Forward Biased (Less-than-current Events)

Carnival of Liberty IX

Gullyborg over at Resistance is Futile! hosts the latest Carnival of Liberty.  Check it out.  Lots of good stuff from like-minded defenders of individual liberty, from the effect that terrorism impacts liberty, the Fair Tax plan, atheism (or is it Atheism?) to the "re-wilding" of America.

The Carnival of Liberty is a production of the Life, Liberty and Property community of the TTLB ecosystem, but you don't have to be a member of either to contribute.

Disaster aid update

UPDATE:  Be sure to see Instapundit's Katrina Aid Update post.

I had a doctor appointment today.  When I got in to see him, he apologized for the delay, and said that it had to do with the fact that his family lives in New Orleans.

Needless to say, that had him kind of busy and preoccupied.  No problem, I said.

Then, on the way home, I heard Ralph Bristol make a suggestion that I think is a brilliant idea, one that, as far as I know, hasn't been widely supported in the blogosphere (or anywhere else that I know of).

He has a spare room in his home, like a lot of folks do, and he would be willing to let storm victims stay there temporarily while they get their own homes repaired or whatever they need to do to get their lives back together.

Someone out there should coordinate all the people who have spare room in their homes and are willing to let disaster victims stay with them for a little while.  There are lots of people who have such room, and they aren't all necessarily well-to-do--potentially, I may have such a room within a few months, and maybe even more in the near future, and I would be willing to participate, too.  But I have no idea who to tell about this.  I don't know how to coordinate an effort like this, but if I had to I guess I could try.  But I'm hardly the ideal person.

Now, while this blog has little influence in the blogosphere, I know that one or two of the Big Guys check it out on occasion, and this sort of idea is going to need the support of several such Big Guys if it's going to go anywhere.  I haven't actually had the chance to do any reading yet today, so it's possible that someone else out there is promoting the same idea.  If so, please let me know who they are, or ask them to contact me, or somehow get us together.

I'm going to write Glenn Reynolds about this idea, specifically because he's requested information on the subject of Katrina aid, but my email will be only one of thousands, and he doesn't particularly know me or anything.

This is important, I think.  A spare room, even if it has no furniture like beds or anything, and the people have to camp out on the floor with bedrolls, is a durn sight better than places where thousands huddle together in the heat and humidity and dampness.  And there are potentially thousand of such spare rooms in homes all over the country.

Let's do something about this, folks.  We may not be ready in time to help Katrina victims, but we could easily be ready for the next storm or earthquake or volcano or meteorite strike or whatever happens next in the lower 48.

UPDATE:  It turns out that Bill Hennessy has put up a website devoted to this very thing:  registering people who are offering their homes for Katrina victims.  Over 75 people have already registered!  I don't yet know if this is intended as a permanent thing for use in future disasters (I've emailed Bill to ask this.  And thanks to Doug of Below the Beltway for pointing me to Michelle Malkin for the link.)

And NBC News mentioned an effort called "Host A Family," but for the life of me I can't find a link to it yet.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Ogre points to a Yahoo group set up for this purpose, Katrina Open Rooms.  And he's discussing the question of whether we should rebuild New Orleans at all, as is The Steel Deal.  There certainly are good arguments for not rebuilding, but my gosh--4.5 million people, and their hometown may just have disappeared, and this isn't even considering the value of New Orleans as a historic and unique city.  In contrast, Doug of Below the Beltway argues in favor of rebuilding.

To reiterate, I still think that we--someone, anyone--should make this spare-room registry thing a permanent effort, so we're not left scrambling to do something next time a disaster strikes.

Technorati tags:  flood aid, hurricane Katrina

It's 1974 all over again

Good grief.  People are panicking around here.

There's a rumor going around that we're about to run out of gasoline, not to mention that prices are running nearly $3 per gallon--and prices here are always lower than the national average.

What I do know is that the EPA administrator has substantially relaxed volatility standards for gasoline and sulfur standards for diesel fuel (temporarily, of course, until about mid-September) specifically to give distribution a kick in the pants, so that should help within a few days.  And while I have less than a half-tank in my car, that should last me three or four days (it's a small car, manual transmission, with A/C that doesn't work, so I get pretty good mileage).

But there are lines at the gas stations around here like I haven't seen since 1974.  While I was just 18 then, I remember the gas shortages like they were yesterday.  And I refuse to participate in the panic--I'll buy gas when I need to, not before.

But watch for environmentalist groups to howl about standards being temporarily reduced, like that's going to doom the earth or something.  If this isn't proof that we need more refineries, nothing is--but there are those so opposed to the advance of civilization (yes, that's exactly what I think environmental groups are basically all about) that this will be very difficult to accomplish.

UPDATE:  Well, it's three days later and I haven't heard about any howling from environmentalists about the gasoline standards, so it looks like I may have been wrong.  Then again, maybe they're just too busy blaming Katrina on Bush's not signing Kyoto or some such irrational nonsense.  I guess they think they'll get more political mileage (ack!--no pun intended, I think) out of that strategy than by attacking something that gets more gasoline out to the people who need it.

Katrina aid update

Hugh Hewitt is suggesting that the blogosphere set aside one day for a "unified blog beg" on behalf of an organization helping victims of Katrina.  Glenn Reynolds, of course, picked up the meme, suggesting Thursday to do it.

Now, this is just a very small blog in the Grand Scheme of Things, but if anything comes of this, I'll post it here as well.  Please consider doing do what you can.  We got off quite easily in my area--only a few scattered thundershowers, no flooding, and a tornado or two--and it sure beats sitting around disappointed that Gaia/Nature didn't smite us with a heavier hand.

"Unecessary" war

Callimachus over at Winds of Change helps us think about something we can never really know (not that people like Jimmy Carter will stop claiming to know): whether a given war is necessary or unnecessary.

Thomas DiLorenzo says the Civil War was unnecessary. Peter Rinaldo says just about every war America has ever fought in has been unnecessary.

Jimmy Carter long ago pronounced the war to overthrow Saddam unnecessary. Of course, he also thinks the American Revolution was unnecessary.

Carter doesn't go into detail about what he thinks makes for a "necessary" war. Neither do most other Iraq War critics I've seen who invoke the "unnecessary" cry. What would a "necessary" war look like, in their eyes?

I'll give you my version of a necessary war: The brief 1936 conflict between Germany, alone, and France, Britain, and Czechoslovakia.

This is alternative history, of course.  (Details snipped--go read it yourself.)

Why is this war "necessary?" Because it prevents World War II in Europe, the Holocaust, and the deaths of tens of millions of people, from the North Sea to the Russian steepe.

But would it stand up to the modern anti-Iraq-War activist's definitions of justified? Put him in the Wayback Machine and set the dial to 1936. Remember, he doesn't know there's going to be a World War II in Europe. Like the pacifists Orwell scorned, he probably thinks Hitler is not such a bad guy as he's made out to be in the capitalist press, and anyway the leaders of Britain and America are the real threat to world peace.

What will he say, in protesting this "unjust and unnecessary" war?

He follows with quite a list of "objections" that sound strangely familiar.

Necessary war? More like pre-emptive, illegal, immoral war. More like, "He was going to hit me first!"

Read the comments, too.  Hat tip to Rand Simberg--in fact, re-read his own offering of "alternative history" regarding WWII and how today's anti-Iraq-war folks would have likely responded.

I've got no right to complain

So tonight we're expected to start seeing the effects of Katrina in the form of heavy rain.  Sure, long, heavy rain is a pain (in the drain?) but that's all--just an inconvenience (I don't live in a flood plain).  The folks just east of New Orleans aren't getting away with a mere inconvenience, though.

Oh--I live in upstate South Carolina.  But like I said, for us it'll just be rain and a few floods.

UPDATE:  I didn't intend for this to be a political post, but the compassion and human kindness expressed by leftists has yet again amazed me.  It seems James Wolcott, one of the most arrogant, self-righteous, illogical leftists out there with a following (okay, in my opinion), roots for hurricanes.  And he's proud of it.

I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own. Sure, a hearty volcano can be enjoyable. Burning rivers of lava: so picturesque. But a volcano is stationary, like Dennis Hastert after a big lunch. It doesn't offer the same dramatic suspense. Hurricanes are in unpredictable flux. They move, change direction, strengthen, weaken, lose an eyewall, repair an eyewall; they seem to have volition and opera-diva personalities.

That post may come down soon, but even so, someone will have the whole thing saved or cached somewhere.

To be fair, the right has similar characters, who will doubtless blame Katrina on homosexuality and/or claim credit for her changing course (due to their prayers).

(Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds for the Wolcott link.)

UPDATE:  Owlish points out a detail that I missed:  the James Wolcott piece is from September of '04; it's not a recent post.  But the point remains.

OK, I'm nitpicky. So sue me.

So I was surfing a bit the other day amongst some of the science/tech sites I read often, some of which inter-link with each other, minding my own business, and before I knew it I was reading a story on Live Science.  (I have it linked in my blogroll, down there.  Yeah, thataway, on the right, under "Science and technology," because it's, well, mostly about stuff like science.  You know, and technology.)

Now, I don't expect most stories I read there to read like a real tech journal, because they're written for a broader, less-focused readership.  But I do expect writers to at least get the technical stuff right, and get a little actual science in there now and again.  Seems reasonable to me, seeing as they have "technology" right up there on the label, top center, just to the right of the word "science."  (Alright, so I suppose I've made my point.)

I followed this particular link because the title intrigued me:  "All Earth's Electricity Mustered to Destroy an Aluminum Can."  You have to admit that the idea of all the earth's electricity being "mustered" to any particular place for any purpose at all, let alone the destruction of an aluminum can, warrants a little investigation.  And, as it happens, I know a little bit about electricity.  This would be a little like Eugene Volokh reading a story on "All Earth's Lawyers Mustered to Sue an Aluminum Company," or something like that.  At least he would want to check it out.  So I did.

First of all, the title has nothing to do with what happens in the story.  Not a thing.  It implies that all the electricity on earth was somehow gathered up and brought to bear on this little aluminum can in Nevada, which is not the case.  Well, maybe the story will clear things up.  First sentence:

At a government test site in Nevada last week, scientists generated a brief electrical pulse four times as powerful as all the electricity on Earth.

They didn't even get one sentence in before not only being ambiguous from a technical point of view, but being utterly illogical as well.  Suppose I made this statement: "Last week I briefly had four times as many people in my kitchen as there were in my entire house."

How can there be more people in my kitchen than in my entire house?  Similarly, how can any electrical pulse be "four times as powerful as all the electricity on Earth," unless said pulse were not on Earth at all?  (I checked on eBay, and Nevada is still earthbound.)  I can only venture a guess as to the writer's intention, which is that this pulse involved four times more electricity as is typically found on Earth at any one time.

But even making that assumption doesn't clear things up.  The story states that this electrical pulse was "four times as powerful" as something else.  In physics generally, and electricity specifically, "power" is a very particular quantity which is defined carefully.  Generally speaking, power is the product of force and velocity, velocity also being the displacement due to that force over time.  In electricity specifically, power is the product of electro-motive force (EMF) in volts, and rate of current flow in amperes, said current being the amount of displacement of electrical charges over time (coulombs per second).  Both equations for force are similar, differing in the same ways that electrical current differs from throwing a rock.  In any case, it is very specific, and does not represent the amount of electricity present any more than you can know the amount of power in a rock simply by knowing how much rock you have.  Saying this electrical "pulse was four times as powerful as all the electricity on earth" means they know how much power that was, right?  Inquiring minds want to know!

They don't say if they do know.  Actually, they do tell the amount of electricity that discharges through the can, nearly 19 million amperes, but as we have seen, this hardly tells us the amount of power that was in that pulse.  If the writer thinks he is answering the question of how powerful the pulse was, or if he thinks that 19 million amps is twice as powerful as 9.5 million amps, he is the wrong choice to write this story.  We know the electrical discharge was immense, but we kinda wanted to know just how immense.

Ok.  Next, they tell us that this electrical discharge caused the aluminum can-like structure  to accelerate "in an instant" to 27,000 mph, roughly escape velocity, and that the pressure in the chamber where this took place was similar to that at the center of the earth, "where iron goes liquid."

Lots of problems here.  Nothing accelerates in an instant.  A finite time was involved which was hinted at in the second sentence: a few millionths of a second (microseconds, or µSec).  Just how many we are left to guess.  And the pressure?  The story implies that the pressure is so great as to cause iron to go liquid.  Folks, all other things being equal, pressure does not cause iron to go from solid to liquid.  Pressure causes a gas to liquefy and a liquid to solidify, not the other way around.

So yes, there is some liquid iron near the center of the earth's core, and there is tremendous pressure there, but the temperature is what liquifies the iron.  (It begins to turn solid at the very center as pressure overcomes the effects of temperature.)  Again--wrong guy for the job.

My curiosity was piqued, though, as I realized that the aluminum can began to move at a high rate of speed, and I began wondering just how far it might have moved.  Since the writer never tells us, we are left to guess for ourselves.

27,000 mph is in fact slightly higher than escape velocity from the earth's surface, but we'll use their figure anyway.  That translates to...hmmm...5280 feet...divide by 3600...(should I convert to metric?)...that comes to 39,600 feet per second.  Now, how long is it traveling at this speed?  We only know that it manages to get there, and the whole process takes "a few" µSec.  So, ignoring problems of acceleration and deceleration, etc., for a simple point of reference, how far would this object travel if it were moving at a constant velocity of 27K mph for only one µSec?  Turns out that comes to 0.4752, or nearly one-half, inch.  Not very far, but we don't know how far the object is actually allowed to move during the whole procedure.  It could be several times this distance depending on factors we don't know--because the writer never tells us. 

And judging from what he does write, he likely never guessed he was leaving so much out.

"Best war correspondent in 60 years"

That's how Individ characterizes Michael Yon.

Not since Ernie Pyle was killed by a sniper's bullet on Okinawa, 17 April 1945, has there been a war correspondent like Michael Yon. Go to his blog NOW. The combination of the immediacy of a blog, his brave, steel-nerved, yet emotive photography, and his riveting, first-person accounts of battle, death, and life in Iraq, is peerless. Pray for him. If you cry easy, have a box of tissues nearby.

So why are you still here?  Git.  I won't have to remind you to bookmark him.

Stranger in a strange land

If you haven't already clicked through to this story from Owlish Mutterings, do it now.  There's a Hollywood screenwriter who has come out of the closet, outing himself as a conservative, and Jewish, Republican.  And he still manages to find work.

It is, I kid you not, a badge of honor in Hollywood to hate America. These airheads who have amassed millions through the free market economy constantly spout nonsense about the need for a Scandinavian style socialist government. They don't even know that the Scandinavian countries are economic basket cases. I'm not making this up. They actually cruise Sunset Strip in their Bentleys and accuse Republicans of being greedy.

...The political divide in Hollywood is now being felt in the most important quarter: the war against Islamic terrorism. Basically, Hollywood denies that such a war exists.

...When I confront these people with the truth they look at me as if I am some visitor from some foreign planet.

Which I guess I am.

...the network executives, all proud Democrats, refuse to admit that Islamic terror exists. I was actually told in one meeting that "Jewish terrorists" in Israel are just as dangerous as Arab terrorists. I stared at the executives and felt my blood pressure rise. Jewish terrorists? What Jewish terrorists? What universe are these people living in? Are they just making this stuff up as they go along? Are they even aware that they are lying? Do they even care? Or do they truly believe the nonsense they spout? If they do, then I am truly frightened.

Further, I was lectured that I was anti-Islamic and my screenplay proved it because most of my Islamic characters were terrorists. I tried to calmly and rationally explain that it was Islamic terrorists who sawed off Daniel Pearl's head; Islamic terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers; Islamic terrorists who blew up the USS Cole; and Islamic terrorists who routinely butcher Israeli men, women and children.

"Israel is different," the Jewish producers self-righteously lectured me. "If not for the occupation, blah, blah, blah....Besides, we don't deal in stereotypes..."

Let that last statement sink in.  They don't deal in stereotypes.  This goes beyond just being blinded by ideology--these people don't even know how prejudiced they are.  A Democrat, by definition, cannot be prejudiced, anyway, any more than a black man can be a racist, right?

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been leaning very heavily on Hollywood the past few years and the film industry is, frankly, terrified. According to CAIR, not a single Muslim should ever be portrayed as a terrorist on film, reality be damned.

When I was in fourth grade (1965) one of the things they taught us about Communism--yes, they actually used to do that!--was that Communists used the concept of "truth" differently than we did.  Anything that promoted the cause of Communism was the "truth," and anything that did not do so was a "lie."  I interpreted that as a case of warped morality rather than self-deception--after all, everyone knows what the truth is, even if they don't acknowledge it, don't they?  The very concept of being so deluded as to not understand something as simple as the TRVTH (as Johnny Hart would say) was beyond my childish ken.

The far left in this country reached that point some time ago.  Yes, they have a few counterparts in the far right, indeed even in libertarianism.  They have a lot of counterparts in religious groups.  It's a common human failing that we believe many things for no rational reason whatever.  But for most of American history we didn't have to worry about such people being influential, much less in a position of authority.  They were, after all, on the fringe of thought, practically by definition.

This is no longer true.  And while I'm generally optimistic about such things, I occasionally find myself wondering how rational people can ever win. 

Until average Americans begin to learn to think, really think, we might not. 

If this is true, what's stopping us?

In 1923, two researchers, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, working at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in coal-rich but oil-poor Germany, developed a process for converting coal into synthetic hydrocarbons, including fuel.  Since then, many refinements to their method have been made, and the term "Fischer-Tropsch" refers to a variety of similar processes that perform this synthesis of fuel from coal.

Even back then, this allowed Germany and Japan to develop alternative fuels during WWII.  Germany's annual output of synthetic oil reached 90 million tons in 1944.  After the war scientists in the U.S. continued to work on synthetic fuels.  But, as a rule, these processes were uneconomical as long as the price of crude oil remained below $30 per barrel.

Oil is currently going for somewhat more than that.

I am usually not a participant in conspiracy theories, however much circumstantial evidence may exist for them, because I usually view a conspiracy as too dependent on behavior that goes against human nature--it's too hard to keep something really big a secret for long if your own people are looking for it.  Leaks happen.  (Now that's just me--some folks see conspiracies around every corner.)  When I hear urban legends about a secret 200-mpg carburetor I just smile.  And, as much as I sympathize with them, when I hear fancy theories about how we can become independent of foreign oil using biomass, wind power, or some other promising new energy technology, I seldom give them much credence.

But this story hardly appears to be a crackpot or conspiracy theory.  Note:  I know next to nothing about this sort of technology myself--I'm just evaluating what I read.

Montana's governor wants to solve America's rising energy costs using a technology discovered in Germany 80 years ago that converts coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.

The Fischer-Tropsch technology, discovered by German researchers in 1923 and later used by the Nazis to convert coal into wartime fuels, was not economical as long as oil cost less than $30 a barrel.

But with U.S. crude oil now hitting more than double that price, Gov. Brian Schweitzer's plan is getting more attention across the country and some analysts are taking him very seriously.

Montana is "sitting on more energy than they have in the Middle East," Schweitzer told Reuters in an interview this week.

"I am leading this country in this desire and demand to convert coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. We can do it in Montana for $1 per gallon," he said.

...

The governor estimated the cost of producing a barrel of oil through the Fischer-Tropsch method at $32, and said that with its 120 billion tons of coal -- a little less than a third of the U.S total -- Montana could supply the entire United States with its aviation, gas and diesel fuel for 40 years without creating environmental damage.

An entry level Fischer-Tropsch plant producing 22,000 barrels a day would cost about $1.5 billion, he said.

...

California "says they need 25,000 megawatts of electricity during the next ten years," he said. "We'll give you a delivered price and we'll forward contract that for the next 20 years.

"Transmission companies from England, from Canada, from all over America are coming to my office and saying 'we'll build these transmission lines as soon as you have the contracts to build the generation."'

This, to me, doesn't sound like pie in the sky--it sounds like a technology that went unexploited for a long time due to its lack of economy is being re-examined, even if a bit late.

If Gov. Schweitzer is even one-quarter right about how much potential $32-per-barrel oil is in Montana's coal mines, we shouldn't be sitting here talking about it.  We should be building prototype conversion plants now.  Even when the price of oil begins to come back down, the existence of a viable process to produce cheap oil from local natural resources will exert a continuous downward pressure on the price OPEC can get for their product, which now is pretty much whatever they want to charge.

And I don't have to tell you what is the source of revenue for nearly all, if not all, state sponsors of terrorism.  I view this as a matter of national security, and we must examine whether there is any possibility of doing this.

And I confess that if someone suddenly were to say, "Gosh darn it, this looked so very promising...but it turns out that we can't really make economical sythoil out of domestic coal," then I would be just a bit suspicious that I may not be getting the whole story.  I would need to know why the Germans and Japanese could do this 60 to 80 years ago, but we can't do it today--such as, all our coal contains high quantities of spoilium or something that renders it useless for purposes of synthesizing fuel.  But you had better well convince me.  Halfway, handwaving explanations that might work on most folks won't cut it for me or most of the people I know in the Blogosphere.  There are simply too many smart people who know too much about too many things to hide something like this behind a lame excuse.  The knowledge of the Blogosphere is collective.  We've seen numerous examples of that in the last few months alone.

Yes, there are many people who stand to lose a lot if this works.  Ford's development of a mass-produced automobile caused a lot of pain in the buggy whip industry.  But our country stands to gain quite a lot more if it works, quite a few individuals will become very wealthy if it works, and right now I don't have any reason to believe that it won't.

Well, no reason except one:  that we just decide not to try to make it work.

And that's not acceptable.

(Thanks to the open posts on Mudville Gazette, Outside the Beltway and The Indepundit.)