August 2015

There were 15 posts published in August 2015 (this is page 1 of 2).

Malaysia Airlines MH-370

A few of my friends asked how we can so easily track mobile phones but a jumbo jet like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 can disappear without a trace. First off, one of these is designed to transmit all the time, but aside from that difference it is a big ocean out there and it’s still possible to lose things in it.

I responded to my friends with this:

Radars don’t reach everywhere. Polar-orbiting satellites scan the globe but are not always around. Mobile phones have a hard enough time connecting to a tower when turned on in a plane at the terminal. Over the ocean? Forget it.

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Boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park

Cruising Resurrection Bay

Cruising Resurrection Bay


On the morning of the 13th (a Thursday), we hustled to get out the door to make the hours-long drive to Seward, where we would be taking a boat tour around the Kenai Fjords National Park. If we had to boil our whole vacation down to one activity, this would be it. This tour was a truly amazing experience!

We arrived a bit early at Kenai Fjords Tours in Seward to check in, knowing that the Alaska Railroad was soon to bring another load of tourists to town. We then had a few minutes to walk around the docks and get a quick peek at Seward.

The marina was alive with activity. Pleasure boats and commercial fishing boats occupied every slip. The smell of fresh halibut (which wore on me after a short while), filled the air. The strong morning sun lit up the brightly-painted boats and cast the clear sky in a dazzling blue. It was a postcard-perfect scene. The town of Seward was just as welcoming, with many shops and restaurants lining the main street. Pedestrians and cyclists wandered through town. Beautiful parks and community spaces provided inviting places to play. It seemed far more cheerful than Anchorage to me.

After a quick look around the dock, we joined a line of passengers waiting to board our boat. Kelly’s eyes rolled as one tour worker told a cheesy joke as he made a boarding announcement. We handed in our tickets and climbed aboard the modern, two-level tour boat. We found an unoccupied four-spot table on the top deck but soon left it for spots on the more exciting bow.
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Cold Fusion Heats Up: Fusion Energy and LENR Update | David H. Bailey

A friend forwarded this HuffPost story on cold fusion research and I was surprised to learn that a Raleigh-based company called Industrial Heat is said to have working technology.

Perhaps the most startling (and most controversial) report is by an Italian-American engineer-entrepreneur named Andrea Rossi. Rossi claims that he has developed a tabletop reactor that produces heat by an as-yet-not-fully-understood LENR process.Rossi has gone well beyond laboratory demonstration; he claims that he and the private firm Industrial Heat, LLC of Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, have actually installed a working system at an (undisclosed) commercial customer’s site.

According to Rossi and a handful of others who have observed the system in operation, it is producing 1 MWatt continuous net output power, in the form of heat, from a few grams of “fuel” in each of a set of modest-sized reactors in a network. The system has now been operating for approximately six months, as part of a one-year acceptance test. Rossi and IH LLC are in talks with Chinese firms for large-scale commercial manufacture.

Source: Cold Fusion Heats Up: Fusion Energy and LENR Update | David H. Bailey

Back from Anchorage

Well, over 12 hours and 3,500 miles later we are back home from Anchorage, having walked out of RDU around 11 AM. It was an amazing, unforgettable trip filled with many stories I have yet to tell. The red eye on Delta was exhausting, however, and my head does not know what day, time, or place it’s in. I thought I would blog more tonight of our trip but catching up on lost sleep seems more prudent.

Tomorrow I may awaken to wonder if it was all just a dream.

Anchorage and crime

Knowing the number of tourists that must pass through here, I was hopeful that Anchorage’s downtown would be a welcoming place.

I was wrong. I never felt fully safe when we were there, always having my street-smarts kick in to move us along whenever danger seemed to show up. There were a some guys here and there who seemed to be sizing us up as we walked by, causing me to walk us a bit faster. Suddenly, carrying that gift shop bag through downtown didn’t seem so smart.

One evening we parked downtown and headed over to see the “Aurora” showing at the Anchorage Center for the Performing Arts. I overheard the usher there chatting with another tourist.

“Anchorage has a great downtown,” he said without much conviction. “Sure, it has it’s problems …,” he continued, never finishing his thought.
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Independence Mine

Independence Mine from above

Independence Mine from above

After our fun whitewater rafting trip, we took our guide Colin’s advice to detour over to Hatcher Pass to visit Independence Mine. The Mine had been on the list our Anchorage landlord sent us, so it was worth checking out.

Independence Mine is outside of Palmer, only a 20 minute detour from our route home. The weather was clear and breezy as we drove up ever-winding roads towards the pass. The road narrowed as it reached the top of the pass and soon we were at 3,500 feet in the Independence Mine State Historical Park. A cluster of freshly-painted wood buildings stood near the parking lot as several other tourists milled around.

The mine opened in 1934 and was active for a short amount of time, from 1934 to 1950, but in that time unearthed gold worth over $17 million (in today’s dollars). Though the work was hard accommodations were actually fairly luxurious, with heat, electricity, hot water, excellent food, and semi-private rooms.
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The 50 Worst Songs of the ’00s, F2K No. 11: Darryl Worley, “Have You Forgotten?” | Village Voice

This cheesy song was playing in an Anchorage gift shop yesterday and my family and I were rolling our eyes. I count myself lucky that I managed to avoid it for ten years.

Just another schmo who hoped that 9/11 would change everything…for his career.

It’s tempting to simply quote in full the lyrics from Darryl Worley’s crass-in attempt to tie together the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the run-up to the Iraq war. After all, its lyrics, which rhymed “forgotten” with “Bin Laden” and called for daily showings of the attacks on the World Trade Center, were the linchpin of its “appeal.” But to do that would be a disservice to the fine men and women of this country who have actually had to sit through the track.

Source: The 50 Worst Songs of the ’00s, F2K No. 11: Darryl Worley, “Have You Forgotten?” | Village Voice

Tam Hunt: Do Electric Vehicles Lead to Environmental Benefits?

Here’s a very comprehensive rebuttal of Stephen Holland’s recent UNC-G study concluding that electric vehicles are only marginally better for the environment.

A number of studies have come out in recent years questioning the conventional wisdom that electric vehicles are better for the environment than efficient traditional cars.

A recent study from a team that included Stephen Holland of the University of North Carolina Greensboro as first author makes a remarkable statement, that “electric vehicles, on average, generate greater environmental externalities than gasoline vehicles.” The study compares electric vehicles (EVs) with gasoline vehicles and finds EVs wanting.

I’ll examine this study in some detail here to show why EVs are, in fact, very good for the environment.

Source: Tam Hunt: Do Electric Vehicles Lead to Environmental Benefits?

Rafting the Matanuska

Rafting the Matanuska

Rafting the Matanuska


Yesterday we rose early to make the drive to the mouth of the Matanuska River in Alaska for some whitewater rafting! The Matanuska is a glacier-fed river and our rafting outfit, Nova, was about a 2.5 hour drive from Anchorage. We rode up some beautiful, twisty mountain roads to get there, passing a pair of moose standing in the ditch on the way. It was our first moose sighting in Alaska!

We arrived around 10:30 to the rafting office, a nice but remote cabin by the river. After using the pit toilets and checking in, we were given rain gear to wear and spent some time adjusting our GoPro camera before taking the short bus ride to the edge of the Matanuska glacier.

The put-in point near the glacier is private property and the rafting staff (Colin, our guide; Riley, our other guide; and Marsha, our bus driver) paid a hefty fee at the entrance for us to visit. On the way to the launch site, we stopped momentarily at a picnic spot overlooking the glacier: a massive, brilliantly-glowing sheet of blue ice. It was stunning to see! We took lots of pictures and witnessed the trickles of meltwater from this ice combine to form the ice-cold, silt-loaded Matanuska River. We would be rafting on water that was only hours earlier part of a glacier. That was incredible to think about.
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Kayaking at Eklutna Lake

Kayaking at Eklutna Lake

Kayaking at Eklutna Lake

Yesterday we piled in the car and headed up to Eklutna Lake to check out the scenery and do some kayaking. This was our first venture into real bear territory but fortunately we loaded up on “bear bells” beforehand at the Anchorage REI store so that bears, which are attracted to the smell of money, stayed miles away.

The drive was a scenic one as the weather cleared out for the first time we’ve been here. Sunny skies surrounded us as we drove north to Eklutna. After an hour’s drive or so, we pulled into the parking lot at Eklutna State Park and wandered over to get our kayaks.
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