Boom Towns
Welcome to the Don Quijote airport, where only the sound of a distant train breaks the silence in field designed for jumbo airliners. No, really.
The doors to the new air terminal are locked shut, the parking lot is nearly empty and the runway, built for Airbus A380 super-jumbos, has no traffic. The only breach in the silence over the nearby scrubland these days is the sudden whoosh of a train on the high-speed line to Segovia …
It was conceived as Madrid-South, a second airport 100 miles south of capital, though only 50 minutes by train and across the tracks from where city fathers hoped to build the “Kingdom of Don Quijote,” an entertainment park to include Spain’s biggest casino. Unemployment in this town of 60,000 would have disappeared, and Ciudad Real would be on the map. That’s not to be, for the airport closed down on April 13. At its closing, only a handful of flights used the facility each week.
The Don Quijote Airport At Rush Hour
It’s not really unique. “An hour or so’s sail from the port of Nagasaki, the abandoned island silently crumbles.” It known as Battleship Island. “A former coal mining facility owned by Mitsubishi Motors, it was once the most densely populated place on earth, packing over 13,000 people into each square kilometre of its residential high-risers. It operated from 1887 until 1974, after which the coal industry fell into decline and the mines were shut for good. ”
Gunkanjima
In the American Midwest, you can take guided tours around the ruins of Detroit. “Come, travel with me, as I guide you on a tour through the fabulous and vanishing ruins of my beloved Detroit.”
Motown
Further afield you can visit the Lost City of Chernobyl. It still remains much as it was when it was abandoned in 1986. Guided tours are available to view its ruins.
If Only Lenin Knew
Kyle Smith, writing in the New York Post, says we might easily be living in the actual equivalent of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. “The world Aldous Huxley predicted 80 years ago has arrived — but would a young generation agree it’s a dystopia?”
If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.”
That would be a mistake. To trust in Jobs. Look at Detroit. It trusted in Ford and look where it is. Man adapts or perishes. It stagnates at its peril. Innovation, the Design Margin, the unwillingness to believe that unlike Julia, we can trust in the assurances of bureaucrats for permanent security — these are the secrets to survival — though it would be inconvenient to feel wanderlust again in the bones of our species. How did the dialog in Brave New World go?
Art, science –you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness,” said the Savage, when they were alone. “Anything else?”
“Well, religion, of course,” replied the Controller. “There used to be something called God–before the Nine Years’ War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose.” …
“But if you know about God, why don’t you tell them?” asked the Savage indignantly. “Why don’t you give them these books about God?”
“For the same reason as we don’t give them Othello: they’re old; they’re about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now.” …
“Then you think there is no God?”
“No, I think there quite probably is one.” …
“Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn’t there something in living dangerously?”
“We prefer to do things comfortably.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
Trust in government must come a distant fourth or fifth. For bureaucrats cannot even guarantee their own perpetuity.”And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
The Controllers can promise voters the moon and the stars. But they don’t always deliver, though it takes a while to realize it.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
Barrow Wight Night Specials
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The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
A friend of mine who lives in California described to me a housing development north of LA. There are nice new stucco with red tile roof houses and condos, but the interiors were never installed and the power never turned on in most of the complex. A single home there shows lights at night.
Fly over Florida and you will see housing developments that just stop. Acres of land with streets and empty lots but with just a few houses up near the front. I imagine the kids who live there have a ball.
I have read of 19 story condo complexes in Miami in which there is but one resident family. And it’s not fun for them either. Anyone can wander in, and people have been known to pound on their door late at night wanting to know what they are doing in there.
And these are new places, not like old launch complexes on Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg AFB, or the deserted stretches of the Vehicle Assembly Building that have not seen human presence since the early 1970’s. Old spots are expected, but we have invented shining new Has Been Never Was facilities.
Visit some tiny towns on the Midwest prairie or high desert of California, or in the pine woods of the deep south and inevitably you will wonder, “What were they thinking of when they built this place?” Then you’ll notice an overgrown airfield or a collection of buildings and gaps in the trees that indicate a railroad once came through there, and you know what they were thinking. But in the new empty places you soon realize that they weren’t thinking at all.
No coincidence that these scenes are officially referred to as “condemned”. They have committed the sin of not lasting forever, and their inheritors prefer that people not see them. Granted they can be extremely dangerous, even more than the wilderness that’s slowly reclaiming them, but that’s nearly the point… It’s wonderful history, yet only an official guide may allow you to view the exterior. Explorers and squatters are trespassing – but not the bears living there, who are protected.
For folly, check out the empty ‘estates’ of Ireland…
By which an American would term them residential projects in the sticks.
They’re the Western equal to Chinese empty cities — just on a greener scale.
Spinal Tap–Stonehenge
http://www.elyrics.net/inc/vidplay.php
In ancient times hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived this strange rights of pain the [Incomprehensible]
No one knows who they were what they were doing
But the legacy remains here into the living rock of Stonehenge
Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge where a man is a man
And the children dance to the pipes of pan
Stonehenge, ’tis a magic place
Where the moon doth rise with a dragon’s face
Stonehenge where the virgins lie
And the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky
And you my love, won’t you take my hand?
We’ll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there, I will show you how
And oh, how they danced
The little children of Stonehenge
Beneath the haunted moon for fear
That day break might come too soon
And where were they now
The little people of Stonehenge
And what would they say to us
If we were here tonight
http://www.elyrics.net/inc/vidplay.php
About 20 years ago, I read of new projects in Ireland that were moving the poor out of the slums of Dublin to countryside homes. They were living on the Dole anyway, so what not disperse them ? I wonder what happened to them ? I haven’t been to Ireland since 1977.
China has lots of “ghost cities.”
Talk about an upending of the design margin…We are actually building ruins.
There are only two things you can do with money: consume it or invest it.
There are only two sources of money: yourself or other people.
This leads to an interesting framework:
It’s the ol’ principal-agent problem again rearing its ugly head. And the need for agents is really a function of scale – who needs to hire someone else to purchase an airplane ticket? But an airport – that requires an agent because no one has enough time, talent, and treasure to do it themselves.
Agents don’t have to be bad stewards, but the more power – the more OPM – they have the more likely they will abuse it. Centralization of power breeds centrocrats, who are the ultimate agents of abuse. They only spend OPM (lots of it) and they always characterize their spending as “investment.” It makes them appear virtuous as they fritter away other’s hard earned money.
What we’ve learned if nothing else from the horrible 20th Century is that centralized control will always end in tragedy: purges, ghost towns, collapsing societies, wars of expansion, genocide, and a host of other lesser disasters.
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Ah, the irony.
L3
孫子兵法
The government creates markets. Like the space program in Florida. Or the Madrid airport. Then the government goes away and the cities dies.
The automobile industry grew large by making very large cars for $2,000-$6,000 apiece. Detroit boomed. Then the government passed regulations that made these cars very small and raised the price to $20,000-200,000. People stopped buying and Detroit died. The government assumed the goose that laid golden eggs could not be killed.
The street of broken dreams has gone national.
Boom towns do appear and disappear naturally without the intervention of a misguided state policy. Outside of Barstow, CA lies the ghost town of Calico. It’s one of the many ghost towns dotting the American west. It was a hectic mining town in its day. It was bigger than Los Angeles at the time. One day the price of silver crashed and poof! The Mojave came knocking to take Calico back. This is because Calico, like the Japanese coal mining town on Battleship Island, had exactly one reason for being and never developed another.
Production of boom towns and their rapid desolution can be a sign of a healthy economy. This is a signal of adaptability to rapidly changing conditions. It is also a necessary feature. When an asset becomes unproductive for whatever reason, it ought to be purged if it can’t be easily and quickly mended. The statists’ aim is to preserve things. They mistake the wild and often cruel waves of nature as a product of capitalism. They do not understand that capitalism is riding those waves, they assume capitalism is producing them.
Thus, they are evermore trying to fix Detroit, and via their misguided theories which may in fact be the medicine that made Detroit unproductive in the first place. They shadow box with themselves, in those magnificent ruins of grand old theaters.
Getting right to the Four No Trump of internet discussion, “Design for Ruin Value” was Albert Speer’s contribution to Nazi architectural theory. The difference is that the methodical Germans of 75 years ago thought about and planned for what would follow the apocalypse. Modern ruins are evidence of either recent feckless poor planning or proof of the superior craftsmanship and durability of the works of our departed betters that we no longer have the craft or wit to preserve.
We have proven ourselves Philistines. The most beautiful building in New York was Pennsylvania Station. As it was said through there we entered the city “like Gods.” It was torn down and replaced with Madison Square Garden, one of the ugliest and shoddiest works that Man or Orc could have conceived of to degrade the spirit. From the trains and subways beneath there men emerge “like rats.”
Today Japan shut down its last nuclear power station.
What are they going to do?
Japan can provide only 3% of its energy needs from non nuclear national energy resources.
That was what WW 2 in the Pacific was all about-their need for coal and oil.
Meanwhile in the US the price of natural gas has declined from $15 per unit to $2 per unit-
-this can give the US a huge economic advantage in manufacturing costs.
Apart from the cost of capital 3 other things rule
1/ The cost of energy
2/ The price of food
3/ The cost of labor
The US will dominate 1 and 2.
#3 is a question of productivity and automation-
-both of which the US leads or can lead.
c @ 10: … Production of boom towns and their rapid desolution can be a sign of a healthy economy …
thanks for your post, I was trying to express some similar thought and just could not quite find the words.
of course “can be” is the key here, and we’re really starting with assumption that the overbuilding in a bubble was after all NOT healthy, yet even the healthiest may fade and die in time, even in brief time.
Towns are like people. Some last for a long time and others are soon just a memory. Resource towns with a single employer or industry often fade away after a generation or two. Nothing lasts for ever and some places last for just a little while. It’s a natural phenomenon and people just move on and settle in some other place.
In British Columbia the townsite for Gold River on Vancouver Island was chosen by a two foresters around 1962. At that time it was just untouched old growth forest miles from the nearest road. By 1967 Gold River was a prototypical logging and pulp and paper industry community. Gold River quickly sprang into prosperity and established excellent community facilities. When shifting world markets brought the mill closure in 1998, many of Gold River’s inhabitants were forced to relocate and Gold River is now just a village. Since 1998, the village has attempted to capitalize on its idealistic setting among picturesque mountains, lakes, rivers, ocean, and forests to develop tourism and sport fishing as its main economic supports.
Ocean Falls, where a river falls into the Pacific Ocean, on the mainland coast of British Columbia, lasted longer than Gold River. In 1912, the dam was erected and the pulp mill began operating. The Ocean Falls pulp and paper mill was the largest mill in British Columbia for many years. Ocean Falls’ population numbered 250 in 1912 and grew to 3,500 by 1950. By 1970, the number of inhabitants had dropped to 1,500. By 1990, only about 70 people, mostly loggers, remained.
Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia Interior, was a new town established in 1981 by two Canadian mining companies, a consortium of Japanese steel mills, and the governments of British Columbia and Canada. In 1984, world coal prices were dropping and the Japanese consortium requested a reduction in the price of coal from the Tumbler Ridge mines. The company responded by reducing production, cutting employment, and applying for court protection from creditors. The population peaked in 1991 at 4,794 people but then declined to a low of 1,932 people in 2001. Since then, population growth has been led by new mining activities and increased exploration following higher world energy prices.
Boom towns. They are part of life in Western Canada where the answer to “what’s over that hill?” is often “ ‘nuther hill”. They are not a part of life in Europe where every hill is occupied already.
Towns disappearing from old places like Europe and Eastern North America may be one more step on the road to learning that many economic problems are caused by the political class, but almost no economic problems can be solved by the political class. Once that lesson is learned, the political class will be emasculated and things will start to improve.
10. Cowboy
Sorry to repeat much of your comment. You weren’t there when I left my comment draft to get food.
Governments do well when they reflect the societies they govern. The decay of societies is really a function of the disconnection of the elites from the culture times the degree of micromanagement those elites try to assert. It is one thing to accept the rule of a mad king when virtually nothing he does effects your day to day life and quite another when his rule turns your existence into a story by Franz Kafka.
Ciudad Real isn’t alone to support a ghost airport, Castellon near Valencia too
http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/spain-castellon-airport/
Cities die but man endures.
Archimedes’ Syracuse
The Greek Aegean states
Have long since ceased to pay their dues
There’s naught left on their plates
As well as Nineveh and Ur
Are gone and left behind
And in their stead I would aver
Came others of their kind
For cities come and cities go
Some live while others die
The why this is we do not know
We only wonder why
But life and death is surely part
Of Universe’s plan
When someone ends then others start
That is the way of man
Boom towns come when the resources are easy to get. They practically lay upon the surface. When the resources become not readily available, when they require more work and investment, then they begin to wither.
I went to High School in Barstow, CA. I remember the Calico mines. You could still go up there on a weekend and go panning, and many did. If I remember right, the mine had become less productive and had become unsafe. Not sure. Long ago.
The odd thing was, there was still plenty of silver. So, why was there no effort to reassess it, to develop it further, whenever new technology became available?
I think Heinlein had it right. He wrote that all human development is done by a handful of extraordinary men. But wouldn’t such men live in every society at any time in history? Yes, but the culture, the economic system, the political system, has to be such that they are allowed to reach their potential, which Heinlein also addressed.
There are some few visionaries in government, the type who built that useless airport. They think they can create demand. These large projects only succeed when they are filling a demand, not artificially trying to create demand. These things cannot be forced into existence, and that is why government fails, because government is about force.
@7
Money is time. Those who squander their own money are suicides. Those who waste other persons’ money are murderers. Marxism murders in multiple ways.
I grew up near Detroit. When I was a teenager, a pretty high-class date was to go to one of those fabulous theaters downtown on or around Grand Circus Park. To see a bigtime first release, of, say, Sound of Music (dating myself). Then to a nearby great–in our estimation–restaurant. Guys wore coat and tie and women–almost women–wore dresses. It was going down hill. Last time I was there, I dropped off my date and another couple at the theater and went to park in the underground facility. Guy wanted to fight me. He was standing right in front of a concrete pillar–prior planning prevents piss-poor performance–and he lost interest when it hit him in the back of the head.
Never went back.
Heard shortly thereafter it was a Times Square for porn and hookers. Probably now an urban desert.
The auto biz wasn’t failing back then. Society was failing, at least in Detroit.
We study anciet history, the emipires of Greece, Rome, Byzantium, we marvel at their ruins and yet are suprised and disturbed to see our own ruins. Not every builder is a craftsman, not every planner or developer is prescient. Things change, plans fail, some were folly to begin with.
L3 makes an intersting observation on investing and spending. Currently the US has a Government that likes to call the spending of other peoples money “Investing” further eroding the meaning of the words and the value of real investing.
Timbuktu is an actual place.
10. Cowboy
Thus, they are evermore trying to fix Detroit, and via their misguided theories which may in fact be the medicine that made Detroit unproductive in the first place. They shadow box with themselves, in those magnificent ruins of grand old theaters.
One thing that has been constant in Detroit, and in other cities like Pontiac and Flint, during my lifetime has been the tallk about the coming “revitalization” of the city. The city fathers thoughout the decades, beleive that all they need to do is find the right combination of high profile projects and the glory days of olde will return. One project is given a name to signify this return to glory, (i.e. the Rennisance Center in Detroit or the Phoenix Center in Pontiac).
The answer your supposition is yes. Michigan’s boomtown cities always have “Big plans, big plans!” while the city rots away.
KRB
The tour guides will tell you that Ephesus was at one time the second largest city in the world, after Rome. The bay which led from the city to the Aegean Sea — and trade and commerce silted in. Over time, earthquakes destroyed most of the city. The Ephesus “library” near what appears to be the city’s center was buried under 20 feet of dirt until the past couple of decades when archeaologists finally dug it out. The amount of marble in the ruins is amazing, the amphitheaters rival anything in Rome, the surrounding hills are beautiful, the climate appealing. Ephesus went from “second to nothing” probably fairly quickly, and is only in the past century back on the maps, mainly for tourists and as a religious site. Thriving a couple thousand years ago, and busy with cruise ship visitors now. What will remain of Detroit in two thousand years??
As an aside, or an analogy, we may contemplate the ruin of antibiotics. Superbugs are being produced in India and elsewhere, with predictions of epic failures becoming common. The Bubonic Plague made contributions to depopulation and ghost towns once upon a time. And once again, government interference, this time in the production and distribution of pharmaceuticals is having consequences that the polecats and the burs may not have intended.
And here we have the real city. Right here in Belmont Club, where smart wise caring polyglot disputatious inventive funny minds come together, cross paths, erect little or grand structures of idea, argument, theory, joke, poem, odd fact, Next Big Thing. This is the city. And when the bustle ends, when the need changes, when the passion moves onward, the city does so as well. There is no capital trapped in dead subdivisions, no tailings ponds, no unroofed assembly hall. We just continue.
Thanks all. On a personal note, growing up in Gold Rush country I saw lots of those empty streets. Weird, melancholy, fascinating. It may have contributed to a skeptical attitude toward vast shiny visionary works and claims of permanent best answers, particularly those coming at great public expense.
Cities are like bars and churches. Some are living(and/or growing) and some are dead and/ dying.(The half life of bars is typically shorter than churches.)
Corporations exhibit the same characteristics of living/growth and dying. A great deal of thought in fact is put into what makes for a healthy corporation and church for that matter.
12. Victor
Today Japan shut down its last nuclear power station.
What are they going to do?
………..
The japanese are big investors in the gas hydrate experiment in prudehole bay along the artic coast of alaska–that recently reported success. It would not be surprising if they dumped a lot of money into that project in order to accelerate it — because they have a lot of gas hydrates along their coasts.
http://www.adn.com/2012/05/03/2451321/gas-extraction-methods-to-be-tested.html
Less likely but still possible is that they could push thorium research.
LL3 @ 7 – Perhaps baked into the cake of direct democracy, in which the masses select from a couple of candidates, are the seeds of its corruption. Following the principle of personalizing the benefit and socializing the risk, our brothers of French residence have opted for national failure, if therein lies the possibility of temporal personal gain.
The “Trajedy of the Commons” on a national scale. What sane person will suggest that we should vote for the person promising to shovel greater largesse from the treasury regardless of the consequences for the country? Yet they have done so, en masse, as Marie would say.
This was predicted, on our side of the pond, by the Scottish jurist Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, though it seems impossible to cite the exact reference. It appears in the form “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” Though its exact source is unverified.
We should note that the founders were aware of the inevitable implications of democratic election, and devised a buffering concept in the College of Electors. The college was intended to select a president and vice from persons eligible to hold those offices. Not sure how we arrived at the present conundrum of selecting from Democratic and Republican nominees. It’s not that we’re doomed, however.
Between May and November of this year the supreme being will influence our vote, one way or the other. Can’t wait to see what happens.
The only thing government stimulus money is good for in my city is tearing down abandoned buildings.
There are some advantages to living in such places. Housing is cheap and traffic is no problem. You can live your entire life outside the circle freeway and never know that there was a rotting core.
Jobs are the biggest problem. As the population continues to shrink so does the job market. I am already planning an exit strategy because if mine goes away there will not be another in my field here.
The weather is bad and the football team sucks. I wasn’t born here but this is home now. I am going to miss it.
I blame government when they waste money on revitalization projects that are not going to work. I do not blame them for what has happened in my city. There was really nothing they could have done to make a difference.
But it sure was a great run while it lasted.
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.
rwe @ 1: A friend of mine who lives in California described to me a housing development north of LA.
Friend of mine has a son bought a (new?) house in Hesperia (about 90 miles NE of downtown Los Angeles, also across a 3800 foot mountain pass) a couple of years ago, something like $150k for 3000sf on a half-acre lot. A year later he was able to add the house next door for about half that. Maybe he’s underwater, but at prices that low who cares (both he and wife work as teachers). Plenty more houses available at that price, if you want.
#11 Blast from the Past – ““Design for Ruin Value” was Albert Speer’s contribution to Nazi architectural theory.”
I read that Speer didn’t invent this concept, it was taught to him as part of the standard training of an architect at that time. When he designed one of his early buildings for the Nazis, he included a projection of the edifice in ruins, as he was conscientious and wanted to do the most complete job for his employer. Unfortunately, his effort was greeted rather coldly. It wasn’t PC in those days to imply that anything connected with the Thousand Year Reich would EVER wind up in ruins!
In N.C., in the late 60′s, a black activist convinced HUD to fund an all-African-American, “self-contained” utopian enclave-communityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_City,_North_Carolina
This never became a boom town, it was DOA-a collosal waste of our money to assuage white guilt. What a motive for funding a complete boondoggle, that I assure you substantially enriched the developer.
Then the State was talked into building a “Global Transpark” as a way to draw business into rural N.C. http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=7731
What a great idea-no roads except a 4-lane state highway nearby. Needless to say, that ballyhood plan, doomed and absurd from the start, continues to suck up state funds. Proponents contend that anytime now, the project will explode into success beyond belief.
The politicians who support and fund these things are usually out of office when they explode-they get the initial credit and essentially leave a flaming bag of s&*t on the porch bdfore running away.
Dr. Mabuse @ 32 said:
“When [Albert Speer] designed one of his early buildings for the Nazis, he included a projection of the edifice in ruins, as he was conscientious and wanted to do the most complete job for his employer.”
Albert Speer’s book “Inside the Third Reich” is very interesting. People say that Speer lied about being ignorant about the Holocaust. It’s remotely conceivable (not likely) that Speer did not have direct knowledge since the Holocaust was mainly an SS thing and not directly under his control.
It’s interesting that relatively little Nazi architecture survived WW-II. It’s my understanding that the Deutsches Museum in Munich is one of the few examples of surviving Nazi architecture.
The building plans that the Nazis had assuming victory after WW-II are fascinating to read. Apparently that Nazis planned on building this super-duper railroad (essentially a hotel on wheels) that would have run from Calais to Vladivostok. 1950 was going to be a very significant year for the Nazis when they would have established Berlin as the world’s capitol. Speer had all of this extremely grandiose neo-classical architecture planned for Berlin (sort of Washington D.C. on steroids). The most interesting plans were for Linz, Austria which had the dubious distinction of being Hitler’s favorite city. Hitler and Speer planned on building a cathedral to Nazism in Linz that would have housed Hitler’s crypt. The Braunschweiger Dom (Brunswich cathedral) was the prototype for this Nazi cathedral with Heinrich der Loewe’s crypt serving as the prototype for Hitler’s crypt. Hitler was a big fan of Heinrich der Loewe (a direct ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II). As crazy as it seems, the Nazis really thought the British were Aryans. The Nazis desecrated the Braunschweiger Dom and turned it into a Nazi cathedral. The building was damaged during WW-II (Braunschweig was more-or-less nuked during WW-II). After WW-II, the Germans restored the Braunschweiger Dom as a Christian church and tried to cleanse it of Nazism. When visiting that Church, you can see traces of the old Nazi taint if you know where to look (it’s worth a visit). Also, a gee-wiz bit of trivia about Braunschweig: It was in Braunschweig that Hitler became a German citizen. Previously, he was an Austrian citizen. The building where he became an German citizen still stands but its history is unmarked (only the locals know about it).
I have an idea for Detroit, call it, “How free enterprise can save America.”
Recruit black American millionaires and billionaires to invest the money, with a dividend paid on successes. Make the area a regulation minimized zone where governmental types are not allowed to interfere. Make it tax free for a period of time. The result will be a recipe for what could happen to the economy at large under the same conditions. Black entrepreneuers would show that race does not matter, ability does matter. Blacks in the middle class would learn free enterprise, not government handouts, are the key to moving up the ladder.
You can bet the black activists will try to derail this idea so their base will not leave the plantation To counter this, challenge them VERY PUBLICLY to put their money where their rhetoric resides.
There is little risk since Detroit is a failure already but plenty of optimism it can be transformed if the politicians are not allowed to interfere.
oMan @ 26 – Did anyone every tell you that you are an artist? Big ideas in short packages.
oMan…
Then you’ll appreciate Columbia, California. It was neck-and-neck to be the State Capital. It barely lost out to Sacramento.
http://wikitravel.org/en/Columbia_(California)#b
Now it’s specialty is fly-strips and draft beer, IIRC.
Monuments to secular hedonism, that’s all they are.
blert – While doing genealogical research, came across a census record for ancesters selling dry goods in Columbia during the gold hunt. Interesting find was a lady engaged in prostitution. Didn’t know they recorded that on the record.
Way OT: Here and there there’s talk that F-22 pilots are having lethal difficulties with their oxygen supply.
Hence, the USAF grounded the fleet for five months. Still no solution.
I provide it now:
The heart of the latest generation of oxygen supplies is founded on PSA: pressure swing absorption. It works on the chemical-physics of Partial Pressures and bonding equalibria with this or that absorbent.
As long as the altitude does not change, then the natural partial pressures existing in the ordinary atmosphere are also steady. Even mild climbing and descending does not bother the partial pressure mathematics. So such systems have taken hold in everything from helicopters to cargo planes.
Comes now a flying machine that rockets from high to low – and under all kinds of acceleration force.
Such flight profiles INHERENTLY defeat PSA physics because the latency of the absorption crosses the wildly swinging partial pressures as the altitude ( and pressure ) changes too much.
What this means is embarrassing: the USAF STILL can’t figure out that BASIC PHYSICS dictates that you Cannot Use PSA for flying machines that whip all over the sky. PERIOD. STOP.
This limitation CANNOT be designed out. PERIOD STOP.
The only solution is to have a back-up bladder/ canister of oxygen which cuts in during intense altitude changes so that the pilot always has enough oxygen.
A working system MUST have a gas monitor ( think laser / beam absorption electronics ) that Constantly checks on PSA output — and triggers a boost from the reserve bladder whenever necessary.
Such a system needs to be retrofitted to the F-22 ASAP, if not sooner, so as to prevent further black-outs.
It is ESSENTIAL to your understanding that PSA systems produce PULSES of oxygen. Rather like a reciprocating engine, the pulses are cylinder by cylinder.
In petroleum refining PSA systems are used to isolate hydrogen from syn-gas. Such systems rack them up by the fours: think of four-banger engines. At any one time, only one cell, of the four, is able to flow gas. With enough buffering, the system appears, on the surface, to be steady-state. It’s not. It’s a pulser.
This dynamic is inherent to ALL PSA designs. It’s in their physics.
I post this datum here because, somehow, I figure Someone at the BC has better contacts with the USAF — and will get them to Wake Up.
[ For those wanting to really dig in: the PSA chemical-physics is based upon relative absorption into a porous solid. The mathematics come from chromatography: you have competing equalibria between Nitrogen and Oxygen. These change with altitude. By swinging from low to high in elevation the partial pressures whip around. The crux of the physics is that the absorbent is oriented to JUST ONE MOLECULE. ( Typically nitrogen ) The absorbent does not react to speak off with the remainder of the air. As the altitude climbs, the PSA is no longer pulling nitrogen out of the outside air -- it was entirely saturated at lower elevations. Hence, the pilot is now getting totally un-boosted outside air.
If he stays steady on auto-pilot, at altitude, he can nod off as the PSA re-norms to altitude. Step-wise it will purge the nitrogen -- now super-saturating the system. Next, it will begin to have tangible effect upon the rarified air. Finally, the pilot will wake up from his peaceful snooze -- not even aware that he'd fallen into REMS deep sleep.]
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Just doing my part to keep the fly-boys flying on oxygen.
Cheers.
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That should really scare you. ^^^^^
““Design for Ruin Value”
I read somewhere that “ruins” were built in 18th century France as some sort of artistic and architectural conceit.
epignosis @ 39 said:
“While doing genealogical research, came across a census record for ancesters selling dry goods in Columbia during the gold hunt. Interesting find was a lady engaged in prostitution.”
During the California gold rush, Columbia was mainly a service town, i.e. miners would go to Columbia to visit the bars, brothels and hardware stores then return to the gold fields. A large fraction (most?) of the town’s female population were prostitutes. In its hey day, Columbia was in the same league with San Francisco and Virgina City. Columbia survived to this day mainly because it kept getting burned down to the ground and after a bad fire, the city father’s finally opted to rebuild the city in brick (make the city fire-proof). There are two nice 19th century hotels in Columbia, i.e. the Fallon and City Hotel. They serve nice dinners at the City Hotel. It’s good fun to take children to Columbia, tour the old buildings, pan for gold, walk through the old cemetery, ride the stage coach and stay at one of the old hotels.
40. blert—
Quite possibly correct re fluctuations in the oxygen flow/supply. An old friend, retired from NOAA and an expert on the physiology of diving, oxygen transport, etc has been brought out of retirement to look at this F-22 problem. His take is he smells cerebral decompression sickness, ”brain bends”. This is actually rare in diving but has long been known to occur sometimes in aviation.
Eg: 18,000 ft is one-half atmosphere. Flying straight up at >the speed of sound, how long to get a 2:1 decompression? So, they used to sit for 30 min or so breathing pure O2 to de-nitrogenate before taking off.
But he tells me they don’t do that now thanks to modern equipment. He explained his hunch to me. I didn’t quite follow but it had the same ring as yours–too many ups and downs. Me, I think he’s on to something.
One anecdote amongst many: experienced pilot finishes his flight, comes in and says, “When did they paint that white line down the middle of the runway?” (!!!!)
There have other such strange behaviors in pilots who showed no problems during the flight.
Moot….
My take is that for reasons of system efficiency, the pilot’s air is not compressed until AFTER the nitrogen is purged by the PSA.
Which means that my premise holds. The PSA becomes saturated at low altitude — then remains super saturated, too long, at higher altitudes.
The system needs back-up. Period. The delivered pressure to the pilot never falls all that low. Just like airliners, the pilot receives air at pressures normal to 5-7,000 feet, absolute. Too much higher the discomfort is ruinous.
At 16,000 feet your blood boils. It’s a risk so bad that Everest climbers can’t get insurance.
Last time I looked unpressurized light planes regularly fly at over 20,000ft, and blood doesn’t boil at 16,000ft unless you cook it. The problem with Everest is pulmonary edema. the FAA requires oxygen over 20k altitude, but any pilot supply outfit will sell you the whole system.
I’m wondering if the F22 is that much hotter than an F15? Seems like a LOX system would be a fix, or maybe they have to go to full pressure suits like the x-15 or blackbird. Maybe someone’s cousin got the contract for the f22 system.
#34 Eggplant – I wonder how many of Speer’s designs survived the war? It occurred to me that what with computers today, one could virtually “build” Germania, or whatever the New Berlin was to be named, and “experience” life in the never-built Nazi World Empire, at least visually. I’m surprised some Nazi admirerer haven’t already done it. Better not give them any ideas; a vision of a sort of Naziland Theme Park just flashed before my eyes!
Dr. Mabuse @ 46 said:
“It occurred to me that what with computers today, one could virtually “build” Germania, or whatever the New Berlin was to be named, and “experience” life in the never-built Nazi World Empire, at least visually.”
My compliments to Dr. Mabuse. He just came up with a million dollar idea. Now take a good idea one step further: Put on the virtual reality helmet and walk through Athens during the time of Periklis or Rome during the time of Hadrian. What was Tikal like when the Maya were in full swing, Memphis under Pharaoh Khufu or Carthage before the Third Punic War? I bet Speer’s Berlin was spectacular (he was the architect behind Hitler’s famous Munich rally). Of course, what we’re talking about could easily become another form of drug addiction or pornography, i.e. lotus eaters wasting their lives wearing virtual reality helmets playing at being emperors.
Along this line: I recently discovered the BBC television series “Rome” (terminated in 2007). I’ve studied Roman history for most of my life but did not really appreciate everyday life in Rome until I watched that television series. Unfortunately the history shown in “Rome” was mostly junk (they sacrificed true history to make the story more entertaining). Also they felt the need to spice the story with gratuitous sex and violence. That last transgression was almost forgivable since everyday life in ancient Rome appears pornographic by modern standards.
Free associating to another million dollar idea… Someone should make a fantasy movie about life in Berlin after the Nazis won WW-II. Show Speer’s architecture in an IMAX-3D movie. Hitler could be presented as the Nazi patron saint, buried in heroic splendor in his fabulous tomb in Linz, Austria with an SS honor guard. There could be ironic scenes in Berlin night clubs were people quietly wondered about what happened to all the Jews, gypsies and communists. Maybe have the main plot wrapped around the adventures of a German underground where its members are trying to overthrow Nazi totalitarianism. Assume the Nazis have an Internet driving 1984 style digital cameras in every room that were monitored by Gestapo computers (the Nazi analog to the Ministry of Love). The underground could be enabled by clever computer hackers who broke into the Nazi internet and locally defeated the monitoring system. One can imagine scenes where underground members are captured by the Gestapo and later hauled off to a modern equivalent of Auschwitz that’s east of the Ural mountains (make it a human slaughter house that looks like a holiday resort). If done right, this could be a corker of a story and movie.
Civil aviation in light aircraft recommends an oxygen supply from 10,000 ft and requires it from 12,000, though most fit people are good to fifteen or higher. The problem is some pilots feel the effects of altitude at only 8,000 and the effects can be very insidious indeed. Mental efficiency, especially mathematical and complex decision making deteriorate significantly in the first stages but the victim is quite unaware.
Talking to pilots under training who have completed the Air Force Human Factors training, they had little idea hypoxia was serious until they flaked out and shown the results of simple tests they were given in even the early stages they could not believe their poor performance.
In WW11 some aircraft flew to 30,000 ft with crew on oxygen.
I was under the impression the cockpit of the F22 was pressurized, though I don’t know where I heard it and it would seem counter intuitive. One more vulnerability to deal with.
Unless the F22 is so significantly faster to climb than, say, the latest F18 variant there must be some system difference though without detailed knowledge one just can’t speculate effectively.
ChrisVJ..
The prior art was bottled oxygen. PSAs systems are new to the F-22 — and other aircraft.
They’ve also generally replaced bottled oxygen in the medical art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_concentrator