Some health-care thoughts:
* 1) Since Ronald Reagan changed tax policy and trade policy to shift wealth from American workers to investors and foreigners, the number of Americans unable to afford health care has soared to unconscionable levels. The beneficiaries of this wealth shift should embrace universal health care as a just and affordable restoration of economic balance, one that greatly reduces worker anxiety and misery while minimally affecting worker incentive.
* 2) Conservatives complain that their taxes will increase to pay the trillion-dollar ten-year cost of universal health care, a liberal initiative to help millions of Americans. That seems fair enough, since liberal's taxes must increase to pay the trillion-dollar ten-year cost of the Iraq war, a conservative initiative that unjustly hurt millions of Iraqis and thousands of Americans.
* 3) Owing to its portability, universal health care should stimulate economic ferment, as it will enable people to move to more compatible jobs and undertake business initiatives that are now prohibitively risky.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Robotic Surveillance Lighter-than-air Craft
Why wouldn't this 19th century idea work?
** Since the mid '90s, I've been thinking about the potential of robotic surveillance lighter-than-air craft (RSLC) in military and law-enforcement applications. The device would be essentially a miniature Zeplin. The balloon would be filled with hydrogen, its top and side skin being covered with solar-voltaic surface to charge batteries servicing electronics and electric motors driving the propellers and controls. The payload would be several video cameras, including visible-light and infrared, and transmitters for their signals.
** The device would be commanded to approach within a few yards of designated GPS coordinates at an altitude safe from ground fire and small rockets. Barring strong winds, it should be able to hold its position indefinitely. Larger rockets and antiaircraft guns would have to be attacked when identified. The cameras would take video at about 10 frames per second, enough to keep up with moving objects on the ground. Their default zooms would be as wide as compatible with sufficient pixels per unit ground area. On command from an operator on the ground it would zoom in on any object of interest long enough to capture identifying characteristics. It would report the GPS of any object on the ground pointed at by the operator.
** Such a device could provide surveillance around anything in need of protection (a village, an installation), or it could document events in an area rich in criminal activity (Juarez Mexico). Several of them along any route could identify IEDs being planted (where the planters came from and go to), and they could locate ambushers before, during and after an ambush.
** These applications are available to the side that controls the air in an asymmetric conflict. RSLC could have been used in the '90s to monitor and control Iraq (by threats), allowing withdrawal of flyovers, embargoes and blockades (until a new regime could come to power more naturally), thereby avoiding the unethical invasion and occupation.
** It seems that the only engineering challenge in this idea is how to ensure that the energy needed to hold position in expected wind is less than that gathered in expected sunlight. That would have to be addressed in shape of the device (to get more sun exposure, to get less wind drag).
** Since the mid '90s, I've been thinking about the potential of robotic surveillance lighter-than-air craft (RSLC) in military and law-enforcement applications. The device would be essentially a miniature Zeplin. The balloon would be filled with hydrogen, its top and side skin being covered with solar-voltaic surface to charge batteries servicing electronics and electric motors driving the propellers and controls. The payload would be several video cameras, including visible-light and infrared, and transmitters for their signals.
** The device would be commanded to approach within a few yards of designated GPS coordinates at an altitude safe from ground fire and small rockets. Barring strong winds, it should be able to hold its position indefinitely. Larger rockets and antiaircraft guns would have to be attacked when identified. The cameras would take video at about 10 frames per second, enough to keep up with moving objects on the ground. Their default zooms would be as wide as compatible with sufficient pixels per unit ground area. On command from an operator on the ground it would zoom in on any object of interest long enough to capture identifying characteristics. It would report the GPS of any object on the ground pointed at by the operator.
** Such a device could provide surveillance around anything in need of protection (a village, an installation), or it could document events in an area rich in criminal activity (Juarez Mexico). Several of them along any route could identify IEDs being planted (where the planters came from and go to), and they could locate ambushers before, during and after an ambush.
** These applications are available to the side that controls the air in an asymmetric conflict. RSLC could have been used in the '90s to monitor and control Iraq (by threats), allowing withdrawal of flyovers, embargoes and blockades (until a new regime could come to power more naturally), thereby avoiding the unethical invasion and occupation.
** It seems that the only engineering challenge in this idea is how to ensure that the energy needed to hold position in expected wind is less than that gathered in expected sunlight. That would have to be addressed in shape of the device (to get more sun exposure, to get less wind drag).
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