On MSNBC today there was an article titled "Why Americans won't do dirty jobs". The article was wondering why Americans won't perform jobs that require lots of "work" and then proceeds to focus on the number of farm laborer jobs that remain unfilled. Many of these jobs are filled by immigrant workers, some of whom are here illegally. Whether they are here legally or not the fact remains that the article points out that the men in the story can take home about $60 a day on a good day. Maybe that has a lot to do with why Americans will not take these jobs, its pretty difficult to support a family on $60 per day. I don't think that this is the only reason, though it is a major one, for why many Americans do not want to do this work.
For the last 20-30 years adults have been instilling in kids the idea that you have to go to college in order to be a successful person. Along with hammering home this idea that a college degree alone will make you a success, the idea that if you did not have one then you are a failure also crept in. If you've bee hearing your entire life that the only way to be a success is to go to college, how likely are you to want to pick fruit, or muck out stalls, or work with your hands?
The bigger problem is not that people who have invested the time and money to attend college do not want to do manual labor, but the problem is that people are encouraged to attend college simply because they can get in. If you've earned a college degree then by all means you should expect that you should work in job that makes use of all the time you spent earning that degree. Last time I checked it did not require a degree to pick fruit. Why should we expect someone to resort to working at a job for which they are poorly suited especially when it comes with low pay.
I'm certain that you could find Americans who would be willing to work as farm laborers if you paid them a wage that made it possible to earn a living in America. The down side to paying more to farm laborers is that it makes the food they are harvesting cost more, which means that prices rise. If prices rise then generally speaking people buy less, and when is the last time you saw a long line in the fresh produce section of the grocery store?
The current economic trouble in America won't be solved by insisting that Americans take jobs which will result in a drastically lower standard of living than we currently have. Asking them to work at jobs that pay what current farm laborers make would be asking them to do just that. As a country we may well have to give up some of the luxuries that we have enjoyed for a while as we work to fix our economy, the solution to the problem is not tell Americans to take jobs that pay impoverishing wages.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Penn State Football
Last night Penn State fired Joe Paterno in the wake of the developing sexual abuse scandal. Earlier in the day he had announced that he was going step down at the end of season, but apparently Penn State's Board of Trustees wanted him out now. Mind you that Paterno is not accused of committing any crimes, and in fact the solicitor's office has stated that Paterno did everything in reporting what he knew that he was supposed to do. The vice president that he reported the witness account to oversees the PSU police; in effect Paterno reported what he knew the highest police authority on campus. Was he also supposed to conduct the investigation as well as coaching the football team at Penn State?
Penn State is correct in stating that the University is larger than any one person, even if it is the football coach. That Paterno was willing to step aside when he has done nothing wrong shows that he was putting the interests of Penn State ahead of those of the football program. I think it speaks a lot to his character that Paterno was willing to fall on his sword to save a university that he cared so much about, instead he was stabbed in the back by those he was trying to help. Among the more curious decisions that Penn State has made this week is to fire the President and the football coach, but the athletic director who appears to have tried to cover up the alleged abuse still has a job. How do two people that have not been charged with a crime get fired, while one who was charged with a crime gets to keep his?
One also has to wonder there is so much outrage over Paterno only reporting the accounts of abuse that were relayed to him to the proper authorities, but there has been relatively little complaining that the assistant coach who witnessed the abuse reported it to the head football coach before he went to the police. Why didn't the coach who is supposed to have witnessed the abuse go to the police before he went to Paterno? It seems hypocritical to claim that the graduate assistant did nothing wrong in telling the head coach, while claiming that the head coach did something wrong by reporting what he was told to the head of campus police.
Undoubtedly there are many details that have not been reported on yet, and hopefully we will get a clearer picture of what really happened in due time. However, I can't help but think that this situation feels like the board of trustees is taking advantage of a horrible situation to remove a coach who some people feel is too old to continue to be an effective football coach. Hopefully the truth of what happened can be determined quickly and with minimal impact for the victims, but by focusing on protecting their image Penn State is drawing attention to their football team rather than focusing on investigating what really happened in the alleged abuse incidents.
Penn State is correct in stating that the University is larger than any one person, even if it is the football coach. That Paterno was willing to step aside when he has done nothing wrong shows that he was putting the interests of Penn State ahead of those of the football program. I think it speaks a lot to his character that Paterno was willing to fall on his sword to save a university that he cared so much about, instead he was stabbed in the back by those he was trying to help. Among the more curious decisions that Penn State has made this week is to fire the President and the football coach, but the athletic director who appears to have tried to cover up the alleged abuse still has a job. How do two people that have not been charged with a crime get fired, while one who was charged with a crime gets to keep his?
One also has to wonder there is so much outrage over Paterno only reporting the accounts of abuse that were relayed to him to the proper authorities, but there has been relatively little complaining that the assistant coach who witnessed the abuse reported it to the head football coach before he went to the police. Why didn't the coach who is supposed to have witnessed the abuse go to the police before he went to Paterno? It seems hypocritical to claim that the graduate assistant did nothing wrong in telling the head coach, while claiming that the head coach did something wrong by reporting what he was told to the head of campus police.
Undoubtedly there are many details that have not been reported on yet, and hopefully we will get a clearer picture of what really happened in due time. However, I can't help but think that this situation feels like the board of trustees is taking advantage of a horrible situation to remove a coach who some people feel is too old to continue to be an effective football coach. Hopefully the truth of what happened can be determined quickly and with minimal impact for the victims, but by focusing on protecting their image Penn State is drawing attention to their football team rather than focusing on investigating what really happened in the alleged abuse incidents.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Gas Engines
I was catching up on episodes of The Daily Show that I have fallen behind on over the last couple of weeks, when I came across an interview from the other week that I thought was a little interesting. Jon Stewart was interviewing a Harvard physics professor about her new book, and he was trying to ask some relevant science questions, but you could tell he was in a little over his head. I give Jon an A for his effort, he tried ask what he felt were legitimate questions about how science is used to shape government policy; however, his guest was less than helpful with her answers.
The question that was asked that I'll take the time to address is the one about why we are still using internal combustion engines when it seems like there are so many better alternatives. Why we continue to use fossil fuels when we have developed more environmentally friendly alternatives is a simple question with a complex answer. The basic answer to the question is that we continue to utilize fossil fuels to power our cars is because we do not have a better alternative that is cost-effective on a commercial scale. The two most promoted alternatives to fossil fuels are fuel cells or plug-in electric cars.
The biggest challenge that we face to realizing a plug-in electric car is battery technology. Currently there are two high profile plug-in all electric cars, the Tesla and the Nissan Leaf. While each car utilizes a slightly different battery design, they are both basically lithium-ion batteries, similar to the batteries that are in your laptop or cell phone. While the amount of electricity that can be stored is pretty much dependent on how big the battery is, what limits the use of rechargeable batteries is the time that it takes to recharge them. Right now it takes between 4-8 hours to fully recharge the car, depending on the voltage of the recharging outlet, the higher the voltage the less time it takes.
While this time is fine for recharging the car at home at the end of the day, it does not work if the car is being used on a long trip, say from Atlanta, GA to Nashville, TN. This is a trip of about 250 miles, and is within the maximum range of 300 miles that the Tesla claims. The recharge problem comes in we get stuck in traffic or don't start the trip with a full charge. In order to recharge any battery quickly we would have to add a lot of electrons in a short time, this leads to the generation of significant amounts of heat. Automotive engineers call this build up of heat a thermal event, you and I call it a fire.
In order to solve this problem of heating researchers are experimenting with new materials for batteries as well as new structures for how the battery is constructed. These early results show a lot of promise for decreasing the amount of heat that is generated when the battery is recharged. If these new technologies work as well at full scale as they work in the lab then we would be able to recharge a battery large enough to power a car in 10-15 minutes. While it seems like this solves the problem, there is a more subtle and practical problem to consider. In order to recharge the battery in that time we would need to have a wire that is about 5" in diameter. Imagine trying to pick up a copper wire that is as about the size of a cantaloupe. Even if we can solve the recharge time for a battery from a heat dissipation stand-point, we then have to figure out a way to get the electrons into the battery that is practical, try picking up a wire that will weigh several hundred pounds.
Fuel cells provide a more practical alternative to powering our cars. In a fuel cell we use a type of chemical reaction called an oxidation-reduction reaction to generate electricity. The particular fuel cell that is commonly promoted is the hydrogen fuel cell. The biggest advantage is that the "waste" from a hydrogen fuel cell is clean water and heat. The problem with the hydrogen fuel cell as an alternative to fossil fuel is where do we get our hydrogen from? Currently, we get almost all of the hydrogen that we use by processing natural gas and other fossil fuels. Until we can develop a better source for hydrogen, using a hydrogen fuel cell does not get us away from fossil fuels. While it is possible to get hydrogen by splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, this requires a tremendous amount of energy. A better alternative would be a fuel cell based on methanol.
Methanol has a couple of advantages over hydrogen. Since methanol is a liquid, we can use much of the same infrastructure that we currently use to transport gasoline. Methanol is also the product of fermenting cellulose; this is bulk of most plants. By fermenting the cellulose into methanol, it would be more economical than using ethanol, because we do not eat cellulose. This would convert what is currently a large source of waste into a fuel source. While there are currently drawbacks to the methanol fuel cell, research is currently underway to develop materials to make these fuel cells more efficient.
Hopefully in the not too distant future we will be able to do away with our use of fossil fuels to power our cars, but for the time being we are stuck with oil.
The question that was asked that I'll take the time to address is the one about why we are still using internal combustion engines when it seems like there are so many better alternatives. Why we continue to use fossil fuels when we have developed more environmentally friendly alternatives is a simple question with a complex answer. The basic answer to the question is that we continue to utilize fossil fuels to power our cars is because we do not have a better alternative that is cost-effective on a commercial scale. The two most promoted alternatives to fossil fuels are fuel cells or plug-in electric cars.
The biggest challenge that we face to realizing a plug-in electric car is battery technology. Currently there are two high profile plug-in all electric cars, the Tesla and the Nissan Leaf. While each car utilizes a slightly different battery design, they are both basically lithium-ion batteries, similar to the batteries that are in your laptop or cell phone. While the amount of electricity that can be stored is pretty much dependent on how big the battery is, what limits the use of rechargeable batteries is the time that it takes to recharge them. Right now it takes between 4-8 hours to fully recharge the car, depending on the voltage of the recharging outlet, the higher the voltage the less time it takes.
While this time is fine for recharging the car at home at the end of the day, it does not work if the car is being used on a long trip, say from Atlanta, GA to Nashville, TN. This is a trip of about 250 miles, and is within the maximum range of 300 miles that the Tesla claims. The recharge problem comes in we get stuck in traffic or don't start the trip with a full charge. In order to recharge any battery quickly we would have to add a lot of electrons in a short time, this leads to the generation of significant amounts of heat. Automotive engineers call this build up of heat a thermal event, you and I call it a fire.
In order to solve this problem of heating researchers are experimenting with new materials for batteries as well as new structures for how the battery is constructed. These early results show a lot of promise for decreasing the amount of heat that is generated when the battery is recharged. If these new technologies work as well at full scale as they work in the lab then we would be able to recharge a battery large enough to power a car in 10-15 minutes. While it seems like this solves the problem, there is a more subtle and practical problem to consider. In order to recharge the battery in that time we would need to have a wire that is about 5" in diameter. Imagine trying to pick up a copper wire that is as about the size of a cantaloupe. Even if we can solve the recharge time for a battery from a heat dissipation stand-point, we then have to figure out a way to get the electrons into the battery that is practical, try picking up a wire that will weigh several hundred pounds.
Fuel cells provide a more practical alternative to powering our cars. In a fuel cell we use a type of chemical reaction called an oxidation-reduction reaction to generate electricity. The particular fuel cell that is commonly promoted is the hydrogen fuel cell. The biggest advantage is that the "waste" from a hydrogen fuel cell is clean water and heat. The problem with the hydrogen fuel cell as an alternative to fossil fuel is where do we get our hydrogen from? Currently, we get almost all of the hydrogen that we use by processing natural gas and other fossil fuels. Until we can develop a better source for hydrogen, using a hydrogen fuel cell does not get us away from fossil fuels. While it is possible to get hydrogen by splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, this requires a tremendous amount of energy. A better alternative would be a fuel cell based on methanol.
Methanol has a couple of advantages over hydrogen. Since methanol is a liquid, we can use much of the same infrastructure that we currently use to transport gasoline. Methanol is also the product of fermenting cellulose; this is bulk of most plants. By fermenting the cellulose into methanol, it would be more economical than using ethanol, because we do not eat cellulose. This would convert what is currently a large source of waste into a fuel source. While there are currently drawbacks to the methanol fuel cell, research is currently underway to develop materials to make these fuel cells more efficient.
Hopefully in the not too distant future we will be able to do away with our use of fossil fuels to power our cars, but for the time being we are stuck with oil.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
College Football
I watched most of the Alabama LSU game last night, though for all the hype that was around it I think the game was disappointing. It was annoying that ESPN basically spent two weeks talking about nothing but this game, and then to watch a game were both teams were more concerned with not losing than they were with winning the game. I don't think I've ever seen two goods teams play where both of them played so timidly. I do think that LSU is the team that should be ranked #1, but there is no way that Alabama deserves to play LSU in a rematch for the National Championship. If Alabama couldn't be bothered to play to win the game the first time, why should they be given the chance to play not to win for a second time?
Clemson is #9 in the BCS standings that are out this week. They will play Wake Forest this weekend with the winner getting a spot in the ACC championship game in December. As it stands right now the winner would likely play the winner of the Ga. Tech Va. Tech game this Thursday. There is still an outside chance that Virginia could wind up winning the Coastal Division, but I think that is a long shot. Personally I would like to see Clemson play Virginia, just so that the ACC title game is not a rematch, but I think that it is most likely that we will play Va. Tech again.
The SEC also announced the Missouri has joined the conference and will start play next season. Apparently they are going to stick them in SEC East, which does not make any sense based on geography, but is probably the simplest thing to do in the short term. In the long term I think that they will move to the West division after a season or two and that Auburn would move to the East division. I can also see the SEC going to a 9 game conference schedule in the next few seasons in order to preserve as many of the rivalries as they can. The biggest problem is that if Auburn and Alabama are in different divisions then they might not play every season on account of Alabama and Tennessee currently being in opposite divisions but having a long standing rivalry. However, moving Alabama isn't the easy answer since that could put the Auburn Georgia game in doubt, since they are also old rivals. One of the easy solutions that presents itself with a 9 game schedule is the chance to have two fixed opponents from the other division. This would allow Alabama to keep playing Tennessee and Auburn, if Auburn is the school who switches divisions. If the SEC does go to 9 conference games and two permanent opponents, I wonder how many teams in the west will pull a tendon raising their hand to volunteer to play Vanderbilt every season?
Clemson is #9 in the BCS standings that are out this week. They will play Wake Forest this weekend with the winner getting a spot in the ACC championship game in December. As it stands right now the winner would likely play the winner of the Ga. Tech Va. Tech game this Thursday. There is still an outside chance that Virginia could wind up winning the Coastal Division, but I think that is a long shot. Personally I would like to see Clemson play Virginia, just so that the ACC title game is not a rematch, but I think that it is most likely that we will play Va. Tech again.
The SEC also announced the Missouri has joined the conference and will start play next season. Apparently they are going to stick them in SEC East, which does not make any sense based on geography, but is probably the simplest thing to do in the short term. In the long term I think that they will move to the West division after a season or two and that Auburn would move to the East division. I can also see the SEC going to a 9 game conference schedule in the next few seasons in order to preserve as many of the rivalries as they can. The biggest problem is that if Auburn and Alabama are in different divisions then they might not play every season on account of Alabama and Tennessee currently being in opposite divisions but having a long standing rivalry. However, moving Alabama isn't the easy answer since that could put the Auburn Georgia game in doubt, since they are also old rivals. One of the easy solutions that presents itself with a 9 game schedule is the chance to have two fixed opponents from the other division. This would allow Alabama to keep playing Tennessee and Auburn, if Auburn is the school who switches divisions. If the SEC does go to 9 conference games and two permanent opponents, I wonder how many teams in the west will pull a tendon raising their hand to volunteer to play Vanderbilt every season?
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