A bit of late night wisdom

You cannot and should not judge your own worth. For if you do, you can be assured that you will substantially over or under estimate your own worth. If you feel the need to be judged you must let others do it, but you must not let the opinions of others get you down. Why not? You asked them to judge you???… As I said they are giving you an opinion, and opinions are just that, they are not facts. (Plus a lot of the people out there are morons. ;) Most of the time when you are judged, it is unsolicited and as with comment cards at restaurants most people will only speak up when they have something negative to say.

I'm a doctor!!!

Well actually I'll be a doctor in a few weeks when all the paper work is done.

Why Brokeback lost

I have hoped to avoid covering this topic, but with all the hype in the press, I figure why not. It is even richer because I have never seen the movie, but I have theory anyways Brokeback Mountain didn’t sweep the Oscars, but it didn’t deserve too, not because it was a movie about gay cowboys. It won three awards in recognition for the directing, score, etc, because it was an exceptional movie in those areas. Why didn’t the actors win anything? Because they didn’t deserve to! The role of having to pretend you are something you’re not isn’t a particularly challenging role for an actor to play, and pretending to love someone, since a challenge either… That is way the actors got nothing because they didn’t push the boundaries of their field. You win awards for acting because you pushed the boundaries, not cause did your job even if you did it well. Oh and there are serious politics, but I am sure that had nothing to do with it.

What happened to the advice? Or “How to meet your perfect mate”

This blog is entitled Freeguidance, so the few that read this might be wondering where’s the guidance?? Well, I do occasionally post advice, like the Netflix hacks, or how to interrogate the prisoners at Camp X-Ray, but recently I haven’t posted anything like “How to meet your perfect mate”.
So just real quick I’ll go into that. Just like real estate it’s location, location, location. If you have high standards, but only go to dive bars, you should not be surprised that you can’t find that special something. If you want to meet the right person look for them at a place you’d go to together. Example if you are looking to meet a smart, slightly reserved girl, the hot new club might not be the right place, since if she is there she will be there with friends who made her go out and so she’ll feel out of her element and your advances will make her uncomfortable. Even the coffee house of your local bookstore might not be the right place. Where then would you meet such a girl? In the stacks at your local B&N, or reading in chairs that aren’t in the café. There she will be in her element, and more likely to be comfortable and friendly and engage in idle chat with a strange man who asks about a book she’s reading. The location rule is true for girls too; you are likely to meet the right guy in a place where you would want to go with him. Like minds and all.

Advice for you girls:
Many guys now days who aren’t total players are gun shy about first contact. (Remember girls, that total and smooth self confidence is often the sign of a player. (Here’s a hint: if he’s 25+, single and “smooth” then at best he has baggage, at worst he is a predator.)) What’s this means for you girls? You can’t be shy! Even if you aren’t comfortable asking a guy out, you shouldn’t be too shy to make the first move.
If you ask him a question (about anything you want, but don’t be obvious) that makes you approachable, this give him the confidence to keep the conversation going, possibly to the point where a number will be asked for…

Rehab for the our oil addiction, the second of 12 steps (Oil shale)

I would like to open by saying that this is a follow up to a previous post strangely enough entitled “Rehab for the our oil addiction, the first of 12 steps” (the first step was methanol). To be honest I have no idea how many steps there will actually be, I just liked the old title and it is a good idea to serialize articles.
So here we go again!
As that I am a fan of delivering bad news bluntly, they is no way to cut 75% of our Middle East oil imports, by 2025, unless… well hmm… unless we start producing enough oil on our own. Here is the problem with that, even if we made the entire state of Alaska into one giant pump jack and juiced all the seals and caribou for oil we still couldn’t met our energy needs. There is one way that we could get enough oil, well it’s not technically oil it is oil shale. You can think of oil shale is kind of halfway between oil, coal, and a rock. What it is, is less important then the fact that between the US and Canada there is enough of it to feed our energy needs for a couple hundred years 1.2 trillion barrels worth. (Coal, which will be step three of 12 (if I have the time and interest), is also a resource that we have enough of to last hundreds of years.)
The problem with oil shale is how to separate the useful part (kerogen) from the part that is worthless rock and do it cheaply and cleanly. Right now they cook the rocks and that makes most of semi-liquid hydrocarbons flow out, but that is costly and a lot of good carbon is lost or left unextracted. Plus, as I said the stuff is semi-liquid so it clogs everything up. However, for most things that are mined (oil shale is mined) the mineral is extracted from the ore, using a solvent (hard to believe but cyanide is a solvent). So it would be nice if there was a solvent that could extract the hydrocarbons from oil shale. Well there are lots of organic solvents will do it, but organic solvents are bad because most of them are made from oil and would be lost during the extraction, so the solvent costs would make extraction to costly to be practical. (Plus the ultimate goal would be in situ solvent extraction of the hydrocarbons, and could imagine what the EPA would say when asked if it was ok to pump massive amounts of say carbon tetrachloride in the deposit?) There is one carbon-based molecule that isn’t considered organic, yep you guessed it (or not) carbon dioxide (CO2). Mostly people only know of CO2 the gas and CO2 the solid (dry ice), but under pressure when cooled CO2 can turn into a liquid and if kept under pressure it remains liquid at high temperatures (>93 C). (You’ve seen liquid CO2 trucks on the road it’s called NuCO2, you can find the fill port on your local fast food restaurant just look for a 6x6” stainless steel box at about eye level, but I digress.) Liquid CO2 is one of the finest solvents of hydrocarbons there is, and even better to get the stuff dissolved in it back out all you do is release the pressure at the CO2 turns back into a gas.
My idea is that the oil shale material be ground fine and the hydrocarbons extracted using liquid CO2. The extracted material can then be pumped to the hydrogenator or cracker or column still, still dissolved in the CO2 (thus reducing the clogging problems.) The CO2 is then recovered, scrubbed (since it will contain a small amount of gaseous hydrocarbons (CH4) and lots of sulfur compounds (which means the extracted hydrocarbons are less sour and therefore will burn cleaner)), liquefied, and reused. The remaining material which is greater reduced in volume can then be retorted if sufficient carbon remains to be worthwhile, but if (probably) not then it can be burned in a rotary furnace (similar to the kilns used to make Portland Cement) to provide energy for the plant, and clinker that comes out the end can be ground to produce a commercial abrasive, left whole and used as filler for concrete, or if we get hard enough up, would be a medium grade aluminum ore.

In the news: Trees increase global warming

I just read an article that says “Tree increase global warming” if this is true then we are really really screwed. Why? Because deforestation is “cause” of global warming, so if replanting the trees also makes global warming worse, then global temperature should start rising exponentially any minute now. I can already cook eggs on the sidewalk in the summer, so in a few years I should be able to bake bread on the sidewalk too. Or perhaps scientists need to realize that modeling the global climate with the information and resources we have available is futile. When they can predict Tuesday’s weather accurately on Sunday, perhaps I will believe they have a handle on climatological modeling.

Camp X-Ray telling the difference between truth and lies

With the release of the names of the prisoners at Camp X-Ray, the pressure to close that camp is sure to go up. Mark my words, in the next couple days; we will start seeing biographical clips of many of the prisoners. These clips will make the men look like everyday people, who were rounded up by a corrupt and paranoid country. Why? Because if it was clear that most of these men were terrorists, they won’t be being held there, they’d have been tried and sent to real prison. Most of the men there are not there because they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of being a terrorist (however based on what I’ve read they have committed some crime, which in America would get you incarcerated.) Is being a terrorist a crime, even if they haven’t done anything yet? Think of it this way: Is serving as a member of terrorist group, which seeks to undermine the legitimately elected government of a nation, treason? Well, that kind of sounds like the definition of treason... (Conspiracy to commit treason is also a crime, as is espionage.) Now then I have also checked and the punishment for treason in the US and the countries these men were captured in is still death. (In theory anyone who swore allegiance to the Taliban, was committing treason against the elected government of Afghanistan, which was over thrown illegally in 1996.)

Is everyone in Camp X-Ray an enemy combatant? No, probably not, the problem is how to tell who is and who isn’t. Anyone who figures out how to solve that little problem deserves a Nobel Peace Prize (but is more like to get it for Medicine or Chemistry). Actually, the simple solution is PET scans (no Nobel is necessary, it is my honor to serve). But since these men have been questioned for so long I doubt that even PET can determine if they are lying. If you want to use PET you need to do it early in the interrogation process, because if they are use to repeating the same thing over and over it is more difficult to detect, then if they’re having to come up fresh answers (lies). However, you could use the PET scan as propaganda tool. First convince the prisoners, it is infallible, and unlike a lie detector test can’t be fooled. Take a couple of the obviously guilty and probably innocent into be tested, the guilty are immediately transferred to new prisons, and innocent are immediately let go. It is human nature that the innocent will see it as a way to prove their innocence and be more receptive to testing while the guilty will see it as bad thing and resist even passively. Ok the guilty are smart and realize this and not believing PET to be infallible (most will have received training on how to beat lie detector tests) will also want the opportunity to prove their innocence. PET can then be used to pick up on the mental discipline, yes this isn’t a sure sign of guilt, but it is sign that innocence is less likely.

The real problem is what to do with all the people who are innocent. If they weren’t terrorists before, well chances are that four years of false imprisonment with men who are terrorists, might have changed that. That problem not even I have an idea on how to solve.

Lead paint and torte reform

So, the paint makers won a big time victory today. Yes they lost the suit since they were found liable for the lead contamination, but the judgment did not include putative damages. (This is a victory, trust me!)
I have read books written in late 50’s, about home construction, and let me tell you they have sections on the wonders of lead paint, and cement board with reinforced with asbestos. Why, because at the time they were miracle building materials (I’ll skip asbestos board for now, since that is tangential.) Lead paint prevents wood from rotting, and given how old some of those houses are is a testament to how well it works. They have known lead (Pb) is poisonous since Roman times, but they didn’t ban lead paint till the 70’s. This is about the same time when they found a way to (pressure) treat wood with preservative that wasn’t creosote or lead. This is not an accident; they couldn’t ban lead paint till they replaced it. The paint companies sold a product that any rational person would know wasn’t all that safe. More over they didn’t try and hide what it was by calling it “Wonder Paint” or something fluffy, they called it “White Lead Paint”. But lead paint served a purpose, so people bought it and painted surfaces that were subject to rotting with it (base boards, window sills, clapboards, and in well built home the bottom of the studs and the sill plate). This is the problem, since these areas are where kids can get, and because these areas get wet they are also prone to pealing, if lead paint was a great ceiling paint, there wouldn’t be problem. Should the paint companies be made to pay for the contamination? Probably, after all they knowing made a product that was toxic. But the reason it sold so well was because it was toxic, and that is why I don’t think punitive damages were order. Punitive damages are to punish the defendant for their wrong doing, but the paint companies didn’t act in bad faith or try and deceive people with tricky labels. The paint companies sold what the market demanded, and if people didn’t want lead paint there were several other types of paint available, so the consumer’s choice to use lead paint was a conscious one.

Now what does this have to do with torte reform? Everything! The reason we need torte reform is we have become class action happy. However, torte reform would limit the options of people who have been legitimately wronged. The lead paint case and some of the Vioxx cases are the best torte reform we could hope for, because there was no profit in the winning. The lawyers that do this kind of work do it for a cut of the settlement, and they see dollar signs from billion dollar settlements resulting not from actual damages, but punitive damages. If judges and juries stop handing out huge (punishing) damages, then the profit dries up and lawyers lose interest and the system reforms itself. This means fewer suits that are based on the size of warning label on the box rat poison, since too small a label might not make it clear that the contents are not to be used as baby food. But people who’ve legitimately been wronged, (and are likely to elicit big punitive damages) still can sue and win and the evil company can be still be punished with huge damages, so lawyers will still represent them. This is torte reform we can live with.