My Blog

Killing Our Children

Laurence — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:46:51 GMT

It is tempting to view the April 16 slaying of 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech as a horrible anomaly perpetrated by a uniquely insane person with access to guns. Period. End of discussion. We know how to handle this (although, somehow, we failed to do it). Before settling into a comfortable stupor of belief that the authorities have it handled, some of us might take a moment to reflect that “land of opportunity” hasn’t really described America for at least a hundred years. In 1900, or thereabouts, when the world’s last frontiers vanished, they took with them the option to run away and start over. It affects some people more than others, but the disappearance of frontiers and the events at Virginia Tech, at Columbine High, at the World Trade Center, and other icons of terror are related by an inexorable logic that we haven’t yet grasped. In that connection, here are two questions to consider: Computer users know that operating systems require periodic resets, or the computer does bizarre and destructive things, in a manner perhaps analogous to dysfunctional human social systems. So how do you reset a society? In the wild, animals that challenge the dominant male in a group become outcasts. Expulsion, or voluntary departure, is the expected outcome. The rejected individual starts over from scratch. But what if geographical constraints make expulsion impossible? We take the second question first What if there exists no way for an individual to escape a desperately bad situation? The late Dr. John C. Calhoun, an ecologist of some note, was interested in the social behavior of confined populations of rodents. His research began at Johns Hopkins in 1946 and continued through the '60s, when Calhoun, then a research psychologist at the National Institutes for Mental Health, published a report in Scientific American (among other places). What fascinated students and readers of this research, then and now, is that the rats in Calhoun's experiments developed social pathologies similar to the behavior of humans trapped in cities. Among the males, behavioral disturbances included sexual deviation and sudden, gratuitous violence. Even the most normal males in the group occasionally went berserk, attacking less dominant males, juveniles and females. Failures of reproductive function in the females -- the rat equivalence of neglect, abuse and endangerment -- were so severe that the colonies would have died out eventually, had they been permitted to continue. Before going on, it is especially important to be clear on this point: None of Calhoun's experiments began with throngs. All of his populations started out small, with superabundant resources, and grew after many generations into a state of what is called crowding (80% of nesting boxes occupied). And that is why we tend to think of the problem with the rodents as one of population density. It is common to challenge the extension of Calhoun’s experimental results with animals to human populations on the basis of “infinitely adaptable” humanity. It is said that many Asian cities have high population densities without having the social problems characteristic of enclosed colonies of rats. (But those populations consist largely of agrarian workers who move in an out of the city at will on boats.) Actually, the problem is not about crowding. It is one of containment, or “enclosure”, after an old English system of abusive laws by the same name. Appropriately, Calhoun called his confinements "universes," since the animals inside them knew nothing of an outside. The rats of the early days required complete rooms as universes. This, and the fact that crazy rats are notoriously difficult to care for, is what must have shifted Calhoun's affections to mice in later experiments. Full details of Universe 25 appear in a 1970 paper titled “The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population”. A few salient points from the paper: * The mice in Universe 25 developed a social system with a fixed number of places. In nature, the excess population emigrates to what, in human terms, would be a frontier. But in Calhoun's rodent Shangri-La, the possibility of emigration is excluded because ecologists define emigration as a "mortality factor." It is therefore not utopian. Rejected males gathered in "pools" on the floor of the universe, where they fought frequently. Females not accepted in the social structure withdrew to less-preferred nesting boxes in the higher reaches of the universe. * Dealing with large numbers of maturing competitors overtaxed the territorial males. In response to the invasion of nesting sites by interlopers, females became aggressive, taking over some of the defensive duties of the males. This aggression generalized to their young. A pronounced rise in pre-weaning mortality marked the end of social structure in Universe 25. * With the end of successful reproductive activity, the population plunged exponentially and the age distribution shifted into senescence. It had been expected that the population would rebound after declining to a few remnant groups. It did not. What's more, healthy young individuals from Universe 25, transplanted to an empty universe of their own, failed to develop a social structure or engage in reproductive activity. Human behavior is complex, not infinitely adaptable, and not necessarily different from that of Calhoun’s rats. For example, upon enclosure, people create causes to justify their violence. Religious causes have been a favorite, especially recently, since we have global enclosure and there are such a variety of religions in the world to fight about. Economic disparities are perhaps more famous. England’s most pronounced episode of enclosure -- one that nearly led to the genocide of farm workers from the southern agricultural districts of that country -- produced spectacular concentrations of wealth accompanied by dramatic poverty, unemployment, and underemployment. The catch phrase “surplus population” (an Ebenezer Scrooge favorite) became popular in 1834, when English manufacturers proposed to the Poor Law Commissioners that they send the surplus population north so that “the manufacturers could absorb and use it up.” This strategy, arising from enclosure, produced the abuses that brought about the creation of communism as a response to capitalism, and the need for a kind of welfare system -- not to keep people from starving, but to keep them from expressing their resentment of conspicuous wealth by violence. Richard Rubenstein, of the Humanities Institute of Florida State University, put it more succinctly in his 1983 book |The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World|. “The earliest motive for poor relief in England was not charity, but public order ... Had it not been for the safety valve of emigration, in all likelihood the history of Great Britain in the nineteenth century would have been far bloodier than it was.” What prevented that violence was the removal of one-quarter of the population of the British Isles to the Great Frontier (mostly North America and Australia) between 1840 and 1880. Today, with emerging global enclosure problems that are similar to those of England in the nineteenth century, no such escape valve exists. The attack of 23-year-old gunman Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech, the son of immigrants who work in a dry cleaning establishment in suburban Washington, appears to have been motivated by economic envy, as indicated by his videotaped rant about rich “brats” and their “hedonistic needs”. This echoes other terroristic acts such as those in December of 2000 by high school-aged activists espousing the extremist environmental ideology of ELF. The kids burned several upscale houses in Long Island, New York. Spray-painted messages on the charred remains said not “save the forests”, but “burn the rich”. Some of us do prosper mightily. Global (as well as US) sales of private jets are way up. So is yacht production, to the point that the 70-or-so big yacht builders in the world are saturated with work. There are a lot more billionaires than there used to be, and a lot more unemployed or underemployed workers than there were. The latter cannot emigrate to another country for work. It can be argued that those with riches have acquired them at the expense of the others. “Burn the rich”, indeed. So how rich do you have to be to be resented? Ron Kohl, a former editor of the magazine “Machine Design”, an engineering journal, once made an estimate. Kohl was famous for his inflammatory editorials about things only marginally related to machine design. Nevertheless, they generated plenty of mail, and they helped immerse a generation of engineers in their social environment, pretty much a good thing. The estimate came out at about $200,000 per year. A typical (not big-time) CEO makes that much. Take another quick look at English response to the Great Frontier of the nineteenth century, around 1860. Because of the existence of the frontier, wages went up, the government provided more legislation to correct labor abuses, parents took better care of their children, and due to the multiplier effect, not all of the poor people had to leave England. Because of the frontier, British society did a reset to prevent greater loss of labor. Making a frontier is how you reset a society. As to the alternative, big rocks from space are not required to wipe us out. Global warming is superfluous. If a frontier is really impossible, violence (call it terrorism, to use the current political vernacular) escalates until the cost of controlling it exceeds the sum of economic production. It rises until reproductive damage to the enclosed society becomes an extinction level event. That is, you kill your children. Further Reading: Turner, Frederick Jackson, |The Frontier in American History|, ISBN 0-88275-347-9 (1920) Webb, Walter Prescott, |The Great Frontier|, No ISBN (1952) O’Neill, Gerard K., |The High Frontier|, ISBN 0-688-03133-1 (1977) Heppenheimer, T.A., |Colonies in Space|, ISBN 0-8117-0397-5 Rubenstein, Richard L., |The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World|, ISBN 0-8070-4376-1 (1983) Organizing Principle for the Duration: The world needs an exit. The only way out is up.

Infrastructure Winners and Losers

Laurence — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:25:52 GMT

I attended the third of six Oro Valley Institute classes last Thurssday, this one about water and transportation infrastructure. The thing that struck me about virtually all of the funding and resources is that they do not come from around here. Just read on and think about it. Philip Saletta, Water Utility Director, is a geological engineer with an Arizona PE in civil engineering (although he says, as I do, that you will never meet a civil engineer). I would have expected that the State would require at least a bachelor’s in Civil Engineer before granting a license, but perhaps things work here they way they used to in Texas. There, you became a professional engineer by the recommendation of other professional engineers. It’s only an hour’s presentation, so the formula was simple. We talked about the water system (no details, just numbers of connections and history), development plans (more water) and water conservation. Average consumption is about 5,000 gallons per mponth per household. The cost is about $2 per 1,000 gallons. Oro Valley has 336 miles of pipe, much of it ductile iron, which is supposed to be pretty good stuff. Leakage rate is about 2%; more than 10% would be bad, according to Phil, altough I think I have read about numbers much high than that, maybe 40% in some systems. Pipe replacement is figured into the rate structure, with a planned life of, I think Phil said, 55 years. A total desolved solids (TDS) of 150 ppm makes Oro Valley water pretty good. Tucson has 300 ppm. I remember that Walworth, WI, has about 400 ppm. Same for Chatsworth, CA. I think 500 ppm is the limit most places, although Phil says you can drink 900 ppm. 1300 - 1500 ppm is considered “brackish”. TDS measures the concentration of all ionic species in the water. It is easy to measure (I do it with a $20 electronic stick), so it is used as a way to evaluate overall water quality. A new state law requires water utilities to replace as much water from aquifers as is pumped, either by natural means (catch basins) or by replacement from another source. This direct replacement will be by Central Arizona Project water from the Colorado River by 2012 at a cost of $60 million (a bond issue). Even with climate change and increased water use, Phil says the urban water supply from the CAP is pretty secure because it has a high priority, second only to Indian water rights, the highest priority. We did not discuss how changes in other states’ allocations might impact Arizona, nor what happens if the current drought continues. In any case, the CAP water replacement strategy is one of making the problem someone else’s. Sustainable production form the local acquifer is 5500 acre-feet per year. Water consumption was 9,995 af/yr in 2005. By providing reclaimed water for the irrigation of three local golf courses through 11.5 miles of pipe, Oro Valley was able to reduce that to 9,094 af/yr, still way too high. Reclaimed water is treated and coarsefy filtered sewage. Some does reach the water table. Phil says not to panic. Very little gets by the turf, he says. The El Conquistador course is still using potble water, although plans are in place to replace that with reclaimed water in a second phase of water system construction. Planned growth will increase water use to 17,000 af/yr by 2025. Only about a third of that will be sustainable ground water production. Part of the high cost of CAP water will be that of reverse osmosis treatment to bring the TDS to 300 ppm. Water quality will be degraded. Transportation was a much briefer discussion (by Jose Rodriquez, PE, Engineering Division Manager, Public Works Transportation). There is no local public transportation in Oro Valley except for Coyote Run, a van service for the geriatric crowd. It is hoped that funds can be made available from an external source to make public transit available to people who sing more than they kvetch. We are widening First Ave. There are similar plans for a stretch of La Canada between Tangerine and the Library on Naranja. Multimodal (pedestrian and bicycle) linear parks are in planning. (No equestrian accommodation. The right of way is too narrow. Why would most of us want to pay for that, anyway?) The cost of asphalt, which was $40/ton until recently, has gone to $100/ton. No reason given. The cost of undergrounding 14 kVA electrical lines has risen from $700,000 per mile to $1 million per mile, so it has dropped out of some plans. A park-and-ride lot for SunTran buses may happen on Innovation Drive, near Ventana Medical. Right now, the nearest SunTran bus stop is at Honeywell. There followed a great deal of chatter about how to get the region or the state to pay for transportation infrastructure. In this scheme, there will be winners and losers, a zero-sum game completely typical of enclosure. See what I mean at http://www.fordianvillage.com/article_read.asp?id=86.

Southwestern Architecture

Laurence — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:41:52 GMT

I’ve gone back to school. Just a couple of hours a week. It’s free. I think I can afford that. One of the things I hope to learn at the Oro Valley Institute class on Southwestern architecture (and other municipal matters) is how the town (Oro Valley or any other) will deal with alternative kinds of architecture from a zoning and code perspective. Checked out alternative architecture tribes in Tribe. Net today, looking for stuff applicable to closed system life support for space. Intuition tells me that permaculture, for example, is closely related to that. There is little real information in the tribe postings. For a basic definition of permaculture, I had to go to Wikipedia. (Permanent agriculture, not using fossil resources.) Other key words: earthship houses, hobbit houses. But I’m not just interested in houses. Besides code and zoning issues within hide-bound bureaucracies, I wonder how to bring technology and the natural world together to produce happy, healthy individuals. They were never really separate to begin with, technology and nature, but the people involved seem vastly different in character and style. To say that the idea of “sustainable development” is a lethal trap for life on Earth is obviously not going over well with the Gaia crowd. And yet, the narrow vision of trying to duplicate past lives with primitive (or advanced) materials and primitive (or advanced) technologies for billions of people in an enclosed environment with zero growth is a formula for creating a little hell of misery, terror, premature death, senescence and eventual extinction. I believe that any scientifically competent examination of APPARENTLY steady-state, peaceful, prosperous societies is going to show a leakage of people to the outside, or a secret and quite horrible death ritual for senior citizens and misfits (Logan’s Run, Soylent Green). So, for me, the root idea of sustainable development is dangerous, dangerous crap. OK, so when the treehuggers are all done fulminating about the scary technologist inavading their holy space, MAYBE they will be able to hear me say that freakasaurus nerdy geek technofiles such as myself can’t possibly build successul space colonies without their wisdom, expertise, and cooperation. The reason: We need to create closed life support systems, like Biosphere 2, but without quasireligious, pseudoscientific public relations bimboism, for our colonies to be sustainable. And that is the point, or part of it, of Alien Landscapes: continuous improvement of not-so-closed life support systems, partly self-sufficient in food, water, power, waste management, temperature control, and even air, until we can close the loop. Sold for use on Earth, but extraterrestrial in theme, these products are the wares of a bazaar, a medieval trade fair of the distant future, perhaps. It’s a hobby, morphing into an online business, growing into a physical faire rivaling anything that Renaissance Entertainment or Disney can produce. You out there, I could really use your help. 02/22/07 (Thursday) — Attended the Oro Valley Institute class on Southwestern design, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, Town Council Chambers, Oro Valley Town Hall. Annie Nequette, University of Arizona College of Architecture opened with an overview of Southwestern architecture. Prehistoric, Spanish, colonial/territorial, post World War II, and something called “critical regionalism” (which turns out to mean environmentally-conscious) form the substance and context of building styles in Tucson. Hohokam build pit houses, partly underground, covered with domes fashioned from curved beams with a vent at top. The undergrounding kept the temperature more constant and comfortable. First construction Kino mission, 1694. Tucson founded 1775. Early building followed the “law of the Indies”, stemming from Roman architecture, and propagated by Spanish conquistadors. It uses the grid system of urban layout. Blocks arranged in a rectangular grid are built up on the periphery, with a central courtyard. It is a defensive arrangement, but also a social preference. This is Apache raider territory. People shared the common areas, a social preference. Construction material was adobe, for thermal mass, which made the insides cooler in the daytime, but hot at night. People slept on the roofs. Room sizes limited by size of available timbers, hauled first form the southern mountains and eventually from the Catalinas, shaped by hand. Floors coated with caliche (spelling) to make them washable. The railroads brought eastern influences, not appropriate to the climate or the terrain. People tacked Greek elements onto adobe houses. Houses were placed in the center or property boundaries, rather than on the periphery, in order to achieve isolation, the preferred Eastern social arrangement. Modern building is steel frame. (Began in Chicago.) Can get A Guide to Tucson Architecture by the speaker and her partner in the Oro Valley Library. Ken Imoehl, SBBL Architects, explained the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design System (LEEDS) of rating buildings. Features that conserve energy and water, provide natural lighting, eliminate toxic emissions from construction materials (sick building syndrome), find uses for left-over construction materials, reuse as much of existing buildings as possible, and provide handy access to transportation form the basis for scoring. Levels of accomplishment range from basic to platinum (with silver and gold in between, I think). The best green buildings use gray water for gardening and reclaimed water for sanitation. (The difference between gray and reclaimed water not discussed, but reclaiming means passing water through filters, sometimes reverse osmosis membranes, that make it almost as good as potable water.) Additional costs include materials, documentation of the design and construction, and the certification process, 2% to 5%, typically, and up to 9% for the platinum level. Owners reap savings in increased productivity and decreased absenteeism (documented), and more efficient use of energy, including smaller cooling units required, less electricity use for lighting. Hospitals achieve earlier discharges because of health benefits which have to do with safe materials and natural lighting. Briefly, underground construction, or earth-covered construction is doable, but more expensive. Much attention to drainage required. See web site www.usbgc.org. Noted that the best use of insulation is outside the thermal mass. Apparently archtects do not typically make much use of nonsteady thermal finite element analysis or computational fluid dynamics to understand environmental control. Yet. Remaining questions: Does LEEDS consider use of certified sustainable materials like those described in Jarred Diamond’s Collapse? What are the costs and complications of undergrounding? Is security against crime and natural disaster a standard? Auxiliary power, for example. Does Arizona require utilities to buy excess power form distributed generation? What about the benefits of using plants indoors? Considered? When cities build municipal structures, are the costs of operation considered explicitly? Need more detail on reclaimed water use. Diana Rhoades, project manager, speaker for the Sonoran Institute (www.sonoran.org), described her non-profit employer’s efforts to encourage good architectural practices, densification and cohousing (people living closer together, sharing more common areas). Milagro project, an award winner, is a cluster. Solar water heater payback is less than one year. It is less than 10 years for photovoltaics. Places to check out: Originate -- architectural materials store 17th Street Market Edith Ball Aquatic Center. (Has interesting use of fabric structure for shade.) Community Design Academy

Fun-seeking in the Job Market

Laurence — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:42:01 GMT

01/31/07 -- Interviewed at Sargent Controls & Aerospace for a post as a "Continuous Improvement Manager". It was a brief interview. I talked to Larry Schermer (I'm not sure about the spelling) for about an hour and twenty minutes. He showed me the bearing lines and explained some of the manufacturing issues, which turn out to be very similar to problems I've dealt with before, albeit in a slightly different context. For example, bearing liners need to be trimmed in their shells just as composite Teflon radial lip seals need to be trimmed, using the same type of equipment. The materials are similar, too -- both hard to cut. Sargent does this by hand, resulting in a high scrap rate. So they get the necessary quality by 100% inspection. Not only is that expensive, but some defects inevitably escape, usually about 15%. I hope the percentage is much lower in this case, because some of Sargent's lined products are Criticality One items on military helicopters. Failure means loss of mission, aircraft, and crew. Automation of the same type used by seal manufacturers will fix the problem, and I know how to do that. It's not the only interesting challenge at Sargent. Processes need to be mapped (done that), measurement methods need to be developed, and measurement tools need to be purchased or created to get good intelligence (done that). Data needs to be gathered, experiments designed, and information fused into results meaningful to management. Done that. I think that success requires not only knowledge and skill with statistics, which I have, but also long experience with manufacturing, quality, and design (done that). The work I (or someone) would do at Sargent could benefit all groups, as well as the bottom line, relieving any concern about liability issues into the bargain. I like the people (well, the one I actually met), the location, and the challenge. I cannot say, however, that I was made to feel particularly welcome. Larry (who has only been there a month) said I should expect a call to arrange a second interview. We shall see. Maybe, as Larry mentioned, the Top Slot really wants to hire a "statistics guru" right out of school. On the other hand, I heard they had customers and Dover corporate types in. Maybe today was just not a good day for them. On some future day, perhaps I'll learn more.... What standards do they test to? What are the environmental challenges for lined bearings? Is bonding a problem? How is the substrate cleaned? Etched? What adhesive? (It turns out to be sandblasted, and then they REALLY have a cleaning problem.) Do bearing liners experience separation due to differential thermal expansion? Why is rework of worn bearings allowed only on non-Boeing aircraft? How is the waste stream handled? (solvents, etchants, and waste adhesive) Marana, AZ, where Sargent is located, seems like such a corrupt little burgh (mayor under indictment, city manager issuing orders to employees never to talk to the press without approval, for example) that I have to wonder about the last item. I'll ask if I do get a second shot. Larry himself is an interesting character, about the only one there with more than five years experience in anything, not just manufacturing, engineering, or management. He's done Sargent's identical kind of work for years (I forget how many), been back to Sargent for three tours (I guess you could call them), ran his own bearing business in California and China, and hopes to retire before dealing with the sensitivities of youthful company leaders -- sensitivities about being less experienced, taking advice, etc. -- wear him down. Talking to Larry made me recall my own experiences with employers who ache to see a younger face. I don't think I saw anyone over forty at Raytheon, except for one technician whom no one seemed to take seriously. Then there was the experience at MRI, where the hiring manager thought I had the "perfect background" (his words, not mine) for the task at hand, yet his boss decided not to see me (too busy). I had barely cleared 50 when a potential boss at a Wisconsin compressor company thought my turbomachinery expertise was just what he needed. However, in a later conversation, the manager opined that HR had determined that the Big Boss needed "someone he can mentor". I'm sure he wasn't supposed to tell me that. So I ask myself, if I were thirty-something, would I hire me? Maybe not, if I were concerned about advancement. I wouldn't want to look too baby-faced, compared to my minion, in front of the boss. How about HR? Don't older employees kick up the cost of medical insurance? Don't they want too much money? Won't they leave more readily if someone offers them better pay? If I were a policy-maker, I might worry about an engineering shortage, not in the absolute sense, but in the sense of fresh meat (oops, I mean young blood). Even if there were no shortage, impending or otherwise, might I not feel the need -- knowing how many successful foreign terrorists are young, unemployed engineers -- feel the need to keep young males busy? Might I not want SOME pretext (like older people are too expensive or have obsolete skills) to claim a shortage of appropriate job-seekers in order to justify (to Congress) more H1B visas for cheaper foreign labor? It seems to me that the motivation to ignore experienced talent, no matter how sleazy, is overwhelming. Perhaps the world expects more from people who are as chronologically gifted as I am, yet are not intellectuals in the PhD sense. Perhaps I need to be creating jobs rather than taking one. I have some ideas, and a growing confidence that I'd better try.

Scouring the Landscape for Jobs

Laurence — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:38:16 GMT

In what feels uncannily like Fate, I got a call out of the blue, or over the transom, depending on your viewpoint (aerial or nautical), from an old acquaintance at Honeywell Engines in Phoenix, who said he saw my resume and remembered my work fondly. So off I went with Pat and Amadeus Wolfgang (our musically talented dog), Amy for short, to visit People and subject myself to a panel interview at Engines. Of the three people on the panel, I knew two -- not necessarily good, because I was famous for technical engineering, not for being a principal project engineer, the job for which I was interviewing. The panelists took turns asking questions from a prepared list (all candidates get the same ones) about how my experiences demonstrate my ability to plan, organize, motivate people, judge the technical merit of work done by others, and communicate technical and nontechnical information. So I did that for an hour (six questions). Pat and Amy waited in the Explorer because Pat did not want me to drive in now-unfamiliar Phoenix traffic. Amy wanted to bark at passers by. I just wanted to eat pizza, which we did as soon as we met up with the Phoenix branch of the family. I'll know something about the job in maybe two weeks. I could add more, but It would be just as dull, and I would miss lunch.

Penetrating the Blogosphere

Laurence — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:57:06 GMT

Wow. So this is the blogosphere. I see there's an explicit option for importing photographs. If this web log also supports HTML, then"http://www.alienlandscapes.biz" will be a link to my online store, SpaceFarers' Alien Landscapes, which has as its objective the sale, directly or indirectly, of anything that could support or encourage outer space habitation for human beings engaged in industry. What kind of industry? • Mining the Moon and asteroids (mostly for materials to use in space) • Low-cost, non-polluting electrical power generation for Earth • Low-cost, high-reliability space exploration, launched from space, not Earth • Optical and radio astronomy • High-energy physics, exploring fusion and antimatter power sources • Global climate control using mirrors and shades • Planetary defense against Earth-crossing asteroids • Global Security, policing the Earth from space. For example. The list is endless, and its best bullet items are doubtless unknown. In any case, I don't really mean this to be a formal writing exercise, although I have done those, and you can see them at www.fordianvillage.com > articles > Larry Winn. The picture is an artist's rendering of a space colony design that goes by the name "Standford Torus" for its origin at a Stanford University summer conference back in the '70s. By the way, I'm not using "Larry" anymore. Don't want to be confused with Larry Bossidy. So, except for those who are family and old friends, I wish to be called Laurence, which is, after all, my given name. The nickname is dead. So this is what I've been doing lately: • Moved to Tucson with a contract engineering job, because Tucson is where we want to be for magical reasons. • My new job left for India without me, so I am looking for work full time (that's work), trying to stay in Tucson. • Acquired Alibre Design 3D CAD software on a trial basis, and used it to create the SpaceFarers logo. • Also created a 3D model of what I suppose to be a new kind of security door (haven't done a patent search yet) that would be substantially blast-proof and easily defensible. I also did enough of the math to know the basic design parameters. • Modeled the ring wall of Alien Landscapes, the theme park, which I mean to build if I can just find the right people to work with. • Programmed a database to rank action items based on (so far) ten general inputs. This helps me keep my day productive. And the math is, as always, interesting. • Wrote a presentation, which I hope to deliver at some point, on theories and technology for the parametric testing of radial lip seals. • Wrote a couple of articles about the New Space trend, which I have distributed online. • Created a web site in AOL (because it's easy) on which to post some of this stuff.