Wind
Saharan Wind Pictures
It's that season again. The sand blowing off the Sahara into the Atlantic is going strong. Today's picture is very good. The best pictures are around noon to 1PM EDT at the US Navy site.

Wind Power
Reality: 1 - Reactance management
This article in IEEE Spectrum discusses some of the reality of wind power. It is aimed at the intelligent reader, not the engineering specialist, so don't be afraid that it will have too much math or be too difficult to understand.

The focus of this article is on the reactance management problem with wind power. Simple reliable wind generators generate only resistive power. Actual electrical users need a balance of reactive and resistive power. A power grid can withstand small variations and mismatches in the ratio, but large errors cause serious voltage fluctuations, power fluctuations, blown circuit breakers, and even blackouts. When wind is only a few tenths of a percent of the total power generation, the reactive mismatch is tolerable and can be ignored. When wind power becomes a large percentage the reactance ratio must be managed.

Conventional power and the grid can have their reactance ratio adjusted, typically on a timescale of minutes. So the slow changes from calm to windy can be matched by adjusting the conventional power ratio. But the short variations due to gusts and wind shifts happen too fast. As a result, about 20% of wind power must be discarded. They set the grid feed to a lower safe level and adjust that together with the conventional power. The extra available resistive power is discarded because it would destabilize the grid.This discard is often misunderstood and becomes a variety of alleged problems with wind. You find examples of this misunderstanding in comments at Den Beste's and at Asymetrical information.

The rest of the article is your basic engineering discussion:

1. Problem exists.
2. Problem is characterized.
3. Solutions are proposed.
4. Solutions are prototyped. (Wind is at this stage.)
5. Solutions are widely implemented.
6. The world forgets that the problems ever existed.

Reality 2 - Grid connection
Although I don't have articles to point at, I do get information from visits and colleagues in the low countries. The second big problem at the moment is making a suitable grid connection. You may find a farmer with a good wind site. He may be willing to put up a few towers. But the high capacity power grid connection is a few kilometers away on the other side of a town. This makes that site unsuitable. Constructing high capacity power lines is not too bad through farm land, but it is very expensive through industrial sites, towns, and other built up areas.

They have installed wind power on many of the easy sites already. More and more sites with open land and good wind are too expensive to connect over to the power grid.

The US has a closely related problem. You can find highlands in the Dakota's with good winds. But they are often in a sparsely inhabited county that only has a 1 MW power tie. It may take hundreds of kilometers of construction to reach a high capacity grid connection to accept the power from a large wind site.

Wind Power and Nantucket Sound
Den Beste has a very high level article on wind. It is full of those DWL tags to flag that it is highly oversimplified and please don't send mail about it being highly oversimplified. That's fair. You introduce people to complicated subjects with the highly oversimplified basics. Then you gradually dig into the real details. But don't forget, the oversimplified basics also lead to oversimplified conclusions. The correct oversimplified conclusion is that wind power will not replace conventional power.

I have not heard a wind power advocate argue for replacement. I only hear that argument from wind power enemies who are looking for an oversimplified reason to oppose wind power. The actual wind power targets today are:

• Denmark which has targetted 20% electrical power from wind. They are closing in on that goal, and may push for 30%.
• Europe (proposed) a target of 10% electrical power from wind.

Neither is replacement. Both targets can be denigrated as niche targets I suppose. But there is an interesting bit of reality from the experiences of Denmark, Hawaii, and other major wind users. They have not seen the problems identified by the oversimplified analysis. Those problems do not arise at these lower levels of wind power production. They see the reactance management as the next problem. It does not even show up in the simplified analysis.

Some people ask why bother for a niche? That's a fair question. First, Nuclear and Natural gas are each presently about 20% of US electrical production. Should we abandon them because they are so small? What about Oil, at under 10%? Or hydro, at even less?

The right way to think about it is the way you would think about a 20% increase in salary. Is a 20% increase (or decrease) significant? (Most people will immediately answer yes). Sensible people will then ask, but what do I have to do for it? And that is the right way to consider things like the Nantucket Sound wind power. Ask these questions:

• Do we need it? Will local electrical demand grow to need the power?
• What are the load management alternatives that could reduce demand? Are they more cost effective?
• What are the power purchase alternatives available, e.g. more power from Hydro-Quebec?
• What are the power generation alternatives? their costs? their impacts? their feasibility?

The reality of the New England Power pool is that the demand will grow. Load management alternatives exist and are being funded, but the cost effective load management will not eliminate the demand growth. It will just reduce it. Digging into purchase and generation alternatives shows:

• Purchase is feasible, but major increases will require construction of some major power lines from Quebec. The hydro answer is limited also. Transfer from the Midwest is unlikely any time soon. (See the recent blackout for an indication of how close the power grid between NE and the Midwest is to collapsing.)
• Coal is not feasible. It requires rail transport (capacity problems), causes serious air pollution problems, has serious hazardous waste disposal problems, has serious siting problems. It won't happen.
• Oil may be feasible. There are some proposals for new oil fired power plants. There are cost and pollution issues. The most serious problem is a transportation capacity problem. The pipelines are at capacity. The new sites need to be where barge or ship can deliver the oil.
• Natural Gas will be part of the solution. There has been a lot of natural gas brought on line. There are pipeline capacity problems. The gas pipelines are near capacity limits and residential users get priority. Unfortunately, residential and electrical use peak at the same time. There are serious proposals to expand the Boston LNG terminal and build another LNG terminal. LNG is relatively expensive, but New England natural gas has always been very expensive because of the long pipelines.
• Nuclear is a political nightmare. New England has several excellent locations to install upgraded nuclear plants, but it is political death to suggest. Past experiences with utilities grossly mismanageing nuclear plants with excessive costs and poor safety records make the politics much worse.
• Wind is a topic of discussion. The Nantucket Sound location has superb wind characteristics (weeks of steady winds and an annual average wind of over 20mph), it is convenient to the power grid connections, and has modest construction costs.

I think that if the lawyers and wind enemies do not drive the administrative costs sky high that the investment in wind is competetive with the alternatives. Who cares that it is small. It is a 150MW power plant. All 150MW power plants are small in a market that consumes 15,000MW of power. It looks reasonably cost effective. (Actual cost numbers are tricky, especially when you need to factor in infrastructure costs like new LNG terminals and non-financial impacts like pollution.)

As for ugliness, Boston already has one downtown wind power plant, and might get a few more. They are tolerably ugly. Power lines, power plants, strip mines, oil fields, are all ugly. That's just part of life with electrical power. As ugliness goes, I rather prefer wind turbines. They are less ugly than most of the alternatives.

Thorium Nuclear Power
American Scientist has a good article on thorium-based nuclear power. The premise of the article is that the thorium cycle nuclear power will generate the same power with a lower likelihood of nuclear weapons propagation. This results from the isotopic mixture of the resulting chemicals. A mixed Thorium, Uranium, Plutonium cycle results in the creation of fissile uranium and plutonium in the final wastes. The thorium mixture permits a higher burnup percentage than the usual uranium-plutonium cycle, and generates a different mix of uranium and plutonium isotopes. A simple chemical extraction of uranium ends up with too much non-fissile uranium to make a bomb, and it has the added "advantage" of having some short-life elements that make it hot and dangerously radioactive. (That makes it hard to steal). Similarly the resulting plutonium has too many isotopes other than the explosive Pu-239. It too is hot, radioactive, and non-explosive.

Conventional current reactor residual plutonium is a poor mix, but explosive. (Nuclear bomb production uses an inefficient power producing cycle that generates a very high percentage pu-239.)

India is already shifting to a thorium cycle for their power generation. Their nuclear weapons program has resulted in their being cut off from the conventional uranium and uranium-plutonium processing offered by US, Canada, Japan, and others. They have substantial local thorium deposits, and can establish a viable once through thorium system. With a little extra investment and time they can shift to thorium breeding cycle.

For some more background on current state of the art in production, safety, weapons proliferation, etc. see the MIT Report. I disagree with its conclusion that once through remains the preferred approach. I consider the threats from waste storage anddirty bombs using radioactive waste to be much higher and the threat of plutonium diversion much lower. So I think that in the more secured countries (US, Canada, Europe, Russia) a shift to a mix of breeder and once through is appropriate. It has a higher plutonium production, but much lower overall radio-waste production. The gradual shift to thorium cycle might also make sense, but there is no shortage of uranium and the rest of the world has already made the investment is uranium processing equipment.

Mercenaries
Financial Times has been running a nice series on the modern mercenaries employed by the US. People talk about empire, using Rome and England analogies. This reminds me more of Florence and the Renaissance, when the use of political, economic, and mercenary military skill brought Florence to power.

Air Travel in Europe
There was also an FT update on the evolving regulations on EC air travel. The issue is responsibilities for canceled and delayed flights. Who should pay in a situation where a critical connecting flight is unavailable because of overbooking? E.g., Suppose a business traveler flies from the US to Paris and then finds that the connecting flight is unavailable. Further, this delay prevents attendance at a meeting, so the traveler decides the best course is to simply return home. Who pays for what?

The changes that are proposed place more burden on the connecting carrier to make good losses to the traveler. The local carriers are opposed. The ramifications are highly complex and the final resolution some time in the future.

Satellite launches
Another nice launch tonight. This one is the Canadian ozone monitoring satellite. Also two more launches of satellites for TV broadcast. One for Echostar and another to start a satellite service for Cablevision. Also a nice combination of launchers: the air-launch Pegasus, the sea-launched Zenit, and the new Atlas 5 (with link to launch movie). (Nice Zenit launch picture).

I have my doubts about the wisdom of Cablevision entering Satellite TV. It was already barely profitable for the two US players. Adding another may just cause all three to lose money. But then, the actual operating costs are quite low. Most of the costs are the depreciation and interest costs of the expensive satellites and their launches. Once launched, a satellite is cheap to operate, and subscriber rates for cable channels are typically proportional to customer base.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Tilapia
I had a very good dinner one night while traveling. We made a variety of jokes about it, describing it as a peanut butter and jelly fish. The actual meal was Tilapia, crusted in almonds, with a chambord sauce. There was asparagus spears on the side. It was quite delicious.

MIT automotive news
Another research project at MIT is making progress. The goal is to design a relatively inexpensive modification for automobile engines so that they can reach the same efficiency levels as diesels. This is of significant interest because it avoids replacing the huge infrastructure that exists for supporting gasoline piston engines.

The concept is the addition of a plasma generator to crack the gasoline to get a mix of hydrogen and hydrocarbon fragments. This can then be used with air and gasoline to get an extremely lean mixture that allows a very high compression ratio and allows the use of a turbo-charger. On paper, this gets fuel efficiency up to 40% instead of the typical 30%. It should be less expensive than diesel and allow the use of cheaper, low-additive gasolines.

They should have such engines working within a couple years. That will reveal how well it really works and whether manufacturing costs will be reasonable.

Foreign Affairs - serious political analysis
After another long trip, I read my recent copy of Foreign Affairs. It is a refreshing change from the "sound byte" entertainment of the mass media and the blog. They have begun putting several articles online (at least for a little while), and three deserve reading:

• Securing the Gulf - a serious discussion of next steps in Gulf area diplomatic, military, and political activities.
• The Shi'ites and the Future of Iraq - a serious discussion of Iraqi and Iranian politics and appropriate US responses.
• The Protean Enemy - A discussion of the evolving structures of terrorism, especially Al Quaida.

Readers may need a teaser to inspire them to follow the links, and I do not know how long Foreign Affairs keeps these available online. I've summarized and excerpted them below. You can skip to the end of the last one for comments on what it implies for the weblogs, etc.

Securing the Gulf

Kenneth Pollack discusses the need and some alternative approaches to securing the Gulf region now that the major fighting is over. He begins with the primary motivation:

America's primary interest in the Persian Gulf lies in ensuring the free and stable flow of oil from the region to the world at large. This fact has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories leveled against the Bush administration during the run-up to the recent war. US interests do not center on whether gas is $2 or $3 at the pump, or whether Exxon gets contracts instead of Lukoil or Total. Nor do they depend on the amount of oil that the United States itself imports from the Persian Gulf or anywhere else. The reason the United States has a legitimate and critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow copiously and relatively cheaply is simply that the global economy built over the last 50 years rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil, and if that foundation were removed, the global economy would collapse.

After discussing the threats and two rejected alternatives, he reaches his serious proposal, a security condominium modeled on arms control experiences in Europe at the end of the Cold War:

The process would begin by establishing a regional security forum at which relevant issues could be debated and discussed, information exchanged, and agreements framed. The members could then move on to confidence-building measures, such as notification of exercises, exchanges of observers, and information swaps.
...
The real problem with this approach is that such a regional security condominium might be impossible to achieve. It is worth remembering that in Europe it took between 20 and 25 years of excruciating negotiations to produce a workable system. The United States has had agonizing experiences negotiating multilateral agreements in the Middle East, and there is no reason to believe this one will be any easier.

The Shi'ites and the Future of Iraq

Yitzhak Nakash discusses the necessary interactions with the Shi'ites, who dominate Iran and form an important part of Iraq. It begins with several pages of Iraqi history, especially the Shi'ite experiences of this century in Iraq. (This history is something that is obviously unknown to some of our warbloggers.) It then reaches the Shi'ite actions during the war:

The decision of the Shi'ites not to rebel against the regime of Saddam during the recent war has underscored their ambivalence toward the United States as well as their strong Iraqi national identity. Their inaction can largely be explained by their sense that they were betrayed by the United States during their uprising at the end of the first Gulf War.
...
The US decision to abandon the Shi'ites in 1991 touched a collective nerve and evoked memories of their long history of betrayal, stretching back to the events surrounding the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in Karbala in 680.
...
They abhor the idea of an Iraqi government installed by the United States to further America's interests, just as the Sharifians were brought in by the British in 1921.

Then after some discussion of recent events:

In the period since the war, America's credibility has been put to the test in Iraq. The Bush administration has thus far made little effort to reconcile the contradiction between its grand vision of a new Iraq and the limited resources it has actually committed to rebuilding the country.
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Washington needs to ensure that the civil disorder in southern Iraq and parts of Baghdad does not develop into a large-scale anti-American protest movement or even into a revolt, as happened in 1920 following the British occupation. One sensible move would be for the Bush administration to reach out to the Shi'ites and acknowledge that the United States made a mistake in not coming to their aid in 1991. As the victorious power, the United States can afford to appear humble. An apology to the Shi'ites followed by some kind of concrete gesture would not undercut US stature in the country but would rather help rebuild American credibility in both Iraq and among Shi'ites in the larger Arab world.
...
Over time, a relationship between the United States and Iraqi Shi'ites built on trust could facilitate a modus vivendi, perhaps even a dialogue, between America and Iran.
...
Wahhabism's hatred for America is rivaled only by its hostility to Shi'ism. To contain its spread, the United States will need to build bridges to Shi'ites in the Arab world as well as to reformers in Iran. How the Bush administration handles the Iraqi Shi'ites, therefore, will be crucial not only for the future of Iraq but also for the future of the entire region.

The Protean Enemy

Jessica Stern discusses the ongoing and continuously evolving threat from Al Queda. She begins with a discussion of terrorist motivation:

Why do religious terrorists kill? In interviews over the last five years, many terrorists and their supporters have suggested to me that people first join such groups to make the world a better place -- at least for the particular populations they aim to serve. Over time, however, militants have told me, terrorism can become a career as much as a passion. Leaders harness humiliation and anomie and turn them into weapons. Jihad becomes addictive, militants report, and with some individuals or groups -- the "professional" terrorists -- grievances can evolve into greed: for money, political power, or attention.

This evolution is discussed, and then the topic shifts to their non-religious allies. Some are obvious, but there is one troubling new player:

The triborder region of South America has become the world's new Libya, a place where terrorists with widely disparate ideologies -- Marxist Columbian rebels, American white supremacists, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others -- meet to swap tradecraft. Authorities now worry that the more sophisticated groups will invite the American radicals to help them.
...
Reports that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is allowing Columbian rebels and militant Islamist groups to operate in his country are meanwhile becoming more credible, as are claims that Venezuela's Margarita Islam has become a terrorist haven.

Then some notes on the organization and the impact of good communications technologies:

Al Qaeda seems to have learned that in order to evade detection in the West, it must adopt some of the qualities of a "virtual network": a style of organization used by American right-wind extremists for operating in environments (such as the United States) that have effective law enforcement agencies. American anti-government groups refer to this style as "leaderless resistance." The idea was popularized by Louis Beam, the self-described ambassador-at-large, staff propagandist, and "computer terrorist to the Chosen" for Aryan nations, an American neo-Nazi group. Beam writes that hierarchical organization is extremely dangerous for insurgents, especially in "technologically advanced societies where electronic surveillance can often penetrate the structure, revealing its chain of command." In leaderless organizations, however, "individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction."

And particularly relevant to the Web is the comment from the late neo-Nazi William Pierce that using the Web to recruit "leaderless resisters" offers another advantage: it attracts better-educated young people than do more traditional methods, such as radio programs.

She discusses how this evolves into organizations that are common in the West and US, then noting:

Focusing on economic and social alienation may help explain why such a surprising array of groups has proved willing to join forces with al Qaeda. Some white supremacists and extremist Christians applaud al Qaeda's rejectionist goals and may eventually contribute to al Qaeda missions. Already a Swiss neo-Nazi named Albert Huber has called for his followers to join forces with Islamists.
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These groups, along with Horst mahler (a founder of the radial leftist German group the Red Army Faction), view September 11 attacks as the first shot in a war against globalization ...

Finally some discussion of how to deal with this protean nature:

The United States too often ignores the unintended consequences of its actions, disregarding, for example, the negative message sent by Washington's ongoing neglect of Afghanistan and of the chaos in postwar Iraq.
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It does not make sense in such an atmosphere to keep US markets closed to Pakistani textiles or to insist on protecting intellectual property with regard to drugs that needy populations in developing countries cannot hope to afford.
In countries where extremist religious schools promote terrorism, Washington should help develop alternative schools rather than attempt to persuade the local government to shut down radical madrasahs. In Pakistan, many children end up at extremist schools because their parents cannot afford the alternatives; better funding for secular education could therefore make a positive difference.
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What is new today is that radical leaders are using to tools of globalization to construct new, transnational identities based on death cults, turning grievances and alienation into powerful weapons. To fight these tactics will require getting the input not just of moderate Muslims, but of radical Islamist revivalists who oppose violence.

Blogger Optimism

I have already said some things about the naive optimism regarding blogs. The Stern article notes how far Internet use has already gone. We already have neo-Nazis, al Quaida, warbloggers, Dr. Dean and others recognizing and using the web for their own purposes. Ed Cone and John Robb have commented on the unrealistic optimism, and I agree with Cone that Mr. Rove will quickly bring this to the support of the Republican cause. The coastal liberals still haven't figured out what has happened in terms of political sophistication by the Republicans. The Republican party is sustained by hundreds of thousands of contributions from people whose annual contribution is less than $200. The Democrats depend on the big contributors who hit the $2,000 limit. But the Democrats still don't grasp just how thoroughly the Republicans have organized to reach their grass roots supporters.

With colleagues as sophisticated and revolting as the ones listed above, it is time for the naive bloggers to abandon their conceit that they and their technology will change the world. The world is already using their technology for purposes both good and evil. The bloggers risk being left in the dust as the technology is exploited by those with their eyes open.

The entire network faces Civil Liberties dangers from those who are trying to stop the leaderless terrorists. These terrorists are a real threat and they do utilize the Internet. But they use the Internet in much the same was as all legitimate forms of political speech. They exchange ideas and political opinions. It is their personal choices to become terrorists that make them so dangerous.

Government actions sufficient to prevent their effective use of the Internet will also be sufficient to prevent many political uses of the Internet. Some very serious thought will be needed to help create a means whereby the leaderless terrorists can be hurt without destroying the free speech characteristics of the Internet.

Serious Speech

I had an "aha" moment listening to the interview of Phil Maher while traveling. (That's when I get cable.) He pinpointed a key flaw of all the current Democratic and Libertarian opposition. They are not serious people. The Democrats are united in a visceral hatred of all things Republican. But they lack any serious vision or policy beyond "Democrat: good. Republican: evil". The most concrete non-hatred policy statements available can be summarized as "Spend more money on our favorite causes and contributors." There is no evidence of serious, mature thoughtful policy.

This led to the similar realization that the web logs are fun and entertaining, but also not serious. They are filled with sound byte moments, interesting phrases, and quick notions. Many of these have the potential to become serious ideas. But they are not being developed or extended. The articles above are examples of what it takes to develop beyond the quick notion into a serious idea. A serious analysis of a policy requires many such articles and analyses by many different people. That is part of why it is refreshing to get home and have some substantial material to read. It complements the lightweight entertainment that I can get while traveling.

Another little energy efficiency from computers
While walking downtown I got to thinking about the complaints about powerpoint officers in the military. This led to the realization that there is another little energy savings from computers.

In olden days there were overhead projectors in every conference room. People would make foils for meetings. Now, every meeting room has a computer projector and people bring laptops with powerpoint presentations. I'm not sure that this has improved the presentations much, but it does mean a lot less foils are getting made.

So there is less plastic made. Most foils were polyester based. That reduces natural gas use. Less energy is spent on the copier or foil making machine. A little less energy is used by computer projectors, mostly because they can be pre-focused and don't waste light by shining up onto the ceiling. The total energy savings involved is hard to quantify. There is also a re-shuffling of production since the manufacturers of foils have cut back to a tiny production level. This may be even a small productivity gain.

More on Travel
Off for another week. The same hotel as last week. It has a decent exercise room, with a scale that reads a little low. Is this deliberate or accidental? It was nice seeing that sudden weight drop, but I didn't believe it was accurate. It was not. Things returned to normal when I got home.

I didn't get to see any of the later Tour de France stages, because they didn't get those channels at the hotel. I don't have cable at home either. So it was "live Internet" to get the news on Armstrongs victory number five. Sort of like the old days when telegraph sent the up to the minute race news.

Quite an accomplishment by Armstrong. Next year we find out whether he makes another world record with victory number six.

The satellite business
A lot has been happening lately in this business. The satellite operations business will be consolidating. This segment is particularly sensitive to consolidation because the cost of operating an already launched satellite is low. The major cost is the fixed cost of the operations staff and facility. So when two operators are merged, they can get significant operational cost savings.

The recent launch of another broadcast satellite is counter to this trend, but most of their expenditures were already committed. Pulling out of this market would mean Cablevision was abandoning the direct broadcast market to its competitors. It is not willing to do that. So it adds to the operator headcount for a while.

The really large cost is the interest payments on the invested cost. Between satellite, launcher, and insurance there is an up front initial payment of between 250 and 500 million per satellite. Once the satellite is up and working, it just needs a few people on the ground to watch and tend to it. The rest of operations costs are terrestrial connection costs for antennas, connections, etc. So the market goes to those with the best financial setup.

The satellite operators are making noises about more mergers, which may reduce the top six to the top four or five. These companies would run almost all the commercial communications satellites in operation.

A similar compression has happened in the launching industry. In the US it has shrunk to the big two: Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. The next largest player is Orbital, with its occasional low cost launch. Europe is just Arianspace, and Russia has its two survivors. All the other major players have merged. There is not sufficient demand for even these. They are holding on basically hoping that an economic pickup or some incremental new satellite uses will happen.

The latest ripple here is the Boeing misbehavior. Boeing is losing some launches and Lockheed gaining launches as part of the penalty.

Bits of news
MDW They are doing a good job with the upgraded Midway airport. It is much nicer than the old dump.

Meteor Risk The latest analyses indicate that the danger from asteroids is lower than earlier estimates. (From Nature). They've done some more detailed simulations of large meteors hitting the atmosphere. For meteors up to 1 km in diameter these analyses indicate that the stone meteors will disintegrate and be substantially less damaging. About 90% of meteors are stone.

The distribution of old craters and crater clusters is consistent with this model.

So now we have the declassified medium size tidal wave analysis, which showed that meteor strikes of this size would not generate huge tidal waves, and this study that shows about 90% will shatter in the atmosphere and be much less dangerous. This is tough on the movie makers, but they've never let a few facts get in the way. It also means that there is a lot less real risk.

Blogs and politics
Doc Searls has been getting comments on blogs and politics, probably because he links to some highly optimistic opinions. I'll add my cautionary note, then my optimistic note.

The blog will be significant, the same way as the telephone and copy machine were politically significant. Similarly it will be neutral. It will be a tool for both good and evil. It is a mistake to think that this tool will change people or politics dramatically for the better. Any change will because of the efforts of hard working people.

Communications is not the hard part about political power. The hard part is persuading and organizing people to take the time and make an effort that works. The religious right uses the telephone tree to spread the word about significant issues. The blog is more efficient. But the critical step is getting thousands of people to spend 20-60 minutes composing a personalized message and send it to their political representatives. The telephone tree organization is almost incidental.

There was an interesting contrast a few years ago. There was a regulatory issue in education that was important to the religious right, and a DMCA regulatory issue at about the same time. They used their telephone tree. The free speech folks used slashdot, kuro5hin, email, etc. The education regulators received nearly 400,000 individual public comments. The DMCA regulation got under 100 individual public comments.

You see similar patterns in other aspects of politics. How many geeks go to council meetings? have spoken with their state representative or senator? have attended a political fund raiser? attend political rallies?

When you are not willing to make that kind of political commitment you lack power. Using the latest nifty tech toys like blogs does not give you power. Someone willing to put in the time and effort will take those toys and use them to win.

Some things that blogs do not do are:

• Organize talking points with backup white papers so the people can write effective personal messages
• Monitor committees and meetings to track status
• Track commitments, track responsiveness, track results
• Provide personal motivation. One reason telephone trees work is that a person who you know has personally asked you to do something and personally follows up with help and reminders.
• Track schedules and deadlines so that personal effort is used when it is needed and where it is needed, and so that it is not wasted by being used at the wrong time or with the wrong people.

There is a lot more that could be added to this list. These are the things that are part of being a political organizer. It's nice for the blogs to aid communications, but that is neutral towards both good and evil.

As for Mr. Ito's optimism, I can map of his three level diagram and associated thought onto the 1950's: The table at the diner, the circle of telephone friends, and the newspapers. They are all much the same.

The really big difference brought by the Net is making political participation affordable by the middle class. During the American Revolution pamphlets and political involvement had costs within the reach of the middle class. Then the efficiencies of the rotary press, radio, and television moved most of the audience outside the price range of the middle class. Now, it is changing and the middle class can participant in a significant way again.

This is more a financial revolution than a technological revolution. The middle class is able to return to politcal power because the newest technology lets them participate in a meaningful way at an affordable price. That has far more implications than some minor techno-geek factor. The middle class that brought you the American Revolution is returning to political power.

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Mozilla Firebird
I've shifted over to Firebird on Linux and Windows. It's great. The only problem so far is a shortage of plugins for various special stuff. That will come.

Microsoft faces some serious competition in the browser world. They are making a major gamble in their hopes that the integrated applications of Longhorn will replace the browser.

FAA drops CPDLC for now
Catching up on my Aviation Week's I find that the FAA is indefinitely postponing their plans to implement the controller pilot data link communications (CPDLC). It had been scheduled for implementation after the Miami field trials. I can't find confirmation on the FAA web site, which still shows their plans to continue rolling out CPDLC.

The CPDLC concept is the use of digital radio data links to handle the routine communications between controllers and pilots. These are messages dealing with things like routine hand off from one controller to the next or altimeter settings. When there is congestion this can be a significant time saver, and a modest fuel saver from somewhat better routing and communications. There are operational trial sites in Miami and in Europe.

The Miami experience is that the cost savings are real, but that the cost of upgrading airplanes and new radio equipment was more than expected. The estimate was that it would be 2018 or later before the cost savings equaled the cost of conversion to CPDLC. So, the FAA is postponing the transition in the US.

Europe is still proceeding with CPDLC. They have much more frequent congestion problems than the US, and their governments are willing to subsidize the aircraft upgrades for their airlines. If they stay on plan, the trial program will expand to cover all of Europe by 2007, with a requirement that all new airplanes support CPDLC by 2009, and all existing airplanes be upgraded by 2013.

Railroads and Solar Power
Andy Ihnatko describes the joys of Amtrak riding nicely, and reminded me of another example of where solar power is being chosen for financial reasons. There is a growing market for solar power in situations where the construction costs for installing conventional electric exceed the cost of a solar solution. The increased efficiency of batteries and motors, combined with radio telemetry improvements, has made it practical to use solar power for railroad switching, even in switchyards. So you see these odd looking panels on poles scattered around in railroad yards. These are radio controlled solar powered switches. Digging trenches and installing concrete protected conduit in railroad yards is an expensive operation. These systems avoid that extra construction cost.

These will slowly spread across railroads nationwide. It will be slow because there is no financial case for switching to solar until you commit to major revisions of the yard. It is then that the reduced construction costs justify the shift to solar.

Summer Memories
I was sitting in the cafe this Saturday when "Dancing Queen" by Abba came on the radio. It brought back a memory of another warm summer day when I was driving an old Corvette convertible (350cu, 4-barrel Holley, stick shift) down the road in the San Fernando Valley. That same song came on the radio on that warm sunny day.

This was quite a long time ago. I recall that "Network" and "Rocky" were still first run in the movie theaters. That was a great weekend, just riding around and seeing things. I visited a little factory in Westlake Village that was taking a VW Beetle chassis, removing the body, and adding fiberglass replica bodies of classic roadsters. Those were a fun drive also. I couldn't justify buying one. It would be wasted in the New England winters.

Then it was back up to coast to Santa Barbara where I was working on a temporary assignment. Those were good weekends touring around in a fabulous convertible in the southern California sun.

Transportation News
FAA:
The FAA is re-shuffling their efforts to improve air traffic given the lower traffic levels. The FAA's track record is poor, but these plans sound reasonable. They are scaling back the big efforts, which were already very late and having endless technical and managerial problems. They are instead taking on a few easier targets:

• Specific airport improvements, both in terms of runway use and in terms of airspace use, at the eight busiest airports.
• Require certain improvements to all navigation equipment
• Improve Alaskan flight safety
• Gradually commission WAAS enhanced GPS routings at airports. This is being phased in first at the smaller airports and in Alaska. It has a significant safety impact in Alaska because it will permit flight at levels outside the icing levels. Many of the current instruments require flight at these more dangerous altitudes. It also enables some reductions of flight times, delays, and controller load at all locations.

Railroads:
Safety The NTSB figures are out. Railroad accidental deaths in 2002 were 1,306. That is a very high figure, much higher than the airline death rate. But almost all of the deaths are due to crossing accidents, trespassers, and suicides. These are so common that they rarely make more than the local papers.

Container Traffic Although the economy is growing sluggishly, container loadings continue to hold at 10% above year ago figures. This traffic is not all coming from economic growth. One major long-haul trucking firm is in bankruptcy, and two more have just announced merger plans. The frantic "now, at any cost" manufacturing activities have been replaced by "rapid, but low cost" planned activities. This is made possible by:

• computerized scheduling, e.g. MRP systems. They are frightfully expensive to install properly, but they are now starting to pay benefits.
• reduced economic activity that allows people time to plan and think
• customers that are more willing to accept cost versus time tradeoffs, and to choose cost
• warehousing, transshipment, and other shipping facilities re-organizations that are gradually coming on line.

An example of the last two is the emergence of UPS as the largest single railroad shipper. Changes to railroad practices and changes to UPS warehousing are steadily shifting traffic from truck to railroad.

This has more than just a financial impact. It also means:

• much lower energy usage and much lower pollution
• reduced land usage demand for highways
• lower employment in the transportation industry
• lower prices

These improvements are despite continued government hostility. In all the tax cutting, the railroads remain taxed for their diesel fuel usage. These taxes still go into the general funds, unlike the trucking taxes that are restricted to highway use. The administration makes noises that conservation is not a viable energy policy, but real life financial considerations continue to make conservation a very wise choice.

Military Tribunals The Bush administration plans for degrading the US reputation for justice and freedom are thoroughly depressing. The Economist's editorial describes the situation well.

Also available in print is this informative summary table comparing the normal US Criminal courts with various national responses to national security and terrorism concerns. The only subtle point that needs a little clarification is the right of appeal. The administration claims that appeal is possible, but neglect to mention that the appeal is to President Bush, not some impartial judges.

	US Criminal Court	N. Ireland Terrorism	South African Apartheid	US Military Court Martial	Bush Military Tribunal
Civil Judge	yes	yes	yes	no	no
Choose own Lawyer	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
Remain Silent	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
Open Trial	yes	no	no	no	no
Jury	yes	no	no	no	no
Client Lawyer Confidentiality	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
Know Evidence Against you	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
Appeal	yes	yes	yes	yes	no

More Political Quotations
This one is from George W Bush the candidate (in 2000):
The realities of power are different. GWB reminds me of too many CEOs that I have dealt with. They say the right words, but cannot walk the talk.

Meanwhile the pile of old magazines for recycling is reaching the three foot mark. These quotes are from various articles in Foreign Affairs. There is the constant tension between the accumulated junk level and the reading value from rereading articles several years later.

FDA Food Claims Regulation
There is a fuss started over the new rules. At least Medpundit acknowledges that there are First Amendment issues involved. Maybe more later. There are some interesting and difficult complexities here in the balance between protecting the public, dealing with fraud, and complying with the First Amendment.

Political Quotations
Reading old articles is sometimes interesting. These quotes are from Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2000. The article is entitled, "Promoting the National Interest".


This was clearly written before the primaries. The prediction of being internationalist failed, and we have arrogance, hectoring, and bluster. But the underlying focus on national interest held, which was the primary thesis of the original article.


Good advice then and now. Too bad it was not heard. You would have thought that the Administration would have contemplated the possibility of winning the war against Saddam and planned for a post-victory situation. My guess is that hubris is to blame. Rumsfield and Cheney are excellent poster children for explaining the concept.


The remainder of this section goes on to discuss why most humanitarian interventions should be avoided, because in most cases the result will be a costly failure. This does appear to be the current policy.

The author is Condoleezza Rice. It's too bad that current press distills out all the intelligence in political debate, leaving behind the simplistic "good-guy vs bad-guy" reporting found in both blog and traditional reporting. But you can still find intelligent argumentation in the serious magazines.

Travel

Despite good intentions it has been another long gap. Travel, work,etc. So some comments on traveling.

• Washington, DC is too hot and humid. So is Chicago. But travel to these places is inescapable.
• The Amtrak Acela continues to be reasonably popular. The Sunday of a three day weekend was packed. Every seat was taken and some people had to wander the train looking for that last seat.
• More stupid tourist tricks. I watched one couple with baby go past a pair of seats as we got on and several pair across seats. I didn't think much of it until they came back later complaining about trouble finding seats together. They were upset that other passengers would not give up their seats so that this pair could get the seats that they wanted. The ended up sitting separately near me. I might have had some sympathy if I had not watched them ignore less than perfect seats.
• Stopping in NY for a Broadway show is a good idea. This time it was "Cabaret". I had not seen the play before, only the movie, so the plot and character differences made it new and different. I checked later and find that each ressurection has made some changes to the play. None of the play versions match the movie, which is closest to the collection of Berlin stories. The play has a much darker ending.
• Jon Secada was marvelous as the emcee, both singing and playing with the audience. For example, he got great laughs when looked up to the back balconey and says "Helloooo poor people. I love you." then leaned down to the orchestra and said "I love you more."I hardly recognized Mariette Hartley, nor did I know that she could sing that well. I recognized Tom Bosley and was surprised by his performance. In all, a good show.

Diet
I'm trying a new diet, like so many of the bloggers out there. This one seems to be working slowly. At least the weight is dropping slowly. It is a pseudo-paleo diet, which means no grains, no dairy, no highly processed foods. It is also therefore a form of low-carb and low sodium. Aside from slow weight loss, I've noticed that I've become much more aware of what fruits are in season. Basically the only snacks available are fruit and nuts. I've also noticed occasional strong cravings for some carbs. Odd feeling these strong hungers for some rice or some pasta.

The Moon
Another technology experiment satellite (Smart-1) from ESA goes up next month. This time the target is the moon instead of some comets. This is another trial of solar electric propulsion, this time with Hall effect instead of ion. They will launch the satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit, then use the solar electric to gradually shift it into a lunar orbit. The trick with these orbits is to lift the orbit out beyond the Van Allen belts before there is damage from the radiation.

Once in orbit around the moon the rest of the experiment is various new improved sensors. This satellite should provide the next level of detail on the lunar surface.

At some point these electric propulsion systems will become mainstream. The combination of solar electric with lighter weight electronics makes for significant cost savings.

Ancient Mediteranean
Nature recently had an article on the crustal history of the Western Mediteranean of about 5 million years ago. That was the period where rising mountains cut off the Med and it dried up. It must have been quite a sight. The depths would make Death Valley look mild. The normal temperatures would have been brutal. Simple adiabatic effects would lead to temperatures in the depths that were 20 degrees C higher than the sea level.

Since temperatures around 40 degrees are normal in Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya today, that would mean normal temperatures around 60 degrees. The world record high temp is 58 degrees (observed in the Libyan desert). Extrapolated record temps would be around 80 degrees (or 176 F). This would be a desert beyond any current imagining.

The waterfalls resulting when the hills dropped and the Straits of Gibraltar opened up were probably also quite spectacular.

A Resumption
Travel, etc: For those who have been wondering, I've been away from home traveling for more than 50% of the workdays this year. It leads to a large expense account and interferes greatly with blogging and any other aspect of life. Blogging has come in lower priority than other things.
Sword: I got a sword. A nice Tai Chi practice sword. I never realized the atavistic pleasure of holding a proper sword. It makes some of the middle ages attitudes easier to understand. Most swords are costume swords, designed to look good but not to be funtional. A practice sword is required to withstand stage fights and sparring. So it is a much sturdier build, properly balanced, and lacks the fancy frills that a costume sword will have. The difference in feeling is a surprise. (This was a reward to myself for finally learning the Tai Chi sword form.)

Coffee Notes
Winter Weather: I know I'm just whining, but having a winter with winter weather is no fun. It's been cold. It's snowed. This morning it was cold and snowed a little. Now it's snowing again. The radar shows more snow flurries coming. Total is probably only an inch or two. More bitter cold arctic air is sweeping in causing this snow and will make it very cold for the next week. And the next week's forecast is for more snowstorms.

I know that this is actually not all that unusual. Winter weather is usually like this. But the last few years of mild gentle winters left me spoiled.

Update The wind is howling, the sky clear blue, the sun higher and hotter, but the temperature is plummeting. Perhaps another record cold tonight.

On Standards
The question of "why do standards efforts succeed or fail?" came up in part last night. My experiences with standardization of Fortran, C, and DICOM indicate some pre-conditions for success. These are:

• Multiple major players. Usually this means two or more major vendors must exist. On some occasions the customers may be sufficiently well organized that they can act as a major player.
  
  If there is only one major player, then the wishes of numerous individual customers and small players is insufficient. The creation of standards permits new competitors to enter the market and opens the area to extensions by new people with new ideas. The new people with new ideas benefits everyone. The dominant player may understand the benefit from new people with new ideas, but as the dominant player it has other means besides standards to attract those new people and bring in those new ideas. So they can forsee only problems from opening their market. They will defeat the standard, either by open opposition or quiet incompatible implementation.
  
  When there are two or more major players, they already face competition, and opening the market to more competition is a small change. Both players also know that while the standard opens up their customer base to their competitors, it also opens up their competitors' customer base. So the competition effect is more neutral, and the benefit from new people with new ideas is gained.


• Standardize only the generic interfaces. Do not try to standardize the value-added product differentiating components. With Fortran, the vendors primarily competed on compiler features, not language features. They could continue to claim their compiler was faster, had better error messages, generated better code, etc. The core product remained vendor specific. They gave up the relatively unimportant differentiation of saying "my language is better than their language." (For arguments like that you can go to discussions of whether Perl, Python, or TCL are better languages.)
  
  Deciding what is generic and how to do it can be difficult, but it is primarily an engineering exercise. The financial and business aspects can be divorced from the standard. There are many failed standards efforts where major players have been unwilling to settle for standardizing only the generic. They go for the "business win" and try to standardize some aspect that will force the entire world to utilize a technology that gives that one player an advantage. Sometimes the politics of the standardization process works to allow this. Those standards generally fail.

These two criteria are not sufficient for success. There are other factors that affect eventual success or failure. But I've not seen a widely accepted standard that failed to meet these criteria.

This may help those who want to gain the benefits from standardization. If your subject for standardization fails either of these criteria, you are tilting at windmills. You may be entirely correct about the social value from creating your desired standard. But it will fail.

Quick Notes
Winer Seminar: That was interesting. It was blogged too. I was wondering what to expect. A variety of interesting ideas and people. So now I have even more essay ideas that I've not finished off. I suppose I should tidy up the blog, etc. too. Now more people that I've actually met may be reading this.

At least I'm not alone in getting too busy to blog and then feeling guilty about it.

Blogging Delays: It's called work. It pays the bills. It involves (at least for me) all this travel time. Then there are all the unfinished things to be done when you get home. So here it is Tuesday and I just now get around to this.

Railroad News: The quarterly reports are mostly in. Container traffic is up 10%. Other carload traffic is down about 5%. This is consistent with overall GDP growth around 0.5%. It means that people continue to find ways to compensate for the problems with rail containers. The cost and efficiency gains are a positive into the economy. Both in terms of labor and fuel use, the intermodal rail is substantially superior. Higher fuel costs will push this further.

Part of this may be the opening of two of the three new container interchange facilities outside Chicago. Most transcontinental container traffic suffers from the one to three day delay from when containers arrive by truck/train until they leave on truck/train. As traffic grows there are a few more direct point to point trains, and perhaps a few other interchange spots. But most interchange is around Chicago. More interchange facilities will help drop this. The goal is to get the delay to around one day.

Amtrak: The success and problems of Amtrak are illustrated in the same event. Amtrak wants to close the telephone reservation site in Chicago, eliminating about 275 jobs. This will leave two other sites. The Amtrak web site and kiosks are sufficiently popular that they do not need as many telephone staff. The local Congressman is making noises and pressuring Amtrak to keep it open. Those votes on funding do matter. He wants Amtrak to show a profit, but not at the expense of local voters losing their jobs.

Stonehenge: The Amesbury Archer has been shown to be from the Alps. This leads to all sorts of interesting speculation potentials. Who was this guy? How was he involved with Stonehenge? The burial date and Stonehenge completion are about the same time. Why move from the Alps to England?

All sorts of entertaining speculative fiction could result.

Air Travel: Flew back into a big storm. Before web, you worried about flight delays and wondered what to do. After web, you watch the FAA status site, weather radars, and wonder what will happen. No real change, but it is easier to handle the uncertainty when you get constant input. Watching radar and status doesn't actually change anything, but it is an emotional salve.

The one real change was that I did not have to bother a person to determine that my flight was not cancelled. (About half the flights were cancelled.) So I knew that I did not need to do anything (yet).

In the end, about a one hour delay. The foot of snow messed up some things, but it had stopped a few hours before I arrived, so the roads were clear. And another hurray for the new tunnel. That complex twisty drive is now simple and brainless. It is suitable for the end of week, post airline fatigue state.

Shuttle Lost
I was monitoring the status reports as the Shuttle landed. When they lost communications I did a quick recheck, and no this was not supposed to happen. This is at a worse time than the first loss. I hope that this country has the courage to continue. Even with all the problems and mistakes made by NASA, giving up on manned space flight would be even worse.

Balloon Astronomy, Whither NASA
The latest print version of Nature discussed the next step in balloon based astronomy. The presently established balloon technology is:

• inexpensive: costing about $1-2 million per launch for balloon and operations.
• good for most astronomy: the balloons drift at about 10mb, so 99 percent of the atmosphere is below the balloon.
• much less hostile than space: The launches are very gentle, a little atmosphere makes design easier than a hard vacuum, and the gravity is normal Earth gravity.
• permits heavy and re-usable instruments: Balloons can carry 1-2 tons and the payload is usually recovered. A loss allowance of $100K is typical.
• short lived: typical balloons survive 1-2 weeks.
• limited locations: Russia and China do not permit overflights. Oceans risk payload loss. So most flights are from Antarctica, although short duration flights are also launched over North America.

The new constant pressure balloons have been operationally proven. They make a few changes:

• Moderate cost: these balloons cost about $10 million for balloon and operations.
• Long life: these balloons last several months.
• Fewer restrictions? There are indications that Russia and China may permit overflights, allowing regular operations over both Arctic and Antarctic. Oceans remain a potential payload loss problem.
• Higher capacity: These balloons can carry 2-3 tons.

Astronomers would like to see the shift to longer missions. In terms of dollars per observations the new balloons are better.

But will NASA fund these launches? The first A in NASA is for air, but in fact NASA has become a space agency and industrial policy arm. Sending billion dollar telescopes into space satisfies both of these goals. Even the low cost astronomy satellites involve $100-200 million for satellite, launch, and operation. Funding these much lower cost balloons that reduce the need for satellites is controversial.

Strange Telescope
The Amanda neutrino telescope team will be publishing their results for the upgraded telescope soon. This is one wierd telescope. They installed vertical strings of detectors in a huge array buried 1 km deep in the ice at the South Pole. These detectors actually look down (North), using the entire Earth to block out all other forms of radiation beside neutrinos. Neutrinos still mostly zip through the earth with only minor losses. The huge detector array has a directional accuracy of under 6 degrees and should detect the strongest and most active neutrino sources in the sky.

They have plans to make an even bigger array with greater sensitivity and pointing accuracy.

Notes
Apologies: My attempt at quick remote updating failed. So the mid-travel update didn't make it. More things to catch up on during the occasional visits home.

Big Dig: The new tunnel is now open. It was closed on departure. It will be a huge hit with Boston visitors. Instead of that complicated and consuming maze of roadways, you get a straight simple tunnel right out to the turnpike. It is a straight shot that completely bypasses Boston. This is also good for those returns at midnight after a long trip and a tiring flight. Not too much thinking required.

Notes
Travel: Going into this year it looked like the first two months would be 80 percent travel. I think I can cut that to 60 percent. It's hard to do all that travel, and keep up with work, and blog. Guess which one suffers.

Cat Psychology: Last year I got a cat brush. It's oval, 3-4 inches, with lots of little wires on a flexible rubber base. Cat seems to think it is the most wonderful thing in the world. It is so wonderful that it gets over the upset about travel quickly. I got it so that most of that long cat hair would be gathered up by the brush instead of found in hair balls and blobs. I didn't expect it to be such a big hit with cat.

I did an imaginary rescale to compare it with the mother's tongue on a little kitten. It's a rather big cat tongue, but maybe cat is reminded of wonderful times with mom. It collects lots of cat hair, and I think that the hair balls and blobs are reduced.

Big Dig: I-90 is complete, coast to coast. I should be able to try the new airport tunnel on this next trip. That should be interesting.

New Hybrids: A little more info is out from the car makers. GM and Ford are doing as I predicted. Their new hybrid models are low risk improvements. Honda and Toyota have gone with the high risk, high efficiency, thoroughly hybridized cars. GM and Ford are just going to 42v, improved starter motor, and engine shutdown while stopped. These are much lower cost, lower risk, and lower efficiency improvement. Instead of the 40 percent improvement claimed for extensively hybrid cars, these will see a 5 to 10 percent improvement.

They don't risk major performance or manufacturing problems. These are safe changes. They can ramp up production and gradually introduce these improvements into all of their automobile lines with modest costs increases.