Category Archives: Politics

The Lumen is Looming

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Coming in 2011: New Labels for Light Bulb Packaging

Under direction from Congress to re-examine the current labels, the FTC is announcing a final rule that will require the new labels on light bulb packages. For the first time, the label on the front of the package will emphasize the bulbs’ brightness as measured in lumens, rather than a measurement of watts. The new front-of-package labels also will include the estimated yearly energy cost for the particular type of bulb.

This will allow one to make an easier comparison of bulb’s brightness, but it should be noted that lumen is the unit of luminous flux, which is the brightness as perceived by the human eye. The eye’s efficiency peaks at about 550 nm, and tapers off at the red and blue ends of the spectrum, and the lumen compensates for this. In other words, it’s not the actual amount of visible light energy given off, it’s how bright it looks. This is a trick used in the past by laser pointer manufacturers, when they started coming out with shorter-wavelength (i.e. redder or non-red) devices. Because the eye was more sensitive, they appeared brighter, even though the power was actually smaller. 1 mW of green can be as bright as ~5 mW of red, depending on the exact wavelengths involved.

Bette Davis Eyes, Karl Malden Nose

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Strange Maps: 468 – Crime Topography of San Francisco

San Francisco’s iconic topography – with grades of up to 31% – is as much a tourist attraction as its cable cars or the sea lions at Fishermans’ Wharf. But the city’s hilliness is more than just ankle-biting eye-candy. Its elevation, mainly in the city’s centre, is responsible for a 20% variance in annual rainfall throughout its eastern and western precincts, with bay-fronted neighbourhoods in the east also significantly less cold, windy and foggy than those facing the ocean.
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These maps present San Franciscan peaks and troughs of a different, less savoury kind. Although the information they convey is as real as the city’s actual orography, these infographics express incidence of crime rather than elevation above sea level. By mimicking cartographic methods of height demarcation, the mapmaker has hit upon a visually very arresting method to frame raw crime statistics in a geographic context.

Sigh

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iPhone city San Francisco is first in U.S. to demand radioactivity warnings on mobiles

The home city of the iPhone has passed a law requiring warning radioactivity warning labels on new mobiles.

San Francisco retailers will soon have to provide information on the specific absorption rate (SAR) of all handsets stocked.

Repeat with me: “Radiation” and “radioactive” are not the same thing.
The specific absorption rate in question is of radiofrequency radiation, which is non-ionizing, and in no way implies that the source is radioactive (i.e. comes from a spontaneous nuclear reaction), because it doesn’t.

On the other hand, it’s the Daily Mail. They apparently handle science no better than Robert Green handles weak shots-on-goal by Americans. (Bang!)

As far as the legislation goes, I think it’s antiscience being sold as informing consumers. But what information is being provided? I think specific absorption rate is being abused here, because it’s not being explained. If I have a mass of 100 kg, does a phone with an SAR of 1.6W/kg mean it is emitting 160 Watts? And for a user who has a mass of 70 kg, the power magically drops to 112 Watts? No. SAR is measured using a calibration standard of one gram of tissue (in the US; in Europe it’s 10 grams) meaning the gram of tissue absorbs 1.6 milliwatts of radiation from the source, under some geometry. The actual power emitted by a cellphone is of order a Watt. But even that information is almost useless without context; the human body radiates somewhere around 800-900 Watts in a more-or-less blackbody spectrum. Is that a cause for concern?

Potato Chips vs Clean Energy Technology

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Gates, venture capitalist Doerr issue warning about America’s future

Of the top 30 new energy technology companies worldwide that produce batteries, solar technologies and advanced wind energy, only four are headquartered in the United States, Doerr said.

“It’s very sad that Americans spend more on potato chips than we do on investment in clean energy R&D,” said Doerr.

Gates said more federal research spending is needed to spur investment in clean technologies. “The incentives aren’t there to make it happen,” said Gates.

The N States of America

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13 Stripes and 51 Stars

If Puerto Rico were to become the 51st state—and granted, that’s at least four ifs away—federal law requires that a new star be added to the American flag. One can’t help but wonder: Where would we put it?

There’s a flag generator which allows you to vary the number of stars from 1 to 100. There is no “valid pattern” for 29, 69 or 87 stars — none of the desired symmetries are possible — and a few of the other patterns look like “why don’t you admit two states at a time” (like 79, 89 and 92)

Doing Nothing?

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There’s a management phenomenon, which is magnified by politics: if some unusual circumstance occurs, doing nothing is usually deemed worse than doing the wrong thing. There’s usually no easy way to quantify the nothing that you did, even if you actually investigated carefully. There’s the though that “we have to do something!” and even if the action is inappropriate or ineffective, management can point to it and say, “See! We did something about it.” (I think our current terrorism responses too often fall into this category.)

I was reminded of that lesson when I read this story: Tainted nuke plant water reaches major NJ aquifer

The tritium leaked from underground pipes at the plant on April 9, 2009, and has been slowly spreading underground at 1 to 3 feet a day. At the current rate, it would be 14 or 15 years before the tainted water reaches the nearest private or commercial drinking water wells about two miles away.

But the mere fact that the radioactive water – at concentrations 50 times higher than those allowed by law – has reached southern New Jersey’s main source of drinking water calls for urgent action, Martin said.

Now, it’s possible that what is being reported isn’t the whole story, and there is legitimate cause for concern. But based on what was in the story, I think the call for urgent action is based on the sphincter-clenching response the general public has to the word “radiation.” Let’s look at the details.

— The half-life of Tritium is 12.33 years. Which means that less than half will be left when it reaches the drinking water. 50x becomes <25x

— If the diffusion is isotropic, and only in the radial direction, the Tritium will be diluted by another factor of 14 or 15. 25x becomes less than 2x.

— Diffusion rates depend on the gradient of the concentration. As the Tritium becomes diluted, the diffusion should slow down. It's not clear that the estimates take this into account. The story gives the current rate as 1-3 feet per day. 2 feet per day is 2 miles in 15 years.

— Tritium is delicious and wholesome

So, based on the information given, it's possible the tritium concentration will be at or below the legal limit by the time it enters the drinking water (which could dilute it even more). The person calling for urgent action works for New Jersey's environmental protection department, so one would hope that the science was considered. But I suspect that "urgent action is required" is the response because trying to assuage peoples' fears would be viewed as a smokescreen, and simply levying a fine (which I'm all for — the power plant should not be let off the hook) might be taken as the company buying their way out of the problem.

Who's Afraid of Ill-Tempered, Mutated Sea Bass

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But where are the sharks?

The Lab Lemming tells us we shouldn’t be afraid of laser isotope separation of Uranium, and then tells us what we should really be scared of.

[T]he critics of this planned laser separation technique don’t even explain how they expect proliferation to happen. It is just a vague sentiment that if this particular nuclear technology works, it will somehow spread to the hands of the bad guys.

What US Currency Could Look Like

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… but it doesn’t.

Michael Tyznik’s US Currency Redesign

Contrary to rumors circulating in chain emails, this design is not the work of or in any relation to the U.S. government. It was my entry to the Dollar Rede$ign contest and is purely speculative.

American banknotes are in dire need of a redesign. Even though the green color of money is deeply interwoven into the nation’s culture, the need for color differentiation between denominations has forced the inclusion of color. The recent redesign of banknotes by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is poorly executed and aesthetically lacking. Because the coloring of the current notes is so subtle, it is still hard to differentiate between denominations by that method alone.

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