People who are famous to me. Perhaps it's that I'm getting older so I'm aware of more people--and they're getting older too. But it seems like 2016 has been a particularly bad year.
Jan 3 Peter Naur Computer Scientist
Jan 10 David Bowie Performance Artist, Musician
Jan 14 Alan Rickman, Actor
Jan 18 Glenn Frey, Musician, The Eagles
Jan 21 Bill Johnson, Ski Racer
Jan 24 Marvin Minsky, AI Researcher
Jan 26 Abe Vigoda, Actor
Jan 28 Paul Kantner, Musician, Jefferson Airplane
Jan 28 Signe Anderson, Musician, Jefferson Airplane
Feb 4 Maurice White, Musician, Earth Wind and Fire
Feb 4 Edgar Mitchell, Astronaut, 6th man on the moon
Feb 6 Dan Hicks Musician, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks
Feb 13 Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice
Feb 16 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary General
Feb 19 Umberto Eco, Novelist
Feb 19 Harper Lee, Novelist
Feb 28 George Kennedy, Actor
Mar 5 Ray Tomlinson, Computer Programmer, implemented first ARPAnet email program
Mar 6 Nancy Davis Reagan, Actress, First Lady
Mar 8 George Martin, Record Producer, 5th Beatle
Mar 10 Keith Emerson, Musician, The Nice, Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Mar 10 Ernestine Anderson, Jazz Musician
Mar 21 Bob Ebeling, Engineer, tried to explain Challenger O-Rings
Mar 21 Andrew Grove, Engineer, Semiconductor executive
Mar 24 Garry Shandling, Comedian, Actor
Mar 29 Patty Duke, Actress
Apr 6 Merle Haggard, Country Musician
Apr 13 Gareth Thomas, Actor (Blakes 7)
Apr 21 Lonnie Mack, Musician
Apr 21 Prince, Musician
May 8 William Schallert, Actor (played Patty Duke's father)
May 12 Susannah Mushatt Jones, world's oldest person, age 116 years 311 days
May 19 Morley Safer, Journalist
Jun 3 Muhammad Ali, Boxer, Activist
Jun 7 Tom Perkins, Venture Capitalist
Jun 10 Gordie Howe, Hockey player
Jun 27 Alvin Toffler, Futurist
Jun 27 Simon Ramo, Engineer, co founder TRW age 103
Jun 28 Scotty Moore, Musician
Jul 2 Elie Weisel, Concentration Camp Victim, Author, Activist
Jul 19 Garry Marshall, Director
Jul 24 Marni Nixon, Singer
Jul 31 Seymour Papert, Computer Scientist
Aug 3 Chris Amon, Racing driver
Aug 11 Glenn Yarbrough, Folksinger
Aug 15 Bobby Hutcherson, Jazz Musician
Aug 17 Arthur Hiller, Movie Director
Aug 19 John McLaughlin, TV Pundit
Aug 22 Jean-Baptiste "Toots" Thielemans, Jazz Musician
Aug 29 Gene Wilder, Actor
Sep 5 Phyllis Schlafly, Conservative
Sep 16 Edward Albee, Playwright
Sep 25 Arnold Palmer, Golfer
Sep 28 Shimon Peres, Israeli President & Prime Minister, Peacemaker
Oct 2 Neville Marriner, Musician, Conductor
Oct 5 Brock Yates, Motorsports journalist
Oct 18 David Bunnell, Computer journalist
Oct 22 Sheri Tepper, Science Fiction writer
Nov 7 Leonard Cohen Poet, Musician
Nov 7 Janet Reno, US Attorney General
Nov 7 Roy Kerth, UC Berkeley physicist
Nov 8 American Freedom and Democracy
Nov 11 Robert Vaughn, Actor
Nov 13 Leon Russell, Musician
Nov 14 Gwen Ifill, TV Journalist
Nov 15 Mose Allison, Jazz Musician
Nov 16 Melvin Laird, Politician
Nov 17 Samuel Ross Williams (Smerdyakov Flying Karamozov)
Nov 24 Florence Henderson, Actress
Nov 25 Fidel Castro, Dictator
Nov 25 Ron Glass, Actor
Nov 26 Fritz Weaver, Actor, Narrator
Dec 7 Paul Elvstrom Sailor
Dec 7 Greg Lake Musician, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Dec 8 John Glenn Astronaut, Test Pilot, US Senator
Dec 17 Henry Heimlich, Physician, inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver
Dec 18 Zsa Zsa Gabor, Actress
Dec 25 Jeffrey Hayden. TV Director, Producer, Eva Marie Saint's husband.
Dec 25 George Michael, Singer
Dec 25 Vera Rubin, Astrophysicst
Dec 27 Carrie Fisher, Actress, Author
Dec 28 Debbie Reynolds, Actress, Dancer, Carrie Fisher's mother.
Dec 30 Tyrus Wong, Cartoonist (Bambi)
Dec 31 William Christopher, Actor (Father Mulcahey on MASH)
08 December 2016
02 December 2016
Suggested Supercharger Locations, II
I've made so many addenda to my original version of this I think it's time for a new start. Tesla has done lots of what I suggested (although there's little evidence they listen to me).
I-5 improvements: There are a bunch of biggish gaps. The worst would be solved by adding a station near Roseburg, OR (it's 138 miles from Springfield to Grants Pass, but southbound it's uphill, so when it's cold, my car drinks about 190 miles of rated range). A station near Longview, WA, would allow Seattle<->California travelers like me to stop only once on the way to Eugene instead of two as today, and relieve some of the present crowding at Centralia. Mount Shasta and Grants Pass are only four berths--more are needed. Better would be to add sites: Ashland or Yreka, perhaps?
We really need superchargers close to Seattle, and to a lesser degree, Portland. Where these are important is for out-of-towners doing one-day visits. The new pricing model may help this, because it will inhibit locals from doing their daily charging there. (Although there needs to be a better option for people who can't get a home charger for some reason. Home charging is the single best thing about an electric car, I think). A charger near Seattle is also needed for people trying to get to Ellensburg and points east from Burlington or Centralia.
Olympic Peninsula: Aberdeen is under construction. Something is needed between Sequim and Forks. Dare I ask for both? (There's a CHAdeMO in Port Angeles and several J1772s and 14-50s in RV places, but more is needed)
North Cascades: Route 20 (which is closed for the winter as I write this) is one of the prettiest drives anywhere. Plug-in North Central Washington has been installing 70+ amp L2 J1772s (Newhalem, Winthrop, Twisp, Omak, Pateros, Waterville, Wenatchee, Coles Corner near Leavenworth, probably more), many of which are free and seem to be well maintained, which is awesome, but that's about 5 hours of waiting between Ellensburg and Burlington even if you have dual chargers. Put a supercharger at Twisp or Winthrop, and Leavenworth. Make sure there's plenty of destination charging at the Stevens Pass ski resort (there appears to be none at present)
Slightly related: Ellensburg is too small (5 stalls) and is often ICEd. It's the logical place though. Alternatives are needed. One possibility would be to put a new supercharger in Cle Elum, which would relieve the pressure in Ellensburg and take 30 miles off a Seattle to Leavenworth trip via Snoqualmie Pass. Another one in George or Moses Lake. There's often a queue in Ellensburg after a show at the gorge.
South Cascades: Seattle or Tacoma to Mount Rainier Crystal Mountain is right on the limit and Seattle-Paradise is about 110 mountain miles each way. Too far, but only a little. There are NO destination chargers listed on plugshare for either route or the ski resort. A few restaurants would do well to add a charger anywhere along there--an hour at 40 amps would make a big difference. There are several NEMA 14-50s (and one 10-50) on US-12. A start but not good enough. A supercharger somewhere near Packwood would open this route up.
There needs to be a reasonably direct route between Reno and Spokane. Right now you need to go west to I-5 (over 300 miles out of your way) or east almost to Salt Lake (even more). Two suggestions. The simple one would be to put a charger at Burns Junction, where US-95 and OR-78 meet. Traffic is probably so light it could be a single supercharger. A prettier and slightly more direct (but not really shorter) option would be to use US-97 and/or 395. A start has been made on US-97 with Bend and Klamath, OR. It's 250 mountainous miles between Klamath and Reno, so there should probably be two more. Susanville, and probably somewhere around Bieber, Adin or Alturas.
101 is technically complete, but Eureka<->Ukiah is 156 hilly miles, which is a problem when it's cold and wet. Also, CA 1 through Mendocino and Fort Bragg are a lovely, albeit twisty drive. I'm thinking a charger in Leggett on 101 and another near Point Arena or Sea Ranch. Maybe Bodega Bay? (that's where Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was filmed)
I-80. Nebraska, which a few weeks ago had zero superchargers, will soon have four, all on I-80. Another 3 or 4 in southern Wyoming and I-80 will be complete.
I-15 is almost complete. Lima, MT is almost finished but progress has stopped for almost two months. There should be at least two more, one near Great Falls and one either near the border on I-15 or at East Glacier Village on US-2. I'm very happy that they put one at West Yellowstone and in Jackson, which almost makes the park accessible.
TransCanada Highway. You can get from Vancouver to Calgary but then it just stops...and doesn't start up again until you're almost to Toronto. Over 2000 miles/3300km.
I am mystified why I-94 is taking so long. It's fossil fuel country--perhaps it's local intransigence.
Something similar may be happening with I-10.
Route 66 is now complete, Chicago to L.A and all the cities named in the song have a supercharger in or in the town next door. Another great driving song, Little Feat's "Willin", has four named cities: Tuscon, Tucumcari, Tehachapi and Tonopah. The only one without a supercharger is Tuscon, which is the next logical place on I-10. Tehachapi's is 15 miles away, which is close enough, I think.
addenda 23Feb2017
Progress is happening on I-10. It is now possible to get to El Paso, TX and a charger is planned for there. After that there will be a gap through Tuscon 370 miles long, which will take 2 or 3 new chargers.
The Michigan Upper Peninsula is presently unreachable. Mackinaw is 175 fairly flat miles from Bay City on I-75, which is 276 miles along the lake shore to Green Bay. I'd put one first somewhere near Mackinaw, then midway to Green Bay, for example at Escanaba. The UP is beautiful country--it's worth a trip.
It seems to me that there would be something appropriate about having a charger at the Grand Coulee Dam. It's not a high traffic area but it's pretty much where the electricity comes from here in the northwest. Plugshare says there's a NEMA 14-50 at an RV park near there but that's it. It's 117 miles from Coeur d'Alene and 120 from Ellensburg, so it's already a sort of reasonable place. In any case, there surely should be a few J1772s at the visitor center even if they don't spring for a Tesla Supercharger.
I-5 improvements: There are a bunch of biggish gaps. The worst would be solved by adding a station near Roseburg, OR (it's 138 miles from Springfield to Grants Pass, but southbound it's uphill, so when it's cold, my car drinks about 190 miles of rated range). A station near Longview, WA, would allow Seattle<->California travelers like me to stop only once on the way to Eugene instead of two as today, and relieve some of the present crowding at Centralia. Mount Shasta and Grants Pass are only four berths--more are needed. Better would be to add sites: Ashland or Yreka, perhaps?
We really need superchargers close to Seattle, and to a lesser degree, Portland. Where these are important is for out-of-towners doing one-day visits. The new pricing model may help this, because it will inhibit locals from doing their daily charging there. (Although there needs to be a better option for people who can't get a home charger for some reason. Home charging is the single best thing about an electric car, I think). A charger near Seattle is also needed for people trying to get to Ellensburg and points east from Burlington or Centralia.
Olympic Peninsula: Aberdeen is under construction. Something is needed between Sequim and Forks. Dare I ask for both? (There's a CHAdeMO in Port Angeles and several J1772s and 14-50s in RV places, but more is needed)
North Cascades: Route 20 (which is closed for the winter as I write this) is one of the prettiest drives anywhere. Plug-in North Central Washington has been installing 70+ amp L2 J1772s (Newhalem, Winthrop, Twisp, Omak, Pateros, Waterville, Wenatchee, Coles Corner near Leavenworth, probably more), many of which are free and seem to be well maintained, which is awesome, but that's about 5 hours of waiting between Ellensburg and Burlington even if you have dual chargers. Put a supercharger at Twisp or Winthrop, and Leavenworth. Make sure there's plenty of destination charging at the Stevens Pass ski resort (there appears to be none at present)
Slightly related: Ellensburg is too small (5 stalls) and is often ICEd. It's the logical place though. Alternatives are needed. One possibility would be to put a new supercharger in Cle Elum, which would relieve the pressure in Ellensburg and take 30 miles off a Seattle to Leavenworth trip via Snoqualmie Pass. Another one in George or Moses Lake. There's often a queue in Ellensburg after a show at the gorge.
South Cascades: Seattle or Tacoma to Mount Rainier Crystal Mountain is right on the limit and Seattle-Paradise is about 110 mountain miles each way. Too far, but only a little. There are NO destination chargers listed on plugshare for either route or the ski resort. A few restaurants would do well to add a charger anywhere along there--an hour at 40 amps would make a big difference. There are several NEMA 14-50s (and one 10-50) on US-12. A start but not good enough. A supercharger somewhere near Packwood would open this route up.
There needs to be a reasonably direct route between Reno and Spokane. Right now you need to go west to I-5 (over 300 miles out of your way) or east almost to Salt Lake (even more). Two suggestions. The simple one would be to put a charger at Burns Junction, where US-95 and OR-78 meet. Traffic is probably so light it could be a single supercharger. A prettier and slightly more direct (but not really shorter) option would be to use US-97 and/or 395. A start has been made on US-97 with Bend and Klamath, OR. It's 250 mountainous miles between Klamath and Reno, so there should probably be two more. Susanville, and probably somewhere around Bieber, Adin or Alturas.
101 is technically complete, but Eureka<->Ukiah is 156 hilly miles, which is a problem when it's cold and wet. Also, CA 1 through Mendocino and Fort Bragg are a lovely, albeit twisty drive. I'm thinking a charger in Leggett on 101 and another near Point Arena or Sea Ranch. Maybe Bodega Bay? (that's where Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was filmed)
I-80. Nebraska, which a few weeks ago had zero superchargers, will soon have four, all on I-80. Another 3 or 4 in southern Wyoming and I-80 will be complete.
I-15 is almost complete. Lima, MT is almost finished but progress has stopped for almost two months. There should be at least two more, one near Great Falls and one either near the border on I-15 or at East Glacier Village on US-2. I'm very happy that they put one at West Yellowstone and in Jackson, which almost makes the park accessible.
TransCanada Highway. You can get from Vancouver to Calgary but then it just stops...and doesn't start up again until you're almost to Toronto. Over 2000 miles/3300km.
I am mystified why I-94 is taking so long. It's fossil fuel country--perhaps it's local intransigence.
Something similar may be happening with I-10.
Route 66 is now complete, Chicago to L.A and all the cities named in the song have a supercharger in or in the town next door. Another great driving song, Little Feat's "Willin", has four named cities: Tuscon, Tucumcari, Tehachapi and Tonopah. The only one without a supercharger is Tuscon, which is the next logical place on I-10. Tehachapi's is 15 miles away, which is close enough, I think.
addenda 23Feb2017
Progress is happening on I-10. It is now possible to get to El Paso, TX and a charger is planned for there. After that there will be a gap through Tuscon 370 miles long, which will take 2 or 3 new chargers.
The Michigan Upper Peninsula is presently unreachable. Mackinaw is 175 fairly flat miles from Bay City on I-75, which is 276 miles along the lake shore to Green Bay. I'd put one first somewhere near Mackinaw, then midway to Green Bay, for example at Escanaba. The UP is beautiful country--it's worth a trip.
It seems to me that there would be something appropriate about having a charger at the Grand Coulee Dam. It's not a high traffic area but it's pretty much where the electricity comes from here in the northwest. Plugshare says there's a NEMA 14-50 at an RV park near there but that's it. It's 117 miles from Coeur d'Alene and 120 from Ellensburg, so it's already a sort of reasonable place. In any case, there surely should be a few J1772s at the visitor center even if they don't spring for a Tesla Supercharger.
23 November 2016
Birds Killed by.....
During the campaign, Trump railed about windmills, emphasizing the birds killed by them and the supposed hypocrisy of liberals for wanting windmills despite this problem., At his rallies, he often expressed it as "killing all the birds". So I did a little research. All these numbers are bird mortality for the US
0.2-.35M Windmills
1-2M Oil and wastewater pits
15M Hunters
60M Collisions with cars
72M Pesticides
174M Collisions with power lines
400-900M Collisions with windows
1400-3700M Cats
So windows are at least 1000 times more dangerous to birds than are windmills. And cats. We need to ban cats and windows!!!!
Sheesh!
Of course we should do everything reasonable to minimize all of these, but the idea that it would be a reason to not build windmills is foolish. The oil business kills far more.
The real reason he doesn't like windmills is because some would be built in the view of one of his resorts and he thinks that would reduce the price he could charge (maybe, maybe not), but more importantly, he is beholden to fossil fuel interests and wants to drag his feet as much as possible on the inevitable switch to renewables.
He also claimed that all of the wind turbines come from Germany and Japan. Uh, no, there are several wind turbine manufacturers in the US, and GE owns wind companies in several other countries.
China 10
South Korea 6
Germany 4
US 3
Japan 3
Spain 2
Denmark 1. but it's by far the biggest
There were 88,000 wind power workers in the US at the start of 2016, growing at about 20% per year. The American Wind Energy Association estimates that there will be 380,000 wind power jobs in the US by 2030. The vast majority of these are in rural areas or semi-rural areas. There were 63,000 US jobs in the coal business in 2015 and this number can only decline. Virtually all coal mining is done in strip mines and mountaintop removal, which substitutes big machines for workers, and there is nothing Trump or anyone else can do to change this.
addenda 10 Mar 2017
Predatory birds like eagles are particularly susceptible to poisoning because many of them are also scavengers. A particularly serious problem is birds and animals killed by hunters and abandoned, either because the hunter only took enough to make a trophy, or because they couldn't find their victim. Eagles and other scavengers eat the decaying flesh, including the lead shot. Lead is a slow neurotoxin, so they don't die immediately, but their thinking and coordination is damaged, and they often crash into things that they'd have otherwise been able to avoid.
Eagles and other raptors are also particularly susceptible to being hit by windmills, because their hunting methods may put them at the same height as the moving blades.
0.2-.35M Windmills
1-2M Oil and wastewater pits
15M Hunters
60M Collisions with cars
72M Pesticides
174M Collisions with power lines
400-900M Collisions with windows
1400-3700M Cats
So windows are at least 1000 times more dangerous to birds than are windmills. And cats. We need to ban cats and windows!!!!
Sheesh!
Of course we should do everything reasonable to minimize all of these, but the idea that it would be a reason to not build windmills is foolish. The oil business kills far more.
The real reason he doesn't like windmills is because some would be built in the view of one of his resorts and he thinks that would reduce the price he could charge (maybe, maybe not), but more importantly, he is beholden to fossil fuel interests and wants to drag his feet as much as possible on the inevitable switch to renewables.
He also claimed that all of the wind turbines come from Germany and Japan. Uh, no, there are several wind turbine manufacturers in the US, and GE owns wind companies in several other countries.
China 10
South Korea 6
Germany 4
US 3
Japan 3
Spain 2
Denmark 1. but it's by far the biggest
There were 88,000 wind power workers in the US at the start of 2016, growing at about 20% per year. The American Wind Energy Association estimates that there will be 380,000 wind power jobs in the US by 2030. The vast majority of these are in rural areas or semi-rural areas. There were 63,000 US jobs in the coal business in 2015 and this number can only decline. Virtually all coal mining is done in strip mines and mountaintop removal, which substitutes big machines for workers, and there is nothing Trump or anyone else can do to change this.
addenda 10 Mar 2017
Predatory birds like eagles are particularly susceptible to poisoning because many of them are also scavengers. A particularly serious problem is birds and animals killed by hunters and abandoned, either because the hunter only took enough to make a trophy, or because they couldn't find their victim. Eagles and other scavengers eat the decaying flesh, including the lead shot. Lead is a slow neurotoxin, so they don't die immediately, but their thinking and coordination is damaged, and they often crash into things that they'd have otherwise been able to avoid.
Eagles and other raptors are also particularly susceptible to being hit by windmills, because their hunting methods may put them at the same height as the moving blades.
07 November 2016
Living Presidents
I've come down with a cold, so between naps, I've been using wikipedia to figure out how many living presidents and ex-presidents there have been at any one time.:
1800 1: John Adams. Washington died in Dec 1799
1801 2: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (both died in 1826)
1809 3: James Madison (1836), Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
1817 4: James Monroe (1831), Madison, Jefferson and Adams
1825 5: John Quincy Adams (1848), Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, Adams
1826 3: Adams Sr and Jefferson died in July: Adams Jr, Monroe, Madison
1829 4: Andrew Jackson (1845), Adams, Monroe, Madison
1831 3: Jackson, Adams, Madison
1836 2: Jackson, Adams
1837 3: Martin van Buren (1862), Jackson, Adams
1841 4: William H Harrison (1841), Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1841 4: John Tyler (1862), Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1845 5: James K Polk (1849), Tyler, Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1845 4: Jackson died in June: Polk, Tyler, Van Buren, Adams
1848 3: Polk, Tyler, Van Buren
1849 3: Zachary Taylor(1850), Tyler, Van Buren
1850 3: Millard Fillmore (1874), Tyler, Van Buren
1853 4: Franklin Pierce (1869), Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1857 5: James Buchanan (1868), Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1861 6: Abraham Lincoln (1865), Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1862 4: Lincoln, Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore
1865 4: Andrew Johnson (1875), Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore
1868 3: Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore
1869 4: Ulysses S Grant (1885), Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore
1869 3: Grant, Johnson, Fillmore
1874 2: Grant, Johnson
1875 1: Grant
1877 2: Rutherford B. Hayes (1893), Grant
1881 3: James Garfield (1881), Hayes, Grant
1881 3: Chester A Arthur (1886), Hayes, Grant
1885 4: Grover Cleveland (1908), Arthur, Hayes, Grant
1885 3: Cleveland, Arthur, Hayes
1886 2: Cleveland, Hayes
1889 3: Benjamin Harrison (1901), Cleveland, Hayes
1893 2: Harrison, Cleveland
1897 3: William McKinley (1901), Harrison, Cleveland
1901 2: Theodore Roosevelt (1919), Cleveland
1908 1: Roosevelt
1909 2: William H Taft (1930), Roosevelt
1913 3: Woodrow Wilson (1924), Taft, Roosevelt
1919 2: Wilson, Taft
1921 3: Warren G Harding (1923), Wilson, Taft
1923 3: Calvin Coolidge (1833), Wilson, Taft
1924 2: Coolidge, Taft
1929 3: Herbert Hoover (1964), Coolidge, Taft
1930 2: Hoover, Coolidge
1933 1: Coolidge died in January. FDR took office in March. for those 2 months, Hoover was the only living president
1933 2: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1945), Hoover
1945 2: Harry S Truman (1972), Hoover
1954 3: Dwight Eisenhower (1969), Truman, Hoover
1961 4: John F Kennedy (1963), Ike, Truman, Hoover
1963 4: Lyndon Baines Johnson (1973), Ike, Truman, Hoover
1964 3: Johnson, Ike, Truman
1969 4: Richard Milhous Nixon(1994), Johnson, Ike, Truman
1969 3: Ike died in March. Nixon, Johnson, Truman
1972 2: Nixon, Johnson
1973 1: Nixon
1974 2: Gerald Ford (2006), Nixon
1977 3: James E Carter(still alive), Ford, Nixon
1981 4: Ronald Reagan (2004), Carter, Ford, Nixon
1989 5: George HW Bush (still alive), Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon
1993 6: William Clinton (still alive), Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon
1994 5: Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford
2001 6: George W Bush (still alive), Clinton, HW, Reagan, Carter, Ford
2004 5: W, Clinton, HW, Carter, Ford
2006 4: W, Clinton, HW, Carter
2009 5: Barack Obama (still alive), W, Clinton, HW, Carter
There have been 3 times that we've had 6 living presidents and ex-presidents:
1861 to early 1862, 1993 to the death of Nixon in 1994, and 2001-2004.
We may have another starting next year.
There have been 5 times that there were no living ex-presidents: 1799-1801, 1875-77, 1908-9, 1933, 1973-4
addenda 1 Dec 2018. GHW Bush died yesterday, so there are two new lines:
2017 6: Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, HW, Carter
2018 5: Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, Carter
I was hoping Trump would be run out of town on a rail before HW or Carter died and we'd have 7 for the first time, but no such luck.
1800 1: John Adams. Washington died in Dec 1799
1801 2: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (both died in 1826)
1809 3: James Madison (1836), Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
1817 4: James Monroe (1831), Madison, Jefferson and Adams
1825 5: John Quincy Adams (1848), Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, Adams
1826 3: Adams Sr and Jefferson died in July: Adams Jr, Monroe, Madison
1829 4: Andrew Jackson (1845), Adams, Monroe, Madison
1831 3: Jackson, Adams, Madison
1836 2: Jackson, Adams
1837 3: Martin van Buren (1862), Jackson, Adams
1841 4: William H Harrison (1841), Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1841 4: John Tyler (1862), Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1845 5: James K Polk (1849), Tyler, Van Buren, Jackson, Adams
1845 4: Jackson died in June: Polk, Tyler, Van Buren, Adams
1848 3: Polk, Tyler, Van Buren
1849 3: Zachary Taylor(1850), Tyler, Van Buren
1850 3: Millard Fillmore (1874), Tyler, Van Buren
1853 4: Franklin Pierce (1869), Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1857 5: James Buchanan (1868), Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1861 6: Abraham Lincoln (1865), Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Van Buren
1862 4: Lincoln, Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore
1865 4: Andrew Johnson (1875), Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore
1868 3: Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore
1869 4: Ulysses S Grant (1885), Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore
1869 3: Grant, Johnson, Fillmore
1874 2: Grant, Johnson
1875 1: Grant
1877 2: Rutherford B. Hayes (1893), Grant
1881 3: James Garfield (1881), Hayes, Grant
1881 3: Chester A Arthur (1886), Hayes, Grant
1885 4: Grover Cleveland (1908), Arthur, Hayes, Grant
1885 3: Cleveland, Arthur, Hayes
1886 2: Cleveland, Hayes
1889 3: Benjamin Harrison (1901), Cleveland, Hayes
1893 2: Harrison, Cleveland
1897 3: William McKinley (1901), Harrison, Cleveland
1901 2: Theodore Roosevelt (1919), Cleveland
1908 1: Roosevelt
1909 2: William H Taft (1930), Roosevelt
1913 3: Woodrow Wilson (1924), Taft, Roosevelt
1919 2: Wilson, Taft
1921 3: Warren G Harding (1923), Wilson, Taft
1923 3: Calvin Coolidge (1833), Wilson, Taft
1924 2: Coolidge, Taft
1929 3: Herbert Hoover (1964), Coolidge, Taft
1930 2: Hoover, Coolidge
1933 1: Coolidge died in January. FDR took office in March. for those 2 months, Hoover was the only living president
1933 2: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1945), Hoover
1945 2: Harry S Truman (1972), Hoover
1954 3: Dwight Eisenhower (1969), Truman, Hoover
1961 4: John F Kennedy (1963), Ike, Truman, Hoover
1963 4: Lyndon Baines Johnson (1973), Ike, Truman, Hoover
1964 3: Johnson, Ike, Truman
1969 4: Richard Milhous Nixon(1994), Johnson, Ike, Truman
1969 3: Ike died in March. Nixon, Johnson, Truman
1972 2: Nixon, Johnson
1973 1: Nixon
1974 2: Gerald Ford (2006), Nixon
1977 3: James E Carter(still alive), Ford, Nixon
1981 4: Ronald Reagan (2004), Carter, Ford, Nixon
1989 5: George HW Bush (still alive), Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon
1993 6: William Clinton (still alive), Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon
1994 5: Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford
2001 6: George W Bush (still alive), Clinton, HW, Reagan, Carter, Ford
2004 5: W, Clinton, HW, Carter, Ford
2006 4: W, Clinton, HW, Carter
2009 5: Barack Obama (still alive), W, Clinton, HW, Carter
There have been 3 times that we've had 6 living presidents and ex-presidents:
1861 to early 1862, 1993 to the death of Nixon in 1994, and 2001-2004.
We may have another starting next year.
There have been 5 times that there were no living ex-presidents: 1799-1801, 1875-77, 1908-9, 1933, 1973-4
addenda 1 Dec 2018. GHW Bush died yesterday, so there are two new lines:
2017 6: Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, HW, Carter
2018 5: Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, Carter
I was hoping Trump would be run out of town on a rail before HW or Carter died and we'd have 7 for the first time, but no such luck.
addenda 19 Mar 2021
2021 6: Biden, Trump, Obama, W, Clinton, Carter
To their credit, all living ex presidents had sharply rebuked Trump, including the second worst, GW Bush, who looks positively Periclean in comparison.
21 October 2016
Biggest Landslides
Sorted by percentage
1: 1920: Warren Harding & Calvin Coolidge (R) vs James M Cox & FDR
16,144,093 to 9,139,661 (7,004,432 differential)
60.3% to 34.2% (26.1%)
404 to 127 electors
One of our most corrupt presidents and one of the most popular during his time in office.
2: 1924: Calvin Coolidge & Charles Dawes(R) v John W Davis & Charles W Bryan(D) v Robert La Follette (Progressive)
15,723,789 to 8,386,242 to 4,831,706 (7,337,547 differential)
54% to 28.8% (25.2%)
382 to 136 to 13 electors
Davis, a southern democrat and La Follete, a Wisconsin progressive, split the D vote, making the landslide appear larger than it really was. Harding and Coolidge presided over the bubble that led to the great depression
3: 1936: FDR & John Nance Garner v Alf Landon and Frank Knox
27,747,636 to 16,679,543 (11,068,093 differential)
60.8% to 36.5% (24.3%)
523 to 8 electors.
FDR, his policies successful at beating back the depression, carried all but two states: VT and ME
4: 1972: Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew vs George McGovern & Sargent Shriver
47,168,710 to 29,173,222 (17,995,480 difference)
60.7% to 37.5% (23.2%)
520 to 17 electors
McGovern was forced to change VPs after the convention and Nixon ran a terribly dirty campaign, which included the watergate breakin.
5: 1964: LBJ & Hubert Humphrey vs Barry Goldwater & William Miller
43,127,041 to 27,175,754 (15,951,287 difference)
61.1% to 38.5% (22.6%)
486 to 52 electors
Goldwater made a lot of noise about using A-bombs against North Vietnam, which scared pretty much everybody. He won only his home state Arizona and the deep south.
6: 1904: TR & Charles Fairbanks vs Alton Parker & Henry Davis
7,630,457 to 5,083,880 (2,546,577 difference)
56.4% to 37.6% (18.8%)
336 to 140 electors
Incumbent TR was successful in foreign affairs and trustbusting, and immensely popular. He'd have easily won a third term but he elevated his protege, Taft, who turned against his successful policies.
7: 1984: Ronald Reagan & GHW Bush vs Walter Mondale & Geraldine Ferraro
54,455,472 to 37,577,352 (16,878,120 difference)
58.8% to 40.6% (18.2%)
525 to 13 electors.
Reagan touted his "Morning In America" as he presided over the end of the 10 year stagflation caused by the multiple OPEC oil embargoes. Mondale won only his home state and DC
8: 1932: FDR & John Nance Garner vs Herbert Hoover & Charles Curtis
22,821,277 to 15,761,254 (7,060,023 difference)
57.4% to 39.7% (17.7%)
472 to 59 electors
Hoover presided over the start of the Great Depression and exacerbated it immensely with his misguided policies.
9: 1928: Herbert Hoover & Charles Curtis vs Al Smith and Joe Robinson
21,427,123 to 15,015,464 (6,411,659 difference)
58.2% to 40.8% (17.4%)
444 to 87 electors
Hoover, presiding over the continuing bubble, ran against Smith, the first Catholic to run for president.
10: 1832: Andrew Jackson & Martin van Buren vs Henry Clay & John Sergeant
701,780 to 484,205 (217,575 difference)
54.2% to 37.4% (16.8%)
219 to 49 electors
127M people voted in the 2012 election. Inexplicably, there are at least 50 million people who will vote for Trump, despite, or perhaps because of his open dishonesty and appalling behavior, or any Republican, no matter how grotesquely unqualified the candidate is. At this moment, fivethirtyeight.com has Trump at 42.7% and Clinton at 49.2%, a 6.5% difference. If these numbers hold and there are 130M votes cast, Trump will get 55.5M and Hillary 63.9M votes, an 8.4M vote difference. It's a good attempt so far, but he's got to alienate a lot more voters to get the Yuugest landslide in history. He is certainly giving it his best shot.
1: 1920: Warren Harding & Calvin Coolidge (R) vs James M Cox & FDR
16,144,093 to 9,139,661 (7,004,432 differential)
60.3% to 34.2% (26.1%)
404 to 127 electors
One of our most corrupt presidents and one of the most popular during his time in office.
2: 1924: Calvin Coolidge & Charles Dawes(R) v John W Davis & Charles W Bryan(D) v Robert La Follette (Progressive)
15,723,789 to 8,386,242 to 4,831,706 (7,337,547 differential)
54% to 28.8% (25.2%)
382 to 136 to 13 electors
Davis, a southern democrat and La Follete, a Wisconsin progressive, split the D vote, making the landslide appear larger than it really was. Harding and Coolidge presided over the bubble that led to the great depression
3: 1936: FDR & John Nance Garner v Alf Landon and Frank Knox
27,747,636 to 16,679,543 (11,068,093 differential)
60.8% to 36.5% (24.3%)
523 to 8 electors.
FDR, his policies successful at beating back the depression, carried all but two states: VT and ME
4: 1972: Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew vs George McGovern & Sargent Shriver
47,168,710 to 29,173,222 (17,995,480 difference)
60.7% to 37.5% (23.2%)
520 to 17 electors
McGovern was forced to change VPs after the convention and Nixon ran a terribly dirty campaign, which included the watergate breakin.
5: 1964: LBJ & Hubert Humphrey vs Barry Goldwater & William Miller
43,127,041 to 27,175,754 (15,951,287 difference)
61.1% to 38.5% (22.6%)
486 to 52 electors
Goldwater made a lot of noise about using A-bombs against North Vietnam, which scared pretty much everybody. He won only his home state Arizona and the deep south.
6: 1904: TR & Charles Fairbanks vs Alton Parker & Henry Davis
7,630,457 to 5,083,880 (2,546,577 difference)
56.4% to 37.6% (18.8%)
336 to 140 electors
Incumbent TR was successful in foreign affairs and trustbusting, and immensely popular. He'd have easily won a third term but he elevated his protege, Taft, who turned against his successful policies.
7: 1984: Ronald Reagan & GHW Bush vs Walter Mondale & Geraldine Ferraro
54,455,472 to 37,577,352 (16,878,120 difference)
58.8% to 40.6% (18.2%)
525 to 13 electors.
Reagan touted his "Morning In America" as he presided over the end of the 10 year stagflation caused by the multiple OPEC oil embargoes. Mondale won only his home state and DC
8: 1932: FDR & John Nance Garner vs Herbert Hoover & Charles Curtis
22,821,277 to 15,761,254 (7,060,023 difference)
57.4% to 39.7% (17.7%)
472 to 59 electors
Hoover presided over the start of the Great Depression and exacerbated it immensely with his misguided policies.
9: 1928: Herbert Hoover & Charles Curtis vs Al Smith and Joe Robinson
21,427,123 to 15,015,464 (6,411,659 difference)
58.2% to 40.8% (17.4%)
444 to 87 electors
Hoover, presiding over the continuing bubble, ran against Smith, the first Catholic to run for president.
10: 1832: Andrew Jackson & Martin van Buren vs Henry Clay & John Sergeant
701,780 to 484,205 (217,575 difference)
54.2% to 37.4% (16.8%)
219 to 49 electors
127M people voted in the 2012 election. Inexplicably, there are at least 50 million people who will vote for Trump, despite, or perhaps because of his open dishonesty and appalling behavior, or any Republican, no matter how grotesquely unqualified the candidate is. At this moment, fivethirtyeight.com has Trump at 42.7% and Clinton at 49.2%, a 6.5% difference. If these numbers hold and there are 130M votes cast, Trump will get 55.5M and Hillary 63.9M votes, an 8.4M vote difference. It's a good attempt so far, but he's got to alienate a lot more voters to get the Yuugest landslide in history. He is certainly giving it his best shot.
07 October 2016
Seattle Minimum Wage
There's a widely held belief that the minimum wage hurts low wage employment. There's basically no evidence of this.
Washington state has one of the highest minimum wages in the country and among the lowest unemployment. The statewide was $9.19 in 2013 and rose to $9.47 at the start of 2015.
Seattle is one of several cities that's voted in a gradual rise to a $15 minimum wage. Prior to 1Apr2015, it was the same as the state, $9.47. On that date, it went up to $10 for small businesses and $11 for big ones. 1Jan2016, it went up a further dollar to $11 for small businesses and $12 for big ones (big is defined by 500 or more workers).
Conservatives insisted that this would surely cause a spike in unemployment. And sure enough, they managed to find one. The very conservative "American Enterprise Institute" put together BLS data that seemed to show it and conservatives and business columnists around the country jumped on board. Here's one from Forbes. Ooh, scary, 9 months (8 actually, but we all know conservatives aren't good with anything that involves numbers) of declining employment.
But wait: here's the same data, charted out to August this year
The pattern is almost exactly the same, and the rest of the MSA only got the statewide wage hike, not the city one. Note also that Seattle's unemployment is almost a point lower than the regional, despite the higher wage, and the difference seems to be the same, irrespective of what Seattle's minimum wage is. From these data, we can't be exactly sure what's causing these fluctuations, but this is pretty good evidence that it's not the minimum wage. It's plainly dominated by events that are taking place at a much larger scale than the city itself. Seattle is the biggest employment hub in the region, but it's not a large enough share to have this universal effect. And of the 5 minimum wage hikes captured in these graphs (1Jan2013, 1Jan2014, 1Jan2015, 1Apr 2015, 1Jan2016), only one of them correlates with climbing unemployment.
Washington state has one of the highest minimum wages in the country and among the lowest unemployment. The statewide was $9.19 in 2013 and rose to $9.47 at the start of 2015.
Seattle is one of several cities that's voted in a gradual rise to a $15 minimum wage. Prior to 1Apr2015, it was the same as the state, $9.47. On that date, it went up to $10 for small businesses and $11 for big ones. 1Jan2016, it went up a further dollar to $11 for small businesses and $12 for big ones (big is defined by 500 or more workers).
Conservatives insisted that this would surely cause a spike in unemployment. And sure enough, they managed to find one. The very conservative "American Enterprise Institute" put together BLS data that seemed to show it and conservatives and business columnists around the country jumped on board. Here's one from Forbes. Ooh, scary, 9 months (8 actually, but we all know conservatives aren't good with anything that involves numbers) of declining employment.
But wait: here's the same data, charted out to August this year
Note that the climb in unemployment seems to have ended, and by August (the latest that data has been compiled for, it was back down almost to the low. Well then, couldn't it have been lower without the burden of the high minimum wage? Perhaps, but notice that the biggest declines took place after the second hike, which was almost double the size of the first hike. And mysteriously, the sharpest drop occurred after the statewide wage hike that took place that January.
But here's the regional data. Seattle (population 630K) is the biggest city in King County (pop 2M), and the whole thing is in the Seattle Tacoma Bellevue Metropolitan Statistical Area (pop 3.7M)
The pattern is almost exactly the same, and the rest of the MSA only got the statewide wage hike, not the city one. Note also that Seattle's unemployment is almost a point lower than the regional, despite the higher wage, and the difference seems to be the same, irrespective of what Seattle's minimum wage is. From these data, we can't be exactly sure what's causing these fluctuations, but this is pretty good evidence that it's not the minimum wage. It's plainly dominated by events that are taking place at a much larger scale than the city itself. Seattle is the biggest employment hub in the region, but it's not a large enough share to have this universal effect. And of the 5 minimum wage hikes captured in these graphs (1Jan2013, 1Jan2014, 1Jan2015, 1Apr 2015, 1Jan2016), only one of them correlates with climbing unemployment.
This author makes a pretty good case that the insistence is not, and never has been, about the minimum wage depressing employment, but about employers wanting to keep their workers a little bit scared and desperate. Scared and desperate workers don't make waves, like demanding better wages or safer working conditions.
20 September 2016
2016 Calendar
Fri 1 Jan New Year's Day
Mon 18 Jan Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Tue 2 Feb Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 7 Feb Superbowl L, Santa Clara, CA
Mon 15 Feb Presidents Day (Holiday)
Sun 13 Mar Daylight Savings Time begins
Mon 20 Mar 04:30UT (19 Mar 21:30PDT) Spring Equinox
Sun Mar 27 Easter
Mon 1 May May Day (midspring)
Mon 30 May Memorial Day (Holiday)
Sun 5 Jun Ramadan begins
Mon 20 Jun 22:34UT (15:34PDT) Summer Solstice
Mon 4 Jul Independence Day (Holiday)
Tue 5 Jul Ramadan ends
Mon 1 Aug Midsummer day
Mon 5 Sep Labor Day (Holiday)
Thu 22 Sep 14:21UT (07:21PDT) Autumn Equinox
Sun 2 Oct Sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5777
Mon 10 Oct Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Wed 12 Oct Yom Kippur
Mon 31 Oct Hallowe'en
Tue 1 Nov Mid autumn day
Sun 6 Nov Daylight Savings Time ends
Tue 8 Nov Election Day
Fri 11 Nov Veterans Day
Thu 24 Nov Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 25 Nov Holiday
Thu 21 Dec 10:44UT (02:44PST) Winter Solstice
Sat 24 Dec Sundown Hannuka begins
Sun 25 Dec Christmas (Holiday)
Mon 26 Dec Holiday
Sun 1 Jan Sundown Hannuka ends
Days off work in bold
Astronomical events in italic
Mon 18 Jan Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Tue 2 Feb Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 7 Feb Superbowl L, Santa Clara, CA
Mon 15 Feb Presidents Day (Holiday)
Sun 13 Mar Daylight Savings Time begins
Mon 20 Mar 04:30UT (19 Mar 21:30PDT) Spring Equinox
Sun Mar 27 Easter
Mon 1 May May Day (midspring)
Mon 30 May Memorial Day (Holiday)
Sun 5 Jun Ramadan begins
Mon 20 Jun 22:34UT (15:34PDT) Summer Solstice
Mon 4 Jul Independence Day (Holiday)
Tue 5 Jul Ramadan ends
Mon 1 Aug Midsummer day
Mon 5 Sep Labor Day (Holiday)
Thu 22 Sep 14:21UT (07:21PDT) Autumn Equinox
Sun 2 Oct Sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5777
Mon 10 Oct Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Wed 12 Oct Yom Kippur
Mon 31 Oct Hallowe'en
Tue 1 Nov Mid autumn day
Sun 6 Nov Daylight Savings Time ends
Tue 8 Nov Election Day
Fri 11 Nov Veterans Day
Thu 24 Nov Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 25 Nov Holiday
Thu 21 Dec 10:44UT (02:44PST) Winter Solstice
Sat 24 Dec Sundown Hannuka begins
Sun 25 Dec Christmas (Holiday)
Mon 26 Dec Holiday
Sun 1 Jan Sundown Hannuka ends
Days off work in bold
Astronomical events in italic
2017 Calendar
Sun 1 Jan New Year's Day
Mon 2 Jan Holiday
Mon 16 Jan Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Fri 20 Jan Inauguration Day
Thu 2 Feb Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 5 Feb Superbowl LI, Houston, TX
Mon 20 Feb Presidents Day (Holiday)
Sun 12 Mar Daylight Savings Time begins
Mon 20 Mar 10:28UT (03:28PDT) Spring Equinox
Sun 16 Apr Easter
Mon 1 May May Day (midspring)
Sat 27 May Ramadan begins
Mon 29 May Memorial Day (Holiday)
Wed 21 Jun 04:24UT (20 Jun 21:24PDT) Summer Solstice
Sun 25 Jun Ramadan ends
Tue 4 Jul Independence Day (Holiday)
Tue 1 Aug Midsummer day
Mon 4 Sep Labor Day (Holiday)
Wed 20 Sep sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5778
Fri 22 Sep 20:02UT (13:02PDT) Autumn Equinox
Fri 29 Sep sundown Yom Kippur
Mon 9 Oct Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Fri 13 Oct Friday the 13th
Fri 31 Oct Hallowe'en
Sat 1 Nov Mid autumn day
Sun 2 Nov Daylight Savings Time ends
Sat 11 Nov Veterans Day
Thu 23 Nov Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 24 Nov Holiday
Tue 12 Dec Sundown Hannuka begins
Wed 20 Dec Sundown Hannuka ends
Thu 21 Dec 16:28UT (08:28PST) Winter Solstice
Mon 25 Dec Christmas (Holiday)
Days off work in bold
Astronomical events in italic
Mon 2 Jan Holiday
Mon 16 Jan Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Fri 20 Jan Inauguration Day
Thu 2 Feb Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 5 Feb Superbowl LI, Houston, TX
Mon 20 Feb Presidents Day (Holiday)
Sun 12 Mar Daylight Savings Time begins
Mon 20 Mar 10:28UT (03:28PDT) Spring Equinox
Sun 16 Apr Easter
Mon 1 May May Day (midspring)
Sat 27 May Ramadan begins
Mon 29 May Memorial Day (Holiday)
Wed 21 Jun 04:24UT (20 Jun 21:24PDT) Summer Solstice
Sun 25 Jun Ramadan ends
Tue 4 Jul Independence Day (Holiday)
Tue 1 Aug Midsummer day
Mon 4 Sep Labor Day (Holiday)
Wed 20 Sep sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5778
Fri 22 Sep 20:02UT (13:02PDT) Autumn Equinox
Fri 29 Sep sundown Yom Kippur
Mon 9 Oct Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Fri 13 Oct Friday the 13th
Fri 31 Oct Hallowe'en
Sat 1 Nov Mid autumn day
Sun 2 Nov Daylight Savings Time ends
Sat 11 Nov Veterans Day
Thu 23 Nov Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 24 Nov Holiday
Tue 12 Dec Sundown Hannuka begins
Wed 20 Dec Sundown Hannuka ends
Thu 21 Dec 16:28UT (08:28PST) Winter Solstice
Mon 25 Dec Christmas (Holiday)
Days off work in bold
Astronomical events in italic
15 September 2016
Life on Other Planets?
Is there life on other planets? Of course there is. There are 100 billion stars in this galaxy and it looks like the majority of them have planets. There are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. that's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 septillion) stars with planets. most of them will not be inhabited, but even if only one in a trillion is inhabited, that's 10 billion planets with life. I'm confident will be far higher than that.
The circumstances that allow life as we understand it are fairly narrow:
the only specific chemistry that this requires is water. Our life is based on carbon and water, but silicon or potentially any other chemistry is conceivable.
So far, there is only one planet that we know meets all these criteria, and it's the one we live on. About 3000 exoplanets have been detected so far and only one of them doesn't have obvious disqualifying factors. The Kepler spacecraft is looking at 145,000 stars and has only detected planets on a few thousand of them. The mechanism used wouldn't detect a system with one of the poles pointed at us--around half of the stars examined--and virtually all qualifying planets are below the minimum size that can be detected with Kepler.
Of course, it may not be necessary for the physics we're familiar with to be relevant at all:
They're Made Out of Meat
A Fire Upon the Deep
The Drake equation:
calculates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that might be able to generate signals that we can detect. Most of the parameters are unknown.
R* is the rate of star creation (known)
fp is the fraction of stars that have planets (still unknown but appears to substantial)
ne is the number of planets per such star that could contain life (still unknown, but in our system, if we count all moons and planets, it's about 2%)
fl is the fraction that actually go on to develop life (totally unknown)
fi is the fraction that develop intelligent life (totally unknown)
fc is the fraction that release detectable signals into space. (totally unknown)
L is the average length that such civilizations are able to communicate (totally unknown)
he omitted one: fraction that are close enough that any signal might be detected. It's hard to imagine this coming from anywhere outside of our galaxy and probably only the local quarter.
The first four terms address the same question I'm asking. The only one that's still completely unknown is fl, the fraction of planets or moons that actually develop life. The earliest fossil record found so far of life on earth is about 3.5 Billion years ago. The first time life as we know it could possibly have formed--the first time that liquid water was available on earth--was about 4.4 Billion years ago. So we know life started at some time in the first 900m years that it was possible. There's not much left of the fossil record from that long ago, so it's probable that it was a lot longer than 3.5B year ago.
Life tooled along making stromatolites and other primative things, until about 1.2B years ago, some protozoa figured out how to reproduce sexually. This created lots of new things: species that would breed true, yet allowed a lot of very small variation, to allow evolution by natural selection to take place. It took another 650m years for the real excitement to happen, in what's called the Cambrian Explosion, when all of the multicellular phyla of plants and animals evolved.
So we took at least 3 Billion years to develop above the protazoa stage (and most of that to develop to the protazoa stage), and more than another half billion years to develop intelligence. if this is typical, chances are pretty good that whatever life we find will be very, very simple. We know that over 3/4ths of the time that life has been possible on earth, that it has existed. It is entirely possible that the first life occurred in the first few million years, or even earlier. As it stands, it seems like that 3/4ths is a plausible guess for fl.
So far, we have only sent missions capable of detecting life to one of the extraterrestrial bodies in our planet where life would be at all possible, Mars, and we know that it's unlikely there because atmospheric pressure is too low to sustain liquid water and temperature too high to allow a permanent frozen shell. There are a handful of moons that probably do have liquid water, around Jupiter and Saturn, although in all cases, it's under a very thick layer of ice. Until we find out whether there is life there, we really have no handle on that all important term: fl. But we have the beginnings of a handle on some of the others. Life on about 1 in 200 planets seems possible based on what we know. And since most stars that have any planets probably have multiple planets, the number of stars with life is probably similar.
The circumstances that allow life as we understand it are fairly narrow:
- the ambient temperature needs to stay fairly close to the melting point of water: a little above it and not too far below it. too hot and too much of the water will be vapor.
- the ambient temperature can't vary too much.
- enough gravity that most of the water will stay liquid.
- not so much gravity that complex molecules break down.
- enough solar energy to provide a source of energy
- not so much solar that complex molecules will break down
- enough radiation to generate some mutation.
- not so much that a species can't be stable long enough to reproduce widely.
- has another big planet in the same system that cleans out most of the asteroids
- has a relatively circular orbit (to keep temperature constant)
the only specific chemistry that this requires is water. Our life is based on carbon and water, but silicon or potentially any other chemistry is conceivable.
So far, there is only one planet that we know meets all these criteria, and it's the one we live on. About 3000 exoplanets have been detected so far and only one of them doesn't have obvious disqualifying factors. The Kepler spacecraft is looking at 145,000 stars and has only detected planets on a few thousand of them. The mechanism used wouldn't detect a system with one of the poles pointed at us--around half of the stars examined--and virtually all qualifying planets are below the minimum size that can be detected with Kepler.
Of course, it may not be necessary for the physics we're familiar with to be relevant at all:
They're Made Out of Meat
A Fire Upon the Deep
The Drake equation:
calculates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that might be able to generate signals that we can detect. Most of the parameters are unknown. R* is the rate of star creation (known)
fp is the fraction of stars that have planets (still unknown but appears to substantial)
ne is the number of planets per such star that could contain life (still unknown, but in our system, if we count all moons and planets, it's about 2%)
fl is the fraction that actually go on to develop life (totally unknown)
fi is the fraction that develop intelligent life (totally unknown)
fc is the fraction that release detectable signals into space. (totally unknown)
L is the average length that such civilizations are able to communicate (totally unknown)
he omitted one: fraction that are close enough that any signal might be detected. It's hard to imagine this coming from anywhere outside of our galaxy and probably only the local quarter.
The first four terms address the same question I'm asking. The only one that's still completely unknown is fl, the fraction of planets or moons that actually develop life. The earliest fossil record found so far of life on earth is about 3.5 Billion years ago. The first time life as we know it could possibly have formed--the first time that liquid water was available on earth--was about 4.4 Billion years ago. So we know life started at some time in the first 900m years that it was possible. There's not much left of the fossil record from that long ago, so it's probable that it was a lot longer than 3.5B year ago.
Life tooled along making stromatolites and other primative things, until about 1.2B years ago, some protozoa figured out how to reproduce sexually. This created lots of new things: species that would breed true, yet allowed a lot of very small variation, to allow evolution by natural selection to take place. It took another 650m years for the real excitement to happen, in what's called the Cambrian Explosion, when all of the multicellular phyla of plants and animals evolved.
So we took at least 3 Billion years to develop above the protazoa stage (and most of that to develop to the protazoa stage), and more than another half billion years to develop intelligence. if this is typical, chances are pretty good that whatever life we find will be very, very simple. We know that over 3/4ths of the time that life has been possible on earth, that it has existed. It is entirely possible that the first life occurred in the first few million years, or even earlier. As it stands, it seems like that 3/4ths is a plausible guess for fl.
So far, we have only sent missions capable of detecting life to one of the extraterrestrial bodies in our planet where life would be at all possible, Mars, and we know that it's unlikely there because atmospheric pressure is too low to sustain liquid water and temperature too high to allow a permanent frozen shell. There are a handful of moons that probably do have liquid water, around Jupiter and Saturn, although in all cases, it's under a very thick layer of ice. Until we find out whether there is life there, we really have no handle on that all important term: fl. But we have the beginnings of a handle on some of the others. Life on about 1 in 200 planets seems possible based on what we know. And since most stars that have any planets probably have multiple planets, the number of stars with life is probably similar.
11 September 2016
September 11th
15 years ago today, 19 Arab guys, 15 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from UAE, one each from Egypt and Lebanon, funded by a wealthy scion of the Saudi regime and partly inspired by the same Wahhabi fundamentalist crackpotism that inspires the Saudi regime, attacked America and killed about 3000 of us.
Our initial response was to invade Afghanistan, which was a failed state and not involved in the attack, but some of the warring parties allowed some of bin Laden's other projects to train there and it appears that bin Laden himself was there for a time. It didn't really address what had caused the attacks, but it made a little progress against Afghanistan's real problems. But like our efforts 20 years earlier, after the first superficial successes, we gave up on the real solutions (e.g. schools and a way for ordinary Afghans to make a decent living) and moved on to making yet another failed state in Iraq.
All together, our response to the September 11th attacks have killed more than 3 times as many US and allied soldiers, wounded far more than that, killed hundreds of thousands in the countries we've attacked, exacerbated the problems of Afghanistan, created newly failed states in Iraq and Syria where there had been stable states before, and created a far more deadly terrorist organization in ISIS than bin Laden's al Qaeda ever was.
By any standard I can think of, the "war" on terror has given a huge victory to the terrorists, and to the cause of nihilism in general.
The Saudi regime in Arabia is extremely repressive, and their huge wealth allows them to stay in power in spite of it. The Arab guys who attacked us 15 years ago knew there was no point in attacking their oppressor. As long as the money keeps rolling in, the family of ibn Saud will use it to retain power. So they attacked the enabler of their oppression.
Meanwhile, we have been quietly increasing development of US petroleum reserves. Corrected for inflation, the price of gasoline is about where it was in the mid '70s, down from all-time highs. The Saudi are feeling the bite, but they're still making good money. But more important than that, we've been installing renewable energy sources, mostly wind and solar, at a rapidly increasing rate. In another decade or so, we may be able to stop buying buying from them entirely. Once that happens, and the profligacy of the Saudi family burns through all that money, there will be regime change in Arabia.
That will be a victory for all of us.
Our initial response was to invade Afghanistan, which was a failed state and not involved in the attack, but some of the warring parties allowed some of bin Laden's other projects to train there and it appears that bin Laden himself was there for a time. It didn't really address what had caused the attacks, but it made a little progress against Afghanistan's real problems. But like our efforts 20 years earlier, after the first superficial successes, we gave up on the real solutions (e.g. schools and a way for ordinary Afghans to make a decent living) and moved on to making yet another failed state in Iraq.
All together, our response to the September 11th attacks have killed more than 3 times as many US and allied soldiers, wounded far more than that, killed hundreds of thousands in the countries we've attacked, exacerbated the problems of Afghanistan, created newly failed states in Iraq and Syria where there had been stable states before, and created a far more deadly terrorist organization in ISIS than bin Laden's al Qaeda ever was.
By any standard I can think of, the "war" on terror has given a huge victory to the terrorists, and to the cause of nihilism in general.
The Saudi regime in Arabia is extremely repressive, and their huge wealth allows them to stay in power in spite of it. The Arab guys who attacked us 15 years ago knew there was no point in attacking their oppressor. As long as the money keeps rolling in, the family of ibn Saud will use it to retain power. So they attacked the enabler of their oppression.
Meanwhile, we have been quietly increasing development of US petroleum reserves. Corrected for inflation, the price of gasoline is about where it was in the mid '70s, down from all-time highs. The Saudi are feeling the bite, but they're still making good money. But more important than that, we've been installing renewable energy sources, mostly wind and solar, at a rapidly increasing rate. In another decade or so, we may be able to stop buying buying from them entirely. Once that happens, and the profligacy of the Saudi family burns through all that money, there will be regime change in Arabia.
That will be a victory for all of us.
25 August 2016
Did America Stop Being Great?
We didn't stop being great, not really, but there's a real collection of problems that are making life not so great for a lot of people. The picture below shows a particularly important manifestation of this. It's from this article:
http://www.eoionline.org/blog/x-marks-the-spot-where-inequality-took-root-dig-here/
article
from that article
Something significant happened in the '70s to produce that shocking and very consequential discontinuity.
several things happened all at once: ever since the reforms that followed the great depression, the people that felt they had been hurt by those reforms (they are few in number, but they're very very rich) had been trying to undermine them and the gigantic success of the economic theory that worked extremely well for almost half a century. in the mid '70s, several things happened all at once:
during the 30s through 70s, we did such a good job with infrastructure that it took decades for the damage the EMH and the rest had caused to be obvious. The middle class had plenty of savings, the roads were built looking ahead to 30 years or so of growth and wear, and so forth. But now it's gone. if we actually do want to restore the things that were good about the 40s-90s, we need to unwind as much of this as we can.
There's probably not much we can do about shipping. But all of the rest are conscious choices we have made. The most catastrophic was the election of Reagan, but we can repudiate the changes he made to union rights, to public infrastructure support, to management of public resources.
We need to make regulations that force private corporations to be good citizens: minimum wage, union protections, environmental protection. Once one business in a market has begun cheating, they all need to, in order to compete. We need to break that cycle. Business groups might be able to do this but their track record is abysmal. Regulation, unfortunately, is the only way. If done right, it will hurt all by exactly the same amount, which means all will keep their present markets.
We need to reverse Marquette v First of Omaha somehow. Probably the only way is a national usury law. I'm thinking it should be flexible and adaptive. For example, the Prime Lending Rate plus 6. presently the prime is about 3.5%, so this would be a 9.5% cap on loan interest. During more normal times, the prime is closer to 7% so this would be 13% cap. If predatory lenders can't make a profit at that rate, that's a good thing: they won't be making ruinous loans. Credit card companies are doing good business at 13% today.
Note that Donald Trump is a supporter of many of the things that have made us less great. To the Donald, making America great again is about making Donald Trump rich at the expense of everybody else.
1 The reason OPEC did is because the US gave its whole-hearted support to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. OPEC is very dominated by Saudi Arabia. After a second shortage in the late '70s, the US administration changed its policy to kowtow to the Saudis at every opportunity. Reagan's point man on this policy was George HW Bush.
2 A lot of South America had been dominated by "the Chicago Boys", a group of economists who got their training under Friedman at the University of Chicago.
3 The 1973 coup in Chile was to remove (and murder) a popular and effective socialist (Allende) and replace him with a puppet that was friendly to Friedman's ideas (Pinochet) who deregulated much of Chile's business. As usually happens when this is tried, economy quickly collapsed. Well, they said, the only thing for it is even more freedom for business. when the people squawked about mass unemployment and poverty wages for the few jobs there were, where before the coup they'd had good jobs and a booming economy, the leaders of the rebellion were "disappeared". 7 years later, Pinochet was soundly defeated in an election, so Pinochet rewrote the constitution to let him keep power. Pinochet and his administration is gone now but Chile has not recovered from the damage he did. This was the most egregious example, but Brazil, Argentina, Greece, Iran and several others were subjected to similar "experiments" in capitalism which all failed miserably. Pretty much all of the trouble we've been having with Iran stem from our similar 1953 coup.
4 Lincoln had given massive tracts of land to the railroads and homesteaders. There was a strategy behind this, about expanding infrastructure and opportunity for millions of Americans, and the country got far more in return than it gave up. But what Reagan did was give away forests and mineral reserves to businesses who wanted despoil the land and take the profits for themselves, leaving the rest of us worse off than we were before.
5 Jack Welch, long time president of GE, was during his tenure a major supporter of this idea. Since he retired, he's realized the error of his ways and has taken to calling it "the dumbest idea in the world". http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/#152d2c682224. I'm loath to use superlatives, especially when there are so many other incredibly dumb ideas to choose from, but it's possible he might be right.
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Minneapolis_v._First_of_Omaha_Service_Corp.
http://www.eoionline.org/blog/x-marks-the-spot-where-inequality-took-root-dig-here/
article
from that article
Something significant happened in the '70s to produce that shocking and very consequential discontinuity.
several things happened all at once: ever since the reforms that followed the great depression, the people that felt they had been hurt by those reforms (they are few in number, but they're very very rich) had been trying to undermine them and the gigantic success of the economic theory that worked extremely well for almost half a century. in the mid '70s, several things happened all at once:
- OPEC created an artificial shortage of oil1. this created an unusual type of recession, called a supply side recession, which is accompanied by high inflation, where normal, demand side recessions have deflation or deflationary pressure. The Fed was not able to do anything to restore the oil supply, so the problem persisted and president Nixon thrashed around with ineffective policies like price controls that just made everything worse.
- Milton Friedman won the Nobel in 1976, giving him a potent platform, despite the obvious, catastrophic failure of his ideas when implemented2 in Chile3, Argentina, Brazil, Iran. Reagan embraced them wholeheartedly and began implementing them here as fast as he could: killing unions and infrastructure projects, giving away government resources (especially forests) willy nilly4, allowing the minimum wage to fall behind inflation, etc. But they'd learned how important propaganda is and they used it well. Obama is the first president since then to admit some skepticism.
- One of those ideas was that shareholder value5 was the only thing that mattered, and that such issues as product quality, responsible behavior in the community, how they treat employees, etc., are accurately reflected in the stock price. This is one of a collection of ideas that are collectively called the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. It is wrong, catastrophically so, but the double whammy of the Nobel and the OPEC-caused recession seemed to give it credibility. It tended to encourage self serving or sometimes even fraudulent behavior to prop up the stock price, instead of better products and better corporate behavior. And it tended to make the sort of people who can afford to buy influence even richer, so they chose to buy influence that reinforced the idea.
- In 1978, the supreme court ruled6 that banks can charge up to whatever the interest limit is, in the state in which they are chartered no matter what the rules are where the business is being done. this immediately led to several states eliminating their usury laws and made the predatory lending business possible, as well as the only slightly less predatory credit card business.
- availability of effective air conditioning made it practical to employ industrial and office workers in the south, so many industries moved their worker base to "right to work" states, where it was legal for businesses to obstruct union organizers. This was a long trend but the '70s marks a big transition.
- containerized shipping made it practical to outsource manufacturing to far away places, where they have even fewer worker protections and lower wages than in the American South.
- Free Trade agreements exacerbated the ease of outsourcing.
- the people who were old enough to remember and understand the great depression first hand started dying off. Policies like Glass-Steagall, the Securities Act of 1933, and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 were enormously effective and they were all weakened in the 70s through 90s.
during the 30s through 70s, we did such a good job with infrastructure that it took decades for the damage the EMH and the rest had caused to be obvious. The middle class had plenty of savings, the roads were built looking ahead to 30 years or so of growth and wear, and so forth. But now it's gone. if we actually do want to restore the things that were good about the 40s-90s, we need to unwind as much of this as we can.
There's probably not much we can do about shipping. But all of the rest are conscious choices we have made. The most catastrophic was the election of Reagan, but we can repudiate the changes he made to union rights, to public infrastructure support, to management of public resources.
We need to make regulations that force private corporations to be good citizens: minimum wage, union protections, environmental protection. Once one business in a market has begun cheating, they all need to, in order to compete. We need to break that cycle. Business groups might be able to do this but their track record is abysmal. Regulation, unfortunately, is the only way. If done right, it will hurt all by exactly the same amount, which means all will keep their present markets.
We need to reverse Marquette v First of Omaha somehow. Probably the only way is a national usury law. I'm thinking it should be flexible and adaptive. For example, the Prime Lending Rate plus 6. presently the prime is about 3.5%, so this would be a 9.5% cap on loan interest. During more normal times, the prime is closer to 7% so this would be 13% cap. If predatory lenders can't make a profit at that rate, that's a good thing: they won't be making ruinous loans. Credit card companies are doing good business at 13% today.
Note that Donald Trump is a supporter of many of the things that have made us less great. To the Donald, making America great again is about making Donald Trump rich at the expense of everybody else.
1 The reason OPEC did is because the US gave its whole-hearted support to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. OPEC is very dominated by Saudi Arabia. After a second shortage in the late '70s, the US administration changed its policy to kowtow to the Saudis at every opportunity. Reagan's point man on this policy was George HW Bush.
2 A lot of South America had been dominated by "the Chicago Boys", a group of economists who got their training under Friedman at the University of Chicago.
3 The 1973 coup in Chile was to remove (and murder) a popular and effective socialist (Allende) and replace him with a puppet that was friendly to Friedman's ideas (Pinochet) who deregulated much of Chile's business. As usually happens when this is tried, economy quickly collapsed. Well, they said, the only thing for it is even more freedom for business. when the people squawked about mass unemployment and poverty wages for the few jobs there were, where before the coup they'd had good jobs and a booming economy, the leaders of the rebellion were "disappeared". 7 years later, Pinochet was soundly defeated in an election, so Pinochet rewrote the constitution to let him keep power. Pinochet and his administration is gone now but Chile has not recovered from the damage he did. This was the most egregious example, but Brazil, Argentina, Greece, Iran and several others were subjected to similar "experiments" in capitalism which all failed miserably. Pretty much all of the trouble we've been having with Iran stem from our similar 1953 coup.
4 Lincoln had given massive tracts of land to the railroads and homesteaders. There was a strategy behind this, about expanding infrastructure and opportunity for millions of Americans, and the country got far more in return than it gave up. But what Reagan did was give away forests and mineral reserves to businesses who wanted despoil the land and take the profits for themselves, leaving the rest of us worse off than we were before.
5 Jack Welch, long time president of GE, was during his tenure a major supporter of this idea. Since he retired, he's realized the error of his ways and has taken to calling it "the dumbest idea in the world". http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/#152d2c682224. I'm loath to use superlatives, especially when there are so many other incredibly dumb ideas to choose from, but it's possible he might be right.
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Minneapolis_v._First_of_Omaha_Service_Corp.
05 August 2016
Kakistocracy
I just learned a new word. My source is this WSJ article, but it's in wikipedia, too. Kakistocracy is from greek: Kakistos is the superlative of Kakos (κακός), meaning bad or evil, so Kakistocracy is government by the worst. The wikipedia article interprets that to be rule by the stupidest. But I don't think that's right. It's government by the worst--the most corrupt, the most willing to lie, cheat, steal, kill for their own (or whoever is paying or controlling them) self interest.
In other words, pretty much what we get when we let the big banks, big oil, big military companies, the NRA, etc., have too much power in government. Kakistocracy, Oligarchy, and Plutocracy are not mutually exclusive...in fact, they usually go together. If you understand Gresham's Law, it's pretty much inevitable that it happens when you fail to regulate the powerful sufficiently: The getting of power is always a competition. If cheating is tolerated, those who cheat will quickly gain enough advantage that those who don't cheat will either be driven out of the competition or forced to begin cheating. So it's inevitable that those that cheat the worst have the most power.
One of our parties has been fundamentally Kakistocrat for a long time, has stacked the supreme court with pro-corruption justices, has blocked enforcement of monopoly, financial, environmental, etc., regulation, has taken us into self destructive (but good for the plutocrats) wars. It became almost literally kakistocrat when it began following the tea party script to try to get their way by mucking up the works of government...and not really succeeding at anything but mucking up the works. The other party has been a feckless patsy...target for the Kakistorats lies, and occasionally duplicating their destructive policies.
A few pertinent references
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/tattoos-incompetence-and-the-heritage-foundation
http://www.timesherald.com/article/JR/20150729/NEWS/150729821
https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486272745
In other words, pretty much what we get when we let the big banks, big oil, big military companies, the NRA, etc., have too much power in government. Kakistocracy, Oligarchy, and Plutocracy are not mutually exclusive...in fact, they usually go together. If you understand Gresham's Law, it's pretty much inevitable that it happens when you fail to regulate the powerful sufficiently: The getting of power is always a competition. If cheating is tolerated, those who cheat will quickly gain enough advantage that those who don't cheat will either be driven out of the competition or forced to begin cheating. So it's inevitable that those that cheat the worst have the most power.
One of our parties has been fundamentally Kakistocrat for a long time, has stacked the supreme court with pro-corruption justices, has blocked enforcement of monopoly, financial, environmental, etc., regulation, has taken us into self destructive (but good for the plutocrats) wars. It became almost literally kakistocrat when it began following the tea party script to try to get their way by mucking up the works of government...and not really succeeding at anything but mucking up the works. The other party has been a feckless patsy...target for the Kakistorats lies, and occasionally duplicating their destructive policies.
A few pertinent references
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/tattoos-incompetence-and-the-heritage-foundation
http://www.timesherald.com/article/JR/20150729/NEWS/150729821
https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486272745
04 July 2016
Pesterware
The first pesterware was advertising on TV. I understand the purpose of advertising and to some extent I even embrace it. It pays for some or all of the desired programming or at least makes it less expensive--which enables production of more. Once in a rare while, I even see something in an ad that I want to buy.
TV advertising has crossed the line in several ways. When they run the same ad over and over and over and over and over, I initially get bored, but before long I get irritated. A little repetition is understandable: people miss the beginning of the show, go to the toilet during ads, etc. I skip as many as I can with a Digital Video Recorder (or its predecessor a VCR). But at some point it becomes so annoying that I no longer watch the channel. SciFi and FX are both in this category for me. These guys break up the show into such short slots that I am constantly cursing them--a 90 minute movie extended to 3 hours, in 5 minute spurts, often with substantial parts of the movie cut out. No thanks.
Another way they irritate me is by putting a bug, splash or crawl over the screen. A typical example: a news program will show some video with a banner over it: KWTF BREAKING NEWS!!! and the critical thing will be hidden by the banner. Sometimes they get the banner out of the way, but rarely. A bug or bottom of screen crawl would have been better. (why do they put it away from the bottom, ever? Back in the days of rounded screens, the bottom was a moving target, so I understand why they moved it up then. But since the '70s, screens have been relatively rectangular and technology has eliminated sync and size issues completely. But they're still doing this.) Recently a few channels have been putting a moving bug in the corner, occasionally with an accompanying noise, often loud enough to obscure the programming. Sheesh.
Once upon a time, the government put a limit to advertising on the airwaves: 16 minutes per hour. This is no longer the case but many channels still stick to it.
Computer pesterware has never had such a limitation. Virtually all browsers have a popup blocker and virtually all users have it enabled. So websites have implemented their own popups. The best of them do things in a way that don't interfere and have a little X in the upper right to dismiss them. But many of them can't be dismissed without giving the offender some of your personal data. I boycott such sites. I also run an ad blocker. Many advertisers have figured out how to detect that the blocker is running and a few badger you about it.
In my view, unintrusive advertising is acceptable. If it prevents the content I wanted from being accessed, it is intrusive. If it keeps badgering me, even after I have attempted to dismiss it, it is intrusive. If it makes spurious noises or flashes, it is intrusive. If it takes more than two seconds to figure out how to dismiss it, it is intrusive. If it consumes consequential amounts of network bandwidth, or any other resource on my computer, it is worse than intrusive.
Advertising doesn't have to be pesterware. But when it is, we need to stop it.
TV advertising has crossed the line in several ways. When they run the same ad over and over and over and over and over, I initially get bored, but before long I get irritated. A little repetition is understandable: people miss the beginning of the show, go to the toilet during ads, etc. I skip as many as I can with a Digital Video Recorder (or its predecessor a VCR). But at some point it becomes so annoying that I no longer watch the channel. SciFi and FX are both in this category for me. These guys break up the show into such short slots that I am constantly cursing them--a 90 minute movie extended to 3 hours, in 5 minute spurts, often with substantial parts of the movie cut out. No thanks.
Another way they irritate me is by putting a bug, splash or crawl over the screen. A typical example: a news program will show some video with a banner over it: KWTF BREAKING NEWS!!! and the critical thing will be hidden by the banner. Sometimes they get the banner out of the way, but rarely. A bug or bottom of screen crawl would have been better. (why do they put it away from the bottom, ever? Back in the days of rounded screens, the bottom was a moving target, so I understand why they moved it up then. But since the '70s, screens have been relatively rectangular and technology has eliminated sync and size issues completely. But they're still doing this.) Recently a few channels have been putting a moving bug in the corner, occasionally with an accompanying noise, often loud enough to obscure the programming. Sheesh.
Once upon a time, the government put a limit to advertising on the airwaves: 16 minutes per hour. This is no longer the case but many channels still stick to it.
Computer pesterware has never had such a limitation. Virtually all browsers have a popup blocker and virtually all users have it enabled. So websites have implemented their own popups. The best of them do things in a way that don't interfere and have a little X in the upper right to dismiss them. But many of them can't be dismissed without giving the offender some of your personal data. I boycott such sites. I also run an ad blocker. Many advertisers have figured out how to detect that the blocker is running and a few badger you about it.
In my view, unintrusive advertising is acceptable. If it prevents the content I wanted from being accessed, it is intrusive. If it keeps badgering me, even after I have attempted to dismiss it, it is intrusive. If it makes spurious noises or flashes, it is intrusive. If it takes more than two seconds to figure out how to dismiss it, it is intrusive. If it consumes consequential amounts of network bandwidth, or any other resource on my computer, it is worse than intrusive.
Advertising doesn't have to be pesterware. But when it is, we need to stop it.
Stevens and the West
For some reason, surprisingly many of the early explorers of the American west were named Stevens or Stephens. It's probably just a coincidence. Here's a partial list
Elisha Stephens (1804-1877) was one of the leaders of the Stephens/Murphy/Townsend party. He seems to have been the one to have discovered Donner pass in 1844 and led the group of 50 to what is now the western part of Santa Clara county without any deaths--in fact two babies were born in route. John C Fremont would put it on a map the following year, claiming to have discovered it, resulting in the incompetent Donner party attempting it in Nov 1846, losing 39 of 87 in the process. Stephens would settle on the Arroyo de San Jose de Copertino, so named by the De Anza party, which had camped there in March of 1776. Other settlers would rename the creek in Stephens honor (but misspelling it) and today, the biggest two streets in Cupertino are Stevens Creek Blvd and De Anza Blvd, which cross at Cupertino Corner. Frustrated with how crowded Cupertino was becoming, he sold his land and moved to the area that would become Bakersfield in 1861.
John Frank Stevens (1853-1943) was a surveyor and engineer hired by James J Hill to plan and develop the route for the Great Northern Railroad, which he did with extraordinary skill. Stevens Pass, which he discovered, is named for him. He later would plan the route of the Panama canal and for a little while headed the whole project.
Isaac Stevens (1818-1862) (no relation) was the first governor of Washinton Territory from 1853-1857. He was the one who chose Olympia as the Territorial Capital. He forced the local native tribes all over the territory to sign restrictive treaties, leading to quite a bit of conflict but earning him good support from the White settlers at the time. He was killed in action fighting for the Union in the Battle of Chanitilly in 1862. Stevens County, WA, Lake Stevens, WA, and Fort Stevens, OR, were all named for him, along with numerous schools and streets, a county in Minnesota, and more.
John Lloyd Stephens (1805-1852) was an explorer of Central America. He and his friend Frederick Catherwood rediscovered the ruins of the Mayan civilization in the 1840s and were the first to realize this was a great civilization that had disappeared for hundreds of years. He was also the chief engineer of the Panama railroad, which was instrumental in building the Canal 60 years later.
John H Stevens (1820-1900) the first resident of Minneapolis west of the river.
James B Stephens (1806-1889) one of the earliest settlers of Portland, OR.
Elisha Stephens (1804-1877) was one of the leaders of the Stephens/Murphy/Townsend party. He seems to have been the one to have discovered Donner pass in 1844 and led the group of 50 to what is now the western part of Santa Clara county without any deaths--in fact two babies were born in route. John C Fremont would put it on a map the following year, claiming to have discovered it, resulting in the incompetent Donner party attempting it in Nov 1846, losing 39 of 87 in the process. Stephens would settle on the Arroyo de San Jose de Copertino, so named by the De Anza party, which had camped there in March of 1776. Other settlers would rename the creek in Stephens honor (but misspelling it) and today, the biggest two streets in Cupertino are Stevens Creek Blvd and De Anza Blvd, which cross at Cupertino Corner. Frustrated with how crowded Cupertino was becoming, he sold his land and moved to the area that would become Bakersfield in 1861.
John Frank Stevens (1853-1943) was a surveyor and engineer hired by James J Hill to plan and develop the route for the Great Northern Railroad, which he did with extraordinary skill. Stevens Pass, which he discovered, is named for him. He later would plan the route of the Panama canal and for a little while headed the whole project.
Isaac Stevens (1818-1862) (no relation) was the first governor of Washinton Territory from 1853-1857. He was the one who chose Olympia as the Territorial Capital. He forced the local native tribes all over the territory to sign restrictive treaties, leading to quite a bit of conflict but earning him good support from the White settlers at the time. He was killed in action fighting for the Union in the Battle of Chanitilly in 1862. Stevens County, WA, Lake Stevens, WA, and Fort Stevens, OR, were all named for him, along with numerous schools and streets, a county in Minnesota, and more.
John Lloyd Stephens (1805-1852) was an explorer of Central America. He and his friend Frederick Catherwood rediscovered the ruins of the Mayan civilization in the 1840s and were the first to realize this was a great civilization that had disappeared for hundreds of years. He was also the chief engineer of the Panama railroad, which was instrumental in building the Canal 60 years later.
John H Stevens (1820-1900) the first resident of Minneapolis west of the river.
James B Stephens (1806-1889) one of the earliest settlers of Portland, OR.
18 June 2016
Third Parties
Many people are looking at the fiasco that the Republican Party has become and are thinking that it is likely to die. I certainly agree that it probably should die, but the circumstances do not at all resemble the one time such a thing happened before, and I don't quite see how they can get there.
James Buchanan was the last Whig to be elected president, in 1856. He was an ineffectual compromise leader, and he interfered with the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case to get a decision which made just about everybody extremely angry. The abolition vs slavery tensions were high and Buchanan and his party fanned the flames. The Republicans, supporting abolition and union, were able to capture a lot of the liberals who had been Whigs, and there were a total of four major candidates for President in 1860. Lincoln won the most votes, at 39.8%, and John Bell, the nominee of what was left of the Whigs, who now called themselves the "Constitutional Union Party", got 12.6% of the votes. The Democrats were split into southern and northern, who got 18.1% and 29.5% respectively. Lincoln's famous nemesis, Stephen Douglas, represented the Northern Ds. Had the D's remained united, their candidate would have won the election, but the issue that divided them was the central one of the campaign.
The relevant points of this history for the present election are two: Both parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, were irredeemably divided. This meant that it was possible to win with a plurality without having a majority. (Demographics also meant that the second place party in votes, the Northern Democrats, received the fewest Electors, winning just one state.) This sort of four way split is entirely possible in the 2016 election. The second point was that the moribund party, the liberal Whigs, had a natural, popular and progressive successor, the Republicans, who effectively replaced them. This has no parallel in the present election. The heirs of the name (but none of the policies) of the Republican party are split into 2 groups: Trump enthusiasts and "Establishment" Republicans. Neither group is going to move wholesale to a party or candidate that is not fundamentally whackadoodle conservative. Trump's voters are unlikely to abandon him for anyone, and the establishment is faced with putting up a more acceptable candidate, who will be more conservative than Trump but not as hated as Cruz, or bowing to the inevitable and voting for Trump.
The more rational conservative alternative is the Libertarian candidate, Ron Johnson, who is benefiting greatly by the madness that has gripped the Republican Party.
The real third party proposals are all coming from the left. Bernie earned nearly as many delegates in the primaries and caucuses as Hillary and many of his fans are not quitting, saying they will vote for him or Green candidate Jill Stein. Bernie himself seems to be signalling that he will support Hillary, saying that he will work his heart out to prevent Trump from winning, but still holding out for platform planks.
So it looks like we will have 5 "real" candidates:
Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton
Ron Johnson
Jill Stein
An Establishment Republican to be named later.
If the Rs name a credible person for this last role, that person and Trump will split about 48% of the votes, and Johnson will get 1-3%. If they do not, Trump will get under 40% and Johnson will get 8-10%.
Many people will write in Bernie, but I don't think his name will be on any state ballots, so his votes will be well under 1%. He'll work for Clinton, but how enthusiastic he will be and how many of his voters will vote for her depends upon what happens in the next few weeks. The Bernie Bros are remarkably intransigent and while they may be right on the issues, it will be a disaster if they split non-wingnut vote. If they move wholeheartedly to Stein, she'll get about 10% of the votes and Hillary will get about 40%.
So there's a scenario where it's a close race between Trump and Hillary: if the Rs stay with Trump and too many progressives go to Stein.
This is dangerous. It is possible that the progressive agenda will survive a Trump victory, in a sort of Kropotinist way (i.e., Trump will make things so bad that the progressives win next time), but it's important to realize that Trump is an authoritarian who doesn't believe in civil discourse and the rule of law, and is likely to employ repressive measures to exterminate potential rival groups. If he wins, the next election may be a one candidate referendum, or it may be during World War III.
So: if you live in a state which is either hard blue or hard red: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Utah, Alabama, etc., go ahead and vote your heart. I wish I could do the same thing...I'd vote for Bernie or Jill in a flash. The electoral college gives you that option. But Washington is too close to being a swing state. Even though Hillary is at best my third choice, I must vote for the candidate that is most likely to defeat Trump.
So what does this have to do with third parties? The only way a third party can win if it is replacing an existing party all at once. Nobody is suggesting that the Ds are moribund, and while the Rs are doing a wonderful job of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in this election, only the Trumpsters are likely to form a new party--and they are now running the old one. We can hope that Trump's success will split the conservatives and shine light on the complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of today's Republican party and their corporate masters, but I won't hold my breath.
James Buchanan was the last Whig to be elected president, in 1856. He was an ineffectual compromise leader, and he interfered with the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case to get a decision which made just about everybody extremely angry. The abolition vs slavery tensions were high and Buchanan and his party fanned the flames. The Republicans, supporting abolition and union, were able to capture a lot of the liberals who had been Whigs, and there were a total of four major candidates for President in 1860. Lincoln won the most votes, at 39.8%, and John Bell, the nominee of what was left of the Whigs, who now called themselves the "Constitutional Union Party", got 12.6% of the votes. The Democrats were split into southern and northern, who got 18.1% and 29.5% respectively. Lincoln's famous nemesis, Stephen Douglas, represented the Northern Ds. Had the D's remained united, their candidate would have won the election, but the issue that divided them was the central one of the campaign.
The relevant points of this history for the present election are two: Both parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, were irredeemably divided. This meant that it was possible to win with a plurality without having a majority. (Demographics also meant that the second place party in votes, the Northern Democrats, received the fewest Electors, winning just one state.) This sort of four way split is entirely possible in the 2016 election. The second point was that the moribund party, the liberal Whigs, had a natural, popular and progressive successor, the Republicans, who effectively replaced them. This has no parallel in the present election. The heirs of the name (but none of the policies) of the Republican party are split into 2 groups: Trump enthusiasts and "Establishment" Republicans. Neither group is going to move wholesale to a party or candidate that is not fundamentally whackadoodle conservative. Trump's voters are unlikely to abandon him for anyone, and the establishment is faced with putting up a more acceptable candidate, who will be more conservative than Trump but not as hated as Cruz, or bowing to the inevitable and voting for Trump.
The more rational conservative alternative is the Libertarian candidate, Ron Johnson, who is benefiting greatly by the madness that has gripped the Republican Party.
The real third party proposals are all coming from the left. Bernie earned nearly as many delegates in the primaries and caucuses as Hillary and many of his fans are not quitting, saying they will vote for him or Green candidate Jill Stein. Bernie himself seems to be signalling that he will support Hillary, saying that he will work his heart out to prevent Trump from winning, but still holding out for platform planks.
So it looks like we will have 5 "real" candidates:
Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton
Ron Johnson
Jill Stein
An Establishment Republican to be named later.
If the Rs name a credible person for this last role, that person and Trump will split about 48% of the votes, and Johnson will get 1-3%. If they do not, Trump will get under 40% and Johnson will get 8-10%.
Many people will write in Bernie, but I don't think his name will be on any state ballots, so his votes will be well under 1%. He'll work for Clinton, but how enthusiastic he will be and how many of his voters will vote for her depends upon what happens in the next few weeks. The Bernie Bros are remarkably intransigent and while they may be right on the issues, it will be a disaster if they split non-wingnut vote. If they move wholeheartedly to Stein, she'll get about 10% of the votes and Hillary will get about 40%.
So there's a scenario where it's a close race between Trump and Hillary: if the Rs stay with Trump and too many progressives go to Stein.
This is dangerous. It is possible that the progressive agenda will survive a Trump victory, in a sort of Kropotinist way (i.e., Trump will make things so bad that the progressives win next time), but it's important to realize that Trump is an authoritarian who doesn't believe in civil discourse and the rule of law, and is likely to employ repressive measures to exterminate potential rival groups. If he wins, the next election may be a one candidate referendum, or it may be during World War III.
So: if you live in a state which is either hard blue or hard red: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Utah, Alabama, etc., go ahead and vote your heart. I wish I could do the same thing...I'd vote for Bernie or Jill in a flash. The electoral college gives you that option. But Washington is too close to being a swing state. Even though Hillary is at best my third choice, I must vote for the candidate that is most likely to defeat Trump.
So what does this have to do with third parties? The only way a third party can win if it is replacing an existing party all at once. Nobody is suggesting that the Ds are moribund, and while the Rs are doing a wonderful job of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in this election, only the Trumpsters are likely to form a new party--and they are now running the old one. We can hope that Trump's success will split the conservatives and shine light on the complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of today's Republican party and their corporate masters, but I won't hold my breath.
09 June 2016
Trump the Troll, part III
Trump has been telling us that the judge in his Trump University fraud case, Gonzalo Curiel, is a Mexican and thereby should not be allowed to judge his case. He points out how the judge has repeatedly ruled against him and that he's building a wall to keep Mexicans out. He won't quite be explicit why that would somehow disqualify him, but he's insistent.
This is obviously racist but it's something much worse. It's an attempt to intimidate the judge and tamper with the jury pool.
First, about the judge. Curiel was born in a suburb of Chicago, just across the state line in Indiana, and has a solid record as a judge. He was involved in several cases against Mexican drug cartels and was repeatedly threatened, at least one time that the FBI took pretty seriously and put him under protection for a while. His parents were from Mexico but he's shown no evidence at all of judicial bias or impropriety, and is by any reasonable standard something of a hero.
It occurs to me that the fraud case may be the explanation of Trump's inexplicable run. Trump knows virtually nothing about politics or the obligations of the office he's running for, and shows no real interest in it, other than wanting to have it. But he's a gifted pitchman and is able to get lots of naifs to eat up his every word. Nearly every day he says something that would end the career of any ordinary politician. But Trump is a TV star and has his name on a lot of real estate, which apparently is sufficient for a lot of voters.
It was probably a little over a year ago that it became obvious to Trump that the government's case that he'd committed fraud was pretty solid and that he was facing dozens or even hundreds of counts of fraud, each one of which could earn him up to a year in prison. He turns 70 next week and and is unlikely to be out of prison until he's well into his 80s. His only real chance is to undermine the process somehow--intimidate the judge or contaminate the jury pool or something. Maybe he can get a mistrial. But an ordinary hyper-rich person trying to screw with the judiciary in this way would not go over well and would probably earn him extra prison time. But by an interesting coincidence, more than a dozen people had declared that they were running for the republican presidential nomination. What if Donald joined them and made a lot of noise, especially horrible things about Mexican immigrants. What better pulpit to do things that would trigger a mistrial?
I doubt he ever thought his candidacy would get as far as it has. He knows he doesn't have the aptitude to be president and has said there are lots of parts of the job that he doesn't want to do. Since he was self funding and got a lot of free media, he knew he could stay in until the convention when his anti-Curiel schtick would be most effective, but he wouldn't have to actually run in the national. So he set about submarining his candidacy by saying horrible things. Bizarrely, his fans loved it. Maybe he could actually win. Then, they couldn't try him before impeaching him first, and he could make a deal with his VP to pardon him as soon as he left office, which would end the case. It's not quite clear how Judge Curiel is going to be able to try one of the candidates during the election.
This is obviously speculation...I have no evidence. But it fits the facts at hand.
This is obviously racist but it's something much worse. It's an attempt to intimidate the judge and tamper with the jury pool.
First, about the judge. Curiel was born in a suburb of Chicago, just across the state line in Indiana, and has a solid record as a judge. He was involved in several cases against Mexican drug cartels and was repeatedly threatened, at least one time that the FBI took pretty seriously and put him under protection for a while. His parents were from Mexico but he's shown no evidence at all of judicial bias or impropriety, and is by any reasonable standard something of a hero.
It occurs to me that the fraud case may be the explanation of Trump's inexplicable run. Trump knows virtually nothing about politics or the obligations of the office he's running for, and shows no real interest in it, other than wanting to have it. But he's a gifted pitchman and is able to get lots of naifs to eat up his every word. Nearly every day he says something that would end the career of any ordinary politician. But Trump is a TV star and has his name on a lot of real estate, which apparently is sufficient for a lot of voters.
It was probably a little over a year ago that it became obvious to Trump that the government's case that he'd committed fraud was pretty solid and that he was facing dozens or even hundreds of counts of fraud, each one of which could earn him up to a year in prison. He turns 70 next week and and is unlikely to be out of prison until he's well into his 80s. His only real chance is to undermine the process somehow--intimidate the judge or contaminate the jury pool or something. Maybe he can get a mistrial. But an ordinary hyper-rich person trying to screw with the judiciary in this way would not go over well and would probably earn him extra prison time. But by an interesting coincidence, more than a dozen people had declared that they were running for the republican presidential nomination. What if Donald joined them and made a lot of noise, especially horrible things about Mexican immigrants. What better pulpit to do things that would trigger a mistrial?
I doubt he ever thought his candidacy would get as far as it has. He knows he doesn't have the aptitude to be president and has said there are lots of parts of the job that he doesn't want to do. Since he was self funding and got a lot of free media, he knew he could stay in until the convention when his anti-Curiel schtick would be most effective, but he wouldn't have to actually run in the national. So he set about submarining his candidacy by saying horrible things. Bizarrely, his fans loved it. Maybe he could actually win. Then, they couldn't try him before impeaching him first, and he could make a deal with his VP to pardon him as soon as he left office, which would end the case. It's not quite clear how Judge Curiel is going to be able to try one of the candidates during the election.
This is obviously speculation...I have no evidence. But it fits the facts at hand.
02 June 2016
The Third Commandment
Pennsylvania Representative Brian Sims observes that: "On the list of things that actually stop shootings in this country, I'm
going to put Prayer somewhere down around pencil shavings and Ovaltine." He later apologized to Ovaltine. I think he's still giving prayer too much credit.
A lot of people think that Prayer does no harm, and it might do good. God, after all, might be listening. Of course if he believed that gun violence was something worth doing something about and had the power to do something, why would he need the prayer? Is He such a jerk that he'll let thousands of innocents die each year and won't do anything about it unless we pray even more?
But of course it does do harm. The idea that God responds to your prayers is an example of a gambling fallacy known as the hot-hand fallacy. If your prayer works once or twice, a lot of people think that "luck is on their side", when really, it was something else...possibly random chance. But it really discredits the hard work you might have put in to develop your skill at shooting the basketball, and it especially discredits the hard work your opponent did. Perhaps most dangerous is that it might suck you into believing that the one-armed bandit is on your side. Nearly all gambling is designed so that whether you win or lose is completely unrelated to how it went last time, and outfits like the Nevada Gaming Commission work hard to make sure this is really the case. (Billiards and horse racing are exceptions, and to some extent counting cards in blackjack, but such exceptions are rare).
Moses understood this. He gave us the third commandment, about not taking the Lord's name in vain. This has nothing to do with offensive language. If you think God might actually damn someone because you asked, if you think the reason you scored the touchdown or won the roulette roll is that you been praying for it, then you've implicitly decided that God is playing favorites and that you've been picked. You are taking the Lord's name--and your whole relationship with Him--in vain. The next step is thinking that prayer gives you special privileges: that because you pray a lot, it's ok to shoot other people, for example, or it's ok to not put in your fair share of the payment at dinner.
Prayer gives a lot of people solace. If you spend some time, at the end of the day for example, thinking about your goals and what you've done towards or against them that day, it's potentially productive. It doesn't matter if the abstraction you're talking to in your mind is God or a dead ancestor or something else, what matters is that you're thinking about this stuff, and trying to make yourself better. Belief in yourself is helpful. Believing that God might step in against shootings or to help you win the game or that promotion is taking the Lord's name in vain.
A lot of people think that Prayer does no harm, and it might do good. God, after all, might be listening. Of course if he believed that gun violence was something worth doing something about and had the power to do something, why would he need the prayer? Is He such a jerk that he'll let thousands of innocents die each year and won't do anything about it unless we pray even more?
But of course it does do harm. The idea that God responds to your prayers is an example of a gambling fallacy known as the hot-hand fallacy. If your prayer works once or twice, a lot of people think that "luck is on their side", when really, it was something else...possibly random chance. But it really discredits the hard work you might have put in to develop your skill at shooting the basketball, and it especially discredits the hard work your opponent did. Perhaps most dangerous is that it might suck you into believing that the one-armed bandit is on your side. Nearly all gambling is designed so that whether you win or lose is completely unrelated to how it went last time, and outfits like the Nevada Gaming Commission work hard to make sure this is really the case. (Billiards and horse racing are exceptions, and to some extent counting cards in blackjack, but such exceptions are rare).
Moses understood this. He gave us the third commandment, about not taking the Lord's name in vain. This has nothing to do with offensive language. If you think God might actually damn someone because you asked, if you think the reason you scored the touchdown or won the roulette roll is that you been praying for it, then you've implicitly decided that God is playing favorites and that you've been picked. You are taking the Lord's name--and your whole relationship with Him--in vain. The next step is thinking that prayer gives you special privileges: that because you pray a lot, it's ok to shoot other people, for example, or it's ok to not put in your fair share of the payment at dinner.
Prayer gives a lot of people solace. If you spend some time, at the end of the day for example, thinking about your goals and what you've done towards or against them that day, it's potentially productive. It doesn't matter if the abstraction you're talking to in your mind is God or a dead ancestor or something else, what matters is that you're thinking about this stuff, and trying to make yourself better. Belief in yourself is helpful. Believing that God might step in against shootings or to help you win the game or that promotion is taking the Lord's name in vain.
The Worst President
America has had a few great presidents: the four guys on Mt Rushmore, plus, I would argue, FDR. But it has had a lot of really, really bad ones. In no particular order:
Warren Harding: Pushed for the deregulation that led to the bank runs and stock market collapse of 1929, triggering the Great Depression. He was involved in a major corruption scandal involving oil companies, Teapot Dome, but he died before impeachment proceedings could be begun.
James Buchanan: Elected amid the strife of the movement to abolish slavery, he was a political weakling and in attempting to take a balanced position, wound up exacerbating tensions. The Civil War would have happened eventually, but Buchanan deserves credit for making it worse.
Herbert Hoover: Had he not inherited an unstable financial bubble from his predecessors Harding and Coolidge, we'd regard him as a merely middling president. But when, amid the dust bowl, the stock market collapsed, he reacted precisely wrong, implementing extensive austerity and using weapons against veterans marching to ask for food to feet their hungry families. Had he given the veterans what they wanted and nationalized the panicking banks, it would have been much less severe than it was.
Andrew Jackson: The "Trail of Tears", the brutal removal of native Americans from most of the eastern part of the country, is the worst, but there are lots more. He was pro-slavery. He was among our worst "gold bugs": he fought the adoption of paper currency. It is particularly ironic that his image has been on the $20 bill for a long time...
Andrew Johnson: he handled reconstruction very badly, and created anger both north and south. Like Clinton's, his impeachment was mostly partisan and is not really a knock on the guy.
Zachary Taylor: Hero of the Mexican war, both parties recruited him, but the Whigs got him. His weird outsider appeal and popular acclaim gave him political traction that he didn't deserve, but he proved completely incompetent. He deserves a lot of credit for setting up the circumstances that caused the civil war, and even more credit for destroying the Whig party.
Ronald Reagan: His incessant saber rattling extended the cold war 5 or 6 years and made the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union much worse than it needed to be. Iran Contra--not the worst thing he did by any means, but it was an act of high treason, deserving of impeachment and execution. The worst thing he did though was the undermining of the bank, business, environmental and other regulation, and the deliberate sabotaging of the unions and systems of public infrastructure. For all his saber rattling, Reagan set about destroying the infrastructure and industrial base that won World War II.
George W Bush: Our most incompetent and corrupt president. Rejected repeated warnings that terrorists were looking to attack, and when it came, used the attack for crassly partisan purposes. The first year of the Afghan war that ensued showed how skillful the CIA and special forces can be when they are allowed to be and how terribly impossible Afghanistan is to govern, especially from afar. He should have quit after a year instead of getting involved in the same quagmire as the Soviet Union had 20 years earlier. It makes it clear why a series of surgical strikes and indirect support, with clear commitment to not get directly involved, as was done in Kosovo, Libya and Syria, is so much more effective over the long term, although it clearly doesn't always work either. Instead, he diluted the forces in Afganistan and falsified evidence that Iraq had been involved in 9-11, and attacked a country that had been doing good work as a moderating influence in the middle east. What he got for his trouble were 5000 American dead (more if you count contractors), tens of thousands of maimed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, and a determined terrorist insurgency that is very much scarier than anything that existed before in the middle east. Never before have terrorists been even slightly competent--their few successes have mostly been luck. Daesh is something different. Torture, spying on Americans, forcing Americans to spy on their fellow citizens, stacking the Supreme Court with pro-corruption justices and more. This man and several of his inner circle should be in small concrete boxes in Belgium for the rest of their lives.
Richard Nixon: He sabotaged negotiations that would have ended the Vietnam war in 1968 for crassly partisan purposes. He naively gave full-throated support to Israel during and after the Yom Kippur war of 1974, which provoked Arab dominated OPEC to sharply reduce US oil supplies, provoking a very severe recession. His responses to the recession were just as bad, including price controls. The recession turned to inflation and went on at some level for 8 years. To try to defend against this, he and his proxies (in particular GHW Bush) put a lot of effort into strengthening relations with Saudi Arabia, for which we would pay a price later. Like Reagan, the offense that almost got him impeached was relatively minor: When some of his henchmen were caught breaking into the office of the DNC in order to dig up political intelligence, he attempted to cover it up. It turned out that this group had been doing lots of other dirty tricks at Nixon's behest.
Hiram Ulysses Simpson Grant. A brilliant general, but too much of a peacemaker. He surrounded himself with what proved to be crooks and incompetents, although there's little suggestion that he himself was a crook.
Chester A. Arthur: a Political sidekick and gofer, he was nominated for VP as a political sop for his boss, Roscoe Conkling. When Garfield was murdered by a deranged person and Arthur was elevated to the presidency, he proved relatively inactive and ineffectual, but that made him popular.
Not on this list:
Obama has been one of our very best presidents, not quite deserving of Mt Rushmore but has achieved a lot despite the most intransigent, malicious and destructive opposition since the civil war. Mitch McConnell has almost as much power as the president and he has used it almost entirely for evil.
Clinton was an above average president who held office during the rise of Newt Gingrich. His impeachment was for trivia and the American people knew that and repudiated the Rs for it.
Carter was an above average president who had the bad luck to inherit Nixon's recession and Eisenhower's Iran relationship. He was in every possible way a better president than Reagan.
Had he reacted better to the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, LBJ could have been a great president: the Great Society and Civil Rights laws were real steps forward. The Bush Supreme Court has done a lot of damage to both. LBJ was terrified that a considered response to what proved to be an imaginary attack would give the White House to Goldwater, which almost certainly would have ended in a nuclear holocaust.
Warren Harding: Pushed for the deregulation that led to the bank runs and stock market collapse of 1929, triggering the Great Depression. He was involved in a major corruption scandal involving oil companies, Teapot Dome, but he died before impeachment proceedings could be begun.
James Buchanan: Elected amid the strife of the movement to abolish slavery, he was a political weakling and in attempting to take a balanced position, wound up exacerbating tensions. The Civil War would have happened eventually, but Buchanan deserves credit for making it worse.
Herbert Hoover: Had he not inherited an unstable financial bubble from his predecessors Harding and Coolidge, we'd regard him as a merely middling president. But when, amid the dust bowl, the stock market collapsed, he reacted precisely wrong, implementing extensive austerity and using weapons against veterans marching to ask for food to feet their hungry families. Had he given the veterans what they wanted and nationalized the panicking banks, it would have been much less severe than it was.
Andrew Jackson: The "Trail of Tears", the brutal removal of native Americans from most of the eastern part of the country, is the worst, but there are lots more. He was pro-slavery. He was among our worst "gold bugs": he fought the adoption of paper currency. It is particularly ironic that his image has been on the $20 bill for a long time...
Andrew Johnson: he handled reconstruction very badly, and created anger both north and south. Like Clinton's, his impeachment was mostly partisan and is not really a knock on the guy.
Zachary Taylor: Hero of the Mexican war, both parties recruited him, but the Whigs got him. His weird outsider appeal and popular acclaim gave him political traction that he didn't deserve, but he proved completely incompetent. He deserves a lot of credit for setting up the circumstances that caused the civil war, and even more credit for destroying the Whig party.
Ronald Reagan: His incessant saber rattling extended the cold war 5 or 6 years and made the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union much worse than it needed to be. Iran Contra--not the worst thing he did by any means, but it was an act of high treason, deserving of impeachment and execution. The worst thing he did though was the undermining of the bank, business, environmental and other regulation, and the deliberate sabotaging of the unions and systems of public infrastructure. For all his saber rattling, Reagan set about destroying the infrastructure and industrial base that won World War II.
George W Bush: Our most incompetent and corrupt president. Rejected repeated warnings that terrorists were looking to attack, and when it came, used the attack for crassly partisan purposes. The first year of the Afghan war that ensued showed how skillful the CIA and special forces can be when they are allowed to be and how terribly impossible Afghanistan is to govern, especially from afar. He should have quit after a year instead of getting involved in the same quagmire as the Soviet Union had 20 years earlier. It makes it clear why a series of surgical strikes and indirect support, with clear commitment to not get directly involved, as was done in Kosovo, Libya and Syria, is so much more effective over the long term, although it clearly doesn't always work either. Instead, he diluted the forces in Afganistan and falsified evidence that Iraq had been involved in 9-11, and attacked a country that had been doing good work as a moderating influence in the middle east. What he got for his trouble were 5000 American dead (more if you count contractors), tens of thousands of maimed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, and a determined terrorist insurgency that is very much scarier than anything that existed before in the middle east. Never before have terrorists been even slightly competent--their few successes have mostly been luck. Daesh is something different. Torture, spying on Americans, forcing Americans to spy on their fellow citizens, stacking the Supreme Court with pro-corruption justices and more. This man and several of his inner circle should be in small concrete boxes in Belgium for the rest of their lives.
Richard Nixon: He sabotaged negotiations that would have ended the Vietnam war in 1968 for crassly partisan purposes. He naively gave full-throated support to Israel during and after the Yom Kippur war of 1974, which provoked Arab dominated OPEC to sharply reduce US oil supplies, provoking a very severe recession. His responses to the recession were just as bad, including price controls. The recession turned to inflation and went on at some level for 8 years. To try to defend against this, he and his proxies (in particular GHW Bush) put a lot of effort into strengthening relations with Saudi Arabia, for which we would pay a price later. Like Reagan, the offense that almost got him impeached was relatively minor: When some of his henchmen were caught breaking into the office of the DNC in order to dig up political intelligence, he attempted to cover it up. It turned out that this group had been doing lots of other dirty tricks at Nixon's behest.
Hiram Ulysses Simpson Grant. A brilliant general, but too much of a peacemaker. He surrounded himself with what proved to be crooks and incompetents, although there's little suggestion that he himself was a crook.
Chester A. Arthur: a Political sidekick and gofer, he was nominated for VP as a political sop for his boss, Roscoe Conkling. When Garfield was murdered by a deranged person and Arthur was elevated to the presidency, he proved relatively inactive and ineffectual, but that made him popular.
Not on this list:
Obama has been one of our very best presidents, not quite deserving of Mt Rushmore but has achieved a lot despite the most intransigent, malicious and destructive opposition since the civil war. Mitch McConnell has almost as much power as the president and he has used it almost entirely for evil.
Clinton was an above average president who held office during the rise of Newt Gingrich. His impeachment was for trivia and the American people knew that and repudiated the Rs for it.
Carter was an above average president who had the bad luck to inherit Nixon's recession and Eisenhower's Iran relationship. He was in every possible way a better president than Reagan.
Had he reacted better to the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, LBJ could have been a great president: the Great Society and Civil Rights laws were real steps forward. The Bush Supreme Court has done a lot of damage to both. LBJ was terrified that a considered response to what proved to be an imaginary attack would give the White House to Goldwater, which almost certainly would have ended in a nuclear holocaust.
Interstates and Superchargers
Here's a list of major highways in the US Interstate Highway System and how well they are presently covered by the Tesla Supercharger network. The Interstate system is intended that "major" roads are multiples of 5: even numbers east-west, and odd north-south, with connectors in between, and bypasses and spurs having a leading digit (bypasses even, and spurs odd.)
I-5: Fully covered, Canadian border to the Mexican border
I-10: Largely covered, but there's a big hole from Tuscon, AZ to San Antonio, TX
I-15: Fully covered L.A. to Pocatello, ID, but from there to the Canadian border is challenging
I-20: Spotty coverage. It's not a transcontinental: it only goes from West TX to SC. It should be called I-14.
I-25: Good from its northern terminus in WY, but stops at Albuquerque.
I-29: Is an important road in the midwest, running from Louisiana (where it's called I-49) to Winnipeg with a big gap in Arkansas with the renaming at Kansas City. It has 4 superchargers. It needs a dozen.
I-30: This is really just a spur, from Little Rock to Dallas. No coverage. It should be called I-335.
I-35: Almost complete, San Antonio to Duluth, with just a couple of gaps
I-40: Almost complete, L.A. to Raleigh, NC, with a big gap from Oklahoma City to Nashville
I-44: the old route 66 is almost complete, Chicago to L.A, with just a small gap in MO.
I-45: despite its name, it's a spur, not an interstate at all: it's completely supercharged, Dallas to Houston. It should be called I-314
I-49: Is called I-29 north of Kansas City.
I-50: no such road. They may have been worried about confusion with US-50. US-50 is a true transcontinental, Ocean City, MD, to San Francisco. It shares its route with I-80 and I-70 for part of the way and is well supercharged in those places, but not otherwise.
I-55: Almost finished Chicago to New Orleans, with one charger needed near Memphis, TN
I-60: No such road. US-60 goes from L.A. to Norfolk, VA. I-10, I-44, I-64 share parts of its route.
I-64: spotty coverage, St Louis to Norfolk, VAI-65: Almost finished Chicago to Mobile, AL
I-70: The first supercharged transcontinental. Fully covered, DC to Utah, where it splits into I-80 to SF and I-15 to LA
I-75: Almost completed Southern Florida to Michigan, with northern MI the only gap.
I-80: About half completed, but there are a few big gaps. As a transcontinental, they are redundant with I-70, but Southern WY, NB, IA, and Northern PA are unserved, and would be by finishing I-80.
I-85: A stub, from AL to NC. Fully covered.
I-86: Southern New York. unserved.
I-90: Fully covered.
I-94: Is the northern route, connecting connecting Billings, MT to Chicago through Minneapolis, Fargo, Bismark, etc. It needs a half dozen more superchargers.
I-95: Fully covered.
US-101: Fully covered, San Diego to Ukiah, CA, No coverage at all north of there. Two SCs in Eureka and Crescent City have been planned for over a year, but no construction at all. 101 in Oregon is well covered by Aerovironment's CHAdeMO. update: Eureka is started and Seaside, OR is open, and there appear to be plans for Lincoln and Coos Bay, OR.
US-1: For a lot of its route, it's close to or shares it's route with I-95. I found no place south of Maine where a US-1 Tesla traveler would have to drive far for a supercharge, or for that matter any place east of the Appalachians. Northeastern Maine and northern New Hampshire are a problem
US-2: Much of the northernmost transcontinental route is uncovered, except for where it crosses another route, which is rare.
US-61: New Orleans through Minnesota, is now largely supplanted by I-55. The Music Highway. The crossroads where Robert Johnson purportedly sold his soul to the devil is at Clarksdale, MS.
I-5: Fully covered, Canadian border to the Mexican border
I-10: Largely covered, but there's a big hole from Tuscon, AZ to San Antonio, TX
I-15: Fully covered L.A. to Pocatello, ID, but from there to the Canadian border is challenging
I-20: Spotty coverage. It's not a transcontinental: it only goes from West TX to SC. It should be called I-14.
I-25: Good from its northern terminus in WY, but stops at Albuquerque.
I-29: Is an important road in the midwest, running from Louisiana (where it's called I-49) to Winnipeg with a big gap in Arkansas with the renaming at Kansas City. It has 4 superchargers. It needs a dozen.
I-30: This is really just a spur, from Little Rock to Dallas. No coverage. It should be called I-335.
I-35: Almost complete, San Antonio to Duluth, with just a couple of gaps
I-40: Almost complete, L.A. to Raleigh, NC, with a big gap from Oklahoma City to Nashville
I-44: the old route 66 is almost complete, Chicago to L.A, with just a small gap in MO.
I-45: despite its name, it's a spur, not an interstate at all: it's completely supercharged, Dallas to Houston. It should be called I-314
I-49: Is called I-29 north of Kansas City.
I-50: no such road. They may have been worried about confusion with US-50. US-50 is a true transcontinental, Ocean City, MD, to San Francisco. It shares its route with I-80 and I-70 for part of the way and is well supercharged in those places, but not otherwise.
I-55: Almost finished Chicago to New Orleans, with one charger needed near Memphis, TN
I-60: No such road. US-60 goes from L.A. to Norfolk, VA. I-10, I-44, I-64 share parts of its route.
I-64: spotty coverage, St Louis to Norfolk, VAI-65: Almost finished Chicago to Mobile, AL
I-70: The first supercharged transcontinental. Fully covered, DC to Utah, where it splits into I-80 to SF and I-15 to LA
I-75: Almost completed Southern Florida to Michigan, with northern MI the only gap.
I-80: About half completed, but there are a few big gaps. As a transcontinental, they are redundant with I-70, but Southern WY, NB, IA, and Northern PA are unserved, and would be by finishing I-80.
I-85: A stub, from AL to NC. Fully covered.
I-86: Southern New York. unserved.
I-90: Fully covered.
I-94: Is the northern route, connecting connecting Billings, MT to Chicago through Minneapolis, Fargo, Bismark, etc. It needs a half dozen more superchargers.
I-95: Fully covered.
US-101: Fully covered, San Diego to Ukiah, CA, No coverage at all north of there. Two SCs in Eureka and Crescent City have been planned for over a year, but no construction at all. 101 in Oregon is well covered by Aerovironment's CHAdeMO. update: Eureka is started and Seaside, OR is open, and there appear to be plans for Lincoln and Coos Bay, OR.
US-1: For a lot of its route, it's close to or shares it's route with I-95. I found no place south of Maine where a US-1 Tesla traveler would have to drive far for a supercharge, or for that matter any place east of the Appalachians. Northeastern Maine and northern New Hampshire are a problem
US-2: Much of the northernmost transcontinental route is uncovered, except for where it crosses another route, which is rare.
US-61: New Orleans through Minnesota, is now largely supplanted by I-55. The Music Highway. The crossroads where Robert Johnson purportedly sold his soul to the devil is at Clarksdale, MS.
19 May 2016
10 Essential Economic.....
I just stumbled upon a little bit of absolute rubbish in the pages of Forbes. 10 Essential Economic Truths Liberals Need to Learn. It's been there for a couple of years. All of these ten "truths" are false, many egregiously so.
1: Government cannot create wealth, jobs, or income. Dorfman doesn't understand what money is. government can obviously create jobs, by hiring teachers, soldiers, police, etc. They create money too. The purpose of money is to create liquidity in markets. If money didn't exist or didn't have a competent government behind it, nobody would be wealthy except a few bandits.
2: Income inequality does not affect the economy. Of course it does. Inequality takes the value of the labor of the poor and gives it to the rich. The rich don't spend all of it, so it's out of the economy. Parking money (saving) doesn't help the economy at all, except insofar as some of it is used for real investment. He understands the difference but he is absurdly wrong.
3: Low wages are not corporate exploitation. Of course they are, although he's got the causality arrow backwards. Low wages are about disenfranchisement. If you have poor bargaining power, your wages tend to be low. As a consequence, you have few choices but to take whatever abuse the employer wants to dish out. Low wages are not the only abuse the employer might impose but they're a big one.
4: Environmental over-regulation is a regressive tax that falls hardest on the poor. He takes a little germ of truth and turns it into a giant strawman. Over-regulation might be a problem but nothing like that is happening, anywhere in the world. Again, his almost complete ignorance of what money is misleads him. Regulation does increase prices, across the board. But because it's across the board, it's nominally fair. The poor pay a much higher extrinsic cost for pollution. Lead is a case in point. From Tetra Ethyl Lead to lead pipes in Flint, to unmitigated lead paint, the children of the poor pay a much higher price.
5: Education is not a public good. Of course it is. Education can provide bargaining power, among other things, which leads to higher wages, not to mention increased ability to rebut ignoramuses like Dorfman.
6: High CEO pay is no worse than high pay to athletes or movie stars. This is a strawman. It's technically true: both are harmful. These people have higher bargaining power and are thus able to get more money. They spend some of it buying fancy clothes, fancy houses, etc., which does help the economy. But a lot of it is simply parked. See #2.
7: Consumer spending is not what drives the economy. Yes it is. Dorfman confuses GDP with "the economy". Trade is mostly driven by consumer spending...most of what is not is driven by government: the military for example. Big business buys from each other to make consumer products. He is right to be concerned by consumer debt, but that's not what he says is wrong. consumer debt is a big part of GDP, which is dangerous and in the long term harmful for the economy, although it makes a few people very rich.
8: When government provides things for
free, they will end up being low quality, cost more than they should,
and may disappear when most needed. Only if you let idiots run the government. There are actually very few cases of this. For example, US public schools used to be of very high quality, and still are in many cases. The fire department. The military. DARPA. NSF. NOAA. it goes on and on.
9: Government cannot correct cosmic injustice. No, but it can mitigate the consequences. "every time government fixes or eases a cosmic injustice, it creates a new one by sticking somebody with the bill." So? Compared to the problems, the bill is trivial. The number of people with terrible debilities is fairly small, and assisting them creates jobs. The multiplier effect almost pays for this by itself: these are low paying jobs, so all the money goes into housing and food and such.
10: There is no such thing as a free lunch. In a literal sense this is true, but the cost to society, for example of having hungry students in classes, is far greater than the cost of buying them lunch. 12 years of school lunch at $5 each costs about $12,000. If that raises the student's GPA 1/2 point, that's worth several thousand dollars a year in income, every year, for 40 years. It only takes 5 or so break even. If the student would have been really hungry, it probably raises GPA more than that. The student is also significantly less likely to need the dole later in life.
12 May 2016
Renewable Energy
There are three ultimate sources for energy on the earth, none of them renewable. One of them, solar nuclear fusion, deposits so much energy on the earth that its consequences are left behind for millions or even billions of years. Whether a sources is renewable or not is really whether these consequences can provide meaningful amounts of energy without causing environmental consequences or using the resource faster than it's produced. I'll get into the two ultimate sources first.
Nuclear fission: All chemical elements have some degree of of nuclear instability and spontaneously decompose, emitting sub-atomic particles and energy. Leo Szillard figured out how to use the sub-atomic particles to create a self sustaining chain reaction, generating a lot of heat. At controlled densities, this heat can be used to run power generating equipment, such as steam turbines. At uncontrolled densities, it's an atomic bomb. The atoms involved are destroyed, but there are plenty of them around so renewability of the supply is not a serious problem. But the process generates a lot of dangerous radioactive waste. Presently, there are no really good solutions for dealing with this waste, although there are some that are not extremely terrible.
Geothermal compression. Gravity causes the materials in the interior of the earth to be compressed, which causes them to heat up. Most of this stays deep inside the earth, but a little comes out in volcanoes, geothermal vents and a few other things. This heat can be used to run power generating equipment, such as steam turbines. The total supply of geothermal energy is finite, but far larger than present consumption rates could use for millions of years. As far as I know, there's no real downside to using geothermal energy, but there just aren't very many places where it's near enough to the surface to be of much help to energy needs. In order to drill our own geothermal wells into the earth's mantle would require some big breakthroughs, none of which show any signs of happening. For the time being, we pretty much have to rely on earthquakes and volcanoes to do it for us.
The third, and far and away the most important, is Nuclear fusion in the sun, causing lighting and heating of the earth. The sun is finite, and will eventually burn itself out, but this won't be for billions of years. Radiation from the sun strikes the earth at about 1 kilowatt per square meter. average US energy consumption is about 3 billion kilowatts. The US is about 10 trillion square meters, so theoretical capacity is about 3000 times what we need. No means of collecting that energy is very efficient, but that's a big multiplier. Ultimately, the question of renewability is whether we can extract energy in a way that doesn't wreck the environment. Here are a few:
There are numerous ways of using solar energy fairly directly.
Photovoltaic cells (mostly silicon but there are others) can be exposed to the sun and turn about 15% of the energy received into electricity. This are almost completely renewable and will work just fine for as long as they aren't damaged or obstructed, although some of the chemistry in making the cells is nasty.
Solar heating: There are several ways of doing this. The sun can be used to heat blackened tubes to generate hot water, which is a useful commodity, and can be used for bathing, washing, or radiant heating. The sun can be focused and used to generate something hot enough to run generating equipment, such as steam turbines. These are completely renewable, but a little fussy to manage.
Hydroelectric power: the sun heats bodies of water, including the ocean, and evaporates it. Some of this later precipitates and fills other bodies of water, at higher elevations, where it can be run through a turbine to generate electricity as it falls to lower elevations. Modulo the environmental damage involved in redirecting the water, this is completely renewable.
Wind Energy: Differential heating of the earth causes air to move from warmer places to cooler ones. We call this air movement "Wind". Windmills can be put up to collect electrical (or mechanical) energy from this. This too is completely renewable, modulo the environmental consequences of building the windmills. There is also a tiny but real risk that we affect the movement of air. Windmills have also been known to injure flying animals, such as birds and bats, that can't recognize the fast moving blades. The harm from this is considerably less than from fossil fuel plants.
Biofuel. Ultimately, biofuel uses energy from the sun to cause plants to grow. The complex molecule chlorophyll uses the suns energy to convert carbon dioxide from the air, and minerals and water from the ground, into plant material. There are many biofuels. The most familiar is wood. Trees can be harvested and burned, generating heat directly, or used to run power generating equipment, such as steam turbines. Whether this is renewable or not is whether the trees are harvested at a rate that damages the forest or allows it to continue to be as healthy and large. There is a lot of wood that is cut down and thrown awaybecause it's the easiest thing to do with it. A lot of this could be turned into energy. There are many wood-products industries that generate all the energy they need from wood waste.
There are numerous other biofuels. The one in largest use is Ethanol, which in the US is mostly from corn. Because the government subsidizes corn farmers, some of the surplus is fermented and distilled into ethanol. Most of this gets added to gasoline. This technically renewable but it is a terrible waste of agricultural resources and taxpayer money. Professor Patzek calculates that it takes between 4 and 7 times as much fossil energy to create the ethanol as it produces, which makes it a big new loser on the renewable scale.
Other biofuels include converting dirty cooking oil into biodiesel. This is certainly renewable: the cooking oil is an agricultural product, which probably was sun and carbon dioxide less than a year prior to it being turned into biodiesel, but the total supply is very small.
Another which seems promising until you do the math is microbes which secrete, or can be turned into, some sort of petroleum-like product. Again, this is completely renewable, on short cycles, but chlorophyll is a very inefficient converter of the sun's energy to usable energy: around 1/10th of 1% at the very best. If we were to use the entire area of the US (including alaska) to generate biofuel this way, it would not be sufficient for present energy needs despite that amazing 3000:1 multiplier. Their advantage is once the process is started, it's very low maintenance, but Photovoltaic is way more efficient.
Fossil fuels are technically biofuels and renewable, but the time it takes to renew it is in the hundreds of millions of years. Plant matter in large quantities lived, grew, and died, over thousands or millions of years creating big piles. When they're in the process of being created, they tend to be called things like marshes or peat bogs. Eventually they get covered up by hundreds or thousands of feet of earth and over millions of years they turn into fossil fuels. Whether it's coal, petroleum or natural gas depends on the exact temperature, pressure and chemical composition. Coal stays where it was formed, but petroleum and gas are lighter than earth and stone, and if there's a path to the surface, they float up and eventually are lost into the atmosphere where the sun causes them to break down into CO2 and water. When there's a geologic formation on top that causes it to be trapped, we can drill into it and recover the petroleum or gas. Most petroleum was created around 300 million years ago, but over hundreds of millions of years. By burning fossil fuels, we're emitting hundreds of millions of years of CO2 storage in a few decades. Not renewable.
Nuclear fission: All chemical elements have some degree of of nuclear instability and spontaneously decompose, emitting sub-atomic particles and energy. Leo Szillard figured out how to use the sub-atomic particles to create a self sustaining chain reaction, generating a lot of heat. At controlled densities, this heat can be used to run power generating equipment, such as steam turbines. At uncontrolled densities, it's an atomic bomb. The atoms involved are destroyed, but there are plenty of them around so renewability of the supply is not a serious problem. But the process generates a lot of dangerous radioactive waste. Presently, there are no really good solutions for dealing with this waste, although there are some that are not extremely terrible.
Geothermal compression. Gravity causes the materials in the interior of the earth to be compressed, which causes them to heat up. Most of this stays deep inside the earth, but a little comes out in volcanoes, geothermal vents and a few other things. This heat can be used to run power generating equipment, such as steam turbines. The total supply of geothermal energy is finite, but far larger than present consumption rates could use for millions of years. As far as I know, there's no real downside to using geothermal energy, but there just aren't very many places where it's near enough to the surface to be of much help to energy needs. In order to drill our own geothermal wells into the earth's mantle would require some big breakthroughs, none of which show any signs of happening. For the time being, we pretty much have to rely on earthquakes and volcanoes to do it for us.
The third, and far and away the most important, is Nuclear fusion in the sun, causing lighting and heating of the earth. The sun is finite, and will eventually burn itself out, but this won't be for billions of years. Radiation from the sun strikes the earth at about 1 kilowatt per square meter. average US energy consumption is about 3 billion kilowatts. The US is about 10 trillion square meters, so theoretical capacity is about 3000 times what we need. No means of collecting that energy is very efficient, but that's a big multiplier. Ultimately, the question of renewability is whether we can extract energy in a way that doesn't wreck the environment. Here are a few:
There are numerous ways of using solar energy fairly directly.
Photovoltaic cells (mostly silicon but there are others) can be exposed to the sun and turn about 15% of the energy received into electricity. This are almost completely renewable and will work just fine for as long as they aren't damaged or obstructed, although some of the chemistry in making the cells is nasty.
Solar heating: There are several ways of doing this. The sun can be used to heat blackened tubes to generate hot water, which is a useful commodity, and can be used for bathing, washing, or radiant heating. The sun can be focused and used to generate something hot enough to run generating equipment, such as steam turbines. These are completely renewable, but a little fussy to manage.
Hydroelectric power: the sun heats bodies of water, including the ocean, and evaporates it. Some of this later precipitates and fills other bodies of water, at higher elevations, where it can be run through a turbine to generate electricity as it falls to lower elevations. Modulo the environmental damage involved in redirecting the water, this is completely renewable.
Wind Energy: Differential heating of the earth causes air to move from warmer places to cooler ones. We call this air movement "Wind". Windmills can be put up to collect electrical (or mechanical) energy from this. This too is completely renewable, modulo the environmental consequences of building the windmills. There is also a tiny but real risk that we affect the movement of air. Windmills have also been known to injure flying animals, such as birds and bats, that can't recognize the fast moving blades. The harm from this is considerably less than from fossil fuel plants.
Biofuel. Ultimately, biofuel uses energy from the sun to cause plants to grow. The complex molecule chlorophyll uses the suns energy to convert carbon dioxide from the air, and minerals and water from the ground, into plant material. There are many biofuels. The most familiar is wood. Trees can be harvested and burned, generating heat directly, or used to run power generating equipment, such as steam turbines. Whether this is renewable or not is whether the trees are harvested at a rate that damages the forest or allows it to continue to be as healthy and large. There is a lot of wood that is cut down and thrown awaybecause it's the easiest thing to do with it. A lot of this could be turned into energy. There are many wood-products industries that generate all the energy they need from wood waste.
There are numerous other biofuels. The one in largest use is Ethanol, which in the US is mostly from corn. Because the government subsidizes corn farmers, some of the surplus is fermented and distilled into ethanol. Most of this gets added to gasoline. This technically renewable but it is a terrible waste of agricultural resources and taxpayer money. Professor Patzek calculates that it takes between 4 and 7 times as much fossil energy to create the ethanol as it produces, which makes it a big new loser on the renewable scale.
Other biofuels include converting dirty cooking oil into biodiesel. This is certainly renewable: the cooking oil is an agricultural product, which probably was sun and carbon dioxide less than a year prior to it being turned into biodiesel, but the total supply is very small.
Another which seems promising until you do the math is microbes which secrete, or can be turned into, some sort of petroleum-like product. Again, this is completely renewable, on short cycles, but chlorophyll is a very inefficient converter of the sun's energy to usable energy: around 1/10th of 1% at the very best. If we were to use the entire area of the US (including alaska) to generate biofuel this way, it would not be sufficient for present energy needs despite that amazing 3000:1 multiplier. Their advantage is once the process is started, it's very low maintenance, but Photovoltaic is way more efficient.
Fossil fuels are technically biofuels and renewable, but the time it takes to renew it is in the hundreds of millions of years. Plant matter in large quantities lived, grew, and died, over thousands or millions of years creating big piles. When they're in the process of being created, they tend to be called things like marshes or peat bogs. Eventually they get covered up by hundreds or thousands of feet of earth and over millions of years they turn into fossil fuels. Whether it's coal, petroleum or natural gas depends on the exact temperature, pressure and chemical composition. Coal stays where it was formed, but petroleum and gas are lighter than earth and stone, and if there's a path to the surface, they float up and eventually are lost into the atmosphere where the sun causes them to break down into CO2 and water. When there's a geologic formation on top that causes it to be trapped, we can drill into it and recover the petroleum or gas. Most petroleum was created around 300 million years ago, but over hundreds of millions of years. By burning fossil fuels, we're emitting hundreds of millions of years of CO2 storage in a few decades. Not renewable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)