NOLA-dishu

Texans?

2012-01-17T20:02:00.001-06:00

Texans?, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

Times-Pick-Your-Nose makes an oopsie.

Must have had AT&T?

2012-01-16T20:49:00.001-06:00

When you get it...

Coastal Restoration Heads Up - UPDATED

2012-01-12T17:33:00.008-06:00

Louisiana just released it's 50-Year Master Plan (the latest in a series of Master Plans... let's see if this one turns some more shovels than their predecessors).

Also, PBS has been airing "Turning the Tide", which is about Louisiana coastal wetlands. It interviews most of the scientists whose abstracts I spent last semester reading. LSU failed at turning one Tide, let's see if Louisiana can turn the more important one.

UPDATE- Just finished watching it on my DVR. Watch it here (upper right corner). Some notes: Wax Lake was open in 1941, not 1942. Also, they hold out hope that the failed BP berms will wind up nourishing barrier islands. That's news to me.

"I'm an oceanographer in water up to my knees" - Dr. Paul Kemp

Think about how important the internal transportation system that the Mississippi river provides is to America's industrial background. No other industrialized country has something as large and as economical as America's barging system. The only country that comes close is China (the #2 global economy; coincidence? doubtful...).

The Repetitive Loss issue with NFIP is problem that just begs for some sort of intervention (buyouts?).

Upcoming airings of Turning the Tide:

Turning The Tide (Lpb)

Sunday, January 29, 08:00 pm on LPB2 - READ MORE
Thursday, February 2, 11:00 am on LPB2 - READ MORE
... Buy "Turning the Tide" here.

One note about the Louisiana coastal plan: there was plenty of data from studies of climate change, but no mention of Climate Change itself. Bobby Jindal isn't as dumb as Rick Perry, but is playing to his political base.

We cannot restore the entire coast, but we still do have a chance to save just enough if we act now. The most important thing now is to keep coastal restoration in the conversation. If we do that, funding will follow, and the engineers and scientists can take it from there.

"It's not enough"

2012-01-08T20:28:00.001-06:00

It's Not Enough NOLA from Lula Fotis on Vimeo.

Put together by some current Tulane students.

Knee Down, no TD

2012-01-07T22:28:00.003-06:00

H/T Scott Cody.

Also, thank you, Jabari Greer. You're never in the spotlight and that's a good thing. You're the best Saint ever at your position.

Tops of 2011

2011-12-31T13:11:00.004-06:00

Here are some top lists for 2011:

I like the Wired top scientific discoveries of the year more than the SciAm list. I'm going to go cook some cabbage and black eye peas and go set off some fireworks now.

Lines Plan

2011-12-31T12:09:00.003-06:00

So, blogging has dropped off because I'm now in grad school. So far, I'm through with one semester (with several more to go). I'll have to take it relatively slowly, since I'm still working at the same time. That actually gives me some time to slowly consider what I want to take.

For one of my classes, I had to do a Lines Plan (sample below) by hand.

This meant lots of Saturdays spent meticulously measuring and drawing.

This is also where you get the phrase "ducks in a row"

The ducks are used to hold down a spline to draw a compound curve.

Here's the final result. It doesn't photograph too well, because it' s so big.

Most of the drafting-type classes have been eliminated from modern engineering curricula. That's something that MIT started in the 1940's under Vannevar Bush. It's funny, with some of the older engineers, they all have the exact same font to their print and that font exactly matches AUTOCAD.

Drew Dat

2011-12-27T22:41:00.001-06:00

iProcreate, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

Yesterday's game was awesome. It was just so damned enjoyable. Not only watching the Drew beat Marino's record, but also doing it against the Falcons.

To the whiny Falcons fans, boo hoo.

What's also great is we have players that are just a joy to root for. Brees thanked the equipment managers ("for rubbing down his balls") instead of focusing on himself. Another great example is Jimmy Graham (as profiled in this earlier Times-Pic piece). That Times-Pic piece is actually a bit better than the "$98 Tight End" ESPN video that's been making the rounds.

One of the the Saints I'm the most thankful for is Jabari Greer. He's just about the least flashy Saint on the squad (he's a lot better at batting balls away than INT's), but he's so much of an improvement over anything on the old Saints. He, like Drew Brees, is the best Saint ever to play his position. Nothing is more frustrating to fans than watching bad CB play. When Jabari Greer is in the game, you don't hear Megatron, Steve Smith, TO, or Roddy White's name (except to make fun of the last for dropping the ball when he finally does get thrown to)
'
Just some thoughts.

Need to watch more NASCAR?

2011-12-25T15:24:00.002-06:00

Hostilidays 2011

2011-12-20T21:24:00.000-06:00

Happy Hostilidays!

Also, in time for the first day of Chanukah, Benny Grunch's "Twenty Foist Anniversary" edition of their 12 Yats of Christmas now features the "8 Yats of Hanukkah"

This is a drill

2011-12-09T07:14:00.001-06:00

Jimmy Stewart in Thunder Bay (1953)

This is not a drill

2011-12-07T18:06:00.003-06:00

Prosecuting Wall Street

2011-12-05T18:12:00.003-06:00

Why hasn't anyone on Wall Street gone to jail?

I've been thinking this as Fuel Fix has been doing a retrospective on Ernon

Related?

Douglas Brinkley vs. Don Young

2011-11-21T17:49:00.003-06:00

It starts at about the 31 minute mark.

Brinkley was testifying on the historical background to the ANWAR debate. The former-Tulanian book-factory has cranked out another one, The Quiet World.

H/T Fuel Fix

Links of the Day - Economics

2011-11-19T07:40:00.003-06:00

If you read no other link, scroll down and read the last one.

Are Jobs obsolete?

"Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff." Unconventional story will give you a new way of looking at things.

Death Star Procurement

This symptom probably applies to the majority of Air Force procurement projects. More Air Force officers can fly Powerpoint than fly an aircraft (sad but true).

Labor Union protest in South Korean shipyard

US Shipbuilding has biggest multiplyer effect amongst all government spending

...Due to having the largest portion of their supply chain within the US.

NYT: Unemployment now higher in South than Rust Belt

Gov't regulation saves Alaskan crabfishing

So says one of the stars of "Deadliest Catch"

News from The Associated Press

German executive arrested under Alabama's Immigration laws. That'll attract foreign investment...

Outsize Severance Continues for Executives, Even After Failed Tenures - NYTimes.com

A free market, until it's their neck in the noose.

Nabors Drilling Exec gets fat payday

Isenberg's payment would exceed Nabors' third-quarter profit of $74.3 million. A horrible executive gets a gigantic payday, against the wishes of the stockholders.

Big Banks Plead with Customers Not to Move Their Money

Banks are unpopular with #OWS'ers and conservatives.

The Consumer is Dead

With Christmas shopping around the corner, long live the Consumer?

The China Money Report » Chinese Fund Managers Sentenced to Death after Cheating Investors out of 1 Billion USD

And people accuse the #OWS crowd of hating bankers...

Who needs unionized firefighters when there's slave labor!

Can you imagine letting prisoners save your house? Coming to a budget-strapped city near you!

World Power Again Swings back to America

Talks about 80's US/Japan fall/rise trend that ended up with a lot of journalists with egg on the face. One key factor: a weaker dollar helps out US manufacturers. There were also some interesting discussions on Twitter about how NOLA-area merchants LOVED it when the dollar was weaker because they had European tourists spending like mad. Now, with the Euro in the gutter, those tourists are gone.

3 Ways Of Looking At Manufacturing In America : Planet Money : NPR

Fascinating article

It's the Economy, Dummkopf! | Business | Vanity Fair

Michael Lewis is the best writer out there when it comes to the economy. He covers the German/Greek debt crisis from an unusual perspective.

The Decline of Manufacturing in America: A Case Study « naked capitalism

H/T @muffuletta: "Read this then tell me who has done more damage to the country, Al-Qaeda or business schools"

It's the Inequality, Stupid | Mother Jones

Statistics-rich article.

Only Advanced-Degree Holders See Wage Gains - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Over the past decade, on average, wages have risen only for Americans with graduate degrees

Report: Rich-poor gap growing - Mackenzie Weinger - POLITICO.com

50% of US workers made less than $26,364 last year

The faces of poverty

A sobering read.

Obama Signs Patent ‘Reform’ Bill — ‘Crustless Sandwich’ Still Patented | Threat Level | Wired.com

Information Dissemination: US Launches a WTO Nuke Towards China's Great Firewall

Now THIS is an interesting monkey wrench.

The Economist on Student Loans

Linked to by LGM.

Losing the HP Way

"American firms have been laying-off their engineering staffs for years. In today’s world of MBA-managed companies, R&D is perceived as not being a good use of money." Horrifying.

Blum and Roberts 2009 - "Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise"

2011-11-18T14:58:00.009-06:00

As I referenced earlier, Blum and Roberts 2009 is an extremely important paper published in Nature that deals with feasibility of rebuilding the coast. Here's a presentation I submitted to class with some notes.

That's a really stark title for an academic paper. No messing around, just going for the jugular.

The drainage basin of the Mississippi. The sediment load basically comes from clastic deposits of material washed down from the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.

"All these lands are drained by the Mississippi" - Armand St. Martin
Louisiana Frenchman

Problem is, the sediment load is not what it used to be. The main loss comes from the damming of the Missouri River.

Here's a snapshot of a few of the dams. Each one pictured generates several hundred MWe's.

From Blum and Roberts' paper, you can clearly see the dropoff after the dams are completed. This data comes from USGS samples of suspended sediment load. Note that we're also losing the coarsest-grain sediment, which is the best at creating new land.

And, to make matters worse, we don't just have a choked off river and low sediment loads. We have to deal with increasing rates of sea level rise. Historical data indicates a rise of ~1mm/yr for most of the 19th and 20th Centuries. We've been increasing to closer to 1.25-1.5mm/yr since about 1970. Future projections are for a MINIMUM of 2mm/yr. There's quite a bit of disagreement on how quickly sea-levels will rise. Here's some discussion on Dr. Jeff Master's blog.

The biggest culprit in sea-level rise? It's not deglaciation. It's thermal expansion.

So, Blum and Roberts put together a mass balance of the sediment coming down the river and what we'd need to keep up with sea level rise. Even if we blew up every single dam on the Mississippi and unleashed the lower Mississippi, we'd continue to lose prodigious amounts of land.

There are some flaws in their model, though. For one, they couldn't come up with a way to count organic buildup of soils due to plant activity. They (as they pointed out in their own paper) said that since they couldn't come up with a way to quantify it on a macro scale, they just neglected it altogether, but admitted that organic buildup could be significant.

This is from the Times-Picayune writeup of the Blum and Roberts paper. Note the slide shows a "no-action" scenario with a 1-meter sea level rise (over 100 years), which is on the middle-to-upper-end of sea level rise projections.

Quite an ending quote. Note that Dr. Harry Roberts might be THE foremost authority on Coastal Louisiana subsidence. He is also from Louisiana, so it's not like he's some grad student on the other side of the country throwing this out. He's right in our backyard. This paper was also published during a major push for diversions to save the coast and he went and said that diversions were nearly pointless (not what you want when you're trying to drum up political support). The paper was extremely contentious within the scientific community.

Also, an honorable mention to Maitri's coastal retreat costume.

1st Down, Saints!

2011-11-14T06:51:00.001-06:00

coach gimpy, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

We need Brees Circle, Gleason's blocked punt in bronze, and this as a giant inflatable hanging from the Superdome (or at least an animated .gif to play over and over).

Tulane Green Wave Dome

2011-11-10T22:04:00.001-06:00

Tulane Green Wave Dome, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

Green!

Coastal Geology & "Engineered Avulsions"

2011-11-10T15:24:00.013-06:00

So, I'm in grad school now and that's eating up a whole ton of time. I'm going to take one of my projects and post a bit of it on the ole blog because I think it's interesting.

The assignment for a class on coastal geology was to take a scientific paper, write your own abstract and make a presentation to the class. Two of my projects were Blum and Roberts 2009, "Drowning of the Mississippi Delta due to insufficient sediment supply and global sea-level rise" (quite the pessimistic title, especially for a scientific journal). Here's a writeup by Dr. Len Bahr and here's the original paper [PDF] as published by Nature Geoscience.

The second one I did was was Mohrig, Kim, et. al. 2009, “Is It Feasible to Build New Land in the Mississippi River Delta?”. Note that the second paper directly references the first. Here's a writeup from Dr. Bahr and here's the supplemental material from Eos / American Geophysical Union (Thanks, Maitri and Helena on the assist!).

Here are my slides with my presentation notes interspersed. I skipped a couple slides in the middle, but this should be the gist of it.

So, the last time I presented, we went through how screwed South Louisiana is. We went through Blum and Roberts' extremely pessimistic projections for coastal rebuilding efforts. Well, now I'm going to present an alternative scenario.

Mohrig, Kim, et. al. presented their paper shortly after Blum and Roberts presented theirs.

We've all heard the dire predictions. 10,000+ km^2 of land loss over the next century. Look at all the red on that map and of course red = bad.

We should just give up and move to Cleveland, right?
Let's take a closer look at one of those "red" maps. You see a bit of green. The Atchafalaya basin is still growing. One lobe is the main Atchafalaya. The other is Wax Lake, which is actually artificially created.

What is Wax Lake? In 1941, there were big river floods and people were worried about Morgan City being inundated, so the Corps cut a channel (the Calumet Cut) to divert ~30+% of the water away from Morgan City. The Corps cut the channel, Morgan City was saved, and everyone forgot about the cut and left it at that. And then something interesting happened...

(Progression of images of delta building; note Belle Isle Salt Mine)

(Some images omitted for post)

Note that all this delta building took place in an area that WAS affected by oil and gas activity, that WAS affected by major erosion from Katrina/Rita, etc.

So, in the paper, Mohrig, Kim, et. al. constructed a model of delta building based off Wax Lake, then backchecked their results on the actual Wax Lake delta. Here's the model results 1941-2005 (the two sets of lines represent variation in % sediment load captured by Wax Lake vs. main Atchafalaya).

Mohrig, Kim, et. al. then modeled two major diversions in Lower Plaquimines Parish. Note that these diversions are AT LEAST an order of magnitude greater than West Bay, which is the largest diversion project built to date.

So, here are the results. From 2010-2110, considerable land is created. One important note: the diversions are only opened during flood events. During low river levels, the diversions are closed. If you "save" New Orleans, but kill the Port of New Orleans, you've sorta shot yourself in the foot. We can both save the city and keep the river navigable.
Another thing to note: everyone says, "we just gotta blow up the levees" and that will fix everything, right? Well, not quite. Mohrig, Kim, et. al. said that wouldn't give you a deep enough channel (to capture the coarsest-grain sediment) and you don't really have enough control over the river dynamics.

They advocated an "Engineered Avulsion" (*I love this term*), like the Old River Control Structure.

Here's another view of an "Engineered Avulsion"

That's the presentation. There was some nice discussion at the end of the presentation. Gotta run to class now.

UPDATE: Fixed some minor typos.

Here's the full progression of images on the Wax Lake building. Found it via this Field and Stream article: Wax Lake Delta: Accidental Eden in the Atchafalaya. I reformatted the images to make them easier to read, but the raw source has a lot more slides on it.

Here's a presentation on "Optimizing Engineered Avulsions". Once again, I love the term "Engineered Avulsion."

Here's the definition of an "Avulsion": In sedimentary geology and fluvial geomorphology, avulsion is the rapid abandonment of a river channel and the formation of a new river channel. Avulsions occur as a result of channel slopes that are much lower than the slope that the river could travel if it took a new course. (Wikipedia)

West Bay Diversion to close?

2011-10-26T20:30:00.005-06:00

West Bay Diversion Project to End. Or at least, that was the headline in early 2010.

Backing up, West Bay was the first diversion project optimized for sediment diversion. It's also WAY larger than either Canarvon or Davis Pond (ea. ab. 10,000 CFS vs. 50k+ for W. Bay). Canarvon and Davis Pond are sometimes called failures, but that isn't really fair, since they were optimized to fight saltwater intrusion only and NOT to carry sediment.

West Bay is located near Head of Passes (scroll down on the link for the maps). Planning started in 1991 and it was the first diversion optimized for sediment diversion. It was opened and petered along for a while, but was considered a disappointment. The Corps, who hated the project from the start (they believed it would be a hazard to navigation or would just plug up), trumpeted the failure and pushed for its closure.

Here's a quote from Dr. Len Bahr about the Corps and West Bay:

Despite its recent construction in 2003, bathymetric surveys in 2009 showed that sediment accretion from the West Bay Sediment Diversion project had exceeded subsidence in parts of the project receiving area for the first time in almost a century. Nevertheless, the public was told that a lack of significant wetland accretion contributed to a decision to shut down this ‘youthful’ sediment diversion project.

They also forced CWPPRA to pay for the dredging of the Pilot Town anchorage, despite modeling that proved West Bay was responsible for 20% (or less) of the shoaling and that the anchorage was built in an area that was prone to shoaling anyway. Here's a presentation from a past Tulane Engineering Forum describing the sediment transport modeling [PDF]. Furthermore, the port people weren't really complaining because the anchorage is hardly ever used (pilots are almost 100% available within a few hours notice at Head of Passes; the anchorage is almost a vestige of the old sailing days).

Enter the 2008 and 2011 Mississippi River floods (both of which were BIG, especially 2011 which was at least a 100-year event). West Bay, which wasn't a total failure like the Corps was making out, but also wasn't lighting the world on fire, explodes in activity and they figure out the missing ingredient: sand and gravel. The normal river flow has almost no sands in it; it's all mud and fine sediment (good for nourishing plants, but not enough of a base for land-creation). In flood events, there's a totally different dynamic. During flood events, sediment load per unit volume of water is at least 50 times larger, with much coarser sediment mobilized. The Corps continues to call West Bay a failure.

There was also an interesting side story that happened about this time: CWPPRA was investigating barging sediment from one area to another and asked the Corps about shortcutting through the West Bay diversion instead of going all the way around to SW pass. The Corps said, 'bah, it'll be too shallow and you'll just get stuck on a sandbar and we know everything there is to know about river dynamics because we've been studying it for 100+ years.' Well, the barging project was shelved because of cost, but they did to a hydrographic survey and the depth of the West Bay channel: 84' (barges draw ~20' or less).

More and more, the science community wants to study West Bay (being wrong in science is a good thing; you learn something new). The Corps is doing what a bureaucratic organization does to something it sees as embarrassing them: kill it with fire. The Corps had finally blackmailed CWPPRA into closing West Bay in 2010 when 2 monkey wrenches were thrown into the mix: the 2011 floods and the shipping people 'stabbed the Corps in the back' (or so that's how the Corps felt, so I'm told). Note that that link is dated October 13th.

My theory behind the objection: the port people know SW Pass is hydraulically inefficient and a pain to keep dredged. They're looking into a new, deeper pass much closer to Venice and see West Bay as an interim solution to accommodate New Panamax-class ships (Panamax=39.5' draft, New=49.9' draft) in a cost effective manner (as opposed to Miami's expensive Deep Dredge Project that's caught up in Tea Party-type stalls). The Port of New Orleans has been doing extremely well with containerized cargo this year (highest ever for NOLA?) and want to get an even bigger slice of that pie going forward.

How will this all shake out? Will the Corps force the closure of West Bay? Will we ever learn how to save the coast? We shall see.

So much catchier than "Drill, Baby, Drill"

2011-10-25T20:22:00.003-06:00

H/T Fuel Fix. Actually pretty cool. They even get what a Christmas Tree is.

Remember kiddies, don't drink and drill, no matter what the Russian guy says.

Sneak Peek of the BenzDome

2011-10-22T21:54:00.004-06:00

Took a break from grad school to go to the Tulane/Memphis game. It was Tulane's homecoming game. It was an interesting game to watch, but unfortunately Tulane lost. Oh well. It's not like it isn't the first time I've seen Tulane football lose.

There were 25,000+ people in attendance, but, because it's the Dome, it still looked empty. A bright spot: got an early preview of tomorrow's Premiere of the new "Mercedes-Benz Superdome":

Engineer Porn: Square Drill Bit

2011-10-06T19:52:00.002-06:00

Mesmerizing machining...

Reggie Bush vs. Darren Sproles

2011-09-25T20:05:00.003-06:00

Reggie Bush:
Games 1-3: 104 total yards, 1 TD, 2 Fumbles (1 Lost)

Darren Sproles:
Game 1-3: 235 total yards, 2 TD, Zero "Fiddle-Farting Around"

If the Dolphins gave us a pizza for Reggie, they were robbed:

USCG/MMS Final Report on the Loss of the Deepwater Horizon

2011-09-25T19:12:00.001-06:00

Full Report here.

Direct link to PDF of main body of Report.

There's nothing big in the report that we haven't already seen somewhere thus far.

David Hammer's Wrieup. Hammer focuses on the difference between the Presidential Commission (no subpoena power, said it was a systemic problem) vs. the USCG/MMS (later USCG/BOEMRE) Report (which had subpoena power and focused on very specific errors they "laid at BP's feet").

As I read through the report, I found the most interesting part is where they go through the CFR's (Code of Federal Regulations; The LAW on how to do everything) and they systematically list the CFR's that were violated and why. They also go through the ones that need to clarified. CFR's tend to be written by lawyers (or at least engineers with lawyers looking over their shoulder) and tend to use notoriously impenetrable language. Clarification of CFR's is a great idea for a part of regulatory reform.

One of the post-Macondo regulatory changes was a shift from a prescriptive-regime (do X, Y, and Z and you're assumed to be safe) to putting the onus on the companies to prove they've managed risk on a systematic basis (the North Sea's regulations are along these lines). I personally don't have too much of an opinion as to which is "better" and BP looks like it would have screwed up either way.

Note that it was published the same day as the report about the BP Geophysicist testifying in a deposition that they "missed" a 2-foot gas zone hundreds of feet above the top of the cement plug. She "assumed" that it was passed to the rig for them to modify their P&A procedures. BP now claims that it was a water-bearing instead of gas-bearing zone.

Another thing to note is that the lead investigators are being held back, probably to preserve their testimony for the (imminent?) indictments of BP management (or at least quintuple fines under the "gross negligence" clause). Another recent development: BP puts in for their first post-Macondo drilling permit. BP's been a minority partner on a few wells, but this is the first one where they are the operating company (with their own company men on the rigs running the show). The Sunday Money section in the Times-Pic had more about the drilling push by BP.

Going forward, I see all but the largest independents squeezed out of the Gulf and deepwater drilling left to the majors (Shell, Exxon, etc.). This was a transition that was underway well before Macondo, but the post-Macondo world (insurance, regulation, increasing technical challenge) really accentuates. The other guys are discovering they really don't have the manpower to put together permits that can withstand post-Macondo scrutiny. Here's an erl industry exec that says BOEMRE isn't holding back permits for political reasons, they're just checking them very thoroughly. Here's gCaptain's reprinting of an excellent WSJ article about getting back to work in the Gulf.

And as a side note, the NTSB has released their report on the fatal California gas pipeline explosion. The keys were very old, substandard pipe. It was an intra-state pipeline, so there was never any requirement to hydrotest the pipe (an incredibly important safety procedure in ASME Pressure Vessel Code).

News and Notes - Local Edition - 24 September

2011-09-24T10:11:00.006-06:00

Billy Nungesser abruptly cancels all public appearances. Gee, you figure his history with Jeanette Maier resurfacing has something to do with it. Some very interesting comments in that last link. Let's just say don't make any assumption on the gender of Ms. Maier's employees. Oh, look, David Vitter endorses Nungesser over Jay Dardenne for Lt. Governor. UPDATE- More from the Yellow Blog, who beat me to the publish button.

Corruption in the New Orleans Taxi Certificate Markets. From The Lens. Excellent reporting. But, but, but, the Times-Picayune told me Nagin eliminated corruption in the taxi bureau?

Another one Louisiana can be proud of: David Vitter named one of the most crooked members of Congress. If you go to CREW's website, they like to point out how many people on their old lists are now behind bars.

Poor John Fleming. At least he made The Daily Show.

Watching Jay Cutler thrown to ground repeatedly was extremely satisfying. I'm actually glad Ingram fumbled. He got taught a lesson in ball security in a situation that didn't really matter and we got to watch more of the Cutler beat-down. 1/21/07: Never Forget.

Tulane brings back CS. The first of the Cowen-eliminated programs returns. Note that for years, Tulane has done without an ABET-accredited Computer Science program in the 21st Century. How can you call yourself a University without at least CS?

Back to Bacchanal. Great expose on the whole flap. Especially searing on the out-of-towner, absentee-landlord next door.

SOS from Avondale. Gambit coverstory. Note there might be some interesting Avondale news coming down the pipeline shortly...

Garland violated the Public Trust, Stephanie Grace. James Gill's epic takedown of Garlandfill. Everyone is taking a whack at the pinata.

ER: Homeopathy Edition

2011-09-24T10:09:00.000-06:00

Review: "The Big Uneasy"

2011-09-18T07:35:00.005-06:00

I missed the chance to see The Big Uneasy premier at The Prytania and a lot of other opportunities since, but felt it was pretty important to watch it. I downloaded it off Amazon and just finished it and here are some of my thoughts.

The Big Uneasy doesn't cover a lot of new ground that a local that's read the paper won't know, but it's good to know that a lot of it will reach a wider, national audience. It did a great job of some of the more qualitative issues (addressing "Why don't we move New Orleans?" in their "Ask a New Orleanian" segment), but I was a bit disappointed when it came to some of the more technical aspects. I may have had high standards, but I expected more.

One of the things that constantly annoyed me was little glitches. For example, there's a progression where they show land loss from 1932-2010, but the graphic is wrong. They pulled the graphic from Blum and Roberts (or some derivation thereof, like the Mike Schleifstein writeup) and the progression should have ended in 2100, NOT 2010.

There's another screwup where they're interviewing Ivor van Heerden and he's talking about building on sand horizons in the London Ave. Canal and he's talking about water seepage through sand and he says that sand is a bad foundation because it's not strong enough. Well, actually, sand is a pretty good foundation. It can withstand a pretty hefty load without subsiding, when compared to many other layers you'd encounter in South Louisiana. Now, the larger issue that Ivor was talking about is absolutely 100% correct (water seepage through sand) and that was his main thrust of his excerpt; the structural point was sort of an (irrelevant) aside, but because the editor left the whole interview unedited, it sort of makes the subject look (to technical eyes) like he doesn't know what he's doing, when he (at least in this case) does.

I'm probably being nitpicky, but I'm an engineer and that's just what I'm gonna do. One of the things I was really disappointed in wasn't what was in the movie but what was left out. When talking about LSU, Sean O'Keefe's is never mentioned. There was no real mention of the actual structure of the Army Corps of Engineers (military officials that come and go while 90+% of the Corps are civilian engineers, etc.). Dr. Bob Bea is big on organizational issues contributing to disaster, well, wouldn't it be great to ask Dr. Bea (who had worked at the Corps back in the day) about leadership churn at the Corps?

Another issue is the dynamic between Congress and the Corps. They made the point over and over that the Corps is Congress' pet and they had one good example where they went through all the Congressional websites highlighting all the water-resource bills various congressmen have corralled. I would have like to have seen them go a bit further there.

I'll even lay out a great example for somebody to take: dredge companies. I'd love to see someone look into crooked dredge companies. There are examples out the wazoo. For example, on one coastal restoration project, the dredge company was paid per cubic yard of material dredged, but not on what actually made it to the build site, so they could lose all the material they wanted between Ship Shoal and the deposit site and there was no contractual mechanism to penalize them.

The best example of all on how crooked the dredge companies is the River Dredge Wheeler. Wheeler was commissioned in 1982 after being designed from the keel up for one purpose: keep Southwest Pass open. It was a purpose-built tool designed to maximize efficiency and minimize cost for a very specific purpose. Since it's commissioning, it's been almost entirely unused. It sits in "ready reserve" most of the time next to the ACoE headquarters at Riverbend. You see, back in the early 80's, a group of congressmen (including Bob Livingston, you can fill in the rest of the 'usual suspects') got elected and decided that "the government is obviously incompetent and let's let the free market do everything!" Now, they couldn't just lease the Wheeler to a private operator; that wouldn't result in enough political donations to the politicians. So, they decided to let it out to private dredge companies. Then, embarrassingly, nobody bid; it was too big a job for even a consortium of companies. The Corps then went back, sliced and diced the dredge job into small tranches that private dredge companies could tackle (with huge project management staffs to keep track of everything). This highly inefficient system continues to this day. A few years back, a Dutch company wanted to bring in some ultra-modern dredges and do the job much cheaper than the local companies could do with their antiquated equipment. The dredge companies then squealed like stuck pigs for government protection ("GAH! Jones Act! National Security! DEY TOOK ER JERBS!"). The Dutch, who had plenty of work building the Palm Islands in the UAE dropped their inquiry after a while.

On a related note, after Katrina, there were scores of letters to the editor demanding to "privatize the Corps." What would a privatized Corps actually look like? Wouldn't you still have to have some sort of project management staff to oversee the whole mess?

Dr. Bea does make the excellent point that the Corps no longer has as large a technical staff and that lots of personnel are now outside contractors and a lot of those who remain are more project managers than competent technical professionals. That is, frankly, a criticism you could extend to many, many other industries. Contractors and subcontractors and consultants are a major feature of any heavy industry today. I will say this: you can pull up Karen Durham-Aguilera's CV shows a P.E. licence and a technical Master's. The Vicksburg office of the Corps is still a center of excellence in geotechnical engineering. OTOH, I've also had interactions with Corps employees who couldn't set up a free-body-diagram to save their life.

How 'watered down' has the Corps become? I'm not sure I have an answer, but I'll put forward an idea. On projects I've worked on, when there's a really immense challenge and there's no time to argue over budgets or organizational hierarchies and you get the MBA's to just stand out of the way and let the engineers 'do their thing,' you'd be astounded with the results. In virtually every measurable metric (LTI's, delivery time, and {counter-intuitively} cost), these "Apollo-program" projects outperform the day to day engineering jobs we put together. There's total, bottom-up efforts to get it right. It's very similar to Scott Adams' "Bet on Engineers" philosophy (WSJ Op-Ed here).

The Corps is closed to finishing a major effort to get New Orleans' levee system up to 100-year protection as quickly as possible. How did they do along the way? Well, there are some good things they've done and some not so good things. The Ms. Garzino's faulty pump incident is quite worrying (updated letter here). So is the ongoing issue with debris in some of the levees (and what annoys me the most about that is the immediate 'shoot the messenger'-reaction as opposed to 'gee, maybe we oughta enforce these contractual requirements and penalize some contractors'-reaction). There's also the question of workplace atmosphere that was brought up by the Levees.org personal attacks on company time issue. I think a commander of the Corps has more to fear from fostering a workplace environment of, say, sexual harassment, than one where technical competency is valued and a good engineering product is turned out.

In the end, the Corps is a big bureaucratic organization. They're not the only one who's had a major engineering disaster, but we'll have to see how they respond. Do they build a better organization or do they fall into the same old traps? It hasn't been settled one way or the other and the proof will be in the pudding (what gets built and how it holds up). I will say this for the critics of the Corps: they only responds to INTENSE criticism. The Corps doesn't really get tact and nuance. You have to whack them in the head with a sledgehammer to get their attention.

Keep paying attention to Levees.org and Fix the Pumps.

NOTE- Small edits for grammar and spelling.

Garland Robinette and New Orleans Radio

2011-09-04T17:38:00.007-06:00

First, a little background for those outside the area: Garland Robinette is a WWL-870-AM radio host. He used to be fairly left-wing (pretty ardent environmentalist and used to host striking refinery workers on his radio show). He came to prominence with the infamous September 2, 2005 "Get off your asses" radio interview with Nagin. You can see a snipet of the infamous interview below:

The full interview can be found below:

Anyways, he hosts a weekday, mid-day radio show. It seems to me that somewhere in 2008/2009 he's also shifted a lot further to the right, politically.

What's become REALLY interesting is Fred Heebe, the notoriously corrupt benefactor of a lot of Jefferson Parish politicos, paid him as a "lobbyist" for the River Birch Landfill. He even gave Robinette a $250,000 loan after he did a radio show blasting the re-opening of the Old Gentilly Landfill (which would take business away from River Birch).

Here's the Times-Picayune above-the-fold article from Saturday. One thing to point out, yet again, the Times-Pic was scooped on a corruption story by one of the NOLA Bloggers. Slabbed was already on the case. It'll also be quite interesting who else is on the list of lobbyists (other local media?).

Since the initial article, the Times-Pic has been quiet as tomb, but online is another matter. Which brought me to the discussion here. There's a nice little exchange about the state of local radio in there as well. (Partial quote of my comments + Jason's):

Clay said...
You know, NOLA has 2 dead-tree papers that aren't half bad, when you consider the market size (Times-Pic and Gambit). Both have flaws, but are well above the national average.

We've got awesome online news (The Lens, great bloggers).

We've got TV stations that, while not perfect, are also good and getting better with intense competition (WWL, Fox8). ABC's local affiliate is the only one that really sucks donkey balls.

BUT, when it comes to radio, New Orleans is ABSOLUTELY BOTTOM OF THE BARREL. There's a reason why I only listen to WWOZ and WTUL. Politics aside, Bob Delgorno is so incredibly stupid I wonder if he was dropped on his head as a baby.

September 4, 2011 11:44:00 AM CDT

Dambala - Jason B. Berry said...
That's about the best assessment I've read. The only person on WWL that I could stand to listen to is Garland and now he's a useless shill.

Delgorno is so narrow-minded and dim I get embarrassed for him. I wonder who's idea it was to put that guy in front of a mic.

Spud is harmless enough and intelligent enough but I've never heard anyone talk so damn much and say absolutely nothing. Say something for Buddha's sake.

Tommy Tucker is hyper-annoying. If you were sitting in a bar and this guy started talking, you would get up and move in short order....once again, putting a mic in front of a guy like that is probably not a great idea.

Believe it or not the only person I've actually liked on WWL was Rob Couhig. I don't agree with his politics but he's no idiot. Taking into account WWL is way right of center, I would at least like to hear intelligent conservative banter on local issues instead of the dingleberries they have on the air now.

If WWL had any good sense they would replace GR with a moderate Dem or even an outright liberal. If they offset their programming instead of enforcing the party line 24/7 it would make for more interesting radio. Plus the lib. host would probably enrage their listeners to the point where they would tune in just so they could argue. Then the rest of the conservative yahoo hosts could make apologies for the black sheep and make themselves look better. It's a win/win.

And need I point out that the whole network is staffed with old, white men?

Come to think of it, I wish they would put Sandra Hester on in place of Garland. 18 Wheeler would be a ratings bonanza.

September 4, 2011 12:08:00 PM CDT

There are plenty of other good comments over there. Go ahead and read them; I just don't want to grab more than I've already nabbed.

The thread goes into more general discussion of the New Orleans radio stations. Bob Delgiorno is probably the poster-child for our crappy airwave media. Jeffrey has been cataloging his miscues for quite some time. Even TigerDroppings (a site I generally loathe) points out his lack of research and total stupidity. Why does WWL keep him on the air?

On a more general note, why does NOLA Radio suck? Can't it be better? Will Garland be on the radio Monday?

UPDATE- Well, No Garland today. Maybe tomorrow?

'The best thing the government's done since the National Do Not Call Registry'

2011-09-04T09:40:00.005-06:00

Wired: Feds are Right to Stop AT&T Merger. Great, systematic debunking of the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

After years and years of letting big corporations get away with all sorts of appalling shenanigans, from mortgage securitization to insider trading to using Main Street & everyone's 401(k)'s as their own personal gambling funds, it's amazing that something so obviously disastrous actually gets attacked. One of the best quotes of the modern era is from Matt Taibbi: [on Goldman Sachs] "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

The reasons why the AT&T and T-Mobile merger are a bad idea are incredibly obvious. We've already broken up AT&T once (United States vs. AT&T, 1982) and it was a boon to the consumer. I remember going through some old documents of my grandfather and being astounded at the cost of the old telephone bill. It was like inflation never happened.

The modern AT&T incarnation sucks as a phone carrier. It's terrible at innovation. AT&T iPhone users hopped to the competition at the first opportunity.

The only thing AT&T does well is bribe politicians. They are the largest corporate donor to campaigns since 1990. They really don't care which party they bribe, either (45/55 Dem/GOP split). They're equal opportunity enticers. Hell, they'll even bribe state politicians (Thanks again, Bobby and the notoriously corrupt Louisiana Public Service Commission). Companies like AT&T are the reason establishment politicians (whether they are Boehner or Dianne Feinstein) suck. Americans of all political persuasions HATE huge, unresponsive corporations. And people wonder how we get to "too big to fail..."

And I'll close with a quote from the Wired article I really like:

AT&T is the single largest corporate donor to politicians and it’s used to getting its way.

...

This go round, the Justice Department is realizing that what’s good for AT&T isn’t often what’s good for Americans — no matter how many lobbyists and political donations Ma Bell can afford.

UPDATE- Here's the dinner and drinks menu for the wining and dining of lawmakers the bastards at AT&T are trying. $52 steaks and cucumber martini's...

I'll give you 1 guess what went here.

2011-09-02T18:22:00.001-06:00

Hurricane Stocking Up, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

Didn't manage the K+X post. I suppose that means I no longer have to worry about keeping things bottled up.

Been fairly busy with school and work. We were out today stocking up for the weekend's expected soaking. I saw this and laughed. I'll give you 1 guess what usually goes here (HINT: it's the first thing everyone runs out of, even before beer and ammunition).

Rising Tide Recaps

2011-08-27T22:09:00.012-06:00

I'll add more as they come, but here's a couple from Nola.com:

'Treme' creator David Simon says New Orleans may have something to learn from Baltimore. Congratulations all you "young journalists" out there. (Also: slightly different wording on the Mobile version of the article). I also missed the first half of Simon's speech (desperately in need of caffeine), so I was trying to reconstruct exactly what he said from others and it was about 50/50 'nice points'/'Simon is a douchebag'.

Gambit article on Rising Tide.

NOLA Femmes recap.

First Draft's Liveblogging here.

angels and people's photos from the conference.

American Zombie: "The Ebb and Flow"

Jeffrey: Standing

Maitri's favorite photo

Huck Upchuck: Busy Day

Cliff: 7 Years in Blogger Land and I'm still here.

B2L2: We Have A Winnah

Liveblogging: Re-Capping the Well

2011-08-27T10:46:00.014-06:00

Panel:
Alex Woodward - Mod.
Anne Rolfes
Drake Toulouse
Bob Marshall
David Hammer
Len Bahr

Intro. - Alex Woodward.

Overview of blowout - Hammerman.

Schedule here (w/bio's of presenters)

UPDATE 1- Excellent, technically accurate overview given by Hammerman. I've thoroughly enjoyed his USCG/BOEMRE Board of Inquiry Updates.

UPDATE 2- If we never hear "Top Kill" and "Junk Shot", it'll be a good thing. Unfortunately, that ain't gonna happen.

Ken Feinberg, the "Special Master". He's special alright.

Anne Rolfes now talking about refinery accident rates. 10 accidents a week. She also starts mixing the oil industry and refinery industry, which I don't generally agree with. I tend to think of Upstream (Exploration and Production) and Downstream (Refining) as separate industries and, interestingly enough, one happens to have a much lower accident rate. According to the (somewhat dated) Normal Accidents, the Chemical/Refining industry has the lowest fatality rate of any heavy-industrial sector. My opinion. Take it for what you will.

Bummer (BOEMRE) joke is excellent.

Now Hammer is going through the MMS Sex Parties Scandal. He says that the biggest issue going forward is the lack of qualified personnel at regulators.

UPDATE- Now Hammer and Rolfes are disagreeing about accidents. Hammer seems to be making a distinction between Process Safety and Personal Safety accidents.

Len Bahr now speaking...

UPDATE

Bahr now talking about Bob Bea and his background working for Shell Offshore on fixed leg platforms.

Bob Marshall talking now about the extent of Louisiana's desire to push drilling in order to reap the royalties, employment, etc. "...and we accept this [risk]." 'The oil industry didn't rape the state,' "it was consensual sex."

Distilling it down further...

UPDATE: Drilling down further?

Alright, bonus points to the first panelist to make a reference to The Oil Drum. OK, that's just my desire I guess...

Drake Tolouse now describing blogging about the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF). Here's his blog: Disenfranchised Citizen. Give it some love.

UPDATE: GCCF: for profit or nonprofit? (BP gets unspent $ back).

Personal note: Cold room. Glad I'm wearing a jacket. Linen is the best for NOLA: loose and breathable for heat, and you get to wear a jacket when you walk into an over-air-conditioned room.

Lots of panelists now ripping of Feinberg (justifiably), but Hammer makes the issue that we do need to root for Feinberg in the end. If Feinberg fails, it's left to the lawyers and courtrooms where MAYBE, SOMEDAY, SOME of those who sue MIGHT get treble damages (and even then to be paid out over installments over time). Rolfes says that BP is trying to turn victims against each other, no acknowledgment of health claims vs. 9/11.

UPDATE: Len Bahr's blog. "Katrina gave us Bobby Jindal," (knecapped relatively moderate, successful Blanco) {did the Moratorium get Vitter re-elected - Me}, how can we ask for $100 Billion for coastal restoration (which we badly need) after our past actions?

"Why do they live there?" - Talking about NY Residents evacuating from coastal, low-lying areas (Bob Marshall). Related.

(TP headline) "A Win for the Coast" = 'Waterloo was a win for France' (LA Coastal Restoration $ gets classified as discretionary spending, with 1 Louisiana legislator voting against that modest [$1 million] appropriation.

Discussion about API and its lobbying role. Hammer makes the note that API makes engineering specifications (API RP's) that carry legal authority that are referenced in Code of Federal Regulations (CFR's). Note that Transocean probably didn't follow API RP's in their maintenance of the failed BOP (there is some vagueness in the API RP that gives TO some wiggle room, but my personal opinion is TO violated API RP's, and hence the CFR's).

Marshall: Pipeline companies in Louisiana gets Eminent Domain power (LA is most restrictive state in nation when it comes to Eminent Domain Laws), but Louisiana can't get that authority for coastal restoration projects. (NOTE: See issue Campanella talked about earlier with Bayou Bienvenue ). BIG ISSUE!

Hammer relays story from flying offshore with (Doc?) Laborde "You know, we never realized what we were doing back then." Related (H/T Cade Roux).

Bob Marshall: We're in the driver's seat. Oil reservoirs can't be moved. Thunderhorse has 1 well that produced ~7% of domestic production at one point. The oil industry (my note- as long as prices stay high) aren't going to up and move. The "Resource Curse".

Rolfes- 'We have such a small budget and the reaction to the little amount of work LA Bucket Brigade does, but then the Oil Industry acts like we're the bane of the state.' [see recent issue of TELC law ]

? Time:

Can it happen again? Hammer: if BOEMRE doesn't hire qualified inspectors/petroleum engineers/ etc., yes.

? to LA Bucket Brigade on Statistical Compiling of Accident Reports: Rolfes- We just re-compiled industry reports with industry terms (LTI's, etc.). Hammer makes note that there were VIP's were having a party on the Deepwater Horizon to celebrate no LTI's in a long period of time.

LUNCH!!!

NOTE: I tried to note my personal opinions as they popped in my head from the commenters' statements. I hope there aren't too many typos and too scatterbrained and all (for a live product). If you've got a complaint, let me know.

Rising Tide 6

2011-08-27T08:14:00.001-06:00

Hope I see y'all today. #RT6 Blog here.

Historical Gulf of Mexico Production Data

2011-08-21T21:07:00.006-06:00

I like this image a lot. Found it here. The data is based off 2003 MMS well data, so it's pretty far out of date on the deepwater fields, but it illustrates how deepwater production is the lynchpin of US offshore oil production (the lion's share of the ~1.6-1.8 Million Barrels a day we produce offshore). The chart is organized based off the maximum historical production rate (B/D) by leaseblock. Note that the shallow fields have history back as far as the 1940's, while there are plenty of blocks now (2011) in production that aren't even show on the map. If the map were updated with today's information, it would look even more lopsided.

The Moratorium 8

2011-08-21T20:39:00.008-06:00

Here's the names of the 8 drilling rigs that have left the Gulf since the Moratorium was put in place. To note:

* 1 was already scheduled to depart for another area
* 3 were new, 5 were more than 24 years old, and some were more than 30 years old. 20 years is generally a good lifetime for a rig; 30 is sometimes done if prices are favorable and there's been good maintenance and 10-year overhauls. The new rigs will hurt (the 3 that left were among the best in their respective fleets), but the others were so long in the tooth, you'd almost say good riddance. Diamond had a lot of legacy drillships left over from New Orleans-based OEDECO that probably shouldn't be operating in the second decade of the 21st Century. They'll eventually be replaced by newbuilds very soon. There's a MODU building boom going on in Korea, thanks mostly to generous government subsidies and financing for customers.

Note that there have been some rigs that have come TO the Gulf since the Moratorium, although almost all are jackups leaving shallow-water Mexico to drill a series of promising shallow water gas fields on the US side.

BP, meanwhile, still hasn't gotten a SINGLE drill permit since the moratorium. Most other operators now have all their drillships back in operation, but BP's only drilling is being done where they are a minority operator. Either the BOEMRE is deliberately shoving aside anything with BP written on it (unlikely) or it's yet another indicator that BP lags behind in technical competency. BP desperately wants to avoid "gross negligence" charges (and the quadrupled fines that go along) and this (in my opinion) is yet another nail in that coffin.

The worrying about "Economic Survival" seems to be past, but the Moratorium may yet teach us some interesting things about drillship construction and BP's operating practices.

Unions win a battle with Verizon

2011-08-21T14:32:00.006-06:00

Recently, 45,000 unionized electrical workers went on strike against Verizon. The two main points of contention were healthcare costs and pay fairness for the same work. On the first issue, Verizon wanted to force the workers to pay hundreds more per month for the healthcare package (shifting the burden from mostly Verizon to mostly worker). The second issue was that linemen in the landline-side of the business would be forced to take an even higher hike than the cellphone-side of the business. The union argued 'equal pay for equal work' (both sets of linemen do about the same thing, just one unit happens to be more profitable now). Here's an overview article that explains more.

I takes some real balls to go on strike when unemployment is ~10%, but it looks like the union came out on top.

Here's one incident that caught my attention throughout the whole flap: Verizon accused the strikers of conducting acts of sabotage. They even offered a $50,000 reward for proof. Now, charges of sabotage are not uncommon and it's not unheard of for the occasional striker to go off the reservation, but so far, I can't find one time Verizon paid out on their reward and I think I know why.

The striking workers were electrical workers. Guys that deal with high voltage and sensitive electronics. There was also an enormous number that walked out all at once. You can't just take any dopehead off the street and send them to work. They'll electrocute themselves, take down your network, and then you'll need a new network (and a new worker). It looks, though, like that's exactly what Verizon did: Verizon uses inexperienced worker to fill in. Note that the NRC used to explicitly ban any manufacturer of nuclear powerplant equipment from providing equipment to plants built by "scab" workers.

What's really interesting is there's lots of videos out there of the replacement workers screwing things up (with IBEW guys snickering in the background):

Verizon (replacement) workers blow transformer while striker hassles them

One more related note: Has anyone found Obama's comfortable shoes?

Given some recent events, maybe these guys are just helping him out by going on their own search for his comfy shoes.

Link Dump - 20 August 2011

2011-08-20T20:28:00.006-06:00

Crime:

✭

"But I wore my juice"

People tend to overestimate their own intelligence. Funny story at the beginning of the article.

Great article on Wired about Stuxnet

There are other articles out there that are better on one aspect of it, but this is by far the best overview of the spread and damage done by the Stuxnet worm.

✭

Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed | Threat Level | Wired.com

Gives some great perspective on how the Wikileaks Afghan War Logs got leaked. Also, nice to read the unedited logs to get the whole perspective (although it takes some skipping around).

✭

Anthrax killer still unknown?

FBI mucks up the case yet again.

More here

✭

Lee Zurik is lazy

So sez Aaron Bennet

Miami Scandal - Original Yahoo Sports column

Original article. Well worth a read. Great investigative journalism.

Church child protection chief caught with 4,000 child porn pictures - mirror.co.uk

Mubarak in hospital bed, but still on trial

In Mussolini's Italy, people surrendered their civil rights 'so they train could run on time'

Economics:

✭

How does Germany keep youth unemployment down?

Answer: get some practical experience. In the US for engineers, the Senior Project is looked at very closely by employers.

✭

China vs. Korea: Battle of the Shipbuilders

China seeks to displace Korea as the king of the shipbuilders. Korea will start concentrating on higher-value ships (LNG tankers, for example) as China's government pumps money into the shipbuilding industry to build capacity.

✭

Illegal Immigrants from Mexico drop to a trickle?

Note the article focuses only on Mexican immigrants (not other Latin American countries). Economic progress and less corruption keeps Mexico's best and brightest home.

✭
Sandeep Gautam's answer to Managerial track or Technical track - how should students make this career choice? - Quora

Discussion of choosing between technical track and managerial track positions. I don't necessarily agree with everything that's presented in the article, but the comments at the end are also good.

✭
Small measures to reign in executive pay prove worth

✭

The Price of Life

✭

Broken Lotteries | Wired Science | Wired.com

Downgrade saves US taxpayer $10 Billion dollars

✭

As Newsrooms Shrink, PR fills the gap

Shocking article. Also mentions the USCG/MMS hearings in New Orleans.

Energy

✭

Natural Nuclear Reactors hold the key to nuclear waste storage?

Also check out the 'Chats with nuclear dad' on the Georneys blog. A PhD candidate in geology interviews her nuclear engineer dad on Fukushima and other nuclear topics.

✭

10 most dangerous moments in ISS/Shuttle history

Lots of the early missions are still classified (NRO/NSA satellite launches, mostly) and there were some incidents that were never widely known.

✭

Young Men and Fire

The Practical Pyromaniac, reviewed by Adam Savage

✭

Retrain Shuttle workers to inspect Offshore?

Not as crazy an idea as it soundsh

✭

Oil Industry Executives Pay themselves well, fire their subordinates and don't even try to make more oil

Note that many major oil companies have negative reserve replacement ratios and don't even have a plan to reverse that trend; they'd rather live high on the hog on booked reserves. If you look at oil patch history, on the long run, it's cheaper to find and book barrels today rather than wait until tomorrow....

✭

Squirrels changing trees: Republican edition

MMS tuns to BOEMRE. Now it's BOEM, OESS, and ONRR.

Too Much Safety Could Make Drivers Less Safe | Autopia | Wired.com

If I ever become dictator, everyone will drive stickshifts. It will stop distracted driving, lower energy consumption (and hence oil prices), and be safer.

Bomb found on Natural Gas Pipeline

Chesapeake Padding Reserves?

The truth about the "Obama/Soros/Petrobras deal"

From the Houston Chronicle, with hilarious appeal to 'stop sending us those crazy emails'

War:

A Littoral Mess

A history of the Littoral Combat Ship

Khadafi as the lynchpin of Middle Eastern Secret Polices?

✭

Soldier's view of having to shoot on your own country's civilians

Syrian soldier's view on being ordered to shoot at his neighbors.

✭

Pakistan let China see crashed US "stealth" copter

Information Dissemination: China Exporting Submarines For Pakistans Nuclear Triad

Politics:

Freshman Republicans hate pork... Except for their own district

✭

For lesson in shared sacrifice, send Congress to boot camp - CNN.com

Lt. General Russel Honoré thinks Congress should be sent to boot camp: "Put them in tents with no air conditioning, have Army drill sergeants teach them teamwork and physical sacrifice. When they recognize their responsibility to the people of America, they can return to D.C."

Obama's Book Club - The Daily Beast

List of books read by Obama over the past ~2 years.

No laws, no welfare, no building codes, no minimum wage, and lots of guns

Book Review: The Gun by CJ Chivers

2011-08-07T07:26:00.007-06:00

Two histories have recently come out about the AK-47. Larry Kahaner's book and CJ Chivers' book. I read this LGM Review and decided on the later.

Chivers' book is more a history of automatic weapons in general and then focusing in on why the AK-47 was so successful. There is a large section in there about the M-16's early teething problems that will make your blood boil (the blame for which he places squarely on Colt's greed and the DoD's incompetence). There have been approximately 100 million units of AK-family weapons produced; the M-1 Carbine, the most produced weapon of WWII only had 6 million units built. The AK is "so easy a child can use it... and they do".

Chivers is a good writer. He's won a few Pulitzers while working for the NY Times in Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia during the South Ossetian War. He served as a Marine in the first Gulf War. He knows weapons inside and out. I love his explanation of how an engineer must juggle compromises to reach his design. He's a fantastic researcher (the notes section is extensive and has a few funny little stories). One of my favorite stories comes from the Civil War. There were several draft riots in New York. During one, a mob marched down the street to burn down the New York Times. Now, you normally think of the NY Times as a Democratic Party paper and incredibly 'anti-gun,' but in the Civil War, the NY Times was ardently Republican and the editor in chief personally manned the hand-crank of one of three Gatling guns. The editor was not about to let HIS paper get ransacked. He had the 1st story covered in wet newspaper and stared down the protesters over the barrel of a gun. The mob took one look at that editor and decided to burn down another abolitionist newspaper (the New York Tribune) instead.

One of the coolest things about the book is the binding. For about $10 on Amazon, you get a nicely bound hardback. The pages are nice and thick and have a good texture to it. The coolest part is the cover. It has a set of grains to it and when you pick the book up just the right way, it feels like the foregrip of an AK.

My biggest gripe about the book was the photographs. Only about half of them follow the book, while the rest seem like a random allotment from a stockphoto site. I know that Chivers could have done better. He has an awesome blog with all sorts of great photos he's taken in war zones. Check out this post on Rebel Graffiti of Muamar Qadafi.

Looters vs. NOPD: a table

2011-07-30T10:25:00.006-06:00

Looters	NOPD
Looted Wal-Mart	Looted Wal-Mart
“Sniper fire” (really a Relief Valve)	Long range, deadly fire
“Raping Babies”	Raping children
Body count: Looters shot 1 cop in the head (survived)	Body Count: Still counting (1 conviction so far, probably a few more soon, maybe a lot more)
Rapes: 2 confirmed sexual assaults in Superdome, others elsewhere	Rapes: Equipped and ready to go

Next time a storm runs this way, here's a humble suggestion for the governor's office: issue additional orders to shoot NOPD on sight.

UPDATE- NOPD vs. TUPD gunbattle. Nobody hit, despite both officers being "expert" firearm-wielders.*

Another thing NOPD loves doing along with criminals: stealing guns:

*- The article was a little unclear as to whether it was just NOPD firing or the NOPD and TUPD exchanging rounds.

Deepwater Horizon Investigation Updates

2011-07-22T13:16:00.003-06:00

There's been a multitude of investigations into the Deepwater Horizon / Macondo Blowout and I figure I'd summarize where we're at.

There's broad agreement between all the reports on the facts (with a few minor exceptions), but each one puts different emphasis on which actions were most important.

Transocean's Report came out not too long ago. Watch this video; it's excellent.

I liked most of Transocean's report. There were only a few howlers in there. Transocean endorses the maintenance as good practice (I'm personally not so sure; scheduled maintenance is perfect for turbines {things with well defined MTBF's}, but not great for something with weird failure modes like a BOP). They also say that the AMF/"Dead Man" fired successfully within an hour of the initial blowout (doubtful, but not impossible, according to the Det Norske Veritas report), but the blind shear rams failed to seal. The DNV report said the shear rams were closed days later by ROV intervention, which TO says 'closed the rams further.' Both agree the off-center drillstring was to blame for the failure to seal. The other big howler in TO's report is the treatment of fast rescue craft.

Transocean praises the Fast Rescue Craft from the Bankston (used to pluck multiple casualties from the water), but TO never mentions that the Horizon was never fitted with a FRC mostly to save space and money. The regulations allowed them to get away with this because they designated one of their large, slow, unwieldy lifeboats as their rescue craft, despite the fact that they are incapable of performing an injured swimmer pickup. There are some drawbacks of FRC's, but for a vessel the size of the Horizon, in my opinion as an engineer, the omission constitutes a design blunder. Had the Damon Bankston not been on the scene, there would be more than 11 dead.

USCG/BOEMRE almost finished, but won't meet deadline

The National Academy of Engineering has a draft report out, but the final report is still being worked on.

The Chemical Safety Board has another investigation they're working on. Note that they've gotten very, very little cooperation from anyone offshore, because nobody wants the CSB to have purview over offshore. The CSB is a funny little organization. They've got no enforcement powers, their reports are generally not (directly) admissible as evidence in courts, but they're packed with some really brilliant PHD's and do wonderful reconstructions of events:

CSB Video of Texas City.

I love engineering disaster books. Love 'em. I picked up the book the CSB head put together about Texas City and was so disgusted with BP's management I couldn't finish it, that's how in-depth it was.

More notes:

✭ WHOI Examines the Plumes

✭ BP's Company Man excused from testifying for "medical reasons"

But medical records kept under seal....

All of these investigations reaching slightly different conclusions is a GOOD thing. It means we'll actually learn something and the 11 lives weren't lost for nothing.

Jury Duty - Impressions

2011-07-22T12:53:00.004-06:00

A couple weeks ago, I had the honor (?) to serve Orleans Parish criminal Jury Duty.

A few quick notes:
* I had many people warn me about how disorganized and chaotic the system was, but I have to say, on the whole, it was fairly well organized. Parking was no problem. One gripe: it seemed like the jurors had to arrive earlier than the judges, who would trickle in hours after the jurors.
* I brought plenty to read and needed it all. I was very surprised at the prevalance of E-readers/Nooks/Kindles/etc. Far more people were using them than I thought.
* A constant complaint during the Voire Dire was NOPD. Juror after juror would say, "I'm sick and tired of picking up the paper and seeing some officer under indictment for murder, rape, etc." I appreciate that it's actually fairly difficult to 'prove beyond a reasonable doubt' that someone is guilty. Case after case, for better or for worse, depends on the testimony of a single officer and the conviction rate will rise and fall based off NOPD's reputation first and foremost. Check out this report from The Lens for an idea of what people look at NOPD as.
* There was an extremely large contingent (>1/3 of the jury pool) that openly advocated, at a minimum, marijuana legalization. The Voire Dire for drug cases was far more involved that it should have been. The prosecutions spent way too much time trying to pick out anyone who may have thought about smoking a joint one time. On the flip side, defense attorneys spent their time trying to get the jury most likely to result in an acquittal / were most uncomfortable with the thought of judging someone else. I personally feel that the jury should be closer to a representation of society and then take your chances and present your case from there. If society is skeptical of drug busts, than the average jury should reflect that.
* Fortunately, the entire time, I was only picked for 1 jury and that guy pled guilty at the start of the trial. One group of my fellow jurors had to sit through the trial of an NOPD officer who eventually pled guilty to raping his step-daughter. From what I heard after the trial finished, that was a seriously messed up case.

For all of its flaws, it's hard to think of a better system than trial by jury. It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do for now.

Further reading: New Orleans juries aren't voting 'guilty' too often, analysis shows

City Hall gets liquored up

2011-07-20T19:22:00.001-06:00

Tales of the Cocktail, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

For Tales of the Cocktail.

Game of Thrones

2011-07-19T05:53:00.003-06:00

Game of Thrones, the TV show is done for the season. To fill the time (an get into some fiction, for a change), I've picked up the books. I've finished Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings and started A Storm of Swords.

The books are pretty good. I've never read about a character I've wanted to hate more than the little impudent whelp Joffrey. (MINOR SPOILER, Highlight to read: Joffrey takes a crossbow to a crowd of people begging for bread.)

To get more of your fix of Game of Thrones, check out First Draft's awesome commentary. Wired: Call the Banners goes through a bit of the strategy of the characters (by the Danger Room blog guys). Be warned: the Wired article has a few spoilers.

And now, here's Joffrey getting bitch slapped to close:

Tulane Engineering Updates

2011-07-08T13:44:00.006-06:00

"Tulane Breeds a New Kind of Engineer" (Apologies in advance for ABC26's horrible ads; turn down the volume at first)

*************************

I found this Interview with Tulane Science and Engineering Dean Altiero. Some snippets:

There are task forces in place looking into several potential programs, including Computer Science, Geological Engineering, and Human Factors Engineering. Of these, the plan for Computer Science is the most developed at this point.
...
[on the return of the computer science major] The longer term plan is for a full undergraduate major within five years.

*************************

Tulane Civil Engineering grad pilots the final shuttle. Doug Hurley went to Tulane on a NROTC scholarship and eventually became an astronaut, along with his wife.

*************************
UPDATE:
Tulane vows to bring on-campus football back. Dickson said he and the university refuses to strap itself with a mountain of debt to build facilities.

The Balloonist

2011-07-06T16:35:00.001-06:00

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost.

She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted: 'Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don't know where I am..'

The man below replied, 'You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.'

'You must be an Engineer,' said the balloonist.

'I am,' replied the man, 'how did you know?'

'Well,' answered the balloonist, 'everything you have told me is probably technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip by your talk.'

The man below responded, 'You must be in Management.'

'I am,' replied the balloonist, 'but how did you know?'

'Well,' said the man, 'you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my f**king fault.'

H/T Reddit

Bunch o' Book Reviews

2011-07-03T21:14:00.014-06:00

It's been a while since I did a book review, but since I finished the P.E. exam and don't have any grad school (yet), I've been filling my time with book and depleted my "to read" pile.

Here are a whole bunch of quick reviews (with covers from Good Reads):

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.
Loved it. Exhaustive technical coverage of the making of the bomb. It teaches lots of physics and project management. I wish I had read this book when I was in college. Rhodes has a writing style I really like. I've picked up Dark Sun and The Twilight of the Bombs. I've read Twilight of the Bomb and that one covers more of the political side (although the part where the IAEA tracks down the pieces and parts of Iraq's nuclear program is fantastic). Nuclear Renewal is dated crap and is to be avoided.

Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans by James Gill.
Fantastic. A must-read to understand New Orleans history and why New Orleans society is structured the way it is. There was a speech in one of the last Treme episodes where the old plutocrat describes how each successive generation tried to keep the next one down ('until the Standard Oil men left for Houston').

One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander by Sandy Woodward.
The Falklands War was a surprisingly nasty little war that everyone has sort of forgotten about (partly because the US was incredibly embarrassed by it; the Reagan administration loved the staunchly anti-communist Junta and the Brits, of course were Robin to our Batman). Woodward gives a lot of credit to the 'Argies' ("We should have realized a country that made great Formula One drivers also made for great fighter pilots"). Had the Argentinians either waited for the British to scrap their carriers or waited for the assembled fleet to fall apart from rust and overdue boiler maintenance, they would have won.

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 by Leo Marks.
Candice read it and then got me to read it. It's all about SOE's operations and field ciphers. Note that you always hear about Bletchley Park's cryptography, but never allied codes (except for maybe the Navajo codetalkers); that's because the allied codes were crap. One of the German cryptographers wrote a book about "Operation North Pole." The book itself is a bit frustrating at first. There's a lot of discussion about the confusing nature of SOE's command hierarchy. Leo Marks doesn't really understand it (which is the point), but it slows the beginning down. A lot of reviewers also thought it was way too technical, but I thought that was the best part of the book (explaining WOK's and one-time-pads). A very sad ending as well.

The Control of Nature by John McPhee.
I firmly believe that all engineers should read 1 'engineering disaster'-type book per year. I thought that To Engineer Is Human would do it, but I hated the explanation of fatigue failure, so I gave up on the book and moved on. I found the Control of Nature thanks to XKCD and loved it. Like a combination of Rising Tide, Bayou Farewell, and Inviting Disaster. It covers 3 topics: the Atchafalaya/Old River Control Structure, volcanic eruptions in Iceland, and debris flow in Los Angeles. The only drawback was the analogies (5 million gallons per minute is like ______) droned on too many times and I didn't like some of them.

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer*.
A French/German kid from Alsace-Loraine enlists into the Grossdeuchland Division of the Wermacht. You rarely read histories of the losing army. This is another one Candice got me to read. This is, despite 50 years and the stumbling block of translation, one of the greatest war accounts ever written. Starkly anti-war. Almost the entire book is the long, slow retreat from Stalingrad. You'll be reading the book and you'll get to a part that really just reaches out and grabs you and shakes you. In one part of the book, he remarks how reading war accounts shouldn't be 'in the comfort of your own home, in a nice cozy chair, but instead in a field, cold, starving, tired, standing for hour after hour.'

UPDATE- More random thoughts.

On The Control of Nature: geologists must get pretty cocky around engineers. Geologists study mountain chains being worn down by erosion and here are the engineers proposing 'taming' a river.

On Silk and Cyanide: There's a great quote where Marks is visited by another cryptographer and they talk about political matters and then, as Marks writes, "He paid me the greatest compliment: he got technical." LOVE THAT QUOTE!

_______________
* There's a little controversy about Sajer. Some think the book is a forgery, but I don't find that view very credible, although Sajer admits that it's more of an emotional book than a strictly factual reference. Guy is apparently still alive in Paris.

Happy 4th

2011-07-03T21:14:00.012-06:00

Videos of the day

2011-07-02T13:38:00.003-06:00

Samuel L. Jackson reads "Go the F*ck to Sleep".

Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about NASA's recent changes and future.

How to make Vacuum tubes by hand

"This is going to be a terrible day; I have no one to hang!"

2011-06-26T13:53:00.008-06:00

I've known quite a lot about my mom's side of the family for a while. I only really knew one of my grandparents. My grandfather had gone on a genealogy kick a while back and filled in most of that side of the family, but my dad never liked talking about his family.

I read Ge(neal)ogist on Maitri's site and decided to interrogate my dad (no waterboarding needed, but that was considered). Here are some of the responses

* What is your earliest memory?
My father and his parents were driving back to Carrolton, MS when a tornado came down and moved the car 100 feet. There was no damage and they drove on.

* What were your [father's] grandparents like?
Paternal Grandfather (deceased)
Paternal Grandmother (very very old, never knew that well) Known as Big Momma
Maternal Grandparents - Emma and William Bluford Vance. My dad knew them very well, because they were still living and my grandmother would drop my dad by their place from time to time. My dad never really liked, them, though. Bluford had a law degree from Vanderbilt, but never practiced law. Instead, he became Sheriff of Carrolton, MS. I've found this article describing the last legal hanging in Carrolton, MS. You see, this was one of Bluford's first hangings.

There was a mood for lynching, but McDougal’s family insisted the case be tried. Caught in June 1914, Myers was appointed an attorney, J.W. Conger. Oct. 31 at the Carrollton courthouse, a jury convicted Myers. Fifth Circuit Judge James A. Teat sentenced Myers to be hanged Dec. 11 by Sheriff W. Bluford Vance.

Conger didn’t file an appeal.

The day of the hanging was apparently a celebrated occasion.

Bluford used to love his hangings (although he didn't care for little things like trials). Bluford used to remark every morning, "This is going to be a terrible day; I have no one to hang!" He would sometimes find someone to hang. My dad was once brought to a hanging by Bluford; my dad did not think it was a very grandfatherly move.

Bluford became a millionaire off bribes from bootleggers (in a dry county). The money was lost to gambling later on (or so I've heard).

* What were your parents like?
My Dad's Father- Used to like to sit around and read a lot. Very literate, smart. Liked Football. Went to Ole Miss and got a degree in Civil Engineering. Worked on the Manhattan Project*.

My Dad's Mother- A gifted pianist, once taught Mose Allison, went to Juilliard, wanted to be concert pianist, but then got pregnant. My dad hated taking lessons from her.

* What are you proudest of in your life?
Answered the lowest point: Dad was going crawfishing with friends, they stopped at Schweggman's to get chicken necks (bait), the line was too long, so my dad tried to just shoplift, but got caught. "Getting caught stealing chicken necks is about as low as a man can get."

That's it for now. Thought it was interesting, so I'd post it. It's also amazing the genealogical resources out there these days.

* One of the things that always confused me growing up was why was my dad born in eastern Tennessee, despite his whole family being from the Greenwood area. Now I know. I don't know exactly what he did (a topic for future research), but I've been told by family friends it was mostly roads and bridges in eastern TN.

Nuclear Weapons Testing

2011-06-17T21:35:00.002-06:00

After the introduction, the next 5 minutes of the video is an animation of global nuclear explosions through history (over 2,000).

I've been reading through Richard Rhodes' fantastic series of nuclear history. I've read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and I'm rapidly working my way through the "Twilight of the Bomb" book. I've got "Dark Sun" and will get to "Arsenals of Folley." Richard Rhodes is a fantastic writer and a great researcher. The first book, about Trinity, Little Boy, and Fat man, was written in the early 80's, and the last book was published just last year. That's an amazing stretch of attention to one topic.

Just wanted to post the video for now.

Molleresque

2011-06-12T16:41:00.002-06:00

Molleresque, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

"Whiz Kid Turns 40" by Jan Moller

A positively Molleresque article from the Times-Pic. You know, the last guy the paper liked calling a 'Whiz Kid" is now a "broken, humiliated man" in the federal pokey.

Hmm, I wonder where this might lead....

Drips and discharges - 11 June 2011

2011-06-11T09:28:00.002-06:00

Oil industry news.

✭Transocean raps USCG Report. Wait until you see the actual Transocean report before you believe anything that Transocean says about the USCG report, but I will say this: all of these separate investigations is a GOOD thing.

✭ NTSB Report on PHI Helo crash

I remember this crash in S. Louisiana a couple of years ago. Turns out it was a bird strike w/unrated_ non-OEM window

✭ Cascade-Chinook Chain Failure and discussion from P.E.

✭ Louisiana a giant petro-state? State-level regulators in the pocket of lobbyists

✭ Unions moving offshore? Also includes a little history about the last time unions did a big push offshore.

✭ Leviathan Brine Blowout? Lots of different types of blowouts (crude oil, like Macondo, Fracking fluid, like the recent one in PA, and now brine). A blowout is simply a severe underbalance between mudweight and reservoir pressure.

✭BOEMRE Drilling Checklist. Used for approval process of new drilling permits. A remarkable amount of cooperation and communication between regulators and industry.

✭gCaptain commentary on USCG Deepwater Horizon Report . I don't agree with some of the gCaptain comments, but it's interesting reading.

✭When does "Stop Work Authority" actually get used? Focuses on Oil industry. Good example of "human factors engineering."

✭ The Forgotten 11 . The Deepwater Horizon dead.

✭ Tanker Mogul at center of oil picefixing investigation . I'm not sure about this one. Speculators DEFINITELY manipulate the market in the SHORT TERM, but in the long term, the conventional wisdom is they make the market more efficient.

✭ Specific regulatory changes asked for (mainly Maritime Licensing). Another one from gCaptain.

✭ BP Survivor wants all rigs reflagged as US Ships . One of those "why didn't we do that years ago"-ideas.

Link Dump - 11 June 2011

2011-06-11T08:55:00.008-06:00

Engineering:

✭ Calamities: Engineering Design Failures
A column by an MIT engineering professors that goes through engineering failures (mostly materials failures) and their post-accident investigation.

✭ Michael Bay’s Scenario « xkcd
Great discussion from XKCD about the rising levees, with a plug for McPhee's "Control of Nature."

Evil lawyers:

✭NYT: At Well-Paying Law Firms, Some Going cheap in Legal. Wonder why some firms took so long to try to cut costs in legal, while cutting their engineering staffs to the bone? Maybe they thought the consequences of crappy engineering wouldn't be as bad as crappy corporate defense. Ask that to BP and see how they respond.

✭ NOLA.com : Sen. Vitter's spokesman dares Obama administration to prosecute his boss Umm, Mann Act (aka- the "White Slavery Act" with its 10-year statute of limitations) anyone?

YouTube:

✭ YouTube - ‪Bear Grylls turns a dead seal into a wet suit‬‏

Bear Grylls makes homemade wetsuit: Umm..

✭ YouTube - buran briefing. Bonus points for 80's era Soviet music.

✭ She texted. We kicked her out. : Blog : Austin : Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Note to self: if ever in Austin, go to this theater:

Miscellaneous:

✭ Joplin Sat Images

✭ NYT: Ex-Mossad Chief Meir Dagan Slams Gov't When Mossad think you're bloodthirsty...

✭IEEE on Chernobyl and Fukushima radiation deaths Verdict: It's VERY hard to put a precise number on it

UPDATE- a few more:

✭ The First Item on my Christmas List...

✭ Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation . From 1971 to 2001, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in English declined by 20 percent, but the number awarded in math and statistics declined by 55 percent. The only areas of the liberal arts that saw an increase in BAs awarded were biology and psychology—and this at a time when aggregate enrollment expanded by something like 75 percent.

✭ 5 Ignored WikiLeaks Hits of 2011.

Most Prominent Politicians: State Edition - Louisiana

2011-06-08T16:07:00.007-06:00

Lawyers Guns and Money have been running a series of posts about the 'most prominent politicians in each state.' The list is going in order of the state's admission to the union. The list is weighted towards national impact and historical impact (away from, but not excluding, recent [post-2000] politicians). They've made it up to New Jersey, so it'll be a while before they get to Louisiana.

The list also tends to rank the top 3 and then list a few other 'also-rans.'

It got me thinking about what Louisiana's list might look like. There is the (excellent) Louisiana Political Museum, in Winfield, LA, but I'll distill it down a bit and use the metrics of LGM (national significance and historical characters).

#1, 2, AND 3- Huey Long. No doubt whatsoever. T. Harry Williams still has the best history of, love him or hate him, the most important man in Louisiana's history. I'll also group all the Longs into Huey (they were all imitations, compared to the genuine article).

I give him all top 3 slots and leave the rest to a list in historical order.

W. C. C. Claiborne- The first Louisiana Governor, important in the lead up to the Battle of New Orleans and his handling of the Haitian Emigres.
Zachary Taylor- The only Louisianian who made it to the presidency. He was the last president who actively owned slaves during his presidency (mainly through marriage). I've always found him an interesting character because, despite owning slaves, he was generally hostile to slave interests (probably because of his travels in the military) and his very short term in office (due to abrupt illness and death).
Henry C. Warmouth- "Carpetbagger" governor who did build up quite a formidable block of emancipated black voters. Huey Long secretly admired his political cunning.
Murphy Foster- NOT Mike Foster, Jr. Murphy Foster was one of a line of Conservative/"Reform" governors in the post-Reconstruction era, but he was the only one that actually practiced what he preached when it came to gambling. He shut down the NOTORIOUS Louisiana State Lottery Company (unlike his "reformer" predecessors that condemned the Lottery when campaigning and then exploited it to levels that even the carpetbaggers would consider obscene.
Dutch Morial- The only black politician on my list, partly because of his Civil Rights record prior to his mayorship. PBS Pinchback wasn't around long, and Bill Jefferson, frankly, did nothing of note with his ample talents. $Bill was a brilliant Harvard Law grad, worked his way up to become a senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means committee and a close ally of Bill Clinton and all that talent went to waste. He used it to enrich his family and local political allies (like Eddie Jordan).
Hale Boggs- Short-tenured Speaker of the House
Bob Livingston- Short-tenured Speaker of the House.
Edwin Edwards- Louisiana's only 3-term governor. See Huey Long.
Mary Landrieu- The most national significance of any of the Landrieu's (mainly for being on the Senate Appropriations Committee).

That's my list, given the slant towards 'national significance.' Am I missing anyone? What would your list look like?

Taking Responsibility

2011-06-07T21:12:00.002-06:00

Taking responsibility. A foreign concept to certain businesses today. A copy of this note should be hammered onto the forehead of ever single BP executive.

Happy Memorial Day

2011-05-30T19:07:00.001-06:00

Macondo-related Observations

2011-05-30T07:57:00.004-06:00

I've been thinking over the whole Deepwater Horizon/Macondo/Moratorium mess and here are a few thoughts.

The Long-string vs. liner tieback issue made no difference in the blowout and the number of centralizers had very little effect, BUT the entire episode is very illustrative of BP's management. Time and time again, BP was putting things together at the last second with little oversight on the big picture.

BP's internal emails are the most illustrative of the anarchy that reigned in BP's organization:
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"One of BP‘s top cement experts also described ―the typical Halliburton
profile‖ as ―operationally competent and just good enough technically to get by." - Ref. (PDF)
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“Are you going to fire me?” - Ref.
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You seem to love being the victim. Everything is someone else’s fault. You criticize nearly everything we do on the rig but don’t seem to realize that you are responsible for every(thing) we do on the rig.

You seem to think that running is more important that well control.

... (Sims, the only BP engineer with a PE, to John Guide*, - Ref.
-------
Out of all those emails, though, this pair takes the cake:
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I believe there is a bladder effect on the mud below an annular preventer as we discussed. As we know the pressure differential was approximately 1400-1500 psi across an 18 ¾″ rubber annular preventer, 14.0 SOBM plus 16.0 ppg [pounds per gallon] Spacer in the riser, seawater and SOBM below the annular bladder. Due to a bladder effect, pressure can and will build below the annular bladder due to the differential pressure but cannot flow – the bladder prevents flow, but we see differrential pressure on the other side of the bladder.

Now consider this. The bladder effect is pushing 1400-1500 psi against all of the mud below, we have displaced to seawater from 8,367′ to just below the annular bladder where we expect to have a 2,350 psi negative pressure differential pressure due to a bladder effect we may only have a 850-950 psi negative pressure until we lighten the load in the riser.

When we displaced the riser to seawater, then we truly had a 2,350 psi differential and negative pressure. - Robert Kaluza, BP Night Company Man on the Deepwater Horizon who was on duty when the well blew, explaining the "bladder effect"
---
Mike,

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Regards,

Pat - response by Patrick O'Bryan, Drilling VP for BP North America - Ref.
-------

When everyone was trying to get off the rig to safety, nobody had a knife to cut the painter line that connected the liferaft to the rig. The liferaft was tethered to a sinking ship, nobody could find the safety knife on the raft, and BP's "Strict No-Knife Policy" was the only corporate policy of BP's that actually worked. There have been stabbings offshore (there are some surly characters offshore), but the "Strict No-Knife Policy" is typical big company bullshit that needs to stop. Every time I've been offshore, I've had a knife on hand (Leatherman Wave).

Another thing that's disgusted me: according to the testimony of multiple individuals, the USCG-certified Master on the Horizon told other crewmembers to leave an injured man behind on the rig before he jumped into the waters alone. No way to put it nicely; that was pretty shitty on his part and I have a feeling the Coasties will string his ass up for it.

Fortunately, a few things DID actually work. There were a few individuals who really stuck their neck out, for example, the Chief Mate (who kept one of the lifeboats on the rig until it was full to capacity, despite howling protests of those already inside) and the Chief Electrician (who, along with others, rescued the injured man mentioned above and kept his liferaft from drifting into the fire).

The US-flagged M/V Damon Bankston crew really are heroes. The more and more I read about the incident, the more I'm convinced that if it weren't for their quick response, there would be more than 11 dead. The Damon Bankston also had one INCREDIBLY important tool the Deepwater Horizon lacked: a fast rescue craft. The Deepwater Horizon tagged one of their large, slow, ungainly 75-man lifeboats as their "rescue craft" (in case of man overboard, etc.). The Damon Bankston had a dedicated, quick-launching, high performance (several hundred horsepower in a tiny craft) FRC that was also capable of rescuing incapacitated swimmers in rough waters** (a capability the Deepwater Horizon lacked). Every offshore platform I've ever been on has had a FRC (and all were constructed before the Deepwater Horizon). Now, there are some differences in a platform and a DP-rig, but still, the Horizon SHOULD have been designed with a FRC, in my professional opinion.

The US Coast Guard also blasted the flag-state of the Marshall Islands for lax enforcement of standards (which also turned out to have a few holes in them). The "flags of convenience" (nicknamed "Flags of Corporate Convenience") concept has never really set well with me. What I also don't like is there's been a push to drop Panama, who has slightly increased their regulatory requirements, for countries with even less regulation. I'm especially appalled by the idea of landlocked countries (like Mongolia) regulating merchant ships. The Russians and the Chinese lately seem to like Bolivia and Mongolia for some of their merchant ships. It just doesn't seem right to have a Marshall Islands-flagged ship sitting in US waters, when the ship was had never operated outside US waters and would NEVER operate in Marshall Islands territory. Note there's a USCG-led QUALSHIP initiative to up the standards on Flags of Convenience, but I'm not sure how effective it has been. Why not just use US-flagged drilling vessels (or at least require 30% or so of them be US-flagged)? I can name at least 1 modern US-flagged deepwater drilling rig in operation.

The qualifications of the DNV experts called in to investigate the BOP vs. the qualifications of BP's experts called in to knock the DNV BOP report was interesting. The DNV experts had an incredibly impressive resume. One of the leaders had a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Vandy and the other leader worked on the King's Cross Investigation. The King's Cross fire was a fairly standard trash fire that suddenly and unexpectedly flashed over and killed 31 people. The ins and outs of why was new to science (the Trench Effect, related to the Coandă effect) and it was even written up in my Fluid Dynamics textbook in college. It was literally an investigation so thorough it rewrote the textbooks. BP on the other hand put up one guy who had 'a year or two of engineering school before dropping out and working on rigs for 30+ years.' The expert was also a longtime contractor, not an actual BP employee. BP's expert completely flubbed basic materials science questions (that any senior in engineering could answer) to the point where the board stopped asking him questions. The BP expert wasn't a moron and he did have some interesting points about the DNV report, but nothing that undermined the DNV report in any significant way.

The damage thus far from the Moratorium has been greatly exaggerated, but I'll still be waiting to see what happens a few years down the line. A lot of these big deepwater projects have years-long lead times. Also, note that not every permit was actually drilled in the past and there always been a flow and ebb tide with drilling. Somedays, the rig count is high and rig dayrates are on the rise. Sometimes, everyone packs up and heads somewhere else or stacks the rigs in storage. I will say that the biggest benefit of US offshore oil isn't necessarily the jobs or the tax revenue (although those are important), but the effect on the Balance of Payments. Petroleum purchases are a HUGE portion of the US trade deficit and a big drag on the dollar (on the same level as the budget deficit?). Petroleum purchases are so huge, you often see disclaimers like 'non-petroleum trade deficit' in the fine print of charts in the WSJ, etc.

There's a quote in one of my favorite engineering disasters books, Inviting Disaster by Chiles. It goes something like 'operating on the cutting edge of technology is privilege conveyed on high-tech industries and those industries must protect and nourish that trust if they expect to stay in business and not have their franchise closed after too many failures dumped in societies lap.'*** That's a lesson the offshore industry must heed, or face the consequences. More costly errors and near misses cannot continue.

______________
* The de facto leader on the Macondo well. Some video of John Guide testifying here.

** Note that the waters were completely calm the night of the blowout, but the Damon Bankston did have to fish out incapacitated swimmers, a capability the Deepwater Horizon's lifeboats would have been unable to perform alone.

*** It's near the end of the book. I loaned out my copy right now, so I can't nail it word for word at the moment, but I'm sure that's the gist of it.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty

2011-05-26T17:34:00.003-06:00

Guilty, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

I got the opportunity to be in the courtroom today. I was a little late for the reading of the verdict.

I've been thinking about it and the one thing that still makes me a little sad: out of everything Meffert, Nagin, and St. Pierre did, nothing was more evil than the Interoperability Grant.

One thing we learned from the I-35W Bridge Collapse was what a difference a good, interoperable communications system can make. Despite the fact a damned interstate fell into the Mississippi and dozens were in danger, only 13 people died. Dozens were swiftly rescued from the water by adept, well-coordinated rescue work. Minnesota had the system that New Orleans lacked after Katrina.

Of all the charges today, not a single one related to the Interoperability Grant. In all likelyhood, nobody will ever to go to jail for it. Think of the lives in Katrina that could have been saved.

"On the websites"

2011-05-14T11:02:00.003-06:00

In honor of C-Ray:

Labou via Hulu.

Note C-Ray's speech at about 1:24-1:25 or so.

"...and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!"

Check out AZ for the juicy details from the St. Pierre trial. Some of the best blogging I've ever read.

UPDATE- Much more to read at my new favorite site, Slabbed

The end of the line for the Pike House

2011-05-10T20:08:00.002-06:00

No more Pike rape den, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

The Pike rape den dies an ironic death: turned into a police station.

Backstory.

A picture is worth a thousand words

2011-05-06T15:53:00.011-06:00

A few interesting graphics I've come across recently (click to enlarge):

That's not the tail rotor of a Blackhawk helicopter. Backstory here, from Wired.

Top Oilfields in the US, by proven reserves. From The Oil Drum.

Growth Spurt. From NSPE Magazine.

Also: Louisiana #45 on Science and Technology Development Index: (PDF Charts).

BONUS: Macondo, 1 Year Later. The Big Picture, Boston Globe. Don't forget to click the images to see the before/after.

UPDATE- 1 more:
From DNV Macondo Report:

Osama

2011-05-01T21:55:00.002-06:00

Project Truck Update: a Patch for Patches

2011-04-17T17:18:00.002-06:00

The weather was great this weekend and no festivals, so I went over and got a little done on Patches.

There have been a few holes in the floor of the cab from the get go.

I'd like to have these taken care of before I'm leaning on them replacing the wiring harness. After removing the gas tank, I first tried grinding the holes out and then welding in metal.

That didn't work out too well. I just burned straight through the sheet metal. I then cut out a square patch of rotten metal, cut a replacement from the thickest sheet metal I had on hand (which was STILL thinner than what they used building Patches) and welded it up strong enough for Paul Prudhomme to jump on.

From the mailbag...

2011-04-15T19:58:00.003-06:00

Errol Williams, a photo by Noladishu on Flickr.

Only in New Orleans does the guy who comes up with you tax bill ask you to a $500/plate dinner.

More background here.

Notes on the 2011 Tulane Engineering Forum

2011-04-15T18:47:00.003-06:00

I got a chance to attend the 2011 Tulane Engineering Forum and the forum continues to grow. This year drew over 600 engineers. The day before I went, one of my coworkers teased me that going to an engineering conference hosted by Tulane was like going to an easter egg hunt hosted by the Ayatollah in Tehran*.

One of the things I've really come to like about the TEF's are that I'll pick up on some really nice phrases/wordplays/sayings. Some of my favorites from this year:
* "Worry Budget"
* "Assumed-Away" (dealing with risk)
* "Science as a contact sport" (engineering as well, sometimes)
* "Compartmentalized engineers" (missing out on the big picture)
* "Dynamic Regulation" (constantly in-flux regulatory rules that are poison for projects that take 10 years to develop) {Another quote from the same guy, "[MMS] served our industry well for a number of years"}
* "Everyone supports it, until you put your finger on a map" (coastal restoration)
* "Engineering meets public health meets Indiana Jones" (Engineers Without Borders)
* And my favorite of the year: "Unavoidable uncertainty in complex systems" (talking about scientists dealing with the public on complex topics)

This year's theme was the Macondo blowout. I attended the Morning Plenary Session (which included a dispersant expert from XOM, a ChemE professor from LSU, an MBA from Tulane, and the head of research for ULL), but ended up attending mostly coastal restoration and infrastructure lectures. My personal favorite lecture of the day was given by Dr. Allisha Renfro who pinch-hit for a presenter who was out. She did a science and engineering postmortem on 3 coastal projects: MR-GO**, the West Bay Diversion, and the Myrtle Grove Pulsed Sediment Diversion (which was held up as a model for future projects).

__________
* Maybe he read this article?

** Even if you ignore all the "secondary" effects (levee failures, wetlands loss, etc.), MR-GO was a MASSIVE failure on its primary objective: serve commerce. Taxpayers ended up subsidizing MR-GO (from its opening in 1968 to its closure recently) by $20,000/vessel, clearly a massive failure in its primary objective (lower transportation costs). There was also plenty of science, engineering, and economic expertise that warned against the project before it was ever begun, but the powers that be pressed on anyways.

Last year's forum notes.

Lawyers try to make a fool out of an engineer, get Pi on face

2011-04-04T17:07:00.013-06:00

Today brought the return of the USCG/BOEMRE Hearings on the loss of the Deepwater Horizon. For an example of what they're going for, check out the Ocean Ranger Report or the Cullen Report [PDF] from the Piper Alpha disaster. Unfortunately, this BOEMRE/USCG investigation, instead of being a technical probing of a failure has become a legal sparing match. I want to focus on one little incident from today's testimony.

Throughout the whole inquiry, the lawyers for the various parties have totally flubbed even minor technical details. There's one BP lawyer in particular who looks like he's never had a single math course beyond Prob Stat 101 that was required for his undergrad degree. Today, there was an exchange between the lead project manager and lead investigator for the DNV BOP report and several of the lawyers. The Times-Pic reported about various "uncertainties" about the massive DNV Report (Volume 1, PDF). I've gone through both volumes and the report stands up pretty strong. There might be a little detail here and there that could be better, but nothing compared to the concerns these lawyers are broaching.

The lawyers then began attacking the credibility of the lead project manager. They asked him if, before the Deepwater Horizon incident, if the lead project manager had ever seen a BOP firsthand. The lead project manager replied no, and the lawyers seized on this as evidence of "government incompetence." What shocked me most of all is the "Times-Picayune Staff" decided to feature this drivel as their "comment of the day" including the claim that Det Norske Veritas, which certifies various marine equipment (including BOP's), knows nothing about BOP's:

To hire an engineering firm that has never "seen or heard of" a BOP to conduct a forenic [sic] investigation on this equipment is rediculous. [sic]

Commenter "edjn50," from Folsom, LA, is obviously a product of Louisiana's woefully underfunded education system.

Do a little Googling and you'll learn that Neil Thompson, the project manager, has extensive experience in several fields and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Vanderbilt. The lead PM and investigator are just the head of a large team, which includes experts in Finite Element Analysis and BOP's.

We'll see how well the DNV report holds up, but these lawyers are obviously trying to do whatever they can to limit their company's legal exposure. The worst incident of the day came from that same idiot BP lawyer who questioned Dr. Thompson on what elastic deformation was. The idiot BP lawyer claimed that "nobody in the oil industry has ever heard of elastic deformation." Fucking dunce! I'm in the oil biz and I learned about it in my sophomore-level Materials Science course. It's on page 117 of my textbook. I can only sympathize with that poor engineer trying to teach bloody English majors mechanical engineering while under oath. Flummoxing your opponent with your total ignorance might be an effective legal strategy, but is no way to run an investigation of an engineering disaster.

Idealized Plastic and Elastic Deformation regions in metals, from Wikipedia

UPDATE- Also, one more thing worthy of interest: Chron article about new BP emails. Note Sims was the only BP engineer who actually had a P.E.

UPDATE 2- Godfrey [Annoying BP lawyer] suggested that nobody in the industry had ever seen such "elastic buckling" of a drill pipe before. But Thompson said it's a commonly understood concept of physics. Note that drill string is called a string precisely because of the elastic nature of the elongated sections when joined together. They hang like a string from the derrick. The elasticity is what allows for directional drilling, for example.

UPDATE 3- Rigzone weighs in on the "unqualified opinion." More english-major foot-in-mouth.

Also: more Gulf of Mexico concerns. Petrobras, which had an interesting kablewey 10 years ago, has some problems on the first FPSO in the Gulf. Note that I've been concerned in the past at how it would handle a hurricane.

UPDATE 4- Transcripts posted. One of the investigators worked on the King's Cross investigation. Very impressive. BP's rebuttal witness, despite some 40 years of BOP operational experience, flubbed some basic materials science questions. Not very impressive.

Tulane plowing millions into football?

2011-04-02T17:30:00.007-06:00

Cowen Pledges Greater Football Funding - The Hullabaloo. Excellent Article.

This is a curious little announcement. I've asked around and what the administration is thinking is they've done research. Their surveys indicate that there's a strong correlation between football programs and alumni donations. Good foobtall programs have a high rate of alumni donorship, while bad football programs generally correlate with poor alumni donorship. That's what I've heard from a couple of different sources on the administration's thinking. The overall plan is to pump up the football program (which loses a couple million dollars a year) so that it at least stands on its own feet and the halo effect of a better football team would pump up alumni donations. At least, that's the plan.

I'll add a few bits of history. Tulane was a founding member of the SEC. They left because "the board thought they could make more money as an independent, like Notre Dame."

Tulane also had Sugar Bowl Stadium (seating 80,000+), which they tore down and shifted over to the Superdome. That one is actually fairly understandable at the time. They didn't have the money to do the extensive renovations the stadium needed and there was this big, shiny new stadium downtown. Unfortunately, the Superdome is the absolute worst venue possible for a small football program. 20,000 fans (a good Tulane attendance figure) are lost in the cavernous, freezing cold stadium. Note that Cowen mentions a fund-raising drive of $60 million to build an Uptown stadium. From what I'm told, it would be ~30,000 seats and be situated one of three locations: wedged into the practice field area (behind Riley Center; tight, but possible), Audubon Park, or Uptown Square, which Tulane acquired about 6 or 7 years ago. We'll see how the neighbors react if they get the money lined up and want to start construction.

I know that Cowen isn't exactly on my Christmas card list, but take a look at the track record. When Cowen arrived at campus we had a Bowden-led football team with offensive genius of Rich Rodriguez calling a potent offense, the oldest degree granting college for women (Newcomb), engineering programs so old, they dated to founding of ABET (in addition to other, smaller academic programs eliminated in the Renewal Plan), and the Princeton Review ranked Tulane #31 overall. Now, we're ranked #51 (Tulane has griped and moaned about using Katrina-tainted data for dropping it out of the top 50 {well, what about the other 19 spots...}) and we're the only top 50 {51} school without an ABET-accredited program in Computer Science (go ahead and look it up for yourself). Even LSU has (finally) gotten their CS program accredited!

I really want Tulane to do well, but we'll have to see where things are headed. I just can't help wondering if this is really the best way to spend this money.

******************************
Here's Cowen's email:

Good Morning:

It has been about six years since Katrina almost destroyed New Orleans and Tulane University. Since that time, Tulane has not only survived but has reimagined itself and become stronger academically and financially. This recovery has not been easy, but the Tulane community was determined to move forward. We have made substantial progress in achieving our academic and financial goals, which have been the primary focus of our efforts since August 29, 2005.

We are now in the stage of our renewal where we can and should continue to focus on the development and success of Tulane Athletics. Next year we will once again field 16 sports teams, fulfilling the NCAA's requirement for competing at the highest level of collegiate athletics.

We have made major commitments to our baseball, basketball and volleyball programs, with a new practice and training facility currently under construction for the latter programs and beautiful Greer Field at Turchin Stadium for our baseball team. These improvements were consistent with the university's recovering finances after Katrina and were made with our academic priorities always in mind. We are proud of what has been accomplished in athletics given all the unprecedented challenges we faced. But the task is not yet complete. Our next goal, which will be the most difficult one to accomplish, is to build a consistently successful football program.

Our vision for football is a program that opens every campaign with the talent and resources to win our division and conference and participate in post-season games - as opposed to one that has periodic winning seasons, which has been the experience at Tulane for the last five or six decades. We will not achieve this overnight, but we must begin the journey for success right now with clear and unambiguous progress made every year, starting with this coming season.

An overview of the evolving plan to accomplish this goal is outlined in The Playbook. In the months ahead we will refine our plans as we marshal the resources necessary to achieve our goals. We will build a successful football program while adhering to Tulane's philosophy of enrolling student-athletes who desire a first-rate education. Our student-athletes are committing their collegiate careers to achieve at high levels, on and off the field, and our coaches will dedicate every bit of their talent and experience to help them in their quest.

For us to be successful, it will require a true team effort -- an effort comparable to what we did after Katrina when many naysayers around the country counted us out. The journey now begins; we hope you will join us.

Have a great weekend,
Scott

UPDATE- Changed capacity figure for Sugar Bowl Stadium.

Fukushima Dai-ichi

2011-03-20T17:07:00.002-06:00

UPDATE-
Video of site:

High Res Photos.

Thinking ahead

2011-03-05T21:24:00.005-06:00

Getting back to doing a bit of posting, so I figure I'd post what's been on my mind the most.

After taking the P.E., I was wondering what to do with all of my free time. I've worked a little more on Patches (weather permitting). I've also been doing some thinking.

I've talked with a friend of mine and he said that for an engineer my age, more and more, the Master's degree is the "expected" degree. In a few years, Civil engineers will be required to have a Master's before they're allowed to sit for the P.E. This additional requirement is being pushed mainly by structural engineers. Also, from studying for the P.E., you realize how much is still out there that you really don't know and it's always nice to supplement your technical knowledge. There's also the thought of taking a few business classes.

I've signed up to go back to grad school. I've previously talked about it, but now I've signed up. I've taken the GRE (750 Quantitative; the English score doesn't matter for an engineer*) and filled out a bunch of forms to go to UNO.

One thing I will do when I go back is, as much as schedule allows, take what I'm interested in. As an undergrad, approximately 120 out of 140 hours are basically dictated to you and (especially if you're going through it in 4 years like me) it's a rush to get through.

Oh well. Back to drinking beer and bloody mary's for now.

UPDATE- Another interesting story from a coworker. He used to work for a big public utility in California. There, the engineers were encouraged to get lots of credentials. The recommended track was PE, MBA, Master's, then finally PhD. The goal was to have whatever engineer is working on a project be able to sit in front of the public service commission and beat them over the head with credentials until they got the rate increase they were looking for.

__________________
* The application should read: "Do you speak English? ... No? Well, we'll let you teach anyway if you want to anyway."

Mardi Gras 2011 - Muses vs. Krewe D'Etat

2011-03-05T20:49:00.005-06:00

We're resting a bit before the madness of tomorrow's 5 parades. We'll have to fend off the barbarian hordes (Endymion watchers) and their ladders and encampments.

One funny note: the Muses vs. Krewe D'Etat battle going on.

Krewe D'Etat Float 6, "Triple Sow Cow"

This is the float that Krewe D'Etat ran. Here's what their pamphlet said:

TRIPLE SOW COW – What’s this mooooving down the parade route? An over-stuffed, bovine figure skater? While we doubt the Swedish ice-skating master had this in mind when he created the triple sow cow, our version of this now classic move features a certain “krewe“ of whirling dervishes whose spins on things have slung mud (and ice) on many others in the past. But this time, the high-heeled mudslingers are in for the Tonya Harding treatment themselves. Mooooving targets are hard to hit, but the Dictator’s aim is true here, scoring a perfect 6.0. In addition to tossing out the high and low scores, watch for the old footwear that might also be flung from this float. Who knows, perhaps this year these full-figured skaters might even be able to witness this spectacle, rather than once again riding in our wake.

It mercilessly makes fun of the Krewe of Muses. The Muses ladies are pissed. I can't wait for the response.

UPDATE- One other little thing to think about is the background of the Krewes. Muses is a bunch of artsy women. Krewe D'Etat is basically the sons of the Momus and Comus crowd that are pissed the old line krewes don't parade anymore. That'll be funny to see as things develop.

Ich bin Ingenieur!

2010-12-30T08:54:00.001-06:00

Passed! Phew, that wait sucked.

Jason Berry: Our Own Worst Enemy

2010-12-14T17:58:00.003-06:00

Part I is up.

Here's a sample:

BrentLaliberte2 from Blackbird Media on Vimeo.

Hostilidays: Shock and Awe

2010-12-11T17:56:00.004-06:00

It's that time of year again. Horrible videos all over your Google Reader feed. Leigh, Greg, Mark and more have entries.

Here is the carpet bombing approach to the Hostilidays. Leave no awful video left un-embedded:

Rudolf's Christmas special gets an internet makeover:

Charlie Brown's Heavy Metal Christmas

Little known fact: Bon Jovi's first recording was the Star Wars Christmas Special Album

Another little known fact: the infamous special actually had a plot, as detailed on this entirely too long Wikipedia article.

The Worst Noel:

And the series of tubes brought us the 12 Days of Christmas:

Enjoy. Hope your computer doesn't melt going through all the video.

The Montara Blowout: "A failure of sensible oilfield practice 101"

2010-12-10T13:46:00.006-06:00

The Montara blowout happened in 2009 in Australia. It was 74 days before well control was re-established, but it was about an order of magnitude smaller than Macondo, so there has been much less scrutiny.

A couple of days ago, the Australian Government released their Report [PDF].

The Oil Drum has a nice summary.

Some interesting notes:
* The report placed the blame almost entirely on PTTEPAA (Thailand's Nationalized Oil Company). Numerous red flags were ignored. The government did not mince words: "the way that PTTEPAA operated the Montara Oilfield did not come within a ‘bulls roar’ of sensible oilfield practice". {Personally, I wonder how much the global shortage of experienced petroleum engineers to supervise projects has played a part in both this blowout and Macondo.}
* Because PTTEPAA is not exactly a household name and no personnel lost their lives, there's been much less attention paid than BP's Macondo Blowout. The Oil Drum says the Aussies should be paying more attention, because it was near the Great Barrier Reef and it could have been a whole lot worse.
* The proximate cause of both disasters was failure of untested cement barriers. Both cement jobs failed to achieve proper zonal isolation, both operators (PTTEPAA and BP) relied on a single barrier to protect them (removal of mud w/o a second cement plug), and failed in well intervention efforts after the well started kicking.
* The cement contractor in both Macondo and Montara: Halliburton. It's interesting to note, though, that the Australian Report completely exonerates Halliburton. {Note that there are also relatively few contractors that do downhole cement. There's Halliburton, BJ Services, Schlumberger, and that's about it. Halliburton provided all of the cement for both relief wells BP drilled, including using their infamous nitrogen-foamed cement [but only on the shallow casings; conventional cement was used to block off Macondo]}.
* The use of dispersants was discussed in the Montara report. They concluded that the use was warranted as the less of two evils.
* In both Macondo and Montara, there were good rules on the books, but nobody, government regulator (MMS) or operator (BP/PTTEPAA) looked at them. In both Macondo and Montara, government regulators would OK whatever the operators asked for in minutes. BP and PTTEPAA's casing engineers totally ignored extensive internal casing design guidelines and operated in a cavalier and ignorant mode of 'git 'er done' without actually knowing what they were doing.

Alvin's last journey

2010-12-05T08:33:00.001-06:00

To the area around the final resting place of the Deepwater Horizon...

Project Truck Update: Preparing for a facelift edition

2010-11-20T18:35:00.003-06:00

It's been a long time since I've done a project truck update.

I got back to the truck last weekend. I had neglected to disconnect the ground, so the battery was very weak from a slow leak somewhere. Also, the gasoline had evaporated out the carburetor, so I had to crank the truck enough so the mechanical fuel pump could refill the carburetor reservoir. Patches always rises from the dead eventually, though, like a true zombie.

There's some minor front end damage to the passenger side on Patches, so preping some spare parts for installation is one of my next tasks. The weather has been perfect for painting. Nice and dry.

Cracked front body panel

Here's a collection of various spare parts I've picked up, mostly for free:

I've got a spare radiator mount cleaned up and primed:

This body panel attaches to the radiator mount:

(The grille and headlights connect to it)

I ran out of time before I got to the battery tray, which is yet another item that bolts to the radiator mount:

That's the next project.

National Academy of Engineering Preliminary Report on the loss of the Deepwater Horizon

2010-11-18T20:11:00.004-06:00

NAE Report (PDF)

Excellent report. I don't have as much time as I'd like to go through it in detail, unfortunately.

A couple quick notes:
* I like how it emphasizes the importance of the delicate fracture gradient to the cementing operation. Any idiot could throw cement down a hole, but with this setup, too much cement (too heavy) would fracture the formation, lose the cement, and not seal the hole. Too little cement, no seal in the hole, boom (what happened). Hitting it right on the nose was what a well engineered cementing plan was supposed to do.
* Personnel shifting around so much is a sign that a company doesn't take something seriously. I watched the engineers testify on CSPAN back in August and I'll say that there was at least 1 engineer who looked like he knew what he was doing (also, the only one who had a P.E.). Unfortunately, he was only on the job for about 2 weeks before the well blew. Whoops.
* Training. OTJ isn't going to cut it anymore for personnel running half-billion dollar assets, drilling $100 million wells, with tens of billions of dollars in consequences for mistakes.

Update: Gullfaks C Report Finished by Statoil. Blowout averted by "sheer luck". After overbalanced drilling caused a poorly-constructed casing to crack, the well lost mud, losing control. Cuttings plugging the production screen was the only thing that stopped another blowout.

Happy Birthday, Mikhail!

2010-11-14T13:27:00.001-06:00

91 years old.

The Landrieu Party?

2010-11-03T19:57:00.003-06:00

Random observation from yesterday: Every single office of any significance in Louisiana is now held by either a Republican or a Landrieu. The Louisiana Democratic Party is practically extinct. It should be renamed the Landrieu Party.

(Yeah, there's Richmond, but he might not be around that long)

USS Kidd

2010-10-31T12:41:00.006-06:00

The day before the P.E. exam, I wanted to relax and not do any more studying. I drove to Baton Rouge, scouted out the exam site, and then entertained myself for the afternoon. I went to the Old State Capitol Museum, saw the gun that killed (?) Huey, and checked out the USS Kidd.

The Kidd is a Fletcher-class destroyer from WWII. It survived battles, a Kamikaze, post-war mass-scrappings of ships, age, and has been lovingly restored to it's WWII configuration. It has a unique anchorage that's a big part of why it's in such good condition. Half the year, the vessel floats, but it also rests during low tide on a set of blocks.

The ship dry-docks itself each year, which reduces corrosion and allows for easy maintenance of the hull. There are lots of museum ships that may soon end their lives because of corrosion (see the Olympia and the Texas).

The ship itself is an engineering marvel, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to go the day before the exam. It was built in 1942, but the ship is practically all powerplant (45-Megawatt) underneath the waterline, HUGE propellers has a top speed of 39 knots*. That's a ship that will really move! Part of the key is the "destroyer hullform":

A very narrow, tapered bow that slices through the water. It's not necessarily a great hull for heavy seas (see Typhoon Cobra), but when you want to go fast with reasonable fuel efficiency, accept no substitutes. It's a marvel of naval architecture.

I chatted with a USS Kidd veteran who was on duty at the museum for a while. I mentioned I had stayed on the Kidd when I was in scouts and I was an engineer and was taking the exam tomorrow and he said, "Oh, if you're an engineer, you'll want to see the engine room." JOY! He grabbed the key, and let me go down the ladder to the turbine room (the boiler rooms apparently are still sort of a wreck).

STEAM! VALVES! POWER!

As I left, I did have one sort of sad thought: there's a casino boat right next to the Kidd. How many more visitors does that ship get than the Kidd?

Full Flickr set here.

___________________
* 39 knots = 44.8 mph. There is some ambiguity about the exact top speed. The tour guide said 39 knots, the USS Kidd veteran said 39 knots, the USS Kidd website says 37 knots, Wikipedia lists 35-knots for the Fletcher class.

P. E. Exam Day

2010-10-30T09:08:00.004-06:00

BR River Center
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Well, yesterday I took the exam. I stayed in a hotel the night before nearby and man, Baton Rouge sure does suck.

I made sure to load up on coffee. I arrived early (they threaten you with not letting you in if you show up late) and the other test takers, being engineers, also showed up early. It was a pretty interesting sight there, all the engineers with their suitcases full of books. Wish I had taken a photo.

One nice thing: the proctors were extremely efficient and courteous. They kept the exam on time (unlike when I took the F.E.) and you didn't notice them during the exam, as it should be.

The exam was flat out hard. There's no other way of putting it. The test makers are extremely paranoid about content being posted, so I'll skip through that. I'll say that there were a few of my strengths that were completely absent from my question bank.

The morning section I was almost finished after 2 1/2 hours. There were a few questions I struggled with the rest of the time.

The afternoon section was far harder than the morning (although it matched up with my areas of expertise more). Each question took much longer. I used all the time allotted to me.

Especially in the afternoon, you've got to move quickly. There's no time to look through solved problems (I tried in the morning and it didn't help). The references that are the best are those that provide shortcuts or are tabulated data. A book full of tabulated data (like Keenan and Keyes or Crane 410) beats out the equations. I now know how all the old farts were able to launch a rocket to the moon with slide rules and all. It was those books of tabulated data. They are awesome and go a long way towards cutting down on calculation errors.

Out of the entire suitcase of books, here's what I actually touched during the exam:
The MERM (all hail the MERM). I also xeroxed the index (3-hole punched and bound, so it met the rules). That saved a lot of time.

Keenan and Keyes Steam Tables

Mark's Standard Handbook. I was able to pull a problem from one of the weirder tables inside.

Keenan's Gas Tables. A book I really, really wished I had studied with more.

Engineering Unit Conversions. A must. Big time saver.

Cameron Hydraulic Data. All the info in Cameron is in the MERM, but Cameron is so much handier. I think I also may have used Crane 410.

Shigley's Machine Design. I think I used it once.

Pocket Ref. Flipped through it for a value on something, I think.

All other texts in my giant suitcase were useless. For all of the code questions (CFR/ASME/etc.), they gave you the section of the code and you had to interpret it.

The best thing I did, honestly, was my own 3-ring binder full of material. I had several psychrometric charts, tons of Wikipedia data on the molecular weight of common gases, etc. I was flipping through that almost as much as the MERM.

P.E. Exam Tomorrow

2010-10-28T19:29:00.002-06:00

Open Book Test
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

I'm in Baton Rouge. Tomorrow, it's me and the MERM (with a few other resources) vs. the P.E. Exam.

Wish me luck.

Race

2010-10-21T06:16:00.002-06:00

Race
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Took a break from studying to go see "Race", When I first got there, the filmmaker introduced herself with a British accent and then the movie started with lots of Doug Brinkley interviews and I thought, 'oh crap, time to head for the exit'. I stuck around and it thankfully got much better than that.

The later parts of the film featured much less of Brinkley and much more of Jim Carvin, the political consultant who has never lost a mayor's race. He's a fascinating character who can at a instantly dissect both candidates strategies and their chances of victory. Among his main features of advice: run for politics like you're playing golf (stick to the plan, don't get flustered and don't pay attention to what the other guy does).

There was also lots of Nagin. My favorite part was when Nagin interrupts an interview, says, 'hey man, let me tell you about Sun Tzu', reaches into the top drawer of his desk and gingerly pulls out this copy of "The Art of War" that's covered in dog ears and book marks and underlines. The book is falling apart and it looks like he reads the book every single day.

The movie is only 60 minutes long, so there's plenty that's left out, but nothing that really throws the story off too much. If I could give one piece of advice: cut Brinkley's scenes and add much more Carvin.

P.E. Exam - Still Studying

2010-10-20T20:56:00.000-06:00

8 days left until the trek to Baton Rouge for the exam... Still buried in engineering books...

P.E. Exam, then what next?

2010-08-30T13:03:00.004-06:00

Out sick still, so doing a fair amount of posting. I'm still studying. I'm fully registered for October. All I need is to study and take the test.

After all this studying, then what? The P.E. Exam will allow me to stamp drawings (taking on liability for any errors) or work on my own. Even the later is subject so all sorts of caveats. For example, the state of Louisiana prohibits offering engineering services without a license (P.E.), but does allow for the much-maligned "industrial exemption".

Anyway, the P.E. is very important with what I do, but for other industries, the P.E. is useless. I've chatted with a few of my coworkers that work in aerospace, and their companies are all about the Master's degrees, especially if you deal directly with NASA. The NASA employees look down their nose at an engineer that just has an undergrad degree.

Just throwing out random additional ideas:
* Petroleum Engineering/Geology

Petroleum Engineering textbook set I picked up
When times are good, Petroleum Engineering is the highest paying of all engineering professions (when times are not so good, they all go on the unemployment line). I've got the SPE Guide to the P.E. Exam and it seems about 1/3 production system (which I know), 1/3 reservoir engineering (mostly geology), and 1/3 drilling. Now, normally someone who works on drilling would never work on production and visa-versa, but BP has taught me a whole lot about drilling.

* Naval Architecture/Marine Engineering. Recently, I've been working on a lot of offshore and marine systems (ballast systems and the like) and I've found it pretty interesting. If I were to pick up the requesite undergraduate courses, UNO happens to have one of the best NAME programs in the country. Maybe I should look into getting a degree before the Legislature's budget cuts make UNO "ain't dere no more."

* Nuclear. Nukes have always been fascinating to me. It's 20% of our electricity comes from nukes and we actually produce more power, GW(e) to GW(e), than France. I've picked up a guide to the nuclear P.E. test as well.

* Materials Science. There's always a need for a "materials/corrosion guy" on all large projects. An extensive knowledge of materials, galvanic corrosion, welding, etc. It also is a nice balance between specialization and generalization. I don't like the idea of doing just one little niche with no idea on how it fits into the total project. One cool resource: the entire ASM Metals handbook is now online.

Rising Tide 5 in the books...

2010-08-29T11:26:00.005-06:00

Rising Tide - Mac McClelland Keynote
Originally uploaded by Maitri

Rising Tide 5 is in the books. I've been sick and Candice had work to do, so we weren't around all that much, but we both made an appearance Friday night and I made it for most of Saturday.

Mac McClelland signing my copy of Halliburton's Cementing Handbook. That's something special.

The venue was great. I liked the setup a lot. There were areas to mill around and talk away from the presentations. That I think is always one of the highlights of Rising Tide. Also, the air conditioning actually worked! Amazing! The lakefront is still my favorite of the Rising Tide venues, thus far.

I decided to not use my flash for my photography, so most of my photos didn't come out well. Oops. I got a couple that came out well.

A few of my takeaways from the Politics panel:
* The focus of the panel was on 2 races: 2nd Congressional (New Orleans) and senate (Vitter/Melancon)
* Crouere: "Bobby Jindal WILL NOT serve two full terms as governor."
* If public universities start shuttering their doors left, right, and center in Louisiana, it will destroy Jindal's reputation both in the state and nationally.
* 2nd Congressional will pit "ethically challenged" Richmond vs. Cao, with Cao having a decent shot at reelection. Note that at last year's Rising Tide, the entire panel thought he was toast.
* Vitter should cruise to reelection, despite nobody actually liking the guy (Republican or Democrat). Vitter is a hard worker, but he's also never faced a strong, well-organized opponent. Every single race he's run has been against pitiful competition. Melancon isn't covering himself in glory, thus far. Also, don't be surprised if more damaging revelations about Vitter's past are released right before the election...
* The LA Democratic Party is a mess. Mitch tried to get the previous head of the party sacked and, despite the backing of his sister, failed. There's major division between the "John Breaux Democrats" and the more liberal, more black democrats. Good leadership is needed to keep the two camps pulling in the same direction and that hasn't happened for a long, long time. As a side note, remember that EVERYONE in the state was a Democrat 20 or 30 years ago.

Tim gave a great presentation on "Why can't we get some dam safety?" Related: Dam Failure - Wiki. Note that dams are considered life safety systems, while levees are not and that's written into the law by Congress.

Congrats to Cliff on winning the AshMo Award for the year.

4 Years Ago

2010-08-28T06:16:00.003-06:00

PDR_0029
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Four years ago today, my grandfather died at the age of 99. He was my only living grandfather.

He grew up in Mississippi. His father died when he was only 6, so he grew up poor. He always had to work. He remembers delivering the papers that ended WWI. He dreamed of being an architect or an engineer. He used to win architectural drawing contests in the county fair. The Great Depression killed those hopes. He came to New Orleans and started working for a bank. He started sweeping the floors of the bank, but many years later, after marrying my grandmother, and going to night school, he became the president of the bank (Federal Farm Credit Bank, if memory serves).

He always had a passion for tinkering. At first, he didn't feel that he had anyone to pass it along to, since he had three daughters and times were different then. Years later, I come along as the first male grandchild and I'd say we had a special bond. We had lots of trips to the Butterfly. He used to keep a trunk full of slingshots and other assorted contraband for me and my little brother to play with, when out of sight of my mother.

He gave me subscriptions to Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, and whatever else I requested. He taught me the basics of shop.

He rode out Katrina at Lambeth House, since the new management could get their act together before the storm, but NOFD helped them evacuate after. He ended up for a couple of months in Lutcher, LA.

He came back to New Orleans when I did to finish my last semester for Tulane Engineering. We had debates on whether or not it was appropriate, given the state of the city, but he wanted to come back. He dearly loved New Orleans.

I graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Tulane and he was there when I walked and got my degree. Despite being wheelchair-bound and not in the best of shape, he made it to McAllister Auditorium. He died three months later. He was pretty sick towards the end, but he had his mind to the end, which is about as much as anyone could ask for.

The photo is the two of us from August 2005. I was interning at an engineering firm on Magazine Street doing mostly drafting work while I prepared for my senior year at Tulane. The drawing is a rail-based launch system so a topsides unit could be rolled onto a barge and then towed offshore to be placed on a platform.

Rising Tide 5

2010-08-26T17:38:00.000-06:00

See y'all Saturday.

Details here.

5 Years of Keeping Up With the Corps

2010-08-26T08:15:00.005-06:00

In the five years since the worst failure in the history American Civil Engineering, we've had to keep up with the Corps. They've done some good things since the storm (MR-GO closure, quick and strong repairs) and some not so good things (Option 1 vs. 2a/b debate for permanent pump stations). I'd like to go through 5 major ideas that, depending on how they settle, will determine what sort of levee system we end up with.

1- Design/Build. Shortly after the storm, the Corps decided to issue most of their contracts as Design/Build instead of the Design/Bid/Build, which they've used for decades. Nobody is really sure why the Corps is doing this. I've heard arguments from the Corps saying that they'll get more "creative" designs. I've heard arguments elsewhere saying that the Corps wants someone to throw under the bus in case there is another failure. The Corps also didn't initially free up any money for bid prep work, which meant that bidding firms would spend as little as possible preparing for the bids and would go with very conservative designs they knew how to estimate the cost of. Design/Bid/Build allows you to work the kinks out of the design while still on the drawing board. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to pay a few engineers overtime than have hundreds of workers and field equipment idle while you have to redesign something in the field once construction has begun. In general, I think the design/build approach will lead to excessive cost overruns, but won't make a difference one way or the other on the quality of the work.

2- Resiliency/Backup. One of the points the SELFPA-E has repeatedly made to the Corps when arguing for work on the interior canal walls is what happens if there's a failure of the interim control structure. I have no reason to think there is a design flaw, but if there was, then the flood waters would have a direct path into the city where we know that certain sections of the floodwalls are sub-standard. If the walls are repaired, there would be a second line of defense. The Corps has said that there's no money to do repairs to the existing walls and they can only do what Congress orders them to. The Corps wants to focus all their efforts on Option 1. Now, I will give the Corps credit because there have been several promises made to do at least a modest amount of work upgrading the canal walls at known weak points and that has at least partially mollified SELFPA-E's worries about the canal walls. There is some recognition within the Corps that redundancy is a good thing. OTOH, the Corps can shift some money around and it sort of pokes a hole in their "we do what Congress orders us to do" argument, because otherwise, they wouldn't spend a nickel on canal wall upgrades. From what I understand, it looks like there will be minimally acceptable repairs to canal walls, but many engineering experts, particularly the SELFPA-E would prefer to see more.

3- Geotechnical Analysis. Southeast Louisiana is built on very soft soils and the geotechnical analysis of what sort of loads it can carry is key to any large building project. Most of the geotechnical engineers I know do not believe the Corps' geotech methods are the best that are out there. Furthermore, while I can't say this about the Corps, I have personally seen geotechs put under enormous strain give a "better" answer to allow projects to move forward. The last thing I'll say about geotechnical engineering is it's one of those things in engineering that's still sort of art mixed with science. MIT did a famous study that was presented to ASCE where they constructed a dike, gave a group of eminent geotechnical engineers every single detail about how it was constructed (fill material, depth, volume, etc.) and asked the geotechnical engineers to provide an estimate of how high the water level inside the dike could go before the dike gave way. Of the 7 experts, 5 gave predictions significantly below the level that it failed at, 2 gave level substantially above the level it failed. The geotechnical engineers were given perfect data and no political or economic considerations factored into this test.*

4- B.31.3 Calculations. Matt McBride covered this a few years ago: Post 1 and Post 2. Later, Parsons wrote a report [pdf] that stated the piping is properly designed, per ASME B.31.3 code. It doesn't happen often, but I can say absolutely, definitely, objectively that they are WRONG! I've done those ASME calcs many times before and they are just plain wrong. The consequences aren't all that severe (the piping would probably leak, causing a drop in pressure and lower pumping rates; very small risk of rupture/HSE danger), but it still worries me. If there's a mistake that obvious in something built to tight tolerances, what about more subjective engineering decisions that use materials with wide tolerances?

5- 100 vs. 1000 year protection. As Tim has repeatedly pointed out, "100 Year" protection isn't enough. We need 500 or 1,000 year protection. Furthermore, I have personal questions about how those 100-year levels are computed. The Corps, in the post-Katrina work, has actually built a bit higher than strictly to 100-year protection. For example, some levees have a few extra feet to take subsidence into account and ensure that in a decade or so, the levees will still be well above the 100-year level. Outside the government, I've seen other organizations that have completely revamped what they consider to be a "100 year event". For example, offshore, what used to be considered a 1000-year design is now only considered a 100-year design and as a result, modern construction methods are much, much more robust than they were even just 5 years ago. Don't take my word for it. "Lessons Learned the Hard Way" Page 11 [pdf]: "Yesterday’s 1000-yr criteria have become today’s 100-yr". You can also compare the old API RP's with API 2INT-MET (subsequently integrated into current API RP's).

From all this, I hope everyone sees how important it is to keep an eye on the Corps. Oversight is incredibly important. Note that the SELFPA-E is spending an enormous chunk of their incredibly meager budget to get engineering firms to review the Corps design drawings and calculations. This is important work that must continue.

UPDATE- Minor edits for spelling.
___________________
* Paper: "Reliability of embankment performance predictions" Hynes and Vanmarcke, 1976.

If God Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise

2010-08-26T08:10:00.002-06:00

Spike Lee came down and blasted a shotgun at New Orleans. His camera caught the good, the bad, the guilty and the innocent. The main feature of Spike's documentaries is the expansive, if schizophrenic coverage they provide.

Here are a few thoughts:

My absolute favorite part of the entire thing was how they covered the plight of the elderly. More than whites or blacks the elderly had it the worst of anyone. Too many stayed in their homes in Lakeview or elsewhere. They had ridden out Betsy and Camile and just weren't evacuating. Too many drowned in their homes. Many more just had more change and chaos than they could take. So many just lost the will to live, more than any physiological illness.

From there, the rest of the film is a mix of the good, the meh, and the atrocious.

The coverage of the levee situation is atrocious. Ivor van Heerden and Brad Pitt are levee experts and Ivor says the reason the Corps is building things right is because the trial lawyers are on their ass! The Corps is given very little chance to speak (for good or for ill), and Dr. Calvin Mackie (the first black engineering professor at Tulane), who was sterling in "When the Levees Broke" dismissing dynamited-levee-conspiracy-theories, was not really referenced.

Good job on covering mental health issues.

The most questionable part of Spike Lee's style is who he decided to put in the film. It's a very mixed bag. John Kerry? Tracie Washington and Brinkley do not speak well to Spike Lee's judgment. Fuck Brinkley. Fuck anyone who wants to put a camera, mic, or pen in front of him. In his horrible book, the "Great Deluge", he writes that in 1927, they blew up the levees to flood all of the black people in the Lower 9th Ward. Nope. That's how shitty a historian he is.

IMMENSE smackdown of Warren Riley, et. al. by General Honore for panicking people about snipers and raping babies. Honore showed real leadership (unlike, say NOPD) and put his body in front of panicky soldiers with loaded rifles and told them to stand down and realize they were in an American city. As a post-script, I've been told they later realized that the alleged "sniper" near Charity was the PVSV popping off relieving pressure on a liquid oxygen tank used for the hospital.

Schools, meh. Would have liked some mention that the School Board was in the process of being flushed down the toilet before the storm.

Crime & NOPD. Man, what a disaster.

Nagin and the history question... Nagin was allowed to talk way too long and say way too little.

Ivor is also an expert on mining and oil and gas safety...

Tracie Washington is an expert on Dispersant

The BP part, meh.

Going into hibernation

2010-08-07T14:41:00.002-06:00

Not much posting lately. Lots to study for October.

My application has been accepted by the state and all I have to do is register with NCEES and pay a couple hundred bucks. I haven't registered yet because I'm still not sure what I'll do for the afternoon section. I've narrowed it down to HVAC or Thermofluids. I have until September 16th to decide.

I'm confident I could pass either one, but it's also possible I could fail either one; there's simply so much material on it. I like to explain Mechanical Engineering to people by saying it's "anything that moves" from cars, to refrigeration, to engines, to aircraft, to pumps, etc.

I've got lots more studying to do. I don't even want to think about how many hundreds of hours I'll be putting into this before I'm done. I want to pass on the first try and would HATE to have to do this all over again. I'm not going to lie, it's starting to get old. It wears on a man, doing engineering all day and all night.

To stay motivated, I've had lots of help from Candice and I've also gotten myself a little reward for after the exam:

Go Away Bonnie

2010-08-07T14:40:00.002-06:00

Go Away Bonnie
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Sequal to the BP Cake

Awesome.

2010-07-29T05:53:00.000-06:00

Awesome. Simply Awesome. H/T Gambit.

Transocean Safety Rap

2010-07-29T05:49:00.001-06:00

Story and video here. Filmed on the Deepwater Horizon in 2009.

"They're all dead"

2010-07-10T09:53:00.001-06:00

H/T AZ.

Tulane Law School to begin wholesale grade inflation

2010-07-05T23:28:00.003-06:00

Tulane will now tack on 0.3 to every law school student's GPA. Apparently, too many recent grads are unemployed, so law schools across the nation feel like they have to give their students a helping hand. Above the Law has the details.

At least they're not stealing shoes anymore...

[Insert obligatory Cowen and Tulane Engineering comment here; I'll take your suggestions in the comments]

P.E. Exam Application Status

2010-07-03T08:25:00.003-06:00

Sorry the posting has fallen off a bit. I've still got a lot of studying to do.

My application to LAPELS is now complete and it's now "being reviewed by the committee. It takes 6-8 weeks, allegedly. NCEES registration starts on July 6th (Tuesday), but stays open until September. Right now, I'm waiting on LAPELS to give me the OK to register to take the exam. I'm playing a waiting game...

In the meantime, more studying. I'm going through machine design and I'm very glad I still have my old textbooks. Shigley's is fabulous. I've also borrowed Machinery Handbook from a coworker and I've found it really comes in handy. I wish I had bought that instead of Rourke's. It's much easier to find what I need in Machinery Handbook than Rourke's.

After all the machine design problems I've worked, I think I'll stick with either Thermofluids or HVAC for the afternoon section.

Treme vs. After the Catch

2010-07-03T07:35:00.007-06:00

First off: Pistolette reviews Treme. Go read it.

I've been watching Treme and it definitely has its moments, but all in all, I'm finding that quite a few born-and-bred locals, including myself, are lukewarm about it.

------------

Contrast Treme's depiction of New Orleans with Deadliest Catch's "After the Catch". Let's be honest, while Treme is an artistic piece put together by HBO's premier 'auteur', After the Catch is a way for Discovery to milk a few more nickels out of one of the top products, but the results have been fantastic.

For those of you that don't know, this year's ATC is being filmed at the Blue Nile here in New Orleans. Here are some of the funny moments from ATC so far:
* Phil's sons (and all the other captains, as well) talk about New Orleans being the perfect fisherman's town ("The bars! They never close!").
* As opposed to Treme, which beats you over the head with New Orleans culture, ATC just sort of presents it and there it is, like the gumbo cooking segment.
* They had a Chalmatian shrimper on the show and he took Sig and Keith shrimping and, while they didn't catch a thing, they had a blast. What was amazing is Sig, totally unscripted BTW, was blow away by the fact that these fisherman have their house right on the water with the boat tied up by the back and go out shrimping for these big hauls in only 10 or so feet of water. Sig's feeling was, 'that's the life. What have I been doing wrong all these year?' {The obvious, 'Wow, it would be a shame if we lost this' was left for the audience to figure out instead of throwing the brick at them.}

* The same Chalmatian shrimper told the Deadliest Catch captains about surviving Katrina and about how being fishermen is a genetic disorder. While Treme is depicting New Orleanians as running around fucking everyone except who they're supposed to ("Do what you wanna...") with their "defective work ethic", here you have ATC presenting a real, heroic portraits of South Louisianians to Middle America in a way you can honestly be proud of. The guys from the Time Bandit praising Louisiana shrimpers is the best defense against bullshit like this: Michael Savage Calls the Gulf Oil Spill Victims Welfare Deadbeats.

Video of the Deadliest Catch captains being interviewed about their time along the Gulf Coast:
CNN Video

NOTE- Some minor edits after posting.