Slowly, reconstruction begins in Japan

March Madness: War against Libya launched on the anniversary of Iraq War

It was only a couple of days ago that I blogged about the anniversary of the Iraq War, through a compilation of satirical video clips from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.  I would never have imagined that the US and NATO would launch another war, against another Arab/Muslim country on that very date.  I suppose life is full of coincidences, some pleasant and some not-so-pleasant.

US forces apparently led the attack in the war referred to as Operation Odyssey Dawn.

A funny thing first: PBS is reporting this as "Audacity Dawn" ....
looks like the headline writer was channeling his inner-Obama by substituting the keyword from Obama's presidential campaign.
Funny!

Anyway, back to the military operations ...
The LA Times, which has the correct "Odyssey" in the report:

The U.S. moved ahead Saturday with a three-pronged approach in what has been code named Operation Odyssey Dawn: launch targeted cruise missiles against Libyan air defenses, jam communications of Kadafi's forces and establish the central command and control for the operations.

U.S. military assets are being joined by ships and aircraft from the U.K., France, Italy and Canada, as well as Arab partners. The Pentagon said those partners would announce their level of participation separately.

The U.S. effort is being run by General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command based in Stuttgart, Germany. Admiral Samuel Locklear, chief of U.S. Navy forces in Europe and Africa, has on-the-scene command and control from aboard the Mount Whitney in the Mediterranean Sea.

 Meanwhile, the Mad Dog refers to Obama very fondly in his communication, as if that would make any difference:

Colonel Qaddafi addressed President Obama as “our son,” in a letter that combined pleas with a jarring familiarity. “I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son and I have all the love for you as a son, and I do not want your image to change with me,” he wrote. “We are confronting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, nothing more. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? Tell me how would you behave so that I could follow your example?” 

Oh well ... I suppose with the Iraq War, and now the Libyan War, we now have a new meaning for "March Madness"

Now that the military operations have begun, here is to hoping that:

• Gaddafi and his clan will soon call it quits and not make it one dragged out bloody fight
• After the war ends, Libya will be able to put things together on its own, and that we don't have to trapped in the North African sands

Remembrance of things past: Navin Nischol

Navin Nischol, the "poor man's Rajesh Khanna," died of a massive heart attack.

The higher education bubble bursts, with law schools first

A typical complaining note in this country, perhaps more than anywhere else, has been that we need yet another lawyer as much as we need a frontal lobotomy.  (editor: we do think you need one. Awshutupalready!)

Yet, law schools seemed to be sprouting everywhere. Why so?

Over the past decade, the number of law-school students has also steadily increased, as universities have opened or expanded their schools. Law schools tend to be moneymakers: They're cheap to set up, and tuition runs high, even at poorly rated programs. Thus, universities have added them on with relish, and the list of approved law schools has increased 9 percent in the past decade, to 200. That means that the number of new lawyers minted every year has not stopped growing, either: Law schools awarded 44,004 degrees last year, up 13 percent in a decade.

But, the Great Recession's aftermath has helped clarify that there might not be much monetary rewards waiting for these students upon graduation.  So, what is the latest news then?

According to data from the Law School Admission Council, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the number of applicants to law school has dropped a whopping 11.5 percent year-to-year—to the lowest level since 2001 at this point in the application cycle.

One heck of a reason to celebrate, wouldn't you think?  But, what is driving down law school enrolments?

In the past year or two, scads of blogs have committed themselves to exposing law school as a "scam," and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have devoted thousands of words to telling readers why law school is a bad, bad idea if you do not actually want to be a lawyer. Look to any of a dozen blogs or news sites to explain how wages for legal workers might continue to fall, as automation takes over rote tasks and businesses increasingly refuse to pay obscenely high per-hour fees. Wandering further into the realm of anecdata, virtually every young lawyer or law student I know would love to talk my ear off about the worrisome employment prospects for new legal professionals.
Once the conventional wisdom has spotted a bubble—whether in housing or gold or anything else—it tends to burst.

When will the public notice that law schools are only the most glaring example of most of higher education swelling up into a giant bubble?

So ... Coase Theorem explains how I became lonely? :)

Greg Mankiw, whose blog is where I came across this Dilbert toon, notes that this is "Coase Theorem in Action." ... A few weeks ago, I would have used this cartoon in my urban planning class!

Come to think of it, visiting friends is relatively inexpensive compared to the scale in which weddings are celebrated in India.  Even as a kid, I thought that they were wasteful spending, and I think so even now.  As a high schooler, I once suggested as a serious argument that when invitations go out to friends and relatives who lived far away, well, we could add a note that they could choose not to attend the wedding, and instead "money order" the bride's parents half the amount that they otherwise would have spent attending the wedding.  Yes, the same Dilbert cartoon idea. 

But, there are instances where weddings and costs are approached rationally.  Even in India.

Obama flexing his muscles at the wrong time in Libya

At least the one reader (you know who you are!) who has engaged me on discussions regarding America's response to the protests in Libya, well, that reader will probably be shocked and surprised that I am not in favor of American involvement at this point.

If it were on grounds of idealism and principles, and that ought to be the reason any time, then we would have expressed our outrage from the very beginning of the protests.  We would have then applied pressure on Gaddafi right from that first day, and there is a fair chance that most of the Arab countries would have backed up that kind of pressure from the US and Western European countries.

But, we didn't.

Instead, we watched the President waffle through weakly, as if even he had even lost his oratorical gifts.  Secretary Clinton tried some weak version of diplomacy; but then who really cares any more for what diplomats have to say in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks cables, eh!  Those leaks made it very clear--they confirmed--that we say one thing in the public and lots of different things in private and the two sets don't necessarily converge.

So, Mad Dog Gaddafi figured that the rebels weren't going to get any support--psychological and material--from America and the West.  Gaddafi went on the offensive, and he now pretty much has regained control over the country.

And now the President is acting all tough, and issuing ultimatums.  What the hell is matter with this guy?

So, if he is acting strictly as a response to the horrific developments over the last couple of days, then the President has a tough question to answer: how will he then respond to the murderous assaults on protesters in Bahrain, or the merciless killings of protesters in Yemen?  And what about the horrors that Robert Mugabe has inflicted upon his his country and people over a couple of decades?  The President is now beginning to tread on dangerous military missions if his leadership will be in response to imagery and not clear principles.

Will he then use the same logic of gathering up the international community to impose whatever variations of a no-fly-zone are in Yemen and Bahrain?  Wait, we already have a base in Bahrain; so, we just open the doors and let our forces go and straighten out the Bahraini/Saudi forces?

So, now that we have the UN resolution, now what?

The hope may be that the resolution's passage, and the current preparations to enforce it, would be enough to make Qaddafi crumble. But, as the saying goes, hope is not a strategy. At this point, if the fighting continues, Obama, the Europeans, and—presumably—the Arab League forces will have no choice but to respond, and not just to shoot down planes but to attack (from the air) Qaddafi's airfields, weapons, and maybe troops on the ground.
At that point, we would be intervening in an Arab civil war. This would be done in a putatively humanitarian mission, under the authority of a U.N. resolution, with (perhaps merely in support of) other Arab countries in the region—but it's still intervening in an Arab civil war, and this is the sort of thing that makes senior U.S. military officers nervous.
How will it go? In a tactical sense, probably pretty well. U.S., European, and even Arab air forces are very capable of pummeling Qaddafi's army and air force if they want to do so.
Where will it end? That's a different question. Will Libya bog down in a protracted civil war or into mutually hostile regions? Will Qaddafi hang on to power? If he crumbles, who will take over, and what will that person or family or tribe or faction do—and with what resources or institutions to mobilize the population, inspire their allegiance, and rebuild?

Couldn't we have played our cards at the very beginning when there was a fair chance that Gaddafi might have fled, perhaps to Venezuela?

I know I am stupid, but it appears that I have some presidential company here.

Finally, a request to Obama, Clinton and all you administration people: stop saying "all options are on the table."  I would like to impose restrictions on what options can and should remain on the table, and when those options can be exercised.

Sarah Palin in India, or, when Mama Grizzly met the holy cows ...

Who woulda thunk it!
Apparently India Today did ...



But ... but, .... Sarah Palin to deliver the keynote at this event?  Why?  Were they unable to book Paris Hilton?

I suppose Palin knows how to cash in her fifteen minutes of fame.  I wonder if Mccain gets a commission every time Palin's cash registers ring ... Anyway, why is Sarah Palin going there?  Well, because she can't otherwise see India from her front porch in Alaska:



What?  Sarah Palin is going there for the gazillion dollars and media exposure, and not for the elephant? I am shocked, shocked!

I almost threw up when I read the blurb at the India Today site:

Governor Palin epitomizes the theme of the 10th India Today Conclave: 'The Changing Balance of Power'. A working mother of five, as a mayor and governor she emphatically broke through the gender-ceiling in Alaska. In the process she cleaned up political corruption and championed reform to allow the private sector to grow.

What a mighty fall for this publication that was one of my favorites in my late teenage years!  BBC's Biswas notes in his report:

what is quite certain is that Ms Palin will be well received. As a rank newcomer, she has novelty value with the audiences. Also, as analysts like Gupte say, India loves women leaders - India's most powerful leader is Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party chief and daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, the country's most powerful prime minister ever. Indians also have traditionally loved Republicans. So while Ms Palin's journey to India may never be fully explained - unless she comes clean to the Delhi glitterati in audience on Saturday night - it will possibly end up provoking a lot of interest. To mop up that kind of attention in the world's largest democracy cannot be a bad thing for any aspiring US presidential candidate.

So, where is the half-term governor going after she is done with India?

After the address, Ms. Palin will travel to Tel Aviv, where she will hold a private meeting with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu on Monday before heading back for another paid speech in Florida on Wednesday.
In a statement on her Web site Thursday, Ms. Palin said the Israel visit was part of an effort on her part to discuss the political change in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere. Ms. Palin is traveling with her husband, Todd, and a small number of staff members.
“I’m thankful to be able to travel to Israel on my way back to the U.S.,” Ms. Palin said. “As the world confronts sweeping changes and new realities, I look forward to meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the key issues facing his country, our ally Israel.”

I guess it is Sarah Palin's version of Eat, Pray, Puke Eat, Love, Pray

Eat Eat Eat (Eat Pray Love parody) - watch more funny videos

Let's howl at the super-sized moon on Saturday

Well, maybe not here in my part of the world where the rains have been soaking through and through; but, then, this is Oregon!

Apparently our moon will come closest to us--yes, really up close and personal.

An exceptional celestial treat is in store for sky gazers as ‘supermoon’, the biggest and brightest full moon of the year which will be closest to Earth in 18 years, will be seen in the night sky on Saturday.

“The ‘supermoon’ will be closest to the Earth in 18 years tomorrow and will appear to be the biggest and brightest of 2011, Director of Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) C.B. Devgun said on Friday.

Saturday’s full moon will be around 10 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter as compared to other full moons during the year, he said.

The term ‘Supermoon’ was first coined by Astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979. According to him, it is a situation when the moon is slightly closer to the Earth in its orbit than average, which is 90 per cent or more of its closest orbit, and the moon is a full or new moon.

Why does the size of the moon increase like this?

because the size of the moon's orbit varies slightly, each perigee is not always the same distance away from Earth. Friday's supermoon will be just 221,566 miles (356,577 kilometers) away from Earth. The last time the full moon approached so close to Earth was in 1993, according to NASA.

However, ...

Though the supermoon will be about 20 percent brighter and 15 percent bigger than a regular full moon, the visual effect may be subtle, added Anthony Cook, astronomical observer for the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
"I doubt that most people will notice anything unusual about this full moon," Cook said.
"Because the total amount of light is a little greater, the biggest effect will be on the illumination of the ground—but not enough to be very noticeable to the casual observer."

Naturally, there are people ready to link the super-moon to the catastrophic tsunami in Japan.  That kind of talk is the real March Madness!

WikiLeaks: the aftershocks now in India

Here in the US, where yesterday's news becomes staler than the stalest in a context of the 24x7 news cycle, and when Japan and the Middle East have overwhelmed us, and rightly so, it is not any surprise that WikiLeaks barely registers a blip anymore on our radars.  Thus, there is pretty much no ripples from the news of the unusual and cruel treatment of the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning, and the recent resignation of the State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, over this matter.

But, the effect of WikiLeaks is now being felt big time all the way across in India.

The Hindu has a special on the Indian connections to WikiLeaks, and India Today lists "eight bombs" of which the #1 is:

Wikibomb 1: Congress bought MPs for 2008 trust vote.
US cable suggests MPs from Ajit Singh's RLD were paid Rs. 10 crore each by the Congress during the 2008 trust vote.

To the common man (aam aadmi) in India, politicians being bribed isn't exactly news.  It is a given that it is a rare exception when a politician is considered "clean."  What is new then?  Phenomenal evidence, from information leaked by outsiders who have no personal investment in the outcomes.  The Hindu reports:

In a cable, dated July 17, 2008, sent to the State Department (162458: secret), accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks, U.S. Charge d'Affaires Steven White wrote about a visit the Embassy's Political Counselor paid to Satish Sharma, who is described as “a Congress Party MP in the Rajya Sabha ... and a close associate of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi considered to be a very close family friend of Sonia Gandhi.”

Mr. Sharma told the U.S. diplomat that he and others in the party were working hard to ensure the government won the confidence vote on July 22. After describing the approaches the Congress leader said had been made to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Akali Dal, Mr. White drops a bombshell of a revelation:

“Sharma's political aide Nachiketa Kapur mentioned to an Embassy staff member in an aside on July 16 that Ajit Singh's RLD had been paid Rupees 10 crore (about $2.5 million) for each of their four MPs to support the government. Kapur mentioned that money was not an issue at all, but the crucial thing was to ensure that those who took the money would vote for the government.”

Lest this should be construed by the visiting diplomats as an empty boast, Mr. Sharma's aide put his money where his mouth was: “Kapur showed the Embassy employee two chests containing cash and said that around Rupees 50-60 crore (about $25 million) was lying around the house for use as pay-offs.”

Well, the ruling government won the crucial confidence vote, and the coalition (UPA) continues in power even now.  As one can imagine, the opposition parties are trying their best to seize the opportunity, in the grand traditions of carpe diem.  Again, The Hindu:

The Opposition sought to mount pressure on the government outside Parliament too. At separate press conferences, both the National Democratic Alliance and the Left parties said that Indian democracy had been “maligned” and demanded the immediate resignation of the government.

Not that the politicians from the opposing camp are saints!  But, all these make for interesting political theatre, while the common man is screwed by the corrupt politicians, rising food prices, ....

So, even otherwise, how does India compare with other countries when it comes to corruption?  According to Transparency International, India ranks at # 87 out of the 178 countries analyzed.  Guess who else shares that same ranking?  Albania, Jamaica, Liberia.  Excellent company, eh!

The best caricature, yet, of Gaddafi versus Obama

‘The sari-clad golfers of Madras'

Excerpt from "Memories of Madras" at The Hindu:

SUMATHI RAGHUNATHAN: Born in 1935, she played golf in the 1970s and 1980s with distinction, winning The Addicts — an all-India tournament — one year and finishing runner-up in another. In addition, she has won many club-level golf tournaments.

The Saudi-backed violence in Bahrain

In the bad old days, before Twitter and YouTube and the internet itself, we were a lot insulated from the brutal details of dictatorships.  News reports left them to our imaginations.
But, now, we get a real feel for how dictatorship is enforced. (ht: Sullivan and Kristof)

Warning:
DO NOT click on play in the following videos, unless you know you can handle the reality of graphic violence. 
I could barely watch the first few seconds of the second video, which is a short one to begin with, before I stopped it and stepped away to clear my head and eyes.


I really mean that warning for the following one:


The US now reaches yet another critical test: should we oppose the Saudis and the Bahraini king, stay silent, or support the people who are protesting in order to gain freedom?

Or, let us suppose that the protesters in Bahrain as us the same question that President Bush asked the rest of the world: "are you with us, or against us?" ....

Meanwhile, in Libya, whose people we in the US and in Western Europe let down in an awful manner, well, Gaddafi is now feeling so strengthened that his son brags that it will all be over in 48 hours, and any no-fly zone will be too late:

"Military operations are over. Within 48 hours everything will be finished. Our forces are almost in Benghazi. Whatever the decision, it will be too late."

What a tragic mess that the US and the West made out of the rebellion against a mad dog dictator :(  It was one awful sin of omission.  As the Telegraph put it:

The imperious silence emanating from the White House as the turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East intensifies is exacting a high price. For the better part of a month, President Obama has shown himself to be a master of gnomic inaction.

How did this guy go from those big speeches in Germany and Cairo, to such a wimp?  "A man or a mouse?," as the old question goes!  The Telegraph adds:

If America is not prepared to support its friends, they will increasingly be forced to look after themselves. For example, Bahrain may not have felt compelled to seek military aid from Saudi Arabia if Washington had been more supportive of its clumsy attempts to introduce democracy. Certainly, the Saudi intervention in support of Bahrain's Sunni ruling family can hardly be said to be in the West's interests, as it runs the risk of further antagonising the kingdom's majority Shia population. If Iran, which regards itself as the Shias' main protector, were to respond on their behalf, the crisis could quickly escalate into open hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia, thereby closing the Gulf and cutting off the West's vital oil supplies. At that point, the American president would have no alternative but to intervene

If we intervened only at that late a time, then we will end up delivering convincing proof to the entire world that the only American interest in that part of the world is in the millions of barrels of petroleum that lies beneath the sands.

It is not "higher education" anymore but "lower education"

I wonder if I had idealized higher education so much so that it is that kind of idealization that results in an utter disappointment with its current state.  If only I had not worked myself to hallucinating images of intellectual curiosities in well defined places!

The latest was when I read about "live sex act" in a class at Northwestern.  I was reminded of a similarly bizarre class years ago becoming a controversial news item back in California.  (I think it was Berkeley that made news at that time.)  But then often one tends to dismiss anything out of the ordinary happening in California as, well, Californian.  But, at Northwestern?

Joseph Epstein writes in this context that:

One of the most important things that departed from higher education with the old ideal of the university was intellectual authority. One of the first changes I noticed from my own undergraduate education when I began teaching at Northwestern—and this is certainly not true of Northwestern alone—was all the junky subject matter being taught. Courses in science fiction, in the movies, in contemporary or near contemporary writers already consigned to the third class ... Who is to say that the films of Steven Spielberg are less important than the plays of Shakespeare, or for that matter that Shakespeare himself wasn’t gay and a running dog of capitalism into the bargain?

Joseph Epstein is a familiar name to me because of the number of years he spent editing the American Scholar.  It was one of my favorite publications of the few that my university library had on its display shelf.  I still recall the essay there by a long-time friend of Scooter Libby after Libby's problems with the law that arose from his work for Dick Cheney during those dark ages when Cheney was the vice president.  A Chinese parable that the author discusses there has become a valuable guiding metaphor in my own life.  Another piece was an excellent essay about "Teaching the N-word" ... An interesting sidebar story all by itself--my university library no longer has the publication on its shelf.  I suppose the subscription to the physical copies, and perhaps the electronic version too, have been discontinued.  Meanwhile, there are all kinds of trashy magazines and third-rate journals that are proudly displayed.  

I suppose even the absence of the American Scholar from our shelves is an indicator of the depths to which higher education has fallen.  No wonder that Epstein calls it "lower education" ....I wish he had authored it at some other publication instead of the atrocious propaganda pages of the ideologues who brought upon the country and the world the horrific war in Iraq.

Oh well, whatever happened to the university as the intellectual authority?  When did they begin to allow fakes like me into their campuses?

The tsunami aftermath ...

I can't imagine where one would even begin given the scenes like the one below ... so, a couple of days ago, I did the only thing possible--left it to the Red Cross to figure it for me through my contribution.

(The caption at the source: "Rescue workers stand on destroyed buildings in the ruins of Miyako city")

Nuclear power, radiation, science, and ... Thomas Kuhn

With all the hyper-attention on the nuclear crisis in Japan, as if the problems of the millions of survivors do not matter at all, it was tragically farcical to read about the sales of iodine tablets here in Eugene, Oregon, which is thousands of miles away from Japan.  All the assurances from scientists and public health authorities:

[Haven't] stopped people from exhausting the supply of potassium iodine tablets at local drug and natural foods stores, however. The run began on Saturday, a day after a deadly earthquake and tsunami struck Japan and severely damaged three reactors at a nuclear energy plant.

Janell Davis, the vitamin manager for Sundance Natural Foods, said the store’s small supply of tablets was gone by Saturday afternoon. A spokeswoman at The Kiva said their supply is gone as well.

Will be funny, if it weren't true!

According to Jerrold Bushberg, a medical physicist at UC Davis:

Americans don't have a particularly good grasp of the science of radiation and tend to over-exaggerate the risks. ...

"I think anything that has radiation associated with it conjures up in people's mind -- either consciously or subconsciously -- fears of everything from nuclear weapons and nuclear reactor accidents like Chernerbol," he said.

It is not merely the lack of an understanding of science.  Hey, we can't know it all, and everyday of my existence is nothing but experiences revealing my ignorance.  But, it is the very questioning of science itself, an a large-scale denouncing of science that worries me.  So, can we blame it on anybody?

The devaluation of scientific truth cannot be laid on Kuhn’s doorstep, but he shares some responsibility for it.

Thus writes Errol Morris in the NY Times.  It is a fantastic series in five parts that the filmmaker Errol Morris has about Thomas Kuhn and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Actually, he offers a lot more than that, and the entire series is a wonderful example of what liberal education can provide.  A kind of education that we promise a lot but practice the least.  But, I digress ...

Perhaps it was not Kuhn's explicit agenda to provide a relativistic framework to the way we understand anything and everything in the intellectual world, but his work did provide one solid argument for the anything goes attitude of postmodernism and, along with that, the questioning of facts and truth in science.

What exactly is the science behind radiation from the damaged nuclear reactors?  I loved this jargon-free explanation of how a nuclear power generation system works, and what caused the failures, and particularly the following sentence:

It is important to note that many of these fission products decay (produce heat) extremely quickly, and become harmless by the time you spell “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E.”

Worriers about radiation exposure need to read this

More nuclear power on the way: It's the energy, stupid!

As I noted a couple of months ago, India is pressing ahead with its plans for a nuclear power plant complex that after completion will be the largest of the kind in the world.  Of course, the reason for this is simple: it is an energy-deprived population that is all of a sudden gearing up for a tremendous growth in demand, which is what I blogged about yesterday.  It is a similar story in China, too.  As today's NY Times reports,

while acknowledging the need for safety, they say their unmet energy needs give them little choice but to continue investing in nuclear power.
“Ours is a very power-hungry country,“ Srikumar Banerjee, the chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, said during a news conference Monday in Mumbai. Nearly 40 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people do not have regular access to electricity, Mr. Banerjee said. “It is essential for us to have further electricity generation.“
And in China, which has the world’s most ambitious nuclear expansion plans, a vice minister of environment, Zhang Lijun, said on Saturday that Japan’s difficulties would not deter his nation’s nuclear rollout.

I hope the officials in India and China are closely watching these developments, because one of the many issues with, for instance, with the proposed nucler power generation complex in Jaitapur in India is the fact that it will be located in a seismic zone.  Though not as active as the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Indian Subcontinent experiences earthquakes, the worst of all in recent times was the quake in Pakistani Kashmir.  China is not immune from shakes either. 

One of the interesting ways in which India is going after its nuclear power program is this: the country:

makes nuclear power plant suppliers, not just operators, liable if accidents occur.
Despite American pressure to change that provision, the Japan disaster could encourage Indian legislators to keep it in place.
G.E. and Westinghouse have said they will stay out of the Indian nuclear market unless the country changes its liability law to conform with international standards.

Interesting how the American suppliers didn't want to play by those stricter liability rules!

Anyway, back to the energy issue itself.  I hope the  Fukushima nuclear incident will be a serious wake up call on the growing energy demands and the limitations related to fossil fuels.  We ought to have woken up to this back in the oil-shock years betwen 1973 and 1981.  We didn't.  We didn't even bother to talk about energy in the aftermath of 9/11.  We simply dusted off the BP oil spill nightmare last year.  And, yet again, I am afraid that we will ignore the energy question all together.

It is not whether or not we are for nuclear power that ought to be the discussion for the moment.  To paraphrase that famous political slogan from years ago, it's the energy, stupid!

My worry is about the cooling pools for spent fuels:

The pools are a worry at the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant because at least two of the reactors have lost their roofs in explosions, exposing the spent fuel pools to the atmosphere. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.
If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools do indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.
“It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked as an instructor on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”
A spokesman for the Japanese company that runs the stricken reactors said in an interview on Monday that the spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants had been left uncooled since shortly after the quake.

The exaggeration of Fukushima: I hate fossil fuels more

Last spring/summer, I blogged, a lot, about the big news story at that time--the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Even then, I noted in one post that our demand for energy means that, given the available technology, there will always be environmental impacts associated with how get that energy:

there are no technical answers to those challenges--as in technical answers for zero impacts.  Which is why then we resolve those trade-offs in the political domain. 

I am reminded of these trade-offs as I follow the Fukushima nuclear power story, about the potential for a partial or complete meltdown in one, two, or even three reactors there, out of the six.

Like everybody else, I am no fan of the radiation hazards and the waste issues that always worry us when it comes to generating electricity from nuclear reactions.  But then we so easily tend to ignore the hazards associated with coal, petroleum and natural gas, which, globally, are the dominant sources of power generation.

I don't suppose we have forgotten already the massive spills in the Gulf.  The explosion that killed the workers on that offshore platform.  Images of the ever spreading oil, and birds trapped to their death.  And, this was not even a natural disaster.

And that was merely one oil spill.  There are a lot worse ongoing horror stories in the oil-rich delta areas of Nigeria, in the ecologically sensitive areas of Ecuador, ... one could list them forever.

Coal is no easy matter either.  As I routinely remind students, every step along the process of electricity from coal has horrible impacts on humans, other life forms, and the physical environment.  Surely we haven't forgotten the other gripping story from last spring--the Massey Coal mine accident that killed 29 miners.  Again, this is merely one of many accidents worldwide.  Strip mining and mountaintop removal is are no advantages either.

Yet, for some reason, we time and again overlook all the complications related to fossil fuels, and focus exclusively on nuclear power.

I was afraid that I am in some echo chamber happily listening to my own voice on this matter and, therefore, started looking around.  Boy do I have some good company!

William Saletan expresses similar observations, and advises not to exaggerate the Fukushima crisis:

In advanced countries like Japan and the United States, nuclear plants are built to standards no drilling rig can touch. If a sensor, cable, or power source fails, another sensor, cable, or power source is available. Containers of steel or concrete envelop the reactors to prevent massive radiation leaks. Chernobyl didn't have such a container. Three Mile Island did. That's why Three Mile Island produced no uncontrolled leakage or injuries.

Saletan provides this comparative statistic:

If Japan, the United States, or Europe retreats from nuclear power in the face of the current panic, the most likely alternative energy source is fossil fuel. And by any measure, fossil fuel is more dangerous. The sole fatal nuclear power accident of the last 40 years, Chernobyl, directly killed 31 people. By comparison, Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute calculates that from 1969 to 2000, more than 20,000 people died in severe accidents in the oil supply chain. More than 15,000 people died in severe accidents in the coal supply chain—11,000 in China alone. The rate of direct fatalities per unit of energy production is 18 times worse for oil than it is for nuclear power.

Of course, it doesn't mean that we can overlook the nuclear crisis.  We need to, and will, learn from this and design additional safety features that nature will later challenge us.  But, we need to keep the destruction to life and property in perspective.  Not too far away from Fukushima was the refinery that was up in flames, and as of the latest reports those fires have not been completely extinguished.  But, above all, we need to place all this against the damage to life and property from the earthquake and tsunami, which were the causes for the nuclear crisis too.  Estimates are that the tally of the dead might exceed 10,000 and many times more rendered homeless.  Spiked tackles this line of thinking:

In contrast to the devastation across Japan, however, the accident has – at the time of writing – so far caused only 15 injuries, just one of which appears to be serious, and a handful of suspected cases of exposure to radiation, none of which appear to be serious. So why is there such a preoccupation with the nuclear power plant? 

Yeah, why such a preoccupation?  Spiked doesn't have a convincing answer, but concludes on a strong note:

it should be pointed out that earthquakes and tsunamis cause much greater problems for humans than nuclear power ever has. Furthermore, where nuclear power is a possibility ie, in wealthy economies, the effect of earthquakes and tsunamis is mitigated, and their consequences more easily ameliorated than in poorer regions. The 2004 Asian tsunami, and the earthquake in Haiti last year, were smaller in magnitude than last Friday’s events, but came at a much higher human cost than in Japan. Poverty, and the earth’s natural forces, are far more dangerous than our attempts to protect ourselves from them.

This affluence has saved lots of lives in Japan.  In contrast to the shakes in Haiti, Pakistan, China, the shaking itself did not kill comparable numbers in Japan because the wealth makes possible better and safer structures.  Even the NY Times has picked up on it:

Japan has gone much further than the United States in outfitting new buildings with advanced devices called base isolation pads and energy dissipation units to dampen the ground’s shaking during an earthquake.
The isolation devices are essentially giant rubber-and-steel pads that are installed at the very bottom of the excavation for a building, which then simply sits on top of the pads. The dissipation units are built into a building’s structural skeleton. They are hydraulic cylinders that elongate and contract as the building sways, sapping the motion of energy. ...
the United States standard is focused on preventing collapse, while in Japan — with many more earthquakes — the goal is to prevent any major damage to the buildings because of the swaying.
New apartment and office developments in Japan flaunt their seismic resistance as a marketing technique, a fact that has accelerated the use of the latest technologies

If you want to get an idea of how much such advanced engineering works, watch the skyscraper sway like a pendulum in the video below:



My point is this: it is easy to worry about the problems related to nuclear energy, and we have to be worried.  But, by focusing exclusively on this, we let the fossil fuel problems slide by as if they don't matter at all, and in reality they are worse.  But, more than anything else, all these mean that we are refusing to recognize the most basic issue: we--across the planet--have enormous demand for energy, and that demand is increasing rapidly.  What alternatives do we have right now for that huge demand for energy?

Profound proverb for the day ... for life ...

 

What a profound statement that is! 

Music video post-storm: Here comes the Sun

It was one heck of a windy and rainy yesterday.  It was pleasant and a tad sunny, and yet far into the horizon the dark clouds were obvious.  Soon the wind and the rain came and they seemed as if they were pissed off at everything.  Boy, the fury!  If thirty- to forty-mile per hour winds are like this, I cannot begin to imagine how a category-five hurricane will be like, and don't want to experience one either.

It is now the morning after the storm, and the Sun is struggling to peek through.  More rain has been forecast for the next couple of days.  But, for now, Here Comes the Sun.



I hope a pleasant Sun will appear soon over the Land of the Rising Sun too.  What a tragedy that one is!  Puts in perspective the literal and metaphorical storms that I have experienced here.

Naima: John Coltrane and Hisham Matar

Earlier, I noted about Hisham Matar's short story, Naima, which was featured in the New Yorker.  It was a coincidence that his story was published about the time that protests began in Egypt, and later in Libya as well.

It all came together so well that it became a part of the final project assignment for one of my classes.  But, what I didn't know then was that one of John Coltrane's pieces is titled Naima.  I suppose it is yet another measure of how music-challenged I am!

Of course, to the nerd in me, the immediately nagging question was this: what is up with Coltrane titling it Naima?  According to Wikipedia, he named the composition after his wife, Juanita Naima Grubbs.

So, now I am all the more curious: where from did Coltrane's wife get the name Naima?  The all-knowing Wikipedia draws a blank!

The baby names website notes that Naima is a name of Arabic origin, and means to be contented.  Even as I read that, I was thinking, "shouldn't it be "to be content" and not "to be contented" ...?"  I hope a grammarian can clear this up!  (editor: what makes you think that anybody reads this blog?  Awshutupalready, we have traffic data!) 

Anyway, perhaps it is with this meaning in mind that Matar named that character Naima?

More graduate school stuff: "bad project"

Doctoral research and then years as postdoc ... Yet, it is the innate desire for knowledge that drives most students into research in the sciences.  And, some of them have a good sense of humor too, as in this "Lady Gaga" video :)



But, at some point do we need to worry that perhaps we are generating way too many PhDs that the employment market cannot accommodate, which then drives down the earnings for these people who have spent many of their young and productive years locked up in research labs?

How bad, or good, are our universities?

I am not so much impressed by the faults and failings of the university—they are real enough, but largely the product of frightening trends toward inequality in American society that the universities can combat only to a limited degree. It’s more the survival of the university that amazes and concerns me. It’s one of the best things we’ve got, and at times—as when reading these books—it almost seems to me better than what we deserve.

That is an excerpt from this essay in the NY Review of Books, which looks at four recent books on the state of American higher education.  The author, an Ivy Leaguer for decades, isn't impressed with most of the criticism, including from Hacker and Dreifus, whose book highlighted the university where I work as one of the best returns on the investment.

The author is a tad unfair when he writes

Universities are not so isolated from the tragic past, but they still make a claim to speak with eloquence across the centuries. They often fail, they need reform and course correction, but they are not, at their best, merely venal and self-serving. They deserve better critics than they have got at present.

Unfair to the critics.  And unfair to how much in reality universities have indeed become venal and self-serving.

He does have a great point in noting about the likes of the Ivies:

reminds me of the time I lived in rural Virginia and drove some distance on Sundays to buy The New York Times: the storekeeper would squint at me as I handed over my $5.00 and declare, “‘T’ain’t worth it.” While he was probably right about the Sunday Times, I doubt that many students (or their parents) will really pass up admission to the Golden Dozen for a place at Ole Miss. For both the wrong reasons and the right reasons, America’s elite colleges will continue to be coveted (Harvard just reported a record 35,000 applications for its next freshman class).

Critiquing the likes of Harvard is not only a wasteful exercise, but incorrect too.  Every time I go to a conference, or watch an interview on C-Span/BookTV, I can see so easily the phenomenal game that the Ivy scholars bring to the discussions.  Even if those faculty are rarely around thanks to sabbaticals and other deals (which Hacker & Dreifus, and Taylor write a lot about) they make it possible for the talented and the driven to aggregate at a place called the university.  There are plenty of advantages in such agglomeration, infinitely above and beyond a simple diploma. 

If I had a son or daughter who is college-ready, then of course I would want that child to attend the best possible university based on this academic quality and not based on any cost-benefit analysis.  So, yes, I agree with the author that Ole Miss can't stand a chance against the Ivies.

But, therein lies the issue--an Ole Miss or my own university wasn't set up to become an alternative to Harvard!  These other institutions have missions that are distinct from those of a Harvard or Stanford.  But, even these universities think and work as if they are nothing but a Harvard-lite.  The focus on "research" at third-rung universities is a classic example--most of the research publications that faculty from third-tier universities are in third and fourth rate journals, which seem to have brought into existence only to serve as an outlet for the great pretenders.

It is the mission creep that is awful, and this occurs mostly at public institutions, whether they are community colleges or state universities.  Community colleges, for instance, have gotten to be very expensive because for the past couple of decades they have been hiring faculty with doctorates and awarding them additional pay for that unnecessary qualification.  Should we wonder why they have become expensive then?  It is like going to a heart specialist to get treatment for a common cold!

It is also this mission creep that Hacker and Dreifus point out, though they could have been a lot more focused on this argument.  The proliferation of academic majors and programs at smaller universities like mine, as if we are a Harvard with the capabilities to offer such a vast array of courses and programs is mission creep that arose out of trying to pretend that we are Ivies.