The Unavoidable Death Penalty

We all have a death penalty hanging over our heads. We were sentenced to die the day we were born. The killer was sentenced to die, and so was the saint, and the doctor, and the professor, the thief, the businessperson, the priest, the adulterer, the lawyer, even the judge. No defense in this world can prevent that sentence, and we all will die.
So what is this absurd argument of imposing a death penalty? As if you are bringing about something that wouldn't have otherwise happened? As if the murderer would have lived forever? Is that the case? For if it is, then the death penalty is a punishment indeed. But if it is not, then what have you done that wasn't already destined to happen?
A penalty is imposed to teach the perpetrator, and others contemplating it, that there are consequences for a wrongful act. The cost of the penalty has to outweigh the benefits of the crime: that's how you deter people from committing a crime. For example, the benefit of driving drunk and speeding on the highway must be outweighed by the penalty imposed: a hefty ticket and perhaps time in jail. The benefit of stealing a piece of clothing from a store must be outweighed by the punishment for it: imprisonment, fines, stigma. Also, the penalty should be reserved only for those who have committed the crime and must be avoidable, merely by not committing the crime.
Not so with death. Death is not avoidable and the death penalty does not outweigh the crime. Nor does the murderer learn anything from his punishment. So who does such a penalty benefit? The victims? No, they are already dead. Society? No, because life imprisonment can achieve the same public safety. The murderer, then? Yes, because by hastening the inevitable you didn't let him suffer his imprisonment: to know that he will never get out, to have no hope of redemption and finally to long for Death to arrive. To the free man who would rather have freedom or have death, denying both is the greater punishment.
The death penalty is no penalty. It's vengeance. And I shall have no part in it. Thou shalt not kill means thou shalt not kill. Not in my name, not in God's name, not in society's name.

Why private death panels are better than government ones

The short answer is they are more efficient. I have some friends who I don't see eye to eye with on all issues, but for this they clearly have the stronger argument.

Think about it. A government death panel. You, or your loved ones, waiting in comatose oblivion while the papers are sent up the ladder: from secretary to secretary, admin to admin, department to department to eventually arrive at the death panel's desk to sit there for weeks, perhaps months. Then the panel finally looks at the documents and after prolonged discussion over a few days finally decides to pull the plug. Of course, then it's another long detour from department to department, desk to desk, finally to arrive at the patient's bedside. The comatose patient might have already recovered by that time! Blinking, talking, may be even sitting up or taking a few steps down the hallway!

The death panel's recommendation to pull the plug would be rendered useless. Too late! That's government bureaucracy for you.

Now contrast it with the insurance companies' private death panels. There is hardly any wait. The hospital sends your information to the insurance company. Depending on your financial status and standing, which determines your insurance level, your case would be looked at by either a claims examiner, or a supervisor, or progressively higher levels of authority. But whatever be the case, each level has decision making powers and rest assured, your case would be dealt with swiftly. And unlike the prolonged discussions by government bureaucrats, any decision to pull the plug will be made quickly based on concrete evidence of your financial value to the company. That decision will then be transmitted down to the hospital within a day or or two, using modern communication methods and you, or your loved ones, won't have to stay plugged in to so many hideous looking life preserving machines for long. You, or your loved ones, can spend valuable time doing more important things, like planning a proper, respectful funeral.

Now that's efficiency. After all you pay high premiums for a reason: to have efficient and prompt treatment.

The Ugly Hybrid

The predominant argument against the Prius these days is that it is ugly. Sometimes some people want to really emphasize their point, so they call it fugly. You may still hear some random comments about its performance, and that it doesn't accelerate as fast, etc. but gone are the days when people used to say that the Prius is unsafe, impractical, unreliable, hyped-up and so on. Their comments now have converged to the looks of the Prius.

Well, lets see here. I am thinking of the fairy tale we all must have read: The Ugly Duckling. The ugly little duckling wasn't a duckling at all. He was unlike the rest and they made fun of him all the time. Then one morning he found out that he wasn't, after all, just a lame duck: he was a majestic big white swan! And he unfurled his wings and flew away as the mere ducks looked on. May be some of these aesthetic critics need to read their nursery school story books again.

Why is the Prius ugly? Because it doesn't look like other cars? Is there a standard by which the aesthetic qualities of a car can be measured? What is it about other cars that make them "pretty"? Why does it have to look like other cars? Why don't all the other cars out there look like the Prius? Why do cars have their engines in front under a protruding nose? Why do they have similar protrusions at the back? Why do cars have four windows on the sides? Why do cars have wheels? Why four of them? Why does the driver have to sit on one side and not the middle? Honestly I think almost all cars are ugly. And I am not even thinking of SUVs and trucks yet.

Now we all have our own idea of what the ideal woman or man should look like. That idea is shaped mostly by our genes, our DNA and the environment we grew up in. It's a genetic appeal. It's a hard wired attraction. It's an instinct. Basic instinct! However, the shape of the best looking car is not an instinct. It is merely something we have gotten used to. We have seen cars that look a certain way. We are used to it. And we have taken it for granted that that is what cars should look like. It's the engineer's idea of what a car should look like. It started with Karl Benz and Henry Ford and over the last 130 years the idea has been fed to us so many times that we now think that it is indeed our own idea of what a car should look like.

The car, the automobile, is a machine. And machines don't look good or bad. Machines perform well or poorly. And the looks of a machine is a function of its abilities and efficiency. That's how we judge machines. The Prius has the lowest drag coefficient of all cars out there. Drag coefficient depends on a number of things but most notably the shape. It determines the magnitude of the force that the rushing air would exert as the car travels through it. It's something we all know very well, stick your hand out the car window (safely) and have your palm face the wind, then have your palm face the ground. The drag coefficient of your palm facing the wind is higher than your palm facing the ground. The Scion xB probably has a very large drag coefficient given its boxy shape (what's up with that Toyota?); so do most SUVs. The Prius on the other hand is extremely streamlined making it efficient. Its looks were not determined by the random whim of Toyota, but by the equations of aerodynamics. And if you think the Prius is ugly, why did Honda copy the shape for its new Insight?

We don't hear much about the looks of airplanes, now do we? The Boeing 757, for example, is shaped like a thin tube with two flat surfaces sticking out on the sides, yet no one complains why it isn't shaped like the Porsche!

ENIAC and the piston engine

ENIAC was the state of the art computer during the late 1940s to mid 1950s. It was built with vacuum tubes, diodes, resistors and other electrical components. To quote Wikipedia

ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6 m by 0.9 m by 26 m), took up 680 square feet (63 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power.

Impressive, huh? The ENIAC could also perform 5000 simple addition or subtraction operations per second, with capacity to work much faster if strung to operate in parallel. It could also do 385 multiplications per second. I really suggest reading the Wikipedia entry for this. The details are fascinating. However, I wonder how many people would want to have the ENIAC as their personal computer. It's not even that old, just from the 1950s. I am sure vacuum tubes and diodes have become better these days, and a modern ENIAC could certainly outperform the original one by a huge factor.

Would you buy an ENIAC?

Consider this in contrast though: the Internal Combustion Engine was first conceived of in 1206 AD. That's 9 years before the Magna Carta was written. There have been various people who have made designs of it, till Nikolaus Otto came up with the 4-stroke engine in 1876. Then Karl Benz made the first automobile using a variant of the 4-stroke engine in 1879.

1879. That's 71 years before 1950. And we still drive 4-stroke engine automobiles. And we celebrate Benz (as we rightfully should) in the Mercedes-Benz. But we dismiss the Prius, which uses a hybrid system by combining an electrical motor and a 4-stroke engine, as a hype and as a political statement. The Prius actually uses the Atkinson cycle which was invented in 1882. So whichever way you look at it, the Prius uses more modern technology than any other car out there on the road. But people want the pricier BMWs, Ferraris, Mustangs and what not.

Why not buy a new ENIAC in a newly built concrete housing, with fresh paint, with voice operated climate control, with retina scan entry systems? Isn't that what the new cars offer? An engine technology nearly 130 years old with marginal, if any, modifications, packaged in shiny bodies with fancy interior gadgets.

Fortunately, the ENIAC now exists in the museum and we now use microprocessor powered PCs and Macs. Hopefully the Prius will send the 4-stroke Otto cycle engine to the museum as well. With a little help from the rising price of gasoline.

Driving habits, aerodynamic drag and horsepower

I touched on the subject of speed limits and speeding and drive time earlier, briefly. I wanted to revisit that. And you'll see why.

If we travel the same distance at two different speeds (velocities) we will record two different times.

Distance = velocity₁ × time₁ = velocity₂ × time₂

Let's say velocity₂ is twenty percent higher than velocity₁. Then you can write:

velocity₂ = 120% velocity₁ = 1.2 × velocity₁

So essentially you have a method to compare by how much time went down:

velocity₁ × time₁ = 1.2 × velocity₁ × time₂

Therefore: time₂ = 0.83 × time₁ = 83% time₁

You can save about 17% of time by going 20% faster.

I have done a few calculations, the up and down arrows signify by how much velocity goes up and by how much time goes down correspondingly:

Velocity ↑ 10%, time ↓ 9%

Velocity ↑ 15%, time ↓ 13%

Velocity ↑ 20%, time ↓ 17%

Velocity ↑ 25%, time ↓ 20%

Velocity ↑ 30%, time ↓ 23%

Velocity ↑ 35%, time ↓ 26%

Velocity ↑ 40%, time ↓ 29%

Velocity ↑ 45%, time ↓ 31%

Here's a more concrete example, showing the speed and the time taken to cover the same distance:

Going a distance of 25 miles @

65 mph : 23 min

70 mph : 21 min

75 mph : 20 min

80 mph : 19 min

85 mph : 18 min

Now that's one side of the equation: how much time you saved. What's the cost of that?

When you move through air, it pushes you back. That's called drag and the formula looks something like this:

Drag = ½ × Drag coefficient × Density of air × Area facing the wind × velocity ²

In that formula, the drag coefficient, the density of air and the area facing the wind all remain constant. The only variable there is velocity. The equation can be written as:

Drag = Constant factor × velocity ²

So the drag, which is a force experienced by a car, increases as the square of the velocity. Increase velocity by a factor of two, the drag will increase by a factor of four!

But wait, there's more. The power required to overcome this force and keep moving at that velocity is given by:

Power = Drag × velocity = Constant factor × velocity ² × velocity = Constant factor × velocity ³

What?! The power required now has velocity cubed as a factor. If you increase velocity by a factor of two, the power required to keep moving will increase by a factor of EIGHT!

Now, using the example above, an increase in speed from 65 mph to 85 mph, is roughly a 30% jump. Let's plug these numbers in and see how much power it takes to keep the car going:

Power₁ = Constant factor × velocity ³

Power₂ = Constant factor × (1.3 × velocity) ³

Power₂ = 2.2 × Power₁ = 220% Power₁

To drive at 85 mph, compared to 65 mph, the power required is more than double. Although engines have an optimal load point, for most engines that are in use, anything beyond 65 mph is inefficient. Also for most engines, horsepower and fuel economy are inversely related. In other words, horsepower and fuel consumption are directly proportional to each other.

By increasing your speed from 65 mph to 85 mph you gained 5 minutes. If this is your morning commute to work, isn't it easy just to start 5 minutes earlier? If you are in a job that is like everyone else's then those 5 minutes are probably not crucial. If you are in a job where it is crucial, like you are a captain on a submarine, then you probably don't drive to work, or don't have time to read this blog either, for that matter.

Changing our driving habits

We have all seen drivers who rush from one stop light to the next, accelerating as fast as they can, revving up the engine, screeching the tires on the ground, &etc. &etc.

What do they accomplish? 2 seconds of thrill? May be another 2 at the next red light? Is it the sound of the engine revs or the screech of tires that is the more exciting part? Or is it the acceleration that throws you back against your seat back? Because those are the three (3) things that really happen when you go from zero to sixty in 3.14159..ad infinitum seconds. The acceleration part is also available on rollercoasters. Or small planes. Or gliders. What these drivers do not realize, or do realize and do it anyway, is that the fast acceleration uses the most energy. If you were getting on a highway, it would be a good thing. But the bad part is when you have to stop. All the energy that was generated is lost as heat when the brake pads press against the wheels to bring it to a stop. Would be good if this heat could be stored somewhere to be re-used. But no one has done that yet.

What is the purpose of getting in a car and going somewhere? Is it a race? Are there prizes? Why do we drive as fast as we can when it really makes negligible difference in the time? If you have to go 10 miles and you were driving the speed limit of 65 mph you would get there in a little over 9 minutes. If you drove at 75 mph you would get there in 8 minutes. A minute sooner. That's all. If you were going 100 miles, then the trip would take 92 minutes at 65 mph and 80 min at 75 mph. Just 10 min earlier. However, if you were going 100 miles you would probably take longer to start the trip, or stop in between for more than 10 min. In the grand scheme, the 10 mph extra gets you nothing.

Email to the editors of SmartBrief

I wrote the following email to Jesse Stanchak and Robert Jones, editors of SmartBrief for Entrepreneurs.

Dear Jesse and Robert,

I went to Babson for my MBA and I love to read these little stories that you publish. They are informative and often inspiring. However, today I noticed a story, indeed, one endorsed by Robert Jones, that caught my eye. It seemed way out of line and extremely out of character for SmartBrief.

From what I've learned, through my own experiences and that of others', is that more than anything else, leaders are agents of change. Everybody can stay on the beaten track, it takes a leader to lead them onto a new path. And entrepreneurs are no different. In fact entrepreneurs are the distilled essence of leadership. They are change agents, sometimes disruptive enough to change the way we live. Not only are entrepreneurs change agents, they are also highly competitive. Change and competition are almost synonymous with entrepreneurship. So it is surprising that your journal would take a shot at the President's new health care option. It introduces new competition to the market and it changes the way the game is played now, in an almost disruptive way. It seems almost entrepreneurial in character.

Shouldn't you be celebrating?

Instead you opine how it will increase costs for "entrepreneurs". Well, from the entrepreneurs I know, I don't think they are too concerned about health care reform right now. They spend more time thinking of their own fledgling businesses, they don't always even pay in cash (but equity) and many would love to get such an issue off their hands so they can concentrate on the problems they face day to day. Your poll is completely out of character and even diagonally opposed from what entrepreneurship is about and is in total antithesis with your journal and its spirit. Besides, when you mention a poll, I am sure you know that you need to mention the number of people polled, the demographics of the polled sample and the margin of error. Without those facts, that can be independently verified, your poll is meaningless.

I could go off topic and tell you that health care is a form of physical protection, just like the police or the fire department, or even the military, and physical protection is the raison d'être of the existence of a civil society and even the State. Even if you cut everything out, physical protection must be there in order to have a functioning society. But that's a different debate that I might have with you on another day.

Let me conclude by saying that not only have you gone off character in your newsletter today but there is another thing that experienced editors would never let slip by unnoticed. When you wrote "The Devil You Know: President Barack Obama..." although you were referring to something else (viz. the known health care problem), yet by the juxtaposition of those words you were probably trying to make a subliminal association that is absolutely uncalled for. I do not believe that experienced editors like yourselves did not notice that particular word arrangement and did not think of the connotations it brings. So my conclusion would be, it was a deliberate choice of words and their arrangement. You are a newsletter bringing news of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. All that is well and good, but when you foist your personal political beliefs on others in the name of a "poll" I think you become a demagogue.

I will certainly forward this letter to Babson College and seek their opinion on this matter, since I am an alum of the school and their name appears on this newsletter and ask the opinions of my classmates and other fellow alums.

Thank you.

SmartBrief for Entrepreneurs has published their daily newsletter. Today's issue can be found here SmartBrief August 5, 2009. Near the bottom of the newsletter there is a "poll". I put poll in quotes because there was no accompanying data of the demographics, sample size or margin of error. To summarize the "poll", it seems a large percentage of entrepreneurs think that the public option for healthcare will increase the cost of running their businesses. Immediately following the poll are these words:

The devil you know: President Barack Obama has been making the case that businesses will save money under a federally mandated health plan, but so far entrepreneurs don't seem to be buying it. In fact, even if every undecided respondent were to break in favor of the Obama plan, opponents would still outnumber supporters by about 25 percentage points. -- Robert Jones, Smart Brief on Entrepreneurs contributing editor (original emphasis)

Health of The State

How would privatized fire fighting services work?

First, there would be the insurance companies that you would pay fire premiums to, for an agreed upon level of service. And then there would be the private firefighters. If someone's home caught fire, they would call the firefighters. The firefighters would come out, assess the fire and send a report to the insurance company. The insurance company would then go over their policies and if they found that the level of services required was within the purview of the policy agreement (interpreted completely from their profit-making point of view), then they would authorize the firefighters to go ahead and extinguish the fire. If for some reason, from the insurance company's point of view, the level of service required wasn't authorized for the policy then they might deny the claim and parts of the house or all of it would just burn down. However, let's say the insurance companies are compassionate and they always authorize all services. But there still remains one little hitch in this model. If the fire was big enough then by the time the insurance company and the firefighters figured out whether or not to put the fire out, it might have already burned the entire house down.

Someone's house burning down like that would be a terrible thing to happen to them. Especially if it was a big, pretty and expensive house. Especially if it could have been avoided. And that scenario doesn't even take into account the danger to the life and health of the residents and neighbors. Clearly such a business model would hardly work. The risks are too high to allow private business with profit-motive to operate in such cases. So what do we have instead? Socialized firefighting. Everybody pays taxes to hire and maintain a public firefighting squad. The person with the pretty, big, expensive house, gets the most value out of it in case of a fire though. The insurance companies play an entirely different and minor role here, merely to replace material things afterwards.

What about a private police force running on the same model?

There is a break-in or armed robbery or some other emergency so somebody calls 9-1-1. At the other end the dispatcher asks, what is your emergency and can I have your insurance policy number please. And if the emergency doesn't involve the caller, the dispatcher might even refuse to talk to the caller, insisting rather that the people facing the danger make the call themselves so that their insurance information may be obtained to be run through the same process of service authorization.

My guess is this model probably wouldn't work for the police either. What do we have instead? Socialized police.

How about the military? That's socialized too.

Makes sense; fair enough. After all that's the reason for existence, the raison d'être, of the State. To protect the people from what, as individuals, they cannot protect themselves. To protect their life and property from threats that are too big for any one person to handle. That is the social contract. People give up their natural rights in order to be part of the State. The State, in return offers them collective protection and a set of civil rights. So why is it that the State can socialize the protection of property but not the protection of health? Why is it that the State can socialize protection from fire that burns your house but not from fever that burns your flesh? Why from threats that are large and visible but not from threats that may be microscopic and invisible? Threats that invade the territory but not threats that invade the body? Why do private insurance companies have so much power over the level of medical care a person may receive? Is the threat to a person's health of less importance than the threat to somebody's property? What is the State? Is it property? Is it territory? What is the State without people? The people are the State. Whatever person or organization argues against public healthcare stands against the State.

If firefighting is a service provided by the State, if public security is a service provided by the State, then by the same logic healthcare must also be a service provided by the State. It is not enough for the State to offer healthcare insurance. Healthcare itself must come from the State. Just as it is a collective responsibility to maintain a police force, so it is a collective responsibility to maintain a medical force. And not just for infectious diseases but for all kinds of medical needs. Firefighters and police officers come to our rescue regardless of whose fault it was that put us in harm's way. And it should be no different for healthcare. What hypocrisy to advocate for a strong military but at the same time trivialize public healthcare! If we trust the State's military to protect us why can't we trust the State's doctors to heal us?

It must be noted that the State is not the same as its government. Government is the instrument a State uses to administer itself. It is one thing to be against big government, but an entirely different matter to oppose an obvious and fundamental purpose of the State.

Salus populi suprema lex esto: the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law. (Cicero, De Legibus).

Locke,Voltaire, Rousseau, thinkers and writers who heavily influenced the founders of the United States, all adopted and professed the same principle. It is about time the healthcare "industry" and its advocates understood the meaning of that principle.

Star Trek and Leonard Nimoy's dickheads

I think I like Star Trek enough to write a couple paragraphs about it. I recently watched a Saturday Night Live (SNL) episode where the actors portraying the younger Kirk and Spock are trying to defend the new Star Trek movie. And they get some help at the end from Leonard Nimoy, who of course played the original Spock. At the end Leonard Nimoy claims that people who don't like the new movie are "dickheads". Well, if Leonard Nimoy says so, it must be so. After all isn't he the authority on Star Trek?

Well, no. He isn't.

A very technical (and geeky) reason for that would be that Leonard Nimoy's Spock and hence the entire Star Trek series existed in a separate and parallel, and perhaps lagged, timeline than the Star Trek movie of 2009. In all fairness to the people who liked the movie and those who didn't like it (this author included) the new Star Trek movie is an entirely different set of events! Kirk and Spock in this timeline do not have to be like the Kirk and Spock of the original series. Even twin brothers have different personalities. Hence it is perfectly alright for someone to like Star Trek and still not like the new Star Trek movie. The fact that Leonard Nimoy doesn't understand that difference is disappointing. Mr Spock would have understood it right away.

There is however a second, non-technical, non-geeky and more philosophical response which I prefer. You see Star Trek may be a science fantasy television series or movie, but that's not all it is. Veiled behind the ostentatious display of science fiction and special effects are dilemmas and questions that we encounter in our mundane lives as well. And though our lives may be mundane, those questions are often baffling and sometimes downright profound.

Are our actions morally justified? Should I pay heed to my heart? Or should I follow logic? Is the individual more important than the collective? Why are we here? Who am I? Is this all there is? Who created me? Can I contact my creator?

Those are not light questions. Yet Star Trek asks them. And because it sets the stage with smoke and mirrors where we expect to see things of fantasy, because it makes us more accepting of things we otherwise know to be impossible, it also makes us more amenable to the suggestions of those questions. When V'Ger searches for its creator we identify ourselves with it because we search for our creator too. When the extinction of humpback whales causes a future earth to be in danger, we are reminded of our responsibility to nature too. When Spock sacrifices himself because he believes that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" we are reminded of our duties to the collective we are a part of too.

The message, if there is one, in the 2009 movie is either too feeble or too common place and it fails to surface even after two hours. May be in that parallel time line of the new movie there is no place for reflection or thought, just an abundance of testosterone.

Running red lights and pushing yellows

I was waiting to pick up my wife from a work related meeting she had where neighbors of a certain area were complaining to city officials about a certain traffic light. As my wife recounted the story to me afterwards, the neighbors wanted the timing of the light to be slightly changed so that they could come out of a side street easier on to the main arterial street. The traffic engineer from the city tried to explain that changing timings can have devastating effects on driver behavior, especially on main roads. People are used to a certain amount of wait time at stop lights, if they are made to wait longer, they are likely to run red lights or push yellow lights in order to get to their destinations in time. Apparently there is a whole body of nationwide research to support such behavior change theories.

I don't doubt there is a lot  of research on such matters, but what bothers me is such data  or research conclusions are taken as the final word by government officials and bureaucrats. And not just in the case of traffic lights. Well, somebody did the research, they may be mistaken, their research may not apply universally or their research may just plain be old and outdated.

To talk of red and yellow lights, I think most people do not want to run red lights on purpose. The only reason they do it is because they are going too fast and they are too close to the stopping line to stop. So when they see the light turning from green to yellow to red, instead of braking, they accelerate. My premise is if the same driver saw the yellow light much sooner then they would have slowed down and halted instead of speeding up. I think all we need to stop red light running is an extended yellow light, one that will allow people to see it well in advance and slow down.

Let me present a scenario where we know the speed limit of a certain road and the margin by which someone is likely to exceed the limit. Can we from these two numbers arrive at a conclusion about how long a yellow light should be on for before turning red? Let's say the speed limit is thirty miles per hour (30 mph). Generally people drive five miles over limit but to accommodate the really aggressive ones, secretly we'll assume that the some drivers will drive ten miles over speed limit, or forty miles per hour (40 mph). If we assume an average car can go from 0 mph to 60 mph in 10 seconds, then we arrive at an acceleration value of 8.8 feet/second/second or 8.8 f/s/s. For those not used to the unit of acceleration, it is [feet per second] per second. This is because velocity is measured in feet per second and acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. The equation of motion is written: v = u + a*t , where v is the final velocity, u the initial velocity, a is the acceleration and t is the time to reach the final velocity from the initial velocity. Here, v is 60 mph, u is 0 mph, and t is 10 seconds. We also have to convert miles per hour, mph, to feet per second, f/s. A mile has 5280 feet and an hour has 3600 seconds.

8.8 f/s/s is about a quarter of the acceleration due to gravity. However, this value is often the best acceleration the car can muster. For normal, comfortable driving the real acceleration is probably half this value. However we'll use this same value for the maximum deceleration as well. This is not to say what the car is capable of, but what is comfortable to the driver and passenger. Since we are talking of regular street driving we'll also assume that the normal acceptable deceleration is half the maximum value as well. That gives us 4.4 f/s/s. For ease of calculation let's round it up to 5 f/s/s. Back to the street, so the person who is going 40 mph has to slow down comfortably and stop in such a way that their deceleration never goes beyond 5 f/s/s. Again using the equations of motion, we can find that the person needs at least 11.7 seconds to come to a complete stop and do it comfortably. Also we can find that the distance the car will have traveled in the process is 344.2 feet.

So what are our conclusions? In order to come to a complete stop the driver must be given about 12 seconds and about 344 feet. This example assumed that the wayward driver was going 40 mph on a 30 mph street. Most people won't go that fast, but some will and it is probably best to consider the worst case scenario when designing for safety. For a road with a higher speed limit the yellow light time should be even longer. But from experience I can tell you hardly any traffic light stays yellow for that long. As a result, the driver sees the yellow light too late and either brakes too suddenly or speeds up and runs through the red light. 

What can be done to mitigate this problem? For one, the light timings can be changed. It doesn't matter how long a light stays green or red: those things depend on traffic flow and are not critical to safety. The light that everyone ignores is the most important light for safety and its timing must be adjusted according to speed limit and expected or observed margin of over limit speeds. The other thing that can and should be done is to demarcate on the road the safety line. There should be a small sign on the side or it can be painted on the road itself where it says that if you are behind or at this line when the light turns yellow, start braking. People who are past that line should ignore the yellow light and drive through to the other side.

I agree with the traffic engineer in his argument against the neighbors who simply wanted to change the lights for reasons of their own convenience but I also wish the engineer, and his peers, were more analytical in their jobs and less reliant on government research from the past.

To prosecute or not to prosecute: II

The well known Stanford prison experiment, pointed out some very dark aspects of the human mind. In this experiment, conducted in 1971 and worth recounting here, a group of undergraduate students were chosen to play prison guards and prisoners in a mock prison in a Stanford basement. The chosen students were psychologically stable and healthy normal people with no crime histories and their roles as prisoners or guards were assigned randomly. The experiment was supposed to run for fourteen days. The prisoners were "arrested" and finger-printed and photographed and transported to the "prison". They were given prisoner clothing and a number sewn on their clothes to identify them. The prison guards were given "uniforms" and batons. Within a very short time the situation grew out of hand. At first riots broke out, which were suppressed by the guards who turned very sadistic and the prisoners suffered humiliating treatment at their hands. The prison guards harassed the prisoners and the punishments went as far as forced nudity and sexual humiliation. Around fifty outsiders who were introduced to this experiment said nothing until the girlfriend of the professor running the experiment finally objected to the prison's apalling condition and the experiment's morality. All this happened with six days and the experiment had to be terminated early. The prison guards were upset about the premature termination and the prisoners suffered emotional trauma.

Ten years before the Stanford prison experiment was conducted another professor, at Yale, had conducted another experiment: the Milgram experiment. In this experiment, a group of random people were chosen to play the role of a "teacher". There was also a "learner" who was part of the experimenting team and an "experimenter", a pretty unemotional biology researcher who was experimenting memory and learning in different situations. In the beginning the teacher read out a set of word pairs for the learner. After that, the teacher would read out the first word and the learner had to choose the second word of the pair from a group of four words. Every time the learner made a mistake the teacher was supposed to impart punishment by electric shock. And the voltages of the shocks went up steadily by 15V to a maximum of 450V. The learner and the teacher were in different rooms and they could hear but not see each other. The learner was not receiving actual shocks but the electrical switches were set up to play pre-recorded screams of pain when the "shock" was administered. The learner would also bang on the wall and sometimes fall completely silent. If a "teacher" objected to the experiment at any point, the biology researcher in the grey/white coat would insist that the experiment be continued and that the teacher would not be held personally responsible for any injury to the learner. Everytime the teacher protested the researcher would insist more forcefully: there were four such insistence levels and if the teacher still protested after the fourth and very firm insistence the experiment was halted. Otherwise the experiment halted after administering the maximum voltage of 450V. After the results were tallied it turned out only one person refused to carry on beyond a 300V level and 65% of participants went up to the 450V level, although many questioned the experiment but were persuaded by the authority of the grey coat researcher.

These two experiments point out two things. One, even normal people can become sadistic and torturous under certain situations. It does not matter what their personalities or characters are like, the system overpowers them and they do as the system demands. Two, most people defer to authority even when they feel that what they are being asked to do may not the most ethical task. People are quite obedient to authority. The usual sentence that  is used to describe this is "they were just following orders." This was seen in Nazi Germany when the Germans were "just following orders" when they sent millions of Jews to their deaths. Just following orders? Whatever  happened to conscience?

However, there is a more immediate application of the argument in these two experiments: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Were the soldiers just following orders in Abu Ghraib? Whose orders were they? And why were the people in command not aware of the dark side of the human mind? Why did they not institute a system where torture is not permitted? Were the CIA interrogators just following orders? Again whose orders? And regardless of who was giving orders and who was receiving them, what happened to their conscience?

The world punished the Nazis for their dark deeds regardless of whether they were giving orders or they were just carrying them out. Why then is America afraid to deal with its own set of dark commanders and subordinates?

To prosecute or not to prosecute: that is the question.

A lot is being said and not said about torturous techniques used by the CIA to interrogate enemy prisoners. The far left is outraged and wants Obama to prosecute the people who engaged in those interrogations. There are another set of people who want the interrogators pardoned but their superior officers, who ordered the torture, prosecuted. Obama himself has said he wants to look forward and move on, although he believes this was a crime. The far right neither believes it was a crime nor thinks the agents or their superiors involved in the interrogation should be prosecuted. In short there is a full spectrum of opinions. I hardly expect there to be any consensus on this issue.

There are a few things worth pondering before forming an opinion on this subject though. First of all, if the President thinks torture is illegal and is a crime but in the same breath says that he doesn't support prosecution of the torturers then isn't he condoning a crime? What makes this particular crime forgivable? If this is, then what other crimes are forgivable? The argument that they did what they did to protect the country is hardly defendable. Against what standard or yardstick will you measure an act and say that it is not forgivable regardless what ends it means to achieve? Any odd group of people, together or severally may commit murder, torture, pillage and what not and claim it was necessary, in their best beliefs, to protect the country. By this precedent then they should also not be prosecuted? Or does this mean that only people working in government agencies can be immune from prosecution as long as they claim their actions were for the protection of the country? Who makes this distinction between people in the government and ordinary citizens? The executive branch?

I hope President Obama has well reasoned arguments to answer all of those questions, not just one. There are many angles from which to attack his vacillating decision on whether to prosecute or not to prosecute. I will list at least one such angle in the next blog.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

Does anyone remember what happened at the Mad Hatter's tea party? The Hatter and March Hare tried to put the sleepy, drowsy dormouse in the teapot. I don't know if the tea was hot. And I wonder if it burned the dormouse or killed him entirely. The Hatter had a riddle though, which he confessed he didn't have the answer to himself.

The "tea parties" held across the US yesterday were somehow highly reminiscent of that story. It is a curious coincidence that a lot of the attenders were wearing hats very similar to the Hatter's hat. I wonder who March Hare is. But I think it is pretty clear to the rest of us who the dormouse is. Alas the dormice don't know who they are. And in their slumber they don't realize that the Hatter and the Hare are trying to drown them in that tea.

It is mostly funny, and partly pitiful, that the attendees of the mad tea party somehow got their own party confused with the Boston Tea Party. Now, the Boston Tea Party was in protest of taxation without representation. The mad tea party is in protest of electoral loss of representation. These same party-goers were probably sound asleep (like the dormouse) for the last eight years when government spending went up, surplus went down, deficit went up and the general economy went down and so on. They raise their voices against wealth redistribution but fail to see how the money goes from their wallets to the government coffers to failed bank executives and no-bid government contractors. Is that redistribution? Are the dormice against all redistribution or are they against redistribution in just one direction? The dormice cry and wail because they don't want undeserving fellow citizens to have health care but they do not speak a word when undeserving CEOs of failing companies get millions of the same tax dollars as bonuses. The dormice whine and complain when money is spent inside the country to rebuild its economy but they hardly raise their voices when money is spent outside the country to wage wars and then rebuild other countries. And when the majority of these same dormice get a tax cut, they rally in support of the hatter and the hare who have already received their cuts and are now trying to drown them in the teapot!

Oh the irony! Of mice and men...

Tax cuts vs. Government spending

An economy is a a system where people buy and sell things. And as these transactions take place, money changes hands and brings value to the different players in the system. When an economy tanks, money is in short supply: indeed that is why the economy starts to falter. Money/value/wealth is the life- blood of an economy. Therefore in order to bring back life to an economy you need to "inject" money. Note that is very different from the Republican stand point of "cutting spending". Spending is the economy! Cutting spending is equivalent to drawing blood out of a patient who NEEDS blood. So in order to bring life back, someone has to spend. If it is not the people, it must be the government. That's where the infrastructure projects come in. It's right out of Keynesian economics: give some men shovels and ask them to dig a hole; when they are done digging ask them to fill it up again and at the end of the day pay them some money for their work.

That is one way to "inject" money into the system. The other way is to give people tax breaks. No doubt about that. But again you want to give the break to people who will actually spend it. Give a millionaire a tax break and he/she will probably either invest it in a bank in China or buy some stock of a relatively successful business or even park the money in a Swiss account. The money will disappear from the primary market and get sucked into the secondary markets. And money in the secondary market will do no good whatsoever to help the economy. The economy is in the primary market. So to ensure that the money stays in the primary market the tax relief has to go to people who will actually spend it. Again, key word: spend.

Lastly tax relief only affects people who still have a job and are paying income taxes. For the people who have lost their jobs, such relief means precious little. No income, no income tax. No income tax, no tax relief. Tax relief will provide relief to those already employed but will not revive the system if a large number of people remain unemployed. The strategy therefore should rest both on re-employment and relief. Not either or.

YellowStone and the fate of humanity

Mt. Redoubt, in Alaska, is going to blow. There is no reason to redoubt or even doubt that. On the other side of the Pacific, a volcano in Japan spewed hot gases and ash into the atmosphere. Yellowstone Park was in recent news. There were more than 250 tremors in the mid to high 3 range on the Richter scale. The scientists monitoring the park said it was unusual but they also said that they didn't think the situation was getting out of hand. What's going on with all the volcanic activity?

For those who don't know, Yellowstone Park, the beautiful snow covered wilderness with the timely geysers, is actually a caldera. It sits atop a huge magma chamber which erupts time to time, violently, spewing thousands of cubic miles of rock into the air. The fiery plume from the eruption rises miles into the atmosphere and the ash hangs in the air and travels far and wide. It darkens the sky and hides the sun. Not a very happy prospect. The Yellowstone caldera has erupted violently three times in the last 2.1 million years. Many scientists say that is not a pattern and that a lot of the magma has already been ejected so even if there was another eruption it would not be a violent one or at least not as violent as the previous ones.

According to the Toba event theory, a similar eruption occurred approximately 75,000 years ago in south east Asia. It created the Toba Lake of current times. When it erupted it covered the world in ash, darkened the skies and nearly wiped off the human species. Exactly how violent are these eruptions? To use terms we understand better, let's compare this with other explosions or eruptions that have happened in more recent times. Much of this is available on Wikipedia but I'll compile them here nevertheless. The Toba eruption was two thousand times more powerful than Mount St. Helens and twenty thousand times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba. Now the Tsar Bomba, a 50 megaton thermonuclear device, was approximately ten times as powerful as all the explosives used during World War II combined, including Fat Man and Little Boy. Think about that for a minute. The Toba super volcano erupted with twenty thousand times as much ferocity as the Tsar Bomba which in turn exploded with ten times the violence of all explosives used in WWII. That's a lot of violence coming from mother nature.

The Toba eruption was cataclysmic. Volcanic ash is actually tiny shards of glass which, if inhaled, can kill animals quite quickly. It killed off almost all plant and animal life in South East Asia. It also brought about a volcanic winter where temperatures dropped 3 degrees Celsius (equal to a drop of approximately 5 degrees Fahrenheit). It is conjectured that human species was nearly wiped off with a mere ten thousand or so survivors and about a thousand breeding pairs. This theory is used to explain why the species is so homogeneous around the world: Because we are all descended from a handful of survivors of a great cataclysm. And it makes one wonder, that if we all are so closely related, then what causes the division and strife that we see today. The Jews and Arabs, the Christians and Muslims and Hindus, the Allies and the Axis, the whites and blacks and browns: all descended from a lucky few.

The Yellowstone caldera has the capacity to blow with the ferocity of ancient Toba. Some say it erupts approximately every 6o0,000 years. And if that is the case we are 40,000 years over due. Others say that period is longer, since it has erupted thrice in the last 2.1 million years. And still some others say, those eruptions are not good predictors of future activity. I don't have a preference. I would rather it never erupt again at all. But if it does, how have we, as humans prepared for it?

Instead of realizing our basic commonness: that we are all descended from a few survivors of the last great cataclysm; that it shouldn't be us versus them, but we all together versus nature; that our species, and life on earth in general, is fragile, we have stoked our differences. Instead of coming together as one species to ensure our survival, we have created more reasons and ways to destroy ourselves.