Once everyone in the country has broadband access, education is utterly revolutionized. It's just a
question of structure at that point.
One common
complaint about society compares teachers to football players. "What's
wrong with our society," they ask, "when someone playing a game gets
paid a thousand times more than a teacher?" I'll tell you what's wrong
with society: teaching is inefficient. It's not about cultural priorities, it's about scale. One football player can entertain a million people at a time. One
teacher can only teach maybe thirty. In fact, per audience member
contact hour, a teacher (teaching 25 students seven hours a day, 180 days a year) makes 500 times what a football player
(playing maybe 22 three-hour games a year) does! If you want teachers
to be paid better, if you want education to improve, we need to model
professional sports: find the absolute best teachers out there, and give them a way to teach millions at the same time. Education as we know it will change forever.
We're almost there. If you haven't looked at Khan Academy, I suggest you do so. It's become one of the top e-learning
platforms out there, with thousands of simple videos explaining almost
any subject you can name. The math section has just been expanded
further to be fully interactive. There are several other similar sites. MIT has opened access to almost all it's classes!
As impressive as all these initiatives are, one thing stands out to me about them all: they are all unfinished. We stand at the terminator.
We've all seen children operating tablets as soon as they have the
motor skills. When those children get to school as school is today, they
will be bored out of their minds! If information is presented well,
most children can absorb it at an unbelievable rate. That's the
revolution we're looking at.
Here's what the government
can do to help the process. Some of it is large infusions of cash, some
is fixing the existing brokenness of the educational system, and some
is just getting out of the way.
Hold competitions for the best online teaching programs.
Define
standards, then offer prizes to the best ones in each subject. And I
mean serious
prizes, in the millions or tens of millions of dollars. Make the contest
run over a few years, with a randomly selected group of students
assigned to each program. Test each group regularly on the selected
subject, in a thorough and rigorous manner. Give intermediate prizes
each year or semester to the programs that show good progress.
Ultimately, this project could cost the government well under a billion
dollars, and jumpstart the new wave of education by a decade! But that's only useful
if schools can handle the advanced students, which leads us to...
Make the school curriculum more adaptable.
If
a student comes into first grade already competent in some of the
requisite skills, advance that student to a class where they might
actually learn. Schedule each student individually in each subject, at
their appropriate skill level. Forget no child left behind. Better no child held down.
Every child should be pushed to the limit of their skills, without
regard to age. I was, and it shaped my entire life in very positive
ways. If a student can finish school at sixteen, let them! Declare them a provisional adult, with additional privileges like voting. (The Constitution says that all citizens eighteen or older can vote. It doesn't say those younger can't.)
Don't ever compromise advancement standards.
No more of this "oh, you showed up, have a gold star" or "you turned in an assignment, have a 50". I'm all for giving multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery, but you can not compromise standards. If a student doesn't understand the material, they do not advance. Period. Anything else turns your educational system into a babysitting system, which is where we are now.
Make the in-building education focus more on things that can't be learned online.
Critical
thinking, clear communication, discussion, respect, personal
interaction, field trips! Despite how we do things now, an education is not about
learning facts, it's about learning new ways to think! Facts can be
learned anywhere. Students should be exposed to multiple instructors,
constantly, preferably with utterly different viewpoints about subjects.
It's all too easy to turn your brain off when you're never presented
with contradictory information. Clear communication in text
should also be emphasized. Far too often I've seen college students
write like seventh graders talk. This will take the longest time; it
will take over a generation for there to be enough teachers trained this
way.
Make students feel safe.
All too often, crimes like assault and theft are committed in schools without anything done
about it. Constantly bullied students are ignored, then punished when
they fight back. Students need a system of justice that can be trusted,
no different than adults do. There should be no problem with having
students two or three years apart in the same classes if their skill
level allows it. Right now if we tried that it would be a disaster,
because disrespectful and threatening behavior to other students is
ignored. That has to change.
This requires some viable
ability to punish students, possibly outside school hours, and possibly
even without parental cooperation. But it also requires a system to
ensure that students aren't punished unjustly, because that happens
regularly too. In short, we need a court system for very young children. Yes, that's ridiculous. But what else makes sense?
Make school optionally year-round.
Many poorer families rely on school to double as child care. School being offered (if not required) year-round would
help the students advance faster, and would help the parents work more, save money, and improve the
child's quality of life. The only downside is that we have to pay more
teachers, but spending huge amounts of money to accomplish good things
is what these posts are all about!
Make students work.
Students should be expected to participate in low-level "internships" later in school. A few hours a week, for limited pay,
the students learn how to work. Ideally, this would evolve into full-on
vocational training, integrated with local community colleges and
technical schools.
Don't forget adult education for everyday life.
Education isn't just what you learn in school. There are all sorts of things that could be taught through interactive online materials that would be useful for adults. Good nutrition, for example. Many people subsist on junk food because they honestly don't know they could be healthier and saving money!
And how about language? There are huge numbers of immigrants and refugees in the United States, particularly in Tennessee and nearby states, that don't speak English. That language barrier makes it very difficult for those islanded cultures to assimilate into our larger community. No good comes of that. With the kind of online program we were talking about above, we could make it tremendously easier for those adults to learn English.
The census bureau found that about 4.2 million people speak English "not at all", and 9.3 million speak English "not well". For a rough cost estimate, let's just assume we're buying all those people Rosetta Stone at the list price. That comes to about $5 billion. Now, consider how much the US spends on translators in a year for all those people. I found one number (not sourced) indicating it's about $375 million a year federally, and I'd bet states and cities spend much more. And how about the indirect costs of poor communication? For $5 billion, I'd say this is a bargain.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Friday, August 22, 2014
Infrastructure Megaprojects: Communication
Think about what your life would be like without a phone, without
television, without internet access, without books, without music.
Really sit and consider that for a minute. I'm betting that if you're
reading this, you can't even imagine what you'd do with most of your
time. Now imagine your life to date without those things.
Will anyone dispute that information is a necessity in this world?
The US information infrastructure is pathetic compared to most of the developed world. But it's fixable! Estimates have Google Fiber costing about $1,500/home to install. Figure 100 million homes in the US, and to wire the country with high-speed fiber would cost something like $150 billion. Even if it's double that, it's trivial on the scale of projects we're talking about. And following the Google Fiber model, it should be possible to supply most households with free high-speed internet access, only charging for higher bandwidth connections.
But it shouldn't stop there. Wired communication is only part of our information consumption. Right now there are a large number of incompatible cellular networks in the country. How much could we save by standardizing those networks on a single interoperable technology? Think about that. With appropriate leasing agreements in place, you could use anyone's tower, and just let the providers haggle over who pays whom on the back end. And once there's a single universal standard, expanding coverage and service becomes much easier and more efficient.
How much would it cost to pay everyone to switch their towers over to a shared technology? Figure there are 200,000 towers in the US, and we want to change out 90% of them to match the rest. At $150,000 per tower, the entire network would cost $30 billion to build from scratch. Assuming the electronics involved are only a tenth the cost of the tower, we're talking about three billion dollars. Chump change. Once a standard was in place, the government would probably spend more than that building additional towers just to improve coverage.
Unfortunately, we're now beyond my technical knowledge. Are there actual technical advantages to Verizon's approach over, say, Sprint's? Is one objectively better? Is there some technical reason what I've proposed is unworkable? I can't say. But anyone who's ever considered switching cell providers knows what I mean when I say that anything to reduce vender lock-in is a good thing.
Oh, and while we're at it, let's get rid of bundling the cost of a phone into my monthly bill. If it's a $600 phone, don't tell me it's a $200 phone with an early termination penalty if I leave before 2029. Just tell me it's a $600 phone. Finance it, pay cash, whatever, but vender lock-in needs to die.
No, that's not a megaproject. But let's do it anyway.
Will anyone dispute that information is a necessity in this world?
The US information infrastructure is pathetic compared to most of the developed world. But it's fixable! Estimates have Google Fiber costing about $1,500/home to install. Figure 100 million homes in the US, and to wire the country with high-speed fiber would cost something like $150 billion. Even if it's double that, it's trivial on the scale of projects we're talking about. And following the Google Fiber model, it should be possible to supply most households with free high-speed internet access, only charging for higher bandwidth connections.
But it shouldn't stop there. Wired communication is only part of our information consumption. Right now there are a large number of incompatible cellular networks in the country. How much could we save by standardizing those networks on a single interoperable technology? Think about that. With appropriate leasing agreements in place, you could use anyone's tower, and just let the providers haggle over who pays whom on the back end. And once there's a single universal standard, expanding coverage and service becomes much easier and more efficient.
How much would it cost to pay everyone to switch their towers over to a shared technology? Figure there are 200,000 towers in the US, and we want to change out 90% of them to match the rest. At $150,000 per tower, the entire network would cost $30 billion to build from scratch. Assuming the electronics involved are only a tenth the cost of the tower, we're talking about three billion dollars. Chump change. Once a standard was in place, the government would probably spend more than that building additional towers just to improve coverage.
Unfortunately, we're now beyond my technical knowledge. Are there actual technical advantages to Verizon's approach over, say, Sprint's? Is one objectively better? Is there some technical reason what I've proposed is unworkable? I can't say. But anyone who's ever considered switching cell providers knows what I mean when I say that anything to reduce vender lock-in is a good thing.
Oh, and while we're at it, let's get rid of bundling the cost of a phone into my monthly bill. If it's a $600 phone, don't tell me it's a $200 phone with an early termination penalty if I leave before 2029. Just tell me it's a $600 phone. Finance it, pay cash, whatever, but vender lock-in needs to die.
No, that's not a megaproject. But let's do it anyway.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Why the votes for Charlie Brown must have been random
I wrote previously, suggesting that Charlie Brown won his primary due to people who voted for the first name on the ballot. Another writer responded in the Tennessean, suggesting that he instead won due to informed voters. I would like to explain how I concluded this was unlikely.
94,000 people voted for Brown. If 94,000 informed voters chose him, there have to be a number of similarly informed people who either didn't vote, or voted for someone else. We can reasonably say that at least 200,000 people have to have been informed about Brown's positions before the election.
So how did these people get that information? Remember, I'm not the only one wondering who this man is; he's a cypher to the newspapers too! He has no internet presence, nor any other mass media campaign. Perhaps he mailed fliers? But if he had a massive snail-mail campaign that reached a couple hundred thousand voters, he'd need to spend at least $20k. His campaign reports having no money at all.
Perhaps Brown has a couple dozen volunteers going door to door twelve hours a day for six months. But other than that, I'm just not seeing a way that most votes for Brown could possibly be informed votes. Perhaps someone who knew Brown's positions before the election, and chose to vote for him based on them, can write and tell us how? And also why out of his 94,000 informed supporters, only a hundred have joined his facebook group?
94,000 people voted for Brown. If 94,000 informed voters chose him, there have to be a number of similarly informed people who either didn't vote, or voted for someone else. We can reasonably say that at least 200,000 people have to have been informed about Brown's positions before the election.
So how did these people get that information? Remember, I'm not the only one wondering who this man is; he's a cypher to the newspapers too! He has no internet presence, nor any other mass media campaign. Perhaps he mailed fliers? But if he had a massive snail-mail campaign that reached a couple hundred thousand voters, he'd need to spend at least $20k. His campaign reports having no money at all.
Perhaps Brown has a couple dozen volunteers going door to door twelve hours a day for six months. But other than that, I'm just not seeing a way that most votes for Brown could possibly be informed votes. Perhaps someone who knew Brown's positions before the election, and chose to vote for him based on them, can write and tell us how? And also why out of his 94,000 informed supporters, only a hundred have joined his facebook group?
Friday, August 15, 2014
Infrastructure Megaprojects: Arable Land
So now we have energy and fresh water. The next obvious human need is
food. Food production comes down to three things: water, land, and
fertilizer. We have a solution to get arbitrary amounts of fresh water,
and we can develop fertilizer from the leftover potassium from the desalination plants.
That leaves land.
Large sections of the United States are desert, and much of the rest is trending that way. Deserts may not all be dead and barren, but they're not particularly useful by human standards. The growth of deserts is a huge problem.
So let's fix them. It's possible to reverse desertification by planting trees. It's counter-intuitive, but think about it this way: plants don't just absorb water, they also release it through their leaves. That means that whatever rain that's fallen, the trees hold it temporarily, then release it back to the environment to rain out again. That means that whatever rain falls in the area stays in the area longer, cycling through the local ecosystem, rather than just evaporating and leaving.
There are about a quarter million square miles of desert in the continental US, and about as much semi-arid land. Figure fifty trees per acre, and that's sixteen billion trees. Sixteen billion trees to increase our useful arable land area by 20% sounds like a pretty good deal!
If you think that number sounds totally unreasonable, think again. During the great depression we planted three billion trees. More recently, seven billion trees have been planted in less than a decade. Moreover, this requires almost totally unskilled labor, so it's a great jobs project.
Of course, once the forests are established, we wouldn't just leave them untouched. Forests are great, and they have all sorts of positive effects on air quality, improving the health of those nearby. But forests aren't the only end goal. Over time we'd need to make some reclaimed areas into farms, taking advantage of the rebuilt soil. But we'd do that in a planned and controlled fashion. We need to make sure that we don't reclaim the deserts, only to recreate them later.
Large sections of the United States are desert, and much of the rest is trending that way. Deserts may not all be dead and barren, but they're not particularly useful by human standards. The growth of deserts is a huge problem.
So let's fix them. It's possible to reverse desertification by planting trees. It's counter-intuitive, but think about it this way: plants don't just absorb water, they also release it through their leaves. That means that whatever rain that's fallen, the trees hold it temporarily, then release it back to the environment to rain out again. That means that whatever rain falls in the area stays in the area longer, cycling through the local ecosystem, rather than just evaporating and leaving.
There are about a quarter million square miles of desert in the continental US, and about as much semi-arid land. Figure fifty trees per acre, and that's sixteen billion trees. Sixteen billion trees to increase our useful arable land area by 20% sounds like a pretty good deal!
If you think that number sounds totally unreasonable, think again. During the great depression we planted three billion trees. More recently, seven billion trees have been planted in less than a decade. Moreover, this requires almost totally unskilled labor, so it's a great jobs project.
Of course, once the forests are established, we wouldn't just leave them untouched. Forests are great, and they have all sorts of positive effects on air quality, improving the health of those nearby. But forests aren't the only end goal. Over time we'd need to make some reclaimed areas into farms, taking advantage of the rebuilt soil. But we'd do that in a planned and controlled fashion. We need to make sure that we don't reclaim the deserts, only to recreate them later.
Monday, August 11, 2014
What does "close the border" actually mean?
I had this conversation on the Tennessean comments page, wherein Larry Tanner was saying we should "close the border". I asked for clarification, tried to provide some of my own, and everything got honest in a surprising direction. It was refreshing, when most people just spit out talking points and call each other names.
The original topic was Obama's requested appropriations to execute the law relating to the present refugee crisis. Keep in mind, I am not with the below advocating any course of action, nor am I condoning any of Larry's positions. I am simply saying we all need to be clear about what we're suggesting should be done.
Larry: I wouldn't be against this if a portion, probably a large portion, was used to close the border to illegal immigration. Without the border being closed, this would only be a Band-Aid requiring more billions to care for the next wave of "children" which are sure to come.
The original topic was Obama's requested appropriations to execute the law relating to the present refugee crisis. Keep in mind, I am not with the below advocating any course of action, nor am I condoning any of Larry's positions. I am simply saying we all need to be clear about what we're suggesting should be done.
Larry: I wouldn't be against this if a portion, probably a large portion, was used to close the border to illegal immigration. Without the border being closed, this would only be a Band-Aid requiring more billions to care for the next wave of "children" which are sure to come.
Stephen: Define
what the border being "closed" would look like. I mean, it's not like
these children are crossing undetected or unimpeded. They cross the
border and turn themselves in. What do you want, a giant two-thousand
mile impenetrable wall?
Larry: Impede them. I know the feds won't do this but the Texans can and are doing this as we type. The gist of the letter was money. Take care of the ones that are here until we can send them back and stop completely any more from getting their grubby little toes in the Rio Grande.
Stephen: How?
Larry: Threaten
the Mexicans with sanctions or tell them to stem the tide or we'll come
to the south side of the border and do it for them. Might take out a
few drug cartels while we're at it. You're the engineer, how would you
do it? Excuse the question, I already know your answer.
Invading Mexico has consequences. We need UN approval, or we risk a huge amount of goodwill from the international community. And we actually need that goodwill, believe it or not. We burned a huge amount invading Iraq illegally, and I don't think we could get away with that again.
Now, that said, Mexico is in large part a failed state, and I think we need new international legal structures for handling failed states. If we're threatened from Mexican territory, and the Mexican state can't control their territory well enough to eliminate that threat, we should have some legal means of recourse. I wrote about that here.
In a lot of ways, what we're contemplating is worse than the Iraq invasion, because there is no end game! It's not like we'll eventually leave. We're basically permanently annexing a piece of Mexico to create this hypothetical border zone. In so doing, American soldiers WILL die, and the financial costs will be enormous. The political will may simply not be here internally to sustain an occupation.
Now, compare the cost of your proposed invasion and occupation of part of Mexico to the cost of the uncontrolled border. Which costs more? I really don't know, but I'm betting it's not as easy a decision as it looked before we started talking about it in these terms.
Stephen: The UN as an organization isn't so bad, as long as you don't expect it to be more than it is. If the world is going to get together and say "this kind of thing is not okay", the UN is the place those kinds of statements happen. It has no actual power, nor was it ever intended to. So if we were going to occupy part of Mexico, for any reason, the UN would be where the world discussion about whether that was okay or not would take place.
What I'm really interested in is that we don't act unilaterally on something like this, which violates agreements we've made to not do that. We don't need to look like the bad guy any more than absolutely necessary, because that hurts us in the long run. And we need to make sure we don't set precedent that can be used against us. The UN is the forum for that kind of thing.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Open Letter: Tennessee Democratic Party
Right now Tennessee is a single-party state. Republicans hold both US Senate seats, the Governorship, seven of nine US House seats, and over 70% of the General Assembly. This election looks unlikely to change any of that. The Democratic party is completely shut out of power, making it almost impossible for them to get donations. Who would donate to a party who can't do anything for them in return?
So what's your party to do? You keep running joke candidates, because you can't get any viable ones to take you seriously. Candidates can't get money without the hope of winning, and in our system you can't get political power without money. You have to break that cycle. You have to appeal to someone with lots of money, and appeal to the voters in a new way as well.
There's one issue that can do that: getting money out of politics.
There are two major PACs right now dedicated to ending the influence of money in politics. Mayday PAC is raising money to unseat incumbents opposing campaign finance reform. I think there are plenty of those in our state! This PAC has eight million dollars in its pocket, plus matching donations. Clearly this is an issue that there's (ironically) some money behind. If the Democratic Party wants to regain seats in the US House, this is a great place to start.
Second, Wolf PAC is pushing for states to call a constitutional convention, to propose an amendment outlawing campaign donations. If your state-level candidates were advocating this issue, Wolf PAC could make a significant difference in whether they win or lose.
If the Democratic party wants to come back in this state, you're going to have to focus on this one issue. It's the one thing that will set you apart from Republicans, there's a lot of money behind it, and it puts you on the side the huge majority of the nation agrees with.
Oh, and it's the right thing to do.
So what's your party to do? You keep running joke candidates, because you can't get any viable ones to take you seriously. Candidates can't get money without the hope of winning, and in our system you can't get political power without money. You have to break that cycle. You have to appeal to someone with lots of money, and appeal to the voters in a new way as well.
There's one issue that can do that: getting money out of politics.
There are two major PACs right now dedicated to ending the influence of money in politics. Mayday PAC is raising money to unseat incumbents opposing campaign finance reform. I think there are plenty of those in our state! This PAC has eight million dollars in its pocket, plus matching donations. Clearly this is an issue that there's (ironically) some money behind. If the Democratic Party wants to regain seats in the US House, this is a great place to start.
Second, Wolf PAC is pushing for states to call a constitutional convention, to propose an amendment outlawing campaign donations. If your state-level candidates were advocating this issue, Wolf PAC could make a significant difference in whether they win or lose.
If the Democratic party wants to come back in this state, you're going to have to focus on this one issue. It's the one thing that will set you apart from Republicans, there's a lot of money behind it, and it puts you on the side the huge majority of the nation agrees with.
Oh, and it's the right thing to do.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Ballot Order
The democratic party has selected their candidate for governor. He has no public policy statements, website, or twitter feed. He has an inactive Facebook group, a picture of himself with some fish, and his own name misspelled. From all appearances, this is the entirety of his campaign. Yet he won by a 2:1 margin.
How? He was first on the ballot. This isn't the first time.
There are two groups that should learn from this.
First, voters. If you don't know who you prefer in an election, don't just pick someone on the spot! All you do is water down the opinions of the informed voters, the ones that should be making the decision. If you don't have an opinion on one office, just don't vote for that office! Your votes for all the other offices will still count!
Casting a vote, any vote, is something you should take very seriously. If you're not prepared to do that, don't vote.
Second, legislators. Ballot order is fixed, by law, in alphabetical order by last name. Ballot order clearly has a significant effect on outcome, giving some candidates advantage over others. Laws should never, ever help particular candidates. That's undemocratic and unamerican.
Each voter should be presented with the candidates in a different, randomly chosen order. The uninformed voters who just pick the first candidate on the list would cancel each other out. If we're doomed to use these stupid electronic voting machines with no paper records, we should at least use them in a way that makes elections work.
And if anyone tells you that these machines can't be made to put candidates in random order, give the machine to me. I'll fix it for you. I won't even charge. This is not a technical problem. It's a legal problem, and it has a legal solution.
How? He was first on the ballot. This isn't the first time.
There are two groups that should learn from this.
First, voters. If you don't know who you prefer in an election, don't just pick someone on the spot! All you do is water down the opinions of the informed voters, the ones that should be making the decision. If you don't have an opinion on one office, just don't vote for that office! Your votes for all the other offices will still count!
Casting a vote, any vote, is something you should take very seriously. If you're not prepared to do that, don't vote.
Second, legislators. Ballot order is fixed, by law, in alphabetical order by last name. Ballot order clearly has a significant effect on outcome, giving some candidates advantage over others. Laws should never, ever help particular candidates. That's undemocratic and unamerican.
Each voter should be presented with the candidates in a different, randomly chosen order. The uninformed voters who just pick the first candidate on the list would cancel each other out. If we're doomed to use these stupid electronic voting machines with no paper records, we should at least use them in a way that makes elections work.
And if anyone tells you that these machines can't be made to put candidates in random order, give the machine to me. I'll fix it for you. I won't even charge. This is not a technical problem. It's a legal problem, and it has a legal solution.
Infrastructure Megaprojects: Water
Water stress is the resource challenge of this decade, and probably a few more to come. Much of the US has been in drought for the last five years, driving up food prices. Some estimates are that this drought has cost the US economy $150 billion dollars each year! Water tables are being drained faster than they can refill, and polluted beyond use. Some bodies of water are being diverted so much that they've become poisonous, or ceased to exist. We need new sources of water, and we need them now.
Unfortunately you can't just create water unless you have a lot of hydrogen lying around. But we're not lacking for water; we're lacking for potable water. We have all the water we need, if we can just clean it up a bit.
We need to build desalination plants to make the seawater drinkable. There are already several in the United States, and quite a few more around the world. This is not a new thing, it's just a question of scale.
How much water are we talking about? Looking at a couple sources, we can estimate that the US uses around 400 billion gallons per day, most of which goes to run power plants and irrigate crops. An average desalination plant (based on Australian installations) could do 60 million gallons per day, consume about 24 MW, and cost $1.8 billion. So to replace every source of fresh water in the US, we're talking about 6,700 desal plants, consuming 160 GW and costing $12 trillion.
Now, that's just an upper limit. There's no need to desalinate every last drop of water we use. Let's scale back a bit, and target 10%, which should be more than enough to relieve the water stress we're seeing. Now we're talking about 670 plants, 16 GW, and $1.2 trillion. That's eminently doable. And the system scales wonderfully. You can build it gradually over time. If you need more water later, you can build more plants.
Figure 3.5% salinity as a general average, so we're talking about having to find a home for 6 million tons of salt every year. That's enough to cause an environmental catastrophe if it's all in one place, so we need to plan for that. Luckily, the US presently produces 7-8 times that much salt in a year, so our economy could obviously absorb it.
Other resources are present in seawater. We'd be extracting 220,000 tons of potassium a year, about 1/5 our present production of potash. This has great possibility for fertilizers, though I can't speak as to the chemistry involved. We'd also get a comparable amount of magnesium, making us the world's fifth largest producer.
The total value of all those extracted solids comes several hundred million dollars a year. Trivial by comparison to the cost of the construction, but still, a nice offset to operating expenditures.
Of course, it's not just the coasts we're worried about; we also need a way to move the desalinated water from the sea to the midlands. We're talking about a huge aqueduct network. We already have quite a bit of experience building such things, but the scale would be unheard-of. Figure a trillion dollars to build the aqueduct network alone.
Now, we could do closed pipes, but I'm not sure that's what we want to do. Perhaps instead we should have open aqueducts, and let the water evaporate as it will. It will condense back out somewhere as rain, giving us the most efficient possible distribution method. Some combination of covered and uncovered aqueducts would probably be best.
Ultimately, the oceans will provide us with the only sustainable source of fresh water on the planet. We'll eventually have to start tapping it, and we're getting to that point.
Unfortunately you can't just create water unless you have a lot of hydrogen lying around. But we're not lacking for water; we're lacking for potable water. We have all the water we need, if we can just clean it up a bit.
We need to build desalination plants to make the seawater drinkable. There are already several in the United States, and quite a few more around the world. This is not a new thing, it's just a question of scale.
How much water are we talking about? Looking at a couple sources, we can estimate that the US uses around 400 billion gallons per day, most of which goes to run power plants and irrigate crops. An average desalination plant (based on Australian installations) could do 60 million gallons per day, consume about 24 MW, and cost $1.8 billion. So to replace every source of fresh water in the US, we're talking about 6,700 desal plants, consuming 160 GW and costing $12 trillion.
Now, that's just an upper limit. There's no need to desalinate every last drop of water we use. Let's scale back a bit, and target 10%, which should be more than enough to relieve the water stress we're seeing. Now we're talking about 670 plants, 16 GW, and $1.2 trillion. That's eminently doable. And the system scales wonderfully. You can build it gradually over time. If you need more water later, you can build more plants.
Figure 3.5% salinity as a general average, so we're talking about having to find a home for 6 million tons of salt every year. That's enough to cause an environmental catastrophe if it's all in one place, so we need to plan for that. Luckily, the US presently produces 7-8 times that much salt in a year, so our economy could obviously absorb it.
Other resources are present in seawater. We'd be extracting 220,000 tons of potassium a year, about 1/5 our present production of potash. This has great possibility for fertilizers, though I can't speak as to the chemistry involved. We'd also get a comparable amount of magnesium, making us the world's fifth largest producer.
The total value of all those extracted solids comes several hundred million dollars a year. Trivial by comparison to the cost of the construction, but still, a nice offset to operating expenditures.
Of course, it's not just the coasts we're worried about; we also need a way to move the desalinated water from the sea to the midlands. We're talking about a huge aqueduct network. We already have quite a bit of experience building such things, but the scale would be unheard-of. Figure a trillion dollars to build the aqueduct network alone.
Now, we could do closed pipes, but I'm not sure that's what we want to do. Perhaps instead we should have open aqueducts, and let the water evaporate as it will. It will condense back out somewhere as rain, giving us the most efficient possible distribution method. Some combination of covered and uncovered aqueducts would probably be best.
Ultimately, the oceans will provide us with the only sustainable source of fresh water on the planet. We'll eventually have to start tapping it, and we're getting to that point.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
August 7 2014 Election: Judicial Retention and Local Offices
So I've covered the legislative races, but there are others. Right now there's a heavily-politicized retention election for judges. A
bi-partisan commission says all the judges are doing a good job. I plan to vote for retention on all judges, to avoid politicizing the judiciary.
There are also elections for several local positions, a few of which are even competitive! Frankly, I don't know enough about any of those elections, so I plan to abstain. If you have opinions on any of these races, please share!
Now, there's one thing I will comment on. Frankly, I think this school board has done a terrible job by allowing standards to fall as low as they have. When students can't be given a grade less than 50, we're not teaching any more, we're babysitting. My gut response is to thrown out the entire board and try again. But anyone with even the slightest bit of information should ignore that and act on actual data. And please share that data!
Oh, and Bob Schwartz is running for Republican Executive Committee, Senate District 20. When I met him during the 2010 campaign, he was a reasonable and thoughtful individual, not one of the usual Fox News crowd. I plan to vote for him.
There are also elections for several local positions, a few of which are even competitive! Frankly, I don't know enough about any of those elections, so I plan to abstain. If you have opinions on any of these races, please share!
Now, there's one thing I will comment on. Frankly, I think this school board has done a terrible job by allowing standards to fall as low as they have. When students can't be given a grade less than 50, we're not teaching any more, we're babysitting. My gut response is to thrown out the entire board and try again. But anyone with even the slightest bit of information should ignore that and act on actual data. And please share that data!
Oh, and Bob Schwartz is running for Republican Executive Committee, Senate District 20. When I met him during the 2010 campaign, he was a reasonable and thoughtful individual, not one of the usual Fox News crowd. I plan to vote for him.
August 7 2014 Elections: State Legislature
TL;DR
Puttbrese, Aljabbary, Mancini, Rawlings are the only candidates in competitive primaries that I can say seem better than their opponents. I'd recommend voting for any of them who appear on your ballot.
Long version
There are only a few competitive races in the state legislature, at least in Davidson county, which is really unfortunate. I hate people running unopposed; it makes the election meaningless. Decisions are made by the people that show up, so if you feel like you could do well holding elected office, I encourage you to consider it. If you're thinking about it, talk to me, and I'll help you think!
I'm going to list links to each of the candidates on the Davidson County sample ballot, and add whatever information I can to each one. There are few details for most of their position statements, and usually the only one that's really specific is whether they would or would not accept all the free money the federal government is trying to hand Tennesseans. But you can probably tell that by the (R) or (D) anyway.
I contacted all of them I could, to ask their position on Wolf PAC and approval voting, and their responses are noted below. Most did not respond at all, which makes then an automatic "no" in my book. If you're not willing to tell people where you stand on the issues, you shouldn't be asking to represent those people.
Also, this isn't necessarily a complete listing of candidates for the general election in November. I fully expect more candidates to show up there. This is just the primaries for the two major parties.
19th Senate District
Sterlina Inez Brady (R)
No information, at all. No webpage, no Facebook page, no Twitter feed, no contact information.
Thelma M. Harper (D)
The incumbent in this district. She did not respond to my requests for positions.
Brandon J. Puttbrese (D)
He responded to my tweet about money in politics. That alone makes me support him.
21st Senate District
A race with no incumbent!
Mwafaq Aljabbary (R)
I spoke to Mwafaq on the phone for a long time. He was interested in the issues I asked about, but didn't have a defined position, which is reasonable. Can't expect people to make up their minds immediately. He's very busy, very involved, and has been for years. He works with anyone, regardless of party or religion, and has the history to back that up. Very interested in integrating immigrant communities. Very opposed to corruption and regulatory capture, which is unusual for a Republican. He also has a masters degree in city planning (or something close to that, I didn't get the exact degree written down), so he's very interested in public transportation. Overall, I liked this candidate quite a bit.
Diana Cuellar (R)
She responded to my emails, and said she'd look into the issues. I never heard anything past that.
Quincy McKnight (R)
I never heard anything from this candidate at all.
Mary Mancini (D)
Another candidate I spoke to on the phone. She was amenable to Wolf PAC. She's been around the political scene for a while, and previously wrote a law requiring Tennessee to use paper ballots! She's still in favor of that, and eliminating gerrymandering is also one of her issues. Another candidate I like.
Jeff Yarbro (D)
Again, no communication, at all.
If you're voting in the Republican primary in this district, I'd strongly recommend Aljabbary. If you're voting Democrat, I recommend Mancini.
50th Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.
Troy Brewer (R)
Bo Mitchell (D)
51st Representative District
The only one of these candidates I heard from was Rawlings, who is on board with Wolf PAC. I can't even tell the difference among any of the Democrats from their websites.
Brian L. Mason (R)
Joshua Rawlings (R)
Puttbrese, Aljabbary, Mancini, Rawlings are the only candidates in competitive primaries that I can say seem better than their opponents. I'd recommend voting for any of them who appear on your ballot.
Long version
There are only a few competitive races in the state legislature, at least in Davidson county, which is really unfortunate. I hate people running unopposed; it makes the election meaningless. Decisions are made by the people that show up, so if you feel like you could do well holding elected office, I encourage you to consider it. If you're thinking about it, talk to me, and I'll help you think!
I'm going to list links to each of the candidates on the Davidson County sample ballot, and add whatever information I can to each one. There are few details for most of their position statements, and usually the only one that's really specific is whether they would or would not accept all the free money the federal government is trying to hand Tennesseans. But you can probably tell that by the (R) or (D) anyway.
I contacted all of them I could, to ask their position on Wolf PAC and approval voting, and their responses are noted below. Most did not respond at all, which makes then an automatic "no" in my book. If you're not willing to tell people where you stand on the issues, you shouldn't be asking to represent those people.
Also, this isn't necessarily a complete listing of candidates for the general election in November. I fully expect more candidates to show up there. This is just the primaries for the two major parties.
19th Senate District
Sterlina Inez Brady (R)
No information, at all. No webpage, no Facebook page, no Twitter feed, no contact information.
Thelma M. Harper (D)
The incumbent in this district. She did not respond to my requests for positions.
Brandon J. Puttbrese (D)
He responded to my tweet about money in politics. That alone makes me support him.
@swcollings I would push for a constitutional convention to reverse #citizensunited. Big money in politics is a huge problem. #tnsd19
— Brandon Puttbrese (@bjputtbrese) July 14, 2014
So if you're voting in the Republican primary in this district, you may as well not. And if you're voting Democrat, I recommend Puttbrese. 21st Senate District
A race with no incumbent!
Mwafaq Aljabbary (R)
I spoke to Mwafaq on the phone for a long time. He was interested in the issues I asked about, but didn't have a defined position, which is reasonable. Can't expect people to make up their minds immediately. He's very busy, very involved, and has been for years. He works with anyone, regardless of party or religion, and has the history to back that up. Very interested in integrating immigrant communities. Very opposed to corruption and regulatory capture, which is unusual for a Republican. He also has a masters degree in city planning (or something close to that, I didn't get the exact degree written down), so he's very interested in public transportation. Overall, I liked this candidate quite a bit.
Diana Cuellar (R)
She responded to my emails, and said she'd look into the issues. I never heard anything past that.
Quincy McKnight (R)
I never heard anything from this candidate at all.
Mary Mancini (D)
Another candidate I spoke to on the phone. She was amenable to Wolf PAC. She's been around the political scene for a while, and previously wrote a law requiring Tennessee to use paper ballots! She's still in favor of that, and eliminating gerrymandering is also one of her issues. Another candidate I like.
Jeff Yarbro (D)
Again, no communication, at all.
If you're voting in the Republican primary in this district, I'd strongly recommend Aljabbary. If you're voting Democrat, I recommend Mancini.
50th Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.
Troy Brewer (R)
Bo Mitchell (D)
51st Representative District
The only one of these candidates I heard from was Rawlings, who is on board with Wolf PAC. I can't even tell the difference among any of the Democrats from their websites.
Brian L. Mason (R)
Joshua Rawlings (R)
Bill Beck (D)
Stephen Fotopulos (D)
Jennifer Buck Wallace (D)
52nd Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Mike Stewart (D)
53rd Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.
John Wang (R)
Jason Powell (D)
54th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Brenda Gilmore (D)
55th Representative District
I haven't heard anything from either of these candidates. That makes me tend to vote against the incumbent, Odom, though that's pretty shaky ground.
John Ray Clemmons (D)
Gary Odom (D)
56th Representative District
Again, both candidates running unopposed.
Beth Harwell (R)
The incumbent in this district. She did not respond to my requests for positions, despite repeated requests. Very disappointed in my representative.
Chris Moth (D)
This candidate responded to me, and described himself as "deeply concerned about the influence of money in politics". Not a commitment to do anything, but it's something. He's unopposed in the primary, but I hope to have more information about his positions before the general election.
58th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Harold M. Love (D)
59th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Sherry Jones (D)
60th Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.
Jim Gotto (R)
Darren Jernigan (D)
Stephen Fotopulos (D)
Jennifer Buck Wallace (D)
52nd Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Mike Stewart (D)
53rd Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.
John Wang (R)
Jason Powell (D)
54th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Brenda Gilmore (D)
55th Representative District
I haven't heard anything from either of these candidates. That makes me tend to vote against the incumbent, Odom, though that's pretty shaky ground.
John Ray Clemmons (D)
Gary Odom (D)
56th Representative District
Again, both candidates running unopposed.
Beth Harwell (R)
The incumbent in this district. She did not respond to my requests for positions, despite repeated requests. Very disappointed in my representative.
Chris Moth (D)
This candidate responded to me, and described himself as "deeply concerned about the influence of money in politics". Not a commitment to do anything, but it's something. He's unopposed in the primary, but I hope to have more information about his positions before the general election.
58th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Harold M. Love (D)
59th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Sherry Jones (D)
60th Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.
Jim Gotto (R)
Darren Jernigan (D)
Saturday, August 2, 2014
August 7 2014 Election: US House TN-7 Candidate Impressions
TN-7 has been redistricted out of Davidson County, but enough of greater Nashville is in TN-7 that I want to comment on this race as well.
Marsha Blackburn (R)
We all know what I think of Blackburn. She opposes network neutrality, opposes municipal broadband, and spends a huge amount of time trying to repeal the ACA without proposing a viable alternative. Buying insurance across state lines, while it may be a not-terrible idea, doesn't help people with pre-existing conditions, and the cost impact will probably be minimal. It also requires a single set of federal regulations for insurance companies, overriding state regulations. It's really interesting to me that she's all for states being able to trample on municipalities when it comes to broadband, but her idea of healthcare reform is nothing but the federal government trampling on states.
By her measure, all our problems are caused by government. Yet she describes herself as a "staunch supporter of the PATRIOT act," one of the biggest expansions of government power in history. She blames Obama for failing to deport refugee children, but refuses to fund the deportation. Oh yes, and she helped cause the government shutdown last year, and otherwise contributed to this utterly dysfunctional Congress. She's the worst kind of Republican: the kind that says anything it takes to get you angry at Democrats, whether it makes sense or not. She's not a Palin, or a Bachmann. Blackburn's worse; she's informed and smart, she just doesn't work for Tennesseans. She's a hypocrite. Anything that gets her out of office is probably a win.
Jacob Brimm (R)
Brimm's policy statements are somewhat vague, but not the usual anger-fueled talking points that we usually get from Republicans. I don't see anything I can deeply object to. Unlike most candidates, he responded to my request for comment on Wolf PAC! With a thoughtful answer no less! Same for approval voting. Even without those things, though, it would be hard for him to be worse than the alternative. I'd strongly recommend voting for Brimm in this primary.
Credo Amouzouvik (D)
Credo (as he goes by for obvious reasons) has a decent list of policy statements. None are particularly surprising or detailed, but nothing objectionable catches my attention. And he also replied to my questions, saying he wants to take money out of politics, and opposes the NSA spying on citizens without probable cause.
Daniel Cramer (D)
Cramer's position on the Keystone Pipeline: "I don’t see the risks being worth the benefits but I am willing to listen to detailed arguments for or against as they are provided." That says a lot about the man. It says that he's capable of deferring judgement until more information is obtained. It says he's capable of changing his mind. It says he's willing to talk in public about things he doesn't fully understand. I love that in a candidate.
He's one of the few candidates I've seen that makes a point of saying he opposes the NSA's domestic spying abuse! He mentions H1-B visas, which is another issue that's often ignored. And he strongly opposes Citizens United.
Both Democrat candidates in this election hold positions I agree with, on the issues that matter to me. I'd be happy with either one in Congress. Cramer, though, has the advantage that he had public policy statements on those issues before I asked. Domestic spying, corporate money in politics, H1-B visas, those are issues that he thought important enough to put up on his site without prompting. That makes me lean towards him over Credo.
Marsha Blackburn (R)
We all know what I think of Blackburn. She opposes network neutrality, opposes municipal broadband, and spends a huge amount of time trying to repeal the ACA without proposing a viable alternative. Buying insurance across state lines, while it may be a not-terrible idea, doesn't help people with pre-existing conditions, and the cost impact will probably be minimal. It also requires a single set of federal regulations for insurance companies, overriding state regulations. It's really interesting to me that she's all for states being able to trample on municipalities when it comes to broadband, but her idea of healthcare reform is nothing but the federal government trampling on states.
By her measure, all our problems are caused by government. Yet she describes herself as a "staunch supporter of the PATRIOT act," one of the biggest expansions of government power in history. She blames Obama for failing to deport refugee children, but refuses to fund the deportation. Oh yes, and she helped cause the government shutdown last year, and otherwise contributed to this utterly dysfunctional Congress. She's the worst kind of Republican: the kind that says anything it takes to get you angry at Democrats, whether it makes sense or not. She's not a Palin, or a Bachmann. Blackburn's worse; she's informed and smart, she just doesn't work for Tennesseans. She's a hypocrite. Anything that gets her out of office is probably a win.
Jacob Brimm (R)
Brimm's policy statements are somewhat vague, but not the usual anger-fueled talking points that we usually get from Republicans. I don't see anything I can deeply object to. Unlike most candidates, he responded to my request for comment on Wolf PAC! With a thoughtful answer no less! Same for approval voting. Even without those things, though, it would be hard for him to be worse than the alternative. I'd strongly recommend voting for Brimm in this primary.
Credo Amouzouvik (D)
Credo (as he goes by for obvious reasons) has a decent list of policy statements. None are particularly surprising or detailed, but nothing objectionable catches my attention. And he also replied to my questions, saying he wants to take money out of politics, and opposes the NSA spying on citizens without probable cause.
Daniel Cramer (D)
Cramer's position on the Keystone Pipeline: "I don’t see the risks being worth the benefits but I am willing to listen to detailed arguments for or against as they are provided." That says a lot about the man. It says that he's capable of deferring judgement until more information is obtained. It says he's capable of changing his mind. It says he's willing to talk in public about things he doesn't fully understand. I love that in a candidate.
He's one of the few candidates I've seen that makes a point of saying he opposes the NSA's domestic spying abuse! He mentions H1-B visas, which is another issue that's often ignored. And he strongly opposes Citizens United.
Both Democrat candidates in this election hold positions I agree with, on the issues that matter to me. I'd be happy with either one in Congress. Cramer, though, has the advantage that he had public policy statements on those issues before I asked. Domestic spying, corporate money in politics, H1-B visas, those are issues that he thought important enough to put up on his site without prompting. That makes me lean towards him over Credo.
Friday, August 1, 2014
Infrastructure Megaprojects: Energy
Without energy, nothing happens. That's not a hyperbole; nothing happens if
there's not energy. No water is pumped, no food is moved to market, no
computers or lights turn on, and come winter we all freeze to death. It
seems fitting to start our megaprojects list here.
Electricity is our most efficient means of moving energy from place to place. There are many ways of generating electricity, but most have significant downsides. Fossil fuels pollute to varying degrees, and need continuous exploration to find new sources. (The negative effects of fracking for this purpose are tremendous. But that's another post.) Wind and photovoltaic solar cells are weather-dependent, and thus unreliable for continuous demand. Hydroelectric dams can only be put in a few places.
There are only two developed means of generation which are both emission-free and weather-independent. The first is nuclear. A well-designed and well-maintained nuclear plant is one of the safest means of power generation ever conceived. Adding up all the deaths due to nuclear accidents, those numbers don't come close to the damage of coal plants. Most nuclear accidents in the world have been due to old designs that were not properly fail-safe; there are vastly better designs now. Spent fuel rods can be reprocessed, eliminating most of the waste disposal concerns. And research into thorium reactors could further enhance both safety and pollution concerns.
But there's an even better way. Solar thermal power is completely pollution-free. It has all the upsides of a large-scale photovoltaic plant, and none of the down-sides. It can run at night, doesn't require complex chemical processes to build, and has no lifetime constraint. Right now there are about 1.5 gigawatts of installed solar thermal power in the US, with another 4 GW in planning.
Average electricity consumption in the US is on the order of 500 GW, about two-thirds of which is fossil fuel based. A large solar thermal plant can generate ~300 MW, so about a thousand solar thermal plants could eliminate fossil fuel plants entirely. Cost of construction for solar thermal plants is about $5500/kW, meaning it would cost ~$2 trillion to get the grid entirely off fossil fuels. That's a lot of money, but it's only about 4x the cost of the interstate system. Divide it up over 40 years, and we're talking about $50 billion a year. That's significant, but it's only about 1.5% of federal spending. What we would gain would be far greater than what we would lose.
Ecological benefits are obvious: our particulate and carbon emissions go way down. Economic benefits are high as well, as our fossil fuels now become something we can sell on the world market, rather than something we must burn here just to keep our civilization going. We'd become a huge supplier worldwide, greatly increasing our soft power. Along with this, we should improve our infrastructure links to Canada and Mexico, allowing us to become a net exporter of electricity and helping improve those countries as well.
Now, that's just the macro picture. There would clearly need to be a robust program in place to retrain whatever workers were displaced by the shift. And there would be second-order effects as electricity prices drop, possibly shutting down other plants. There's no changing one thing without changing fifty others, and we'd want to minimize the overall damage as much as possible. But once the shift was over, having a large, distributed, clean, free source of electricity would make the United States and our neighbors far better countries to live in.
Electricity is our most efficient means of moving energy from place to place. There are many ways of generating electricity, but most have significant downsides. Fossil fuels pollute to varying degrees, and need continuous exploration to find new sources. (The negative effects of fracking for this purpose are tremendous. But that's another post.) Wind and photovoltaic solar cells are weather-dependent, and thus unreliable for continuous demand. Hydroelectric dams can only be put in a few places.
There are only two developed means of generation which are both emission-free and weather-independent. The first is nuclear. A well-designed and well-maintained nuclear plant is one of the safest means of power generation ever conceived. Adding up all the deaths due to nuclear accidents, those numbers don't come close to the damage of coal plants. Most nuclear accidents in the world have been due to old designs that were not properly fail-safe; there are vastly better designs now. Spent fuel rods can be reprocessed, eliminating most of the waste disposal concerns. And research into thorium reactors could further enhance both safety and pollution concerns.
But there's an even better way. Solar thermal power is completely pollution-free. It has all the upsides of a large-scale photovoltaic plant, and none of the down-sides. It can run at night, doesn't require complex chemical processes to build, and has no lifetime constraint. Right now there are about 1.5 gigawatts of installed solar thermal power in the US, with another 4 GW in planning.
Average electricity consumption in the US is on the order of 500 GW, about two-thirds of which is fossil fuel based. A large solar thermal plant can generate ~300 MW, so about a thousand solar thermal plants could eliminate fossil fuel plants entirely. Cost of construction for solar thermal plants is about $5500/kW, meaning it would cost ~$2 trillion to get the grid entirely off fossil fuels. That's a lot of money, but it's only about 4x the cost of the interstate system. Divide it up over 40 years, and we're talking about $50 billion a year. That's significant, but it's only about 1.5% of federal spending. What we would gain would be far greater than what we would lose.
Ecological benefits are obvious: our particulate and carbon emissions go way down. Economic benefits are high as well, as our fossil fuels now become something we can sell on the world market, rather than something we must burn here just to keep our civilization going. We'd become a huge supplier worldwide, greatly increasing our soft power. Along with this, we should improve our infrastructure links to Canada and Mexico, allowing us to become a net exporter of electricity and helping improve those countries as well.
Now, that's just the macro picture. There would clearly need to be a robust program in place to retrain whatever workers were displaced by the shift. And there would be second-order effects as electricity prices drop, possibly shutting down other plants. There's no changing one thing without changing fifty others, and we'd want to minimize the overall damage as much as possible. But once the shift was over, having a large, distributed, clean, free source of electricity would make the United States and our neighbors far better countries to live in.
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