Petulant Politicians and their Piss-Poor Performance

I've been pretty sick the past few days with a 103 degree fever, but the silver lining is that the time at home has given me the chance to catch up on some reading.  An excerpt from Michael Grunwald's new book, "The New New Deal," boiled my blood far more than the fever ever could.  Enough to get me back on the wagon again and start posting.

The part I read focused on the time shortly after the 2008 elections, when Barack Obama won the presidential election on a platform of hope and change.  The Democrats had also won strong majorities in the Senate (58 of 100 seats) and in the House of Representatives (257 of 435 seats).  Understandably, the Republicans were humbled, and were nursing their wounds at a strategy session.  The quotes -- not just the narrative, but the quotes -- that Michael Grunwald uses to describe the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, make me furious:

The owlish, studiously bland Senate minority leader from Kentucky was the unlikeliest of motivational speakers.  He was a strategy guy, cynical and clinical; he reminded his members to stay calm, stay on message and stay united.  Obama had promised postpartisanship, and Republicans could turn him into a promise breaker by withholding their support.  "We got shellacked, but don't forget we still represent half the population," McConnell said.  "Republicans need to stick together as a team."  Or as Ohio Senator George Voinovich summarized the strategy, "If Obama was for it, we had to be against it."

...

But McConnell believed Republicans had nothing to gain from me-too-ism.  He reminded his caucus that Republicans wouldn't pay a price for opposing Obama's plan if it succeeded, because politicians get re-elected in good times.  But if the economy didn't revive, they could return from the political wilderness in 2010.  "He wanted everyone to hold the fort," Voinovich later explained.  "All he cared about was making sure Obama could never have a clean victory."

Excerpted from The New New Deal, copyright 2012 by Michael Grunwald, published by Simon & Schuster, August 2012.

I cannot explain my outrage at this kind of philosophy using even marginally polite language.  Is this how we teach our kids to play on the playground?  That if you don't get your way, the next best thing to do is be obstinate and destructive until you get your way?  I fail to understand why our Senators consider themselves above the most basic behavioral traits we try to instill in our youth.

This.  Is.  Disgusting.

This has nothing -- nothing -- to do with political ideology, or about Republicans vs. Democrats.  There are many tenets of the Republican party that I find appealing.  For instance, some elements of Representative Paul Ryan's budget plans are uncomfortable and different from what we are used to, but they are required to address the uncomfortable and different budget problems we face today.  The Republican ideal of a smaller, less intrusive government is broadly appealing to many people.  But Senator McConnell's uncompromising, obstructionist, screw-the-other-guys-at-all-costs is antithetical to everything that this country was founded on and stands for.

When James Madison was asked, "Are there any principles by which the American government works?" he responded, "Yes, there are three: compromise, compromise, compromise."

Look, dammit, you don't win your way back to popularity by being petulant and throwing a tantrum.  You win your way back to popularity by proposing a compellingly better path forward; by being more in tune with what people want; by making a positive case that you can address the current administration's shortcomings.

In business, in the military, and in engineering (and I've been involved in all three), you make your case for your position or your proposed path forward.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  The team's success requires you to execute the chosen task to the best of your ability, whether it was what you wanted or not.

That is how I expect elected officials to behave, whether I voted for them or not.  Anything less is disgusting.

Inspirational Quote #4

Nike had a stroke of brilliance with their "Just Do It" slogan and campaign.  I mean, what a simple, motivational, and utterly inspiring set of words?  In that vein, I offer this sentiment ... in the spirit of "Just Keep Doing It."

(Mr. Brooks is most famously known for writing the lyrics to "O Little Town of Bethlehem," but sadly, history has kind of neglected his inspirational preaching and writing.)

Inspirational Quote #3

Traditional project management training (and almost all systems engineering) drills the concept of "stakeholder requirements" into your head.  "Ask the customer what they want."  

I really enjoy it when people are so smart, and have such a clear vision, that they can say things like this -- and be right.

Inspirational Quote #2

When I first heard this quote back in 1997, I thought "Oh, how awful."  The past 15 years have taught me that, at times, this philosophy is useful and motivational.

Inspirational Quote #1

Back on the horse again, after a long hiatus.  Sorry about that.

It has become trendy on the internet these days to post pictures of famous people along with famous quotes those famous people said, all in the hopes that the original poster becomes famous.

Okay, I'm in.  And I plan to update a new quote each day this week, so check back here often.

The Peter Principle - An Addendum

The Peter Principle is commonly stated as follows:

In an organization based on achievement and rewarding of merit through promotions, an employee will rise to his or her own level of incompetence, and stay there.

The principle was actually first formalized in a book, known as The Peter Principle.  I was going to add a corollary to it, but I see there are already a few corollaries out there.  So, I'll add an addendum:

Diligent, responsible employees will collect more and more responsibilities until they are paralyzed and ineffective.

I feel like that addendum helps describe why I haven't posted anything in nearly two months.

Iranian Uranium

The title of this post sounds like something that could be written by They Might Be Giants, but alas, it's not.  This is a post by an engineer who knows a thing or two about uranium enrichment and I thought I'd flesh out a few scenarios.

About a week ago, the IAEA released a new report saying that Iran had greatly stepped up its ability to enrich uranium.  The report stated that since November, Iran has tripled its capability to produce uranium enriched to 20%.  (Natural uranium has 0.72% U-235, most commercial reactors need 3% to 5% U-235, weapons-grade uranium is around 80% or higher.  The arbitrary limit on "low enriched uranium" is set at 20%.) Iran is said to be sitting on a stash of about 105 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium, and is capable of adding about 14 kilograms per month to that stockpile.

Additionally, as of 1 year ago, Iran had over 3,000 kilograms of uranium at 3.5% enriched.  That's a fair amount of uranium -- especially considering that Iran only has 1 working nuclear reactor (the 5 MW Tehran research reactor), 1 nearing completion (Bushehr), and one a few years off (Arak).

What does all this mean?  Here's a chart I made to help you understand:

This complicated graph shows three things: enrichment level (on the x-axis), the mass of uranium needed (as shown by the size of the bubbles), and the work necessary to move from one step to the next (as shown on the y-axis).  The shaded region (above 20%) is considered Highly Enriched Uranium, and the IAEA and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) prevent a country from going above that.

The "unit of work" on the y-axis is the Separative Work Unit (SWU).  Climbing up the y-axis is really, really hard.  There are lots of SWU calculators on the internet that you can use to figure this kind of thing out, but I wrote my own a few years ago to calculate some off-nominal conditions for a project I was working on.  For you techno-nerds out there, I assumed a tails of 0.2%.

The Blue Line
First, look at the blue line.  This "path" shows the work and steps necessary to go from natural uranium to 3.5% enriched uranium to 20% enriched uranium to 90% enriched uranium.  The red circle at 3.5% enriched uranium is where Iran sits today.  Here's the bottom line: as far as separative work is considered, Iran is already two-thirds of the way towards having uranium suitable for a nuclear weapon.

The Green Line
Iran also has a stash of 20% enriched uranium lying around.  This is shown by the green line.  Again, very little work is necessary to turn the 20% enriched into 90% enriched uranium.

How much is enough?

The IAEA defines a "Significant Quantity" as:

The approximate quantity of nuclear material in respect of which, taking into account any conversion process involved, the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive device cannot be excluded. 

For HEU, this is 25 kg.  Look again at the above chart at the 90% enrichment level.  Yikes.

A picture of Iran's installed centrifuges.

Looking ahead
To be fair, there are a few plausible explanations for Iran's actions.

1. Iran needs 20% enriched fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor, which is also uses to make the medical radionuclide Tc-99m.  In fact, with much fanfare, it loaded an Iranian-made fuel element into the reactor a few weeks ago.  Having the domestic capability frees them from buying the Tc-99m isotope abroad.
2. Iran will eventually need fuel for its Bushehr reactor, and that thing will eat about 1,000 kg's of uranium per year (CAVEAT EMPTOR: That's my wild guess.)
3. Everything Iran has done is in compliance with the NPT, and its enrichment facilities are under the camera surveillance of the IAEA.
4. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah, has issued a fatwah against nuclear weapons.

However, to each of the above points, there are strong counterpoints to make:

1. The expense (and additional work) needed to get to 20% enriched Just Isn't Worth It.  There was a great solution on the table offered to Iran about a year or two ago: "We'll take your 3.5% enriched uranium and trade you the equivalent of 20% enriched."  Economically, that would have been fantastic.  But Iran turned it down.
2. It is economic folly to go down the path of creating your own front-end domestic fuel cycle when Russia, France, and the US have all independently offered to provide Iran the fuel it needs for the Tehran research reactor, and for Bushehr.  Iran, the country, is not sitting on any known large uranium deposits.  There is no way that 1 commercial reactor can hope to pay back the expense and effort that went into developing uranium centrifuges and conversion facilities.
3. Although they are under IAEA surveillance, cooperation with the IAEA has been difficult.  And if Iran's plans are truly peaceful, why on earth would they bury their newest centrifuge enrichment plant under 260 feet of rock?  (The existence of this plant was only really brought to light when it was outed by Western intelligence ... although there is a slight controversy about it, any rational organization in Iran's situation would be as transparent as possible.)
4. Leaders (and potential leaders) of countries have been known to flip-flop on key issues before.  Call me skeptical.

Conclusions:

It wouldn't be hard for Iran to kick the IAEA out, shut off the cameras, and devote resources towards making weapons-grade material.  Some estimates say that's as little as 2 months out.  North Korea did something similar in its push to make plutonium for its weapons.  

So, the bottom line is that while Iran has been obeying the letter of the law per the IAEA, they're also doing a textbook-perfect case of building nuclear-weapons capability "in plain sight."  I made the above chart because I hadn't seen anyone depict this situation graphically before.  Hope it helps.

Apple Products and Getting Old

I've been an Apple-product user for a long time.  For a really long time, actually, ever since the Mac Plus in 1986.

Memories of Dark Castle, anyone?

To put it simply, even in the dark, "beleaguered" days of Apple in the late 1990's, I liked Apple's business model because they controlled the hardware, they controlled the operating system, and they set the tone for a lot of the software.  In my opinion, that kind of vertical integration was worth the additional cost and, admittedly, the relative dearth of software.

As such, you tend to accumulate hardware, cables, connectors, and other computer detritus over the years. I was excited when I thought I would be able to finally put to use an old firewire-to-Apple connector that has been lying around for many years, now that I am the proud new owner of an iPhone.

Rats.  They don't even support charging with an old firewire cable.  That hurt.