Speed Rules

Business Week has a good article about hypernet benefits.

As the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland says, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Welcome to the 21st century...

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Responding to The New York Times March 13 article on high speed Internet.

The Internet lexicon laments the “digital divide” as if America were divided into ignorant hillbillies without Internet and the new, cool Internet hipsters. Recent discussions of the FCC "100 squared" initiative, i.e., 100 million people will get 100 megabit connectivity, emphasize the differences.

Reality is, of course, different than how the media presents it. American Internet usage should be divided into three categories, not two. Yes, there are some Internet hillbillies. They might have a ten year old computer, or they might have their secretary print out their emails. They enjoy hand written letters, or might occasionally receive an email or access some specific item over the Internet. They may be our parents or grandparents, or they might be kids in Amish homes. They may belong to a fundamentalist sect. There are two important points: first, there are not a lot of these people, and second, no government or private initiative is going to change them. I see this as similar to the home schooling movement -- immaterial to the discussion about our failing education systems. The "100 Squared" initiative should not be trying to change them.

At the other end of the spectrum are the crusaders, the hipsters. The complainers who think 100 megabits will still be too slow, behind the Netherlands, Korea, Japan, etc. The ones begging for Google's gigabit service for their city. They support "100 Squared" because it is at least moving in the right direction.

In the middle is the dangerous plurality, those that think they understand the Internet potential. They regularly do email. They have a Facebook page, and have seen videos on YouTube. They Skype with their friends, and do some on-line banking. As the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live said, "Isn't that special?"
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The 1930s saw a huge expansion of the roads in the US as cars became mainstream. The WPA built bridges and the US highway system. Who would ever of thought we needed more? We could drive to California on US-66; it was finally paved in 1938. Eisenhower knew we needed something better - he had experienced the autobahns of Germany. Because of him, the world's finest highway system was built. We broke free of provincial local and state highway commissions and linked up our country. We need to do the same with our telecom infrastructure.

What would we do with the hyper-internet? Customer service calls could be full video, so the representative can show you the details on the product, demonstrate it, pull up the data sheet, put your account info on your screen, etc. It allows the account representative to be distant from the central office, perhaps working out of their island home. Head-mounted tiny wireless videocams are readily available now (skiers use them to record their runs). Engineers and repair people could be showing the details of repairing equipment, crawling under the truck or up the wind tower. A consumer could be walked through a repair of a tractor, or at least identify which parts need replacement. A gardener or farmer could walk through the plants showing the problems to an expert to find out what ails them: do the plants need more water, fertilizer, or what type of pesticide. Education can utilize fully immersive video so there is much more interaction. Top quality education can be distributed, and not limited by what the local school board and union does.

Movies and entertainment are obvious, but the less obvious is participating with live conferences and events. Compare jerky small screen video with large HD TV. Very few present consumers can support live HD video over Internet.

Tele-medicine is beginning. Today's slow speed Internet supports looking at medical records, but the huge files created by CAT scans and high resolution x-rays are not easily handled. Remote surgery has been tested by the military, and can be a way of getting sophisticated health care to rural areas at lower cost.
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So why are those in the middle the dangerous plurality? They want to block the future and keep America behind, yet think they are acting responsibly. Is the government the solution? Rarely. Our challenge will be overcoming the provincialism and petty self interests, such as the lawsuits that tried to prevent the Interstate highway system from circumventing the traffic jams (and businesses) of the little down towns. Today's obstructionists are ATT and Verizon, intent on protecting their oligopoly of pricing and (lack of) performance with the aid of (pick one: corrupt | stupid | incompetent) government officials.

My argument is that our islands are in greatest need of the "hypernet" since we have so many other distance and isolation issues to overcome.

The Collapse

I got to thinking about the various species we have on island and realized a lot seemed threatened. Below is my summary of the what I have observed over the last 30-40 years. I would greatly appreciate other islanders inputs. COLLAPSED means a 90% sustained drop in population. I am ignoring land mammals (rats, muskrats, etc.) and insects. The nesting sea birds are my estimates of nesting birds at Sou'west Point at the end of May each year. Non-nesting populations are much lower. Are there other species I have forgotten? Some species are seen so rarely from shore, such as whales and porpoises, that I am not including them. My guesstimate for those species are significantly more during the late 70s and 80s than from the 60s, stable in the 90s, and slight decline in the 00s. Other inputs and observations welcome.

Species	1970s population	2000s population	Status	Comments
Nesting birds
Herring gull	10s of thousands	Low thousands/ hundreds	COLLAPSED
Black back gull	10s of thousands	Low thousands/ hundreds	COLLAPSED
Eider ducks	Thousands	Low hundreds	COLLAPSED
Cormorants	Dozens	Zero	COLLAPSED
Barn swallows	Hundreds?	Fewer?	?	Need more data
Bald Eagles	0	2-4 adults, chicks	Healthy	There may be second nest at Eastern End
Pheasant	Dozen	Low Hundreds	?	Introduced in 60s. Summer 2009 did not appear to have any chicks. Racoon predation?
Sea Life
Herring	100s of tons caught	Zero	COLLAPSED	Purse seiner harvest
Harbor Pollock	1000s	Near zero	COLLAPSED	In harbor estimates
Mackerel	100s	Near zero	COLLAPSED	In harbor estimates
Barnacles	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED
Mussels	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED
Dog whelk (conch)	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED
Periwinkles	Common	Rare?	COLLAPSED
Urchins	Common	Rare	COLLAPSED	Over harvested in early 90s
Clams	Limited	?	?
Lobsters	100s of tons	100s of tons	Healthy	Harvest quantities
Crabs	Common?	Common?	?	Need more data
Starfish	Limited	Rare	?	Need more data
Harbor Seals	100s	100s	Healthy?	I think they have increased. Other comments?

Ocean Acidification

Had a good time at the MLA meeting in Rockland. The most interesting session was about Ocean Acidification. When CO2 gets absorbed into the ocean, carbonic acid is formed and the pH drops, making the oceans more acidic. Crustaceans (animals with shells) are very sensitive to acidity: the calcium carbonate in their shells dissolves.

The speaker went on about corals (not many in Maine), oysters (only a few in Maine), and urchins. He showed pictures of the larvae dissolving in water with elevated CO2 levels. Urchins are the most sensitive to dissolved CO2.

Lobsters and crabs react differently when exposed to slightly acidic water. Preliminary studies indicate that they tend to grow thicker, bigger shells with less meat inside. He cautioned the audience about the diet of the lobsters in the future, since they eat a lot of the crustacean larvae.

The urchins were over-harvested 15 years ago, but I always wondered why they never came back. And then it hit me - the other shellfish are gone, too! I remember 30 years ago, the pilings and ledges were covered with barnacles and mussels. Urchins and whelk (conch) often filled traps. Today they are pretty scarce.

What are your experiences? Aren't there now a lot, lot less barnacles, conch, mussels and urchins? Does anyone have a feel on clams, limpets or periwinkles?

What I find really scary is that we haven't had any significant changes in population, fishing, technology, pollution or other outside effects. We are far away from mainland problems. Except for the urchins, none of these species were ever commercially harvested on Criehaven or Matinicus.

What if we use NH3 now?

I just got back from driving to Iowa looking at ammonia engines, and noticed that diesel prices were often over $3.00 per gallon. So I started thinking what would we be paying for ammonia if our engines were converted.

Last week the price of ammonia was $365 per ton. On a btu basis, that is about $2.28 per gallon for the same amount of energy. We will ignore that ammonia engines are supposed to be somewhat more efficient than diesel.

This is not a fair apples-to-apples comparison. The ammonia price quoted is wholesale, and buying retail in New England would cost more. Road diesel includes a lot of taxes, while ammonia is exempt at present. Eventually there will be a tax if NH3 becomes significant, but that is many years away.

Even so, ammonia is quite competitive with diesel especially if we can make it in state.

Fair Isle, Scotland: Sister Island to Matinicus?

Stumbled upon Fair Isle, the most remote island off of Great Britain, with 68 year round residents. They are using wind for much of their power production, and use two separate grids for constant power and for flexible power, used for heating and non-essential uses.

links at Wikipedia and Fair Isle Electricity . There may be something for us to learn there.

I have been reading Withouthotair.com which has a very good book about renewable energy. Read about Fair Isle on page 198 of the pdf download. If you use the page numbers in Adobe Reader, it is located on p. 211 (out of 383)

Bad press for bad reporting

Philip Conklin has written an excellent rebuttal to the Portland  Press article about Vinalhaven's wind turbines. The article stated implied that ten percent of the island residents were complaining about the noise (which would be terrible), when the actual quote was that ten percent of the people within one mile were complaining. In other words, not 200 people complaining, but maybe half a dozen.

Philip's article is in Working Waterfront , the Portland Press article is at Portland Press.

We all need to have our facts straight on the issues in order to make good decisions. Our media often does not help or has objectives other than truth.