Francois Bigot, meet Kellog, Brown, & Root

I just read an interesting book, titled “1759” and subtitled “The year Britain became master of the world.” The author, Frank McLynn, explores the conflicts between Britain, France, and the other major European powers through the lens of that one eventful year. 1759 was four years into what we in the U.S. call the French and Indian War, and what the rest of the world calls the Seven Years War. One of the fronts he covers is New France, now known as Canada. The colony of New France was governed by several officials more recommended for their connections at court than their competence or honesty. (Does this sound familiar?) The outstanding scoundrel was the Finance Minister and Intendant (military supply officer) of New France, Francois Bigot. He controlled a web of corruption from the top to the bottom of the supply chain. To quote Mr. McLynn:

“A favourite wheeze was importing provisions from Bordeaux (where Bigot's corrupt partners had a trading company) on the grounds that there were food shortages in Canada. Since prices were higher in Canada, there were already profits to be made, but Bigot increased his profit margins by escaping import duties: he simply had his officials at the customs house wave the goods through as the King's personal stores and therefore exempt from duty. The stores were then sold back to the government and the military at inflated prices fixed by edict, often with other rogues taking cuts along the way: the first buyer would make a profit, then the second, until finally `the King' bought at a grotesquely distorted high price. One transaction netted Bigot and his associates twelve million francs: they bought for eleven million and managed to sell for twenty-three million.

But there was simply no end to the defalcation and embezzlement of which the ‘Bigot ring’ was capable. Bigot liked to force farmers to part with grain at a fixed, low price on pain of confiscation, on the grounds that they were ‘hoarding’, then sell to the highest bidder when dearth or famine threatened. He would bribe officers at the military forts to sign for, say; two million francs of goods, then deliver one million and pocket the difference. He bought up boats for military purposes, then leased them to the King at high prices. A favourite scam was cheating France's Indian allies. Let us suppose that Bigot had raised an invoice allowing him to give gifts to 2000 Indians. First, `payroll padding' would be employed, for there would be just 500 Indians, not 2,000. Then Bigot would charge the highest prices and sell one-third of the gifts to the tribes, keeping the other two--thirds as ‘perks’. Another dodge was to employ free labour in the form of boatmen, drivers and porters in return for a rear's exemption from military duty; then charge the government for their wages. All the time Bigot enjoyed the protection of Vaudreuil, who in turn was a beneficiary of the corruption.”

248 years later we find ourselves in Iraq, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on food, fuel, ammunition, vehicles, and housing. We have machine guns, not muskets, and helicopters instead of horses, but the categories of need are much the same. Alas, so are the categories of corruption. To term it a hog trough would be to slander good swine. Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article in Rolling Stone on the subject, which was reprinted online at Alternet. A few choice excerpts:

“Like most contractors, Custer Battles was on a cost-plus arrangement, which means its profits were guaranteed to rise with its spending. But according to testimony by officials and former employees, the partners also charged the government millions by making out phony invoices to shell companies they controlled. In another stroke of genius, they found a bunch of abandoned Iraqi Airways forklifts on airport property, repainted them to disguise the company markings and billed them to U.S. taxpayers as new equipment.”

“The company [KBR] has been exposed by whistle-blowers in numerous Senate hearings for everything from double-charging taxpayers for $617,000 worth of sodas to overcharging the government 600 percent for fuel shipments. When things went wrong, KBR simply scrapped expensive gear: The company dumped 50,000 pounds of nails in the desert because they were too short, and left the Army no choice but to set fire to a supply truck that had a flat tire. ‘They did not have the proper wrench to change the tire,’ an Iraq vet named Richard Murphy told investigators, ‘so the decision was made to torch the truck.’

In perhaps the ultimate example of military capitalism, KBR reportedly ran convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the insurgent-laden desert, pointlessly risking the lives of soldiers and drivers so the company could charge the taxpayer for its phantom deliveries. Truckers for KBR, knowing full well that the trips were bullshit, derisively referred to their cargo as ‘sailboat fuel.’”

Monsieur Bigot would smile.

But this should be no surprise to a student of military history. As Marine General Smedley Butler put it, “War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

I can imagine one Roman soldier on the Gallic frontier, grousing to another, “Rancid olive oil and diluted wine, if you can call it that, and Kappa Beta Rho is getting double the local market price. And have your heard what the AquaNiger mercenaries are getting paid?”

War is the mother of corruption. To some, that is its chief appeal. When we try to answer the question of why the Bush Administration invaded Iraq we should realize that nothing happens for one reason alone. Yes, it was about oil. Yes, it was about being a war president in an election year. Yes, it was about neocon fantasies of empire. We still have our foot on the dime and crude is trading above $80, so the oil play can be called a success. The political gains are long gone, along with dreams of hegemony. However, no matter what happens on the ground in Iraq, the cash is in the bank for a horde of swindlers and the corporate behemoths they serve. Taxes on millionaires have been slashed, so the beneficiaries of a privatized military can hold their loot while the rest of us hold the bag – a multi-trillion dollar deficit. Mission accomplished.

In a previous post I suggested that our elected representatives, upon declaring war, should sign a statement acknowledging that they take responsibility for the inevitable killings of innocent civilians. Perhaps there should be an addendum to that statement where they declare their understanding that the nation’s wealth will be wasted as well.

Waiting to be Conned

I have just experienced a new level of raw, unadulterated chutzpa.

My phone rang, and a recorded female voice informed me that my car’s warranty had expired and that I should press “one” to talk to their representative about a warranty extension, or “two” to be removed from their list. Ok, so far, the usual. You have probably received similar recorded pitches for extended car warranties, Caribbean cruises, or insurance. This was probably the tenth extended warranty pitch I had received, having pushed “two” each time to get myself off the list. This time I decided to press “one” to talk to a human being and get them to actually take me off their list. I did so, and got the usual recorded message about how my call might be monitored or recorded for quality control.

Then they put me on hold. A tinny version of a Frank Sinatra classic played in the background, interrupted periodically by the assurance that my call was important to them and that I would soon be talking to the next available customer service representative.

Wait a goddamned second. I’m not some desperate software owner trying to deal with the inevitable failure of a beta test program served up as a product. I’m not a sick person trying to actually get some health coverage for the wads of cash I’ve sent in to my insurance company. I am, as far as they know, a potential customer, the Holy Grail of telemarketing. By pressing “one” I have signaled that I am a sucker, a buffoon, one of P.T. Barnum’s favorite morons, credit card at the ready, waiting to be fleeced.

And they put me on hold. How much contempt do they have for their victims? Not content to merely separate us from our money, they want us to wait on hold for that privilege. I sat there for a minute with my jaw down, listening to Old Blue Eyes and a string section before I dropped the phone back on the hook.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. If they have enough contempt for the public to interrupt our day with a hailstorm of bunko propositions, then why not inconvenience us that much more and save on operator wages?

I mentioned this experience to a friend and he said “Of course they put you on hold.” His thesis was that they don’t want to waste their time on rational individuals. Putting people on hold separates those who are truly desperate to burn their cash from those with a “Let’s see” attitude. It sounds cynical enough to be real.

There is an answer to all this, short of the mother of all lawsuits. (Believe me, if I had infinite time and money I would sue them for disturbing the peace with commercial speech and take it all the way to the Supremes.) Telemarketers use so-called predictive dialers, computers with programs that filter out unwanted numbers. One sign of an unwanted number is that rising boo-dee-beep tone you hear when you call a number no longer in service. If you put that tone at the very beginning of the message on your answering machine, then any digital dialer that gets your message will note that your number is no longer in service and expunge it from its database. I used to have this on my phone message, and I am going to again.

You only have to put the first tone in, actually. If you are adept with computers, edit it down. If not, find an average 14-year-old to do it for you. You can download the tone here. Turn up the speakers on your computer, rerecord your message with the tone, and in time you will enjoy peace. At least in terms of the telephone.

Afterthought: I am going to put a shortcut to the SIT tone on my computer desktop so that if I am working at the computer and pick up a telemarketing call I can just click the icon, hold the phone to the computer speaker, and bid that phone list goodbye.

Incubi, succubae, alien kidnappers, and out of body experiences

Incubus
. pl. in·cu·bus·es or in·cu·bi (-b)
1. An evil spirit supposed to descend upon and have sexual intercourse with women as they sleep.
2. A nightmare.
3. An oppressive or nightmarish burden.
[Middle English, from Late Latin, alteration of Latin incub, from incubre, to lie down on; see incubate.] From the Free Dictionary

Succubus
n. pl. suc·cu·bus·es or suc·cu·bi (-b, -b) also suc·cu·bae (-b, -b)
1. A female demon supposed to descend upon and have sexual intercourse with a man while he sleeps.
2. An evil spirit; a demon.
[Middle English, from Medieval Latin, alteration (influenced by Late Latin incubus, incubus) of Latin succuba, paramour, from succubre, to lie under : sub-, sub- + cubre, to lie down.] From the Free Dictionary

Note the literal meaning of the Latin root of incubus – “to lie down on.” I’ll get back to that. For the classic visual of this, look at John Henry Fuseli’s painting, The Nightmare.

After waking up one morning in that vaguely disturbed state that follows a half remembered nightmare, I started thinking about a couple of types of “paranormal” experiences that have been explained by science. The first is the dream of oppressive visitation.

In the Middle Ages and beyond, people would claim to have been visited by an incubus or succubus (see above). From the advent of aliens in science fiction in the early 20th century to this day people have claimed to have…..well…to have had sex with an alien. Or, for that matter, to have been captured and tied down by an alien. It all relates to the same physical syndrome, with different cultural overlays.

It is called sleep paralysis. When we sleep, we pass in and out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when we dream. In this state a certain part of our brain shuts off, effectively paralyzing us. If not for this, we would act out our dreams in our sleep, thrashing around and probably injuring ourselves. A minor failure of this mechanism can be seen in the twitching paws of a sleeping dog, as it chases its prey across the lawn of its dreams. In humans, when all works correctly, we regain our motor functions as we awake. This enables us to smack the alarm clock and roll out of bed. However, with some people the timing is off and the sleep paralysis stays engaged as the person is in the process of waking up from REM sleep. Humans are pattern finders, assimilators of all parts of the perceived environment. When a fractionally awake person feels as if he or she can’t move, there needs to be a cause, and a cause is provided by the imagination. For the medieval peasant it was a demon, for the modern Westerner, an alien. Sleep disorder researchers have watched people with sleep paralysis wake up and swear that they had just been visited, once again, by an alien.

The other phenomenon is one that many people have experienced during a physical crisis. The story often goes something like this: “I was on the operating table, under anesthetic. I heard the doctor say that my heart had stopped. I felt myself rise up out of my body and found myself looking down on the operating table and the doctors and nurses around my body. They restarted my heart and I reentered my body.”

Jet fighter pilots have experienced the same phenomenon during or after sharp maneuvers. The pilot pulls out of a steep dive and experiences large g-forces, the acceleration that is like experiencing 2, 4, or even 8 times the force of gravity. The pilot partially or completely blacks out. The pilot then finds himself over his own plane looking down on himself in the cockpit. What is going on?

Neuroscientists call this phenomenon failure of proprioception. Proprioception is our internal sense of our body position and movement. It enables us, for example, to walk in complete darkness. Alcohol impairs proprioception, which is why a cop will ask a drunk to close his eyes and touch his nose with one fingertip. In rare instances of complete loss of proprioception due to neural injury, people have become essentially paralyzed, and eventually relearn basic movements by watching themselves. These unfortunates can’t look away while holding a glass of water – they’ll drop it.

Failure of proprioception can be caused by temporary loss of sufficient blood flow to the brain. In the case of the pilot, the g-forces caused blood to pool in the lower body, depriving the brain of oxygen. Depending on situation, a person can find themselves apparently behind themselves, above themselves, in front of themselves, or beside themselves. According to some accounts, the sense of being in front of your own body can result in the sufferer feeling shadowed by someone else. This probably brings us back to demons and aliens.

For a great exploration of this, listen to the Radiolab broadcast of May 5, 2006 on proprioception.

I sincerely wish you pleasant dreams.

The Fastest Man on Earth

I just received the latest newsletter from the Human Powered Vehicle Association, which had the results of the Nissan One Hour Challenge. The car company donated the use of its 5.6 mile oval test track in Standfield Arizona for a unique bicycle race. The competitors ride recumbent (sitting position) bicycles with aerodynamic carbon fiber shells as fast as they can for one hour.

A Canadian named Sam Whittingham pedaled a world record distance of (are you recumbent?) 53.918 miles. This guy maintained highway speeds for an hour. The top three competitors all exceeded 50 mph, and the fourth and fifth bested 47 mph.

Here’s a video clip from Whittingham’s chase car in the last two minutes of the race. The streamlined bike is barely visible at the beginning.

If that isn’t impressive enough, consider this: In 2002, on possibly the flattest, straightest section of highway in America, in a place called Battle Mountain, Nevada, Whittingham accelerated his bike to just over 81 mph. He still holds the world record with that run.

Here’s a short video about Battle Mountain and another attempt by Whittingham to beat his own record.

If you want to know what it’s like inside the carbon fiber shell, here’s a helmet camera video of “Fast Freddy” Markham reaching 78 mph at Battle Mountain. Fast Freddy, by the way, set the previous one-hour record in 2006 of 53.43 mph.

Sam Whittingham is a serious physical specimen. In 2003 he was monitored during a competitive run and produced 450 Watts of power going 78 mph. 450 Watts is about three times what your average schmo can put out. His bike, the Varna Diablo II is something special itself. The Diablo looks like a cruise missile on wheels, and is about as aerodynamic as any land vehicle can be. The gear train starts out higher than the top gear of a normal bike and goes up from there.

I keep thinking about that 450 Watts. Consider that when you drive down the road in your car at highway speeds you are expending about 15,000 Watts, 33 times the power that the Diablo needs. Of course, the Diablo is specifically designed as a speed bike, and not practical for everyday transportation. Still, it gives an idea of what can be accomplished down at the other end of the transportation spectrum. Post peak oil I could imagine people using vehicles that look much more like the Diablo than an SUV.

So, if you are driving on highway SR305 out in Nevada in October and a small cruise missile on two wheels passes you as if you were parked, smile and wave. It’s probably Sam.

Barging down the Erie II: Return of the freight barge

Your semi-aquatic Minor Heretic took to the Grand Canal once more last week, travelling from Oswego, on Lake Ontario, down the Oswego Canal, onto the Erie Canal, through Rome to Utica, New York. At one point, when we were docked near a lock, a massive construction barge went past, pushed by a tugboat. The barge filled the lock to within a few inches of the sides and nearly end to end. The incident was notable because of the lack of commercial traffic on the barge canal. It started me on a train of thought about the possible return of waterborne freight traffic.

I had spoken a couple of weeks before with a Canal Corporation official about the future of freight traffic, and he offered a few thoughts. A canal barge is 8 times more energy efficient than a tractor-trailer on the highway. $4.50 a gallon for diesel fuel is the economic tipping point between trucks and barges. The Canal Corporation is starting to get inquiries about barge freight. They have also started designing a self-propelled barge to carry up to 60 standard cargo containers.

I’d like to explore the possibilities of barge freight and its environmental impact. Interstate 90 generally parallels the canal across New York State. According to the Department of Transportation, between 2000 and 7000 trucks per day travel I-90 between Albany and Buffalo, depending upon the section of highway.

From my limited time on the canal I have seen that the time it takes to cycle a lock is about 20 minutes. A lock tender told me that his could cycle in 10 minutes if there were two lock tenders on duty. For the purposes of this exercise I’ll assume that the Canal Corp. gears up for freight traffic with two operators per lock, but allocate that saved ten minutes for maneuvering. At 20 minutes per cycle, a lock can pass 72 barges a day. At 60 containers per barge, that is 4320 containers per day. That represents a major percentage of the present I-90 truck traffic.

Of course, no system is perfectly efficient. I’ll arbitrarily assume that the canal is busy, but not packed, with each lock passing two barges per hour, or 2880 containers a day.

The Albany to Buffalo run on I-90 is about 290 miles. A tractor-trailer gets about 7-9 miles per gallon (call it 8), so one would burn 36.25 gallons of diesel on the trip. 2880 trucks would burn 104,400 gallons of diesel, producing 22.384 pounds of CO2 per gallon, or 2,336,889 pounds of CO2.

The ratio between the energy consumption of a barge and a truck is dramatic. There is a unit called the ton/mile, meaning the work of carrying one ton of cargo one mile. A truck gets 59 ton/miles to a gallon of diesel. A freight train gets 202 ton/miles per gallon. A barge gets 514 ton/miles per gallon, 8.71 times that of a truck. Divide 2,336,889 pounds that the truck fleet produced by 8.71 and you get 268,299 pounds, saving 2,068,590 pounds of CO2 per day. The polar bears would be happy about that.

Transferring that much cargo to the canal would also save about 92,400 gallons of diesel fuel a day, or 33,726,000 gallons a year. For comparison, that’s a little over half the annual diesel consumption in Vermont.

It makes sense that 200 years ago people built canals. Dig a ditch, let it fill with water, and gravity gives you a smooth surface. You can then build a wooden box, fill it with 120 tons of cargo, and pull it with three horsepower. Ok, mulepower.

I’m not indulging in nostalgia. As oil prices go up and oil availability gets spotty, we are going to be looking for energy efficient alternatives to the “rolling warehouse.” For items that can take four days to get from Albany to Buffalo instead of one, it is a reasonable alternative. 90% of the population of New York State lives within 20 miles of either a canal or the Hudson River. Vermont’s most populous city, Burlington, is connected to Montreal, Manhattan, and Michigan by water. Obviously we can’t transfer all cargo traffic to the water, but as we face ever rising energy prices we should develop this resource to its practical limits.