MAD? Yes, Thats What 'Stars Wars' Was

The Iranian blustering and North Korean bargain hunting spree has put the question of Nuclear Disarmament in many peoples minds once again. And once again people are suggesting that if we really want nuclear weapons to not spread and to stop being a threat then we must do our part and disarm ourselves to show 'good faith' if nothing else. It puts me in mind of the great "Star Wars" kerfuffle. While there was, and still is, some effort being expended toward some projects of that type we can all be very thankful it hasn't actually worked.

At the time, there were a number of computer scientists and the like openly stating that such a system as could defend any place completely from attack by ICBMs was simply impossible to build. The computer software would be very complex and no complex software has ever been written 100 percent error free and, because of the nature of what the software would have to do, there would be no way to test it sufficiently to remove the 'bugs'.

The argument went as follows; Because the only way it could be particularly useful at all was if it was sure to be 100% effective, and because such complex systems simply are never 100% the first time, (or the second or third) and because it could not be tested to any really significant degree, the plan was doomed from the start. Having done some programming and even more software testing, I have to say that the argument is probably valid, but it maybe a little hard for most people to see.

But the problem becomes clearer if you look at it like this:

It takes perhaps 4 or 5 good nuclear bomb hits to effectively take a large country like the U.S. completely out any considerations of economic and/or military power in the world, so, assuming the country to be attacked cannot retaliate because they have relied on 'defense', all that is needed to beat them is to get 4 or 5 missiles through and the attacker wins. If the defense system is 99.9% effective the attacker sends 5000 and wins; if it is 99.99% effective the attacker sends 50000 missiles and wins. As you can see, only perfection in the defense will do for complete security.

What nobody ever pointed out, in anything I read, is what a disaster it would be if it worked.! Why? Just look at the following scenario:

The 'Star Wars” system is perfected and in place around the world (remember Reagan's promise). It is impossible for anyone , person or country, to get a hostile missile up into the air and back down again Nuclear peace at last!???? Everybody gets rid of their nuclear missiles because they can not use them. Of course they were never going to use them except as a retaliatory weapon anyway, but now they don't even need them for that. No retaliatory strikes possible so the missiles are not necessary.

Whoa! What was that last sentence? “ No retaliatory strikes possible.......”

That means that I, the long term planner and rightful inheritor of the world, can defeat the “Great Satan” and survive the conflict intact. All I need to do is build dozen suitcase bombs and secret them around New York, LA, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and say Chicago, then set them off and the “Great Satan” is ruined and can't do anything to me, even if they knew who I was, because they threw away their ability to retaliate as they die!. Now I dare an attack!

As distressingly nihilist as Mutually Assured Destruction sounds, it is still all that keeps friends and enemies working together to see that nobody starts the deadly chain reaction. And given that, a successful 'Star Wars' defense system might well be the worst thing that could happen in the world of nuclear politics.

Altrenative Power. Electric or Hydrogen

This article is also in the main a comment on Bert Bigelow's article Electric Cars? or Hydrogen Cars?


Bert the main problem you find with electric vehicle is the portability of sufficient power for extended range. Here hydrogen has the advantage because either sufficient fuel for a full days driving could be carried on the vehicle or 'recharging' would be a matter of minutes from an appropriately equipped station just as we use gasoline or diesel now. There is certainly a non-trivial problem of the chicken and egg nature in developing and placing infrastructure sufficiently widespread to make the system viable. But you and most comments concentrated on the inefficiency of producing hydrogen through hydrocarbon gasification or coal or atomic powered electricity for hydrolysis. What is wrong with solar powered hydrolysis?

It is virtually non-polluting (except maybe for what to do with all the oxygen gas) and who really cares about efficiency since, once the infrastructure is in place, the energy is very nearly free. Using the sunlight from a square mile or two ( or 10 or 50 or two hundred) of the earths surface to separate hydrogen out of the sea has got to be more efficient than using it to grow algae and plankton and then waiting for that algae and plankton to die, get buried, and turned into coal to be mined, crushed, and gasified into hydrogen and co2.

Anyway you look at it when the energy is there nearly for free, actual efficiency isn't really an important consideration. ie. The fact that hydrogen enough to run my car three hundred miles costs more energy to produce than the gasoline to run my car three hundred miles is completely unimportant if the energy used to produce the hydrogen costs enough less than the energy needed to produce the gasoline.

I have read in a couple of places that the energy cost of a gallon of crude is now greater than the energy produced by a gallon of crude. Oil is an energy loser! It continues to be valuable solely because of its non-energy uses and its portability as energy.

Solar power can never be an energy loser provided its infrastructure energy costs can be returned within the life of the infrastructure. Since the biggest thing keeping it from being more widely touted is the long life of the infrastructure which negates the 'continuing profit' motive, I think it safe to say that returning costs 'within the life of the infrastructure' is not likely to be a problem.

True there is no free lunch and eventually even the sun will burn out, but by the time that happens we will be elsewhere or non-existent and it will happen whether we use the energy or not, so for all practical purposes solar power has no cost except infrastructure and maintenance and I would find it incredible if that were truly significantly higher than any currently used form of electricity except perhaps hydro electric.

So my proposed solution to the 'energy problem'!

• Use solar energy to power all energy requirements directly where practical (nearly everywhere for stationary power loads)
  
• Use it to produce hydrogen from seawater for all portable power needs that are beyond the capability of portable batteries.

Bring Back The Draft?

I was reading an article, to which "www. military.com" had directed my attention, about bringing back the draft. The opening paragraphs follow:

WASHINGTON - Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 under a bill the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says he will introduce next year.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.

In a way I sympathize with the goals of the sponsors of this bill. I can see the point of there being less readiness to start a war if the military was picked from the population at large.

However I think the best bet for really controlling the urge to war for fun and profit would be to mandate the selection of politicians over 50 and their wives, sons, daughters, grandsons, grand-daughters etc., first.

Of course there is another alternative that has been suggested before: Only those that have served in the military, or similar capacity, could vote or hold office and that only after having completed their service. That should both reduce the political support for war and make sure that the military was not short of manpower. And frankly if the possibility were opened to everybody in what ever capacity of military or community service they were capable of, I see no ethical or 'democratic' problem with the concept.

If military and quasi-military organizations were developed to perform, or assist with, all sorts of general "community services" ( for example: nursing aides and orderlys, teachers assistants, environmental cleanup, simple home care for the elderly and disabled, etc) there would be plenty of work to go around for all those wishing to avail themselves of their political privileges and the services provided could greatly improve the life of the community as a whole.

I do not think that democracy and an all-professional military are compatible and I do not think that being alive is particularly sufficient qualification for the exercise of political power. And while I certainly do not condone limitations to political rights based on such irrelevancies as gender or skin color or even age, I do think that it is reasonable to require a certain level of demonstrated commitment to the society that one wishes to exercise control in. A couple of years service to the society at "room and board and a little spending money" levels of reimbursement would be a good method of demonstrating that commitment.

Shoot the Searchers!

There are numerous developments in the Internet world that should be of concern to all of us. One thing, of course, is the issue of 'net neutrality' which primarily revolves around data carriers attempts to be able to control who uses their services. Basically the deal is that companies like Verizon, Bell, etc. want to be able to sell exclusivity or priority on their available data streams to the highest bidder. Their claims that they need this ability to afford to develop more data carrying capability are completely fallacious, but they have found a way to make it sound reasonable and are willing to bribe as many politicians as necessary to make this happen. The possible profits for them are beyond calculation as they would, of course, quit wasting money on developing more capability and simply sell current capacity at the highest possible price. Can you imagine what, for example, Google might pay to have Yahoo, Ask.com, Amazon.com, etc. denied access or limited to slow dial up lines?

The article “Italy opens probe into Google over bullying video” ( look it up with a Google News Search) points to another insidious attack on the Internet as we know it. In this case the Italian government is trying to hold Google responsible for letting people see a video of four teenagers beating a disabled teen in a classroom in Turin. What the Italian government would have us believe is that Google committed some kind of crime by letting the public find this video on the Internet.

"I've said repeatedly that there can't be double standards, one for the press and television and another for the Internet," Fioroni told ANSA news agency.

The Internet search engine shared the same duty as other forms of media in distributing "responsible" content, he said.

It sounds quite reasonable but think a minute. Is the researcher who finds pictures of naked people in the middle of the New York Sunday Times guilty of the same breach of standards as the editors who put pictures of naked people in the middle of the New York Times? Well according to the Italian government finding illicit published material is the same crime as publishing illicit material. Hmmm!I suppose that the same argument could be made that if someone put the names of all the undercover CIA agents around the world in a flyer and passed it out by putting it under the windshield wipers of all the cars parked in New York City, it would be a reasonable and legal response to try all the people who read the flyer for treason and jail them for life. Only those that destroyed the document and erased all memory of it could be considered blameless.

These actions, in this case by the Italian government but actually distressingly common throughout the world, are taken because governments prefer secrecy. The last thing anyone in power actually wants is an informed public. The Internet scares the 'bejesus' out of the powerful.

Without certain tools the Internet is such a mass of diffuse data that it would be nearly useless, but the search engines, data miners, aggregators, etc. turn it into a tool that everyday people can use. Therefore, quite sensibly from their point of view, governments and powerful corporations have chosen to aim their attack at those tools. If they can manage to make the researchers responsible for what is found they will have effectively crippled the information dissemination potential of the Internet and helped restore the ignorance of the public.

Making these ridiculous attacks as many of the powerful have done, and giving in to them as Google, MSN and others have continually done is not a minor issue. Being a 'little bit' censored is a lot like being a 'little bit' pregnant. There really is no such thing!

The Software Patent...Ahhh..'Problem'?

Software patents are raising a lot of debate. Do they inhibit innovation by intimidating developers? Do they encourage innovation by insuring that the developers have an opportunity to profit from the innovation?

Patent law, in general, is intended to encourage innovation by insuring a limited time of exclusive rights to the innovator to profit from his/her bright idea. But, certainly, they could have the effect of limiting innovation, also.

For example suppose that Mr. Ford (or Mr Stanley, or whoever) were granted a patent on the idea of putting a wheel on each corner of a rectangular frame and applying drive power to two of those wheels and turning the other two to steer. For twenty years or so, no one else would have been able to make a car or powered wagon of any sort. Pretty stifling on innovation, I should think.

I think the problem arises when :

1. a patent is granted on too wide a basis. As in the example above, if a patent is granted on the whole concept of doing something instead of a specific way of doing something, it will completely stifle innovation for the duration of the patent.

2. a patent is granted on the only possible way of doing some particular thing, at least without re-inventing a whole new set of supporting technologies. For example, if a patent were granted on the concept of checking switch states and interpreting them as instructions and/or data, then the whole digital computer industry would be hostage to that patent holder, at least until someone invented a viable analog computer system.

Perhaps the problem is inevitable when most 'innovations' are of the 'concept' type as is the case in the computer industry. Because of the constraints of the basic 'on/off' system and the complete dominance of a couple of basic equipment providers, there is often only one practical way of implementing most concepts.

I think it might be possible to sort through the problem by a combination approach. Disallow patents that are ridiculously broad, but grant patents on truly innovative solutions to specific problems with a variation similar to the requirements for maintaining a Trademark...the patent holder would be required to prove, annually, that they are indeed producing end-user product based on the patented process/concept or they lose the protection of the patent.

Some Questions on Man-Made Global Warming

As I understand it, man is causing 'global warming' by burning, either fully or partially, vast quantities of hydrocarbons, mostly in the form of oil and coal, thus releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and water vapor and some other stuff into the atmosphere. Again, as I understand it, these gases are 'greenhouse gases' in that they trap heat from the sun, not letting it radiate back into space and thus gradually raising the temperature of the atmosphere.

To make matters worse, not only is mankind releasing huge quantities of these gases into the atmosphere but he is also destroying large tracts of vegetation which is the mechanism by which these greenhouse gases are extracted from the atmosphere and locked back into solid form.

Do I have the basics right, so far?

If so then the inescapable implication is this; Long ago, when the oil and coal we are currently burning was living plant life, the atmosphere of earth must have been much, much warmer than it currently is. And it must have been cooling more or less steadily, since the beginning of plant life, until man came on the scene and started messing up the whole thing by re-introducing all that carbon back into the atmosphere.

Does the available evidence show this?

I have been told that the earth has undergone several Ice ages. I cannot recall any explanation of why they each stopped. By all the mechanisms being used to blame man for global warming it would seem they should have gone on forever. Especially when you add in the extra reflectivity from all that snow.

Might not there be some justification for the concept that we might be staving off a new ice age by our fossil fuel consumption? That instead of causing gross global over heating, we are simply stopping the cooling trend.

Might it not be that given the rather large global temperature changes that have been clearly going on since way back before we were burning fossil fuels, the effect of man's activity on the atmosphere is likely to be essentially unnoticeable?