Time Flies

Blogging has been slow the past week because I've been spending time in the Evergreen State visiting with My Lady. She got a job working with the Washington State Government while I manage the homestead in Kansas. The eonomic environment makes it silly to sell our home and relocate, but the being apart is not something we need at our stage in life. But we are muddling through the seperation and our occasional times together are sweet.

And that's why I hven't written much recently, but blogging will resume shortly.

Nature or Nurture?

I spent a lot of time these past few days following the events in Japan. One major disaster (the earthquake) linked to a second major disaster (the tsunami) was not unexpected on an island nation situated in a geologically active area. But when you add the coolant failure that occurred at a nuclear power plant you have an event of staggering proportion.

When the plant was built it was designed to withstand a magnitude 8.0 to 8.5 earthquakes and when the 9.0 quake struck it performed as designed. The plant went into automatic shutdown and had gone off line. Cooling water to the system is delivered by electrically driven pumps that failed when the electric grid was damaged by the quake. As designed the backup system of diesel powered generators took over and was doing its job. The plant was shutting down the four piles safely and as designed.

The estimated 30 meter high tsunami wave that hit the plant was far beyond design specifications and the backup system was drowned out. A disaster such as that on top of a natural disaster is something that nobody ever considered. That was the initiating failure that has caused the present crises. Call it a lack of morbid imagination.

From what I’ve gleaned from the literature the proximal cause of the failure of the coolant system appears to be a rupture in the return system that is allowing water to escape. My feeling is that when the plant was designed the engineers merged the return systems for all four reactors into a single discharge pipe and, perhaps, did not consider the vulnerabilities of the cooling water discharge valves and piping. Technically that could be labeled a “single point of failure”.

Rather than endlessly discuss the failure of the system (both human and mechanical) I would like to focus on the resiliency of the people affected by the terrible turn of events. I haven’t seen a single report of rioting or looting or gangs running amok. Pictures show long lines of people patiently waiting tor their turn. I’m impressed by a culture that presumes that the greater good overrides the individual need.

Typical of that attitude is the story of a family that lost their home and is now living in a shelter. Their dogs had survived the earthquake and the tsunami and were found living in the ruins of the destroyed home. The owners spend a large part of each day returning to the home and caring for the dogs and will not try to bring the animals back to the shelter. The owner is quoted as saying: "There are lots of people dead and it's too much to ask to bring the dogs," said Mr. Kikuchi. "It would be inconsiderate to other people's sadness."

I have to admire a people that in times of crisis thinks first of others before considering their own needs.

Teaching to the test

When Congress passed the “No Child Left Behind” educational bill My Lady was adamant that requiring students to pass a centralized test and making the test score the only requirement of proficiency would eventually lead to an environment of “teaching to the test” where instruction would be focused on passing the test and not on the ability to understand and apply the subject matter.

I silently agreed with her, but since I grew up in a state that had a state wide final exam where no one knew the test questions prior to the day of testing I had hopes that her prophecy would not come true. Silly me. As time went by I saw more and more cases of teachers being lazy and not teaching the subject but merely teaching the students how to take and pass the test. But I was unprepared for what I recently read about in a legal journal.

It seems that a group of teachers at one school, and their school administration (not to be named in order to protect the guilty) took advanced copies of the test and drilled the kids by showing them the questions and answers to the exam. As a result a number of kids will be held back a grade and forced to repeat their studies.

Isn’t that great! Teachers and adults conspire to rig an exam and when the scam comes to light the kids will suffer while the school superintendent is quoted as saying “In their minds they thought they were doing what was fair for the students”. In other words, it’s ok to cheat and to allow cheating if that makes the test scores better.

If the teachers, and administrators, aren’t fired I’ll be disappointed, but firing them would anly give them more time to hang out the state capitol protesting educational reform.

E-Books

Reading is a fact of life at our house. Both My Lady and I love the printed word and the knowledge that can be found in books. Every time we move the weight of books we have to ship raises exponentially, on the last move I think it came to just under 2 tons of books we want to keep and can’t bare to part with. And just about all of them have a subject area that is technical, historical and professional development, if we want fiction we go to the library and borrow because fiction is ephemeral while knowledge is lasting.

My briefcase always has a book inside for those moments when I’m waiting for a judge or a client to give me a moment of time. Because of that need to keep my mind occupied I’ve thought about getting an E-Book, such as Kindle, where I could store multiple books and not take up too much space in the briefcase. But a few days ago I heard about a Kindle “feature” that has me reconsidering going electronic.

Kindle has the ability to scan books I’ve been reading, see if I’ve underlined selected passages, compare it with what other readers of the same book have marked and annotate my copy with notations and comments. I don’t mark up books like that and I don’t like reading books others have defaced with scribbled comments they thought were important to them.

Listen up Amazon, I will buy your device for my pleasure and I expect my privacy to be honored. No one has the authority to invade my (or any one else’s) personal space and compare my likes, dislikes or even my thinking with that of others. Nor can you reach out to my privately owned device and alter or delete the contents, which a scan of legal reporting seems to be what you believe is your right from the number of complaints and legal actions I found.

My personal (and publicly stated) opinion is that anyone searching my private library has the same rights as someone picking my pocket and browsing through its contents. You are a thief and should be treated as such!

Preparing for Changing Times

We moved to the Midwest when my wife was offered a job as an emergency manager in a large, urban county near the geographic center of the country. Coming from a state on the Ring of Fire one of her first concerns was an absence of any plans in place for dealing with movement of the ground such as the New Madrid Fault, which had its last major event in 1811 and 1812. The geologic record for this young and active fault seems to indicate that past events have usually been in magnitude 6.0 to 8.5 range which makes any event a major disaster. And statistically the fault is overdue for a large event.

Nevertheless when my lady suggested that planning for an earthquake in the center of the country might be a good idea she was immediately told that “something like that will never happen here” and told to focus on floods and tornadoes. Now several years later the government is planning a regional exercise covering all of the Midwest in response to (don’t say we didn’t tell you) a magnitude 8.0+ earthquake focused on the New Madrid Fault.

The social and economic impact of such an event will be enormous and, sadly few people are prepared for any type of disaster event. Here in what is considered the heart of tornado country very few homes have any type of built in severe weather protection and people routinely tell me that they don’t need a weather radio “because the TV and local government” will inform them and take care of them. Even stocking extra food in the pantry frowned on and nobody wants to take responsibility for their own well being. I fear the emotional toll of any disaster will far exceed the economic impact of the event.

Be it human causation, rogue water, high wind or shifting ground we are all vulnerable to having a disaster visit when we least expect. Take time to learn what your local exposure is be going to your local emergency management office at local or state level for information concerning personal and family readiness. You can also visit www.fema.gov for lots of good information and resource referrals.

Remember that the first few days after a disaster you will most likely be on your own while government focuses on restoring essential infrastructure and gearing up to help individuals. You will be on your own…so plan ahead and be prepared.

Curses...Foiled Again

Spring is starting to peek over the horizon, days are getting longer and the birds that disappeared last fall are filtering back looking for good nesting sites. Now is the time for me to be out and about getting the yard cleaned up from the winter snows and making sure all the yard tools are ready to go to work.

The house we presently call home doesn’t have a lot of storage space so we routinely use the garage for shop, work space and extended storage. The yard tools are separated from the rest of the garage by shelving and assessable only through the lift door. It usually works well, but as I started to prepare for Spring I’ve found that the garage door motor decided to go on strike and refuse to perform its allotted task in life.

The lawn area and the trees will just have to wait until I can repair the recalcitrant motor…as for me I think it’s time for a fresh cup of tea, while I catch up on my inside jobs.