want to read something scarry? we're now secretly rebuilding sadam's feared intelligence service. sounds like a great idea, no?
we're leaving tonight for the playa. i think it's my seventh burningman. hopefully i'll be able to post from there.
ever wonder how that monument just appeared in the alabama courthouse?
In the wee hours of the morning on July 31, 2001, long after the other justices had gone home, Justice Moore and a couple of workmen sneaked the monument into the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court. Chief Justice Moore did not ask anyone's permission. But he did not have to because he was the top judge in the state and custodian of the Supreme Court.
He even secretly dug up blueprints of the Supreme Court building to find a secure beam to support the monument.
the volokh conspiracy considers what a truly free electric market might look like.
dan posted this but i'm going to bite it: iraqi's top ten blackout tips. i'm a huge fan of #8, 5, and 2.
i left the portland last night so i'll be missing bush's visit. i can only hope that my fellow portlanders will give him hell.
oregon has this crazy law that you're not allowed to pump your own gas. being from nevada it's a bit odd and i've never really gotten used to the process. on my way down i stopped for gas just outside portland. i pulled in behind another car, the guy took my card and disappeared, then a few minutes later he returns, unhooks the pump from the car in front of me and gives them their card/change back. he then gives me back my card and i sit and wait for the car in front of me. i peel and eat an entire orange while waiting. they finally pull out and i start up my truck and get going. all the sudden it sounds like i've just run over something so i stop and look back into my rearview mirrors. right about the time i see the gas pump still hanging out of my truck it makes sense. i back up a little bit and turn off the truck hopeing that the sound i heard was just the pump shifting around. all i could think was "fuck, i sure can't afford to cough up the cash for them to buy a new gas pump."
i just stop the car and wait for the dude to come back. he's flipping out livid, "do you know what you've just done?"
"uhhh, well sort of..."
"you better come in side so we can get your information."
as i'm walking in i notice that the hose had pulled free from the pump and i'd then backed over it. the short version of the ending is that i'm not the first person to drive off with a pump handle still attached so the engineers who designed the pump added a fitting/valve to the hose that pops off and stops the fuel flow. they clicked the hose back on and everything was good as new.
the most ironic thing was that while i was eating my orange, waiting for the car in front of me, i had a whole train of thought about how much sense it would make to not give someone back their card until you'd finished pumping the gas so they'd know not to drive off.
fortunately that was the only trouble i had on the way down. i slept in the back of the truck near medford and got into reno around 13:00. i'm going to try to get some hours in working and prepare for burningman. i'll probably be heading out on saturday/sunday.
risks digest, a newsletter that examines the dangers inherent in the widespread use of technology from a technologist's perspective, has some great writing on the blackout.
i think patrick lincoln correctly identifies the root cause, our changing expectations of the power grid:
One lesson that can be drawn from incidents like the recent massive power outage is that decreasing margins in all our infrastructures place critical societal functions at greater and greater risk of significant disruptions from rare accidental and malicious acts. Redefining acceptable levels of risks and protections as the world changes is hard work, but need to be done.
Cost pressures and tight engineering under benign assumptions lead to thin margins. Optimized engineering leads to most events being of small consequence (we've engineered systems to tolerate them), but some rare events can cause massive disruption. It would be 'bad engineering' to overdesign a system to tolerate very rare events, if that tolerance costs more than the failures it would prevent (in expected value to customer terms). Fragility to extremely rare events can be seen as good business. It would be surprising if there weren't rare disruptions (like massive power outages) in highly optimized infrastructures.
edward reid expresses my thoughs far eloquently than i could:
Of course, certain technical measures would help. So far, the newspaper analyses of the outages correctly point out limited transmission capacity as a problem. Deeper problems are the anti-regulatory environment, that safety doesn't sell, and the failure to invest in conservation.
Building "excess" transmission capacity has no market incentive. Excess capacity is essential to safety, but safety doesn't sell. The market calls it excess capacity; people call it a safety net. When a critical line fails, parallel lines must have "excess" capacity to take over the flow, and this safety net must remain intact when lines are out of service for maintenance. Safety nets are not cheap.
a poster to the interesting people mailing list brought up an angle i hadn't considered in my rant yesterday.
It's clear that the energy behemoths will view the blackout as their golden opportunity. What better way to get taxpayers to fund the grid improvements necessary for assuring the firms of continuing lucrative income streams?
When the Congressional hearings start, watch for the energy executives to wail how they can't *possibly* take on the task by themselves, and since national security is at stake it's obviously the government's job to pay. That this situation has been largely created by the energy companies' own (in some cases criminal) neglect and manipulation will not be a featured part of their arguments.
i'm going to make a prediction. when all the facts are in about yesterday's blackout in the northeast i suspect a significant cause will be cost cutting that followed the deregulation of the energy market.
first a quick disclaimer, i'm not an electrical engineer or an economist, this is just an application of common sense.
in its current incarnation the electrical grid is not well served by a capitalist system. our current unified grid offers the consumer little or no choice as to how their power gets to them. competition is central to a properly functioning market. with no competition there's no way to influence the utilities to provide a more reliable system. i don't know enough about engineering to know if we could even have two independent grids but that would, obviously, be a very expensive undertaking. it seems to me that the solution is a federalized interstate transmission infrastructure, at least someone would be paying for the upkeep.
not that it'll happen with washington's current ideological. i'm sure bush's solution will go something along the lines of a) a tax cut b) more deregulation c) .
paul krugman has another one of his brilliant critiques of the bush administration's misguided policy. he focuses first on the rhetorical but not financial support of the troops (note a pattern strikingly similar to the unfunded mandate known as no child left behind). krugman then turns his attention to the republican urge to privatize all functions of government and it's effects on the troops in iraq. i only wish the times editors would have given him enough words that he could do more than just hint at the "patronage" behind the privatization (a quick note on that last link: dan briody, the writer, has done some great research. everyone ought to listen to the interview he did for fresh air.
salon's got a piece contemplating what ariel sharon's corruption investigation could mean for the peace process. what interested me it is the fact that it's written by a ha'aretz contributor but the tone sounds exactly like one of stratfor's free analysis (is that the plural?).
everyone should make a little time to read the washington post's amazing feature on identity theft. after reading i'm just amazed that for all our talk of "securing the homeland" nothing has been done to make it harder for terrorists to create a new identity either raise money for or commit attacks. makes it real easy to believe that business interests will trump real security everytime.
the washington post is reporting that if bush gets another term powell won't be there.
salon's got a great interview with retired col david hackworth that's worth reading if only to see rumsfeld called out.
i'm going to link to this nytimes editorial discussing how little it would take to save americorps and how much less bush and the republicans are doing so that the next time compassionate conservatism comes up it'll be apparent what a load of shit it is. (from rc3.org)
heather somebody-or-other who used to write for the ill-fated suck.com (oh how i miss it's biting commentary) has a review of paradise hotel up on salon that is so biting i'm actually tempted to watch the show.
i've been trying to move from windows to freebsd as my regular os and i've almost got it ready for prime time. gnome2, unlike the first version, is userfriendly and very elegant, mozilla firebird is even better than in windows (okay, i lie. it's not quite, i can't figure out how to make it the "default" browser), but the key to getting off windows is ximian's evolution. it's like microsoft outlook except it's secure, doesn't crash and you can hack the source. once i figured out how to get the offline mail working correctly i haven't had to use windows for any thing but work related programing.