Iran, according to CNN, has now arrested four Iranian-Americans on questionable charges.
Christine Levinson, according to CNN (this graf appears about halfway down the page), “recently traveled to Washington to meet with lawmakers and diplomats who are working on his case.”
Bobby has been missing since March 8th.
(See below for 5/24 update)
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration – The New York State Public Service Commission.
According to their New York Pipeline Safety “Fact Sheet” – it’s the P.S.C.
But the P.S.C. may not know that. Or not think it important for anyone else to know it. One wants to be careful – when observing facts – to not carelessly draw inferences about intentions.
However, if you go to the Public Service Commission website
– and look hard – you’ll not find any obvious link – I couldn’t find any, obvious or other – to that body’s regulatory responsibility for pipelines. Must not be looking hard enough. It’s clear from the headings 0n the front page – Electric/Steam, Natural Gas, Telecommunications, and Water – that the PSC has some responsibility for underground infrastructure.
Popular Logistics – please pardon the pun – has been of late digging into local pipeline issues – and, to quote Consolidated Edison – “we’re on it.”
5/24 update after the fold
The Atlas Ascender – is a powered rope or cable ascender/descender capable of, for instance,
This image doesn’t do it justice. There’s a video clip on the Atlas site . The inventor was an MIT student when he developed this – reportedly as an entry in a DOD-sponsored competition.
From ToolMonger’s reporting from Maker Faire:
These people from GreeneMotor brought out a number of motorcycles and scooters that they converted entirely to electric power. They claim that you can ride 450 miles on a single dollar’s worth of juice — even at California rates. Thumb your noses at the Prius crowd — you’re really green now. At least you’d be the first person on your block with an almost totally silent ride.
From GreeneMotor.com.
ViaToolmonger. Maker Faire is a project of MakeZine
, to which we subscribe.
A photo essay on the children of Chernobyl at Slate.
We’ll not reproduce them here; those who need reminding that nuclear power – and other complex systems – are accompanied by increased risk where increases in complexity are not accompanied by off-sets in safety – especially
where the basic materials are inherently dangerous – should, of course, make a point of taking a look.
We suspect, however, that at firms which operate nuclear power plants – the link to this photo essay – if anyone is aware of it – is not being circulated to all employees with an admonition that they redouble their efforts to keep things safe.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to a point where this is the preferred means of communications or cartography in a domestic emergency in the United States. However, Popular Logisticsis committed to makings its readers aware of all types of systems, although we’ll probably drawn the line at squirrels. Here’s an image of a German World War I photo-taking pigeon, from PigeonBlog:
Link to concise article on this subject on PigeonBlog here.
We’ll let Mr. Tiemann speak for himself:
In the middle of a cornfield in the middle of Iowa, there is a data center.
Not just any data center. It’s InfoBunker, probably the securest data center you’re ever likely to find. It’s built in a decommissioned Air Force bunker that once housed hardened military telecom equipment, as the giant radio tower that stands above the parking lot—and can be seen for miles around—attests. But that’s pretty much all there is that can be seen by passersby, aside from a small entryway hut and some storage sheds and old wire spools on a patched, 60s-era parking lot. The facility extends five stories below ground, with multiple data floors, employee areas, and living quarters (the 24/7 staff doesn’t see the sun very much).
– snip –
It’s not my place to go into too much detail about what’s housed in the bunker, as just to get inside under escort you have to agree to a strict no-photos policy (perfectly understandable); but suffice it to say that the simplex lock on the main hut door is only the very beginning. Many hardened, keycoded, and biometric-protected doors stand between the outside world and the NOC floors, including the self-sufficient power systems (six days’ worth of diesel fuel; 17,000 gallons of water, for drinking and fire suppression; military-grade NBC air filtration). It’s built to withstand a 20-megaton nuclear blast at 2.5 miles, according to the website, and I can believe it. Your data will be intact even if the rest of the Internet has been vaporized.
The Technisches Hilfswerk is the German government agency charged with responding to disasters at home and abroad. In a country of about 82 million (source: CIA World Fact Book), 80,000 people work for the Dederal Agency for Technical Relief. That’s roughly one person per 1,000 – 99% of whom are volunteers.
One of the THW logos, courtesy of Wikipedia.
According to the United States Census Population Clock
, there were, as of today, 301 million peoplein the United States. If the same proportion of people in the United States were active as volunteers in disasters, we’d have over 30 million volunteer first responders.
Think about that – and we’ll be back to discuss it – as soon as we’ve gotten bug or two out of WordPress.
And at least a little sarcasm. Check out this post from Telstar Logistics, describing a recent test of Airbus evacuation employees. This test was done with Lufthansa employees, without smoke, fire, or other conditions which – assuming an emergency evacuation in the first place, would seem to be within the real of possibility.
How long would it take for everyone to get off the A-380?
In a best-case scenario, with no smoke, no fire, limited structural damage to the aircraft, and no one who sustained any injuries during the landing, it would take a little under 80 seconds to evacuate 853 passengers and 20 crew members from an A380.
…. even under those most ideal of circumstances, there were casualties: one broken leg and 32 friction burns.
It’s clear that the thing to do is just make sure that bad things only happen during ideal conditions.  There’s also a link to a YouTube clip of the evacuation exercise – and an even more disturbing bit from the Wall Street Journal about a McDonnell Douglas evacuation exercise.
Derivative tip of the hat to Upgrade: Travel Better. Direct tip of aforementioned chapeau to Telstar Logistics. Link to Telstar post here.
We’re given to understand that Stanley Wise (1900 – 1985), nine years old, saw two men capsize a canoe in the Roanoke River. Many people were present and watched the accident – but none had the toolsor expertise to attempt a rescue. Both men died.
In 1928, with nine colleagues from the Norfolk & Western Railway, Wise started a rescue squad – with communications support from the city of Roanoke; a local funeral home provided an ambulance.
The wikipedia reference links to Ronanoke’s Volunteer Rescue Muesum
and to Pat Ivey’s EMT Rescue which title is new to us (ISBN-0-7592-4464-2), but we’re going to see if we can track down a copy.
Build Your Own PV Panel Workshop –Date: May 12, 2007
Cost: $50
Location: Lowell, MA
Learn how to assemble your own Photovoltaic (PV) panel for producing electicity. Richard Komp has pioneered PV panel production as a cottage industry in Nicaragua, Mali, and Haiti. In this workshop you’ll get to participate in assembling a PV panel. Depending on the number of participants, we will be making one or more 15 Watt panels, which are capable of charging 12 V batteries and thus are good for small applications.
Phone: 978 453 4787
Email: virginio@virginiosbackyard.com
http://www.virginiosbackyard.com/workshops.html
Writing in The Nation, Joshua Kors describes the Pentagon’s new way to save money. While we have been spending approx. $100 Billion per year on the war in Iraq, including the $Billions in unmarked bills that disappear from suitcases and satchels on the streets of Baghdad, click here and here we are saving about $1 billion per year — about one per cent — with an accounting move that Ken Lay and Andy Fastow (click here) would be proud to call their own.
Take an injured vet like Jon Town. Classify his injury as the result of a “pre-existing condition” and poof: he gets a Purple Heart but gets no Veteran’s Benefits. And remember that signing bonus? The bonus is contingent on serving full term. If you’re wounded and discharged half-way through your tour — kiss half the bonus goodbye. This is the “Enron-esque” beauty of Regulation 635-200, Chapter 5-13: “Separation Because of Personality Disorder.”
Several of Town’s fellow soldiers in 2-17 Field Artillery, including Michael Forbus, could have testified to his stability and award-winning performance before the October 2004 rocket attack. As Forbus puts it, before the attack, Town was “one of the best in our unit;” after, “the son of a gun was deaf in one ear. He seemed lost and disoriented. It just took the life out of him.”
Here are some numbers: According to The Nation . In the last six years the Army has diagnosed and discharged more than 5,600 soldiers because of personality disorder. And the numbers keep rising:
“It’s getting worse and worse every day,” says the official who handles discharge papers. “At my office the numbers started out normal. Now it’s up to three or four soldiers each day. It’s like, suddenly everybody has a personality disorder.”
Is this what America stands for?
Is this what President Bush means by “compassionate conservatism?”
Is this what George W. Bush, the candidate, meant when he promised to restore honor and dignity to the Office of the President?
Not according to Bobby Muller at Veterans for America.
Including a report that a petition, signed by 200 former FBI agents, has been given to the United States government, and quoting Levinson’s wife Christine, as follows:
“My husband, Bob Levinson, is still missing. We, his family, have not heard from him since March 8, and the silence is unbearable,” she said.
“Right now, we are living a nightmare. We need Bob to come home to us. We are aware of all the rumors out there which have raised our hopes, only to have them crushed by the reality that we still have no information. We are asking anyone who has any information of any kind to please let us know.”
A petition signed by 200 former agents, we guess, is one neither widely circulated nor circulated for long. The Levinson League, to coin a phrase, is both wide and deep.
In a piece dated 6 May, Debka File  reports that Bob Levinson was releasedon 1 May, and that the Iranians are miffed that some or all of the five Iranians held by the United States in Iraq.
Since we’re empiricists here at Popular Logistics, and our chief medical advisor is from a state adjacent to Missouri (the “show-me” state), we would like to believe the Debka report, but want firmer evidence.
Since Levinson owes at least one dinner to a senior editor of this blog, we’d accept Levinson’s presence at a meal in Brooklyn as sufficient evidence.
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Apparently the Streetwriter has had more than one incarnation – first built into the body of a van – the more recent and advanced model being towable. From the IAA website:
The system consists of a custom built, computer controlled industrial spray painting unit that is built into an extended-body cargo van. The vehicle prints text messages onto the pavement in a manner much like a dot-matrix printer. The expanded width of StreetWriter allows for messages and simple graphics that are legible from tall buildings and low flying aircraft and is capable of rendering messages that are several hundred feet in length.
New! A radical redesign of StreetWriter has taken place. The new machine, tentatively called SWX, recently infiltrated the finish line festivities of the DARPA Grand Challenge. The earlier version of StreetWriter has been officially decomissioned [sic
].
We’d like to propose an additional use for this technology – when government signage fails in emergencies – viz. certain of New York City’s “Flood Evacuation Route” – which may be signs leading to the flood, rather than away – these machines might be put to use correcting government misinformation. Which may, we think, have been the artists’ original intent. If anyone amongst the Popular Logistics readership has a connection to IAA – an exclusive group, from what we hear – we’d like an introduction.
