The Army of the Future

Last night I had an epic dream.  I call the dreams that are massive and have a strong impact "epic" because that's kind of what they feel like.  Like they are in all caps or bold or something.  They are usually characterized by a memorable and bigger than life feel while they are going on, and they tend to last so that you remember them when they wake up.  They also make you think.

In this one, I was an older recruit for the Army.  I remembered my own real-life history in the dream, remembered the physical training and weapons training from my own era of the mid-eighties.  This was very different.

I remember looking around and wondering how these young people were going to handle it, they didn't seem very tough.  However, I quickly found out that I was the one being outmatched.  There were some similar issues, the whole BS of having to be in perfect uniform and the relentless scheduling that drives you nuts.

What was different was that this was an information based force.  These guys had electronics on everything.  they were controlling miniature and large sized drones and sucking in logistical and tactical information all while communicating constantly with peers and superiors.  I remember thinking, "what the hell is going on?"

It was my first distinct feeling of being too old to get it.  We've often heard people opine that the youth of today are better trained for combat in some ways because they spend so much time playing video games.  This was a twist on that theory.  In this version, these people were good at this form of combat because they were always plugged into their i-phones and social media.  The skill set was that you had to be able to constantly juggle all the input while keeping each individual thread as a distinct data stream.  I wasn't completely out of my depth, I could track a lot of what was going on, but I was totally distracted. 

One odd element to the dream was a strange representation of the uniforms they were wearing.  There was some kind of virtual screen each person was watching, so they looked like they were all watching their own computer screens.  At the same time, you could see other people's screens.  When I looked at other people's uniforms, and my own, for that matter, it was strangely pixelated.  There were little elements in it that looked like computer chips. But instead of being plugged into a fixed point on a circuit board, these chips were crawling all over you like ants or spiders, plugging into different parts of the uniform, then getting up and moving to another.  It was like those videos of the guys that smear themselves in honey and the bees swarm all over them, only it was in green/black/brown camouflage and they were little rectangular chips.

I woke up fascinated by the dream, and even had a strange experience of being able to close my eyes and plunge back into the dream a couple of times.  When I woke up, it still felt like the dream was going on.  It was as if it was in my active memory, but slowing down to a stop.  I felt like the dream was interrupted, we were going to go on a mission once we got our skills down, and I found myself looking forward to it.

I think there are a couple of things that melded together from real life that sparked the dream.  I'm turning 50 soon, and I've been thinking more in terms of being on the downward slide of life, where your skills and abilities erode and it becomes harder to keep up.  I was also listening to some programs that had combat zone scenes in them, which was more high tech than it used to be.  I was talking to someone a few days ago about powering equipment that soldiers carry, and this was similar to that.  We've been looking at cyberwarfare as a concern, and that, too has been on my mind.  We also had the Sandy Hook school shooting last week, and part of me was wondering if the spate of shootings these last couple of years had anything to do with young men's total immersion into computer games like halo, and the other first person combat games.  These shootings have a feel a little like that, as if the goal is to rack up a high body count, there's no repercussions for your actions and no morality or permanence to it.  We also had an office Christmas party this weekend, and for the first time, people were zoning out on their phones at dinner.  This trend of people not being there with you is something that I notice, something that I tire of, so it has been on my mind.

However, regardless of the inspiration for the dream, it seems to have a bit of prophecy in it.  I can see a time where controlling and communicating through your computer network would be highly integrated into a battle scenario.  It makes me wonder how much it already is, we just don't know about it.  Special Forces would be the place to flesh those systems out, and keeping a battlefield superiority with those skills would depend in part on keeping them secret until you had a chance to figure them out.

NYC Storm Shield

After Hurricane Sandy, I have seen proposals for a seawall to protect NYC from storm swells. This would be similar to the massive Deltawerken Dutch seawall project. Perhaps a good way to justify such a massive public works project would be to make the seawall a tidal generating station. The flow from the Hudson (as well as the tidal flow) should be enough to generate power across the entire face of the seawall. The generating sections would be locked down and form a wall in the event of a storm, and open and generating power the rest of the time. Making the seawall generate power would offset the cost of construction by providing a way of paying back the initial investment. The project would also allow public funds to be used for a model/pilot plant. The resulting R&D could be used for future tidal power projects, as it would be public knowledge. The project would keep people employed (economic stimulus now) with a lasting long term benefit of power generation. This is all in addition to protecting NYC from Hurricane Sandy-styled storm surges.


I’m not sure how you deal with ship traffic, as these seawalls usually have an opening in the middle that allows the transit of shipping. When that center portion is open, I believe you would have a lessening of power generated across the seawall, as fluid flows tend to follow the path of least resistance. This is a technical issue that could be solved, I’m sure.

Dutch Engineers are world leaders in this technology, so perhaps they would be willing to cooperate with us in the design. They would also benefit by developing the power generating technology, and may employ it in their own seawalls.

Perhaps the structure could also be topped with a motorway, as I understand that the condition of some of the existing NYC bridges is such that they will need to be replaced at some time in the next few decades anyway.

Politically, I believe that technology such as this that benefits so many should be government developed so that it can be freely shared, but that is another issue. I realize the political environment is not conducive to big government projects right now, so perhaps, once constructed, it could be turned over to a utility which would collect the fees from the power generated in order to provide maintenance. Perhaps other locations could be sited to copy the concept, which might find private power companies interested in repeating the project in other estuaries and bays that need tide surge protection.

NYC is such a crown jewel of our country, it is the perfect place to construct such a showcase of engineering. Projects such as this also generate public interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics) disciplines, which furthers our competitiveness, similar to the boost STEM disciplines got from the moon shot.

Hogwash

I listened to some of the local news in Iowa over the Thanksgiving break.

They have a big debate going on over large livestock growing and slaughtering plants in the state.  On one hand, these operations are big and bring a lot of jobs and money to the state.  On the other hand, they create a lot of pollution.  The problem is when you get a huge number in one location, the waste becomes greater than the land can easily absorb or process.  It gets into rivers and streams and the high nitrogen content kills fish and other wildlife.  I'm familiar with the same situation in western Kansas where the cattle operations are so prevalent that they are polluting the soils with excess nitrogen.  The problem there is so big that the nitrogen is showing up in the water table and some small towns that depend on well water are not able to remove it.  In northern Missouri, we have some hog operations that were run so poorly that their waste containment dams broke and flooded the rivers with millions of gallons of hog waste, effectively killing the rivers.

Iowa's problem is similar and it's playing into the politics.  The corporations threaten to move out of the state if they are forced to comply with environmental laws they see as excessive.  The EPA and some citizen groups want the corporate farms to stop polluting.

It seems to me that the solution could come from a big government imposition of a separate entity to deal with the waste.  You figure out what the cost of treating the waste conventionally would be, and then you subsidize the operation to the extent that it becomes less of a burden to the corporation, and you force them to pay into the solution.  You take the solution out of their hands. The state government sets up a facility on the grounds of the corporate operation that will treat the waste.  You bring in State University researchers and managers, and their goal is to develop leading edge technology to convert the waste into a slow release fertilizer and energy.  After startup costs are realized, the energy is supplied back to the feedlot operation, in some equitable arrangement that offsets the cost of setting up the operation.  Perhaps you even give them the ability to take over the operation once it's set up.

The catch is that the Universities develop the technology and they own it and can patent anything they come up with.  However, this is done with the understanding that these are publicly disclosed patents that can be used for a nominal licensing fee to offset the development cost, then expanded and improved upon.  In this way, you use a combination of private and public funds to develop the technological solution to the waste problem in a way that keeps the waste out of the water, extracts usable energy from it, and provides a slow release form of fertilizer that can be used by farmers without putting as much nitrates back into streams and rivers as typical methods now do.  Another added benefit would be if the operation recovered water in a good enough condition that it could be cycled back into the feedlot operation.

The point is that the feedlot corporations don't want to deal with their waste. They are not experts in this field and they have no inclination to want to become experts in it.  However, past models have let them pollute without having to pay the costs to the environment.  This model, rather than forcing them to figure out how to deal with the problem, forces them to pay for some of the solution, and provides them with experts and a possibility of feedback.

I'm convinced that once the university scientists get ahold of this environment, you might find other technologies spinning off of it.  It gives graduate and undergraduate students some real world experience and provides a revenue stream for the university.

Sometimes the solutions is a combination of government, academia, and industry.

47 Percenters are actually 99 percenters

In the wake of their 2012 Election defeat, Republicans and conservative commentators were saying that Americans had selfishly voted their own economic self interest and that this was proof that the nation had suddenly changed into lazy people that just wanted to be given stuff. 

They claim that the election was stolen because a slim majority of voters are getting handouts from the government, while everyone else is working hard to create businesses and jobs.

It's a great story, but it's completely inaccurate.

Unforturnately, the rich vote Republican because they are keeping their taxes down and paying the big corporations subsidies, or giving them huge tax breaks. Alternately, they are proposing removing (or not enforcing) regulations on big companies.  This would tend to unburden corporations from a lot of additional effort in complying with regulations, and would tend to make corporations more profitable.  Some of those regulations are there to insure that corporations play fair and don't trash the environment, so throwing out the regulations would no doubt allow for some abuse of smaller businesses, workers, and the environment.  I'm all for some regulations being eased, we have some ridiculous laws in this country.  I wish they would pass laws removing the laws and regulations from the books rather than gutting them without review or through inaction.

My point is that you could accuse any side of an election of voting because the government was going to "give them stuff".  That's the unfortunate side effect of democracy.  Politicians certainly have learned it well.  Each election cycle is full of people being promised goodies by the government.

The biggest and best example of a government program that people on the right are in love with is our defense industry.  There are plenty of non-military people out there without defense jobs or defense contracts that support this.  Many people that genuinely believe that our military capability either keeps us safe or keeps bad people of countries in the world from doing bad things.  However, just as Republican President and WWII war hero Dwight Eisenhower warned, you don't want to build a defense industry that is so powerful that it becomes the tail that wags the dog (government).  People see defense as a jobs and pro-growth industry.  What people forget is that in order to justify a big defense industry, you have to actually use your military.  This means that there are ideologues out there that will push for conflicts given the slightest provacation in order to justify all the time and money spent on military power.  The problem with jumping into a fight at the slightest provacation is that after a while people realize that you are scary and dangerous and they arm themselves in order to protect themselves against you.  I can totally understand why Iran would want nuclear weapons.  It's the only way they could operate exactly as they want without fear of retalliation.  Think about Pakistan.  My guess is that we probably would have invaded them by now if it had not been for their nukes.  Where does this end?  If you look back on lots of wars in history, the best most recent one being WWI, you'll see that a situation where all sides are convinced that a war will come usually results in just such a war.  People spend a lot of time and money getting ready, and then some inevitable trigger occurs and the war kicks off to a grand start!  Hooray!  We'll kick there ass now!  However, the resulting war inevitably eats up a lot of lives, destroys a lot of property and environment, and then takes years for both sides to recover from.

War is stupid.  Defense spending is a waste.  Can you imagine any politician getting elected if he stood up and said such a thing?

I don't think the average voter cheers on war and wants massive military build-ups.  I think the average voter is swayed by a lot of public discource that makes it impossible to say otherwise.

Many people tell themselves that they are voting for a person because they trust them to run the country in the right way.  What they don't consider is that the "right way" has certain advantages to themselves.  Imagine people being told the truth, that we're going to have to pay more taxes and take less from government programs if we hope to get not just the deficit, but the debt under control.  Otherwise, it's like saying you are going to either diet or exercise, but you can't be bothered to do both.  You may make some marginal gains by hacking away at only one side of the problem, but you can't be expected to make dramatic results unless you attack both sides.

So before you level your accusations at the cursed other side about their selfish motives, please try to explain how your own motives are not so selfish.  If you are a Republican, are you willing to pay some more in taxes to get rid of the deficit?  If you are a Democrat, are you willing to control government programs that expand each year automatically without any restraint or controls?  We're like one of those Siamese Twins with one body and two heads.  One side wants to diet and the other wants to exercise, but it doesn't matter because the other side is blocking the body from doing both.  We're doomed if we can't realize we're all in this together and be motivated to work harder for less until the problem is fixed.

Debt Crisis

Here's another partially written post saved from 8/7/11 that I am just now getting around to writing:

A friend related to me the gist of an Atlantic Monthly article that told about how the debt was deliberately manufactured by GOP actions (see August 2011 article).

In 2011, the Republicans shifted their tactics and began to hammer the subject of the deficit.  The main reason they wanted it handled then was because they wanted to use it as a issue to help them defeat Obama.

I often think of the psychological term Projection when I watch the Republicans.  You have to watch what they say when they criticize their opponents, because that's a big clue as to what they do and what their plans are themselves. It seemed to me that they really did want the country to fail in order to get in power.  Enough Republicans came out and stated that this was their goal, that it's easy to project that motive onto the entire party.  After all, when parties vote as solid blocs, it's difficult to convince the public that anyone within the party is actually weighing the merits of any particular course of action to determine what's best.  They are simply adding their weight and voice to the issue.  It's bloc strategy (or block strategy, more like it).

On the other hand, Democrats are just as guilty in doing nothing when they are in the minority to slow down rampant spending, or going into expensive wars.   You saw no evidence of principles or personal courage in the years following 9/11, just a dejected and cowed mass of snivelling cowards with no voice and nothing better to offer.

The rest of the article talked about how bad the jobs situation was and forecasted a double dip recession.  While this was not true, the jobs situation did not get worse, but it did not improve.  Fears of what was going to happen still made stocks drop.

Then we had the downgraded credit "crisis".  The GOP said they would allow this to happen if we failed to control deficit.  The real reason we had to downgrade the credit rating is a lack of confidence in the ability of the US government to put together a budget and govern rationally.  Gridlock and political posturing is worse than bad decisions.

The irony of a downgraded credit rating is that this would most likely increase interest rates and that would most likely benefit the banks that got bailed out in the crisis that created this mess.

Societal Diet

I was thinking about people when they are going on a diet.  This is typically necessary when you've been in the habit for a long time of binge eating whatever you wanted without constraints.  The act of cutting back would come with immediate consequences.  Your high calorie fueled body would have to calm down and accept lower energy content. You would have to convince yourself to not answer to the screaming voice inside of your head that is saying "NEED MORE SUGAR!" and make due with what you really need, which is much less than you want.

This is exactly like society, which needs to be saying it needs less energy, not always screaming for more.  It's about as possible and likely as going on a diet.  There is too much resistance on a societal level to make these changes voluntarily without some kind of threat or price explosion.  It may not be impossible to do, but it's very difficult.

Excess energy in a single human body turns to fat. I wonder if there is an analogy in this in society as a whole?  Have we grown fat with our energy consumption?  In some ways, cheap and easy energy allowed us to bulk up our economies with high industrial output.  Has there been a downside that makes us less reluctant to get out and work hard or less able to exert effort because of the extra weight we carry in having grown into the shape we are now in.  We rely on not just the energy we consume, but the way we generated it.  We might have a hard time transitioning to new forms.

During World War II we had lean production, and ran a lean country with no extravagant energy use. Like the way that an individual soldier is in shape, we as a country were in shape and producing more equipment than any point in our history.

It seems we will be able to dodge the bullet and put off the day of accountability for a few more years.  I heard a report from the new North Dakota oil fields.  It was a jobs story, detailing the incredible amount of oilfield work available and the difficulty finding enough people to fill the jobs. It also outlined the extent of what was found in the oil fields.  It said we will be producing more energy in the form of oil and natural gas just 3 years from now, than the national increase in energy demand requires.

This makes us fat in the head.  Rather than spending the time and money developing the next forms of energy, sustainable forms that will not have a looming end point at some time in the future, we get lazy sucking out the last dregs of our old way of powering ourselves.

I have a co-worker that is fond of saying that American needs a crisis before it takes action.  Imagine if we treated our person health that way.  If we waited until we had a heart attack before we started going to the gym, would that not be too late?  You'll never get into good shape if you let yourself go for so long that you harm your health.  It seems to me that this is what we are doing with our planet and its environment.  You need to work toward sustainable energy in order to map out a sustainable long term future.  We don't want to have a planetary heart attack before we start going on an energy diet.  By then, it's too late.

Short Sighted

I've often thought that short sightedness is going to kill us. We are in an era when few branches of government get much respect from the public.  When you look at polling data with historically low approval ratings of congress, and presidential ratings pretty low, too, I think it reflects on the fact that people are asking what's wrong with out Government.

Our government is dysfunctional and seems to be unable to work toward solving any of our current problems.  I am convinced that one of the big problems is that Government has evolved to be an extremely short sighted institution. With elections every two years, we are in perpetual campaign mode.  With election promises divorced from any kind of accountability, we have no way of insuring that politicians will do what they say they will do.  When coming out on top in the barroom brawl that is supposed to pass as political debate is the only goal, because to lose any verbal exchange in the news cycle is seen as a way to lose an election, is there any doubt why our politicians can't even seem to tell the truth in their political speeches?

Elections have become competitions, like a football game.  The electorate divides up and decides which party they are going to vote for, and it doesn't matter how bad their team's sportsmanship is, they will still be blind to the virtues of the other party, or the faults of their own party.  It's like watching a die hard fan get mad at the referee, but only when the call hurts his team.  Few sports fans will say, "that's a bad call" if it helps their team, and few electoral partisans will call members of their own party when they are put their foot in their mouth or do something that adds nothing to help the country.

I get particularly frustrated when I hear the Republicans try to bash the Democrats over the issue of personal responsibility.  As long as we can wage two wars while giving out big tax breaks, nobody should be lecturing the other party about responsibility.  Imagine how long the Iraq War would have lasted depended on voluntary War Bonds in able to finance it.  Yet, we were perfectly willing to put it on the national credit card.

Our corporations don't seem to be any better at being responsible, either.  They're perfectly willing to give CEOs enormous bonuses, whether the company is doing well or not, but they are not willing to give anything for research and development, which is the only way most companies can hope to survive in the long run.  Corporations have devolved to the point where they would rather make good quarterly profits at the expense of their future well-being.

We talk about personal responsibility, yet we are collectively unwilling to do anything for the environment, short term or long term.  It's irresponsible to neglect the impact our actions have on our environment when damaging the environment will hurt us all in the long run, as well as making it more difficult to run profitable businesses.

We shouldn't have to lurch into a crisis in order to think about the long term consequences of our actions, and we shouldn't have to have a gun to our head to make good decisions.  We shouldn't be thinking about our children's lives, we should be thinking about our great great grandchildren's lives, or the life of the planet and our species in 200, 500, or 1000 years from now.  What will those people think when they look back on us now.  Will they praise or curse the decisions we make and the actions we take today?  It's pretty clear to me what those distant descendants will be thinking if we keep behaving the way we do now.