Gray Watson's Blog -- April 2006

Blogging is a useful way for me to record my thoughts and digital travels every so often. Hope you enjoy my digital stream of consciousness.

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April 28, 2006

Great entry showing House Speaker Dennis Hastert getting out of a hydrogen car and getting into his SUV to drive back to Washington after a press session at a gas station. Awesome Washington political shenanigans at work.
Interesting graph showing the US casualties alongside administration retoric (original huge copy).
The Iraqi war is projected to cost American taxpayers over US$800 billion -- that's billion with a B. What a continuing disaster. Remember that one of the selling points of the war was that it was going to cost us very little because it could be financed with Iraqi oil money (which of course is against the Geneva Convention but who's counting).
The rising cost of the war is leading to growing concerns in Congress, where attempts to control the budget deficit have been hindered by the "supplementary" requests received each year for war spending.
The CRS estimates that the US Department of Defense's annual war funding has risen from $73bn in 2004 to $120bn in 2006, with an increase of 17% this year alone. There have also been concerns that extra non-related appropriations are often tucked inside the war funding bill.

April 27, 2006

Just read this excellent article entitled Federal Confidential. I thought it was going one way but then it zigs so stick with it. It is an excellent analysis of our current [sad] state of affairs with regards to federal goverment secrecy.
By March of 2000, the CIA knew that both al Mihdhar and al Hazmi were in the US with valid US visas. That information was, of course, very secret and very closely held. So although the CIA was ostensibly looking for them, they failed to inform the FBI, the FAA, state and local police services and airport security of their identity and presence in this country.
They first went to San Diego. They lived with Abdussattar Shaikh, an FBI informant. Al Hazmi got homesick and flew to Yemen, passing in and out of US airports one more time. In April, 2001, al Hazmi got stopped for speeding in Oklahoma. His license was in his real name. The trooper ran it and nothing came back, so he sent al Hazmi on his way.

April 26, 2006

I'm hoping that the following listing for an electric Rav 4 car on ebay is going to spur developers to make and sell similar vehicles. [ Wow! It closed at US$67,300. ] It is a small SUV which is unfortunate. I'm still pining for my Tango made my Commuter Cars. If I won the lottery I'd be calling them tomorrow! Huh, I hadn't realized that Meyers Motors bought the Sparrow EV and is producing them again for US$25,000.

April 25, 2006

So I was reading an online blog about the virtues of natural-gas to hydrogen conversions which really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm really sick of the so-called "hydrogen economy" and think it is mostly bunk. That it gives off water when it burns is all Hydrogen has going for it. It is 1/4 as dense as fossil fuels which means it needs to he cooled and compressed to hold as much in your tank and you have to stop it from exploding. We should be talking about an "electricity economy" instead. Hydrogen does not get mined -- it has to be produced which takes energy. Hydrogen should be thought of as a way of storing and transporting energy and there are much better ways to do this that don't make your tanker-truck go boom.
The next generation of Lithium ion polymer batteries have the brightest future. These batteries are already threatening to be more efficient than hydrogen per weight and volume and you can imagine what the industry would produce if the demand went through the roof. Forcing all of the public alternative energy discussions towards hydrogen ignores the realities of the situation. We need more electricity. Fission, maybe. Fusion, better start research now. Solar/wind, duh.

Found a couple of articles which are interesting including the lithium economy. lithium-ion electric cars, PDF on hydrogen research.

April 14, 2006

Interesting story comparing fast food use of trans fat. A Danish research paper in the New England Journal of Medicine compared the trans fat content of MacDonalds fries and other "standard" meals from around the world and found wild variation. At McDonald's fries and chicken-nuggets combo in New York City contained 10.2 grams of the trans-fat, compared with 0.33 grams in Denmark where they have banned most trans-fat, and about 3 grams in Spain, Russia and the Czech Republic. Although MacDonalds claims that it is taste that is driving this, most experts say it is more a cost factor since trans-fat is cheaper to fry. Although research shows that trans-fat contributes to 10,000s of heart disease deaths yearly, the FDA has still not restricted it's use although it has improved the labeling. Kraft has reduced trans-fat by reformulating hundreds of its producs. Here's a good site that wants to ban trans-fat like Denmark has. An update on trans-fat from health.com.
Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is cooking oil that has been injected with hydrogen to harden it and give it a longer shelf life. Switching to liquid vegetable oils such as canola, corn, olive or soy eliminates the trans fat, as has been done in Denmark under a 2004 law allowing only a minuscule amount of trans fat in foods. Trans fat raises bad cholesterol and lowers good cholesterol. Eating just 5 grams of it per day increases the risk of heart disease 25 percent, research shows.

April 13, 2006

I was just talking to a co-worker about 747 crashes and we started to confuse the separate crashes of TWA flight 800 and EgyptAir 990. TWA 800 blew up off of Long Island because of a fuel tank explosion. There is much speculation that it was a terrorist bomb, missile, or friendly fire accident. EgyptAir 990 was taken down by Gameel Al-Batouti, the co-pilot calmly saying into the voice recorder "Tawakalt ala Allah" ("I rely on God"). Egypt has refused to accept the NTSB final report.
Two retired generals has come out calling for Rumsfield's resignation. Major General Basiste and now Major General Charles Swannack added their voices to the list. Sounds like the brass is finally starting to really push back against the dictatorial civilian leadership at the Pentagon. Other sources: Guardian, ABC News, Seattle Times.
I believe we need a fresh start at the Pentagon, Maj Gen Batiste, who retired in November 2005 after leading the 1st infantry division in Iraq, told CNN.
President George W. Bush has vigorously defended Mr Rumsfeld, who has a strong ally in his old friend, Vice-President Dick Cheney. But as the White House gears up to make personnel changes in the coming weeks to bolster waning support for Mr Bush in Congress, speculation has grown about the fate of Mr Rumsfeld. While his stock rose after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld has faced a barrage of criticism in the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, and as the US increasingly fails to stem the violence in Iraq.
The Spirit rover on Mars has lost mobility in one of six wheels. The right front wheel motor is no longer working and so they've had to drive Spirit backwards dragging the tire. Because the Martian winter is approaching and Spirit is in a higher latitude then it's twin Opportunity, JPL is worried about it losing power and are looking for a good slope to tilt the solar panels down to the horizon to keep it well powered over the winter.
"Engineers designed the rovers so well that Spirit's weight remains evenly distributed on all six wheels," explained Al Herrera, a computer sequencing specialist for Columbus Technologies and Services Inc. who oversees commands uplinked to the rover. "That keeps the rovers balanced so they don't tip or roll backward."
While such balance is good for keeping the rovers safe and steady, it does not provide relief against the dragging right front wheel as there continues to be equal weight on it.
Dan Savage, a syndicated sex columnist and also frequent This American Life contributor has been trying to coin the term Santorum meaning a byproduct of anal sex. Savage started the movement in response to Santorum's comments that homosexuals have no right to privacy and that government should criminalize homosexuality like it does child molestation and incest. Given how much I hate Ricky, it is my duty to pass it on.
Fans of Savage (among others) have made a concerted effort to make the newly coined term a part of the English language, setting up a web site[2] for the purpose and employing Google bombing to drive that site to the first result slot for a Google search on "santorum". At its annual meeting in January 2005, the American Dialect Society selected "santorum" as the "Most Outrageous" word of the year 2004. The Economist magazine referenced "santorum" in a January 5, 2006 blurb about Rick Santorum.
The Citizens Against Government Waste has put out it's 2006 Pig Book which details the congressional pork.
For fiscal 2006, appropriators stuffed 9,963 projects into the 11 appropriations bills, a 29 percent decrease over last years total of 13,997. Despite the reduction in the number of earmarks, Congress porked out at record dollar levels with $29 billion in pork for 2006, or 6.2 percent more than last years total of $27.3 billion. In fact, the total cost of pork has increased by 29 percent since fiscal 2003. Total pork identified by CAGW since 1991 adds up to $241 billion.
$33,907,000 added by the Senate for projects in the state of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), including: $10,000,000 for the Mississippi Conservation Initiative; $5,766,000 for the Wildlife Habitat Management Institute; $1,433,000 for curriculum development at Mississippi Valley State University; $1,389,000 for the Delta Conservation Demonstration Center in Washington County; $936,000 for advanced spatial technologies; $517,000 for aquaculture research; $300,000 for the National Center for Natural Products; $180,000 for natural products research; and $50,000 for cotton ginning research.
Here's a cool idea. This guy has made 4th Amendment shipping tape designed to wrap checked luggage -- not like it would make any difference. You can also buy it from the Eff Store.
The printed shipping tape has the text slant so that as the pattern repeats, the 4th amendment appears as a long continuous string, as well as a block. You can put this shipping tape on your packages and your airplane luggage. Every time I fly, my luggage gets a card in it telling me how for my protection they have searched it. Now, when they open my luggage, they will have to literally slice the 4th amendment in half in order to do this.

April 11, 2006

Although it's been forecast and under research for some time, ARM has developed the first clockless processor. Without a clock, which keeps all parts of the processor in sync, processors should use less power and not produce electronic interference. Asynchronous processors should also be theoretically much faster than synchronous. Other sources: ARM press release, Philips article.
The processor was designed to use Handshake Solutions clockless IC design technology and is said to be suitable for automotive, medical and deeply embedded control applications. Although reduced power consumption, due to the lack of clock circuitry, is one benefit the clockless design also produces a low electromagnetic signature because of the diffuse nature of digital transitions within the chip.

April 4, 2006

One of the examples that the Intelligent Design (read Creationism) proponents have long stated as an example of the limits of science that it has been unable to determine how bees fly. Well scientists have now done the research into how bees fly and have modeled the movements with robotic wings. This is a news report on this publication by the National Academy of Sciences.
In order to understand how bees carry such heavy cargo, the researchers forced the bees to fly in a small chamber filled with a mixture of oxygen and helium that is less dense than regular air. This required the bees to work harder to stay aloft and gave the scientists a chance to observe their compensation mechanisms for the additional toil. The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.
Interesting piece about how Skylab took pictures of Area 51 which is a secret Air Force facility deep in the Nevada desert.
There was a certain irony in NPIC photo-interpreters discovering photographs of Groom Lake, because even within NPICs Building 213 Groom Lake was classified. Images of Groom were removed from rolls of spy satellite film and stored in a restrictive vault. As a former senior NPIC official explained, there were a lot more things going on at Groom than the U-2. Not all the photo-interpreters at NPIC were cleared to know about these things, but probably included aircraft testing, including advanced reconnaissance drones and captured Soviet fighter planes. The average photo-interpreter would know that the U-2 and the Blackbird were based at Groom, but would be surprised to see a B-52 with drones, or a MiG-21 sitting on its runway.
Interesting article talking about research into a brain stimulator which gives a low voltage current to the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (also called Area 25) region of the brain. This article is reporting on the study from the journal Neuron. The authors of the article are filing a patent on the device. Other sources: NY Times.
Called deep brain stimulation, the experimental surgery involves the implanting of electrodes deep inside the brain to produce a constant, weak electrical stimulation to a target area in the brain -- called area 25 -- that plays a critical role in depression. By aiming a mild but constant electrical pulse directly into area 25, researchers think they can "recalibrate" the area back to normal functioning.

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