a sibilant intake of breath

BuryCoal update

Milan — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:43:31 +0000

“Denying these pipelines is the most plausible way of constraining the growth of the oil sands, given that the federal government is doing everything possible to encourage their unlimited growth and provincial governments are similarly crazed with the promise of immediate profits and in denial about the risks of climate change.”

How to help

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Backlit

Milan — Tue, 29 May 2012 10:00:22 +0000

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Young gamer

Milan — Mon, 28 May 2012 10:00:18 +0000

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Sleeping child

Milan — Sun, 27 May 2012 10:00:14 +0000

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Portlands Energy Centre

Milan — Sun, 27 May 2012 01:29:22 +0000

As part of Doors Open Toronto 2012, my friend Mike and I took a tour of the Portlands Energy Centre: a natural-gas-fired peaker power plant located slightly south and east of downtown Toronto.

This is a combined cycle plant with two gas turbines and a steam turbine. Together, they are about 60% efficient at turning the chemical energy in natural gas into electricity. The plant is a peaker, which means it can be started at reasonably short notice to add power to the grid when demand exceeds supply (summer air conditioning creates Toronto’s highest demand peaks).

The plant puts out 550 megawatts of electricity. The peak temperature inside the gas turbines is about 600˚C, and the output from the steam turbine is at about 80˚C (for all those Carnot efficiency fans out there). Neat fact: steam turbines work on the same principle as hurricanes.

I took about 200 photos inside, and I will be posting the best of them to Flickr once I have processed them.

[Update: 10:21pm] The first few shots are on Flickr: Portlands Energy Centre – Doors Open Toronto.

[Update: 2:25am] Done with all the RAW files. Post-processing takes a lot of time!

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Road bike

Milan — Sat, 26 May 2012 10:00:35 +0000

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Whirlybirds

Milan — Fri, 25 May 2012 22:56:35 +0000

Some helicopter seeds I saw the other day

Can anyone identify the specific plant?

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Tree climbing

Milan — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:00:59 +0000

Photo by Ihor Ilnyckyj

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Sunburst

Milan — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:25 +0000

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Trees and benches

Milan — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:39 +0000

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Idea for an access control device

Milan — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:00:30 +0000

There are many circumstances in which both authorized and unauthorized people wish to gain access to the same physical space. It might be a secure storage area in a shop where valuable things are kept, a secure part of a military facility storing cryptographic materials, a person’s bedroom, a bank vault, or even a child’s secret hiding place.

In all of these cases, it would be valuable for authorized users to know if someone else has been entering the controlled space.

In spaces that do not contain moving objects aside from people, it seems to me that there is a pretty simple way to provide a bit more security. All you need is a device that watches for motion and which publicly displays recent spans of time when it has been detected. It is essential that this time display be able to resist tampering by unauthorized individuals. The number of spans that should be shown depends on the level of security desired and the frequency with which the space is used.

Such a device could be useful for militaries worried about spies, businesses worried about thieving employees, and ordinary people worried about over-curious friends and relations.

Design of the device

The key components of the device are a motion sensor, a tamper-resistant display, and tamper-resistant software and hardware to run the physical devices:

Particularly for spaces that have fairly normal patterns of use, abnormal activity would be immediately obvious from the display board. For instance, the secure file storage facility of a company might ordinarily be used during business hours. The appearance of recorded activity during the middle of the night or during a weekend would attract suspicion.

This device would make a natural compliment to a motion-activated video surveillance system. Where such systems exist, people normally only watch the tapes when they have a reason to be suspicious. The tamper-resistant time display would give authorized users a reason to be wary, if unexplained access times popped up. They could then refer to the video footage for investigation. The two systems could be integrated closely. For instance, beside each of the access times displayed could be a button that causes a fast-motion version of a recorded video to be played. It would then be possible to determine at a glance what sort of activity was happening at a particular place and time. This would be especially useful for identifying false positives. After all, that mysterious movement during the middle of the night might just be the moving glare of headlights from passing cars, fluttering curtains, or something similarly benign.

Obviously, a motion-activated video system alone would be sufficient to let people identify instances of unauthorized access and sort out what happened during them. What the time display system provides is at-a-glance simplicity and ease of use. It reduces the amount of time spent worrying about false positives, and it makes it immediately clear to everyone that access to a particular space is logged. That knowledge alone could be sufficient to deter snooping and other nefarious activities.

I think it would be pretty easy to build something like this. All you need is an off-the-shelf motion sensor that you can connect to a microcontroller, a microcontroller like an Arduino, a display system (possibly a set of seven-segment displays) driven by the same board, and a source of power. A very simple system might be able to run from a solar cell and backup battery. Optional extras include physical barriers to tampering like a locked metal and plexiglass casing, tamper-evident components like seals, and systems for external logging of access times (they could be automatically emailed to a particular address, saved in a database, posted to a website, etc). As a further means of resisting tampering, the device could make use of public key cryptography to include a digital signature and time stamp for each entry in the access log.

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Llama

Milan — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:00:40 +0000

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Links for 2010-11-12 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 PST

An Open Letter to Wired Magazine
Come to think of it, the last time that a woman was featured on your cover, because she was being featured in the magazine for an actual accomplishment, was way back in 1996 when it was Sherry Turkle, the academic and author. And, the only other time was in 1994, when musician/author Laurie Anderson was featured. Because since then, I guess no women have done anything notable in technology unless it had to do with their bodies? Really?

Links for 2010-11-10 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 PST

Supply-Side Virus Strikes Again - By Paul Krugman - Slate Magazine
The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant--that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them.

Links for 2010-11-09 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 PST

Robert Christgau: Frank Sinatra 1915-1998
It's no surprise that among the post-Presley young he gets a lot more guys than gals. The gals have other ways to get off now--provisional romance is one thrill among many rather than the precondition of any thrill at all. The guys, on the other hand, admire Sinatra because he personified a style and an era in which guys still held all the big cards. And they admire the way he made gross material acquisitiveness seem classy instead of just classbound.
Geopolitical Journey, Part 1: The Traveler | STRATFOR
Nations and empires are living things until they die. While they live they grow to the limits set by other nations. They don’t grow like this because they are evil. They do this because they are composed of humans who always want to be more secure, more prosperous and more respected. It is inconceivable to me that Russia, alive and unrestrained, would not seek to return to what it once was.
To block EPA regulations, Koch Industries expands lobbying campaign to children | Grist
Koch Industries, the privately owned industrial conglomerate, is using any available method to fight the enforcement of laws to limit its toxic pollution. This summer's "Regulation Reality Tour," produced by Koch's grassroots marketing arm Americans for Prosperity (AFP), featured a "moon bounce in the shape of a SWAT car for children," ostensibly symbolizing the boogeyman of Environmental Protection Agency "Carbon Cops." "Let's make sure we keep doing our part to ensure that our generation passes on to our children and grandchildren the same freedoms we enjoyed," AFP cries, in protest of sewage overflow rules.

Links for 2010-11-08 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:00:00 PST

Siddhartha Mukherjee has a powerful new metaphor in Emperor of All Maladies. - By Amanda Schaffer - Slate Magazine
This imagery reflects a contemporary, molecularly sophisticated view of cancer cells as savvy, prolific, and immortal. It provides a unified way of thinking about a disease that has come to seem less like one problem with one potential solution than it ever has before. In fact, this imagery carries a more dire implication: If the enemy is ourselves, only better, there may be no solution. As Mukherjee himself wonders, if cancer cells are more wily and adaptable than we are, is it possible finally to defeat them—and if so, by what strategies? Maybe we must ultimately accept cancer, to some degree, as the "inherent outer limit of our survival"—an inevitable offshoot of growth and aging that we might learn to hold at bay but can never truly eradicate.
Al Qaeda Unlucky Again in Cargo Bombing Attempt | STRATFOR
The details that we have been able to collect so far concerning the configuration of the devices is that both were camouflaged in parcels and both contained a main charge of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) that was to be detonated by a primary explosive charge of lead azide. PETN is a military-grade explosive commonly found in detonating cord and some plastic explosives. PETN was also the primary explosive in the underwear bomb used in AQAP’s failed Christmas Day attack as well as its attempted assassination of Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef using an IED concealed inside the attacker’s body. Lead azide is a common primary explosive used in detonators, and it can also be used to effectively detonate an explosive such as PETN. According to media reports, the two devices contained 10.58 ounces and 15.11 ounces of PETN, both of which are larger charges than the 2.8 ounces contained in the Christmas Day device

Links for 2010-11-02 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:00:00 PDT

Morals at the ballot box: If you're reading this, thanks for voting | The Economist
I argue that while citizens have no duty to vote, if they do vote, they must vote well—on the basis of sound moral and empirical beliefs in order to promote the common good—or otherwise they are morally obligated to abstain. Though individual votes make no significant difference to political outcomes, bad voting violates either a duty not to participate in collectively harmful activities or a duty not to participate in collective activities that impose undue risk upon innocent people
Tea-party blues: I still say we're doomed | The Economist
The tea-party movement is two different things: a bunch of spontaneous conservative gatherings, and a few well-financed, experienced and professional conservative political organisations under a new brand. The tea-party movement is spontaneous, and it has been effective. But where it is spontaneous, it is not effective, and where it is effective, it is not spontaneous.

Links for 2010-11-01 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:00:00 PDT

C.K. Chivers' The Gun explains how the AK-47 changed the world. - By Nicholas Schmidle - Slate Magazine
The Kalashnikov was originally touted as a weapon to resist imperialism, capitalism—in short, the United States. But Cold War advertising rarely aligned with reality. The rifle's operational debut came in 1956, when the Red Army rolled into Hungary to crush a popular uprising in the streets of Budapest. Two events in Budapest that autumn foreshadowed the Kalashnikov's future. First, in the process of ruthlessly suppressing the revolution, the Kalashnikov emerged as "repression's chosen gun, the rifle of the occupier and the police state." More important, it quickly fell into the hands of rebels who deciphered the gun's simple mechanics and used it against Soviet-backed soldiers, even executing one lieutenant in broad daylight. Here was a weapon anyone could use—and use over and over. The Kalashnikov was "so reliable, even when soaked in bog water and coated with sand," Chivers writes, "that its Soviet testers had trouble making it jam."

Links for 2010-10-27 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 PDT

CBC News - Politics - Canada's public service rated less corrupt
Canada rose to sixth place in having the most trustworthy public sector worldwide, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Corruption Perceptions Index calculated Canada's score as 8.9 out of 10 on a survey concerning whether public servants use their positions for private gain.

The country's score was a slight improvement from its 8.7 score in 2009, but the gain was enough to push Canada up two spots in 2010.