encourage both the cable company and the telephone company to bring me more bandwidth in the hope of garnering my meager custom has got to be a boon. I have a lot of faith in competition, and given the business models of the competitors in this fray, I see myself benefiting by allowing them to do what they foolishly believe will work for them.

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*While I'm primarily a fan of the zeugma, I'm not above synecdoche.

Unfinished Asimovian Business

I have neglected thus far to mention just how vexed I am with Isaac Asimov. I repair that omission now. Asimov was one of my favorite authors, and still would be if he weren't 100% life-free. Although he is best known for the size of his oeuvre* and for the many, many books he wrote, his earliest and best-known works were science fiction, and the best-known of those were the Robot Series and the Foundation Series. Asimov's writing, as he would be the first to aver, was unornamented and unstyled. Just the thing for this then-teenager, whom grownups kept trying to expose to "literature" at the wrong phase of life. His books were rich in science-fictional ideas, and for whatever reason I found the three volumes of the Foundation Series (the original canon) to be especially inspirational.

I had the misfortune of reading them out-of-order, and so knew the secret of the Second Foundation before I managed to find the first two volumes. Even so, I hunted these down and read them with alacrity and very little light** since I was supposed to be studying/sleeping at the time. And reread them and read them yet again. To this day I can name the major characters, and whenever I clean my desk I think of Mayor Indbur and Ebling Mis. I didn't ascribe any mystical significance to the existence of the Foundation universe. That it had none of Asimov's robots wasn't a surprise; authors (and some current versions of string theory) are entitled to multiple universes*** with different characteristics. And the fact that the "Eternals" (from the 1955 "End of Eternity," one of Asimov's short novels,) weren't mentioned didn't distress me at all. This unique time travel tale had always been one of my favorites, but I had no urge to consider it anything other than just that.

Until...

Rumored, but not necessarily expected, Asimov wrote a sequel to the Foundation series. It came out in 1982, and I'm sure I obtained a copy within minutes. I was older and more sophisticated (for me, at least) and it didn't grip me as the originals had. But I came across a passage, late in the book, described thus in Wikipedia:

"Asimov placed a hint in Foundation's Edge many years later, that the Eternals might have been responsible for the all-human galaxy (and the development of humanity on Earth) of the Foundation Series, but that interpretation is disputed, and indeed Asimov himself mentions the disparity. It is perhaps one of the loose ends that he had planned to clean up, but which his death obviously prevented."

Whoops. Although for Asimov, this was probably an auctorial version of bait-and-switch, intended to entice readers to buy his sequels, it worked all too well on me. I would have read them anyway, but each of the succeeding Robot and Foundation novels I combed obsessively for mysteries and clues about the Eternals, who never should have been mentioned in Foundations Edge, and couldn't have been (since they disappeared) unless there was actually something to it. Although I did find another mystery (Giskard's telepathy, unexplained to this day), there were no other significant clues to the integration of the Eternals into the Foundation universe.

Unlike the real universe, whose explanation we may some day deduce, Isaac Asimov is no longer with us. Although other writers have been authorized to carry on with the Foundation, none seems interested in or willing to explain the role of the Eternals. If Asimov planned this to assure sufficient curiosity remains to lobby for his resurrection when the technology becomes available, I can forgive him. But given the likely time frame for such technology, it is hardly likely to help me! For that, forgiveness will remain elusive.

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*Perhaps he responded to an early spam. Guys are sensitive about this.
**Zeugma alert!
***Oxymoron alert!

What Makes for Smooth, Creamy Chocolate?

That was a stolen title. And this is a stolen paragraph:

Many people, when describing what happens after they bite off a piece of chocolate, would say that the chocolate melts in their mouth, then they swirl it around with their tongue to best enjoy the sweet, creamy sensation. Food scientists might describe the process differently. They'd observe that the tongue induces a shear flow within the melted chocolate layer between tongue and palate. According to Newton's law, the shear stress τ applied by tongue is the product of chocolate's bulk shear viscosity η and the shear rate, which itself is approximately the ratio of the tongue's velocity to the thickness of the melted chocolate layer. Chocolate rheology, however, is non-Newtonian; the viscosity depends on shear rate, time, and temperature. What typical consumers consider "smooth and creamy" corresponds to a viscosity of 1.5–3.5 Pa·s (pascal-seconds), at a representative shear rate of 20/s and body temperature 37 °C. It was written by Erich J. Windhab, and I came across it while reading the June 2006 issue of Physics Today. This is one of the sources from which I normally obtain my cosmology, and now I shall have to consider it a chocolatic source as well. You will not be very surprised to find that Dr. Windhab is a "professor of food process engineering" and even less surprised that he practices this profession in Switzerland (at ETH Zürich). What a remarkable article this is! I prefer to think that "old family recipes" are in part responsible for the delight I experience when tucking into a Teuscher champagne truffle, or one of the multilevular rectangular chocolates that Mrs. Nagle's husband lovingly prepares when he isn't overwhelmed by Valentine's day custom. But reading, to the extent I was able, Prof. Windhab's article, made me realize that chocolate is the triumph of rheology over reality.

I never thought I was deluding myself excessively when I decanted a chocolate from its wrapper, or when I bemoaned the state of the once-noble Sky Bar. But I will never look at a piece of chocolate again without contemplating particle morphology* parameters, surfactants, and flocculation. Of course, eating chocolate with one's eyes closed is an acceptable methodological substitution.

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Morphology of a different kind: On the other hand if you want to eat chocolate with your eyes open, take a look at these confections from Deb's Delectables! Wow!