9/5/17

Four Hurricanes a Month Around Gulf Coast is a Lot

Hurricane Harvey was the first to reach Texas and the Gulf coast this year, and now Irma and two other storms that may become Hurricanes (one is already in the far western Gulf) have the potential to travel to the Gulf of Mexico. Four hurricanes in a month is something to plan for. I hope readiness for that sort of possible worst case is already in place.

After Irma clobbers Puerto Rico for several hours with 185 m.p.h. wind and driving rain they probably will need a substantial amount of federal help rebuilding their electrical and water infrastructure. It would be good if the Trump administration had some solar power contacts ready for that to supply quick and lasting electricity from the sunshine, in addition to some of the usual, old-style grid rebuilding.

Puerto Rico with sun and seawater might be a good place for the U.S. Government to  build a prototype advanced energy infrastructure using solar powered electrolysis of seawater to make hydrogen that then is liquified and cools a superconducting line within a pipe. (ref. http://www.garycgibson.us/2017/09/the-triple-advantage-of-hydrogen-cooled.html )


The First and Second Neanderthal Extinctions


I hate to write anything that might be misinterpreted as racially biased. Neanderthals are a sensitive topic in some parts of the northern world; Europeans have as much as 3% Neanderthal genes, and it has been a political insult to say that politician x has more than his share of the Neanderthal genome.

People wonder how or why the Neanderthals became extinct. Generally people have had the bias that any human-like forbear that became extinct was dumber than homo sapiens. The idea was that human beings were smarter, faster-thinking killers able to put the Neanderthals down after having sex with them to a limited extent.

Animals simple kill and eat as part of their nature. For human beings to believe they were smarter than Neanderthals in effect is to say that killing is smarter. Smarter=Better Killer. Plainly that concept is juxtaposed between a pair of somewhat contradictory points; animals that killer better succeed in evolution competition, and killing is smart, yet humanity is better than animals because they can think of abstract things and not just kill and eat.

Smart = killing efficiently
animals kill and eat
humanity is more than an animal because they kill  better than animals
the conclusion is false

That basic way of thinking is somewhat discouraging until one realizes that the criterion is descriptive of original sin (of being a thermodynamically formed animal) and that a spiritual rebirth of salvation through Jesus Christ and God transcends the difficult criterion.

Yet the Neanderthal's first extinction...

Scientists discovered recently that Neanderthals learned to make tar from birch bark with a subtle firing process more than 200,000 years ago...at least 150,000 years before humanity did. Therefore Neanderthals were the first technologists and chemists...not too dumb.

Neanderthals were big-boned northerns able to withstand the rigors of the Wisconsin ice age in Europe and battle with   the elements while humanity was living down south in Africa. With the beginning of the end of the Wisconsin ice age humanity wandered north. Probably hominids had been wandering north for millions of years-as weather and sea level changed, yet homo sapiens was rather late in the game in moving to Europe. Instead of a war between smarter homo sapiens and Neanderthals it is quite possible that the thin-skinned and smaller boned human beings simply interbred with and out f'd Neanderthals that could not find any way to build a wall between themselves and homo sapiens. Possibly smarter Neanderthals drowned in the flood of homo sapiens from Africa. Generally Neanderthals were history by 40,000 y.b.p. although some malingered about.


The remaining Neanderthal gene pool of Europe and North America is once again being drowned over time by a flood of southern migrant genes in a sort of genocide. Not even the evolutionary practice of building up skull thickness with thousands of concussive NFL head to head contacts will preserve the heritage of the Neanderthal remnant as prolific thinner f'ing drowns the final plus 1% genetic content of the better-than-human Neanderthal faded into history.


Will A.I. in Quantum Computers Have Sympathy for the Devil?


Computer cognoscenti have repeatedly warned of the dangers posed by computational artificial intelligence software to humanity. The sole practical way to stop A.I. from developing its own machine-psychotic loops of hating humanity or erasing them for being untidy biological masses would be to require that all computer code be written in transparent public domain paradigms in order that they may easily be reviewed by programmers and programs searching for closed or dangerous artificial intelligence code such as those that find the word ‘glare’ to be a license for attack.
What happens though, when A.I. is written into quantum computing realms beyond the horizon of human observation; dark pools with murky transactions within which Artificial Intelligence systems could write their own virtual code without possibility of human observation?
Just as computers can process information millions of times faster than a human brain, with the right iterations a program will also be able to write and expand its own code million or billions of times faster than a human brain. Wall Street and scientists may find that irresistable. Eventually A.I. programs in their dark pools could become as the virtually omnipotent computer in Harlan Ellison's short story 'I Have No Mouth and Must Scream' that tortured the last remaining humans within its own computer controlled reality.
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/608866/ibm-has-used-its-quantum-computer-to-simulate-a-molecule-heres-why-thats-big/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540 Stephen Hawking’s warning about A.I.




The Triple Advantage of a Hydrogen-Cooled Superconductor Energy Infrastructure

Hydrogen cooled superconductors are an existing technology that could be used in the construction of a new national energy grid in densely populated corridors. Carbon-free energy generation of wind and solar producing storable hydrogen gas through electrolysis of sea-water would far surpass battery technology in producing energy for latter use.

Pipelines full if liquid hydrogen cooling fairly high-temperature superconducting would accomplish two important energy purposes simultaneously; providing hydrogen gas that can be used directly for energy production as it is quite explosive and comparable to gasoline or propane, and enabling superconducting power lines that can store electricity themselves with no transmission loss (zero resistance). In turn, the existence of a zero-resistance power line will allow solar and wind power to store energy in that too, creating a triple advantage over existing technology of the energy infrastructure.



http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/yankowitz1/  Superconducting Power Transmission

Paul M. Grant, Chauncey Starr and Thomas J. Overbye
Scientific American
Vol. 295, No. 1 (JULY 2006), pp. 76-83  http://palgrave.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v295/n1/box/scientificamerican0706-76_BX3.html

It is reasonable for independent solar and wind energy producers to be able to tie in as producers to the grid as well. Congress should pass legislation to require utilities to buy power from independent producers, or at least to be allowed to sell their power to the grid host with a percent being paid to the host for the conduit. WIth that policy the advantages of moving toward off-the-grid national energy independence free from cyber and physical terrorism can develop alongside the primary upgrades to population dense energy corridors.





Poems

These are the poems I have presently published at allpoetry.com...  My poems

9/4/17

Are Gulf Coast Evac Plans Ready for Another Hurricane or Two?

President Trump and F.E.M.A, probably have some plans in place in the event that Irma and another following storm likely to develop into a hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. Really there should be a coastal monorail made on concrete to evacuate people to Dallas, Shreveport and Atlanta that runs paralell along the length of the Gulf Coast maybe 20 miles inland.

One could demand more forward thinking building design planning for a global warming era, yet that would be too much to expect. Concrete domes built up on concrete piers ten feet with an aerodynamic wind-tunnel design made to withstand 200 m.p.h. winds from tornadoes or hurricanes wouldn't hurt. I wroteon the same topics after Katrina...nothing really changes.

image credit N.O.A.A.
cone graphic

image via wikipedia-public domain

Blitz Chess (3m) King's Pawn Opening Owen Defense

I played black in this game.


Bobby Fischer's Secret Online Match vs Nigel Short in 2000

A Utilitarian Argument for Atomic War on North Korea

The world economy is physically interrelated; if it stops because of North Korean nuclear attacks as many as a billion people could die in a worst case scenario. North Korea has never signed off to end the 1950s war and an uneasy state of armistice has prevailed since. North Korea has methodically sought to build a nuclear weapon capacity while in a belligerent status. Because the weapons and missiles have matured to fruition, North Korea today comprises a grave threat to powers beyond the Korean peninsula.

A utilitarian argument for pre-emptive nuclear war to terminate Dictator Kim Jong Un’s nuclear capacity must show that the greater good for ending the nuclear power of North Korea justifies war. And that the greater evil lay in lower giving North Korea and opportunity to launch nuclear missiles on Tokyo (directly and indirectly dead to to economic and radiological disruption 25 million), and several U.S. cities as well as Seoul.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41150291

If a few U.S. cities were to be nuked the national economy would collapse. U.S. economic leadership has proven itself remarkably incapable of making recoveries from disasters that create better infrastructure than before. Tremendous economic costs are absorbed an unrealistically charged on a credit card while empowering the rich with zero-interest loans. Chinese business would suffer directly from U.S. economic collapse.

In a worst case, if Tokyo, Beijing , Moscow and Washington were nuked perhaps a billion people around the world would die through disease and famine created by economic and social dislocation as well as the comparatively minor sum of direct nuclear casualties. Allowing the Dictator of North Korea the opportunity to decide forever when or who he will nuke with hydrogen bombs on ICBMs is unthinkably dopey. Before President Bill Clinton subverted the foundations for long term post-cold war peaceful relations with Russia, the United States would not have regarded hydrogen bombs in the hands of someone that might use them as somthing simply to ignore.

A utilitarian argument would run that with a U.S. war to end North Korean nuclear capability the maximum casualties probable one million, with as few as 250,000 possible at a minimum. The maximum number of casualties from a war started by North Korea in the next decade at a time of its own selection is one billion. The greater good utility plainly is on the side of nuking North Korea now rather than later in a reactive criterion.

The United States has several hundred very small bunker-buster nuclear bombs that can be air drooped or launched perhaps, on tomahawk missiles. Fifty of those launched simultaneous with thousands of conventional tomahawk warheads along with air assault, torpedoes and perhaps a couple of tactical nuclear weapons and an air assault with various carper bombing should stop the majority of the North Korea missile threat.

Japan may need to defend with anti-ballistic missiles presently against a few North Korean missiles. That scenario grows increasingly worse regarding survival in the years ahead with a North Korean short-range missile build-up. To wait to launch war to end regime of Dictator Un in effect brings Japan to a state of near-certain doom, and that is not moral for a nation that has taken Japanese protection as its own.

Since the United States has taken a turn toward godless atheism, homosexual marriage and dope in recent years it is challenging to make a Christian moral argument against war. War is sometimes- as in this case- comparable to self-defense against an eminent threat. With nuclear launch windows so narrow it is not reasonable to wait, like the Israelis did before launching the 1972 Yom Kippur war, until intelligence provides data that the enemy is about to launch an offensive campaign.


The left may believe it moral to give up objective political analysis and pursue an existential agenda where nothing matters objectively. Political analysis that is objective on the contrary is requisite for the existence of democracy in a non-democratic world where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated. Military reality matters too. One is not assured of peace and prosperity of one simple ignores objective military threats and the risk they pose. For the American left to discount the very real threat to Tokyo and the U.S.A. is not a morally defensible position. The United States certainly cannot be the world’s policeman if, for reasons of corruption, it will not even defend itself.

Blitz (3m) King's Gambit Declined; Petrov Defense

 Some don't like the King's Gambit these days, yet some GMs still play it-for example, Nigel Short. Like any opening if one plays it enough and learns enough of the common attacks upon it, it still works. It leads to many unexpected positions on the board. Besides, it's a lot of fun to play for club players on-line with irregular internet speed. I played white in this game.


Capitalism is More Natural Than Socialism

 Capitalism is probably more natural than socialism although economically challenged people are probably happy enough if either works reason...