Shake, Rattle and Roll

In the wake of the horrific disasters that have hit and still hit Japan, with the possibility (note that it’s not a certainty) of a nuclear meltdown, world-wide sentiment against nuclear power is once again waning and swinging toward irrational fear and fear mongering.  Sadly, despite the human tragedy of thousands dead and missing (possibly 10s of thousands), homes and businesses destroyed, and infrastructure in ruins, the wonks have been politicizing the hurt rather than helping the healing.

There’s so much criticism of Japan’s nuclear program.  If anything the Japanese engineers who built these reactors 40 years ago should be congratulated.  The buildings were designed to withstand a magnitude 8.2 earthquake.  This 8.9 (or 9.0 depending on who is speaking) is more than 30 times stronger than the established design parameters of the buildings.  We have to remember that this earthquake, as measured by the USGS, is the 5^th strongest earthquake measured since 1900 and about 1,000 times stronger than the Haiti earthquake.

And yet the reactors stand.  (Perhaps I’d better publish this quickly before events prove that statement false.)  They’re very heavily damaged, of course, but they’re holding so far, despite the explosions as the cores cool.  There is radiation leakage but prudence says to stay out of its path.

I find it most interesting that pundits sitting in Washington, New York and other big cities here in the US are speculating what might have happened, what might still happen, and how it could possibly affect us.  They simply don’t know and for every one that says that “A” will happen, there is another who says that “A” can’t possibly happen.  We need to prepare for disasters but do so out of wisdom and prudence, not fear.

People in Japan need relief workers, food, water, blankets, clothes, shelters, and prayers, not hand wringing and angst about what might happen here in the US but probably never will.

Our hearts must go out to the people of Japan and our wallets, too.  Want to help?  Here is a link of reputable organizations that won’t simply steal your money (some may have high administrative costs but the people will get help.)

Families have been torn apart or destroyed.  Let’s do what we can to help bring some normalcy to the situation.  We need to do this out of compassion and not out of political motives.

You can Leave your Heart but not your Foreskin in San Francisco

If a proposed initiative gets on the ballot and passes in San Francisco, it will be illegal to perform male circumcision in the city.  ”Intactivists” as they call themselves, feel that circumcision is barbaric and violates the boy’s or baby’s right to choose to be circumcised or not.

First Amendment Freedom of Religion rights of Jews and Muslims not withstanding, opponents of male circumcision claim it is unhealthy and dangerous.  Granted, there is risk with any medical procedure.  You can choke on a toothpick while cleaning your teeth.  However, this practice is over 3,000 years old and there does not seem to be a shortage of Jews, Muslims, or any other group who has chosen to circumcise its male children, nor is there any reported lack of libido in the healthy and mentally stable males as well.

It’s so typical.  For religious reasons, parents may choose not to vaccinate their children or let them have blood transfusions.  For religious reasons, women may be required to wear thick veils over their heads that inhibit their seeing or hearing on-coming traffic.  That’s all well and good to these busy bodies, but don’t do anything that allows the boys to identify culturally with the other members of their societies.

Needless to say, the simple solution is that if you don’t want to circumcise your child, then don’t, but that’s too simple to these people.  This is simply yet another example of some people trying to dictate how others should live their lives.  Are they planning to go around examining little boys’ crotches to make sure they weren’t snipped?  Maybe they’ll use TSA gropers-in-training for the job.

In one respect, I tend to agree.  It’s the boy’s body, let him decide.  In similar fashion, however, when we consider abortion, it’s the baby’s life.  Let him or her decide, too, if the abortion should take place.

Funny, they want to stop the family from snipping a piece of skin but they’ll do nothing about snuffing out a life.

Is Metric Really Useful?

Is Metric Really Useful?

When I would go overseas, my friends were all quick to tell me the joke:

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks many languages?
A: Polylingual (or Multilingual – both are acceptable)

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?
A: An American

Apparently it’s good to speak several languages and I don’t argue with that.  Even here in the US in some places knowledge of Spanish is helpful and in a few others French is handy but nowhere are they absolutely required.

So what do we Americans have over our counterparts in other parts of the world?  We speak many units of measure.  We can speak cups, miles, inches, quarts, acres, and so many more.  Others speak only metric.  What a pity to be so limited to only one measurement system.  I would hope they feel deprived.

But is metric really needed?  I mean, I drank a 12-ounce can of soda.  I filled up my car with 15.3 gallons of gasoline.  I bought a quart of milk.  I drove 9.7 miles to work. I cooked a dozen eggs. I bought a pound of butter and a 3.5-ounce candy bar.  I even flushed the toilet with one gallon of water per flush.

I did not have any even metric quantity of any of those distances, weights or volumes.  I didn’t need it.  If you’re going to buy a fractional quantity of something, what difference does it make which units we use?

I suppose for the mathematically challenged it’s good that we have a measurement system that allow you simply to move a decimal point but what does that really get us?

So what is metric good for?  Yes, you can buy a 2-liter bottle of soda but that’s about all we buy metric (legally).  The only other commodity that I know of that is sold in metric quantities is drugs.  That’s probably because international drug lords wouldn’t know a pound if it bit them in the butt.  Even gold is sold by the (troy) ounce, diamonds by the carat and oil by the barrel.

As an example of how useless metric is to the average US citizen, my one-gallon flush used 3.8 liters of water.  Why not 4?

True, we measure distances to other planets in kilometers, but that’s about it.  In reality, though, does it matter if we’re 93,000,000 miles from the Sun or if we’re 150,000,000 kilometers?  Does it really amount to a hill of beans if the speed of light (the so-called speed limit of the Universe) is 186,000 miles per second (actually closer to 186,282 but who’s counting?) or if it’s 299,792,458 meters per second?  You can’t see it happen.  And regardless if you fall 32 ft/sec2 or 9.81 m/sec2, it’s still going to hurt when you hit.

We even use light years to measure distance which is neither metric nor Imperial (the name given to the US measuring units because they were once imposed by Imperial Britain).

What good is it to buy gasoline in liters if you measure your performance in miles per gallon?  It still costs about $40 to fill my gas tank.  Perhaps it’s time to start drilling in some of the 77,000 km2 of the Alaskan Arctic Refuge (ANWR) for some of the estimated 10 billion barrels of oil we have there.

Gotta Love those Numbers

We know that most statistics are bogus in one way or another.  Oh, the margin of error might be 2.73844692% or some other just about as valid number, however the truth is not in the numbers but rather in the questions asked or the data chosen for the report.  I’d like to take two examples that I feel are very suspect, both from last Friday’s (Feb 18, 20110 USA Today.

The first one entitled “Late Mortgage Payments Declined” began:

The Mortgage Bankers Association said 8.2% of homeowners missed at least one mortgage payment in the October-December quarter.  The figure, adjusted for seasonal factors [emphasis mine] improved from 9.1% in the previous quarter.

My question is, how does one reasonably seasonally adjust late mortgage payments?  We see it every month with the phony labor statistics where unemployment is “seasonally adjusted”.  Is it that if you don’t have a job in the wrong season that you’re not really unemployed?

Either you made your mortgage payment or you didn’t.  Is it OK not to pay your mortgage during the late months due to holidays?  Is is OK not to pay your mortgage during summer when you might be on vacation rather than paying your mortgage?  What is it?  If you know, please post a reply here.

The other problem was with an article entitled “Most consumers OK with new bulbs,” which tries to prove that the Republicans are wrong to try and repeal the phase out of 100-watt incandescent light bulbs.

According to the study, most Americans are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the new compact florescent (CF) or light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs so what’s the beef?  The article implied that the Congress was wasting its time on this subject and therefore by extension were in favor of frying the planet and hasten Global Warming.  They couldn’t say that with winter being as cold as it is, so they have to imply it.

The problem I have here is that the questions merely asked about the performance of the new bulbs.  One should be satisfied if one turns on the light switch and the light comes on.  However, the people were not asked how they felt about being forced to spend upwards of 10 times the cost of the old bulbs for a new one.

The people were not asked how they felt about needing at least 5 years on some of their bulbs to break even due to the increased cost versus energy savings.

The people were not asked how they felt when a 7-year CF didn’t last even 2 years before it needed to be replaced,thus never realizing the energy cost savings.

The people were not asked how they plan to dispose of these poisonous mercury-containing bulbs that cannot be thrown out in the normal trash or even discarded in recycle bins.

The first article mucks with the numbers by scrubbing the data.  The second article asks a question that is meaningless to the true issue at hand and thus drawing a false conclusion.

The sad thing is that we have to read the newspaper as critically as they should have been when they wrote their articles.

What can you expect, however, from the liberal media?

Cap and Trade away our Way of Life

Most rational people who are not Socialist Democrats feel that last Tuesday’s election was a repudiation of the Obama agenda, an agenda and set of policies that the majority of Congress embraced over the past two years.  One of those agenda items is called “Cap and Trade”.  Cap the amount of pollution you can create and trade credits if you produce less.

Like most liberal ideas, on the surface it sounds good.  Lower your pollution and you can make money.  Those that don’t have to buy someone else’s unused pollution permits.  The free market will set the price.  Sounds good but we have to dig deeper.  Where can I, the small investor, find credits to “buy low and sell high”?  Sadly, you can’t unless you’re rich or have set up a dummy company to qualify for credits that you’ll never use.

What’s wrong with cutting down on pollution?  Absolutely nothing. I’ve written before on how little I believe that humans are responsible for Global Warming so I won’t cover it here.  (Check the links below for the topic that amuses or intrigues you.)

The problem with Cap and Trade is that you can’t win.  There won’t be enough credits to sustain a recovery let alone fuel one, assuming, of course, that there would be enough Cap and Trade credits to begin with.  After all, isn’t the US the chief cause of man-made global warming?  Regardless of how much we lower our pollution, it will never satisfy the jealous xenophobes around the world until we become like the socialist countries who have tried to manage their societies: bankrupt.

This so-called solution to this assumed problem is totally backward.  Instead of punishing energy users who fuel our economy and improve the quality of life, the push should be toward providing alternative sources of energy.

Where are the nuclear plants?  France generates about 70% of its electricity with nuclear energy.  We don’t.

Where is the conversion to use methane (an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide) rather than release it into the atmosphere?

Where are the windmill farms?  Now that Ted Kennedy is out of the picture, we can build them off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard where there’s plenty of wind.  Yes, there are arguments that a bird or two might fly into one but if it does, it probably was sick anyway.  They won’t destroy habitats.  They, like the Alaska pipeline, may even improve the habitat for some wildlife by providing a man-made reef in the water and shade on desert lands.

Where are the tidal generators?  Put undersea watermills in the Gulf Stream, Hudson River, and other swift moving waters.  We don’t need to dam them up to tap their energy.  The East River pilot project seems to have been a success.  Why not expand this use?

Where are the geothermal generators?  Lord knows we have enough hot rocks around Yellowstone, Mount St. Helens and other volcanically active places in our western regions.

Why are we using ethanol?  Studies show that its production produces more CO2 than it saves.  Has anyone looked at methanol?  It works great in the Indy cars and won’t take corn out of the food supply (which also raises food prices, of course).

Where is the Hydrogen for fuel cells?  Where are the fuel cells to use it?

Electric cars are an interesting concept.  Unfortunately the current technology generally available makes it infeasible for long trips due to recharge times.  We need work there.

There are several ways to solve energy crises without bankrupting industry by limiting what they produce.