Top stories from 2010 - part 2

Hi everyone,

Yesterday we looked at my take on top stories 6 through 10 for this year, now hours away from ending.

Here we go with stories 1 through 5:

5. This weather in Europe this month, its implications for climate change and the reaction of the nutbar right. Most of Western Europe gets pretty mild winters, particularly by Canadian standards. Still Heathrow's inability to cope with a couple of centimetres of snow is pretty pathetic and people should be held accountable such that it doesn't happen again - particularly as it is going to happen again. The weather will be wilder and unpredictable - that is what climate change is about and we are experiencing it. What was surprising to me was the reaction of the nutbar right wing in the US. These guys are despicable, ignorant and will use any opportunity to make whatever point they make - whether right or wrong:

Of course, this is a bit dated and since its airing, the "Climategate Scandal" has pretty much been demonstrated to be poor public communication rather than bad science or dishonesty.

4. The G8/G20 Summit in Canada - produced almost nothing except bad press for Metro's finest. OK. One cop has been charged with abuse. What about the millions of dollars of damage to private property and the disruption caused by the anarchist bastard protesters. Ohhhh.... They make me mad!!!! http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/26/g20-saturday-protests.html

3. The situation on the Korean Peninsula. How does one deal with a nutbar, particularly one with a huge land army and nuclear weapons? There must be a better way than this and I think it is going to get worse over the next 12 months. Hopefully China can live with a united Korea on its boarder because the collapse of the North may be the only way this happens without a lot of casualties: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-25/world/koreas.crisis_1_cheonan-incident-south-korean-military-exercises-north-korea?_s=PM:WORLD

2. The US mid-term election. Never has one president fallen so far, so fast, eh? Oh, really, the saintly Ronald Regan did the same thing and came back to win all but one state when he went for re-election? Really? Calm down folks - the right didn't win very much. Sure they control one house of Congress and but they don't control the other nor the presidency. People voted on a bad economy, they didn't vote for the Tea Party. http://www.thestar.com/news/world/uselection/article/885531--obama-admits-to-personal-shellacking

1. Obama’s turning of the shellacking into a clear legislative victory including: continuation and increase of tax breaks, passing the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, new food safety legislation, 911 First Responder Benefits, and the START treaty. Yup, that Obama - Sarah really showed him!!!

Some nonsense from Fox...




Happy New Year, everyone - Predictions coming up by the end of the weekend.

Paul

Top stories from 2010 - part 1

As promised, counting down from #10:

10. Iceland Volcano Eyjafjallajökull (hey, not only can I spell it - I have been there) erupts and throws European air travel into chaos. If ever we need to understand how very susceptible we are to the vagaries of nature, it is events such as this that remind us. This could have seriously impacted air travel to Europe for a very long time and there would not be much we could do about it. Remember, nature isn't some fictional god, it isn't good or evil, simply neutral: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull

9. Discussion of a Liberal/NDP and or Bloc coalition remains in play. While I am not sanguine about this, if one is a Liberal, as I am, then it may be the only path toward ending the current Conservative Government's hold on power. With a new Governor General in place who also happens to be a constitutional lawyer, the Tories still at the same place in the polls and NDP support steady, well, the possibilities are there for next year. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/spector-vision/now-that-the-gg-and-ignatieff-agree-on-coalition-government/article1850208/

8. The failure of the citizens of Delaware, Nevada and Alaska to prove themselves idiots. Hey, this is a good news story. While the Tea Party and their spokesthingie in Chief, 1/2 Governor Sarah "Mama Grizzlie of Little Brain" Palin, did have a significant impact on some mid-term ridings, the real nutbars were not among them. With the election of the witch, the bitch and the waco in their respective primaries over the expected Republican favored candidates, the Tea Party tried to prove that avoiding the press, not understanding the issues and assuming your electorate were morons was the clear path to power. Unfortunately for them, not so much... http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/governors/a-mixed-bag-for-sarah-palins-e.html

7. The election of David Cameron and his political partner Nick Clegg in the first post WWII coalition government the UK has seen. They have a hard road ahead of them but seem to have both the guts and the ideas necessary to deliver! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8676607.stm

6. Two successful launches of the Falcon 9 Rocket and a test flight for Dragon. The NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program is starting to really produce some results. CEO Elon Musk has now successfully delivered satellites to orbit and is just about ready to deliver supplies to the International Space Station, perhaps as soon as in the first half of 2011. That could be followed by crew delivery within a year or two. While this doesn't negate the USA's need for its own system of getting stuff up there, it does allow NASA to focus on Heavy Lift and space operations outside of Low Earth Orbit. Exciting! http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/photos-spacex-dragon-spacecraft-test-flight-101208.html

Tomorrow night, New Year's Eve 2010, we will have the top five. Doncha dare miss it!!!!

Paul

Last year's predictions - accountability time.

Hi bloggerets

Last year I made a number of predictions for 2010 and unlike psychics out there, I hold myself accountable and am willing to publicly admit when I am wrong as well as receive acclaimation and praise when I get it right.

So here we go with our review:

10. Ignatiff out / Rae in. While the jury is still very much out on the current Liberal leader, he clearly did survive the year. Will he survive the next election? See my 2011 predictions in a couple of days,

9. No federal election in 2010. Absolutely right!

8. Obama will select Augustine Commission's flexible path for NASA. Will keep Ares/Orion and extend Shuttle life to 2014. Right and wrong. Obama did accept the flexible path recommendation, kept Orion, cancelled Ares and extended the Shuttle likely by a single flight

7. Democrats keep House, make gains in Senate and Republicans eat their young. Wrong, wrong and absolutely right - the Tea Party will either have to fade out or they will cause the Republicans to a self destruct.

6. Federal government will lay groundwork for GST increase and Carbon tax, likely in 2012. No direct evidence of this but it still seems likely to me.

5. David Cameron wins Premiership in UK election but not mandate. Called it, first coalition government since second
World war

4. William, Prince of Wales engagement to Kate Middleton. In the bag!

3. Kepler and Corot spacecraft identify large number of exoplanets taking the total from 415 to over 1000. Likely right. The actual number on December 20, 2100 is 515 with a large number of additional candidates awaiting verification in the new year.

2. World Cup won by underdog. I say that I got this right as nobody was calling for a Neatherland's win even though they are one of the stronger European teams.

1. Neither Israel or US will make any aggressive moves against Iran on it's nuclear program a but that the Iranian government will continue to face internal pressures and is in danger of medium term collapse. Mostly right. I believe that someone was responsible for sabotaging Iran's reactor control systems with a virus and their material supply chain for construction but these are more passive moves and appear to be working. The dissident movement in Iran continues to grow and eventually the Mullah's will crash and burn.

By the ranking that I just invented off of the top of my head, but defensible, I rate myself with overall 7 out of 10 right, 2 clearly wrong and and 1 unknown.

Next, I will review the top stories of 2010 and then begin with predictions for 2011.

Paul

Christmas present update!

Hi everyone,

I think I have decided that my 2012 New Year's Resolution will be to purchase no new printed media. Notice I said 2012 - approximately 53 weeks from now. That gives all the publishers out there 1 year to make the change.

Right now, in addition to books, I get five publications that are printed on paper:

1. The Economist - published weekly. I also now get the iPad version as well and as far as I am concerned can stop with the printed edition any time. It is now up to the Economist to offer me the option of electronic only, something they do not do yet.
2. Astronomy - published monthly. Now available with some "web extras" but a long way away from being available electronically as a full edition
3. Sky and Telescope - also published monthly. Same story as with its competitor, Astronomy.
4. The Sky at Night - published bi-monthly by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I actually don't know that they have any ePublishing plans.
5. The Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I have been receiving this annual publication since I was 12 and I treasure it. I treasure it but haven't opened a copy in more than 3 years as there is so much web material available for assisting setting up with my limited observing sessions that it is redundant.

The fact that I want to go paperless, personally, is not something I impose upon these publishers. I simply want the ability to access their full editions on my iPad or similar device and save a few dollars for not having the paper copy. Simple!

This is not without precedent. Amazon Kindle and iBooks are already there. I received a copy of a book called American Grace for Christmas over the holidays - an electronic copy which I read through the Kindle app on our household iPad. The cost of that eBook was 1/3 of the cost of a paper edition. In fact of the 10 books I received as gifts this year, only 1 was paper based. My reading experience of these books is in no way diminished, in fact, now that I have moved from the Sony eReader, a product which I have used for a couple of years but do not recommend, to the iPad, it is enhanced.

Further, with the advancements in on demand media, the need for physical substrate on which to present it is gone. I don't know when I last played a CD or DVD. I can still do it, of course, from CD right up to Blueray. But I don't. When the WGG and I decided to watch a couple of films over the holidays we either got them from Netflix which has a monthly subscription model, or rent them from iTunes at $3.99. With our computer connected via HDMI to our LCD television, why would we do it any other way?

I believe that the newspaper, magazine and book publishers out there haven't all gotten to the point where they see the competitive advantage. Offer the content but limit the requirement for the infrastructure to produce hard copies of it. Improve your profit margins on top of reduced cost. To some degree this is the upside of the green revolution - while we need to go down this path for environmental reasons, there are real cost savings and profits to be had out there by going down this path.

Will blog you again in the New Year! Happy Holidays everyone!

Paul

Technology impacts in the strangest ways.

Hi everyone,

Back in 1997 I decided I was going to run a 1/2 Marathon. I was overweight, under active and raising young children so I wanted to have a bit more energy, see better numbers with my blood work at the Doctor's office and be a better role model for my sons. Not really a very unusual place for a guy approaching 40 to get to.

So how does one do it? Well, the web was available so I went did a bit of research. I also contacted my dear friend Harvey who had run a couple of marathons and asked him for some help and eventually put together a training schedule which got me through to completing the Toronto Scotia 1/2 Marathon in September of 1998 with a time of 2:22:18. A respectable first showing.

I ran a bit longer but it slowly faded out as I started and then completed my MBA and set up my current company.

I came back to running about 5 years ago and, oh dear, have things ever changed. I mean the training is the same, mostly but the technological support is amazing. Take, for example calculating distance. Back in the 90's I used to take my car, zero out the trip odometer, drive a route that seemed about right for the distance I wanted to cover, record the distance and then use that for a particular race. The process now, well I go to a mapping program for racing, and there are quite a few (I will include some links below), and map it out. Distance, elevation and even target times can be calculated.

Before running, I wrap a lightweight plastic strap around my chest, throw on my running gear, put on my GPS watch and off I go. When I get home, the watch automatically synchronizes with my computer, downloads all the data to a web site where is is displayed visually as a set of statistics about my run or, get this, an animated trace of the run showing route, speed, heart rate and elevation. Here is today's run:



Looking at this, you can know more about my health and running performance than my doctor could have told you 15 years ago.

So, what are the driving technologies behind all this - two and they are both disruptive:

1. The Internet and Web
2. GPS

While both of these technologies are actually getting kind of old, we are finding ways of using them that would never have been self evident to anyone when they were developed. Technology outcomes often lag, by significant times, technology introductions.

What other things are coming down the pipe for we runners. Imbedded chips in our footwear for race tracking is already here. Perhaps something could be done with oxygenation monitoring technologies? Perhaps heart health diagnostics could be built into the GPS watches. Don't know but it is going to be a pretty different world in this any every other area of our lives.

Keep an open mind!

Paul

Paperless Reading...

Hi everyone

Two blogs in two days - wow, sounds like I am getting motivated!

As you know from my blog a couple of days back, the WGG and I are the proud parents of an iPad. It is desperately searching for a sibling, probably with 3G, which may come along shortly after Christmas. I think this is a two iPad house. In fact it is a multiple Apple device household with:

• 160 GByte iPod Video Classic


• 8 GByte iPod Touch


• 2 GByte iPod Shuffle (Gold - see below)


• 32 GByte iPhone 3GS (ditto)


• 32 GByte iPhone 4G (unfortunately, possessed by the WGG)


• 16 GByte WiFi iPAD

The only redundant piece of equipment is the Touch which was replaced by the 4G in the past few weeks. It will likely go to a good home in the near future.

Now, I have been someone who has leveraged eBook technology for several years, having owned a couple of Sony eReaders. Unfortunately, I have been unhappy with the Sony platform. It works reasonably well but the quality assurance on the hardware is poor (I have seen two of them completely die with no ill use), and, as usual, Sony doesn't play nice with other content providers. So with my second eReader in for repairs (4 weeks and counting), the WGG and I got an early Christmas present for each other with an iPad. We went onto iBooks and bought a couple of things. Nice! Still the selection was limited and I mentioned this to an Apple customer rep the next time I was in the Apple Store. Her advice, get the Kindle App for the iPad.

Oh Wow!

Over 750,000 titles plus access to Project Gutenberg and Google books! OMG! Then we came across both the Economist Application for iPad and the new Virgin Project eMagazine. I may never buy a paper book again. Think about it, I have pretty much ubiquitous access to Internet and I can access almost anything I want in a format that is easy to read, about as heavy as a book (but containing potentially hundreds) and the media base is only going to grow. Screen technology is far better than with older devices and I have no difficult in using the technology or reading from it.

A couple of cool pictures:

The picture on the left is shot exactly at the same moment as the one on the right. The image on the iPad is from the front "page" of the new Richard Branson Project Magazine.

I sense a first world game changer, yet again, Mr. Jobs!

Back to Power Generation next blog, I promise.

Paul

Update - An Editorial Comment, The King's Speech and a discussion on Mackin's Three Rules...

Hi everyone,

Was driving back from taking the kids to a movie this evening and the WGG (Barbara) commented that my new blogs weren't as fun to read as my older ones. She felt that my more pure focus on science and technology reflected less of my personality. So, with that comment firmly in mind, let me segue this away from my ongoing comments about power generation and transmission and into something more homey...

My sons are going to be spending this Christmas in Scotland visiting their grandparents with their mother. That said, we had Christmas dinner with them today and then took them to see The King's Speech - a film about the stammer of King George VI. I am a bit of a sucker for any film about the royal family. Well, I was not disappointed. This film treat's His Majesty's challenge with humour and respect and I greatly enjoyed it. One of the sadder bits about the movie was the Duke of York's (later the King) treatment at the hands of his older brother, King Edward VIII - and unpleasent and self indulgent idiot. Upon returning home, the WGG and I discussed Edward and I commented that he clearly didn't follow Mackin's third rule and then I realized that I have never written about them on my blog before so, sequing again, Mackin's three rules...

1. Don't Panic. Panic never accomplished a single thing. Whatever the situation, work the problem. If you panic, you won't help yourself and the problem will still be waiting for you should you survive to address it. Never panic!
2. Never sleep with anyone crazier than you are. Self explainitory, particularly if you have ever done it (I have on two spectacularly instructive occasions - there won't be a third).
3. Never believe your own press. A bit of humility and honest self examination goes along way to keeping you rational and focused. When people complement you, they may not have your own best interests at heart.

Edward VIII clearly violated that third rule, and may have violated the second as well - there is not a lot of good you can say about the horrid Wallis Simpson, AKA The Duchess of Windsor.

Good movie. Go see it over the holidays, it will show what I would say is the essence of bravery - do ones duty, personal limitations be damned.

I will be back with a blog on micro power generation in a couple of days but promise the WGG and my few other fans some glib comments about Sarah Palin (of little brain) and religious zealotry.

Ciao for now.

Paul

Power Generation - my first iPad post

Hi everyone

I am posting this from an iPad in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Kind of cool actually. In any case writing about power generation up here is very interesting as they have significant power generation and transmission issues In the arctic. First off, consider the geographic and demographic challenges:

1. Low population density makes it difficult to scale generation appropriately
2. Large area makes it difficult to transmit power from centralized generators
3. Lack of infrastructure means that construction and logistics represent real challenges for any new facilities
4. Climate pushes the energy requirements up and increases the risk associated with power loss

There are resources here, however. Plenty of hydro potential as well as reserves of oil and natural gas. All good but difficult to get and exploit. There are three territories in Canada's north and each approaches generation separately driven mainly by items 1 and 2. In the Yukon where most of the population is in one city with ready access to hydro generation, they rely on hydro with diesel top ups. That is, if they need to they can put additional diesel generators in play for peak load management. In Nunavut, with a highly distributed a population and a very low population density, they rely on community based diesel generators. Noisy, polluting and with a whole challenge of logistical issues related to getting fuel to said communities but a workable solution. Here in NWT there is a combination of the two with a major population centre in Yellowknife getting it's power from both hydro and diesel and the smaller communities relying on stand alone diesel generators.

The problem is that people need power to live. You can make things more efficient but ultimately you must generate power and get it to the facilities which require it (such as homes) you must generate that base load and have the ability to address peaks in demand as I mentioned in my last blog. There are entire economies defined around power generation and transmission and in over the next several blogs I am going to review a number of approaches using examples such as what we have gone through today. Of all the mechanisms for power generation at we have however, please take this away from today's posting - diesel powered community generators are the least efficient devices available. In addition to the burning of the fuel itself, the efficiency of the generation process is relatively low and the energy needed to find the oil, refine it into diesel and ship it to where it is needed is monstrous! Is there an alternative? Several, but in an environment such as where I am right now, no attractive ones...