Blackberry REACT February 2008 NewsletterQuick ClicksLimitations on Lithium Ion batteries on aircraftThe FAA has limited the number and size of Li-ion batteries we can carry in on-board baggage _and_ put in our checked baggage. Li-ion batteries are a serious fire threat, as they burn at temperatures higher than the melting point of aluminum. Now we need to find out why we can't carry them in our checked bags, but manufacturers can ship them by the pallet in the cargo holds. Another hydrogen fuel cellThe cell itself does the conversion, but it requires a cartridge of hydrogen; the cell is $400, the cartidge $20. The price is too high, and you get maybe 14 hours of power. However, the device and cartridge have an apparently unlimited shelf life, unlike batteries and gasoline for your generator that sits there for a year or more. Vegetarians unite!Veg Paradise offers a vegetarian survival kit. The page also has information on survival kits in general, but it's nice to find a survival menu geared to vegetarians. For non-vegetarians, see this flowchart on "What should I eat". Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids doI've never heard of Gever Tulley, but he gave a talk at TED awhile back on letting kids do dangerous things: play with fire and have a pocket knife for two examples. Among the goals are teaching responsibility and safety. It's an interesting, short presentation. Browse TED for more examples. Kenwood TS-480 and EEE PCLouise and I camped out for Thanksgiving last year, and here's a photo of me operating our TS-480 from a battery, using the EEE PC to log. The EEE PC has made a big splash. It's a tiny PC that runs a version of Linux (Xandros, for those who care), and I have a Linux logging program called xLog. If you are interested in a small, light laptop, the EEE is certainly an interesting device. It's set up with a foolproof graphical user interface and a wealth of programs, including Open Office versions of many most-used Microsoft applications. More photos and videos of the EEE here. 14-year-old takes over city trolley systemSeriously - the kid figured out how a city's trolley system was controlled, modified a TV remote control to run the system himself, and derailed four trolleys and injured a dozen people. Rain eventWe've had a major storm or two (or three) blow through, and we've all made sure our go-bags are updated for the season, right?Modeling Urban PanicPaul M. Torrens, Ph.D., had created a computer simulation of what he calls urban panic. We may recall a fire in a night club in Rhode Island where people all tried to leave through the doors they used for entry, creating a bottle neck and costing lives. Dr. Torrens's program can model crowd behavior in urban settings such as a car fire and a riot, but he also can track the spread of contagious diseases through modeling crowd behavior on city streets. California OES Hazard Mitigationor http://tinyurl.com/2mdkooCalifornia's Office of Emergency Services has plans for the mitigation of all the hazards we have in the state. The preceding link is to the page about mitigation of hazards, and it contains a number of interesting pages. The plan itself is a .pdf file that you can download here. The area of primary interest is Chapter 5, where the OES lists and evaluates the hazards facing the residents of California. Note that this is a mitigation plan; as the plan points out, mitigation is not preparedness. Mitigation is defined as reducing long-term risks associated with hazards. This plan proposes actions to be taken to reduce the losses that will be involved when we have our next big earthquake, flood, or wildfire. Central Valley Flooding a "Disaster Waiting to Happen"This report says the levees are going to fail, flooding the Central Valley here in California. The failures of the levees in New Orleans and more recently in Fernley, NV, point out that our infrastructure is not being maintained. We may spend our next time on the are at an actual disaster just across the Bay. For the actual report, see here. Hazardous material spill in City of San MateoTraffic was horribly backed up by a spill of concentrated chlorine on Delaware Street, resulting in the closure of Delaware Street at Third Avenue, a main exit off 101, and at Fourth Avenue, the main artery onto 101 for north and south bound traffic. The closures of Third and Fourth Avenues caused traffic tie-ups in all of downtown San Mateo and slowed traffic on 101. According to this article, it took seven hours to clean up because the hazmat team did not have enough of the agent necessary to neutralize and dilute the chlorine. The fire department had to call around and find more. This is an interesting situation to contemplate, as the concentration of chlorine was not fatally high, the fire department followed all safety procedures, the spill exhausted the city's resources for that particular clean up, and the street closures kept downtown in a mess for the full business day. The article has no explanation why there were four unmarked containers of concentrated chlorine left on a city street, two of them leaking, there was no indication of the size of the containers, nor was there any identification of the responsible entity. EventsWe have the following events scheduled for 2008:
UpdatesNone yet. Louise and I missed the meeting in February as we were on vacation on the tropical island of Martinique enjoying Carnaval. Our sincere apologies. |
