Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Russians have nuclear reactors. Russians have submarines. Russians have put nuclear reactors in submarines. Not that the Russians have done any of these things very well in the past, but they have done them nonetheless.

Furthermore, we know that submarines, even most Russian ones float. How? Because the weigh the same as a duck, of course.

Hopefully I’ve set up in a lovely way the ugly headline:

Russia to build world’s first floating nuclear reactor

One might assume that Russia has simply decided to recycle old USSR achievements. I hear the Russians are working on being the first to launch dogs and humans into space. That’ll be the day!

Actually that doesn’t seem to be the case either, since the story itself refers says they want to put the reactor at a “plant where atomic submarines are manufactured.”

You might suggest that the headline read, “Russia to build world’s first floating, stationary nuclear reactor.” Again, that description applies to half the Russian atomic navy and should be avoided.

To be serious for a moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if their plan was to lash together a bunch of old nuclear subs and run wires from them to land. Should we send them some of our rednecks and a boatload of duct tape to help out?

While watching C-SPAN today, I caught a bit of Congressional debate about Amtrak funding. Here’s what I recall:

• Funding is either set at 900 million, or 660 million. Either way they were trying to add 240 million. (Amtrak is seeking 1.6 billion)
• Some crazy black lady, who is apparently a Congresswoman from Florida, blabbered something about how Amtrak was so valuable in and around “the Katrina.”
• Last year’s legislation mandating changes at Amtrak saved 19 million dollars.
• It’s wrong to give up on Amtrak after they so admirably lived up to the challenge last year.
• According to some report, Amtrak is 17% more fuel efficient than autos, and 18% more efficient than planes.

Interested, I dug around a bit more.

From September 2004 through August 2005 (the latest data available here), Amtrak provided about 5.4 billion passenger miles at an expense of 2.94 billion dollars according to FY2005 data (which I think goes through September 2005, at least that’s what I gather from the FY2005 financial statement).

So, for FY2005, the cost of operating was 55 cents per passenger mile, while generating operations based revenue of 35 cents per mile.

In FY2004, it was 53 cents and 34 cents, respectively. Also in 2004, AAA estimated “[t]he average cost of driving a new passenger car in 2004 is 56.2 cents per mile” [emphasis mine].

Let that sink in. That’s 56.2 cents per vehicle–not passenger–mile for a new car that’s depreciating rapidly.

Surely the government investment is worth it since Amtrak has to be saving a ton of fuel.

Try again.

Let’s assume that those 5.4 billion passenger miles are each replaced by a person driving alone (a low estimate) in a vehicle that averages 20mpg (again a low estimate, since fleet vehicle fuel economy is closer to 25mpg). That means that without Amtrak, according to this estimate, Amtrak riders would instead be using about 270 million gallons of fuel to move themselves around. But, according to what I heard on C-SPAN, Amtrak is only a 17% improvement, which means maybe 46 million gallons of fuel are saved each year, thanks to Amtrak. And as usual that sounds like a lot. But that really translates to 3000 barrels per day, or about 0.015% of our daily oil consumption.

Looking at it another way, if the $900 million dollars of government money is applied only because of fuel savings, then the government is paying about $825 per barrel, or $19.66 per gallon of of fuel.

Again, I haven’t verified all this information, and certainly some of the comparisons and calculations aren’t really fair to Amtrak. It should, however, provide some food for thought.

UPDATE: I thought about that “17%” figure and thought it must be way low. Has to be. Well, it is what I heard (reading/listening to Congressional speeches inspires suicide by shotgun). It’s taken from a report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory… supposedly.

A report from the Heritage Foundation uses data from the ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book. It gives numbers for Amtrak’s energy use per passenger mile at a figure (4830) I can’t find contained in the book. I found 2935 BTU/revenue-passenger-mile for Amtrak (table 9.13). Using the book though, if you take fleet fuel efficiency at 25mpg, and average occupancy at 1.6 (figures 8.1 and 8.2), then a 17% fuel economy savings relates to an average energy density of our fuel of 137000 BTU/gallon, which is a little high I’d say, but pretty ball park.

I was using some data from the Heritage report below in comments about subsidizing other modes of transport. A government report does incidate that federal highways return a surplus. He author seems to mislead in the ability of airlines to do the same. I have little trust in the Heritage report at this point. Still, it would also be worth distilling the difference between highway funding and other road funding.

UPDATE 2: The Bureau of Transportation Statistics disagrees with Oak Ridge. Table 4-20 indicates that Amtrak, as of 2001, was about 42% more efficient than highway passenger cars.

I’m beginning to wish that I didn’t get curious.

Every year the NOAA generates a list of tropical storm names. Let’s face it. They get boring after a while, and I’m still upset that they’ve never chosen my name to be on the list. Here’s a better idea. Let’s create a list based on historic religous figures. That way, at the end of the year, we can deduce by total damage which religions or religious leaders are out to do us harm and which are trying to protect us.

With the 2006 Hurricane Season officially Open, I’d like to propose a partial list of names.

Not being the religious scholar in any way, I can only come up with a few weak suggestions.

Hurricane Jesus Christ, for example. Can Jesus Christ hit a curveball? I dunno, maybe if he keeps his weight on his back foot. Another good question, should be listed as Jesus, or Christ, or Jesus Christ? If you put him in the ‘C’-spot under Christ, that would leave ‘J’ open for a potential Hurricane Jobu, who may or may not have gotten his refill yet.

We could have

• A - Abraham
• B - Buddha
• C - Christ
• D - David Koresh
• G*
• I - Jehovah (”in the Latin alphabet, “Jehovah” begins with an ‘I’.”)
• J - Jobu
• L - Lucifer
• M - Muhammed
• N - Neptune
• S - Satan (the devil getting double chances to wreak some havoc)
• Z - Zeus

You get the gist. Got any ideas for completing the list?

After the 2006 hurricane season is over, we can drop the names associated with the worst storms, passing the good names onto the smaller 2007 list. In this tournament fashion, we can conclusively show which religions are better. (Should the tournament be double or single elimination?)

*The ‘G’-spot will not be filled since it is impossible to find and presumed to be non-existant.

Coffee that’s hot and high on caffeine
Beer that’s cold and finishes clean
Whiskey that makes me forget everything
These are a few of my favorite things

And it turns out, that they compliment each other nicely.

Coffee may protect against alcoholic liver disease, according to a study that adds to the growing body of literature on the diverse health effects of the popular and addictive brew.

For every cup of java, up to four a day, the study charted about a 20% decline in risk of alcoholic cirrhosis. People drinking four cups a day had about an 80% lower risk. Although the study suggests coffee may be protective, it doesn’t prove drinking it actually caused the benefit.

Bottoms up!

Anyone willing to admit that they actually saw, much less remember lines from, the star-studded Hollywood trainwreck that was Mars Attacks!? Well I am. For no good reason I watched it a lot. In fact, the movie is so terrifically bad that it became a running joke in my household.

Anyway, after Congress is blown up, Jack Nicholson as President Dale takes the optimistic view, “I want the people to know that they still have 2 out of 3 branches of the government working for them, and that ain’t bad.”

Well, since I’m taking the early part of today off because I’ve worked for 2 weeks straight, I’ve been catching up on my farking, where I found out that ‘South Park’ won a Peabody award. I haven’t watched much lately, but I’m still a fan. (By the way, one of my all time favorite CDs has to be Chef Aide (I’m glad someone left it at Woodland Circle for me to claim)). Sadly, the article realy doesn’t say much about ‘South Park’ or Trey and Matt. Instead it’s just a brief overview of the awards show.

It turns out a bunch of news outlets were rewarded for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Maybe it’s because my cable is super crappy, or that I don’t watch much TV news due to a desire for truth, but I had never received any impression that there was any good coverage of Katrina.

The following also jumped out at me:

Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor for “NBC Nightly News,” received the honor on behalf of the citizens of New Orleans, who were “failed by their government,” he said.

The past is always important:

Sandy Breland, executive news director at WWL, choked up as she accepted the award, saying that too many Americans had already forgotten about Katrina.

Well, for Mr. Brian Williams, I’d like to make sure he hasn’t forgotten about Abraham Lincoln. Williams desire to forget about Lincoln is understandable, as the former President was a Republican who used unpopular force for a greater good. Still, in one of the most recognizable and powerful speeches of all time, Lincoln said something about “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

As Lincoln so eloquently stated, the government is the people. The government isn’t at fault. We — yes even me — are at fault (although I don’t think there’s a lot of “fault” to be thrown around with respect to the hurricane or surrounding events).

It seems we’ve forgotten about the “of” and “by” parts. But at least we still demand the “for”.

It’s been a little over two weeks since I got back to town after the first stop on the summer wedding tour. Yesterday I finished picking up the things that were strewn about as I slowly unpacked. Tomorrow I start packing for stop #2.

Anyway, expect light posting over the next several days as I don’t really know where I’ll be or what will capture my attention.

Lake City, SC, here I come!