Central America

30 November 2014. Gen Alzate, Cpl Jorge Rodriguez and lawyer Gloria Urrego were released in good health.

Colombia and FARC have been fighting for 50 years. They are currently talking in Havana, supposedly about peace. A couple of weeks ago a Colombian general went into the jungle wearing civilian clothes, supposedly 'to help the people'. FARC 'kidnapped' him. The army goes on full alert, troops are mobilized, lots of people make a big fuss, and then two weeks later the General and his lawyer (!?!?) are released unharmed. Who are these people running Colombia's press office? Are they idiots? Or do they think everyone else is an idiot? I suppose the two go hand in hand.
     Now the General is retired. Right. He went into the jungle to talk to FARC. He used all his brownie points that he had built up during his career with the army to do so. I doubt it will have any long term effect. As long as the American drug distribution cartel* is calling the shots, nothing substantial is going to change. Still, he tried, and he may have accomplished some short term bridge building, or negotiated a little bonus for his pension fund.

     Meanwhile, on the other side of Panama, Nicaragua is ginning up a deal with the Chinese and the Russians to build a new inter-oceanic canal to compete with Panama's. The Chinese want it so their containerized cargoes can get to New York City without any interference from the US/Panamanian monopoly. The Russians want it so they can send warships from St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad to Vladivostok and back without having to go via Antarctica. I imagine they would not be interested in filling out forms to get their warships through the Panama canal. I wonder if a Typhoon class submarine would even fit through the Panama canal (maybe), or the new one for that matter (probably). That is, if there are any Typhoons left (yes, a couple).
    Nicaragua and Colombia are squabbling about who owns which parts of the ocean floor in the Caribbean. Seems some people think there might be oil down there. That's not a big surprise, we've been sucking oil out of the gulf for at least as long as FARC has been fighting the government.
    Colombia, since they are friends with the USA, has a much bigger navy than poor, impoverished Nicaragua. But now Nicaragua has new friends, new friends with money. See what happens when you stir up shit in people's backyards (i.e. the Ukraine)? The come over and start stirring up shit in your backyard. Funny how that works. Of course, given that people naturally tend to stir up shit where ever they are it would have happened eventually anyway.
    Near as I can tell the big difference between the communists and the capitalists is that the capitalists are a little more deft in their manipulation of the economy. The communists (and any other totalitarian regimes) use a hard line approach to getting what they want: arresting and/or killing people who complain. Their propaganda is almost unbelievably stupid. The capitalists prefer to lead the cattle around by the nose. Our propaganda is carefully constructed by the spin doctors. Do a good job of this and you don't need an army of secret police and all the bad publicity that entails. Though sometimes the amount of crap flying through the air gets a little annoying. Fortunately televisions can be turned off.

*Google "American drug distribution cartel" and Mexico is all that shows up.

Light Pollution

North America at Night

I think the dark blue is a map maker's artifact so you can see where the land is. Big difference between the eastern and western halves of the USA. You can pick out the big cities easily enough. In the western USA, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Denver stand out. I think that amorphous blob in Canada north of Denver must be Calgary. Kind of interesting there is a band of light heading northwest from Chicago across Canada. I think the bright bar down in the lower right corner is Puerto Rico. Havana is the small glow in western Cuba. Jamaica has some light.

This is from You can see the Milky Way Galaxy, via Detroit Steve. I saw the stars once. Haven't seen much lately. Too many street lights in suburbia. Plus you would need to be able to relax to enjoy it. I seem to be beset by a zillion little hassles/annoyances/chores none of which interest me, but I am obligated so I try. Until I get tired. Then I take a nap. The internet is full of fascinating stuff. Most anything is more interesting than washing dishes.

Amazon Robots

Kind of fun watching these little automatons scurry around.  Amazon now has 15,000 Kiva robots in 10 warehouses. The have 50 distribution centers in the US and something over 100 worldwide. From a Market Watch story.

Who's Your Daddy?

Update August 2015: I read it wrong. The guy on the cover is Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, not the Sheikh.
If I read this right, this is Sheikh Raad Al Kafaji, a former Iraqi Army officer specialising in artillery, and a veteran fighter from the days of the Iran-Iraq war. He is head of the al Kafaji tribe and a commander in the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia, one of the Shia militias at the forefront of the fight against ISIS in Iraq.

Shocked to see this, I didn't know Newsweek was still in business. Hadn't seen or heard anything from them in a long time. The story is all about Iran is supporting Shia militias in Iraq in their fight against ISIS. If anyone knows what the USA's foreign policy is, I would appreciate hearing about it. Right now it doesn't make any sense. We like Saudi Arabia, but they are the ones funding ISIS. We don't like President Assad of Syria because he is a brutal dictator. We don't like ISIS because they are Jihadists. We don't like Iran because they are run by zealous religious tyrants.
     Meanwhile Iraq does not seem to be able to produce an army capable of much of anything, but when the Ayatollah (of Rock an' Rolla) issues a fatwa, well now we've got militiamen coming out of the woodwork and ISIS is being pushed back.
    The Iran-Iraq war killed a million people. Saddam killed a half million of his own people because they were the wrong flavor of Islam. I don't know how many people the USA killed in our two attacks on Iraq but I wouldn't be surprised if it was another half a million. There doesn't seem to be any let up in sight. Amnesty International gets mentioned in the last paragraph of the story. What a waste of ink that is.

Uncrackable Code

Uncrackable? My first reaction was, yeah, right, sure. Claiming you have uncrackable code is like waving a red flag in front all the computer science students in the world. They are going to be all over you like flies on shit and later next week we'll have somebody presenting a paper on how they managed to crack your uncrackable code.
     But I watched the video, and Senor Hart, he may know what he is talking about. The idea is all of the components in the bomb would be 'smart', and they would all have the capability of sensing the fluctuations in the radiation that the nuclear part of the bomb was producing. When the bomb is originally assembled, the components all measure the flux, and they all talk to each other and exchange the nuclear bomb component equivalent of secret handshakes and then they go to sleep.
   Now if anyone wants to set off the bomb, all these components will wake up, measure the radiation flux and talk to their fellow components, and if everyone remembers the secret handshake, and the flux has the same characteristics, then we're good to go and the bomb can be detonated. If anyone finds anything that is not to their satisfaction, that component will refuse to cooperate and the bomb will not go off.
    If no one every takes the bomb apart, then the bomb can go boom. If someone steals the whole bomb, the bomb can go boom. If someone steals a pile of components from previously assembled bombs and tries to put together their own bomb, the bomb no go boom. So I'm thinking one smart component needs to be removed from the bomb and kept separate. But you need to remember which bomb it goes to, and in the fog of war, are we going to be able to keep that straight?
    Might be better if we made these components uncooperative so the bomb doesn't go off no matter what. I mean look what smart bombs did for Dark Star.

Energy

With all the blather about energy and 'global warming' it's nice to see a see a few facts laid out in a clear and readable graph. Well, the original, high-resolution, version is readable anyway. There are a few basic things to notice here. Along the left hand side there is a column of colored boxes.These are our significant sources of energy. Notice there are no boxes labeled 'people' or 'oxen'.
    Along the right hand side there are two boxes. These are our 'sinks'. This is where our energy goes. The lower dark gray box is labeled Energy Services. This is where we have gotten energy to do something useful for us, like propel our cars, heat our homes, or light our lights. The upper, light gray box is Rejected Energy. This is wasted energy, energy that escaped because our machines are inefficient. Typically it gets turned into heat which is dissipated into the environment. That is what the radiators on our cars and the cooling towers on our nuclear power plants do, they pump that waste heat out of the machinery and into the outdoors.
    Note that Rejected Energy is almost twice as large of Energy Services. That shows that our machines are about 38.4% efficient in turning energy into something useful. The general rule of thumb for heat engines, like steam turbines and internal combustion engines, is only about one-third, or 33.3%.  I suspect the difference is because some of our energy is used to heat our living spaces, and using energy directly for heating is quite a bit more efficient than using it produce mechanical motion.
     At the top center is a yellow-ish box labeled Electricity Generation. Notice that the waste (Rejected) energy here (25.8) is more than twice the useful energy (Services) produced (12.4). I blame the missing one percent on transmission line losses.
    Notice the column of four pink boxes on the right. Those are the categories where our energy gets used. Notice the big, fat one at the bottom: Transportation. Those are our cars and trucks and they run on oil (the fat green line across the bottom of the chart). Other forms of transportation also use oil, but their consumption pales into insignificance under the tsunami of commuter-mobiles.
    Coal is still the big source of power for generating electricity. Powder River is where all the 'good' electrical companies get their coal, never mind that it first has to be hauled clear across the continent by train.
    Now that we have covered the basics and understand what the general situation is, we can notice a couple of small items that probably weren't there ten years ago. Biomass is providing almost 4.5% of our supply (fermenting corn to make ethanol and then distilling it), Wind power is over one percent, but Solar is still virtually zero.

Russian Jets going round and round

Music: The Calling by Zack Hemsey

A fairly typical jet fighter flight video, except for the first 20 seconds or so where we get a merry go round view of the world. You shouldn't be able to do that with an airplane. A helicopter or a balloon or even a parachute, yes, but not an airplane, yet these guys continue to pull this stunt. The aircraft is an Su-30SM.