Daily crono / Technical question / Criminals aloof / Snowing and thundering / Snowing…

Happiness lies in good health and a bad memory. Chinese proverb

Daily crono

Again, for me: waking up, having a walk (snowing, salting, prisoners shoveling), writing a couple of pages of thesis, taking taxi to MIT (was too wet, etc, or lazy), SA-lecture (not that good this time), wonders of snow and thunder, playing pinball unsuccessfully, working in the Barker library until it closed at 7pm, meeting classmates in the SDM-office, then meeting Pia, who is leaving USA for Finland in the Boston Beerworks, nice to discuss in Finnish with a nice person, back home a bit drunk, reading the energy books.

Technical question

Consider an interface, which transmit either energy, mass (like physical connections), or information. Is it so, that if the amount of information,energy, or mass becomes either very large or very small, then designing and implementing the interfaces becomes harder. In other words, is there a designer (human) and time (technological) history dependent nominal value, and everything far away from it is hard to design and implement. I tend to think so, as I cannot come up with any real counter examples right away. If you have a counter example, leave a comment. This is not directly related to my thesis, as I try to keep my thesis observer independent (complexity of a system does not depend on the capability of the designer).

Criminals aloof

The US government is playing Russian roulette with the world as it breaks away from the climate talks in Montreal. See also an article in NY times. It is said that is by explicit request of Dick Cheney, who, as an old oil boss, thinks only his own money and his remaining life, not of future of his kids. This is a sad day. Cheney and his puppet Mr. Bush claim that cutting CO2-emissions would hurt US economy. I think the eventual higher average temperature of the world is hurting US economy much more, but after these ingorasmuses have left the office. For example, if the Golf-current weakens, it means more energy will remain in the hurricane area, which will increase the number of strong hurricane. This may render huge areas of USA next to inhabitable or at least unsuitable for industrial purposes, like oil-drilling. Not to speak what will happen to other Caribbean countries. And, at some point even the USA must acknowledge global warming. At that time, the European industry has taken over the market of efficient energy systems, and the US economy will suffer further. Too bad that the whole world is suffering from stupidity and irresponsibility of handful incompetent "leaders".

Snowing and thundering

It is snowing very heavily, they call this weather a blizzard. When I walked out of building 9 ten minutes ago, I heard the sound of thunder. I have never before understood, that thunder and snow can co-exist. Very nice to learn new things even today. Of course, it does not matter whether the water moves as water or as swow. Both of them are able to create electricity in the air. And we do not know where water turns into snow - it may be rather low in the athmosphere. Weather statement reads:

This includes the Boston to Providence corridor and nearby towns. A band of heavy snow with embedded thunder will move across the area through 4 PM... resulting in very heavy snow with a quick additional 2 to 4 inches by 4 PM. Thereafter... snow will begin to taper off. Strong northwest winds will create near white out conditions.

Snowing and shoveling

It snows. Men in orange overalls are shoveling the snow away from Sturrow Drive overpasses. Some other men in plain clothes are supervising the shoveling. The whole group arrived in a large van. Who are these men? Why there are so many supervisors? Why are all shovelers so well built? Why 9 out 10 of them are young black males? I have seen them doing similar work of park maintenance many times. Are they prisoners at work? If so, the high incarceration rate of USA is a blessing: just incarcerate enough young males and make them do the public maintenance work. Remember, that the president has claimed himself a sovereign right to declare any US citizen an enemy combatant. The supply of strong park maintenance personnel is not limited by the actual crime rate or its fluctuations. I would suggest also commuting prison sentences for one or two tours in some ongoing war. This is a tried and proven way of recruiting enough manpower. And since they already are combatants, one can skip training as well.

Britain says no to torture

Evidence obtained by torture is not usable in British courts. The law lords reinforced this old tradition unanimously. I just hope, that American would follow the suit and would stop torturing human beings. Doing so would enhance security of each and every American citizen. If would be in their interests, too, as, according to NY Times "Officials said an inmate in Egyptian custody made up details about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in order to escape abuse"., at least if one considers the reasoning for the Iraq something more than a bunch of excused for a war that was decided before - but why the need for abuse in that case? What kind of sissies need to abuse others for lack of spine to stand openly for their decisions?
I may hoping in vain for abolishing torture from the toolbox of American politics, though, for Dr. Rice gave no guarantees that detainees would not be abused again. She added, though, that "The president of the United States is not going to ask American citizens to violate U.S. law or to violate our international obligations.", whatever that means, as so far he seems to have very little to do with anything going on, and he cannot take responsibility of anything, for he is a saint, or enfant savant.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs December 2005".