New TSA rules exposes short term memory problems

Am I the only person who remembers that the box cutters of the 9/11 hijackers was NOT the reason the cabin doors were opened 4 times? It was the carefully wrapped box that they said was a bomb that opened the doors, destroyed the towers, damaged the Pentagon, and turned a crash site in PA into a memeorial to heroes.

What a Difference

Amazing how different the Galveston evacuation is from the New Orleans fiasco. In Texas, they had evacuation plans that took into account the fact that not everybody had cars. Mayor Nagin of New Orleans apparently thought everybody lived there for the Mardi Gras. Don't get me wrong, the traffic jams are horrid, and the shortage of gasoline is a tad scary, but I suspect that Texans have plans to deal with both, without Federal assistance!

What's Good for the Goose...

After reviewing all the information coming out about Hurricane Katrina, I think I see the biggist single reason why so many were left behind. If they had put a nuclear power plant in New Orleans, they would have had sirens, a 100% tested and effective evacuation plan, that would have covered 100% of the population. Instead, they let the Army Corps of Engineers spend billions of dollars on the waterways, levees, dikes and dams, without filing a single evacuation plan. If they had been forced to follow the same procedure that a private firm would have, the city would have been 100% evacuated, and we wouldn't be looking at all the finger pointing that is going on.

Help Us!!!!!

Let me toss a hypothetical your way. I warn you that if you don't evacuate, there will be nothing I can do for two weeks to help you. Better yet, let me make you the Governor of LA, or the Mayor of New Orleans. What would you do? What they did was say the right words, get on the record, and moved aside for the hurricane. Instead of mobilizing the LA National Guard and helping these people out of the area, they picked a couple of places in the heart of the expected disaster area, and moved people there.

They didn't have enough time to plan, is that what I heard you say? You're right, 40 years for politicians is nowhere near enough time. Why budget for that which may not happen, when we have Mardi Gras to plan for? To listen to these pompous asses cry about lack of support is nauseating. Damnit, you were warned, you did nothing, and now it's NOT your fault?

Listening to the mayor of New Orleans this morning explains the situation perfectly. When challenged about the FACT that LA has not requested Federal aid, He asked "did we wait for permission to relieve the tsunami victims?" Well, idiot, yes we did. For some reason, sending troops into an area without permission is called an invasion. Of couse, the resident genius of New Orleans had an answer for that too "how long did it take to invade Iraq?" Gee, I gues hizonner doesn't read papers, of couse, considering the mistakes made by the powers that be down there, maybe the jerk doesn't read at all. Iraq took months, even after the UN presentation.

So now, it's everybodys fault but his. But of couse, otherwise he couldn't live with himself, killing all those hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Let the good times roll may be a good slogan for the convention bureaus, but it sucks for you emergency response group. You had years to plan, two days to implement, and all you did was lead the lemmings to the cliff. What you did was unforgivable, your Honor. You may have killed more Americans in a day than have died in Iraq in two years, or on 9/11. If I tell someone I can' help you if you do X, and you do X, don't be suprised when X happens and I can't help you. And it's your fault, not mine, you ignorant ass.

Been Too Long, A note or two on Prophecy

I've been through a lot, and have much to say, but for now, just two quick thoughts.

PBS did an amazing series about the space program years ago called Spaceflight. Narrated by Martin Sheen, it gives the most intimate look at the people who made the space program work up till the space shuttle. There was an interview with Chris Kraft, the senior flight director, related to the Apollo 1 fire (oops, NASA calles it Apollo 204, just to mask the ptroblem). He said "we knew we were going to lose people, and we are going to lose them again," 'it's how we respond that matters'. This aired not too long before Challenger...always thought it was so appropriate...at least until the 'crats destroyed Columbia because of their continied ignorance.

Other quote I always loved was from Ricky Prohl, night of Superbowl 36: "Tonight a Dynasty is born"...how right he was, in such a wrong way. The Rams went on to lose, and ignomy...the Patriots...well, maybe Dynasty is too strong a word...but close. Be back soon folks, been through a lot, and got a lot to say.

We DeploreThese Events, But....

OK people, time for the Brad Doctrine. When terrorists strike, the following annoucement is made: "All (fill in the blank) are partially responsible for this atrocity, and must immediately begin policing their (fill in the blank), else they all will be considered terrorists, and will immediately be declared anathma, not fit for societal interactions and the protections of the Bill of Rights." Why do I feel this way? Because of "pacifist" Muslim leaders making statements like "We deplore the violence in London, but..." There is no BUT, idiot! You deplore the actions, or you don't. Implying there is ANY reason justifying their actions is tantamount to aiding and abetting, period. America found out that to rein in the KKK, it took Whites, the supposed benefactors of KKK action to bring them down, by passing laws and enforcing them. Yes, it was Blacks who brought the final lawsuits that emasculated the KKK, but it happened because of the laws and attitude changes made by Whites. Muslim terrorists will be reined in when Muslims make them stop, until then, the pacifist will smirk behind their veils, or behind out backs, silently cheering on Al Queda or any other group.

What do you think would happen if all Muslims were put in the position of having to prove they were NOT terrorists? The funding for Jihadists might at first go up, but soon, very soon, it would dry up. Violation of various constitutional rights? Ask the Grand Kleegles of the KKK of the 60's what happened to their constitutional rights. You know what? It's worth the risks

Circular Arguments

So the APA (American Psychiatric Association) bases their belief that they are a REAL science because of "Rigorous, published, peer reviewed research..." Well, let's look at that phrase. Rigorous means demanding strict adherence to a standard. Who do you think set the standard? Yuppers, other psychiatrists whose careers need the research. The next word is published. Big deal, you got it past an editorial board. Oops, forgot about that other phrase "peer reviewed." I take it the peers of a psychiatrist are other psychiatrists. Sorry, they all have a bias towards the efficacy of psychiatry, and this argument is a circle. "Our research proves psychiatry works, and our research is validated by other psychiatrists." There are UFOlogists out there who have "Rigorous (at least to the standards of other UFOlogists), published (Google UFOlogy, 110,000 pages, not counting the myriad books and magazine articles), peer reviewed (yup, by other UFOlogists). In fact, the APA'a statement could have come from ANY group (NMBLA, Republicans, Democrats, IEEE, hell, anybody!). I expected more from a group such as the APA, other than a knee jerk, poorly written rebuke to Tom Cruise. If they are that worried about an actor, they must be paranoid what objective scientists would do.

A New Role for the Government??

The fiscal conservative in me says the government has no role whatsoever in matters of technology. The pragmatist in me believes otherwise. Time has proven that federal highways, funded by gasoline and other such taxes, are more efficient than coast to coast toll roads. Thus, there is justification for government funding of new highway technologies. Government funding of new weapons technology and weapons research is practically mandatory, unless you want our arms manufacturers selling to the highest bidder, and that high bidder not always being the US. How would you have liked some manufacturer developing the atomic bomb, then selling it to Germany or Japan? Of course, by funding the research, you control what happens with it, and can even influence the direction of the research.

That being said, what is government’s role in space technology? The entire NASA program, up through Apollo-Soyuz was to beat the Soviets to the moon and prove America’s superiority. Once that was accomplished, NASA became a n organization without a mission. The shuttle was created to get to the space station, the space station was a place for the shuttle to go. Promises of technological benefits from micro-gravity experiments still ring hollow. Now with the new race to Mars and the Moon, be prepared for even more hollow promises.

The issue I find most interesting when it comes to government funded technology is in the field of energy. Other nations, most notably France, have shown that government controlled nuclear power generation can be safe, efficient and cost effective. They rely on standardization, uniformity of training and constant re-certification. They have perfected fuel re-processing, which minimizes nuclear waste. The hodge-podge of manufacturers in the US, the incompatibility between different reactor types, and the pressure of competition all contributed to the high costs associated with nuclear power in the US.

Besides nuclear based energy sources, is there a role for the US government in energy development? Unfortunately (that damn laissez faire guy is complaining again), the answer is yes. We still use way too much petroleum for transportation. Yes, we use it for heating also, but a transition to cheap nuclear electricity would allow a transition to electric heat. It’s transportation where oil is used. If the US government took the CAFÉ standards, and steadily increased them to 100 miles per gallon, or limited emissions to near zero, it would force internal combustion engines to a level of efficiency that is currently unattainable with conventional technologies. Our dependency on foreign oil could crumble in a matter of years, and with that, Islamic fundamentalism could go the way of the KKK, a shameful blot, but powerless. I’m still thinking this through a bit, more to follow…

John Lukacs, the New Noah Webster, and Alan Greenspan and pap for the masses

I always try to read a book all the way through before commenting on it But I'm about halfway through John Lukacs "Democracy and Populism" and I'm a bit confused. There are moments of absolute brilliance here, a depth of perception I rarely find. Yet he spends huge portions of the book showing how our definitions of words like facism, totalitarianism, liberal and conservative are incredibly wrong. At the same time, he makes references to Hobbes and Locke that require a fairly sophisticated knowledge of philosophy. So let me get this straight, I don't know what facism is, but I have an indepth knowledge of philosophy? If you, like me, can't remember the tenets of Hobbes philosophy, basically he believed that people are by nature evil, well, not really, perhaps insanely selfish is the right description. Of course, trying to define the teachings of Hobbes or Locke or Aristotle in a few words is impossible. Lukacs is making an important point, that populism is a descent into hell, but damn, I wish he had more than 240 odd pages to prove his hypothosis. I should finish the book tonight, and hopefully will more soon.

On a different note, the world hailed the actions of the Fed this week. Why? The employment report on Friday, to me at least, indicates continued weekness in the job market. Yes, I know, more than "whatever the number" of jobs were created, yet the total number of unemployed INCREASED!!!! In the minds of Wall Street, the biggest problem is inflation, and god only knows prices are increasing. But ALL of the increase can be attributed to the rise in the cost of oil! When prices rise because of the scarcity, real or imagined, of a single commodity, that is NOT inflation. Rising oil prices increases the costs of many things. Take fertilizer for example. Much of the process of producing fertilizer requires the use of various forms of petroleum. The increase in the cost of fetilizer raises the price of producing raw foodstuffs. Add to that the added cost of transportaion because of fuel costs, and guess what, the cost of food goes up! Is this because there is too much money available for food? NO!!! It is because a bubble in oil prices is forming, and the ramifications are far flung.

Problem is, Greenspan and the Fed had little choice but to raise interest rates, because it's what is expected by Wall Street and the other brainless investment groups. If the Fed had not raised rates, the perception would be they lacked the courage to fight "a clearly inflationary" issue. Alan Greenspan is an incredibly intelligent economist. I first started reading his opinions in Ayn Rand's non-fiction works (yes, he submitted articles for Objectivist books, before Objectivism decended into a cult of personality) and he has a profound knowledge of market forces. He needs to be educating investors about what is really happening out there. Take my favorite example, tires. In the 60's, tires cost 10 to 20 dollars each, lasted 15,000 miles if you were lucky. Now inexpensive tires are $60, and last for 60,000 miles. That means in basic math terms the cost of tires has not changed in 40 years, so in real terms, they are nearly free! Problem is, most inflation formulae see $60 versus $15 and say tires cost 4 times as much as they used to. Greenspan knows this, he ses this, he must, he is not swayed by the emotional vagaries of an investor. However, he also knows you must play to the audience from time to time. Thus we increase rates, until he can educate the masses. Problem is, the masses are ignorant to such facts. They obsess about the 30 cent per gallon gas they bought, the $15 tires, and fail to see the value of what they are buying.

I don't know where this current economic ride is going to end. I have a saying, stolen from a song, that if the ride is worth the fall, let's ride. Unfortunately this ride is not worth any fall, let alone the one we are heading for. And if John Lukacs is right, it will be on much more than an economic basis.

Will NASA Ever Learn?

I'm still trying to figure out what made Mike Griffin, the new head of NASA (who, by the way had one of the shortest confirmation hearings ever) say that the decision to launch the next shuttle mission would be his, regardless of what the Return to Flight board says. Does he want NASA to be run out of the space-faring business? Has he forgotten Challenger and Columbia, and even the Apollo 1 fire? (well, he may have forgotten the Apollo fire, since NASA refers to it as the Apollo 204 fire, as part of the forgetting process) Maybe he failed to read Diane Vaughns book, "The Challenger Launch Decision," an extremely detailed examination of the flaws in the decision making system at NASA. Maybe he failed to read "Comm Check," by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood, where if you aren't a careful reader, one could conclude that no serious efforts were made to determine the damage to Columbia since there was "nothing we could do anyways, why make them suffer." Even the watered down Rodgers commision report (well, except for Richard Feynmans rather scathing appendix) showed that NASA needs to listen to their engineers. And of course, there is the CAIB report, which emphasizes again and again the NASA ignored evidence of a serious problem, that the need to launch outweighed safety concerns, and that there were several items that had to be addressed before launching the next shuttle. Did you miss that one too, Mike?

The obsession with returning the shuttle to flight has a name - "go fever" and boy, does NASA have a bad case. They as much as admit to the CAIB that they don't have a good understanding of foam shedding, yet allow the the shuttle to rollout with a crack in the external tanks foam! They have modified the analysis software for evaluating launch debris strikes, the same software that said that Columbia was in no danger. Well, that's a good thing then, right? Except they are modifying the software in the OPPOSITE direction of safety! That being the case, what is Griffin going to base his decisions on, his 7 degrees, management opinion, or Kentucky windage? How foolish of me to expect him to listen to the experts who have been selected to approve the return to flight. How foolish of me to doubt the Mike Griffin knows best. How foolish of me to expect a government agency, in this administration, to do a patient review of all the facts instead of acting rashly. And lastly, how foolish of me to expect logic and reason to prevail over ego and emotions. Now, the crew of Discovery are unwittingly risking theirs lives for the furtherance of the political careers of bureaucrats, and I can only hope they survive.

Oil Speculators as Terrorists

So, you want to bring the United States to its knees? Don't become some form of human bomb, just jack up the price of oil! The whole world makes lots of money at $35 a barrel. Only the speculators make money at $40 and above. And there is no earthly reason for oil to be above $35 a barrel, NONE! Of course, there was no earthly reason for the stock bubble in 2000 either, but at least the motive was obvious back then, pure greed. The motives behind the people setting the price of oil these days seem to be purely evil. The trouble is when you look at the impact of high oil prices. During the winter, home heating oil prices rise, in the spring and summer, it's gasoline. Either way, it makes people travel less, re-allocate disposable income towards fuel and away from products, and creates a lot of FUD. Petroleum is a major ingrediant in lots of products, from plastics to chemicals and fertilizers. Thus, the cost of food rises, the costs of packaging rises, in fact the cost of most things rise. Once again, people have to re-allocate more money away from "splurges" to more practical items like foodstuffs.
Now, we have to lay off people, because consumers aren't buying what they used to. No one wants an SUV or other irrationally designed vehicle, we all want 100 miles to the gallon. Auto manufacturers have to cut back on hourly workers. All those increased prices in food and gas brings inflation fears, so up go interest rates, down goes home sales, and home prices. Since the baby boomer generation (myself included) use their homes as their retirement fund, whoops, guess I'll be working longer. And lest we forget, the trade imbalance gets HUGE with all that outrageously priced petroleum coming in, and damn little going out. In short, the US economy is on its knees, all by pushing up the price of oil to an irrational level. There you have. You can destroy the US automotive industry, agriculture, future investment, retirements funds, everything. And not a single follower had to imolate themselves to do it. And we just follow the judas goats bell, and abort to orbit again.

Why it's been awhile

Amazing how sometimes things just turn out, and the circle closes. I've been trying to escape my day job for quite sometime, got all set to bail out, when they announce a plant closing. Now I get to do what I want to do (albiet a few months later) with some paltry, but helpful amount of severance. Of course some of my co-workers are in shock, they have essentially worked for the same people for 20 or more years, never had to do a resume or any job search work, now they are 50+ engineers with no job search skills. It's bad enough they have let their engineering skills stagnate for so long, but over time their salaries have risen to the 99th percentile, while their skills have withered to the 33rd percentile. With the ever shrinking job market up here in New England, their future will be dependent on contacts and luck.

I was fortunate in my childhood to have seen the empty mill buildings in Lowell. To realize that once great companies can just up and move, or cease to exist was earth shattering to me at the ripe old age of 8. It certainly explains why I've never lasted longer than 4 years at any one company, and why continuous training and learning are integral to my life. In this day and age where there is no such thing as loyalty in the workplace, the ability to keep your skills generic is the best way to insure continued employability.

The counterpoint to generic skills is that a lot of firms are looking for specific skills. It's interesting to look at some of the jobs that are out there. For example, "some company" is looking for someone who has experience designing and testing the power supply used in EMC's Symmetrix system. There's a 6 month contract for a former EMC employee who has no other skills than what they learned at EMC. Yup, that's what I want to do with the rest of my life, wait for an ex-employer to need me. You still waiting to re-marry your ex too?

Sorry if this is turning into a rant, but damn if American manufacturers aren't insisting on performing an Abort to Orbit. Rather than use approriate components that require a higher engineering talent level, they are embedding PC's in coffee makers, and scheduling reboots. It's bad enough NASA is still stuck on the ground, do we have to bring down what little is left of domestic engineering talent and manufacturing? It's fine for me, when it's a crisis, my rates start at $100 per hour and soar from there. But wouldn't you like to do a little thinking up front and pay $50?