Blackberry REACT October 2008 Newsletter

Quick Clicks

Unclonable RFID chip announced

Let the office pool commence on when the chip is cloned.

Emergency food

Louise and I went to Burning Man again this year, and we suffered a serious dust storm on Monday and a long one on Saturday. The Monday storm had whiteouts from 10:00 am till after midnight or so. The Saturday dust up was not quite as long, and my Kestrel measured gusts up to 20MPH, which were not as strong as Monday when I couldn't get to the Kestrel. See video of Monday.

We used Heater Meals for our dining pleasure on both days, since getting out the camp stove in those winds was a non-starter. We've tried to cook in high winds, and water just won't boil even with the burner on max. We have links to various quick-fix meals, some of which require separate cooking (often just boiling water), some of which have self-heating entrees (as Heater Meals do), and some of which can be eaten as is. Meals from various companies suit a variety of needs and tastes: gluten-free, kosher, vegetarian, and so on.

In addition to during dust storms, we used self-heating meals during our 8-hour shifts as flaggers out on the highways. Your mileage will vary depending on your needs, tastes, and duties, but having some kind of food in your Go Bag and in your car makes sense to us when we never know when the big earthquake will strike and when we'll be out in the field for some extended emergency.

Crossing flooded roads

We've been taught by the National Weather Service guy not to drive across flooded roads because water will lift and float your car away. Here's another reason not to drive across a flooded road - the flooded road collapses under a truck and overturns it.

For a video of the old fashioned being-swept-away when trying to cross a flooded road, check this. Note that these are not family sedans in the videos. The force of water is inconceivably strong.

Faster, Smaller, Cheaper

Wired's article on 50 years of integrated circuits, with a gallery of photos from IC 1 through current microprocessors with 45-nanometer transistors. Great photos from the 60s, which were still the 50s as far as clothes and haircuts went in Silicon Valley.

Reporter kicked out of Red Cross Shelter

A legitimate evacuee of Hurricane Ike was also a reporter, and Red Cross volunteers made her leave a shelter because she was a newspaper reporter. There's more to the story than this article relates: we don't know how they found out she was a reporter, what she was doing that made them uncomfortable, and so on. Her story is about what was going wrong at the shelter, so she may have been "covering" that story in preparation for a later news article, but I'm just guessing. If her story is accurate, it's an interesting essay on what goes on, what goes wrong, and how evacuees fix shelter problems. It may also be that reporters get to see propaganda shelters during major disasters and not typical, problem-filled shelters. Who can tell, though, what really goes on?

Stackable emergency shelters

I'm not sure how workable this idea is. Fold out containers have a shelter, and they can be connected and stacked for high- density sheltering in big scale disasters. The first thing I don't want is to be on the ground floor of the stack. The next thing I don't want is to be in an apartment of connected rooms where the dividing walls are fabric. On the other hand, being in a fabric room is better than being in a gym with a thousand other people on cots with the lights on 24 hours a day. I also have some concerns about what kind of ground will be available to put a two- story structure on. My experience in camping is that the ground is never level, never flat, and never supports what I want to put on it. I'd be interested in seeing individual units, though. Looks like a really good tent.

Waiting on the levee

Instead of a major earthquake, California's disaster could be a levee break. Eleven hundred miles of levees keep the water supply for 23 million people from being contaminated with sea water and 1,153 square miles of farms in production.

Causes of breaks include inadequate construction, inadequate maintenance and global warming -- if predictions are correct, sea levels may rise two feet, breaching the levees. People are comparing the levees of the Sacramento Delta with the levees of New Orleans.

Page 2 of the article has an interesting history of the levee system, pointing out some of its problems that go back to the 1920s. The system was not designed, but built ad hoc out of dirt by farmers. Later pages explore the ecosystem and the changes wrought by increasing demands on the fresh water system for both drinking and irrigation and discuss the disaster flooding the delta with sea water would cause.

Pre-Ike and Post-Ike photos

Photos by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Using text messages for emergency alerts won't work

Is the college where your child, grandchild, or greatgrandhchild is enrolled planning on using SMS or text messages to alert its students of emergencies on the campus? It won't work. We all know that cells will overload in the next big earthquake, and they'll do the same thing when the college sends its 25,000 students a message. And it takes only a few hundred students to generate a busy signal 50% of the time during an emergency - what's the first thing you do during an emergency? Make a phone call. It's not just the college that uses the cell. There are serious problems with using SMS as emergency alerts. Many of them are pointed out in the paper this article is based on.

I recommend reading through it, especially the part on page 23 which discusses how quickly a cell becomes overloaded and messages fail. Although aimed at using SMS as an emergency alert system, this section makes it clear how our system will fail after an earthquake when everybody phones home.

My personal misgiving is the ability of students to send false alerts. I have 100% confidence student pranksters will send false disaster messages, just for fun or to get out of a test.

I have no confidence in SMS as an emergency alert system. But that's just my opinion.

Jump rope severs hand

This is a news story about a six-year-old girl whose hand was severed in a freak accident. Passers-by helped stanch the flow of blood, protected the severed hand from being run over in the street, and called for an ambulance. My reason for posting the article is the reminder from one of those passers-by: this is a terrible thing to happen, "one that made it hard to sleep for nights afterward, he said." We all think we'll respond to some disaster, do our duty, then go home after a satisfying day's work saving lives. The problem is there are psychic injuries to ourselves that need to be healed. If you are supervising emergency responders, you need to be aware of the toll working in horrific disasters takes on your crews. If you are working with badly injured people, you need to know that you will need counseling afterwards. Get help.

Endeavor and Atlantis prepare for launch

Both images are available for download. NASA is preparing for a launch of the Atlantis. Usually the International Space Station is used for rescues, but it's not available for the Atlantis mission, so the Endeavor is prepared on a second launchpad in these photos. If space shuttles are retired in accordance with current plans, this will be the last time two shuttles are on launchpads at the same time. Atlantis's mission is to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

FDA natural disaster response

Louise has pointed me to a page from the FDA on medicine and natural disasters. The articles tell what to do with medicines that have been exposed to contaminated water, fire, freezing, and the like when disasters occur. Some of the information requires going through a few pages, but if you use insulin or other medication requiring special storage the effort is well worth it.

Do-it-yourself project from Make Magazine

Some metal working required.

Food for after the disaster

Honeyville Food:
Powdered eggs, powdered cheese, freeze-dried fruit, vegetables, and more. We haven't tried these, I generally can't stand freeze- dried food, but the prices here are cheap: a size 410 can holds the volume of about a pint, which yields about 7 cups of prepared berries, for eight bucks. Six No. 10 cans of dehydrated carrots, peas, onions, celery, potato, and corn costs $64. Freeze dried or dehydrated vegetables in a No. 10 can will last 10 to 15 years when stored in a cool, dry place.

Harmony House Foods:
This is food in bulk, and the prices range from under $5 to over $200 depending on how much you buy. If you have to feed a family or group, take a look at this site. Harmony House offers lots of freeze dried vegan and vegetable fare and meat substitutes if you want the flavor. Click on the link to samplers and family sizes for a variety of offerings. These items are in plastic containers, and the site does not brag about long-term storage.

LAFD Emergency Preparedness Book

We've all got lists and emergency kits and such. The LA Fire Department has its book on quakes, fires, and more. This one is interesting because it has more specific information on water storage and containers than any booklet I've seen. It also has a more nearly complete list of supplies, foods, utensils, instructions on water, gas, and electric connections and shut offs, using ham radio to communicate, and much more.

It's October

Are you phasing in your rainy season gear and phasing your shorts ahd t-shirts out of your go-kits? Rotating your canned supplies in your stores of earthquake supplies? Have any of your medical supplies expired?

First commercial radio broadcast

September 29, 1920, is held out to be the date of the first commercial radio broadcast. It's one of those chicken and egg stories. A Pittsburgh department store had ready-made radio receivers for sale, but there were no stations. An amateur radio operator started playing records over his transmitter (this may not have been illegal in 1920 - who would have thought of it?), and people who had radios started calling in (on the air or on the phone) with requests. The store started promoting his "concerts on the air" as a way to sell the radios

The amateur's boss at Westinghouse Electric read the writing on the aether and applied for a commercial license, receiving the call sign KDKA. The recursive model of signal being used to sell devices, device sellers promoting the signal has kept radio and television on the air ever since.

Another model that is familiar is the progression of radio: first, amateurs (whether receivers or transmitters) had to assemble their kits and construct their gear themselves, having learned what they needed to know on their own. Then people began selling parts and instructions on how to assemble them. Finally, the Joseph Horne Department Store bought a supply of ready-made receivers - no knowledge needed, just plug and play.

There's an interesting transcript of All Things Considered at with a description of a guy who was 12 years old when he first heard the amateur's broadcast and had never heard a voice on the air -- it was all morse. Radio was thought to be point to point in those days. No one had thought of broadcasting. It's an enlightening discussion of how things were.

You may find other interesting stories on NPR's Radio Diaries if you have the time to browse.

GPS legal on windshields next year

Our governor signed into law a bill allowing GPS devices to be placed on the windshield in the lower right or lower left corner and away from the airbag deployment zone. Governor Schwarzenegger also signed a bill banning text-messaging while driving, but vetoed a bill prohibiting driving with pets in the driver's lap. The GPS bill takes effect next year.

The IEEE tries to explain steampunk

Photos and more about the people who do stuff at Burning Man, Maker Faire, and the like. Great photos.

Events

Sun. 10/19 JDR Jr. Diabetes Walk

Updates

Bill Menafra spoke at the October meeting, telling us how the Kiwanis attract and cultivate new members. They start with a program in middle schools, and they have members in high schools (Key Club) and colleges (Circle K). The hope, of course, is that these students go on to become adult members of Kiwanis.

High schools may now have mandatory volunteer programs, and many colleges look to extracurricular activities to judge whether to admit students, so Bill suggested talking to the student activities director at local high schools to get Blackberry REACT on their list of organizations to suggest to students. Since we operate radios, I'd hope we can make Blackberry REACT more enticing than many other jobs volunteers are sought for.

Bill also suggested bringing a neighbor to an event to showcase what we do; developing a program or speech for organizations such as the Kiwanis (and Lions Club, VFW, and so on) where we can promote ourselves, hand out flyers and business cards, and seek new members (although he assures us we'll be invited to join that group, too); ask for donations and contributions at the clubs when we speak; go the Chamber of Commerce mixers and promote the team; ask people to join at any opportunity, not just speaking engagements and events.