Category Archives: History

History, Security

Olbermann on the hole in Bush’s logic

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Keith Obermann referenced an interesting episode of the Twilight Zone, in his harsh critique of President Bush:

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

I thought this section was also worth noting:

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ‘something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

History, Poetry

Merched Llanbadarn

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gan Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320-1370)

Plygu rhag llid yr ydwyf –
pla ar holl ferched y plwyf!
am na chefais, drais drawsoed,
onaddun yr un erioed,
na morwyn fwyn ofynaig
na merch fach, na gwrach, na gwraig
py rusiant, py ddireidi,
py fethiant, na fynnant fi?

Py ddrwg i riain fewiael
yng nghoed twylldew fy nghael?
Nid oedd gywilydd iddi
yng ngwal dail fy ngweled i
ni bu amser na charwn,
ni bu mor lud hud a hwn
anad gwyr annwyd Garwy-
yn y dydd ai un a dwy
ac er hynny nid oedd nes
ym gael un no’m gelynes
ni bu Sul yn Llanbadarn
na bewn, ac eraill ai barn
a’m wyneb at y ferch goeth
a’m gwegil at Dduw gwiwgoeth.

More info on Dafydd here and here:

Dafydd ap Gwilym is recognized as one of the most innovative European poets of the Middle Ages. His refined and erudite verse introduced a unique brand of poetry into the turbulent society of Wales during the aftermath of its loss of independence. While drawing on the contemporary elements of bardic poetry, his themes of love and nature embedded in original metric forms was a revolutionary technique. Though his work is relatively obscure outside of Wales today, largely due to difficulties in translation, Dafydd is still recognized as a radical poet of great significance in his era.

Makes me long to return to Wales, or at least conjure up some native Welsh speakers to better understand.

History, Security

StarTrek episode banned for mention of terrorism?

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Someone asked me if I had seen the episode of Star Trek where Data (an android) says that terrorism can be successful. I had never heard of this, let alone seen the actual episode. A quick search only uncovered a basic reference to “The High Ground“:

The three different factions were clumsily but accurately shown: the misunderstood but bloodthirsty rebels, the well-intentioned but brutal government, the idealist but hypocritical Federation-slash-symbolic-America. However, it all fell apart in a worthless, soporific ending: the Starfleet officers scratched their heads, said “Gee, why don’t you just stop killing each other?” and flew off to the Never-Neverland System at Warp Nine.

I understand this episode was originally banned by the BBC since Data mentioned that terrorism did work sometimes, and listed the Irish Republican Army’s victory of 2012 among his examples.

Here are my questions, then: How does this old (1990) episode stand up to modern, post-September-Eleventh sensibilities?

Couldn’t the network just edit out the one line, or is the whole episode too controversial? Note the date. Any more data (pun not intended) out there?

Energy, History, Security

BioDiesel trumps Ethanol

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A new study reaches the same conclusion that I have been harping about for some time:

The first comprehensive analysis of the full life cycles of soybean biodiesel and corn grain ethanol shows that biodiesel has much less of an impact on the environment and a much higher net energy benefit than corn ethanol, but that neither can do much to meet U.S. energy demand.

Ok, the first part was what I was referring to, not the latter part.

With regard to demand, it should be noted that biodiesel can be made from numerous sources including fish oils, nut oils, vegetable oils, as well as waste oil and grease from restaurants, oils from meat and tannery plants, etc. and not just from soybeans. In other words, biodiesel can be a form of recycling products that otherwise would be put into landfill or worse.

Also, demand is often confused by a false dichotomy. We do not have to switch completely to Ethanol or Biodiesel tomorrow. In fact, mixing biodiesel using “splash blend” (e.g. just pouring a few gallons into your tank of petro-diesel) reduces the immediate need for high amounts while still allowing a significant benefit in terms of lubricity (eliminating the need for other more harmful additives like sulfur) as well as safer emissions. You will notice an immediate difference when you put only a few gallons of biodiesel into your tank as the engine gets quieter and the exhaust becomes sweeter smelling and smoke-less.

The fact is a gradual transition from 100% petroleum diesel to 90/10 or 80/20 is perfectly acceptable to the engines available today and yet still hugely beneficial to the environment. Production would thus only need to ramp up gradually rather than be a complete switch-over. Besides, we all know that bio-diesel technology for production and refinement is in the very baby stages of advancement. Remember portable computers of the 1980s? That’s what biodiesel production technology is like today. Ten years from now we should see amazing things by comparison, IF the government is clever enough to allow, or even help, the market to develop.

Back to the news, here is an even more important finding:

The study showed that both corn grain ethanol and soybean biodiesel produce more energy than is needed to grow the crops and convert them into biofuels. This finding refutes other studies claiming that these biofuels require more energy to produce than they provide. The amount of energy each returns differs greatly, however. Soybean biodiesel returns 93 percent more energy than is used to produce it, while corn grain ethanol currently provides only 25 percent more energy.

Still, the researchers caution that neither biofuel can come close to meeting the growing demand for alternatives to petroleum. Dedicating all current U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12 percent of gasoline demand and 6 percent of diesel demand. Meanwhile, global population growth and increasingly affluent societies will increase demand for corn and soybeans for food.

The authors showed that the environmental impacts of the two biofuels also differ. Soybean biodiesel produces 41 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than diesel fuel whereas corn grain ethanol produces 12 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline. Soybeans have another environmental advantage over corn because they require much less nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides, which get into groundwater, streams, rivers and oceans. These agricultural chemicals pollute drinking water, and nitrogen decreases biodiversity in global ecosystems. Nitrogen fertilizer, mainly from corn, causes the ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico.

41%! That’s huge. The environmental and fuel experts may soon conclude that Ethanol, although a good additive to help reduce dependence on foreign oil in the interim years, is definitely not the right solution long term. However, that being said, many people complained that Microsoft produced poor quality products in the 1980s that were insecure and harmed consumers and yet one of its predecessors (UNIX) has only just finally started to be recognized more widely as a superior architecture. Within the next few years, virtually all computerized personal devices, let alone personal computers, will have some form of UNIX or UNIX-like operating sytem on them.

As a funny aside, I recently heard a story about an older gentleman in a beginning UNIX class who said “hey, these commands are all just like DOS” to which the instructor laughed and said “no, other way around. It’s the other way around”. And so, perhaps someday after billions of consumer money has been unwittingly invested into Ethanol in order to try and get its emissions down and energy up someone might say, “hey, this Biodiesel stuff is just like Ethanol”…