Gray Watson's Blog -- August 2005

I've found that blogging is a useful way for me to record my thoughts and digital travels every so often.

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August 31, 2005   

• A former Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement which says that key evidence from the trial of the Lockerbie bombing was fabricated by the CIA.

  He has confirmed that parts of the case were fabricated and that evidence was planted. At first he requested anonymity, but has backed down and will be identified if and when the case returns to the appeal court."

  The vital evidence that linked the bombing of Pan Am 103 to Megrahi was a tiny fragment of circuit board which investigators found in a wooded area many miles from Lockerbie months after the atrocity.

• Rumors have it that Bush's temper has been getting worse recently as he comes under more pressure about the war. He continues to give people the finger which I can't believe that his supporters think is a good idea. I think that the first debate with Bush obviously pissed off is a glimpse into his real character. He is an idealogue and his dogma is coming under a lot of pressure these days. That has to challenge his id/ego.

  Bush, whiles setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters. Aides say the President often flips the bird to show his displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to go to hell or to go fuck yourself. His habit of giving people the finger goes back to his days as Texas governor, aides admit, and videos of him doing so before press conferences were widely circulated among TV stations during those days. A recent video showing him shooting the finger to reporters while walking also recently surfaced.

• Here's an interesting report that the majority of scientific studies are most likely incorrect. This is certainly a failure of science (as implemented by man) but it is also a failure of scientific reporting.

  Traditionally a study is said to be "statistically significant" if the odds are only 1 in 20 that the result could be pure chance. But in a complicated field where there are many potential hypotheses to sift through - such as whether a particular gene influences a particular disease - it is easy to reach false conclusions using this standard. If you test 20 false hypotheses, one of them is likely to show up as true, on average.

• I must admit that I smirk a bit whenever I hear another news announcement about increasing oil costs. Hurricane Katrina has pushed the raw crude barrel cost about US$70. I'm sure it will go down and comparatively, we still have very cheap gas in this country. However, I'd like to think that as we approach US$3 a gallon for gas that people will make better decisions when they buy their next car and the market forces will do what Congress has been loath to do: raise vehicle fuel efficiency requirements. We are more dependent on middle eastern oil then ever before. Oil money sponsors terrorism and radical Islamic fundamentalism so we are in effect financing both sides of the war on terror -- military spending versus the SUV gas guzzlers. But I shouldn't smirk. The poor are going to start to get even more pinched, GM and Ford are going down the tubes with tens of thousands due to loose their jobs, truckers are probably going to effected, and this is just the start. This is also without talking about what the burning of fossil fuels is doing to the environment.

  But at least people are starting to talk about it -- Starting to think about it. Starting to wonder whether the pundits who have been forecasting the end of oil for decades are actually correct. Here's an interesting article about the end of oil. The larger our dependence the more pain we will feel when (not if) the demand outpaces supply and prices skyrocket.

  The world is quickly running out of oil. In the year 2000, global production stood at 76 Million Barrels per Day (MBD). By 2020, demand is forecast to reach 112 MBD, an increase of 47%. But additions to proven reserves have virtually stopped and it is clear that pumping at present rates is unsustainable. Estimates of the date of peak global production vary with some experts saying it already may have occurred as early as the year 2000. New Scientist magazine recently placed the year of peak production in 2004. Virtually all experts believe it will almost certainly occur before the end of this decade.

  Here's another interesting page which talks about how sensitive our economy is to oil and what happens when demand outstrips supply, even by 5 or 10%.

  The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

• So I was out for a couple of days last week because of a foot infection. Pretty weird. Foot swelled up over 5 days until I could not walk on it and it was very sensitive. Never did find a puncture or infection point but anti-biotics and anti-inflammatories seemed to do the trick.
• Boy the scenes from New Orleans are grim these days with the storm surge still taking its toll. Here's a good interactive map from the NY Times. Looks like they missed the full brunt of hurricane Katrina but that the storm weakened the levies which are dumping water into the city and an amazing rate. Areas of Mississippi have been either heavily damaged or completely obliterated by winds. The Red Cross is mobilizing its largest relief effort in its history. Tried to go to their website to give some money today but it was overwhelmed.

August 24, 2005   

• Bush and other prominent conservatives are pushing "Intelligent Design" as an alternative to evolution. It's always nice to year when religious belief starts to dictate educational and scientific thought. Just finished a thoughts column on this subject.

  "Both sides ought to be properly taught... so people can understand what the debate is about," he said, according to an official transcript of the session. Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.... You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

• More details about the Bush administration's use of "extraordinary rendition" to pluck people from foreign countries and transport them for torture in other countries. Seems like the CIA is up to it's old business. Subverting US and international law in the name of protecting our security. Who knows how much damage they are doing to world public opinion on our behalf which only undermines our efforts to support democratic change around the globe.

  The CIA agents took rooms in Milan's 5-star hotels, including the Principe di Savoia ("one of the world's most luxuriously appointed hotels") where they rang up $42,000 in expenses; the Westin Palace, the Milan Hilton, and the Star Hotel Rosa as well as similar places in the seaside resort of La Spezia and in Florence, running up cumulative hotel bills of $144,984.

• Research about the collapse of the Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf back in 2002 has been published in Nature. Another sign of global warming. Here's more details about the collapse.

  Using data collected from six sediment cores in the vicinity of the former ice shelf, Domack and his colleagues conclude that the Larsen ice shelf had been intact but was slowly thinning during the course of the current interglacial period. They attribute the recent collapse to the effects of climate warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, which is more pronounced in this region than elsewhere in Antarctica or the rest of the world. The Larsen B ice shelf is not alone in its demise. In recent years, the Antarctic Peninsula has lost ice shelves totaling over 4825 square miles.

• Summer vacations, new job, and other responsibilities continue to eat into my blogging. Oh well. Had a lot of fun over the past week using my mom's Treo 650 camera-phone to sent pix to my wife during our sailing trip.
• Schools are starting to look into using Linux on the school desktop. Here's the press release from Linspire, the Linux company doing the installation. They charge $500 per year license for their Linux configuration with no per-unit costs.

  A new shipment of computers is set to roll out to pilot school districts this month. If the Indiana Access Program is successful, a total of 300,000 Linux machines could be deployed in the near future, according to the news release.

  "Indiana school officials have evaluated their options and chose to go with a Linux-based system because it's at a lower cost to them," said Heather MacKenzie, public relations manager for Linspire.

• Another example of how we are losing control in Iraq. It's the story about how local Islamist guerrillas completely control a village.

  A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted: Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel.

  That Islamist guerrillas were active in the area was no secret but only now has the extent of their control been revealed. They are the sole authority, running the town's security, administration and communications.

• Very cool product which uses electrolysis to get fire from water. It separates the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is ignited and the oxygen is added to the flag to adjust color (i.e. add color) or released into the room. Not sure I'd buy one (especially at US$50k) but it's an example of possible future home hydrogen production. All you'd need is water and a power source -- solar or wind.
  • Cleanest burning fireplace
  • Keeps 100% of the heat output in the room
  • Does not require a sealed combustion chamber
  • Requires water, preferably de-ionized - 1/2 gallon per hour

August 10, 2005   

• Just found the very nice looking Mytreo.Net site with all things pertaining to the PalmOne Treo. Lots of cool programs, drivers, flash for various providers, add-ons, etc..
• Phillips is making LED bulbs for streetlights that don't have to be changed for 12 years. More details about the led bulbs being used. Copy of the story from Reuters. The Phillips product page for them. More information and good discussion.

  Gas-filled street lamps last an average 12,000 hours, and replacing them is costly and also hampers traffic, especially in hard-to-reach places such as tunnels.

  LED street lamps are twice as expensive as current street lighting with a similar design, but this is compensated for by the longer life span, Phillips product manager Bram Lansink said.

• Wonderful site with tons of bike information. Your host, Sheldon Brown, talks about making tandems, building wheels, fixed gear bikes, cyclecomputers, and just about all things dealing with bicycles.

August 8, 2005   

• Great site with tons of very cool bookmarklets which allow you to modify the page you are viewing including:
  • Converting POST form into a GET for bookmarking.
  • Pause flash movies.
  • Sort table rows.
  • Validate URL.
  • Show hidden form elements.
  • Allow password auto-complete when disabled.
  • Uncheck radio buttons.
  • Etc.
• Pretty cool site that stocks hundreds of insect control chemicals and devices. I already ordered a bugzooka and, after a outside party over the weekend, I am looking at additional mosquito traps like: Lentek Etrap or the Mosquito Barrier. Tim and I are already interested in making a trap of our own because the Mosquito Magnets that we have seem to attract a lot of mosquitos but not catch them. A better funnel or other collection mechanism.

August 4, 2005   

• So scientists are still worried about the 99942 Apophis asteroid that is going to come pretty close to earth in 2029 and then may come even closer and hit the planet in 2036. They are worried enough about the accuracy of the ground based stations to consider trying to tag the asteroid so it can be tracked more easily.

  Timing is everything, astronomers say. If officials attempt to divert the asteroid before 2029, they need to nudge the space rock's position by roughly half a mile - something well within the range of existing technology. After 2029, they would need to shove the asteroid by a distance as least as large as Earth's diameter. That feat would tax humanity's current capabilities.

• Experts say that if the foam debris from the shuttle fuel tank had broken off earlier and hit the orbiter, it might have caused a catastrophic failure. So much for the US$1 billion spent on upgrading Discovery's fuel tank and surfaces to lower the amount of launch debris. Here's some more debris images. All I can do is wonder what Burt Rutan could do with US$1 billion.

  "The piece in question here was pretty close to the same size to the one that brought down Columbia," Hallock said. "The good news at this point is it occurred at such high altitude that it really didn't slow down much, you could see it on the camera, there weren't enough molecules to really slow it down so if that did hit something, it probably wouldn't do too bad.

August 1, 2005   

• Interesting article (now offline) from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review about a biodiesel plant in Pittsburgh. Biodiesel is a fuel that can be generated from just about any plant or animal oil. Left over restaurant fry oil is a favorite source. Soybean oil and other grown crops are another. Here's the notice from CMU's Center for Advanced Fuel Technology about their research which contributed to the project. It is being funded by Capital Technologies International, a Pittsburgh venture funding group formed to help advance this technology. Here's another article from Soyatech about it.

  Biodiesel is virtually sulphur-free, eliminating what is considered a dangerous pollutant. Compared to conventional petroleum-based diesel, a diesel engine operating on 100 percent biodiesel would emit 30 percent fewer particulates, that are believed to be a health hazard. Also, carbon monoxide is reduced by 50 percent, and total unburned hydrocarbons, a contributor to smog, drops by 93 percent. Biodiesel also is biodegradable and when ingested is considered 10 times less toxic than table salt.

• Another depressing article about Iraq. This time about the permanent military facilities we are building over there. 14 "enduring" facilities have either been built or are under construction flying in the face of administration claims that we are there to only bring democracy and freedom. It is obvious that we also felt the need to build long-term military bases as our support in Saudi Arabia erodes.

  Here's what we do know. In April of 2003, senior Bush administration officials told the New York Times that we were planning "a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the region." Nearly a year later, in March of 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported that the U.S. was constructing 14 "enduring bases." These long-term encampments were technically designated to house troops through 2006, but military officials were candid about their potential to serve as permanent bases. "Is this a swap for the Saudi bases? I don't know. ... When we talk about enduring bases here, we're talking about the present operation, not in terms of America's strategic global base," Army Brig. Gen. Robert Pollman told the Tribune. "But this makes sense. It makes a lot of logical sense."

• While searching for biodiesel links for the entry below I came across DIY kits for biodiesel, homebrew biodiesel supplies, DIY sites with recipes (no pun intended), and instructions on how to make your own greasecar. Here's some more links to biodiesel information, the National Biodiesel Board, and where to buy biodiesel in your area. Very interesting.

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