Category Archives: Energy

Energy, History, Poetry, Sailing, Security

Dover Beach

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by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Why do the pessimists always seem to get it so right?

Energy, History, Security

OS Bloat and History Repeating Itself

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Chalk this Infoworld writer up as yet another victim of history:

Twenty yeas from now a new generation of computer users will look back on the operating systems of today with the same bemused smile we look back at the cars of the late 1950s and early 60s. They had huge fins, were the size of a small yacht and burned up just about as much gas.

That’s right, I’m comparing Apple OS X 10.5, or Leopard, and Microsoft’s Windows Vista to those old behemoths — big and flashy and totally unnecessary.

Sorry, cars today are bigger and just as inefficient. Who needs fins when you can carry hundreds of pounds of roof-rack rails around. Hello, chrome spinners?

Conversely, as I’ve mentioned before, in raw terms cars of a hundred years ago were more efficient than those today:

“In 1908 Ford autos got 28 miles per gallon and today fuel efficiency for automobiles averages 25 miles per gallon. Is that progress?� asked Allen Hershkowitz, PhD, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council during a Nov. 9 lecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

So what does that tell you about the future of OS design? America needs Vista like a soccer mom needs an SUV, but we’re talking want here. Want is a whole different ballgame.

A Microsoft security executive released data Thursday showing that, six months after shipping Windows Vista, his company has left more publicly disclosed Vista bugs unpatched than it did with Windows XP.

Can we assume the unnamed executive is looking back with a bemused smile?

Energy, History, Security

Tall Tales of Texans

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I have been stuck arguing with a friend from Texas about government. He is a big fan of less regulation, less government, less interference…the usual vapid tall tales of woe you can expect from stereotypical Texans.

I have just been trying to convince him, in my best Kansan conservative fashion, that his position is actually very anti-graft yet pro-regulation. In fact, as he complained about the manner in which legislators are able to spend money, I asked him “so, it seems you think they need more guidance, perhaps some regulation, on the allocation of funds?” Even more ironic is the fact that he is working with companies to help them navigate security regulations — he is making a living consulting with companies on how to abide by data protection regulations, and he is a hardliner at that.

My revelation of these contradictions to him seemed to have slowed things down a little, but then he countered with the argument that a legislator stealing money should not be considered corrupt if they do it in the open. Er, curve ball. I actually think he means that no one should be accused of breaking the law if they say they do not recognize the laws they are breaking, or there is “insufficient” evidence as determined by the accused. Hmmm, who does that remind me of…?

The logical twists and turns he has taken in order to find a way to argue against government makes me think his eventual position will be more like an overly salted pretzel rather than the well seasoned meal he thinks he is serving.

If I remember correctly, the last time I saw him he tried to convince me that the US was actually winning the Vietnam War but were defeated by liberals at home. More recently he has tried to suggest that there is no conclusive evidence that cigarettes cause cancer, based on the premise that a lack of absolute certainty means scientific proof is inherently insufficient. He said this means we must accept prejudice as a natural condition and stop trying to make it seem like a bad thing. I told him that empiricism is certainly no proof that prejudice is natural, but rather the opposite when coupled with a value system, and to try and spin the two into a meaningless blend was to take a painfully shallow position. What possible point could someone have in trying to claim the word “prejudice” as a positive and natural human condition?

Alas, the one thing we seem to agree on is that diesel is the future transportation energy source of choice.

And that says a lot to me, given the distance of opinion we have on everything else.

Energy, Security

Furniture Safety and the South Carolina Disaster

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American furniture products should be in the spotlight again following the South Carolina fire that killed nine of Charleston’s best.

In 1993 American fire marshals were already campaigning to improve furniture fire safety. However, by 2000, little progress had been made and a law firm in South Carolina called Foster and Foster wrote an advisory called “Flammable Upholstered Furniture: Is there a deadly time bomb in your couch?”

Robert P. Foster has brought legal action against a maker of upholstered furniture causing injury and death under product liability theories of strict liability, negligence, and warranty. “Its excessive flammability makes it an unreasonably dangerous product well beyond the reasonable expectations of the ordinary consumer.”

[…]

The primary flammability culprit is polyurethane foam, the seating cushioning core that shares some of the same combustion properties as kerosene and gasoline. It is a petroleum based product sometimes called solid gasoline

Fast forward to this morning when people are discussing similar conditions under which a “fire tornado” whipped through a Carolina warehouse stuffed to the brim with furniture for a giant sale.

Bloomburg’s report shows that while presence of a sprinkler system could be significant factor, the quantity of “solid gasoline” is also important:

The one-story building had no sprinklers, said Mike Parrotta, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters-South Carolina.

“It appeared they were having a closeout sale, so it’s likely they were overstocked and the fire load was greater than normal,” Parrotta said.

Firefighters are professionals, not just ordinary consumers, but would they have acted differently if they had been looking at a warehouse of gasoline in front of them rather than furniture?

Furniture does not have to be made with solid gasoline, obviously. When I used to work on furniture repair I always saw cotton and burlap padding as easier to work with and more comfortable. I found nothing more unpleasant than working on toxic foam-based products. The furniture industry is driven by a very different set of values, however, as flammability and toxicity of furniture is not regulated in America and remains a significant source of risk:

For three decades, most upholstered furniture and mattresses sold in America have contained flexible polyurethane foam, the plastic material that was used as soundproofing around The Station nightclub stage. It’s found in couches, love seats, chairs, recliners, mattresses, mattress pads and mattress toppers, pillows, carpet cushioning and many other places.

More than 2 billion pounds of foam enters the U.S. market every year.

Foam is comfortable and comparatively cheap — and once ignited, it can be lethal. Mattress, bedding and upholstered furniture fires killed almost 30,000 Americans from 1980 to 1998, the latest year for which National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) data are available. Another 95,655 people were injured.

From 1980 to 1998, mattress and bedding fires killed 12,712 Americans, according to the NFPA — 10 times more than all those killed by tornadoes and hurricanes combined.

Almost 4,000 people killed a year, and that’s old news. By 2002 the number was up to almost 5,000 people killed a year, according to a FAQ by firemarshals.org:

If furniture manufacturers made some small, inexpensive changes to the materials they use, they could save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of serious injuries every year.

They also point out that empirical evidence of success is easy to find:

California is the only state with fire safety regulations for upholstered furniture sold for use in homes. According to the California Bureau of Home Furnishings there was a 25% drop in deaths involving upholstered furniture after these standards were put into place in the 1970s.

The UK also has regulations for furniture. In addition “upholstery in airplanes, hotels, nursing homes, hospitals and even prisons is required to be fire resistant.” But consumer products outside California are left unregulated. The firemarshals.org FAQ does a nice job putting it in perspective:

It’s a funny thing about competition. The auto industry said airbags were unaffordable. The mattress industry said that fire safety standards would add hundreds of dollars to the price of each mattress. Consumers are still buying lots of cars and mattresses.

Perhaps the unfortunate death of the firefighters will bring the federal government to its senses. Nine brave men lost their lives trying to save others. There is no country to invade, no foreigners to blame, but here is a clear case where America’s national security (one less vulnerability in every home) could be improved by a simple stroke of the pen.