december 2005 / greg goebel
* Entries include: Microsoft diversification, Arabs less keen on terrorism, Vietnamese enterprise, US military greenery, retailers go online, robot surgery, oceanic oil rigs & nodding donkey pumps, a colder Europe, more on Intelligent Design, centrism in US politics, proofreading my documents, shifting magnetic poles, technology for developing world, Iraq elections, clean coal power, dog cellphones, Iraq exit, superfreighters, my physics document, terrorism as a business, Brazil's EMBRAER, businesslike NGOs, education by podcast, airliner defensive systems, Detroit seeks fuel-efficient cars, UN relief needs money, 100,000 website visitors.
* MICROSOFT DIVERSIFIES: This last November, Microsoft Corporation threw a big bash in an aircraft hangar in the Mojave desert to introduce their new Xbox 360 game console. According to an ECONOMIST article ("Way Beyond The PC", 26 November 2005), the event was the tip of the iceberg of MSoft's diversification outside of their traditional domain of PC software.
MSoft was driven into diversification as a defensive measure. When the company saw the Sony Playstation game console becoming a computing and networking hub in the home, Microsoft's Bill Gates believed he had to compete in the game console arena. The exact same attitude goes for MSoft's push into mobile telephony and TV set-top boxes. Although these forays into other technologies are not providing financially rewards comparable to MSoft's bread-and-butter Windows / Office product line -- which hasn't been threatened anywhere near as much as competitors pushing open-source solutions like Linux would like to think -- the diversifications give some protection for the future.
* When MSoft introduced the original Xbox in 2001, it was seen as a "me-too" product, and the company's insistence on retaining direct control over Internet gaming -- through the Xbox Live gaming service -- was seen as a classic control-freak MSoft business strategy. The Sony Playstation 2 went on to outsell the Xbox by a big factor, about 92 million Playstation 2s against 22 million Xboxes, though that was better than the 18 million unit sales of the Nintendo Gamecube. It is estimated that MSoft lost about $200 USD for each Xbox sold.
MSoft officials, however, do not concede that they took a beating on the Xbox. The company established its presence in the market, put its imprint on a series of games (most notably the HALO series), and built up Xbox Live. Now that the gaming industry is going into a new technology cycle, MSoft executives think they will have the jump on the competition.
They have valid reasons for this belief. The original Xbox was put together quickly using off-the-shelf components; it was clearly an "interim solution", not able to compete on a level field against the Sony Playstation 2 with its proprietary chipworks. The Xbox 360, in contrast, uses custom chipworks, and is being introduced months ahead of Sony's next-generation Playstation 3. In addition, despite the skepticism over the Xbox Live Internet hub, MSoft poured resources into the site and even many of the skeptics have to admit that it is slick, making software updates transparent and offering goodies such as free classic game downloads. Finally, the Xbox 360 integrates neatly with a home PC running MS Windows, with the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
* MSoft's initial foray into mobile telephony didn't seem any more promising. In 1998 the mobile telephony industry, fearing with valid reason Microsoft domination, formed a consortium named Symbian to develop their own "Not Microsoft" smartphone software. MSoft didn't fight the big boys head-on, instead going upstream to the "original design manufacturers (ODMs)", mostly out of Taiwan, which build phones for other companies to sell as their own brand. MSoft worked with the ODMs to develop Windows Mobile software; Windows Mobile had customer appeal, and so in 2002 a European mobile operator named Orange began to sell mobile services based on the software and a handset by HTC, one of the big ODMs.
Other mobile operators jumped on the bandwagon as well. In 2003, Motorola, the second-biggest manufacturer of mobile phones, left Symbian, mostly because Motorola felt the consortium was dominated by Nokia, Motorola's biggest rival in the cellphone business. Now Motorola offers cellphones with Symbian, Windows Mobile, or Linux software, giving customers a choice. At present, according to MSoft officials, there are over a hundred different smartphones on the market with Windows Mobile software, provided by 42 manufacturers and 93 mobile operators in 55 countries. MSoft is still not a giant in mobile telephony, but the company can no longer be ignored.
* TV set-top boxes seemed like another nonstarter, since cable operators, once again fearing MSoft domination, didn't like the idea of Microsoft providing software for cable TV services. They still don't, but now telecoms operators are starting to move against the cable operators, with the telecoms offering voice, data, and TV transmission over broadband. Since the cost of voice telephony is rapidly falling toward zero, the telecoms either had to diversify or die, but they knew that delivering TV over broadband services was a big mouthful of technology to chew.
Enter Microsoft. The company was able to provide the telecoms with the technology for "Internet Protocol TV (IPTV)", and so the big telecoms have been quickly lining up behind Mr. Gates, to the distress of cable operators. IPTV hasn't taken off yet, but it is expected to do so very soon. As was not the case in gaming and mobile telephony, Microsoft has been in IPTV from the outset.
* It is a mark of the determination of Mr. Gates that all these attempts at diversification have been money losers so far. MSoft is not likely to make more than a modest profit on the Xbox 360. One of the issues with diversification is that MSoft is unlikely to ever get the level of market control that the company enjoyed and still enjoys with Windows / Office; the competition elsewhere is too stiff. Microsoft will never get fat margins in these new domains.
The essential point is that gaming, mobile telephony, and TV set-top boxes protect MSoft's profitable core business. If there are no new horizons that can promise the same level of profitability, then protecting the cash cow becomes all that more important. It may not be a glorious strategy, but it is a thoroughly realistic and pragmatic one.
* ED: I am not a MSoft basher. To be sure, I don't think they're saints, but I don't see them as any worse than any other company would be that had a comparable amount of influence. I do have to respect their mindset.
My days with the Corporation left me familiar with "spreadsheet management": the single-minded fixation on the bottom line. A concern with profitability is of course a fundamental part of doing business and not an objection, but bureaucracies have a tendency to take things that are reasonable in principle to mad extremes. Spreadsheet management could easily devolve into an insistence that every activity in the organization had to show a profit, with little or no consideration of how the activities contributed to the health of the whole.
Mr. Gates, like him or not, seems to be a shrewd visionary. He is perfectly willing to let parts of his business operate at a modest level of return -- or even a loss -- in order to achieve his broader goals. That takes an impressive level of decisiveness.
* SECOND THOUGHTS: The terrorist bombings on 9 November 2005 of American-owned hotels in Amman, Jordan, killed 60 people and wounded many others. According to an article in THE ECONOMIST ("Unfamiliar Questions In The Arab Air", 26 November 2005), the fact that the dead and maimed were all innocent bystanders -- most significantly, a wedding party of Palestinians -- has unsurprisingly done much to dampen public enthusiasm for holy war or "jihad" among the public in Arab lands. The mastermind of the attack, Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once a folk hero to Jordanians for his resistance to the US occupation of Iraq, is now all but universally despised in Jordan, even loudly disowned by his clan.
Few Arabs were too upset at jihadi attacks on Americans. Americans are not popular in the lands of Islam, and their popularity is not likely to increase all that much in any hurry even when -- there is no question of "if", it's just a question of "when" -- US troops get out of Iraq. Jihadi attacks that killed Shiite Iraqis also did not do too much to upset many Sunni Muslims; the Americans are a recent invention, the feud between Sunni and Shiite has been going on for 1,300 years.
Now jihadi terrorism is getting too close to home. It was all very well to enjoy watching one's enemies torn by wild dogs, but it was foolish to think that wild dogs are particularly discriminating in who they attack.
Jordan was not the first Arab nation to feel the bite. The kidnapping and occasional execution of diplomats from Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt in Iraq provoked mass outrage in those countries. The Saudis have been fighting jihadis at home for about two years now; Saudi security officials claim that most of the progress against the terrorists is due to public disillusionment with acts of mindless and indiscriminate violence.
Westerners may take some satisfaction in this, but there is a dark side to the shift in position as well. Arab nations have traditionally tried to hush up terrorist actions on their soil, since such attacks suggest that local governments are neither universally popular nor completely in control, and the violence also scares off tourists. Now terrorist atrocities are played up, in order to justify the heavy-handed actions of "mukhabarats (state security services)".
Still, the increasing revulsion of the Arab public for acts of terror is real and sincere. Arab editors who are quick to criticise Western imperialism, both real and imagined, are now also condemning the jihadis for their excesses. Muslim preachers who once called for battle are now asking for restraint. Saudi TV -- broadcast through the Arab world by the Saudi-controlled ArabSat network -- has run series about jihadis and their victims. Some of the works have been cartoonish and propagandistic, but others have been well-written, showing the jihadis as misguided souls whose choices have turned out to be the wrong ones.
The decline in enthusiasm for jihad has also been driven by (mildly) encouraging developments in Palestine, and by the realization of any literate and sensible Arab that the US occupation of Iraq is not at all popular with American citizens themselves. In fact, the dissent at home and its effects on US government policy have likely proven a better testimonial to Arabs for the virtues of representative government than any of the efforts of Bush II administration officials to spread the gospel.
Whatever the reasons for the change, it means that support for jihadis is starting to dry up. The change also means that Arab governments, previously unwilling to work to help America out of its jam in Iraq lest they seem like stooges, are now more interested in fixing things. The awareness that an Iraq turned into a nest of jihadis means more attacks elsewhere has also been an incentive to provide help. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been working on diplomatic efforts to bring Iraq's squabbling factions to the bargaining table.
Iraq remains the center of jihadi activity, and there seems no prospect of an end to bombings and killings any time soon. Still, there are signs of hope: many Sunni and Shiite Iraqis are sick of the bloodshed, and the Sunnis are beginning to see over the long term that attacks on Shiites may be unconstructive. The Americans will go, but Iran is right next door, and the refusal of Sunnis to make a deal may end up leaving them with an iron-fisted Iraqi Shiite government backed up heavily by Iran. Such a prospect makes at least a degree of discussion with the Shiites and even the Americans seem more acceptable.
A Saudi editor has suggested that Islam has been pulled between two poles -- one absolutist and emotional, the other pragmatic and realistic. He concluded that while the realistic approach may not win you everything you want, the absolutist approach risks losing all that you have.
* Along the same lines, a BBC WORLD report from Iran recorded the thoughts of an Islamic scholar there about martyrdom and what it means. Iran is of course the heartland of Shiite Islam, and martyrdom is wired into the culture. The state allows citizens to sign up to become potential martyrs, should the Iranian state be invaded by new enemies -- almost certainly meaning the Americans. One of Iran's greatest heroes remains Hossein Famideh, a 13-year-old boy who in 1980 strapped himself with explosives and threw himself at an Iraqi tank, destroying himself and the tank.
The scholar interviewed proclaimed that martyrdom was indeed a great thing, but he was dismissive of the program to sign up martyrs, obviously seeing it as little more than public posturing: he stated that those wishing to become martyrs needed to go to a battleground and fight. As far as suicide attacks on civilians went, he judged them as little more than murder and a disgrace. Hossein Famideh's father, though clearly honored by his son's sacrifice and the way the lad has been commemorated by the Iranian people, was equally dismissive of attacks on civilians. His son died attacking a tank, not a marketplace.
* George Orwell once made an observation that pacifists don't like seeing boys playing with toy soldiers, but couldn't think of an acceptable substitute: toy pacifists just wouldn't do. His conclusion from this was that humans have a certain innate enthusiasm for war, not always merely wanting good schools and roads and, in general, common sense, but at least on occasion flag-waving and victory parades as well. The corollary, of course, is that wars are by nature unpredictably destructive, and after performing a costs-benefits analysis and trying to fix the damage, common sense begins to seem more appealing after all.
* VIETNAM GEARS UP: Vietnamese have a reputation for commercial energy and enterprise. As portrayed by an ECONOMIST article ("Changing Gear", 26 November 2005), the Communist Vietnamese government has been liberalizing somewhat, and industrious Vietnamese citizens have been taking maximum advantage of it. Once stereotyped as a land of motorbikes, bicycles, and pedicabs, shiny new cars are a now a common sight on the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
The average yearly economic growth over 2000:2004 was 7.2%, and 2005 seems likely to beat that average easily. Government statistics claim that the number of citizens under their defined poverty line has decreased from 58% in 1993 to 20% in 2004. Most of the growth has been due to a shift from subsistence rice farming to more profitable lines of work -- growing coffee, farming prawns, and working in textile plants or shoe factories. Tens of thousands of family firms sprouted up after the state decided to permit their existence in 2001.
The boom seems set to keep on going. About 74% of Vietnam's 84 million people still live in the country, with most of them raising rice, and it is likely more of those folk will decide to move on to other lifestyles. Outbreaks of bird flu caused little damage to the economy, and high oil prices didn't do much harm either, since the country is a net exporter of oil.
Things still could use some improvement. Vietnam has been trying to get into the World Trade Organization, but with no luck so far, and in fact the country is squabbling with the US and the European Union over alleged product dumping. However, the Vietnamese are proving adaptable to trade obstacles. When the US slapped big duties on shrimp and textiles, the Vietnamese shifted to the European market. When coffee prices fell due to a worldwide glut, exports switched to pepper and cocoa.
Another obstacle is finance. The biggest Vietnamese banks are run by the state; to no surprise their transparency is poor and operating methods suspicious. Foreign banks are kept on a short leash. Stocks and bonds are still a new concept in Vietnam. The end result is that the amount of capital needed to transform small family businesses into powerhouse industries is lacking.
The government still insists on maintaining control. The state is working on large-scale investments in heavy industry, while the bureaucrats are taking their own sweet time about "equitizing (privatizing)" businesses. Given the efficiency of industrious Vietnamese citizens, and the government's tendency towards inefficiency and corruption, that strategy seems to be exactly backwards. However, Vietnam is clearly going to keep on growing over the short term. What happens when the limits to growth are reached promises to be politically interesting.
* ARMY GREEN: Anybody who doesn't follow military affairs might be surprised to find how environmentally conscious the US armed services are, but the Pentagon has been trying to adopt a "greener" image for some time, and not just for camouflage. According to an ECONOMIST article ("Green Clothes, Green Minds", 26 November 2005), the military did have to be dragged into their new mindset, by being slapped with massive costs for toxic cleanups on military reservations. However, the report card for the brass does include being responsive to public interests, and now the environment is part of the game plan of the services.
The US Army is building energy-efficient buildings, modifying their lawn irrigation systems to use less water, and recycling solvents. The US Air Force is a major user of renewable energy, with two of their bases largely powered by wind turbines -- a useful side benefit of the fact that military bases are often sited in desolate and wind-swept places. This exercise not only demonstrates the responsiveness of the services to the public will, but it often turns out to be cost-effective as well.
Some green activists have been skeptical, but the US Environmental Protection Agency has judged that the US Army's Fort Lewis, in the thoroughly green northwest state of Washington, is clean enough to no longer require any extraordinary level of monitoring. The Pentagon has specific, long-range environmental plans and seems determined to achieve their goals. There has even been direct cooperation with environmental groups: the military has collaborated with the Nature Conservancy to buy up lands, which can be used for the occasional wargame but otherwise set aside as natural habitat.
* RETAILER'S REVENGE Online shopping has put many traditional "brick and mortar (BaM)" retailers on the defensive, but as an ECONOMIST article ("Click, Bricks, & Bargains", 3 December 2005) shows, some of the traditional retailers are successfully fighting fire with fire.
The Friday after American Thanksgiving -- always the fourth Thursday in November -- is called "Black Friday" by traditional retailers, not because it is black news but because it is when their accounts go out of the red into the black. Since many Americans have a day off that Friday, they don't get back to work and their high-speed office online hookups until Monday -- when online merchants have their good day, which is now known as "Cyber Monday".
Many online merchants reported a doubling of traffic on Cyber Monday. Amazon.com of course led the pack, but Amazonians might have been surprised to turn around and find Wal-Mart right behind them. In fact, traffic on Thanksgiving Day was heavier on Wal-Mart's site than Amazon's. Wal-Mart is being closely followed online in turn by its primary competitor, Target. There's the same story in other developed nations: in the UK, online vendor Argos is being chased by supermarket giant Tesco.
For BaM retailers like Wal-Mart, online is really an opportunity, not a threat. Wal-Mart already has a huge logistical organization and adapting it to send products to homes may be something new, but no culture shock. Online, Wal-Mart has much less exposure to protests from anti-Wal-Mart activists, and also has enormous economies in scale that allows the firm to charge the lowest prices, bringing in referrals from comparison-shopping sites like Shopzilla.com. Wal-Mart even likes to perform product trials online, since it's logistically simpler than doing it in stores.
Other US BaM vendors that have jumped successfully into the online world include Neiman-Marcus and Circuit City. Circuit City was shrewd in combining the two worlds by inventing the "pick up in store" option. The pick-up option might seem to be a non-starter -- why buy online and then go to a store? -- but it has proven popular, allowing customers to make the buying decision in the comfort of their own homes and with online information available, and then going to a store where they might as well look over all the other fancy new goods while they're there. Shopping, after all, can be an entertainment. Wal-Mart understands that having a foot in both the BaM world and the online world has synergies, for example providing the ability for customers to email in digital photos, with the prints picked up in a store.
Amazon still holds a lead, but the competition is getting fiercer. However, Amazon's boss Jeff Bezos is seeing opportunities in the changing world order as well: the online company is selling its Internet expertise to Target and Britain's Marks & Spencer. Such adaptability suggests Amazon is not about to be eclipsed any time soon.
* DOCTOR ROBOT: The growth during the 1990s of "laparoscopy" -- surgery using a camera-tipped probe and extended surgical tools, inserted through small incisions in the body -- was a medical revolution, allowing surgeries to be performed with far less trauma and side effects. The approach was obviously well suited to automation; a NEWSWEEK article ("Cutting Edge" by Jennifer Barrett, 12 December 2005) shows that the combination of laparoscopy and robotics is now well established.
The pathfinder for the technique is the Intuitive Surgery "da Vinci" robotic surgery system, which was approved by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in July 2000; so far it is the only robot surgical system that the FDA has approved. Over 350 da Vincis have been sold -- at $1.3 million USD each -- to the end of 2005, with about 36,600 robotic procedures performed in 2005. The number of procedures is expected to double in 2006.
A patient going "under the knife" on the da Vinci operating table might be forgiven for finding it a bit intimidating, the setup suggesting something like an examination room on a UFO. There are three robot arms -- one tipped with a dual / stereo camera and tiny spotlights, two that are fitted with surgical tools such as forceps, scissors, and scalpel. A surgical assistant fits the proper tool and keeps an eye on the patient; the surgeon is actually across the room, peering inside the patient using a color dual / stereo display system that gives a magnification-10 view of the interior. The surgeon controls the movement of the arms with twin hand controls, using a "dejitter" function when necessary to reduce vibration, and performs other operations -- camera focus, electrocautery, and disengaging the tools -- with foot pedals.
The da Vinci has hit it big in prostate surgery, with 20% of all prostatectomies performed in the US in 2005 handled with the machine. It only requires five tiny incisions, and patients are up and around in days, even gradually regaining full sexual function -- a dodgy thing with traditional methods. The da Vinci is now being used for other operations, even heart bypass surgery.
While few have any doubts that, at least once procedures have matured, the da Vinci is superior to most traditional surgical methods, the high price and complexity of the system is an obstacle to acceptance. There are those who also think it will result in more surgeries than would have been recommended in the past, both to pay off the expense and because it makes surgeries easier on the patient. However, it is clear that robot surgeons are here to stay, and will only continue to become more sophisticated and effective.
* PUMPING OIL: The rapid rise of oil prices over the last few years has of course been good news to some of the population, including -- as described by an article in THE ECONOMIST ("Jacking Up", 19 November 2005) -- makers of oceanic oil rigs.
There's really only effectively two, Keppel and SembCorp Marine, both in Singapore. After the end of the last oil crisis, US and European shipyards dropped out of the business, but the Singaporean government felt the need to keep the city-state deeply involved in marine services. Right now that decision is paying off: Keppel and SembCorp Marine have about $7.6 billion USD in orders for rigs -- including "jack-ups" and "semi-submersibles" -- and don't expect to get the orders fulfilled until 2010 at earliest.
A related article on BBC WORLD ONLINE reports how oil pumps are at work again in the Los Angeles area. The region is dotted with the pumps -- called "nodding donkeys" because of their rocking action -- but they were shut down in the 1980s with the fall of oil prices. The oil rigs actually predate Los Angeles in the modern sense; some like to say that "they ruined a perfectly good oilfield by building a city on top of it."
Now the oil pumps and rigs are being started back up, and improvements are being implemented. Some near-offshore rigs are apparently camouflaged as little tropical islands, complete with palm trees and waterfalls.
* The little Beeb article brought back a strange memory of the early 1960s, when our family went to Disneyland. I have the vaguest and very surreal recollection of seeing the pumps -- I call them "hammerheads" myself -- rocking up and down as we drove through the twilight. It seemed like an odd sort of thing to have in a big city.
I didn't return to Disneyland until I went there for a tradeshow in the late 1990s, and took a day off to circuit the theme park. I was at the Matterhorn Bobsled attraction, which I believe was the world's first steel roller-coaster, and told an attendant that the last time I had been in Disneyland that attraction hadn't even come on line yet.
* HOT & COLD: The weather is a notoriously complicated physical system; the well-known concept of the "butterfly effect" was originally invented to describe the contrariness of the Earth's weather system, suggesting that the motion of a butterfly's wings in China could lead in time to tornados in Texas.
According to a NEWSWEEK article ("Is Europe Due For A Big Chill?" by Michael D. Lemonick), one of the contrary effects of global warming may be to make northern Europe much colder. Few realize that London is well north of Montreal; the fact that the winters in the UK rarely look much like those of the northern parts of Canada is due to the presence of the "North Atlantic Current", a spur off the warm Gulf Stream that cycles around the Atlantic to the south.
In 2004, Britain's National Oceanography Center set up a network of 22 moored strings of undersea instrument across the North Atlantic, roughly along the latitude of 25 degrees north, between northern Africa and Florida. Each string held current meters and a sensor package that crawled up and down the string on a two-day cycle. The results of the study have now been published and suggest that the currents that drive the Gulf Stream have slowed about 30% since 1992.
Global warming is suspected as the culprit because it results in melting of sea ice, which contains pure water and so dilutes the salinity of the oceans. That would make it harder for cold water to sink and form the return currents needed to keep the oceanic "conveyor belt" operating. The concept is not new: in the 1980s, Wallace Broecker, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory came up with the notion to explain why Greenland's temperatures dropped precipitously several times over the last 70,000 years.
Once again, the Earth's weather is a complicated thing, and nobody has all the pieces of this puzzle. Computer models show that a shift in oceanic currents and attendant changes in the climate won't happen overnight, and there is some skepticism among climatologists that the rate of change reported is for real. Researchers say there is no need to get panicky. However, the matter certainly deserves further examination.
* INTELLIGENT DESIGN II: Concerning the "intelligent design (ID)" controversy in Dover, Pennsylvania, discussed last month in these pages: US District Court Judge John E. Jones dismissed the claims of the ID advocates, releasing a 139-page decision. Judge Jones, a church-going Republican and a Bush II Administration appointee, was not gentle in his dismissal either, calling the efforts of the ID advocates in Dover an exercise in "breathtaking inanity" and saying in exasperation that the whole thing was an "utter waste of monetary and personal resources." No doubt as a district court judge he felt he had better things to do with his time.
Judge Jones ruled that the ID advocates had a clearly religious agenda, pointing out that ID "violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation." He was clearly irritated with the attempts of the ID advocates to verbally tapdance around their real intent, all but accusing them of perjury: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind ID policy."
* The decision against the ID advocates was predictable and I would have thought the whole matter silly and tiresome, hardly worth bothering about -- except that one of the ousted pro-ID Dover school board members announced in response to the judgement: "I'm still waiting for a judge or anyone to show me anywhere in the Constitution where there's a separation of church and state."
That got my attention. I was dumbfounded. After thinking it over for a minute, I realized it was what in my days of hanging around Internet forums would have been called a blatant "troll", saying something outrageously ridiculous just to provoke argument. Of course, if anyone replied with the first line of the US Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." -- the response would have been a diatribe too empty-headed to even be called sophistry. I later found out that there's actually a movement of sorts to make a case against separation of church and state, but so far the courts haven't bought it.
* TOWARDS THE CENTER: In each issue of THE ECONOMIST magazine, there is an editorial on American affairs by "Lexington", who apparently has been "regenerated" as different correspondents over the years. Lexington's comments, which come from an outside perspective, often have interesting insights.
The Lexington column in the 3 December 2005 issue was titled "The End Of Ideology", which was the title of a book by author Daniel Bell, published in 1960. Bell suggested that the day of the split between the Reds and the Red-baiters, the Left and the Right, was about over, that people were exhausted with such ideologies, and that the future belonged to pragmatic technocrats. Bell's timing was terrible: the 1960s introduced the counterculture with its assault on traditional values, which in turn provoked right-wing reaction. And so it went in the US for the rest of the century.
In his column, Lexington muses that after all these decades of culture wars, Americans may finally be tiring of ideologies. The Bush II Administration came into office with a strong rightist agenda, but now even conservatives are exasperated with the administration's lack of fiscal discipline, unfocused energy policies, muddled war in Iraq, heavy-handed treatment of terrorist suspects, and overreaching view of presidential powers.
However, this frustration does not mean the public is wildly rushing to the street barricades of the left either, since mainstream Democrats seem to be drifting around, looking for issues to grab on to, while the left outfield is devoted to petty correctness exercises and dominated by monotonous shrillness over causes that seem somewhat less than rousing. A crusade against, say, Wal-Mart, is not the sort of thing that really captures the public imagination.
Given a bankruptcy of ideas, pragmatism begins to seem more attractive. The Bush II Administration has been gradually deemphasizing grand visions and has been focusing more on details and plans. Two of the plausible candidates to replace George W. Bush in office in 2008, Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, have shown a perfect willingness to mix and match ideas across the political spectrum. Senator Clinton has turned surprisingly hawkish and has allied herself with Newt Gingrich on health-care reform; a political cartoon had the Devil covered with icecicles, watching the two arm in arm on TV. Senator McCain is a hardcore hawk on Iraq but downright leftist on campaign reform and taxation; his chief of staff told a newspaper that the paper's discussions with a noisy anti-tax activist were about as useful as arguing with a "street-corner schizophrenic".
* To a centrist like myself, it is very appealing to think there is a push towards the center, but it also sounds a bit like wishful thinking. There are and will continue to be many people who cram all the facts into the mold of their ideology, who find a world painted in black and white much easier to grasp than one rendered in shades of gray. Any Internet forum is full of them, and obviously both Michael Moore and Ann Coulter still have plenty of fans.
Still, there are encouraging signs. An article in the 12 December 2005 issue of NEWSWEEK ("A New View At Defense" by Daniel Klaidman, John Barry, and Michael Hirsch) shows the Bush II Administration's tilt towards pragmatism in military matters. In the administration's first term, the tone at the Pentagon was heavily set by Defense Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz -- an articulate and intelligent man who was described by one of his colleagues from academia as a "velociraptor", the term "hawk" not doing him justice.
Now Dr. Wolfowitz is at the World Bank, and the tone at Defense is different. At the beginning of the Bush II Administration's second term, a meeting was conducted at the White House to reappraise the policies of the previous term. Philip Zelikow, counselor to Secretary of State Condi Rice, criticized the administration's stand on treatment of prisoners, saying that the problem was not a failure to communicate the policy properly: it was the policy itself.
That came as no surprise coming from the State Department, since the prisoner issue had been a diplomatic nightmare. However, Mr. Wolfowitz's successor in the position of Undersecretary of Defense, Gordon England, had some surprises in store for the group. Mr. England agreed completely with Mr. Zelikow's argument; if the question were asked if the policy on prisoners had made things better or worse for the US, Mr. England said, the answer was: worse.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had found managing the Pentagon to be more than he could handle himself, and so he brought in Mr. England from his position as Navy Secretary to help get things under control. Mr. England is cool, self-effacing, and completely professional; he has many admirers on both sides of the aisle. As the Bush II Administration adopts an increasingly pragmatic mentality, the president's popularity has rebounded from an all-time low.
* For an even more interesting sign of the times, an article in the same issue of NEWSWEEK ("Hillary's Military Offensive" by Susannah Meadows) spotlights the transformation of Hillary Clinton into something very much resembling a hawk.
During her husband's time in the White House, relations with the military were edgy at best, though apparently stories of pointed snubs to the brass were exaggerations. However, following 11 September 2001, Senator Clinton put on her combat boots. The question arises of whether this was out of a perception of new world realities, or due to the awareness that she would never get into the Oval Office herself if she weren't strong on defense. The answer most likely is: Yes.
Like or dislike Hillary Clinton, nobody ever said she was either lazy or stupid, and having grasped the nettle she has shown no signs of releasing her grip. She approved of the invasion of Iraq, and crisply rejected Democratic Representative Jack Murtha's recent call for an immediate pullout. She has taken lessons from the defense professionals in her husband's wide circle of contacts, such as the highly respected ex-Defense Secretary Bill Perry, and worked for the military in her platform at the Senate Armed Services Committee. She hasn't ignored the grunts, either, with her office quick to help constituent servicefolk with their problems.
In the summer of 2005, the Reserve Officers Association gave her the President's Award for her work on behalf of soldiers. There was a fear among the organizers of the event that the audience might walk out; they ended up giving her a standing ovation instead. The senator now has strong allies and advocates in uniform at the Pentagon.
To be sure, at present Senator Clinton is not pushing any strong vision of the architecture or mission of the military, avoiding getting pinned down on specifics. Given her limited ability to shape the military and its job at the present time, that is likely shrewd, since laying out grand schemes would buy her little while giving her many opportunities to trip up. The Bush II Administration has to worry about the details; in the meantime, Hillary Clinton is on an advance towards 2008.
* SYNTAX ERROR: Proofreading documents is a pain; no matter how hard I try, of course I don't catch everything, and so I keep looking for tools to help me with the process. One obnoxious bug that I kept running into was a tendency to duplicate words in sentences: "and the result was also also that ... "
I don't know how I keep on doing this, but I'd had the idea for some time of building a tool to hunt through files and find these duplicates. I finally decided to write a script file that contained a little Awk program to scan word by word through a text file, comparing consecutive words and then printing any duplicate word and the line it was found in. Much to my surprise, when I went into my scripts directory, I found that I already had written a scriptfile to do such a thing. Huh? I performed some tests on it and determined it didn't work, so I must've thrown it together on an impulse one day, not had the time to debug it, and then forgotten about it.
Despite the fact that I have a popular guide to Awk on my website, I don't actually use Awk much and so every time I go back to it I have to refresh my memory. (That's kind of why I wrote the guide in the first place.) I understood the program logic of the scriptfile OK, it was trivial, but there were some tiny syntax bugs and the scriptfile kept crashing. I ended up cleaning things out and putting them back in and it worked -- even though I couldn't see what was different from what I had done before.
Oh well -- it worked, I was happy. Or maybe not. I checked through the new 14-chapter release of my ELEMENTARY CLASSICAL PHYSICS document, and found to a certain amount of distress that there was, on the average, one set of duplicated words in each chapter: "the the" seemed to be the most common case. I knew I would find duplicates, but I didn't think it would be near that many. Just for another check, I went through the proofread chapters for my upcoming new release of THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, and it was more in line with expectations: on the average, no more than half of the files had duplicated words.
It is nice to know that I have finally licked this particular bug, and now I am excited about going through everything and hammering it into the ground for good. However, it was not reassuring to find out just how many bugs were getting past me, leading to a concern about all the other bugs that still are getting past me. Life is imperfect.
* POLAR SHIFT: The Earth's fluid core acts as a dynamo, with the rotating electric currents generating a magnetic field that causes compasses to point north. Almost everyone knows that the magnetic poles aren't on the same site as the true poles, on the axis of the Earth's rotation; what is a bit more surprising is (as reported by a BBC WORLD Online article) that the magnetic pole is drifting rapidly. The north magnetic pole currently resides in Canada's far north, but within 50 years it may be in Siberia. Some researchers suggest that the current polar shift may be part of a normal oscillation.
Researchers can determine the location of the poles in the past from magnetized materials in sedimentary deposits. Over the last thousand years, the north magnetic pole has wandered repeatedly between northern Canada and Siberia, though it has made a few excursions in other directions as well. Over the past 150 years, the north magnetic pole wandered 1,100 kilometers north and has decreased in intensity by about 10%.
The fluid motions in the Earth's core are chaotic and can change in unpredictable ways, affecting the Earth's magnetic field. Every few hundred thousands of years, the magnetic poles actually reverse. The gradual weakening of the field suggests to some researchers that another polar flip is in progress as we speak. The average time between polar flips is 250,000 years, but it's been about 750,000 years since the last flip, so we're statistically overdue. It may take thousands of years to complete the transition, but other than rendering magnetic compasses useless for the duration, the temporary loss of magnetic field should cause no problems for life on Earth. After all, it's happened plenty of times before.
* PROJECTING INTELLIGENCE: According to a NEWSWEEK article ("Shedding Light On A Literacy Problem" by Jessica Silver-Greenberg), a group of MIT engineers named "Design That Matters" working on "appropriate technologies" for the undeveloped world has come up with an interesting idea: an educational slide projector called the "Kinkajou", named after a South American relative of the raccoon that has excellent night vision.
In undeveloped countries, books may be expensive and facilities may be primitive. The solar-powered Kinkajou can project slides from a spool with up to 10,000 entries onto any flat surface. The Kinkajou design was based on that of a Fisher-Price projector for small children, which had to be cheap, as well as durable to put up with the kind of abuse that toddlers can dish out. The Kinkajou uses plastic parts, including lenses, and costs about $50 USD in quantity; a slide spool costs about $12 USD. Aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations are very interested in the Kinkajou and see thousands of them in use within a few years.
* IRAQ VOTES: The Iraqi elections this week were another hopeful sign that there may be an end, someday, to the chaos there. Out of 15 million eligible voters, at least 10 million voted -- including many Sunni Iraqis, even in Sunni strongholds such as Fallujah and Ramadi-- and observers concluded the election process was "generally" satisfactory. However, al-Qaeda in Iraq denounced the election and promised attacks.
The ground rules for the election included:
Despite the threats, election day was more or less peaceful, by the simple process of shutting down all ground and air traffic for two days. 150,000 Iraqi troops and police were deployed to keep order; foreign forces stayed in the background.
* In semi-related news, the Bush II Administration finally gave up their resistance to Congressional insistence on a blanket torture ban. Pressure for the move was so nearly unanimous that it is a bit surprising that the administration didn't give in before. President Bush and Senator John McCain, the prime mover behind the bill, shook hands before the cameras, though Senator McCain came across as unenthusiastic about the exercise.
The Bush II administration is now clearly in retreat on the demand for extraordinary rights to prosecute the war on terror. The US Senate promptly followed Mr. Bush's concession by refusing to extend the Patriot Act, the package of powers handed to the president after the 9-11 attacks. There are a number of other issues that will likely come to the surface very quickly, such as the status of prisoners being held indefinitely without charge or trial, the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and Red Cross access to prisoners. It would seem unlikely that refusing to go the rest of the way and restore conventional concepts of justice would damage the administration's credibility beyond all repair. It is difficult to believe they would do so.
The matter of the alleged secret CIA flights around Europe remains open, if increasingly muddied. US Secretary of State Condi Rice -- who one suspects of having been an internal prime mover behind the change in administration policy -- made loud and clear public declarations that the US is going to act within the law, and also gave assurances behind closed doors to EU ministers that they generally pronounced satisfactory. The EU has a split mind on the matter, with one faction claiming the allegations are "credible" and another insisting that the denials made by the various states said to be involved should not be challenged without evidence. If really damaging facts come to the surface, the issue is likely to explode; if not, it will simply bore itself to death.
Finally, Mr. Bush has also conceded the apparent facts that the occupation of Iraq has been more troublesome than expected, and that the intelligence that led to the intervention was faulty. He does continue to insist that the intervention was justified. The administration has sensibly pulled back their lines to provide a more defensible position, but the momentum of the political battle is for the moment against them -- under fire, the president has just admitted that he authorized wiretaps of American citizens following 9-11, though he insists he was within his rights to do so -- and it will take more effort to restore the balance.
* ED: Whether the invasion of Iraq was actually justified or not is of course arguable, but it is unarguable that a fair case could have been made for it. A political cartoon by Scott Stantis of THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS has been making the rounds. It shows Saddam Hussein standing in front of the judge, who says: "Saddam Hussein, how do you plead to the charges that you were a bloodthirsty tyrant?"
Saddam replies: "If I were in charge, I'd have you KILLED! Uh ... I mean, not guilty ... "
* CLEAN COAL: The notion of coal as a major supply of energy gives forth images of steam locomotives pouring out soot as they roll down the track, and dark satanic mills. According to a BBC WORLD Online article ("How Coal Is Cleaning Up Its Act" by Mark Kinver), the reality is more complicated.
Anyone who knows anything about modern energy technology realizes that
coal-fired power plants are a major source of energy. That's not very
surprising: there's a lot of coal, and it's cheap. According to the World
Coal Institute, the reserves of fossil fuels, given current rates of
production from currently known reserves, amount to:
coal: 164 years
gas: 67 years
oil: 41 years
Coal still has a dirty image, and there was a time in the 1990s that
clean-burning natural gas was being pursued as the "better idea". However,
rising energy demand has pushed coal back onto center stage. The
International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that coal use will ramp up by
1.4% a year until 2030, when yearly demand will amount to 7.3 billion tonnes,
a billion tonnes more than the present.
China is building coal-fired plants at a staggering rate, with about 55 gigawatts (GW) of new production coming online in 2005, most of it in the form of coal-fired plants. China expects to have at least 900 GW of capacity by 2020. Says one IEA official: "If you are in China or India where you have huge resources of coal, and you have elements of the population that do not have access to electricity, then your driver is to build and operate power stations as quickly and as effectively as possible."
Since coal looks like it's going to be around in a big way for some time, the question becomes one of not whether we burn coal, but how. The answer is "clean coal technology (CCT)". CCT is generally interpreted to mean converting coal to a gas for burning to drive a power turbine -- as opposed to the traditional scheme of burning coal to produce steam from a boiler -- with the carbon dioxide and other emissions "sequestered" underground.
However, traditional boiler technology has been improving rapidly, and can now rival "gasification" in terms of efficiency and cleanliness. The latest "supercritical" boiler systems have an operating efficiency of 42%, compared to 30% for traditional boilers. Higher efficiency means burning less coal to get the same amount of power, and so fewer emissions. The latest boilers also allow biomass fuel to be added to the fuel mix, bringing in an element of "renewable" energy to coal power production.
Each approach has its partisans. Gasification advocates point out that modern gasification systems, such as "Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)", can be used for "poly-generation": the gas can be burned to generate power immediately, or piped off and stored for later use in vehicles or industrial plants. Supercritical boiler advocates point out in return that the technology is available now, and can be retrofitted to existing coal-fired power plants at a fraction of the cost of building a new coal gasification plant.
Of course, with either approach the result of combustion is carbon dioxide (CO2), which could contribute to global warming, but enthusiasts believe CO2 can be sequestered underground. The US is spending a billion USD on the "FutureGen" program, which will build a demonstrator plant with IGCC and CO2 sequestration. Critics are not quite convinced yet, and the advocates know they have some proving to do.
* FOOTNOTE -- CLEAN COAL IN OPERATION: In a clean coal plant using IGCC, the coal is first placed through a tumbler washer to remove surface impurities. The coal is then pulverized and fed to a "gasifier", where it is heated and combined with oxygen and steam to produce "syngas", which is mostly hydrogen. The process generates slag, which has to be removed from the gasifier and disposed of. The syngas is cooled and cleaned, then burned to drive a power turbine. It can also be burned to drive a steam-driven turbine, or stored for use, as mentioned, with vehicles or industrial plants.
In current coal-fired plants, a number of methods are used to eliminate "flue gas" emissions. A "wet scrubber" can be used to perform "flue gas desulfurization", eliminating up to 99% of the sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the flue gas; SO2 tends to be transformed into sulfuric acid in the environment and is a major contributor to "acid rain". In the wet scrubber, the flue gas is sprayed with water and calcium carbonate, which is transformed into gypsum (calcium sulfate). The gypsum can be used to fabricate drywall for the construction industry.
Another pollutant is "NOX" -- nitrous oxide -- which is due generally to incomplete combustion. New "low-NOX burners" restrict the amount of oxygen flow to the hottest part of the combustor, reducing the creation of NOX.
Finally, coal burning produces particulates, such as soot. They can be removed by an "electrostatic precipitator", in which an electrical charge is induced on the particulates, which are then trapped by electrically charged plates. Fabric filters and wet scrubber systems can also be used to deal with particulates.
* K9 PHONE HOME: According to a WIRED NEWS article ("Fido's First Cell Phone" by Jenn Shreve), in the spring of 2006, dog lovers will be able to go to the local PetSmart store and buy the PetsMobility "PetCell", the first cellphone for dogs.
This sounds on the face of it like a ridiculous idea, but there actually is a sensible basis for it. The collar-mounted PetCell is fitted with a speaker and a microphone, allowing owners to call their dogs home if they stray too far, get some feedback on the dogs' surroundings, or to generate an alarm to help track lost dogs down. The PetCell also has GPS capabilities to provide an animal's location. The phone is rugged and waterproof.
PetCell will also have an option called "GeoFence" to provide an automatic notification if a dog leaves specified bounds, and is fitted with a contact thermometer to report a dog's body temperature. The manufacturer is also talking about adding a small camera to the PetCell to allow images to be relayed back from the dog's location, which might be useful for rescue operations.
PetCell is not cheap -- the introductory price will be about $350 USD -- but PetsMobility is optimistic about the product. In fact, the company is introducing similar items for kids, old folks, and outdoor sports fans. So far, however, company engineers haven't been able to reduce PetCell in size enough to make it suitable for cats.
* IRAQ EXIT: Over what is now going on three years, the US invasion of Iraq, which seemed to start out as a spectacular success, has gone from one calamity to the next, while members of the Bush II Administration attempted to reassure that public that all was well. Right now, given the dismal history, even conservatives have good reason to be less than optimistic.
It is now clear that administration's plans for regime change in Iraq, to put it tactfully, lacked realism. However, an article in NEWSWEEK magazine ("The New Way Out" by Michael Hirsch, Scott Johnson, and Kevin Perano) suggests that, finally, there may be grounds for cautious optimism: the Bush II administration seems to be piecing together a workable strategy to get American soldiers out of Iraq without leaving chaos behind. The fact that NEWSWEEK is no particular friend of the administration gives the article some credibility.
Last spring, things were so out of control in Baghdad that even driving from the airport to the Green Zone was a "Mad Max" adventure in terror. However, since that time special checkpoints, manned by a few dozen Iraqi Special Police and backed up by two Iraqi National Guard infantry platoons, have turned the notorious "Ambush Alley" into, at least by Iraqi standards, a peaceful lane. The key was getting rid of checkpoints manned by American soldiers; as US Army officer involved put it: "It would have simply produced more targets."
Of course, the Baghdad airport road is only one small piece of a big country, and violence continues at full burn, with American soldiers killed every week and far more Iraqis killed every day. Still, it does seem that the administration has a real blueprint: suppress the insurgents and pass control over to Iraqi forces, while handing carrots to Sunni leaders to get them to stop supporting the insurgency. To ensure US domestic support, American troops are to be slowly drawn down, hopefully to less than 100,000 by the time midterm 2006 elections roll around.
The troop drawdown is not entirely driven by the need to maintain public support; it is also completely obvious that the presence of US occupation forces is a major provocation that keeps on fueling the insurgency. That leads to the obvious question of why the US simply doesn't pull out now.
Zamay Khalilzad, the highly respected US ambassador to Iraq, has the answer: "People need to be clear what the stakes are here. If we were to do a premature withdrawal, there could be a Shia-Sunni war that could spread beyond Iraq. And you could have Iran backing the Shias and Sunni Arab states backing the Sunnis. You could have a regional war that could go on for a very long time, and affect the security of oil supplies. Terrorists could take over part of the country and expand from here. And given the resources of Iraq, given the technical expertise of its people, it will make Afghanistan look like child's play."
The US Army War College put the matter neatly in a refreshing bit of military directness: "We can't stay, we can't leave, and we can't fail."
Since pulling out troops completely is not practical over the short term, the current concept is to pull most of them out of sight in rear-area bases where they can deploy to provide heavy firepower when needed. The normal frontline military presence will consist of special operations teams, officer-advisers, and reconstruction specialists working discreetly inside Iraqi units. Ambassador Khalilzad is working on the creation of "provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs)" made up of both civilians and soldiers, with up to 100 personnel.
There are about 160,000 US troops in Iraq, now focused on providing security for elections. About 22,000 will leave early in 2006; optimistically, 20,000 to 30,000 will be gone by midyear; and troop levels should be under 100,000, even well under that limit, by the end of 2006.
Getting the troops out means swallowing some bitter medicine, for example coming to terms with Iran, once described as a charter member of the "Axis of Evil". Mr. Khalilzad had quiet talks with the Iranians while he was ambassador to Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, and he plans to meet again with Iranian officials. It's hard to imagine two much more antagonistic groups on the sides of the bargaining table, but the US and Iran have more than few common interests in Iraq. The US wants a democratic Iraq, which means to Iranians that their Shiite Iraqi brethren will carry a great deal of weight in the new order.
Nothing is guaranteed to work; there is much violence, chaos, corruption, and treachery in Iraq. If the Iraqi National Guard won't fight the insurgents, things cannot possibly work out. Worse, since the Iraqi National Guard will take time to build up a logistical support apparatus, it will be dependent on US military support units for some time, and those US soldiers will be dependent in turn on the protection of the Iraqi National Guard. The insurgents have also proven adaptable, and have done much to frustrate attempts to improve Iraq's stability.
* Surprisingly, a BBC WORLD Online report indicates that Iraqis have a high level of optimism themselves from a survey conducted by Oxford Research International (ORI) on behalf of five media groups, including the BBC. It was the fifth such survey conducted by ORI, with Iraqi pollsters canvassing the country in minibuses and talking to 1,711 citizens.
71% of those interviewed said their lives were good or quite good. They are cautious, with 89% saying they are careful about what they say in public. There is also a near-even split on whether things are good or bad, and a similar split on the validity of the US invasion. Most -- 65% -- want foreign troops to get out, though not necessarily right away. There is a high degree of confidence -- 76% -- that the upcoming elections will help lead to a stable and democratic Iraq; and there is great support for a democratic Iraq.
There are of course strong regional differences of viewpoints in this picture. The Kurds in the north are enjoying boom times and relatively low levels of violence; things are very good for them. Shiites have reasons for being pleased, too: under Saddam Hussein, Sunnis ran things and kept the Shiites in their place. Things may be rough for Iraqi Shiites right now, but at least they have major political influence. The Sunnis of course are not happy with the new regime, and if they remain too unhappy they may be able to disrupt everything for the others.
* SUPER SHIPS: Transport of goods over the world's oceans by freighter vessels is something that most people know about but take generally for granted. A BBC WORLD Online report ("Ships Power Into Faster Future" by Tracey Logan) shows that international maritime shipping is now growing rapidly and in a state of rapid change.
One observer points out that about 90% of the world's trade goes by sea, and that the amount of goods shipped may well double in the next few decades. One of the biggest drivers of change is the increasing presence of China in world markets. Ships have to carry the flood of goods from China to other nations, with the volume steadily increasing. The rise in the importance of shipping means bigger, faster, and greener ships.
The world's biggest container ship, the MSC PAMELA, launched in 2005, can carry 9,200 containers on the route between China and Western Europe. A few decades back, such a huge ship would have been unthinkable, but supersized container ships are now becoming the norm. A new container ship, the EMMA MAERSK, is in the works and will be able to carry 1,000 containers. By 2020, almost a third of the world's container ships will be too big to fit through the Panama Canal.
The government of Panama is considering a plan to widen the canal. The ultimate size limit is believed to be about 18,000 containers, since any vessel larger than that would have too deep a draught to pass through the Straits of Malacca, the chokepoint between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, nobody thinks container ships will get near to that big, since above about 12,500 containers; above that threshold, no port would have the capacity to load and unload them in any reasonable fashion.
* The economy of scale means that it only costs a US dollar or so to ship a refrigerator across an ocean, but there is a drawback. A big container ship can only steam at about 25 KPH (16 MPH), and it takes about a month to deliver an automobile from the factory in Europe to a customer in the US. That isn't a problem in many cases, but a naval architect named Nigel Gee thinks that there is definitely a place for a fast cargo transport that can get a car across the Atlantic in a week, at higher cost than normal shipping but much lower cost than air freight. Gee's "Pentamaran" design will carry 1,000 containers at a speed of about 85 KPH (53 MPH). It features a torpedolike main hull, with twin thin side hulls on each side to provide stability.
The other factor in cargo ship design is of course fuel economy. The British and French defense ministries are now conducting an "All Electric Ship Demonstrator" project, with gas turbines providing electricity for an electrically driven propeller that doesn't need a long and heavy shaft and is computer controlled to eliminate the need for a rudder. The electric drive makes the prop far more efficient and agile; coupled with improved ship design, shippers would be able to save considerable amounts of fuel.
Some naval architects even believe that future cargo vessels may be nuclear powered. There were attempts in the past to build nuclear-powered commercial vessels, but they weren't economical, particularly because they weren't welcome in many ports. Whether there will be huge, nuclear powered container ships remains to be seen.
* PHYSICS FRUSTRATION: I just finished uploading the new v3.1.0 version of my ELEMENTARY CLASSICAL PHYSICS text to the website. I originally began the update to correct an embarrassing error -- no, I'm not going to say what it was -- but then added enough new material to increase the number of chapters from 12 to 14.
After a rough evolution, I'm feeling pretty happy with the ECP document. Although it's targeted at high school students, junior college students, and more generally "people who don't do physics for a living", it covers a lot of ground, and does it to a certain amount of depth, with an emphasis on gadgetry. One of the surprising things about writing a popular outline of simple physics is that I'm always learning something new and acquiring fresh insights even at that level of detail. ECP also works hard at being entertaining, even original. After all, most physics texts don't reference Gary Larson cartoons, Looney Tunes, M.C. Escher, horror flics, and a wide range of other pop-culture sources, with a little "debunkery" thrown in for entertainment value.
There's only one problem: almost nobody seems interested in it. It comes up fairly high on Google searches, but few sites link to it and nobody has written to indicate any enthusiasm for it. Such correspondence as I have received on it consists of bug reports, and of course a portion of them are obnoxious ("I found a typo error, you brain-damaged moron.")
There are reasons for the indifference. I think most people using the Web aren't looking for a long, detailed text: they have a question and want a direct answer. I understand this, but I don't find it very satisfying to deal in bits and pieces, I want to get the story. There is another inescapable difficulty in that academic physicists are not likely to be very interested in an elementary text and so don't link to it. I suspect further that the cartoonish aspects of ECP also turn them off, even though they improve the document as far as the target audience is concerned.
Of course, there's also the possibility that the thing really does stink, but though nobody's an objective judge of his own work, I don't think it's that bad. The only thing I can do is keep trying to improve ECP and add other physical science writings to the site, in hopes of acquiring a "critical mass" one of these days. I don't like bugs in any of my documents, but I'm touchy about defects in ECP, since I know its credibility is on the line.
* I do have a certain satisfaction in ECP relative to the physics crackpot crowd. A physics crackpot wants to be the genius who outsmarted Einstein. It would never occur to a crackpot to write a detailed text on elementary physics. It would be too much like work and there would be no glory in it. The notion of establishing credibility would never cross his mind.
That line of thought got me to remembering Archimedes Plutonium, one of the most prominent Internet crackpots of the 1990s. Arky Plutonium, as he was called, had a scientific philosophy called "Superdeterminism" and, it seems, believed the entire Universe was actually a giant plutonium atom. Reference to his website yielded page after page of sheer incoherent pseudoscientific gibberish. It was astonishing. There's no way I could produce anything so disjointed and bizarre even in small quantity no matter how hard I tried.
I was telling a friend about Arky, saying that he dropped out of sight a few years ago. She said: "Maybe they made sure he was taking his medication." I replied: "My suspicion is that they finally put him away." Rumor has it, however, that he resurfaced about a year ago.
* TERROR AS BUSINESS: The emergence of global Islamic terror over the past few decades took the world somewhat by surprise, and it has taken time to acquire an understanding of the threat. One interesting aspect, discussed in a US NEWS & WORLD REPORT article ("Paying For Terror" by David E. Kaplan, 5 December 2005), is the linkage between international terrorism and international crime.
At 1:25 PM on 12 March 1993, a bomb went off in the Mumbai Stock Exchange. Other explosions and attacks followed for almost two hours at other prime targets in the Indian metropolis. Ten bombs went off in all, with 257 people killed and over 700 injured. The carefully-planned attack was performed by Islamic extremists, in retaliation for riots provoked by Hindu extremists that had killed over a thousand Muslims.
The attacks of 12 March 1993 were only a sample of what might have been. Indian police soon found a cache of tonnes of explosives, along with large stocks of weapons and ammunition. Then the examination of an abandoned van full of weapons gave the big break in the case, pointing to a gangster boss named Dawood Ibrahim.
The police knew who Dawood Ibrahim was. Everybody in India did. He was a celebrity gangster, simply known as "Dawood" in the news media. One of eight sons of a Muslim Indian policeman, Dawood started out as a petty crook and then worked his way up. By the 1980s his gang, just known as "D Company", mostly staffed by other Indian Muslims, was the biggest and most feared gang in Mumbai. Smuggling was D Company's bread and butter, but Dawood had fingers in everything, including Bollywood movie productions.
Pressure from the law and gang wars forced him to move to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in 1985. Dubai is a gleaming, glittering, modern city on the Persian Gulf, with relaxed rules and a commercial mindset that makes it a hub for commerce from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. That includes, not too surprisingly, illegal commerce. From Dubai, Dawood was able to spread his empire over 14 countries.
The anti-Muslim riots in India in 1993 led Dawood to help Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Pakistani intelligence apparatus, smuggle explosives into India. After Dawood's involvement in the attacks became apparent, he went to first place on India's "most wanted" list. He fled to Pakistan, where he has continued in command of his criminal empire under the protection of the ISI. He is believed to have complicity in several more attacks by Islamic terrorists in India, and to have had contacts with al-Qaeda operatives.
* Dawood's involvement with terrorism does clearly show that linkages have arisen between gangsters and terrorists, but many authorities say that the two groups keep each other at arm's length. Gangsters generally want to make profits, not strike blows for political and religious causes. Terrorist attacks usually don't make much money and they attract far too much unwanted attention from the authorities. On their part, terrorists know that gangsters will betray them if there's a profit in it, and that too much involvement by "holy warriors" in crime may lead them to gradually become less holy warriors and more gangsters.
What is more significant is that terrorist groups are becoming criminal gangs in their own right, funding their movement through drug dealing, product counterfeiting, and human trafficking. The "jihadis" -- Islamic terrorists -- that performed the 11 March 2004 bombings in Madrid supported themselves by selling hashish and ecstasy, with Spanish police seizing the equivalent of $2 million USD in drugs and money from the group. The Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah group likes credit card fraud, as well as robbing banks and jewelry stores. There is a rising acceptance of such purely criminal activities among the jihadis. It is believed that Abu Bakir Bashir, the alleged spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah, put it neatly: "You can take their blood; then why not take their property?"
The authorities in Western Europe see increasing jihadi control over the drug trade in their countries. In Morocco, a major source of hashish sent north, jihadis are believed to control about a third of the trade. Jihadis also like small-scale scams -- credit-card fraud, identity theft, cellphone pirating -- that provide all the funds they need but don't attract too much attention from the authorities. Jihadis also seem to be involved in human trafficking in Europe, though they are not the big players.
Many jihadis got their training in crime in prison. It is believed that up to half the inmates in French prison are Muslims, and in that environment zealots come into contact with criminals who can give them ideas. Jihadis can also form networks during their prison days that persist once they get out into the world again.
Afghanistan has proven to be another meeting ground between criminals and terrorists. Although Osama bin Laden has discouraged his followers from getting involved in the Afghan heroin trade, other Islamist groups in the region aren't so cautious. It is an enormous business, with drugs flooding into neighboring countries, breeding junkies and corrupt officials. Even arch-conservative Iran has been afflicted, with high rates of addiction and evidence of collusion with drug traffickers at high levels of government. The penetration of the trade into the former southern Soviet republics leads to an unpleasant prospect of two-way trade: heroin for sophisticated Soviet weaponry that could be used in terrorist attacks, such as man-portable anti-aircraft missiles or even nuclear munitions.
In Iraq, it is almost impossible to distinguish between gangsters and insurgents. Kidnappings for ransom are commonplace. Corruption is common, and it is now becoming apparent that money provided by the US government is ending up in the hands of insurgents to perform attacks on American forces and Iraqis.
* Criminal activities have downsides for the jihadis. As mentioned, a life of criminal profit can undermine radical dedication, and bring jihadis into linkages with criminals who don't hesitate much to sell them out. Crimes also attract attention to jihadi groups, and give more opportunities for getting caught. An alleged jihadi group in California that was sticking up gas stations was nailed when one of their number left his cellphone at the scene of the crime. A local cop found it.
Internationally, law enforcement organizations around the world have been able to pull in some big fish in international crime, but the division between criminal investigation and antiterrorist operations has made matters more difficult. There are efforts to improve coordination, but there is a real difficulty in that domestic criminal investigation agencies have a necessary separation of powers from international intelligence agencies.
As for Dawood Ibrahim, he appears to be suffering from the effects of his own notoriety. The shrewdest gangsters learn to keep a low profile; but everyone knows who Dawood is, and that makes him an international target. US law-enforcement agencies have been pressuring Pakistan about him. Although the Pakistanis officially deny that he is even there, he may be becoming more of a liability than an asset to his hosts. There is an outstanding Interpol warrant for his arrest, which makes it difficult for him to transfer his operation elsewhere. The authorities are looking forward to the time when they will be able to reel him in.
* EMBRAER FLIES HIGH: As discussed in a BBC WORLD Online article ("EMBRAER Shows Brazil's Aviation Flair" by Robert Plummer"), in nearly all countries around the world, the answer to the question: "Who invented the first airplane?" -- will be: "The Wright Brothers." In Brazil, the answer will be: "Alberto Santos-Dumont!"
Never mind that the dapper little Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian expatriate in Paris, didn't manage to make more than a short and poorly controlled hop into the sky until 1906, when the Wrights were making trips over tens of kilometers. Arguing the matter seems pointless: one is willing to humor Brazilians for the intense pride they feel in their native son, who indeed was one of the important pioneers of modern aviation.
The Brazilians now have an unarguable source of aeronautical pride in the country's world-class aerospace firm, EMBRAER. Company President Mauricio Botelho only told the truth when he said: "Today, we are one of the major forces in the commercial airline market." EMBRAER started out as a state firm, finally being privatized at the end of 1994, and is now a Brazilian economic powerhouse. For three years, from 1999 to 2001, EMBRAER aircraft were the country's biggest export.
While giants Boeing and Airbus slug it out in the market for medium and big long-range airliners, EMBRAER has dominated the market for "regional jets" -- medium-to-short range airliners with seating for up to 110 passengers -- against competitors such as Canada's Bombardier. Since August 1995, EMBRAER has sold almost 850 50-seat ERJ-145 regional jets to 53 airlines in 24 countries. The company is now shipping its "stretched" ERJ-190, which can carry 96 passengers up to 2,260 kilometers (2,660 miles / 1,220 NMI). EMBRAER has 177 firm orders on the books for the ERJ-190.
EMBRAER's roots only trace back to Alberto Santos-Dumont in an emotional sense. Brazil learned to really appreciate air power during World War II. In August 1942, the country declared war on Germany and Italy, and Brazilian forces helped in the battle for Italy. The Brazilian contingent included Brazilian air force squadrons, mostly flying American Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters.
Given the size of Brazil, the Brazilian government recognized air power as an essential tool for defending the territory from both internal and external threats. In 1946, the Brazilian government set up an aviation technical center in the city of Sao Jose dos Campos, 95 kilometers (60 miles) from Sao Paulo. By the 1960s, the center had matured to the point of developing a twin-turboprop commuter aircraft, the "Bandeirante". EMBRAER was set up by the government in 1969 at the same site to build the Bandeirante and other aircraft, including license-built versions of machines from other countries.
EMBRAER was in trouble by the early 1990s, but after it was privatized, setting loose the leash of state bureaucracy, investment and good management sent the company on a rapid climb. EMBRAER now occupies a sprawling industrial complex, working with suppliers and collaborators around the world. Mauricio Botelho says, again accurately, that EMBRAER shows the world "another, sophisticated face of Brazil -- not only football or carnival or beautiful beaches, but presenting something else that is present in the country, which is highly-qualified people and a good business environment."
The Brazilian government still retains a small share in the EMBRAER, if just to make sure that the company doesn't fall under foreign control. Along with regional jets, EMBRAER builds military aircraft, such as the Super Tucano trainer / light attack aircraft, and militarized surveillance variants of the ERJ-145 for the SIVAM system, which keeps an eye on happenings in the Amazon region. EMBRAER is also exporting such military aircraft to other nations. The company may prove a model for new Brazilian high-tech successes in other fields, and Brazilians feel confident that it will.
* PHILANTHROPY AS BUSINESS: According to a NEWSWEEK article ("Where The Money Goes" by Rana Foroohar, 31 October 2005), in the last few decades non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to worldwide relief operations have become big business. One recent academic study showed that NGOs had a total operating budget of $1.6 trillion USD in 2002. With such large sums involved, management and ethics are becoming increasing concerns, and in fact there are factions in the US Congress that are pushing to impose the same sort of good-governance rules that are applied to large commercial corporations to NGOs.
During the 1990s, NGOs grew at a faster rate than the rest of the US economy. Even when the dotcom bubble burst the NGOs continued to grow, with employment in the sector rising by 2% to 4% a year between 2001 and 2004. Donations are rising rapidly, in particular due to funding from charitable foundations, the number of which tripled over the last decade.
To get an idea of the economic scale, Marsha J. "Marty" Evans, president and CEO of the American Red Cross, makes $450,000 USD a year and manages a three billion USD budget. She hires managerial staff from the corporate world, or from NGO-targeted management programs at universities such as Harvard and Stanford. To complicate the picture further, NGOs are creating their own for-profit business lines as well. For example, international giant NGO Oxfam now runs coffee shops, and green activist organizations have taken environmental consulting fees from timber companies.
All of the expansion of NGOs leads to problems very similar to those that afflict the corporate world. The search for funding, the NGO equivalent of corporate profit, can skew aid agendas, and the diversification of NGO activities can lead to managerial confusion. Most recognize that there are plenty of opportunities for corruption when such large sums are involved, particularly when NGOs have to deal in countries where corruption is normal practice. NGO officials have been charged with criminal conduct on occasion.
Work is underway to establish well-defined sets of goals, codes of conduct, and ranking systems for NGOs. Many NGOs have signed on to these efforts. Not all have; as one observer puts it, many still have the attitude: "We're doing God's work, and could everyone please leave us alone?" That might have been a reasonable attitude when their activities were small scale, but with greater power comes the need for accountability.
* PODCAST PROFS: One of the interesting recent developments of the digital audio revolution is the rise of "podcasting", in which spoken-word audio presentations are downloaded from the Internet for "consumption" in a Mac iPod or other audio player. According to a NEWSWEEK article ("Professor In Your Pocket" by Peg Tyre, 28 November 2005), podcasting is starting to arrive on campus. Students who miss lectures can download them later and catch up with what's going on.
Critics suggest that podcasting courses undermines the interaction between instructor and student, and parents shelling out tuition wonder if this is what they are paying money for. However, for freshman 101-series courses, where the course material is not that demanding and the lectures are usually to packed halls, it's hard to see that podcasting makes much of a difference, except to students who find it much more convenient.
In the face of podcasting, some profs are becoming more like disk jockeys, preparing multimedia presentations with musical intros, sound effects, and citations from other profs or from primary sources. A few are even trying to drop the formal lecture session completely, simply telling their students to listen to the lecture on their iPods, with the class reserved for group discussion.
* I have mixed feelings about the usefulness of lectures as a way to learn. Professors are a varied lot: some are brilliant, some are poor, most are in the middle. When I was going through college, I found that I would have a good prof and a poor textbook, or a poor prof and a good textbook, and get by well enough. There was the control-systems class I took where the prof was lousy and the textbook was unreadable -- but I'd rather not remember much about that. In general, I'll take a well-written document over a lecture any day. The overhead of learning is so much less.
* SELF DEFENSE: One of the endless number of nightmare scenarios in our "age of terror" is the idea that terrorists might get their hands on heat-seeking man-portable air defense (MANPAD) anti-aircraft missiles and shoot down a jumbo jetliner with them. Combat aircraft have defenses against such missiles, and it's not any leap of genius to think the same gear might help defend airliners.
According to an AVIATION WEEK article ("Cost Of Protection" by Michael A. Dornheim, 14 November 2004), the US Department of Homeland Security is now performing flight tests of MANPAD countermeasures systems on airliners under the "C-MANPADS" (Counter MANPADS) effort. BAE Systems of the UK is working with American Airlines to test the "JetEye" countermeasures system on a Boeing 767, while Northrop Grumman is working with Federal Express to test the "Guardian" countermeasures system on a FedEx McDonnell Douglas MD-11.
Both systems are derivatives of existing military gear: JetEye is based on the AN/ALQ-212 Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures (ATIRCM) system, while Guardian is based on the AN/AAQ-24(V) Directed Infrared Countermeasures (DIRCM) system. The general architecture of the two systems is similar. They both have a wide field-of-view fixed ultraviolet sensor array to pick up the flash of a missile launch, and a narrow field of view infrared sensor in a turret, boresighted with a laser to jam or "dazzle" a missile's seeker.
When a MANPAD is launched, the ultraviolet sensor cues the infrared sensor, with the two sensors working together to see if a missile has really been launched, or if it's just a false alarm. Once confirmed, the system alerts the crew and uses the modulated laser beam to confuse the missile's seeker.
With the JetEye, a grapefruit-sized turret is fitted to the belly of the aircraft, with an ultraviolet sensor mounted on each side of the fuselage above the turret. The avionics are installed inside the fuselage. The Guardian, in contrast, is packaged as a "canoe" fairing that is fitted on the belly behind the wing. A turret is mounted on the bottom of the fairing, with two ultraviolet sensors on the front of the fairing and two on the back.
The current test program is intended to determine if the defensive systems are effective; if they have an unacceptable false alarm rate; and if the lasers are safe enough to be used over urban areas. If all goes well, a production unit will be selected in 2006, with airliners then being equipped with the gear.
Both design teams claim their systems meet C-MANPADS specifications, which include a weight of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds), an increase of less than 1% in airliner fuel burn due to drag, and a mean time between failure (MTBF) of 3,000 hours. The military only gets an MTBF of about 300 hours with much the same gear, but airliners will only need to use their countermeasures system on takeoffs and landings. The system will be automatically shut down during cruise flight, when the aircraft will be out of range of ground-launched MANPADs.
Northrop Grumman says their Guardian pod is easy to install, can be easily swapped between airliners, and will only cost about a million USD in a production run of 1,000. Company estimates show that will increase the cost of each passenger's fare by about a dollar.
* In the meantime, SAAB Avitronics, a collaboration of Swedish and South African companies, is working on their own airliner protection system, named the "Civil Aircraft Missile Protection System (CAMPS)". It also includes an ultraviolet missile-warning sensor system -- the "MAW-300" -- but does not have an infrared sensor, and instead of a laser dazzler uses a BOA dispenser system to dump out a packet that bursts open to scatter "pyrophoric" decoy material, which merely gets warm instead of burns, providing a better simulation of an aircraft engine and reducing the fire threat on the ground.
The MAW-300 system includes four ultraviolet sensors mounted under the fuselage and a "neural net" classification system to screen out false alarms. A BOA dispenser would be installed under each engine on a twin-engined aircraft, with each dispenser storing 40 cartridges. As a safety feature, the dispensers will be shut off when the aircraft's landing gear touches down, and the packets containing the pyrophoric material will not burst open unless the slipstream wind is 185 KPH (100 KT). The company is planning to test the system on a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream V.
* REDISCOVERING EFFICIENCY: Lulled into complacency by a long period of low gasoline prices, both American consumers and the US automobile industry were caught by surprise when gas prices shot up over the past few years. Consumers had demanded big sports-utility vehicles (SUVs) and Detroit had built them in response, but SUV sales have now crashed. Although foreign competitors had also built SUVs, they hadn't ignored fuel efficient vehicles either, and they have been better able to take advantage of the new order.
According to a NEWSWEEK article ("Go The Extra Mile" by Keith Naughton, 21 November 2005), Detroit has learned the lesson. US car makers are working on hybrids, but they're too expensive to capture much of the market, and so the real push is on making conventional automobiles more efficient.
One of the big buzzes these days is "displacement on demand (DOD)", in which an engine only uses the cylinders it needs to keep the car rolling. In other words, a car with a V8 engine would run on four cylinders when it was cruising down the highway. GM actually tried this idea during the last gas crisis a quarter-century ago, but the Cadillac "8-6-4" engine was a disaster, proving very unreliable.
There has also been some push towards "continuously variable transmissions (CVTs)", but though they are in theory a good idea, capable of cutting fuel consumption by 10%, there has been resistance to them, some drivers complaining that they are noisy, shaky, and have a tendency to shift in a fashion that seems unnatural and aggravating. Chrysler is retuning their CVT to act more like a regular transmission, but for the moment the push is on a more conventional six-speed transmission that can give similar economies.
Automobile makers are now researching "homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI)", in which the spark plugs are eliminated and simple compression is used to ignite the fuel-air mixture, much like in a diesel engine. This could improve fuel economy by 30% or more and burns clean, but right now the scheme doesn't work well on cold start and at high speeds. One idea is a dual-mode engine that uses spark plugs only when needed.
Right now, car makers are shipping "variable valve" engines whose valve displacement cycles are adjusted to improve efficiency. Other efficiencies are being obtained from even simpler technologies: a "mileage meter", currently common on hybrids, to tell the driver when fuel economy is optimum; lighter components and assemblies; and in particular streamlining and aerodynamics. Ford engineers have been tinkering with shutters that will block off the front grille at high speeds to improve airflow. Mercedes engineers took a hint from nature and designed a "Bionic" concept car that took its streamlining cues from the appropriately-named "boxfish".
Fuel economy is sexy again. Hopefully, this time around the romance will be here to stay.
* NEED RELIEF: According to a BBC WORLD Online report, the United Nations is now making an extraordinary appeal to member states to obtain $4.7 billion USD to help deal with a string of humanitarian emergencies around the world.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said this sum was equivalent to the world's defense spending of 48 hours, and added that ten rich countries supplied 90% of UN humanitarian aid. Mr. Egeland commented: "The ten top donors are more or less the same now as a few years ago. There are growing economies on many continents which should become bigger donors. We expect the oil-rich countries to give more."
One third of the total will be for Sudan, particularly the Darfur region. Mr. Egeland said: "It's not going well in Darfur at all. We are stretched to the limit. We're hanging in there by our fingernails." Other trouble spots include West Africa, the earthquake-struck region of Kashmir in Pakistan, Chechnya, and Guatemala.
The UN usually only obtains about 75% of the funding the organization asks for, and many of the donors are slow to hand over the funds. If things go well with obtaining the money now, the UN would like to obtain a fund of about $500 million USD to permit rapid initial response to future emergencies.
* The article included a list of the top ten UN donors in 2005, with the
donations given in millions of US dollars and the rank of the economy
provided in the right column:
United States: $966 1
Japan: $372 2
European Commission: $302
private donations: $283
Britain: $186 4
Norway: $148 24
The Netherlands: $138 15
Canada: $137 8
Germany: $107 3
Sweden: $101 19
A sidebar article also asked: "Does Aid Do More Harm Than Good?" The
article said that there was international shock when Niger's president told
reporters that the country's food crisis was being exaggerated by aid
agencies with self-serving agendas -- but some observers pointed that though
his remarks may have been self-serving as well, an attempt to deflect
criticism, he also had a legitimate point to make.
Said one observer: "I think NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and rich country media do have an incentive to paint too simplistic and bleak a picture, as was the case in Niger's food crisis." Apparently the troubles in Niger were localized, not acute, and have been easing. Niger has long-term problems with hunger and the appeals for urgent aid don't really address those problems. In many cases, it takes so long to organize the aid effort that the crisis has passed by the time the aid arrives -- and the crisis could have been averted if less but more appropriate aid had been provided beforehand.
In 2002, after a drought in southern Africa, an aid effort was mounted for Zambia. However, when American corn arrived, the Zambian government refused it out of concerns that it was genetically modified. This was regarded as an outrage elsewhere, but former Zambian agriculture minister Guy Scott claimed: "Cutting off supplies had no impact." There was no famine, only local shortages that were manageable. "NGOs flatter themselves into thinking that they save lives." He adds that it is "arrogant of the West to think that without whites, without pop stars, Africans would all be dead."
Food aid also has the counterproductive tendency to push down food prices, making life difficult for local farmers. It has helped governments that don't want to face land reform put the matter off, trusting that food aid will prevent a real crisis that would otherwise force change.
Critics of aid policy don't claim that aid should be stopped, just that it should be better managed. Local farmers should be compensated, and the flow of food aid should stop once the crisis is over. Most importantly, instead of responding to the crisis of the day, humanitarian efforts should be focusing on helping poor countries before emergencies crop up. Improving access to clean water, for example, would be a major benefit to sub-Saharan Africa.
* ABOVE THE THRESHOLD: At long last, my website got over 100,000 visitors in a month this November. The increment in traffic was mainly due to heavy interest in my Awk tutorial, which gets an order of magnitude more hits than any other document on the site. This is a good thing in itself but it is a bit exasperating, since it's by no means the biggest and best document there. However, it is one of the oldest, and that gives me some optimism that in time other documents will obtain higher levels of traffic. Next stop, 250,000 visitors ... not sure if I'll ever reach a million.
* I'd passed another threshold -- the majority of images on the site being my own handiwork -- a month or two ago. Now about 850 of the images are from other folks, while 925 of them are mine. I decided about a year ago to that the majority of the imagery on the site should be my own stuff, both to get me out from under potential copyright problems, which will become more of an issue as traffic hopefully continues to build, and to ensure that I'm actually making a contribution of sorts instead of simply mining other people's work.
I tipped the balance towards my own illustrations much more quickly than I expected. However, it is getting tiresome to crunch out 20-plus pieces of artwork a month. A dozen would be more comfortable. It's not artwork for the new documents that's the burden; it's bringing older documents up to artwork spec that's the pain. I think in six months or so I'll be over the hump, and then things will get easier.
* The blog also seems to be a success, having risen from nothing to well in the top twenty in a month's time. I'm not sure there's much real readership of it, but people are at least looking it over a bit. I was thinking that since I was more willing to talk about controversial issues I would get some flak, but nobody's emailed me to dump on me. I doubt that will last.