Category Archives: Security

Energy, Security

Solar Parking Lots

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Google is in the news for some energy innovation:

these asphalt acres are getting their day in the sun, with search giant Google joining other companies in planting groves of pole-mounted solar panels between the rows of Saabs and SUVs, generating clean power and providing a little shade at the same time.

Google’s Mountain View, California, headquarters is getting a 1.6-megawatt solar system — enough to power about 1,000 homes — that will feed about 30 percent of the complex’s power demand.

I like the fact that someone realized that stringing together small arrays on roof-tops makes sense but should not be the limit, especially when you look out over a sea of perfectly flat parking spaces. I also thought of at least two benefits beyond those mentioned in the article:

  1. Shading the asphalt and cars, which reduces wear from the sun and may even provide some shelter from rain. How dumb are we as a civilization to park cars on black asphalt and then run cooling systems to compensate, when harvesting the sun would achieve the same result with additional benefits?
  2. Emergency-backup source of energy for business continuity.
Security

Sharp decline in Aussie deaths after gun buy-back

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The University of Sydney has announced that an Australian law that destroyed nearly 700,000 guns has significantly reduced the number of murders and homicides:

After 112 people were shot dead in 11 mass shootings* in a decade, Australia collected and destroyed categories of firearms designed to kill many people quickly. In his immediate reaction to the Port Arthur massacre, John Howard said of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns: “There is no legitimate interest served in my view by the free availability in this country of weapons of this kind… That is why we have proposed a comprehensive package of reforms designed to implement tougher, more effective and uniform gun laws.� As study co-author Philip Alpers points out: “The new legislation’s first declared aim was to reduce the risk of similar gun massacres. In the 10½ years since the gun buy-back announcement, no mass shootings have occurred in Australia.�

Security

Enterprise Key Management in the news

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A technical committee I’m working on, called Enterprise Key Management Infrastructure (EKMI), has made the news:

The OASIS key management standard, basically an API, would let you use a single key management solution on both platforms rather than try to manage separate key systems for each product that have different procedures and processes for the keys. This will make it easier to roll out encryption…

Food, Security

American hunger replaced with “low food security”

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Senator Boxer has issued a statement about an odd change in US policy. Sorry I don’t have a link as this was sent to me directly:

The Department of Agriculture recently announced that it would remove the word “hunger� from reports on the nation’s food supply. Instead, it announced that it would use “low food security� or “very low food security� in its reports. I have written to Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns to express my displeasure over this change.

Officials at the Department of Agriculture report that the change in labels was not a plot to try to disguise or mask hunger in America. Instead, they claim that “hungerâ€? is too amorphous a phrase to describe, in their terms, ”a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.”

Although I have monitored the politics of food-aid and security for many years, I have to say it is not clear to me why a term like “hunger” suddenly would be seen as vague compared to “low food security”. Strange. Was someone offended to hear that people in America go “hungry”? Senator Boxer puts it this way:

I believe that most Americans are acutely aware of the meaning of “hunger,� especially when used in official reports meant to describe peoples’ access to the food supply.

Exactly, so perhaps that’s why they changed it? Now politicians can say “this report shows no one in America ever goes hungry“, even though the numbers might show 35 million people still experience “low food security” issues.

I’d write more, but you’ll have to excuse me as I’m experiencing a high bladder security issue…probably a result of my low food countermeasures.