Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

Open thread: the cost of renewable energy

Especially in comparison with energy conservation, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear power, much of the debate about renewable energy as a climate change solution concerns cost. Which forms are most and least affordable? How do they compare to other energy options? How should intermittancy and energy storage issues be incorporated?

Another set of questions concerns the rate and scale of deployment. How much of the carbon challenge can renewables address, and how quickly can they do so relative to the timescales necessary to stabilize emissions safely?

Bounded rationality and policy agendas

If individuals have limited attention spans, so must organizations. The notion of policy agendas recognizes the “bottleneck” that exists in the agenda that any policy-making body addresses (Cobb & Elder 1972). These attention processes are not simply related to task environments — problems can go for long periods of time without attracting the attention of policy makers (Rochefort & Cobb 1994). A whole style of politics emerges as actors must strive to cope with the limits in the attentiveness of policy makers — basically trying to attract allies to their favored problems and solutions. This style of politics depends on connections driven by time-dependent and often emotional attention processes rather than a deliberate search for solutions (Cohen et al 1972, March & Olsen 1989, Kingdon 1996, Baumgartner & Jones 1993).

Because attention processes are time dependent and policy contexts change temporally, connections between problems and solutions have time dependency built into them. As an important consequence, policy systems dominated by boundedly rational decision makers will at best reach local rather than global optima. Because of the time dependence of attentional processes, all policy processes will display considerable path dependence (March 1994).

– Jones, Bryan D. “Bounded Rationality.” Annual Political Science Review. 1999. 2:297-321.

The powers of Canada’s prime minister

Remarkably, this (microfilm copy of) a memorandum prepared in October 1935 by the Privy Council Office is the closest thing Canada has to written constitutional text on the role of the prime minister:

The Committee of the Privy Council, on the recommendation of the Right Honourable W.L. Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister, submit the following Memorandum regarding certain of the functions of the Prime Minister,-

  1. A Meeting of a Committee of the Privy Council is at the call of the Prime Minister and, in his absence, of that of the senior Privy Councillor, if the President of the Council be absent;
  2. The quorum of the Council being four, no submission, for approval to the Governor General, can be made with a less number than the quorum;
  3. A Minister cannot make recommendations to Council affecting the discipline of the Department of another Minister;
  4. The following recommendations are the special prerogative of the Prime Minister:

Dissolution and Convocation of Parliament:

Appointment of –

Privy Councillors;

Cabinet Ministers

Lieutenant Governors;

(including leave of absence to same);

Provincial Administrators;

Speaker of the Senate;

Chief Justices of all Courts;

Senators;

SubCommittees of Council;

Treasury Board;

Committee of Internal Economy, House of Commons;

Deputy Heads of Departments;

Librarians of Parliament;

Crown Appointments in both Houses of Parliament

Governor General’s Secretary Staff;

Recommendations in any Department.

The council advice that this Minute be issued under the Privy Seal, and that a certified copy thereof be attached, under the Great Seal of Canada, to the Commission of each Minister.

All which is respectfully submitted for Your Excellency’s approval.

The note was scanned by James W.J. Bowden.

The prime minister is not mentioned in the Constitution Act, 1982, though section VI enumerates the powers of parliament.

See also: Smiley, Donald. Canada in Question: Federalism in the Eighties. 1980. p. 17 (hardcover)

Many meetings

Today I had the extremely good fortune to speak for more than an hour with Peter Russell – one of Canada’s leading constitutional experts – about my forthcoming comp.

Tomorrow, I am meeting with Rod Haddow. Wednesday, with Graham White and Peter Loewen.

Because Robarts library is open late, I was able to pick up a book Dr. Russell recommended, and which I should be able to get well into before I go to sleep.

While there is doubtless a lot of stress and some tedium, there are certainly elements of the life of the grad student which are satisfying, and which could not be replicated elsewhere.

Tolkien giving voice to all

During daily exercise, I have been listening to Tolkien books. Since childhood, I have remembered how he described the thoughts and speech of orcs, but I had forgotten that he did the same for a fox:

A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. “Hobbits!” he thought. “Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.” He was quite right, but he never found out more about this.

Tolkien on real and legendary wars

Given when it was written, many people have interpreted J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series as an allegory about the first or second world war. In one introduction to the books, he addresses this matter directly, denying that they are in any way allegorical. He goes on to say:

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the ring would have been seized and used against Sauron. He would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed, but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time, have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into ring lore, and before long he would have made a great ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled ruler of Middle Earth. In that conflict, both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt. They would not long have survived, even as slaves.

Flash memory and storing data for the long term

I didn’t know this about flash memory:

Flash memory is really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it’s too good to be true. In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception. The illusion of a contiguous, reliable storage media is crafted through sophisticated error correction and bad block management functions. This is the result of a constant arms race between the engineers and mother nature; with every fabrication process shrink, memory becomes cheaper but more unreliable. Likewise, with every generation, the engineers come up with more sophisticated and complicated algorithms to compensate for mother nature’s propensity for entropy and randomness at the atomic scale.

These algorithms are too complicated and too device-specific to be run at the application or OS level, and so it turns out that every flash memory disk ships with a reasonably powerful microcontroller to run a custom set of disk abstraction algorithms. Even the diminutive microSD card contains not one, but at least two chips — a controller, and at least one flash chip (high density cards will stack multiple flash die).

It reinforces the point that we really have no technology for long-term data storage. Hard drives fail, burned CDs and DVDs likewise. Paper is enduring.

Even backup systems like Apple’s Time Machine have problems. If a file gets corrupted on your hard drive, Time Machine will start backing up corrupted copies, eventually over-writing the good ones. What’s really needed is a system that makes a hash of the files to be backed up and stores distinct copies of all modified versions. Of course, that could require a lot more storage space – especially if the files in question are something like videos being edited.

Re-comp preparation

There are now 17 days left before my Canadian politics re-comp.

Studying involves many distinct tasks, but one big one is working on outlines for responses to likely questions, as well as listing sources to use in answers.

Going back through more than 10 years of exams, I have found that there are a few questions that come up exceptionally often, with minor variations in wording. Having the outline of an answer for each is probably a good strategy:

  • Making reference to specific subfields of the discipline, discuss whether Canadian political science is more in need of research on topics on which the literature is sparse, or of research which builds on and expands existing literature. (Asked 7 times)
  • Making reference to specific subfields of the discipline, discuss why the literature on certain elements of Canadian politics makes substantial use of conceptual-theoretical perspectives, whereas the literature on other elements of Canadian politics is largely atheoretical. (8 times)
  • It has been said that “the world needs more Canada”. Can this be said of Canadian Political Science? Are there conceptual frameworks or empirical findings from the study of Canadian politics that could usefully be applied to other polities? (3 times)
  • Is the ‘democratic deficit’ in Canada growing or contracting? (8 times)
  • “The term ‘identity politics’ is fairly recent, but the substance of what identity politics entails has long been a central concern of Canadian political science.” Discuss. (5 times)
  • “For all the talk of the pervasive and pernicious effects of neo-liberalism on Canadian politics, policy and governance, its actual influence has been relatively modest.” Discuss. (3 times)

The exam consists of 3 essays, chosen from a larger array (usually at least 9). Usually, the possible topics are broken up into sections, and students must choose one from each section.