What If...We Never Run Out of Oil?

Ocean-bottom methane hydrates offer that possibility.  Researchers are working hard on practical ways to “mine” the stuff.

So think about it.  What would change if we knew that we had an essentially infinite supply of naturally renewed hydrocarbon fuel?

• Environmentalists who are convinced that carbon dioxide is causing global warming will be horrified.
• The economic incentives for switching away from hydrocarbon fuels (still by far the most efficient way, by volume or by weight, that we know how to store energy) will be greatly reduced.  Unless, that is, government decides to distort the market with “carbon taxes” or some such thing.
• The oil-supported country economies (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, etc.) will be sorely tested.
• Prices for most goods and many services (especially transportation) will fall.

Most of that sounds pretty good to me!

Update and bump: reader and friend Doug W. points out this marvelous quote from the above-linked article:

To ask utilities to take in large amounts of solar power—electricity generated by hundreds or thousands of small installations, many on neighborhood roofs and lawns, whose output is affected by clouds—is like asking a shipping firm to replace its huge, professionally staffed container ships with squadrons of canoes paddled by random adolescents.

Hah! Squadrons of canoes paddled by random adolescents :)

Sounds pretty good compared with the Obama administration and Congress, though, doesn't it? 

Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks...

Executive summary: excellent book; read it.

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who died in 1951 – far too young, of cancer.  Her cells were sampled (without her knowledge or informed permission) and turned out to be immortal.  Such cells are incredibly useful for many different kinds of investigations and tests.  Researchers figured out how to grow her cells (dubbed “HeLa” cells) and soon they spread throughout the world of medical research.

That's an interesting bit of science history, and I can easily imagine someone writing a book about that.  That's not what Rebecca Skloot (the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) did.  In fact, science's use of HeLa cells isn't really detailed much at all in her book.  Instead, her book is mainly about the impact of HeLa cells on Henrietta Lacks' family – and Rebecca Skloot becomes a part of that story herself as she researches her book. 

I picked up this book thinking that it was going to be a sort of standard history of science book; a genre that I particularly like.  But instead it was something else altogether, something unlike any other book I've ever read.  Part science history, part human interest, part philosophy, and in places it reads like a novel.  I couldn't put the book down, and found much in it that provoked thought about the conflicts between medical research and human rights.  Some of these conflicts are avoidable, but others are, I suspect, intrinsic to the field. 

One helluva read, and I highly recommend it – despite the New York Times also recommending it :)

Understand How It Works...

Martin Rue writes about this simple piece of advice he got from his grandfather: “Understand how it works.”  Instead of just understanding what something does, understand how it does it.

This resonates strongly with me.  I've written before about my surprise that many programmers working today really have no idea at all how a computer actually works, and yet they can still write good software.  Lots of people know how to drive a car, but they haven't a clue what actually happens when they press on the gas pedal, or the brake, or turn the steering wheel.

I've noted that it is quite powerful, sometimes, to actually understand how something works.  Martin makes this point better than I have:

If you simply remember how to do something, then all you can do is use it the same way over and over, but if you understand how it works, you can reason about it. Once you can reason about something in your mind you can contemplate why it is the way it is, you can apply your entire creative mind to making the most of it, and you can implement and question improvement – you own it intellectually.

What he said.

Good or Evil?

Here's a very compact collection of statistical formulae, nicely organized and with almost no explanation.  I can't decide whether this is a great thing (a sort of “cheat sheet” for statistics) or if it's an evil thing (encouraging programmers to misuse tools they don't understand)...

Dolphins Find Antique Torpedo Off San Diego's Coast...

Dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy to locate sea mines (at the Pt. Loma facility) have located a Howell torpedo from the late 1800s (the only other known example is at right).

Awesome!

Sometimes We All Have a Day Like This...

Via reader Simi L.:

Cicada Periodicity...

Cicadas are currently emerging on the east coast of the U.S.  These are interesting large insects that I remember well from my childhood in New Jersey.  The North American species (called “periodical cicadas”) have a fascinating quirk: they breed in multi-year cycles of either 13 or 17 years.  They spend most of their lives underground, feeding from the roots of trees.  But every 13 or 17 years (depending on the group, or brood they belong to), they emerge, transform in the large flying insect pictured at right, and breed – thereby starting the next 13 or 17 year cycle.

If you're into math at all, you probably noted immediately that both 13 and 17 are prime numbers.  Is there are reason why those cycles are a prime number of years?  I've wondered that myself.

This morning I read about a hypothesis for this phenomenon.  If it's true that the cicada have multiple predators (that is, things that eat cicadas) whose populations vary cyclically (but independently), then it's provable that the best way for the cicadas to have a regular life cycle while minimizing the chances of being eaten is to have a life cycle that is a prime number of years long.  This, of course, would provide an evolutionary pressure giving the advantage to cicadas whose life cycles happened to be a prime number of years long.  After a few thousand generations, you'd get the situation we have today.

Awesome!

Steyn on Scandals...

Just go read it...

College Tuition Increases...

This article rants and raves about the cost of college tuition, which for the past 20 years or so has been rising much faster than inflation.  The author explores several possible reasons for the increase, but none of them are satisfyingly simple and obvious. 

There is such a reason, however: the fast ramp of college tuition almost exactly correlates with the easing of student loan availability.  Way back in the Cretaceous era when I was examining the possibility of going to college, there's no way that I could have gotten a student loan.  These days, thanks to numerous Federal and State programs, if you can fog a mirror and get admitted to any college, you can easily get a loan to pay not only your tuition, but your books and living expenses as well.

So why would that make college tuition increase?  Because the marketplace for college has been distorted by the government subsidies and guarantees in the student loan market – a student selecting a college no longer needs to worry so much about what it costs.  Because the loans are so easy to get, the only pricing pressure comes from a students deferred need to pay off the loan.  This greatly reduces the pressure on colleges and universities to keep their prices low, as the “buyers” not longer care so much about the price.  Instead, they are now motivated to spend more money to compete for student loans (the fact that a student comes along with the loan is just a cost of doing business for them, and a relatively minor one). 

This is yet another example of the government's intervention causing a huge distortion in the market.  Like the housing bubble, the taxpayers are going to be on the hook again – because a large fraction of all the trillions in student loans are guaranteed by some Federal program or another.  Of course “Federal guarantee” is just the polite way of saying “They're going to stick their hands in my pocket to steal the money”...

Slo-Mo Hummers...

This was taken in Los Angeles.  The two hummingbird species shown (Allen's and Anna's) are both native to us as well...

Reunited...

Marine Sgt. Ross Gundlach served in Afghanistan with Casey, a yellow lab trained as an explosives dog.  Sgt. Gundlach wanted to take care of Casey after she was retired, but she was assigned to the Iowa State Fire Marshal's office.  After pleading his case to the Fire Marshal's office, some state officials with a heart decided to make Sgt. Gundlach's dream come true.  They arranged a surprise reunion of Sgt. Gundlach and Casey, and now the two will be together permanently.

There's a government story that makes me feel good.  First time in a while...

A Most Excellent Wildlife Viewing Evening...

Last night Debbie and I went up to one of our favorite local wildlife viewing spots: the Stonewall Mine Road in Cuyamaca Park, just before dark.  We're still delighting in the return of a substantial deer herd (gone since the 2007 fires), and last night didn't disappoint on that score – we saw at least 50 deer in two different main groups and in several singles and pairs.  We hoped for a bobcat or mountain lion, but alas didn't see one.  We did get a extended great view of a male meadowlark singing his heart out.  What glorious colors on them!

But the highlight of the evening wasn't at Stonewall – it was on the way home.  Debbie, sharp-eyed as always, spotted a hawk silhouetted on a nest with chicks – just 15 feet or so from the road!  I never saw a thing, as I was concentrating on getting the truck safely around the tight corners (this is on the stretch of State 79 between Oakzanita and Descanso town, where the road is very curvy).  I found a place to turn around, and we drove back up to find that nest.  We parked the truck on the road, half on the (narrow) shoulder and turned on the 4-way flashers – and then settled in for a delightful 10 minutes or so watching one hawk parent (we think a red tail, but we couldn't positively ID it) and its two chicks.  The chicks were still mostly white, with a mottled appearance as their first flight feathers were emerging.  There wasn't much action; they seemed sleepy (this was right at dusk) and maybe a little cold.  The parent just stared at us the whole time :)

I've never been this close to a raptor nest with chicks before.  We both had our binoculars with us, so we had a real treat – with the binoculars, were were count-the-feather-barbs close.  Awesome!

One fellow drove by the other way while we were stopped.  He asked if we were ok, and I told him we were watching a hawk's nest.  He said “Nice!” and drove on.  Shortly after we packed up our binoculars and left, though, several cars passed us the other way, and a sheriff's SUV came up behind us.  Our timing was very good :)

We drove home with big silly smiles plastered all over our faces...

Pelargonium tetragonum...

From BPOD, of course:

Quantum Computing Skeptic...

Scott Aaronson doesn't think we're likely to see practical quantum computers anytime soon – if ever.  The rash of recent news concerning the D-Wave company and their claims of working quantum computers drove Scott to comment publicly (for the first time in a while) and even to talk with some reporters.  The reporters all want to know, basically, why he remains skeptical when big businesses (can you spell Google?) and government (uh oh) are spending millions of dollars on D-Wave machines, and have announced spectacular results.  Scott's awesome response:

My reaction, I confess, is simple.  I don’t care—I actually told them this—if the former Pope Benedict has ended his retirement to become D-Wave’s new marketing director.  I don’t care if the Messiah has come to Earth on a flaming chariot, not to usher in an age of peace but simply to spend $10 million on D-Wave’s new Vesuvius chip.  And if you imagine that I’ll ever care about such things, then you obviously don’t know much about me.  I’ll tell you what: if peer pressure is where it’s at, then come to me with the news that Umesh Vazirani, or Greg Kuperberg, or Matthias Troyer is now convinced, based on the latest evidence, that D-Wave’s chip asymptotically outperforms simulated annealing in a fair comparison, and does so because of quantum effects.  Any one such scientist’s considered opinion would mean more to me than 500,000 business deals.

Read his entire post for a (much) more detailed D-Wave takedown...

I don't understand enough about quantum computers to have an informed opinion on their plausibility.  But I have seen hype before, and I have personally witnessed hype completely overwhelming any semblance of reality.  Anybody who lived through the dot-com bubble and was at all observant can say the same thing :)

Cold War Gadgets...

A collection of photos of Cold War KGB (Soviet) gadgets, like the listening device shown below, hidden inside a hollowed-out log:

London in 1927...

This is America?

Sarah Ingram headed the IRS' unit that oversaw tax-exempt organizations up until a short time ago.  She was the boss of that unit when conservative organizations were being targeted for tax-exempt application slowdowns and runarounds, and when conservative organizations and individuals were audited.  She's at the very center of the current scandal, and a completely relevant questions (all as yet unresolved) are:

• How much did Sarah Hall know, and when did she know it?
• Did Sarah Hall direct any of the conservative targeting?
• Did Sarah Hall, directly or indirectly, condone any of the conservative targeting?
• Should Sarah Hall have had the processes and procedures in place to detect and prevent the conservative targeting?

That last point may sound like a no-brainer, but it's really not – it depends substantially on how the IRS organizes its oversight and audit processes (I'm making the large assumption that they actually have such processes).

Now, given all those questions hanging over Sarah Hall, what's the right thing for the IRS to do with her?  You and I might say she should be put on paid leave while the investigation unfolds.  The IRS says she should be promoted and put in charge of the implementation of the parts of Obamacare that the IRS is responsible for.

That should terrify any American – the possibility exists that an operative devoted to abusing the IRS for political purposes just got placed in charge of access to healthcare for millions of Americans.  If you're not terrified, you might want to play a little connect-the-dots...

As I read this, I felt like I was reading about East Germany or Romania in the '60s – but I double-checked, and that article really is about America in 2013.

I want my country back.

Quote of the Day...

From today's Day-by-Day cartoon (below):

...you don't want to grow up to be like the president, do you?

Can You Raise 73 to the 12th Power in Your Head?

I certainly can not (it would have to be a good day for me to do 5^5 in my head!), but apparently this fellow can.  Not just that pair of numbers, but any pair you can throw at him.  If this is for real, it's amazing...

National Geographic Photo of the Month...

It'a a corker of an Eastern Screech Owl, in the Okefnokee Swamp of southern Georgia...