Category Archives: Politics

Clancy’s World of Spooks

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It is like a disease. I find myself drawn to Tom Clancy novels.  I picked up Rainbow Six the other day. Other than his Op-Center series, I think I’ve read most of his books.  Clancy is one of the most successful writers in this genre.  Airport bookshops have been good for him.  When I was in the travelling phase of my career, his books were great for passing the time in airports.  Millions of us have read his books.

And millions of us have read Clancy’s idealized interpretation of how the clandestine world operates.  I won’t indulge in a superficial crtitque of the genre or his writing. But I would like to suggest that a population of readers who have followed the characters and themes of his immensely popular books might have developed certain impressions or even, shall we say, expectations, of the those who practice this tradecraft.

After reading his highly detailed and richly woven stories, one might develop the idea- subconsciously, mind you- that the clandestine services were capable of doing anything they set out to do.  Could it be that decades of Clancy’s stories have adjusted the expectations of countless readers in tems of what was possible in the world of the black arts? Could it be that such fiction has inadvertantly prepared our minds in such a way as to accept the assertions of government leaders when they tell us that hostile states have certain threatening capabilities? Surely, with all of the assets and talent at our disposal, when our elected leadership says that a threat exists, can’t we be certain that the conclusion was based on well placed human assets and has been through a series of tests and filters to verify the accuracy and magnitude of the threat? 

For those in power, the notion of “expertise” is not only useful, it may even be critical.  We all want to know that our safety is in the hands of experts. It is a comfort thing. Leaders need to be able to assure the population that experts are on the job and all will be well. 

I would suggest that there is no such thing as “expertise” as an intellectual destination.  There is only a continuum of confusion.  And some of us are more confused than others.

Worlds in Collision- Idiots Out Wandering Around

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I had the great privilege of doing my post-doc along side some smart and colorful folks.  Fellow post-docs from various parts of the world. In particular I was fortunate to have worked with some folks who came to the USA as Soviet scientists in 1990. Later all but one went back as Russian scientists.  This one in particular was a stunning beauty from near Lake Baikal in Siberia.  She was a first-rate experimentalist who was built like a fashion model from Paris.  She had “The Look”.

I recall the time she and I went to the Symphony.  She was dressed in a short and slinky green dinner dress with a plunging neckline below those electric eyes and high cheekbones.  I was a freshly divorced and mildly oafish- an ethnic Iowegian- chronically depressed and wrapped accordingly in a poorly fitting blue sport coat with tattered khaki slacks.  Just call me “Goober”.  OK. That’s Dr. Goober.  Of course, this was Texas so I fit right in …

As we entered the lobby, I could hear the necks creaking as heads craned in our direction with the odd slapping noise as jaws dropped to the floor. My colleague had that affect on people. Well, I’m not actually stupid. I could tell we were at the receiving end of many furtive glances.  But they were not admiring glances. They were questioning glances. As if to ask “What is that goddess doing with that imbecile?”  Now, being recently divorced and not unaccustomed to being stomped in the head by women, I took it in good humor and in stride.  For this lovely Russian beauty and I were dear friends and colleagues and it was my great privilege and pleasure enjoy the concert with her that evening in that stunning auditorium in San Antonio.

Today she is the Director of Chemistry for a startup pharma company. And me, well I’m a blogger.  Some months after this occurance, I attended a Gynocology convention with a friend who was doing her residency in OB-GYN. But that is another story.

Frequently wrong, but never in doubt

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More and more I find myself afflicted with fellow travellers along the timeline who are never in doubt of their judgement, but they are frequently wrong nonetheless.  There has to be some archetype from literature or Greek mythology that symbolizes this. Maybe there is some character from a Greek tragedy who, as a leader, was destined for a fall as a result of such a trait. Perhaps someone out there has a nominee for this position.

One sees examples of this in business organizations not infrequently. Some openly discuss their views, but often with the presumption of making a disclosure of “what we’re going to do”.  Others sit quietly, rarely contributing to open discussions where ideas are put on the table for dissection.  These fellows might listen to others debate, but they prefer to sit quietly and observe while others reveal the content of their thinking. Rather than adopt or synthesize new concepts openly, they will tend to note commentary that aligns with their pre-existing view. This is where that most loathsome of characters, the yes-man, can gain a strong foothold in an organization. 

Keystone Cops in Boston

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The mind still boggles at the recent cartoonish response of Boston authorities to the “viral” marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting.  Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network evidently sponsored a targeted marketing campaign for its “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program.  In doing so, their 20-something hirelings violated local sign ordinances by hanging electronic signs on bridges and that is where it stood until police were called and one of the displays was “disarmed” by a controlled bomb squad explosion.

The tipping point came when someone looked at the sign and saw a circuit board, wires and something that turned out to be a battery.  Evidently trained in the school of television drama bomb squadding, the officer on the scene triggered the terror response protocol.  God help us if this local constable ever looks in his computer and sees wires, capacitors, and other mechanisms.

I have witnessed much smaller versions of this first hand.  What appears to be an emergency leads to the arrival of the police and the fire department. This is the part where civil liberties fly out the window, and often enough, sensibility as well. The police establish a perimeter and secure the “scene”.  If the incident involves materials unknown to the police, then they will notify the fire department and then pull the trigger on the hazmat team.  If there is an object that seems suspicious, then they may trigger the bomb squad people. 

Obviously, the fine people who serve the public in the capacity of emergency response or law enforcement are trained and dedicated to their jobs. But what happens is that these people are given precious little latitude in their range of responses to “situations”.  What happens then is that they tend to do what is called erring on the side of safety, which means that when in doubt, call the bomb squad or the hazmat people. 

But when a situation leads to the arrival of the bomb squad, then the natural conclusion of the authorities is that whatever caused this response looks like a crime and should be so investigated. So, irrespective of the merits of the officer-on-the-scenes judgement, there might arise a presumption of foul play and the whole law enforcement apparatus is activated to supply evidence to the district attorney for the filing of charges on the alleged wrongdoer.  In fact one might cynically argue that, especially in these dubious circumstances, it is in the best interest of your career to be able to rationalize the release of these resources as a response to criminal activity. 

So, these two hapless fools who hung the signs in Boston are now at the pointy end of the law enforcement stick and the authorities seem to be bent on saving face through the exercise of grim and officious talk of terrorism. What a mess.

Astronaut burns up on re-entry to life

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The sad story of astronaut Lisa Nowak continues to unfold.  This thing seems to have many layers of complexity to it. It is interesting to see how the news media have approached it. People in the news business seem to have a set of tools in their bag from which they shape stories.  Some reporters are grilling NASA about fraternizing policy while others focus on the lurid detail about the diaper.  Perhaps someone will eventually make the connection with the Mercury program and how the astronauts wore diapers on these early flights.  It is just a concession to the pragmatics of long endurance travel. Pretty clever, really.  But regardless of her clever determination, using violence to resolve this kind of conflict has no valid excuse. 

It is rather painful to watch.

The Veneer of Civilization

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It is easy to be lulled into the notion that the USA has reached a transcendent state of modernism; a place where people have come to adopt pluralism and tolerance. When you drive along the highways and fly the skyways of the USA, when you navigate the streets lined with familiar businesses and institutions there is this comforting though superficial vibe that you are in an advanced culture that is fairly progressive and forward thinking.

American culture has produced some of the most stunning changes in the history of life on earth.  Electricity, drug design, advanced materials, aerospace, computers, semiconductors, and on and on. Yet, there is this underlying ache, a subterranean twinge out there that is disturbing in it’s potential.

While I cannot accept the cosmology of supernatural beings or the physics of miracles, I have been known to attend a meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) on a social basis. It is soothing to sit in silence and meditate in a group setting with highly civilized people like the Quakers. I remember some years ago at a Friends Meeting in Boulder, CO, listening to Kenneth Boulding (now deceased) make a comment during the meeting.  It was in another context, but the thrust of it is relevant nonetheless.  He pointed out that a few miles below the serenity of the nearby mountains there exists magma that, if given the chance, will flow to the surface and erupt. He observed that below the surface people also have raw and violent forces that sometimes escape. His point was more of a lyrical acceptance of this human frailty than one of condemnation. Examples of this condition are too numerous to count.

I was reminded of this comment of Boulding when I encountered some commentary on a recent editorial from the Wall Street Journal.  I can’t afford to subscribe to the WJS- I found it in the popular blog Pharyngula. The author of this exceptional blog has added commentary and I won’t spoil it for the reader. It is worth linking over there to read it.  Beneath the surface of consciousness of many, many people is the need to strike out at those have a different view of things.

Few points of view will evoke as vigorous a negative response as atheism does from believers in the Big 3 religions that originated in the middle east.  To these people, atheism is a kind of poke in the eye. The very presence of atheism seems to be a kind of pestilence or a corrosive influence on society itself. Believers in a supernatural being are convinced that without a diety, there can be no moral frame of reference.

It is much like the number line with its positive numbers, it’s negative numbers, and, importantly, zero.  To theists, God is the zero of the moral number line. It represents the demarcation of the positive and the negative realms.  As the theists would assert, without a frame of reference anchored from a higher plane, man is hopelessly absent a moral compass.

One thing is certain. I’m not going to solve this matter tonight.  I do know that civilization is one millimeter thick and there are plenty of places on earth where it has worn off to reveal the troubled underlayment of our species. This week, in the land of Nebuchadnezzar and the gardens of Babylon, many good people have died for no good reason.

Some Sunny Day

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This link shows the closing scene of Dr. Strangelove.  Why are atomic bomb blasts so fascinating to watch? Of course, the movie was a satire.

But when you see the next one, it becomes much more sobering.  It is a clip from a BBC documentary with CGI enhancement on Hiroshima. Part of the responsibility of having civilian control over military forces in the USA entails that at least some fraction of the civilian population retain a bit of knowledge of topics like this.

I think that when queried, most people will think of an atomic bomb blast as primarily a nuclear radiation calamity. To be sure, there is a healthy gamma pulse and the dispersal of a large variety of troublesome radionuclides, with long lasting contamination issues.  But much of the prompt destructive effect is from the immense heat pulse followed by the blast wave. 

Mutual assured destruction (MAD) as a nuclear strategy was arguably successful because parties on both the NATO and Soviet blocks were more desirous of long life than of the need for the delivery of nuclear hellfire at any cost.  The cold war was a time of opposing political and economic doctrines. MAD was essentially a secular concept.

In the present era of religious theatre, movements citing supernatural endorsement of earthly doctrines are in ascendancy.  The calculus of MAD fails when parties practice nuclear policy under the influence of supernatural euphoria.

Space MAD

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The astronomer who taught my intro astronomy class years ago once joked that the shortest meaningful time was the “jiffy”; the time it took a photon to pass the diameter of a proton. He was also fond of referring to the “erg” as approximately equal to the energy required by a ladybug to crawl up on a piece of cardboard: thus 1 erg = 1 bug cardboard. [Hey, take it easy. It was a class for non-physics majors.] That astronomers name is John McKim Malville. He wrote a book called “A Feather for Daedalus: Explorations in Science and Myth in the New Physics”. Here is a quotation from Malville-

 SCIENCE – this precocious child we do not exactly know how to live with – can be used for more than the construction of warheads, the design of rockets, or the invention of technological marvels. As we shall attempt to demonstrate, the insights of science can be used in the same manner that we use our religious and artistic symbols – as evocative devices to lead us beyond that which is merely said. We have to a certain extent been guilty of misusing our SCIENCE in the production of unholstered gadgets [italics by Gaussling] and computerized wonders, thus neglecting it as an aid for mankind’s larger journey. It is as though after hacking our way through the forest we have reached the shore of a great river which prevents us from proceeding further. The water’s edge contains many beautiful and fascinating pebbles. Their colors and shapes are extraordinary! Never before on our journey have we seen such marvellous pebbles. They are, in fact, so captivating that we have completely forgotten about our journey. Instead we spend all our time gathering these brightly colored rocks – the facts with which we have become so infatuated of late. Into higher and higher piles we gather these facts, never wanting to stray too far from them for fear that someone might take them from us. And so we remain, trapped by our pebbles, unable to EXPLORE THE REST OF THE WORLD. We could, it is true, use our rocks to continue on our journey by tossing them into the stream ahead of us and using them as stepping stones. Shall we?

I like his term “unholstered gadgets”.  The 20th century was a period when many unholstered gadgets were developed and used with more technical skill than wisdom.

I picked up a book called “Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove” by Peter Goodchild.  It is an unauthorized biography of a brilliant, though irrascible character who participated in nuclear weapons design in the Manhattan project.  After WWII, Teller went on to solve the problem of how to configure a fission explosive to achieve a thermonuclear detonation. He was an influential supporter of many nuclear programs well into the Reagan years. As a student, Teller studied under Werner Heisenberg and went on to spend a year working with Bohr. Teller was one of the very earliest theorists to work on what chemists now refer to as quantum chemistry.  He and Jahn published a paper in 1937 predicting what is now called Jahn-Teller distortion, a phenomenon found in degenerate octahedral metal complexes.   Teller also helped produce many unholstered gadgets.

So, in this vein, it is interesting to note that the Chinese have just “fired a shot heard round the world”.  They were successful in hitting a retired satellite in what is reported as a ~600 mile orbit with a ballistic missile.  This event has twittered many governments in a jiffy or two, including the US gov’t. It has been reported that the US recently had a chance to sign a treaty that would ban aggressive action against satellites, but refused to do so. I don’t have a primary source for this assertion as yet. And for the first time in a long while, news outlets are referring to “Red China”.

I wonder how many young Tellers are out there, urging their government to develop offensive weapons under the guise of defense?  Perhaps this is Chinese arm twisting, or maybe it is the first step in a new type of Mutual Assured Destruction in space- Space MAD? There is a catchy name.

Watts and Watts of Ice

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Many years ago I had the chance to visit the National Maritime Museum in London. It is a fantastic museum and if you’re ever in London, try to take a day to visit.  The Royal Greenwich Observatory is nearby as well, so you can see the prime meridian and the transit telescope. I seem to recall that Christopher Wren was the architect of the Observatory. Anyway, I remember a visit to the cafeteria there and an observation that I made while buying lunch. 

As an American in Europe, your presence is obvious to everyone. Well, to everyone but a few who may suspect you’re a Canadian.  And a more awkward bunch of preening land lubbers you’ll never find than American tourists abroad. So, standing there at the food counter with fish & chips and waiting for my aliquot of Coca Cola, the matron behind the counter noted that I was an American and asked if I required ice. Yes indeed, says I. She nods and hobbles over to a small ice bucket, not unlike the kind you see in a motel room. She brings the bucket and using a pair of tongs, reaches in and fetches a single ice cube for my 300 mL portion of the blessed nectar. 

At first I was struck with their miserly approach to dispensing ice. They didn’t invest in a commercial high output ice machine like even the most modest American mom & pop cafe had. But sitting there munching on my deep fried cod, I started to think about the vast resources Americans consume in order to have a ready supply of ice.

Just think of it. How many restaurants are there in the USA? According to Datanetwork there are 516,326 restaurants in their database for the USA. If you assume that each restaurant has 1 ice machine, and the ice machine draws, say, 12 amps at 120 VAC, and using the rms value for AC voltage (0.707 * 120 V = 84.84 Vrms) we can use Ohms law to calculate the wattage: power = EI = (84.84 Vrms * 12 Amps) = 1018 watts while in operation. Obviously, there are wide variations in parameters out there in the field. This is just a SWAG- Scientific Wild Assed Guess.

So, multiplying the number of restaurants times the wattage: 516,326 * 1018 watts = 525,619,868 watts, or ~ 526 megawatts of demand.  Assuming that the power distribution losses  in the grid are ~20 % (just a guess!), that means that the utilities have to generate 657 megawatts at the plant so that 526 megawatts get to the consumers.  But it gets better.

The thermodynamic efficiency of a power plant is approximately 33 %, so 657 megawatts/0.33 = 1991 megawatts thermal have to be consumed to to generate the 657 megawatts electrical.  Let’s assume a typical ice maching runs 25 % 0f the time, or 6 hrs per day: Energy consumption for one day is 1991 megawatts * 6 hours = 11,946 megawatt hrs thermal per day. So, lets get down to coal and oil consumption-

(11,946 MWHr * 3,412,000 BTU/MWHr) = 40.76 E9 BTU ==> (40.76E9 BTU/13,000 BTU per lb bituminous coal) = 3,135,000 lbs of bituminous coal per day, or 1568 tons per day, or 572,000 tons per year. The metric conversion is 1.1025 tons per metric ton. So, 572,000 tons/1.1025 = 518,821 metric tons per year.  For conversion to equivalent barrels of crude oil, use 4.879 barrels equivalent crude oil per metric ton of coal.  Thus, 518,821 MT coal * 4.879 bbl crude oil/MT of coal = 2.53 million barrels of oil per year to energize ice machines for our cokes and Slurpies. 

So, 2.53 million barrels of oil * 60$/barrel= $151.8 million. A drop in the bucket in a $10 trillion economy. But it is just a tiny sliver of the whole spectrum of profligate uses of energy.  What we need is to summon some sensibility and reduce our individual consumption of energy.  Think of all of the devices the typical home now has that are always on- anything with a clock, DVD  players and televisions that can be activated by remote, plug in cell phone chargers, etc.- all consume a trickle current.

So forgive me for asking the following question. If we are more than happy to commit the brightest minds in our country to find new energy souces, develop more potent weaponry, teach urban combat in our war colleges, invade savage and squalid middle eastern “countries”, resurrect the nuclear power industry, invent hybrid automobiles, etc., then why can’t we commit a small portion of that effort to reducing demand for resources whose scarcity can trigger a war?

Oh yea, reducing consumption means buying fewer goods and services. How do you reduce consumption while maintaining growth? There is the fly in the ointment.

[Note: this posting makes a lot of assumptions. It is meant to be an order of magnitude estimate of the consequences of our fetish for ice cold drinks.  I value and welcome corrections, comments, and dialog. Th’ Gaussling]