Subterranean Melodies

It really is as simple as that...

I was poking through a couple of people's denial of global warming, and it astounds me that they seem to have little grasp of physics. Lets lay it out in the simplest possible terms:

All energy eventually ends up as heat. That's basic thermodynamics, and with the exception of the zero-point energy crackpots, this is indisputable.

When an object is warmer than its surroundings, heat energy is transferred from warmer to cooler. This transfer occurs by one of three methods: conduction (direct transfer from particle to particle), convection (transfer by the movement of warm particles), and radiation (transfer through electromagnetic radiation). That's it; there's no other way to move heat energy around. The neat thing is that the greater the difference between the warm object and the cool surroundings, the faster the transfer of heat by all three methods.

Space is a vacuum; I think we can all agree on that. In a vacuum, only conduction and radiation are possible--there being no fluid to carry heat via convection. Since the planet isn't regularly in contact with other spatial object, we'll take a little leap here and say that only radiation can carry heat away in any significant quantities.

So let's do a little thought experiment: take a planet, any planet, and make it geologically dead and lifeless. Energy (in the form of radiation from the star it orbits) goes in, warming it. Energy goes out (thermal radiation from the planet), cooling it. What happens?

Thermal equilibrium, that's what happens. If energy in is more than energy out, the planet warms. The more it warms, the faster the rate of energy out. Eventually, energy in equals energy out, and the planet's temperature stabilizes.

Now let's add an internal source of energy; say, by making the planet geologically active due to internally generated heat from radioactive decay at the planet's core. What happens? This internal heat energy adds to the energy in side of the equation. The planet warms until a new equilibrium point is reached, which is higher than the previous point. Why? More energy in, that's why.

Now let's take the last step: Add life to our little planet. A life that has a penchant for taking the complex chemicals that are found on or near the surface and releasing the stored chemical energy to do work. What happens?

Eventually this energy ends up as heat. Heat that adds to the energy in side of the equation. The planet warms until a new equilibrium point is reached, which is higher than the previous point. Bingo. Human-caused global warming.

Now, I realize that this is an overly-simplistic example. It ignores niceties like living organisms turning solar radiation into chemical potential energy. It ignores the exact rates, and the complexities of an active atmosphere. It also ignores the complexities of how atmospheric composition changes the rate of energy out (i.e., greenhouse gases alone change the thermal equilibrium point by reducing the effectiveness of thermal radiation, resulting in a lower energy out and a higher thermal equilibrium even with no additional energy in; or greater cloud cover reducing the energy in by reflecting solar radiation back into space).

But the basic fact is true: energy in > energy out => increasing temperature.

I should note that this holds true for any source of energy we use except three. We can improve things by not mucking with the energy out side of the equation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for example), but so long as we're adding to the energy in side of the equation, warming is inevitable--we can only play with the rate.

The "except three" above? Solar, geothermal and tidal energy (we didn't discuss this above, but tidal forces are part of the energy in side, adding some energy from friction). These three source of energy are already active in the energy in side of the thermal equilibrium equation. If we can use some of the energy coming in to do the work we want, then there's no alteration to the energy in side, and thermal equilibrium can be maintained. Note that solar energy also means tapping any solar-driven cycle: biodiesel (carbon + sun -> plant matter -> fuel -> carbon), wind (remember convection? That's wind), water currents (convection again), and hydro (sun + surface water -> evaporation -> condensation + gravity -> rain -> surface water).

The only other ways out of this basic physical fact is to figure out how to decrease the energy in or increase the energy out part of the equation. But while it's possible to approach global warming like this--in a science fiction kind of way--it's not very practical: when people object to windmills in their neighborhoods, how do you think they'd feel about a multi-tens-of-miles-high radiator or a huge reflective sun shield overhead?

And it really is as simple as that.

(As an aside, space-based power stations--that mainstay of science fiction--would actually contribute to global warming. Why? Because they increase the amount of solar energy being received by this planet, adding to the energy in side of the equation. To keep our current thermal equilibrium, we have to work with the existing energy in value, not increase it.)

And people wonder why I hate Fedora...

So I'm mucking about at work with the pam_pkcs11 module from the OpenSC project. I have it working on Ubuntu Dapper, but RedHat has patched it to use NSS instead of OpenSSL. I tried to port over the patches, but included in them are some pam'ish stuff that's specific to 0.99, and Ubuntu is still on pam 0.7x.

But that's not why I hate Fedora.

I spent some time looking to see if I could backport it to 0.7x, decided that was too much work, and also determined that updating Ubuntu to 0.99 wasn't feasible.

That's not why I hate Fedora either.

So I downloaded Fedora Core 5 and installed it on this laptop I have. But this laptop only has a wireless network it can use. I've got a Cisco a/b/g card that uses the common Atheros chipset. This card uses the madwifi drivers. Since Atheros chips are one of the most common chips on the market, Ubuntu includes that driver on the single install CDROM. ~600MB of space, and they had the intelligence to include it.

The Fedora Core install image is over 3GB in size.

With no madwifi driver.

600MB, madwifi driver. 4x that space, no madwifi driver.

That's why I hate Fedora.

What's in a name?

From high school through college, I was a comics connoisseur--or so I felt I was at the time--and I really enjoyed Dave Sim's book Cerebus. Sim started Cerebus as a low-fantasy parody (red-haired Sophia in her chainmail bikini with attendant "scarring" jokes; "Elrod of Melvinbone," etc.) with forays into parodying comics themselves (anything with the Roach character appearing). The star was the earth-pig born, Cerebus the Aardvark.

Sim had a delightful sense of the absurd and as Cerebus was the longest-running independent comic on the market, it was also very interesting to see how the book had developed over time. Sim's pledge was to continue to 300 issues, a feat that had never before been accomplished by an independent publisher. As the series evolved and morphed from one-off stories to much longer arcs and eventually into mega-length graphic novels, Cerebus was organized into various titled books.

Real life intervened, and my comic-buying days ended with the discovery of things called "bills." This was somewhere around issue #130 or so, about midway through the book "Jaka's Story." I always regretted not getting back to reading comics in general and Cerebus in particular.

The series ended with the promised issue #300 in March of 2004. A couple of weeks ago I got the opportunity to read the entire series, from issue #1. I got to about issue #275 before I just couldn't force myself to go any further (and that was after really really forcing myself over that last 50, and simply skimming the last 25).

Cerebus is a perfect example of jumping the shark.

Now, usually when you get into these kinds of conversations, no two people can agree on exactly when something jumped the shark. Perceiving the proverbial shark-vaulting is, IMHO, a very personal thing. For me, Cerebus jumped the shark after the conclusion of the book "Mothers & Daughters," collected in Minds. This book culminates in Cerebus' actual ascension into heaven and conversation with his Creator. This even, ending in issue #200, tied together a large number of plots that had been developed over the previous 150 issues, and was the "end" I really had been looking for. (SPOILER WARNING: Cerebus, since he's a comic book creation, actually communes with his writer/artist, Dave Sim; something that I just found to be a perfect fit into the world Sim had created).

After that, though, the book really jumps the shark.

You can go out to Google and look up Sim's views on women. I won't go into specific details here. Suffice to say that Sim seems to think that, through the writings in his author's note polemics, he has fought and slain feminism on the intellectual battlefield. But Sim never realizes that he hasn't actually engaged feminist thought; he's merely attacked a construction of feminism of his own devising. Pathetically, Sim is engaged in a straw man argument with himself; an argument he can't help but win. If you choose the game, the rules, the venue, the sides, ref the game, and judge the outcome, how can you help but look good? In this, he resembles talking heads like Rush Limbaugh more than anything, and that's pathetic; most especially for a guy who thinks he's just so much smarter than his readers.

But while these views on women in general and feminism in particular of Sim's lurk in the subtext of the first 200 issues, past #200 they completely take over. There's no story left, and the book begins to feel like an extended lecture by an increasingly maniacal professor. And that's not any fun any more; at least, not unless you've already drunk the Kool-aid.

So I skimmed a few more issues, just to see if there was any hint of getting back on track. But there wasn't, so I stopped, and I have no desire to try again. I can only thank the stars that I didn't spend my own money on them.

Why I bring this up here is that I now find myself in a bit of a pickle. I've been using a userid of "cerebus" since 1989, when I started my junior semester at Boston University. At the time, my enjoyment of Sim's work led me to adopt the aardvark as an online personality. And after using it for so many years, it's become a pretty deeply ingrained habit. But now I find myself wanting to establish distance between myself and Sim, particularly given some of his rather more noxious views on issues of sexuality. But this moniker is so deeply tied into my Internet presence in so many different ways in so many different arenas, I don't think I can exorcise it completely. It's not a matter of simply forwarding my email. Let's put it this way--there are people out there I've known for years who, in all likelihood, only know me as "Cerebus."

Sixteen years is a long time, especially on the Internet, for a name to weasel its way into so many different places. This is certainly a "If I knew then what I know now" kind of situation.

Paradigm shifting

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 75% Modernist 63% Materialist 63% Postmodernist 56% Cultural Creative 44% Idealist 44% Fundamentalist 38% Romanticist 31% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

I love these things, don't ask me why.

You are Rerun!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
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If only he could say, "I told you so."

A new exhibition at London's Imperial War Museum features a long-lost map of the Middle East drafted by Lawrence and presented to the British cabinet in 1918. It provides an alternative to present-day borders in the region, taking into account local Arab sensibilities rather than the European colonial considerations that were dominant at the time.

NPR : T.E. Lawrence's Middle East Vision

Heard this one on NPR this afternoon on my drive home.  I do wish I could get to the Imperial War Museum to see the display, but alas and alack, that's not in the cards.  I don't have enough frequent flyer miles, it seems. 

Anyway, there are some interesting features on this map.  The Kurds would have had the nation they've been terrorizing the Turks over for nearly a century now, and the vision of a Pan-Arab state would have been realized.  Would it have made a difference?

Aye.  There's the rub.  But the people of the Middle East would have certainly gotten off on a better footing, I should think.

The Imperial War Museum website on T.E. Lawrence is here.  No hi-res scan of the map, though.  Pity.  I'd like to read the notes that the man made on it.

New version of Delicious 2 ListDB

Fixed a couple of bugs in detecting the library in the default location. Check it out.

What is this software of which you speak?

You mean this?

More nukes, less crude

I went to two colleges as an undergraduate; I completed an associate degree at a community college and then transferred to Boston University where I completed my bachelor's. At the community college I was enrolled in the "honors program" which included this weird "synthesis" course--part history, part literature, part current events.

My professor was deeply enamored of Charles Perrow's idea of "normal accidents". Simply put, a "normal accident" is caused by our inability to fully grasp all the ramifications of our actions when enmeshed in the increasingly complex systems technology creates. Basically, a series of individually innocuous events can combine in unforeseen ways and cause a major incident. Two cases Perrow uses to bolster his case are the Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents; for example, the alleged presence of an inspection tag obscured a gauge at TMI-2, causing personnel confusion, was "normal" in the sense that placing the inspection tag makes sense in its own context, but not in the context of a developing emergency. Similarly at Chernobyl, the testing procedures themselves were a contributing cause to the accident.

You get the idea. It's a little funky, but Perrow had a valid point. My professor--a classic hippy if I ever knew one--latched on to this as an argument against nuclear power. Missing Perrow's point, he adopted in class the position that these "normal accidents" are the inevitable consequence of complex technology, and that we must either simply accept their existence (and the deaths they cause) or abandon that technology altogether. His preference was clearly the latter. (Perrow's actual point was that these kinds of "normal accidents" are deserving of special study, and that non-linear interactions of complex systems should inform risk analysis and safety engineering.)

But this was also the semester of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Socrates would be proud of me that day; in a series of questions I got my professor to agree that the drilling, extracting, shipping, and refining of petroleum is also a complex system of exactly the type Perrow describes. Then I delivered the coup de grâce--I asked, "If that's so, aren't spills like Exxon Valdez simply one of the kinds of 'normal accidents' that are the inevitable consequence of petroleum technology? And if so, by your own lights, shouldn't we either learn to accept them or abandon that technology altogether. Which would you have us do?"

He was speechless. Class ended shortly thereafter, and next class we moved on to another topic.

I am reminded of this because Thomas Friedman is out stumping for his book The World is Flat. In the book and the Salon article I linked to, he makes the point that energy independence for the US is vital to our stated foreign policy goals of remaking the Middle East--and that to do so we're going to have to suck it up and deal with nuclear power once and for all. This quote specifically reminded me of the incident with my old professor:

The risk of climate change by continuing to rely on hydrocarbons is so much greater than the risk of nuclear power.

While any number of Friedman's ideas might be hokey (I've not read the book yet) he's absolutely spot-on about that. I only wish I could've made that point to my professor.

Skype me

I've been playing with voice over IP (VoIP) lately, mainly because we're weary of cell phone hell out here in Boerne, and have decided we need a "real" phone once again. The fact that we're out of the 210 area code provides added impetus.

Going cell-only was a good idea in theory but didn't work out well in practice. Until radio coverage is truly ubiquitous it's not going to be a really viable option, either. In our new home location the thing doesn't ring half the time, though when it works the quality remains good. Digital service certainly has merits.

Since I have broadband at home and travel with modest frequency, I'm looking at VoIP. The choices have been narrowed down to Packet8 and Vonage; both provide flat-rate unlimited national calling. Vonage generally looks technically superior but doesn't yet have E911 services (they route 911 calls to local PSAPs, which isn't quite the same thing; however, E911 is supposed to be supported soon), and doesn't have numbers in my area code. Packet8 has my area code and E911 service, but doesn't support analog adaptors that do QoS.

In either case I've got a FreeWorldDialup number (503257 for anyone who cares), and can use that to dial home for nothing. Dialing to my FWD account from Vonage uses the international rates, which is annoying, while from Packet8 the same call would be free.

Back to the topic, there's an alternative service built by Kazaa (sans spyware) called Skype. Skype runs a VoIP-like protocl over a P2P network, which is very interesting from a technical point of view. Skype-to-Skype calls are free, of course, and they offer dialout to regular PSTN phones (called SkypeOut) at about $0.02/minute anywhere in the US/Canada/EU/Australia. The limitation is that PSTN users can't call you.

It does, however, sound freakin' awesome. Cross-platform (Windown, Mac, Linux), and it was perfectly plug-n-play; install the client, register and account, and off you go. Plays well behind a NAT, even with multiple instances running, which is a plus. My account there is "cerebusii."

So what I'm thinking is VoIP at home, (probably Vonage since I'm more worried about call quality than the area code issue, and E911 service will be in place eventually) and SkypeOut for calling while on the road, and FWD for calling home. Kind of a hodge-podge, but there you go.

In the meantime, if you see me on Skype, feel free to give me a ring.

Disappointing Myself

I was in the grocery store this evening, and at the checkout I ended up behind a transsexual-- pre-op or post-op, it doesn't matter. Anyway, she paid and left the store, and apparently waited out front for her ride. The baggers-- all teenaged males-- spent the next few minutes running back and forth to the doors laughing and smirking and generally having a grand old time at the woman's expense.

I felt the urge to confront these ignorant children, but I didn't and I'm not sure why I didn't. That's where I disappointed myself. I thought about it all the way home. I should have said something. Is the training to not rock the boat, not to make a scene so ingrained in me that I couldn't stand up and even say something?

Would it have made a difference? Most likely not. Kids are kids and kids are, by and large, cruel narrow-minded little twerps. Especially the boys. But bigotry thrives only where it is allowed to go unchallenged; it is for each of us a moral duty to confront it wherever we find it-- even if we are not the target.

I won't let it happen again.

On friends and lovers.

I posted recently about my reading the livejournal of an ex-girlfriend (call her D.) all the way through, primarily looking to see if I was mentioned anywhere. I've been thinking about that over the last couple of weeks. I even discussed it with my wife.

Yeah, you read that right. I don't have any secrets from this woman I share my life with, and I don't see the need to keep any. Of course, I didn't see the need to keep anything from D. either, even though things were kept from me. Yeah, hindsight being 20/20 and all, I knew even then in my deepest part that she never loved me the way I loved her. There was no reservation on my part, even though some part of me knew it wasn't mutual. My roommate at that time described it this way:

"It's like you're looking in a crystal ball watching yourself do stupid things and you're saying 'Don't do that, that's stupid,' but the guy in the ball is doing it anyway."

I know the kind of commitment I give has the potential to scare some people-- I learned that the hard way with D., it was an issue with M. early on in our relationship and marriage, and you read about it all the time-- but to me it's the only way to be and I see no need to change just to avoid pain.

Primarily M. opined that since it was almost 10 years ago, I should get over it. Well, no duh. But it did give me pause to think, and think extensively on the subject: Why am I not really over this relationship?

I mentioned a lack of closure previously. Well, sort of. Did D. and I have a final argument, hissing and spitting and making it clear? No. I did try to seek confrontations but only half-heartedly, and she played some juvenile games to avoid them. When the end came, it was pretty banal; I called her, we arranged a property swap, and that was the end of it. I'd already started seeing M. and D. was still in her relationship with H. But was there closure? I don't think there's a conversation I can point to and say "Here is where it ended;" but all in all I think there was closure.

So why am I still writing about D., ten years later?

I've been thinking about that, and I think it comes down to friendships.

All my life I've had very few close friends. School was always socially very very difficult for me. Do you remember the line from Real Genius, "My teachers disliked me because I was smarter than they were, and my classmates hated me because I blew the bell curve"? Not quite that bad, but you get the picture. It wasn't until High School that I found a peer group, but even then I wasn't in quite the right social set.

College was a whole new world. The work continued to require only minimal effort, but it no longer mattered to my peers that I found it easy. People actually came to me for help-- not the demands that I aid cheating on a test that I had to fend off in HS but actual, honest help. I met people more like me, like H. for example, than I ever had before in my life. Life online-- I was part of the original set of IRC users in the US-- expanded my social set by many magnitudes; in fact, that's how I met D.

It was these people with whom I felt I had real bonds of friendship. This was unusual for me. People I'd known in High School came close, but not like this. This was different, or so I thought.

As far as I can determine with the clarity of hindsight, D. started her affair with H. the very day I left for the Air Force. Which is to say, that's when they started actually seeing each other. The soil was tilled and the seeds were planted long before that day. And I'm relatively sure that the rest of my college social group knew all about it. Except me of course.

And that's the core of the matter. It wasn't just that I was toyed with and discarded; I'd been through that before. Admittedly, it wasn't as intense as this, but I'd still been there, done that. It was that my friends-- indeed, all of my friends-- betrayed the trust I had placed in them. They simply didn't value me as much as I had valued them. As a result, when I departed that relationship I found myself abandoning everyone and everything that was part of that life.

Compound that with the fact that D. and H. were the best friends I thought I had up until that point in my life, and they were in it together.

Since then, I still haven't many friends besides my wife M., whom I count as my best friend. I have many acquaintances, mostly business associates, but only a very small social group and as they're online and my job has changed, I rarely interact with them any more.

So when you get down to brass tacks, I find myself dwelling over this failed relationship simply because I miss my friends and there's no way to get them back. It's not about lack of closure. It's not about wanting to know if I'd affected D.'s life. It's not even about love any more. It's about the only friends I thought I had, and the betrayal that was done to me.

I am a sick, sick man.

I was up late last night reading an old girlfriend's livejournal.

All of it.

Just to see if I was mentioned anywhere.

Can you say "lack of closure?"

For the record, there was one passing reference and one possible direct reference.

Mid-life crisis, ahoy!

Two ghosts from my distant past get married.

About 10 years ago, I was engaged to a woman in Cincinnati. She was my first love, the first woman I'd had sex with, the first of a lot of things. I'd even moved from Boston to Cinci to be with her. When I failed to find work in Cincinnati, I enlisted in the USAF and left for training in (and eventual posting to) San Antonio.
That's apparently when she started cheating on me-- with perhaps the best friend I had from Boston University.
I didn't find out for about a year, IIRC. And we tried to 'work it out,' whatever the fuck that means, for another year after that. Eventually I cut it off completely, we exchanged personal property, she moved in with Tom in Boston, and that was that. A year later I'd met my wife and we were getting married. I haven't heard from either of them since.
I just found out today (through the website of a mutual friend I haven't talked to in ages) that they got married back in April, after 8 years of living together.
Can you say mixed feelings? My initial reaction was 'about damn time.' My second reaction was 'I'm happy for them.' My third reaction was 'That bitch. That bastard. Fuck 'em both.'
Obviously I haven't fully closed the issue. I essentially abandoned that part of my life after we ended things. Knowing that they'd finally tied the knot just stirs up a lot of emotions I'd thought dead and long since buried. So now here I am, 33 years old, happily married with a family, and I find myself devising ways to bring mystical destruction on an old girlfriend and her husband from two thousand miles and ten years away.
I would have been happier not knowing.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Snow! Well, not quite, at least not in San Antonio. But we did get freezing rain so I took the day off.
I'm from the Catskills in New York. It's not that I can't drive in icy conditions. I worry about everyone else. San Antonians can't even drive in the freaking rain. That plus the road closures make it a heck of a gamble.
Looking out my window it doesn't look all that bad. Yeah, there's a little ice on the bridges but the roads aren't bad.
Any excuse for a break though. Work has been hell the last couple of days.

I blog, you blog, we all blog a web log.

I've been drafted as webmaster for my Scout troop. It's here for right now.

Right now it's an MT-driven blog with per-patrol categories, with a link to a phpicalendar-driven calendar application. I decided it would be easiest to maintain the troop event calendar in iCal. For the moment it's not a webdav-enabled site.
Next up is some kind of photo album. If anyone has suggestions I'm open to ideas.
Hopefully I'll be ready to go live next week. This assumes we can decide on a decent domain name.

I don't understand my dog.

Lady, our mutt (collie, golden retriever and malamute we think), is thunderphobic and has been since we adopted her from the Humane Society.

It's not all that uncommon in dogs. Even before a storm starts, she'll start shaking and panting and generally getting stressed out. And the louder the thunder gets, the worse she gets. She even tries to climb behind you on the couch; no mean feat for a dog that weighs 60lbs.
The part I don't understand is if I put her on her lead and take her out into the front yard for a short walk when the storm starts, she's fine.
It doesn't work if I take her out back. And it doesn't matter how hard it's raining, or how loud the thunder is. On the leash, out the front door, and she's cool as a cucumber. Keep her in the house and she'll try her damnedest to burrow through the floor.
I don't get it.