Author Archives: Jonathan Soroko

About Jonathan Soroko

Revived from the dead, 18-July-2013

Japan rebuilding failed breakwater

Norimitsu Onishi, writing in the Times, November 3, Japan Revives a Sea Barrier That Failed to Hold

KAMAISHI, Japan — After three decades and nearly $1.6 billion, work on Kamaishi’s great tsunami breakwater was completed three years ago. A mile long, 207 feet deep and jutting nearly 20 feet above the water, the quake-resistant structure made it into the Guinness World Records last year and rekindled fading hopes of revival in this rusting former steel town.

But when a giant tsunami hit Japan’s northeast on March 11, the breakwater largely crumpled under the first 30-foot-high wave, leaving Kamaishi defenseless. Waves deflected from the breakwater are also strongly suspected of having contributed to the 60-foot waves that engulfed communities north of it.

Its performance that day, coupled with its past failure to spur the growth of new businesses, suggested that the breakwater would be written off as yet another of the white elephant construction projects littering rural Japan. But Tokyo quickly and quietly decided to rebuild it as part of the reconstruction of the tsunami-ravaged zone, at a cost of at least $650 million.

Wikipedia’s entry “Seawall” is an excellent primer on this type of flood defense.

A seawall works by reflecting incident wave energy back into the sea, therefore reducing the energy and erosion which the coastline would otherwise be subjected to.In addition to their unsightly visual appearance, two specific weaknesses of seawalls exist. Firstly, wave reflection induced by the wall may result in scour and subsequent lowering of the sand level of the fronting beach Secondly, seawalls may accelerate ero . There are three main types of seawalls: vertical; curved or stepped; and mounds.

Planning for housing special populations: Vermont's state mental hospital made unusable by Tropical Storm Irene

Even though it only housed 51 patients, Vermont has been having difficulty replaced the state hospital which housed its most seriously mentally ill patients. Patients – medical, psychiatric, assisted living – all have more particularized needs: ramps for gurneys, power for medical equipment, adequate power and water – a complete list would be long. When we assess risk and plan, perhaps we need to start planning with the most difficult and the most vulnerable populations. Abby Goodnough, reporting in The New York Times, gives a clear picture of the difficulty of rapidly replacing specialized facilities. From Storm Has Vermont Scrambling to Find Beds for Mentally Ill

Among the casualties of the flooding that ravaged Vermont during Tropical Storm Irene was a faded brick hospital that housed the state’s most seriously ill psychiatric patients.

Eight feet of water from the Winooski River inundated the century-old building on Aug. 28, forcing the 51 residents, most of whom had been sent there involuntarily, to the upper floors. The next day, they were evacuated by bus to temporary placements around the state.

Two months later, the Vermont State Hospital remains closed — for good, Gov. Peter Shumlin says — and the state is grappling with how to care for acutely mentally ill residents.

“We really have kind of an unprecedented situation on our hands,” said Jill Olson, a vice president of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, an advocacy group, “where the highest level of care for a mental health situation in Vermont just washed away.”

In a strange way, the disaster presented an opportunity that many state officials and mental health advocates had been seeking in vain for years. The state hospital had so many problems that the federal government decertified it in 2003; state leaders had been vowing to close it ever since, but were stalled by indecision about what to build in its place. “All of us thought that it was so shabby and so old and so difficult to make safe that it was time to replace it,” said Dr. Robert Pierattini, chief of psychiatry at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, the state’s teaching hospital. “But I don’t see any evidence that we can get by without a state hospital.”

Paul Krugman on fracking and renewable energy

$Schematic diagram of hydro fracking$ | Tweet As Paul Krugman points out, in the NY Times, “fracking” for hydrocarbons, , see pictures at left, would, in fact, be highly subsidized:

$Before and after images of hydrofracking$ Fracking — injecting high-pressure fluid into rocks deep underground, inducing the release of fossil fuels — is an impressive technology. But it’s also a technology that imposes large costs on the public. We know that it produces toxic (and radioactive) wastewater that contaminates drinking water; there is reason to suspect, despite industry denials, that it also contaminates groundwater; and the heavy trucking required for fracking inflicts major damage on roads.

Economics 101 tells us that an industry imposing large costs on third parties should be required to “internalize” those costs — that is, to pay for the damage it inflicts, treating that damage as a cost of production. Fracking might still be worth doing given those costs. But no industry should be held harmless from its impacts on the environment and the nation’s infrastructure.

Yet what the industry and its defenders demand is, of course, precisely that it be let off the hook for the damage it causes. Why? Because we need that energy! For example, the industry-backed organization energyfromshale.org declares that “there are only two sides in the debate: those who want our oil and natural resources developed in a safe and responsible way; and those who don’t want our oil and natural gas resources developed at all.”

So it’s worth pointing out that special treatment for fracking makes a mockery of free-market principles. Pro-fracking politicians claim to be against subsidies, yet letting an industry impose costs without paying compensation is in effect a huge subsidy. They say they oppose having the government “pick winners,” yet they demand special treatment for this industry precisely because they claim it will be a winner.

“Here Comes The Sun,” by Paul Krugman, on NYTimes.com, dated November 7th 2011.

Mr. Krugman also notes that, with respect to solar energy, there’s good news:

… [T]he price of solar panels is dropping fast…. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?

"Carlos the Jackal" on trial in Paris

RTE News reports on the trial of Ilyich Ramiez Sanchez, also known as “Carlos the Jackal,” captured by French authorities in 1994, is on trial for bombings in France in 1989. From RTE News,

‘Carlos the Jackal’ on trial for 1980s attacks

The international terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal” has gone on trial in Paris in connection four bombings in France in the 1980s,.

11 people were killed and at least 150 were injured in the string of attacks.

The 62-year-old has made no secret of his past as the leader of a gang that carried out attacks on behalf of Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies and far-left or pro-Palestinian causes, but denies the latest French charges.

“I’m a professional revolutionary,” Carlos Ilich Ramirez Sanchez told judge Olivier Leurent this morning.

Speaking before the hearing, French stand-up comic Dieudonne Mbala Mbala, an activist close to far-right circles, demanded “Commander Carlos” be allowed to return home to Venezuela.

In court, Ramirez Sanchez’ lawyers denounced what they called the “unfair trial” – it is being held without a jury and before a panel of anti-terrorism magistrates.

Bob Gohn/Pike Research: The Class Warfare of Dynamic Pricing

Excerpted from The Class Warfare of Dynamic Pricing, by Bob Gohn, on the Pike Research Blog

Dynamic pricing for electricity has long been the holy grail of the smart grid, particularly for smart metering. The rationale is that if the retail price of electricity actually reflected the true time-based costs instead of a blurred monthly average, then consumers would become more efficient buyers, benefiting themselves, suppliers, the environment, and society. If we can choose to buy less during demand peaks when generation costs are highest, and buy more when the grid is underutilized, then overall electricity bills will go down, peak demand is reduced, and the associated environmental impacts are lessened. Everyone wins – so who’s to complain?

Well, quite a few consumer interest groups are complaining, ranging from the AARP to utility watchdog groups. While some complaints fit within the ongoing smart metering paranoia, there are legitimate concerns as well, including:

Low-income, elderly, and other disadvantaged groups may not be able to shift to off-peak use, and hence may face higher bills. Images of grandma turning off her oxygen, shivering in the cold or sweating out a heat wave because of smart meters are persuasive.

There is a general assumption that consumers will happily make “comfort vs. cost” tradeoffs in energy use. This is counter to the trend toward flat rate pricing elsewhere, including the telecom industry, heretofore the master of time-of-use pricing.

While there is little argument against “opt-in” dynamic pricing programs, most agree that dynamic pricing must be mandatory or implemented as an “opt-out” program to achieve the desired benefits. This muddles the message of enabling “consumer choice” via smart metering.

Underlying all these concerns is an assumption that for someone to win with dynamic pricing, someone else has to lose. The goal may be to reduce demand peaks and fill underutilized valleys, effectively lowering the average, but it is true that some will likely pay more with dynamic rates. The question is who?

Interestingly, opposition to dynamic pricing can be found on both ends of our politically polarized spectrum. Those toward the right fear Big Brother taking control of their thermostats and appliances (here, utilities = government). Those bent leftward see the social good of universal electricity being corrupted, leaving the vulnerable unprotected (here, utilities = big business). I am sure smart grid advocates would love to unite Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street folks, but not this way!

You can read the rest of The Class Warfare of Dynamic Pricing, by Bob Gohn, on the Pike Research Blog. We make only this observation – when uneven distribution of wealth is so extreme that the less-fortunate suffer morbidity and mortality for want of adequately efficient shelter, protection from extremes of temperature, the unevenness of that wealth distribution – it matters not whether we’re talking about housing stock and its efficiency, or energy to heat or cool it, we are inclined to set aside ideology, and find ways to insulate houses, provide clean and warm clothing and food, and prohibit energy companies from executing non-payment shutoffs absent a court order. We can then discuss ideology, or yell at each other, or do what passes for political discourse these days – later. If this makes me intellectually dishonest, I’ll take the weight for that.

In Upstate NY, Gas Drilling Debate Gets Local

Tweet Maria Scarvalone’s coverage illustrates how rapidly and intensely opposition to “fracking” has spread in communities in Upstate New York. Her coverage suggest that the fracking question

“It’s like playing Russian roulette with your water supply.”

has energized voters – against the “fracking” scheme. Scarvalone’s piece makes the probability of “fracking” coming to pass seem unlikely. Add to that other constituencies who are likely to oppose fracking: banks, property owners, title insurance companies, attorneys and real estate professionals will influence the ongoing debate over “Fracking.” Continue reading →

NPR: 3 million without power after relatively minor weather events

Tovia Smith reports that we’re not doing well in recovering from last weekend’s weather. What should be a minor event – with solar, wind, batteries, and even petroleum-based generators all at the ready – is a warning of deficiencies in planning and preparedness.

Residents of the northeast are still coping with a weekend storm that was more trick than treat. Schools are closed and utility crews are working overtime to restore power in several states. More than 3 million people were without power immediately after the storm.

via After Storm, Some Northeasterners Still In The Dark : NPR.

Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet | RAND

This is part of a series dedicated to what we regard as “First Principles.” No set of principles, in our view, is more important than the notion that distributed networks are more robust than centralized networks, and that this applies to a military command-and-control network no more or less than it applies to a suburban neighborhood, rural community, or a city – any social network. Thanks to the RAND Corporation, much of the most important early work in network theory, written by the late Paul Baran, is readily available online for free. Math-averse readers should have no worries, Baran (and the uncredited authors at RAND) won’t require you to have any arithmetic, much less mathematical, background. Before you read the following excerpt introducing the RAND series, we’d like readers to think of themselves, their neighbors, and family and friends both near and far as members of, or “nodes” on, a social network.

In 1962, a nuclear confrontation seemed imminent. The United States (US) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were embroiled in the Cuban missile crisis. Both the US and the USSR were in the process of building hair-trigger nuclear ballistic missile systems. Each country pondered post-nuclear attack scenarios.

US authorities considered ways to communicate in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. How could any sort of “command and control network” survive? Paul Baran, a researcher at RAND, offered a solution: design a more robust communications network using “redundancy” and “digital” technology.

At the time, naysayers dismissed Baran’s idea as unfeasible. But working with colleagues at RAND, Baran persisted. This effort would eventually become the foundation for the World Wide Web.

centralized switching facilities

centralized

distributed switching facilities

distributed

Baran was born in Poland in 1926. In 1928, his family moved to the US. He attended Drexel University where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. Afterward, Baran married and moved to Los Angeles where he worked for the Hughes Aircraft Company. Taking night classes at UCLA, he earned an engineering master’s degree in 1959–the same year he joined RAND.

At that time, RAND focused mostly on Cold War-related military issues. A looming concern was that neither the long-distance telephone plant, nor the basic military command and control network would survive a nuclear attack. Although most of the links would be undamaged, the centralized switching facilities would be destroyed by enemy weapons. Consequently, Baran conceived a system that had no centralized switches and could operate even if many of its links and switching nodes had been destroyed.

Baran envisioned a network of unmanned nodes that would act as switches, routing information from one node to another to their final destinations. The nodes would use a scheme Baran called “hot-potato routing” or distributed communications.

Baran also developed the concept of dividing information into “message blocks” before sending them out across the network. Each block would be sent separately and rejoined into a whole when they were received at their destination. A British man named Donald Davies independently devised a very similar system, but he called the message blocks “packets,” a term that was eventually adopted instead of Baran’s message blocks.

This method of “packet switching” is a rapid store-and-forward design. When a node receives a packet it stores it, determines the best route to its destination, and sends it to the next node on that path. If there was a problem with a node (or if it had been destroyed) packets would simply be routed around it.

In a recent interview with Wired magazine, Baran discussed his vision of how the new technology might be used. “Around December 1966, I presented a paper at the American Marketing Association called ‘Marketing in the Year 2000.’ I described push-and-pull communications and how we’re going to do our shopping via a television set and a virtual department store. If you want to buy a drill, you click on Hardware and that shows Tools and you click on that and go deeper.”

In 1969, this “distributed” concept was given its first large-scale test, with the first node installed at UCLA and the seventh node at RAND in Santa Monica. Funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency and called ARPANET, it was intended for scientists and researchers who wanted to share one another’s computers remotely. Within two years, however, the network’s users had turned it into something unforeseen: a high-speed, electronic post office for exchanging everything from technical to personal information.

In 1983, the rapidly expanding network broke off from its military part, which became MILNET. The remainder became what was called ARPANET. In 1989, the ARPANET moniker was retired in favor the “Internet,” which had also been described as the “information superhighway.” These days, the Internet continues to expand, stringing together the World Wide Web, an all-encompassing, affordable, universal multimedia communications network (see related RAND Review article).

Today, RAND continues to conduct research in this area. CEO and President of RAND Jim Thomson recently recalled Baran’s contributions. “Our world is a better place for the technologies Paul Baran has invented and developed, and also because of his consistent concern with appropriate public policies for their use.”

via Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet | RAND.

BBC News – Global warming 'confirmed' by independent study

Richard Black, Environment correspondent for the BBC News, reports that – no shocker here – global warming does, in fact, seem to be occurring.

The Earth’s surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a US scientific group set up in the wake of the “Climategate” affair has concluded.The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa.The project received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.”Climategate”, in 2009, involved claims global warming had been exaggerated.Emails of University of East Anglia UEA climate scientists were hacked, posted online and used by critics to allege manipulation of climate change

via BBC News – Global warming ‘confirmed’ by independent study.

BBC: mob seizes emergency water supply

From Mob takes emergency water supplies during Banbury shortages. This isn’t inevitable – even in the absence of disaster planning and preparation. But the converse proposition – that good planning and stockpiling would make this much less likely – seems reasonable.

A water delivery driver in Oxfordshire was forced to abandon his supply of emergency bottles after he was threatened by a group of residents.

The incident took place on Sunday after two Thames Water pumps at the Bretch Hill Reservoir in Banbury failed.
About 4,000 homes were cut off for 24 hours.
The company responded by supplying 68,000 bottles of water to the area. It said some residents had behaved aggressively and prevented deliveries.

‘Tough situation’

A spokesman for Thames Water said it was disappointed by a “minority for their selfish behaviour”.
The contractor concerned was outnumbered by a group who verbally abused him and refused to allow him to take his delivery to another part of the estate – physically removing the bottles from his truck.
The spokesman added they were grateful to the majority of affected customers for their patience and understanding but the behaviour of a few residents had “made a tough situation more difficult for everyone”.
The William Morris School, in Bretch Hill, was closed to pupils as a result of the water shortage which was fixed by about 18:00 BST on Monday.

CIA contractor who shot two in controversial incident in Pakistan accused in Colorado parking lot confrontation

The Associated Press reports that Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor jailed in Pakistan after a shooting in which he shot and killed two assailants, has been charged following an altercation in a parking lot: CIA operative charged in Colo parking spot fight.

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (AP) — A CIA contractor freed by Pakistani authorities after the families of two men he killed in a shootout agreed to accept a $2.34 million “blood money” payment was charged Saturday in Colorado, with authorities saying he got into a fight over a shopping center parking spot.

Deputies responding to an altercation between two men outside an Einstein Bagel in Highlands Ranch, south of Denver, took Raymond Davis into custody Saturday morning, said Douglas County Sheriff’s Lt. Glenn Peitzmeier. He was charged with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors.

Further details on his arrest, which was first reported by KMGH-TV Channel 7 in Denver, were not immediately available.

Peitzmeier said the victim, who was not identified, refused medical treatment at the scene. Davis was freed from the Douglas County jail after posting bond, Peitzmeier said.

The Denver Post has since reported that Davis may face serious charges: Former CIA contractor may face felony count in parking fight.

It’s easy to draw a simple inference: Davis is bad-tempered with a short fuse, and the parking lot incident shows that he’s really a bad guy. We reject this inference for the following reasons

Mr. Davis – no matter what happened in the original incident in Pakistan, has clearly not gotten a fair shake; he’s been used as a pawn in an international game of chicken between the United States and Pakistan, a government which contains powerful factions which, with some regularity, attack targets in India, within Pakistan, and within Afghanistan. Some of those attacks are best described as assassinations; others are, using any reasonable definition, terrorism.
Because he’s merely a “contractor,” he’s entirely expendable if it suits U.S. diplomatic interests;
And – again, because he’s a “contractor,” he’s not entitled to the same consideration as he would if he were an employee: pension or disability payments, psychological help, medical help, employment – not least the comfort and community provided by colleagues.

We don’t know what happened in the parking lot – perhaps he did do something reprehensible. But maybe not. At a minimum, he’s entitled to a fair hearing on the Colorado charges. And whatever happened in Colorado, in moral terms, what makes him different than any other person serving abroad for CIA, the State Department, AID, or the military?

One more argument against “outsourcing” critical functions.

Impacted Nurse: "Critical Incident Stress Debriefings" Re-Examined

Tweet A look at psychological first aid replacing critical incident debriefs. may tell us a bit more about assuming that all not people respond the same way to a given incident – or to a given therapy. Or maybe they do. From the brilliant blog Impacted Nurse, quoting in turn from Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks:

“This technique is now not recommended because we know it is at best useless and probably harmful, owing to the fact that it seems to increase trauma in the long-term.

Instead, we use an approach called psychological first aid, which, instead of encouraging people to talk about all their emotions, really just focuses on making sure people feel secure and connected.
Psychological first aid is actually remarkable for the fact that it contains so little psychology, as you can see from the just released psychological first aid manual from the World Health Organisation.
You don’t need to be a mental health professional to use the techniques and they largely consist of looking after the practical needs of the person plus working toward making them feel safe and comfortable.

No processing of emotions, no ‘disaster narratives’, no fancy psychology, its really just being practical, gentle and kind.”

Via Mindhacks – Escaping from the past of disaster psychology. As noted above, via Impacted Nurse.

WSJ: Authorities Try to Discern if Bomb Plot Is Real – WSJ.com

Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal, Authorities Try to Discern if Bomb Plot Is Real, by Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett, and Jessica Holzer. Emphasis supplied. Our view is that the governmental response at all levels has been outstanding. The question remains whether Al-Qaeda used this threat

in order to force us to waste resources, and perhaps respond less methodically next time by making us accustomed, in a sense, to this sort of threat?
In order to smoke out a suspected informant?
In order to study our responses as an aid in their planning?

My comments above are not meant to suggest anything should have been done differently; rather to suggest how difficult it is to counter this conflict effectively.

U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have been on heightened alert since Wednesday, when authorities first learned of a suspected plot involving one or more car bombs in New York and Washington timed around Sunday’s 9/11 anniversary.

Agents have been looking for three people allegedly involved, but officials said on Sunday it remained unclear whether the car-bomb plot was actually under way or if they were chasing a false lead intended to trip up U.S. security and scare Americans.

John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, said on Fox News Sunday that the administration was taking the threat very seriously. “I want everything to be done to find out whether this information from these sources has any credibility to it,” he said.

The car-bomb tip was obtained by U.S. intelligence officials from a source in Afghanistan who has been reliable in the past, officials said.

The source told the Americans that al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, believed to be in Pakistan, approved the plot. But U.S. officials stressed that the information has yet to be corroborated. Mr. Zawahiri took the reins of al Qaeda after the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden in May.

Underlining heightened concerns about the threat, Mr. Obama huddled Saturday with his national-security team to assess the latest threat information. At the meeting, Mr. Obama said the U.S. couldn’t afford to “relax its counterterrorism efforts in the weeks and months that follow” the anniversary on Sunday, reflecting concerns that attacks could still be in the works.

In addition to the suspected car-bomb plot linked to al Qaeda in Pakistan, U.S. authorities believe Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has ambitions for its own attacks.

On Sunday, top officials from various departments and agencies involved in counterterrorism and law enforcement met again at the White House to review information on the threat.

The suspected car-bomb plot spurred law-enforcement officials late last week to roll out extra security precautions, including vehicle checkpoints in New York, where police officers were scrutinizing trucks and vans.

New York also beefed up the number of state troopers at the World Trade Center site, Pennsylvania Station, Grand Central Terminal and the region’s bridges and tunnels.

Many of the security measures were already planned around Sunday’s Sept. 11 anniversary but some measures were stepped up in response to the threat, which was first reported Thursday.

In the wake of the raid that killed bin Laden in May, the U.S. has characterized the threat from al Qaeda’s central leadership in Pakistan as waning.

But a counterterrorism official said the information the U.S. received about the suspected car-bomb plot raised alarm bells because of its level of specificity.

The source in Afghanistan gave the U.S. a description of the individuals involved, their tactics, target locations and the plot’s timing for the days immediately before or after Sunday’s anniversary.

Even as they search for leads in the investigation, authorities don’t have enough information about the three described individuals to know their true identities. While multiple officials have said the original source of the information provided highly detailed information about the plot, the details about the alleged plotters is frustratingly vague, U.S. officials said.

Officials have repeatedly said the information remained unconfirmed and could be an al Qaeda attempt to misdirect the U.S., or the operatives could have overstated their capabilities. U.S. officials had said that in the limited time left before the 10th anniversary on Sunday, they might not be able to verify the intelligence.

Emphasis supplied. Via Authorities Try to Discern if Bomb Plot Is Real – WSJ.com.

Why you need a "POTS" phone, and where to get them

“POTS” is phone-geek and industry slang for “Plain Old Telephone Service.” A P.O.T.S. pone is a telephone, rotary (that’s a “dial,” a big wheel on the front of the phone, for our younger readers) or touch-tone, which doesn’t have a whole bunch of extra features requiring, usually, direct current (DC), which in the United States, usually means an unwieldy black “power brick,” which is plugged into a wall socket or extension cord, converts the alternating current to direct current, powers the extra features (speakers, lights, answering machine) but not the voice connection itself – which is powered by the telephone system at the nearest phone company facility, usually referred to as the “central office,” although, unlike regular offices, they’re often unattended. One can’t walk in and pay a bill, or request service; in that sense, it’s not an office at all. Think of it as network hub. Better-run telephone companies, certainly including the company we now refer to as “Verizon,” but which others of us grew up thinking of as “New York Telephone,” have their own emergency generators.

So – when the power grid fails, assuming the copper wires which connect you to your central office haven’t been cut (more likely in suburban or rural areas where the cost of laying underground cable for a relatively sparse population is prohibited your “POTS” phone will still work in a power outage. You can still call 911, for instance.

However, if you have a “POTS” phone but no one you care about does – not so good.

So – what we at Popular Logistics would like you to do is this: buy yourself a POTS phone, better yet, buy several of them, and then use your powers of persuasion to make sure that the people you care about and who care about you have them, too.

If you’re only going to have one, we suggest a touch-tone phone, because there are systems which will want you to enter data via the keypad.

Reasons for ignoring this advice, and why they don’t stand up to scrutiny

“They don’t make them anymore.” That’s not true, and we’re going to show you here to get them.

“They must be really expensive.” Also not true – we’ve found reliable reconditioned touch-tone desk telephones for as low as $10 with shipping, and if you buy a few at once, the shipping costs get lower. And if we can get enough readers to do this, we might be able to work out a bulk purchase.

“They’re ugly.” We don’t think so. Neither do the Museum of Modern Art, which has telephone by the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss in its Design Collection, as does the Cooper-Hewitt design museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution.

“I’ve already got a mobile phone, and ‘regular’ service is an extra expense.” (1) If the power goes out your smart phone i s going to be hard to recharge; (2) depending on your plan, using a landline for outbound calls from home can actually reduce your mobile bill.

One last point – of the many elegant features of telephone design, it’s worth noting two which make them exceptionally “green” devices. First, the older (and recent, but better-made) telephones use so little power that they can be powered from the central office. They use much more power, in fact, to ring the bell than to carry two-way voice conversations. Second, telephones designed in the 1950’s with a planned lifespan of 25 years are still in service. How many electrical or electronic devices do you own that have worked for that long and not ended up in a landfill? And when they do break, telephone enthusiasts both amateur and professional often scavenge the parts or fix broken parts, further extending their life. I have on my desk a green model 2500 ITT desk telephone which is nearly as old as I am, much older than my children both recently graduated from college with all sorts of honors, thank you very much – not that either has a POTS line. But if the test of good advice were whether one’s own children took it, we’d be living in an entirely different society.

So – in the hopes that we’ve persuaded you that this small purchase will reduce the risk of your being incommunicado in an emergency, and might also save you some money and reduce your carbon footprint – we will, in sort order, tell you about some individual phones and source.

My green desk phone, BTW, came from the excellent Jonathan Finder of OldPhones.com

Hal Needham on Fresh Air

Fresh Air interviews Hal Needham, screenwriter, director, send-unit director, stunt arranger, stun performer, and pioneer of high-speed automobiles, specifically rocket-powered automobiles. Needham was also a paratrooper during the Korean War, but we haven’t been able to determine with which division he served.

Why do we mention Hal Needham, apart from the intrinsic interest in such a cool guy, whose interview with Terry Gross is well worth the time? He’s relevant because he’s spent a career – perhaps several careers, learning new things, and carefully judging risk. As regular readers have no doubt divined, we’re keenly interested in both of those things: learning in general and learning about risk.

Happy Labor Day.