Cspan has Rep Henry Waxman chairing a hearing about adequacy of emergency medical care if we get hit by terrorists again. If Al Quada blew up a subway or something, would the local hospital emergency rooms have enough beds to hold all the casualties?
There were a series of hospital people pleading for more funding to enlarge their emergency rooms. And deploring "funding cuts".
With 16% of GNP being poured into health care, surely we have enough hospital beds within a reasonable ambulance distance of nearly everywhere. And if we don't, why don't we? Where is all that money going? Remember a mere 8% of GNP funded all US health care back in 1980. Doubling that portion should be more than enough.
Then the hearing got steered off to immigration when a Congresscritter opined that illegal aliens (aka undocumented immigrants) were clogging the emergency room beds. And then further off topic when witnesses started testifying in favor of universal health care, aka Uncle pays all doctor's bills.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Barack Obama on Face the Nation
I had a choice between Hillary on Stephanopolis' ABC and Barack on Tim Russert's Meet the Press. I decided to watch Obama, 'cause he promised to be more interesting than Hillary. Russert gave Obama 50 good minutes of TV exposure without every asking Obama to say anything of substance. Russert spend some 15 minutes with Obama rehashing the Jeremiah Wright disaster. This didn't tell me anything I don't know. Jeremiah is not a bullfrog, he is a toad, who has hurt Obama, no one knows how badly, but badly enough.
For the rest of the time Obama was extraordinarily evasive. Lots of smooth, good sounding answers that don't mean anything. For instance Russert asked Obama where he stood on nuclear power. Obama said he was in favor, after safety problems and nuclear waste problems had been properly studied. What does that mean? Would an Obama administration grant construction permits and operating licenses or would they demand lengthy "studies"? Who knows?
Obama still pledges to pull US troops out of Iraq, but he might take 16 months to bring them all home. If a genocidal disaster threatened then he might change his plans, somehow. He promised to support Israel against Iranian nuclear attack by preventing the Iranians from obtaining the bomb. He failed to explain how he planned to work that miracle.
In short, the policies of an Obama administration might be anything.
For the rest of the time Obama was extraordinarily evasive. Lots of smooth, good sounding answers that don't mean anything. For instance Russert asked Obama where he stood on nuclear power. Obama said he was in favor, after safety problems and nuclear waste problems had been properly studied. What does that mean? Would an Obama administration grant construction permits and operating licenses or would they demand lengthy "studies"? Who knows?
Obama still pledges to pull US troops out of Iraq, but he might take 16 months to bring them all home. If a genocidal disaster threatened then he might change his plans, somehow. He promised to support Israel against Iranian nuclear attack by preventing the Iranians from obtaining the bomb. He failed to explain how he planned to work that miracle.
In short, the policies of an Obama administration might be anything.
Words of the Weasel: Alternative Energy
It sounds so virtuous and green that everyone is in favor of it. Alternative energy will replace $120 a barrel oil, clean the air, and reduce acne, cellulite and halitosis. Users of the phrase just let it roll of their tongues and then quickly change the subject.
So what is this wonderful energy source? Well obviously it is not the workhorse conventional fossil fuel sources that keep the lights burning, houses heated, and the traffic moving by air, sea, road, and rail. Could it be nuclear?
Actually nuclear works. Nuclear plants have been running for 50 years and produce 20% of US electricity. Nobody has ever been hurt by a US nuclear power plant. The cost is competitive with $120 a barrel oil. Spent fuel rods have been stored on plant sites for 50 years without a problem.
How about solar? Trouble is solar power only works when the sun is up. Dunno about you, but I want my electrical to work after dark, that's when I truly need my house lights to light.
And wind? Nice stuff, fields of huge windmill blades whirring over the wheat and corn. Cool. What happens when the wind stops blowing? Even mountain top sites have calm days. Of course when the price of bunker C gets high enough we could bring back the sailing ship...
Biofuels? Wood is good, and wood stoves will heat your house. Of course if you go away overnight the stove will go out and then your pipes freeze... Ethanol is going full tilt, due to heavy government subsidies, but it takes nearly as much fossil fuel (tractor fuel, fertilizer, and heat for the still) to make the ethanol as you get back for burning said ethanol. The energy gain from making ethanol is disputed with figures running between 0.5 and 1.5. No one is claiming gain as good as 2.0. Energy gains of less than one mean a loss, making the ethanol consumes more energy than it yields.
Hydrogen fusion? After 60 years of R&D, no one has created a fusion reactor that stays lit for more than a second or two, or that yields more energy than the reactor machinery consumes. There are two promising efforts under way, the multinational $13 billion ITER in France, and the shoestring Bussard Polywell in the US. Neither project has lit a break even fusion reaction yet. Wish them well, but a lot of very smart people have been working on the problem for 60 years without success.
Next time someone says "alternative energy" ask them what they mean.
So what is this wonderful energy source? Well obviously it is not the workhorse conventional fossil fuel sources that keep the lights burning, houses heated, and the traffic moving by air, sea, road, and rail. Could it be nuclear?
Actually nuclear works. Nuclear plants have been running for 50 years and produce 20% of US electricity. Nobody has ever been hurt by a US nuclear power plant. The cost is competitive with $120 a barrel oil. Spent fuel rods have been stored on plant sites for 50 years without a problem.
How about solar? Trouble is solar power only works when the sun is up. Dunno about you, but I want my electrical to work after dark, that's when I truly need my house lights to light.
And wind? Nice stuff, fields of huge windmill blades whirring over the wheat and corn. Cool. What happens when the wind stops blowing? Even mountain top sites have calm days. Of course when the price of bunker C gets high enough we could bring back the sailing ship...
Biofuels? Wood is good, and wood stoves will heat your house. Of course if you go away overnight the stove will go out and then your pipes freeze... Ethanol is going full tilt, due to heavy government subsidies, but it takes nearly as much fossil fuel (tractor fuel, fertilizer, and heat for the still) to make the ethanol as you get back for burning said ethanol. The energy gain from making ethanol is disputed with figures running between 0.5 and 1.5. No one is claiming gain as good as 2.0. Energy gains of less than one mean a loss, making the ethanol consumes more energy than it yields.
Hydrogen fusion? After 60 years of R&D, no one has created a fusion reactor that stays lit for more than a second or two, or that yields more energy than the reactor machinery consumes. There are two promising efforts under way, the multinational $13 billion ITER in France, and the shoestring Bussard Polywell in the US. Neither project has lit a break even fusion reaction yet. Wish them well, but a lot of very smart people have been working on the problem for 60 years without success.
Next time someone says "alternative energy" ask them what they mean.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Should we do a gasoline tax holiday?
The idea sounds good, like everyone else in the world, the price of a fillup is shocking, and anything that would bring it down is a good thing.
Question. Would a gas tax holiday reduce the price at the pump? The outrageous pump prices today are "rationing by price". There isn't enough gasoline to go around, so the sellers are raising the price to slow sales to prevent running out. The price at the pump has little to do with the cost of production, it's a scarcity price. Actually a lot of the gasoline price comes from the equally outrageous price of the raw material, crude oil, but the crude price is sky high for the same reason, not enough to go around.
I think the pump price will stay up there after a gas tax holiday. So, why not channel some of the money from a scarcity price into tax revenue rather than giving it to the oil companies?
If we want to do some thing about price, lets build a couple of new refineries in the US, and allow drilling off shore and next to the Prudhoe bay field ( the so called Arctic National Wildlife Refuge).
Funny, with the entire Arctic to choose from, the wildlife just happen to need refuge in an oil field. If I didn't know better, I'd think the wildlife refuge was established to stop oil exploration rather than to help out the caribou.
Question. Would a gas tax holiday reduce the price at the pump? The outrageous pump prices today are "rationing by price". There isn't enough gasoline to go around, so the sellers are raising the price to slow sales to prevent running out. The price at the pump has little to do with the cost of production, it's a scarcity price. Actually a lot of the gasoline price comes from the equally outrageous price of the raw material, crude oil, but the crude price is sky high for the same reason, not enough to go around.
I think the pump price will stay up there after a gas tax holiday. So, why not channel some of the money from a scarcity price into tax revenue rather than giving it to the oil companies?
If we want to do some thing about price, lets build a couple of new refineries in the US, and allow drilling off shore and next to the Prudhoe bay field ( the so called Arctic National Wildlife Refuge).
Funny, with the entire Arctic to choose from, the wildlife just happen to need refuge in an oil field. If I didn't know better, I'd think the wildlife refuge was established to stop oil exploration rather than to help out the caribou.
Hillary does fine on Bill O'Reilly's TV show
Like many others, I watched the O'Reilly interview of Hillary last night. It was a good performance by Hillary. She came across as serious, well informed, and a decent human being. Far from being a hostile interviewer, O'Reilly asked good questions and let Hillary answer at length and get her points across. For this viewer/voter the forum let Hillary tell us where she is coming from, and the questions were serious and actually gave us some real information about what a Hillary administration might do to us. Compared to most of the TV debates, this one was good, good for me in that I learned things I didn't know, good for Hillary in that she got her views across to the voters.
Fox News did a good job.
Fox News did a good job.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Does the world need a STOL C17?
Aviation Week is ruminating about the fate of the C17 production line. The Air Force has bought most, nearly all, the c17's it wants/can afford/can-get-funding-for. AFAIR that's 187 aircraft. It's a good plane, a lot better than the aging C5, but expensive. The RAF bought 4 or 5 and the Europeans bought a few more, but it's so expensive that only USAF can afford it. So, Boeing is looking at shutting down the lucrative C17 production line next summer. Once shut down, it's gone for good. So Boeing is doing everything it can to generate some more orders for the plane to keep the production line open and the money coming in.
Latest plan is to offer a Short Takeoff and Landing (STOL) version of the plane. More wheels to spread the weight so it doesn't sink in to dirt fields, more engine power, bigger flaps. Might work, but does anyone really want to fly something that big. heavy and expensive into a dirt field? And risk ground looping it? The world is covered with real airfields, the kind with 5000 foot paved runways. Better is to fly the big long range C17 into a real airfield, and swap the cargo over to a real STOL aircraft like the old reliable C130. Air cargo all goes onto pallets with rollers on the bottom. It only takes minutes for the loadmaster to undo the tiedowns and roll the palletized cargo out the rear ramp onto a loader/crawler vehicle. The loader rumbles across the ramp to a C-130 and in a few minutes the cargo is all inside the C130.
Actually, in real life, the long range C17 coming in from the States has a mixed cargo intended for everyone in theater. So they cargo comes of the C17 and into a warehouse. The C130, going upcountry to supply troops off some bean patch, gets a mixed load of stuff off the C17, locally purchased food and drink, ammo that came in by ship last month, and whatever.
In short, the C17 is a good long range transport that needs STOL capabilty like a snake needs shoes.
Boeing needs to keep hoping that the project to rebuild and re engine the aging C5's gets scrapped and the Air Force uses the extra money to buy more C17's. That would probably be a better use of tax payer funds. C5 was a disaster when it was new. McNamara and his whiz kids managed to screw up the design beyond recovery. We would be better retiring it and going with something newer.
Latest plan is to offer a Short Takeoff and Landing (STOL) version of the plane. More wheels to spread the weight so it doesn't sink in to dirt fields, more engine power, bigger flaps. Might work, but does anyone really want to fly something that big. heavy and expensive into a dirt field? And risk ground looping it? The world is covered with real airfields, the kind with 5000 foot paved runways. Better is to fly the big long range C17 into a real airfield, and swap the cargo over to a real STOL aircraft like the old reliable C130. Air cargo all goes onto pallets with rollers on the bottom. It only takes minutes for the loadmaster to undo the tiedowns and roll the palletized cargo out the rear ramp onto a loader/crawler vehicle. The loader rumbles across the ramp to a C-130 and in a few minutes the cargo is all inside the C130.
Actually, in real life, the long range C17 coming in from the States has a mixed cargo intended for everyone in theater. So they cargo comes of the C17 and into a warehouse. The C130, going upcountry to supply troops off some bean patch, gets a mixed load of stuff off the C17, locally purchased food and drink, ammo that came in by ship last month, and whatever.
In short, the C17 is a good long range transport that needs STOL capabilty like a snake needs shoes.
Boeing needs to keep hoping that the project to rebuild and re engine the aging C5's gets scrapped and the Air Force uses the extra money to buy more C17's. That would probably be a better use of tax payer funds. C5 was a disaster when it was new. McNamara and his whiz kids managed to screw up the design beyond recovery. We would be better retiring it and going with something newer.
FAA plays gotcha with AD's. ( Aviation Week)
Herb Kelleher, Southwest's executive chairman, suggests compliance with airworthiness directives (AD) might be more effective if they were simplified. He was referring to 1,100 pages of six AD's covering the Boeing 737 fuselage cracks. Congresscritter James Oberstar (D-Minn) thought that unwise.
I think we just found the root cause of all those groundings. The airworthiness directives are unreadable garbage. No one can keep 1,100 pages of boilerplate in mind as he inspects a real airplane on a flightline. Hell, he can't even carry that much paper work out of the office. In real life, directions for crack inspection can be written in 10 pages, single spaced. In a former life I used to inspect aircraft and write inspection procedures. I never needed more than ten pages myself.
Once you have 1,100 pages of mush, a pissant inspector can find just about anything he wants, buried somewhere in the 1,100 pages. No matter what the line mechanics do, an inspector with 1,100 pages to play gotcha with can always find fault. Betcha the recent FAA grounding of American's fleet started with some pissant inspector playing gotcha with the mechanics.
I suggest we put the FAA out of the paperwork business. Have the engineering departments of the aircraft makers write the maintainance procedures for their products.
I think we just found the root cause of all those groundings. The airworthiness directives are unreadable garbage. No one can keep 1,100 pages of boilerplate in mind as he inspects a real airplane on a flightline. Hell, he can't even carry that much paper work out of the office. In real life, directions for crack inspection can be written in 10 pages, single spaced. In a former life I used to inspect aircraft and write inspection procedures. I never needed more than ten pages myself.
Once you have 1,100 pages of mush, a pissant inspector can find just about anything he wants, buried somewhere in the 1,100 pages. No matter what the line mechanics do, an inspector with 1,100 pages to play gotcha with can always find fault. Betcha the recent FAA grounding of American's fleet started with some pissant inspector playing gotcha with the mechanics.
I suggest we put the FAA out of the paperwork business. Have the engineering departments of the aircraft makers write the maintainance procedures for their products.
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