Bond. From the old to Skyfall. Diamonds Are Forever

It came sooner than expected.  No, please check your sexual interpretations at the door.  I watched the second in my James Bond collection.

Diamonds Are Forever.

I had forgotten a lot about this movie.  I had a hazy recollection of the bad guy, and I recalled something about a lunar vehicle.  I wondered whether I was confusing the plot, however weak and contorted and unbelievable it might be as in any Bond movie, with Moonraker, which I knew had Roger Moore and not Sean Connery.  So, hey, not a bad idea, after all, to build some new synapses.  Maybe future research will show us that watching 007 in action is a good way to defer dementia!

The movie was way less cheesier than Goldfinger.  I suppose the franchise was maturing in every possible aspect.  Scenes did not flash and go but were lengthy for a slower narration.  The movie was much better than how I had remembered.

I had completely forgotten, though, that the movie pretty much unfolds in Las Vegas.  And, my, what a difference from the Vegas of today.

Back when I lived in California, a colleague, Peter, who was going through a career crisis of his own, decided to take the tests in order to prepare himself as a substitute high school teacher.  (He later ditched any plans to switch his career.)  After taking the test, he said that one part included writing an essay in response to a prompt on where a foreigner visiting the US for the first time ought to be taken to for a unique experience.  Peter wrote about Las Vegas.

I agreed with him. The city is one of a kind.  Thankfully, Vegas is one of a kind.  Too many of that will be the ruin of human civilization!

I, too, have done that.  Once, we took two visiting Swedish students to Vegas.  They couldn't put away their cameras and were clicking, clicking, and clicking.  This was back in the days before digital cameras, and when film rolls and developing and printing made that awfully expensive.  They couldn't care about the expense.

But, the Vegas that the Swedes observed and enjoyed was different--very different--from the city in Diamonds Are Forever.  Here is one example from the movie:

The Vegas metropolitan area is anything but such open space anymore.  And, a much more important one: The Dunes was gone a long time ago.  It has been replaced on that spot along the fabled strip by a brand new Bellagio.  A part of the constant remaking of the city, exemplifying the constant creative destruction that is a distinguishing trait in capitalism.

Of course, like any decent Bond movie, this too had a car chase scene. It was quite a good car chase, actually.  Not bad at all, especially when we place it in the context of more than forty years ago.

The streets of Vegas were such a contrast to the contemporary frontages of casinos and resorts; here is a frame from the movie:

Nope. Doesn't look anything like this. The last time I was there was, ironically, to attend a conference.  Crazily enough, the people at the Association of American Geographers had selected Vegas for the annual meeting.  It was bizarre to walk past slot machines and then go sit down for academic conversations.  It was interesting to note that the one-armed-bandits had been replaced by push buttons.  That was four years ago; I wonder how much things have changed since then.

The Bond Girl was so blah.  I mean blaaaah!  Such a downer.  How could they have messed up with that!  She was unimpressive, both in her looks and demeanor, and with whatever little she had to contribute to the story.  No Honey Rider was this Tiffany Case.

Seriously, Tiffany Case?  So, un-creative!  So, un-Bond-Girl like :(

Until the next one ...

In energy, too, it’s the water

Over spring break, I did what university faculty members are notorious for. I attended an academic conference in Las Vegas — and got more depressed about the state of the world!

At the opening plenary session, the speakers talked about the increasing problems with water in the American Southwest, which might also be related to systematic changes in worldwide precipitation patterns. One piece of local data: Water levels in Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, are down to 48 percent of capacity.

So the following day I headed out to Hoover Dam — consistent with the teacher in me who favors field trips as key learning exercises. My previous visit there was more than 10 years ago, when my parents visited us from India. My father had studied about Hoover Dam in his civil engineering program, and I recalled his eager beaver excitement when we were there.

This time around, the low water level was obvious. The bathtub rings above the water’s surface looked like nasty scars. To see the conditions in person was way more real and worrisome than it was when I listened to the speakers while comfortably perched in the conference hall.

Tourists rushed past me as I was parked overlooking the dam, and I wondered how the changing water and drought conditions around the world might affect electricity generation. We tend to forget that even coal-fired power stations need a lot of water; globally, about 45 percent of electricity comes from coal.

I grew up in an industrial company town — Neyveli — in southern India, where the principal activity is to generate about 2,500 megawatts of electricity by firing up the lignite mined there. Lignite, a variety of coal, has a low energy content compared to more energy packed varieties like bituminous or anthracite.

Generating power from lignite requires water every step along the way — which, in Neyveli, came from underground. The area was fortunate to have extensive aquifers, naturally recharged by the approximately 40 inches of monsoon rains every year. However, many engineers, including my father, were and are worried that continued large-scale use of groundwater might catalyze sea water intrusion — after all, the sea is barely 20 miles away.

Thus, strange as it was to think about how water shortages might affect coal-fired power generation while standing atop Hoover Dam, it was more worrying to think about the following confluence of factors:

Coal is being used extensively worldwide as a source of energy. In India and China, 70 percent to 80 percent of electricity is coal-based.

Burning coal is a major source of carbon dioxide, an agent for global warming and climate change.

Huge quantities of water, often groundwater, are needed to sustain coal-based power generation.

Water is absolutely necessary for life on this planet, and there are enough data trends to justify worry about the future availability of water — especially groundwater.

Therefore, instead of urging countries, particularly India and China, to stop using coal, perhaps we ought to focus on how to a large extent it is all about water. Many parts of India, China and other countries have low levels per capita of available water. For instance, while the United States has about 1,600 cubic meters of water per person, the average in China is about 400 cubic meters, and even less in India. This immensely valuable resource can be put to better uses than in coal-fired power plants.

This is but another incentive for us to explore alternative energy sources that do not impose additional demands on water, which will then also mean lesser reliance on coal. Water-constrained countries such as China, India and Israel ought to encourage innovation on this urgent issue.

At the same time, we here in the United States have a wonderful opportunity to use our research and development infrastructure to develop feasible and economical approaches that will ease the pressure on water resources, and thereby help the world.

After all, to borrow a water metaphor, we sink or sail together!

For The Register-Guard
Posted to Web: Sunday, Apr 5, 2009 04:29PM
Appeared in print: Monday, Apr 6, 2009, page A7

Las Vegas now #2 to Macau!

The Pearl River Delta and its neighborhood are THE happening places now. Hong Kong, Shenzen, and Macau. What an economic triangle! Macau has now officially displaced Vegas the gambling capital of the world.

Amazing.

Its location offers a distinct advantage over Vegas:

Macau airport is operating at nearly double its capacity, but with 2.2 billion
people living within five hours' flying time, it's a good bet that the number
will soon double again. Construction on a bridge linking Hong Kong, Macau and
Zhuhai in southern China is scheduled to begin soon. Work has begun to expand
Macau's northern border gate to accommodate 500,000 visitors a day.

James Fallows had a similar narrative in The Atlantic a year ago. I use that multimedia piece in my classes. Of course, my students don't seem to be as impressed with the Macau story as I am :-)