Topic Tuesday #63 2013/10/01 - "Government Zombies: Shutdown Victims"

Topic Tuesday #63 2013/10/01 - "Government Zombies: Shutdown Aftermath"

The men and women on capitol hill have had a tiff, and can't agree on a budget. The consequence is not just a sequester, but a full stop. A shutdown of government for the first time in 17 years.
I'm not going to get into the politics of WHY, but what there is to deal with now.
There are a few websites that have put things very well, and I must refer you to them, as I am going to borrow heavily from them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/30/absolutely-everything-you-need-to-know-about-how-the-government-shutdown-will-work/?tid=pm_business_pop
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4789162/shutdown-us-2013-nasa-epa-hhs

So what has happened? 

"Short answer: There are wide swaths of the federal government that need to be funded each year in order to operate. If Congress can't agree on how to fund them, they have to close down. And, right now, Congress can't agree on how to fund them." - Wonkblog

No budget was passed. The House adjourned at 12:20 AM and will reconvene at 9:30 AM.

Monday a resolution was signed to allow our service men and women to continue to get a paycheck http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/house-gop-moves-to-protect-military-pay-in-a-shutdown-97508.html.

As of midnight the White House Office of Management and Budget issued this memo, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/?p=63520&preview=true shutting down government agencies and sending non-exempt (non essential) personnel home after a half day of getting things wrapped up to the best of their ability. The essential workers continue working, without pay. Civilian essential employees may not get a paycheck during the shutdown. They will, however, receive retroactive pay if and when Congress decides to fund the government again. Non-Exempt, may not get retroactive pay, that is up to the House.

Which parts of government stay open?

• There are a whole bunch of key government functions that carry on during a shutdown, including anything related to national security, public safety, or programs written into permanent law (like Social Security). Here's a partial list:
• - Any employee or office that "provides for the national security, including the conduct of foreign relations essential to the national security or the safety of life and property." That means the U.S. military will keep operating, for one. So will embassies abroad.
• - Any employee who conducts "essential activities to the extent that they protect life and property." So, for example: Air traffic control stays open. So does all emergency medical care, food-safety inspections, border patrol, federal prisons, most law enforcement, emergency and disaster assistance, overseeing the banking system, operating the power grid, and guarding federal property.
• - Agencies have to keep sending out benefits and operating programs that are written into permanent law or get multi-year funding. That means sending out Social Security checks and providing certain types of veterans' benefits.
• - All agencies with independent sources of funding remain open, including the U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Reserve.
• - Members of Congress can also stick around, since their pay is written into permanent law. However, many congressional staffers may not get paid without specific appropriations. Many White House employees may also have to go without pay.

So which parts of government actually shut down?

• "Everything else, basically. It's a fairly long list, and you can check out in detail which activities the agencies are planning to halt in these contingency plans posted by each agency. Here are a few select examples:
• Health: The National Institutes of Health will stop accepting new patients for clinical research and stop answering hotline calls about medial questions. The Centers for Disease Control will have a "significantly reduced capacity to respond to outbreak investigations."
• Housing: The Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be able to provide local housing authorities with additional money for housing vouchers. The nation's 3,300 public housing authorities will not receive payments, although most of these agencies, however, have funds to provide rental assistance through October.
• Immigration: The Department of Homeland Security will no longer operate its E-Verify program, which means that businesses will not be able to check on the legal immigration status of prospective employees during the shutdown.
• Law enforcement: Although agencies like the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency will continue their operations, the Justice Department will suspend many civil cases.
• Parks and museums: The National Park Service will close more than 350 national parks and museums, including Yosemite National Park in California, Alcatraz in San Francisco, and the Statue of Liberty in New York. Last time this happened in 1995-1996, some 7 million visitors were turned away. (One big exception was the south rim of the Grand Canyon, which stayed open only because Arizona agreed to pick up the tab.)
• Regulatory agencies: The Environmental Protection Agency will close down almost entirely during a shutdown, save for operations around Superfund cites. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will also shut down. A few financial regulators, however, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, will remain open.
• (Small parts of) Social Security: The Social Security Administration will keep on enough employees to make sure the checks keep going out. But the agency won't have enough staff to do things like help recipients replace their benefit cards or schedule new hearings for disability cases.
• Visas and passports: The State Department says it will keep most consulates and embassies open this time around, although some passport and visa processing could be interrupted. (For instance, "if a passport agency is located in a government building affected by a lapse in appropriations, the facility may become unsupported.")
• During the previous shutdown in 1995-1996, around 20,000 to 30,000 applications from foreigners for visas went unprocessed each day. It's unclear how many might be affected this time around.*
• Veterans: Some key benefits will continue and the VA hospitals will remained open. But many services will be disrupted. The Veterans Benefits Administration will be unable to process education and rehabilitation benefits. The Board of Veterans' Appeals will be unable to hold hearings.
• Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has a list of other possible effects of a shutdown. Funds to help states administer unemployment benefits could get disrupted, IRS tax-refund processing for certain returns would be suspended, new home-loan guarantees could cease, farm loans and payments would stop, and Small Business Administration approval of business loan guarantees and direct loans would likely cease.
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will see over 90 percent of its civilian workforce be immediately furloughed, 17,701 out of 18,250 total employees, according to the shutdown plan the agency filed last week. As President Obama put it in an emergency address last night, "NASA will shut down almost entirely, but Mission Control will remain open to support the astronauts serving on the Space Station."

AND SO MUCH MORE....

Here's the thing that will stick in the craw of many. Obamacare lives. 

"As Sarah Kliff has explained, the key parts of Obamacare rely on mandatory spending that isn't affected by a shutdown. "That includes the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges, where uninsured people will be able to shop for coverage. The Medicaid expansion is funded with mandatory funding, as are the billions in federal tax credits to help with purchasing coverage."
That means uninsured Americans will be able to start shopping for plans when the exchanges launch Oct. 1, although there are likely to be some glitches."

This is not the Debt Ceiling Crisis, that happens later, between 10/18/13 and 11/05/13
The longest shutdown was 21 days. Hopefully the folks in the clean pressed suits can get their heads out of... and get them together to make good choices. 
Congress needs to pass a bill (or bills) to fund the government, and the White House has to sign them. They can do this at any time. Or they can sit at home and keep the government closed. Nothing requires them to do anything. It depends what sort of political pressure they're facing.

Topic Tuesday #50 2013/07/02 - "CHARGE!!!"

Topic Tuesday #50 2013/07/02 - "CHARGE!!!"

CHARGing you batteries is not the easiest thing to do some days. It gets especially difficult when you do something unusual. For instance you may have seen the MIT/Wilson Solar Grill.

This implementation is unique in the way is stores energy, which is certainly different from the way a cell phone or laptop stores power. This configuration (which has not actually been constructed to my knowledge) uses a fresnel lens to magnify and focus the rays of the sun to melt a lithium nitrate substrate. The melted lithium nitrate, due to its phase change reaction, is able to release its thermal energy for longer periods of time and at higher temperatures than other methods up to now. Heat is then redistributed through convection, which allows for outdoor cooking and heating homes. This method is referred to as "latent heat storage".

Obviously this is a unique application that requires a specific set of criteria. This could also be used to provide electric power or boil water for steam applications. 

Peltier element

Remember any time you have a change of temperature you can utilize that to create power as the heat is exchanged and returns to a neutral state. Peltier coolers use power to create heat, which in turn creates a cold side. With an application such as this, derivatives of that technology can turn a heat source, into power. If done creatively, a refrigerator too. 

Batteries, and power sources in general, are complicated things. The design may be simplistic, but usually a power supply is designed to fit an application.  Some things to consider:

Capacity (Amp Hours)

Weight 

Size (Physical Dimensions)

Discharge Rate (Time to Empty at designed load)

Charge Rate (Time to Charge, when under load and not under load)

Charge Cycles (number of charge/discharge cycles before needing to replace)

Operating temperature range (Affects charge and discharge rates. Batteries can catch fire and explode under the "right" circumstances, like being embedded in a cooking appliance like the solar grill)

Architecture of storage media: Lead-acid? NiCd? NiMH? NiZn? AgZN? NaS? Lithium ion? - and so forth.

Longevity and recyclability:

Obviously what the battery is made of has far reaching implications for the ability to recycle them. Lithium is rare, expensive, and in high demand. Lead Acid (car, marine, UPS batteries) are low cost, high weight, and readily recycled into new batteries given the proper facilities.

So, thank your local engineers for building all this stuff we take for granted all the time, and keep the innovation alive by encouraging our youngsters to... play with electricity, fire, water, light... and anything that interests them. Who knows what problem they might solve.

Topic Tuesday #45 2013/05/28 - "Family Matters"

Topic Tuesday #45 2013/05/28 - "Family Matters"

"...And then the roof collapsed..."
Things you don't want to hear, or say, usually start with issues involving parts of your home caving in around you. Of course our friends out in Oklahoma and the rest of the midwest have this trumped, and rightly so, but when a family member calls you up to tell you of a disaster that has befallen them, you do what you can. At least, that is what we have done. Currently my happy home has swelled with my displaced in-laws, their 2 pugs, and a cat. So far so good. The worst is just their stress over their living situation.  This post is about family, and keeping your family ties strong and being able to rely on the safety net that is afforded by them. I am proud that I am in a position that I can return the favor, and take care of our elders for once.  So often, in our interesting times, children are being forced to return to base, failing to launch. The safety net is critical for all of us.
I am writing this on Memorial Day here in the US. It is fitting to be focused on our families and the freedoms that we do enjoy that, despite whatever politics you follow, are paid for in the blood of our families and friends. Frankly, anyone that is willing to go out on the job and get shot at, they have my heartfelt appreciation.
That said, those that are not concerned with matters of that roof collapsing, can move on.
Still with me?
OK, the roof.
The in-laws live in a 4 unit townhome condo arrangement, that was built popularly in the 1980's. They have had some difficulty with leaks and had recently put a new roof on their unit. Here is where it gets complicated. That is only 1/4 of the area that keeps the building secure. One of the units next to them had what can only be called a series of unfortunate events befall its inhabitant and in turn the structure.
The veteran that lived there, had fallen on hard times. The economy had seen fit to remove him from gainful employment, and this in turn caused a relapse of some mental baggage he carried home with him from his service. He went a little nuts. He did what he could, but it seems more than 3 years ago, his own roof collapsed, and he did not have any money to repair the damage. He had been living in squaller by the time the bank decided that they were going to foreclose on him and kick him out, in spite of his trying to get payments arranged to be put on the end of the mortgage and get current. The bank in an effort to unload the property, had the audacity to request of a roofer to "tarp it and seal it over", which is illegal and unethical by any measure. So as they are repairing that unit, the long term damage that has been seeping through the shared beams and insulation, caused the ceiling above their stairwell, to collapse. This has revealed the nature and only pointed to the extent of the damage. Mold. Lots of mold. Enough mold that, myself as an asthmatic, I could not spend more than 15 minutes in the building BEFORE it was out of the walls. It is bad. So now, I have house guests while the insurance companies duke it out (which is days late due to the holiday weekend).
Family to the rescue! It's always good to know you have options in a situation like this. I hope all of you do.

Topic Tuesday #22 2012/12/18 - "The End of the World..?"

Topic Tuesday #22 2012/12/18 - "The End of the World..?"

Yes, I had to jump on the bandwagon. How often do you get to live through an 'Apocalypse' complete with dooms day scenarios and movies?  Well... Quite a few times as it turns out.

Apocalypse/Dooms Day/End of Days predictions and cults that we didn't die from.

1) If you read this on or later than the 21st of December, 2012 - You have survived the end of the Mayan Calendar cycle. NASA put together a very nice treatise as to why we will still be here Saturday morning and beyond. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html

Harold Camping

2) Harold Camping (born July 19, 1921) of Family Radio predicted the world was going to end in 2011 using numerology in his interpretations of Bible passages. Camping predicted that Jesus Christ would return to Earth on May 21, 2011, whereupon the righteous would fly up to heaven, and that there would follow five months of fire, brimstone and plagues on Earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21, 2011, with the final destruction of the world. He had previously predicted that Judgment Day would occur on or about September 6, 1994. Mr. Camping had a stroke after the failed 2011 predition, apologized, and retired as president of Family Radio.

3) In the days leading up to September 9, 2009, fans of Armageddon insisted that the world would end - 9/9/9 being the emergency services phone number in the UK and also the number of the Devil - albeit upside down. Surprisingly there wasn't the same hyperbole on June 6, 2006.

4) Heaven’s Gate (March 26, 1997) followers believed in UFOs and impending doom, for which the only escape was to voluntarily “turn against the next level” by committing suicide. The leaders of the group, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, convinced members that their “evacuation” plan would be a fast-approaching UFO which would act as their mode of transport to beyond. 

5) Waco, TX Branch Davidians a deeply religious cult that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists("Davidians"), a reform movement that began within the Seventh-day Adventist Church ("Adventists") around 1930. The 1993 actions of this religious sect were predicated on the notion that they lived in the final times according to the Book of Revelation. Vernon Howell (who changed his name to David Koresh in 1990) claimed himself their final prophet. The Davidian movement went up in flames during the 55 day "Waco Siege" (February 28 - April 19, 1993)

6) “Aum” was a Japanese religious movement founded by Shoko Asahara. His 1984 doomsday prophecy described a final conflict culminating in a nuclear "Armageddon", borrowing again the term from the Book of Revelation. According to Robert Jay Lifton, author of “Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism,” Asahara predicted Armageddon would occur in 1997, and that humanity would end, except (surprise!) for the elite few who joined Aum. Shoko Asahara was convicted of masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway and several other crimes, for which he was sentenced to death in 2004. In June 2012, his execution has been postponed due to further arrests of Aum Shinrikyo members.

7) Edgar Whisenant wrote a bestselling book called “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.”  and the following year he published “The Final Shout: Rapture Report 1989,” and continued selling millions of these books with the same title and a revised year through 1993.

8) 50 members of a group called the Assembly of Yahweh (less familiarly known as Messianic, as well as Spiritual Israelites) gathered at Coney Island, New York, in white robes, awaiting their 'rapture' from a world about to be destroyed on May 25, 1981

9) The “mad messiah,” James Warren "Jim" Jones (1931 – November 18, 1978) was founder and leader of the “People’s Temple.” In 1965, Jones claimed that the world would be engulfed in a nuclear war on July 15, 1967. When that didn't happen, Jones went about establishing his communist commune in “Jonestown” in Guyana. The events of November 18, 1978, in Guyana, in which 920 people died at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project (informally, and now commonly, called "Jonestown") and nearby airstrip at Port Kaituma, and Georgetown in an organized mass suicide/killing. The mass suicide and killings at Jonestown resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural non-accidental disaster prior to the events of September 11, 2001. Casualties at the airstrip included, among others, Congressman Leo Ryan. On the evening of November 18, in Jonestown, Jones ordered his congregation to drink a concoction of cyanide-laced, grape-flavored Flavor Aid. Parents were instructed to inject their children with the same drink should they be under a certain age. (This is also a plausible origin of the phrase, "drinking the cool-aid.")

10) Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) In one account is said to have foretold the end in 1948, but in a manuscript he wrote in 1704 (in which he describes his attempts to extract scientific information from the Bible), he estimated that the world would end no earlier than 2060. In predicting this he said, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."

11) Protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483 - 1546) proclaimed that 'the kingdom of abominations shall be overthrown' within 300 years. Anywhere from (1546 - 1846)

William Miller

12) William Miller (1782 – 1849) American Baptist preacher. Among his direct spiritual heirs are several major religious denominations, including Seventh-day Adventists and Advent Christians. Later movements found inspiration in Miller's emphasis on biblical prophecy. His own followers are known as Millerites. Miller prophesied The End in 1844, based on Bible passage Daniel 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." 

13) John Napier (1550 – 1617) though best known as the discoverer of logarithms, predicted the world would end either in  1688 or 1700 in "A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John" (1593). He also dated the seventh trumpet to 1541.

14) Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) predicted the world would end in 1656 in one of his books, a "Book of Prophecies" (1505).

Nostradamus

15) Michael Stifel (1487 - 1567) a German monk, proselytized that the end of the world would come on Oct. 3, 1533, at precisely eight o’clock in the morning. When the hour came and went, he was then summarily ejected from his ecclesiastical quarters and flogged in the streets.

16) Nostradamus (1503 – 1566) in his book "Les Propheties", published in 1555, had this quatrain that still befuddles people into thinking the end is near: Century I Quatrain 46

“Very near Auch, Lectoure and Mirande a great fire will fall from the sky for three nights. (Anytime now...)