IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Jobs Creation - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I assure you that this essay is written with tongue-firmly-in-cheek and is absolutely not to be taken seriously, yet I have now and then had some people address me with disquietingly similar reasoning.

There is a gaping maw in the southwest desert landscape that puts idle what could otherwise be millions of acres of valuable real estate. Some call it The Grand Canyon, but what kind of "Grand" is it to abide such waste? Oddly enough, in that same half of the continent we have these enormous piles of solid mass that extend upward to altitudes which render that region of the continent similarly useless. Some have called these masses The Rocky Mountains, or with some measure of tender sentiment, The Rockies.

Clearly there is a tremendous economic opportunity staring right at us. We could relocate those tall, solid masses from where they are presently found in overabundance to where they are not found at all in the vacant, low lying crevasses. Doing so could render both land areas accessible for development. 

Think of the business revenues to be achieved in the excavation, transportation and construction industries alone and just think of the huge number of jobs that would be created. Why, our national unemployment rate would plummet. Tax revenues from business incomes and personal incomes would skyrocket. With the enormity of this project, the economic benefits could last for years, perhaps even for decades. We and our descendants could be immeasurably enriched.

Of course, we can certainly expect to hear objections being voiced by those job-killing, nattering nabobs of negativism who were once described for us by a former US Vice-President. We could count on having up-in-arms contingents of "conservationists" and "naturalists" and their ilk crawling all over us. Alarmists would have us live in fear of seismic consequences like earthquakes, maybe.

With all of those idealistic objectors somehow put safely aside, we would ask the President to convene a bipartisan Congressional commission to study and endorse this plan and then, with full Congressional cooperation, agreement and approval thereby assured, to enact the required economic legislation.

What a future!

The Volkswagen Scandal - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

The software that allowed Volkswagen vehicles to circumvent emissions testing was deliberately installed at corporate orders. I hold that this constituted criminal misconduct. However, is accountability for this action to be limited to the corporation itself? What level of responsibility shall Volkswagen employees bear?

Please see this URL: Volkswagen Scandal

If my employer orders me to commit a crime and I comply with that order, am I not personally guilty of having committed that crime?

To look at the extreme case, some defendants at the Nuremberg trials following World War Two asserted in their defense that they had just been following orders. Those orders were directed to the extermination of Jews and other populations. Such individuals were not granted acceptance of that line of defense.

Even today, accused parties are still surfacing. Please see this URL:  Woman Accused

This woman is now ninety-one years old and is accused of having served as a radio operator for the Nazi SS at Auschwitz. According to this article, the court won't make a decision about whether she will go to trial until next year.

I can well imagine that legal proceedings against her might never be concluded if at her advanced age, she happens to pass away.

As to Volkswagen, how much protection does the "corporate veil" provide? 

Sheltering Coastal Evaporator Rafts - Dick LaRosa

Relative humidity in the single digits has facilitated wild fire ignition from lightning strikes in California and has allowed fires to spread out of control. In previous posts I have explained the design and deployment of solar-heated evaporator rafts in the ocean and in inland lakes and other water bodies for the purpose of evaporating water to increase the humidity. Deep-well pumping has severely depleted the groundwater, and it is apparent that lakes in northern California may be only a temporary emergency location for evaporator rafts. The long-term solution must be rafts along the Pacific coast. The prevailing wind direction during the warm months appears to be mainly from the west, so the water vapor will be carried inland. Existing recreation and commercial use of coastal features makes it necessary to provide locations for evaporators further offshore from existing activities and facilities.

The evaporator rafts require that the solar energy absorbing surfaces be covered by a thin layer of water. This will not be the case if waves and surf are crashing down on the evaporator rafts. Breakwaters resting on or driven into the ocean bottom would leave the evaporator rafts in a wind shadow at low tide. The airflow over the rafts would be turbulent, rather than laminar, resulting in a low evaporation rate. A possible solution might be a barrier of logs floating on the surface that would act as a grounding for the surf and attenuate the wave action. I think I have seen such surf suppressors described many years ago. I googled "surf suppressors" and received ads for steering dampers for Toyota 4runner Surf SUVs. Other search terms retrieved many videos that were not relevant.

I expect that the logs should be parallel to the shore and perpendicular to the wave direction. The number of logs, their mass and spacing, and the mooring system holding them in position would be parameters in the design. My knowledge of this subject consists of the reading of a portion of one chapter of one book on oceanography plus some random snippets of information picked up over the years. I still have to do some serious performance calculations. Help!!

Humidifying Redwoods and Sequoias - Dick LaRosa

Redwoods and sequoias belong to two distinct species. Redwoods grow close to the Pacific coast, while sequoias grow further inland in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The General Grant Sequoia is 268 ft tall, about 3000 years old, and is located in a national park to the northeast of the San Joaquin Valley. This is just where the water vapor picked up from evaporator rafts in San Francisco Bay would be expected to go during the months from May through September. This is relevant because firefighters are trying (9/14/2015) to protect this national treasure from wildfire.

Redwoods have bark up to 1 ft thick, while sequoia bark can be 3 ft thick. Both species grow so tall that moisture for the active growth at their peaks cannot be lifted directly from their ground roots. References refer to "air roots" which absorb moisture from the atmosphere, especially liquid droplets like fog. My understanding of this is foggy, and I hope to learn more. The coastal redwoods would need to be humidified from areas along the Pacific coast that are sheltered from the surf. Existing recreational and commercial activities make it necessary to consider installing breakwaters to shelter evaporator rafts from the surf - another of my areas of ignorance.

I get no replies from snail mails and emails to governors and firefighter organizations. Why not? Correspondence with a friendly researcher whose work I admire and respect might furnish a clue. He has thought about evaporator rafts and tells me that the solar energy is completely absorbed by the water without the rafts. So who needs rafts? He does not see that a high water surface temperature is required to achieve a high vapor pressure to ensure a high evaporation rate. Should I have risked antagonizing him by arguing the point? Perhaps. I gained nothing by not replying to his argument. Maybe I need a clearer presentation and some quantitative backup.

Ambiguity, Inference and Idiom - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I was at a bagel store the other day when another man standing on line said to his clerk, "I need a half pound of tuna salad. I need two." and then he made two gestures as if he had a container of some sort in each hand. The clerk simply responded "Right." and went off to get the order.

I thought to myself, "Did this customer want a half pound of tuna salad divided up between two containers of a quarter pound each or did he want two containers with each of them holding half a pound?".

If I had been that clerk, the ambiguity would have made me ask "Half a pound in each container?", but it didn't happen that way. Instead, an inference was made and acted upon and because I was running a bit behind just then and had to leave, I never got to see which way it turned out.

Idioms are commonly used in everyday speech and their meanings, even if not entirely literal, are commonly understood by inference. If I say to somebody in a moment of astonishment, "You're kidding!", it isn't taken as an accusation of attempted levity. It's taken as an expression of personal surprise which is NOT a literal translation of the phrase itself. There is an idiomatic exchange.

Was I missing something about the dialog going on in that bagel store? Was there some idiomatic exchange going on between the customer and the clerk that I didn't pick up on? Am I somehow failing to grasp things that everyone else seems to understand effortlessly or is there something else afoot?

This kind of thing has happened to me before. It's not exactly a terrifying issue so far, but it does make me a little nervous.

Funny or Just Weird? - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Notice the careful attention that was devoted to the proper placement of these street signs.

 

Seen on a local storefront. ( To be fair, this got fixed some days later. )

 

Doesn't this car look sweet? 

 

What subway train station is this supposed to be anyhow??  

Actually, it's the World Trade Center station but maybe they want to keep that a secret.

 

UFOs??? Have they arrived? 

Nah! Just reflections of ceiling lights in the plate glass of a store window.