Sambal

I don’t really care about Terri Schiavo. I know that I should care, in the same way that I should care about murders and injustices everywhere, but I find it very hard to get exercised about Schiavo herself. There are so many distractions: I have to work on taxes; we’ve underbilled for the month and only have one day to catch up; and I’m finally reading Quicksilver, and Hell, I went to Easter Mass — doesn’t that count for something? Evidently not enough.

But then I look at my daughter, and I wonder if the Schindlers worried, when Terri was not yet two, that someday they would fight a protracted legal battle against her husband, each claiming to represent her authentic wishes. Thirty years ago — I’m sure they didn’t. But I wonder about it, and try to imagine being in the Schindlers’ position.

Or even in Michael Schiavo’s position. I have a more cordial relation with my in-laws than he did while Terri was still walking around, but it could certainly happen that I’d feel myself obliged to carry out my wife’s wishes (which have been clearly expressed but not in writing) while being opposed by her parents.

There is so much misery intrinsic in the case that I wonder why so many strangers and outsiders (I must include myself in this group) feel the need to add to it. Is it because we fear that we will be pressed into acting in a case like this? And not particularly in the role of Terri, since as the estimable Brer Fox writes:

Do whatever’s cheapest / easiest / makes you feel better, I won’t care, I’ll be dead. And if my lack of a living will creates havoc on an international scale? Well, that’s too bad, I guess, but I will still be (quite literally) unable to care.

No, it’s not Terri’s role that I worry about filling. As in a passion play, the role I want to avoid — and yet the role I know I deserve — is Pilate’s

I have to admit that I’m not sympathetic to the arguments regarding federalism and the sanctity of process. As many others have pointed out, federalism and process were used to justify slavery and segregation; and it does not seem unconservative to me to claim that human rights should trump states’ rights. But again, conservatively, I do not see the need for urgent action here; a simple federal clarification of the process for resolving disputed right-to-die cases would help in the future.

Nothing is going to help in the present matter. Except perhaps prayer.

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I know, I know, it sounds like a bad joke, but there is one. I’ve skimmed some of it, but I don’t think I’m getting it, whatever it is.

I can tell you why anarchists drink herbal tea, though: because proper tea is theft…

Toshiba has a press release hyping a new lithium battery, which they promise to commercialize in 2006. The big news seems to be the recharging time, which seems nearly physically impossible given that EVs take all night or weekend to charge. But is it?

First of all, the slowness of EV fueling is mostly a myth. Even lead-acid batteries, which are the slowest of all chemistries used, can get topped up to 20% SOC in 5 minutes. The limitations are things like thermal control. That’s pretty fast, though, corresponding to a rate of about 2 C (double the battery’s capacity each hour). This is higher than most lead-acid battery manufacturers recommend, although evidently you can get away with it for awhile if you’re careful. Other fast charge companies are Posicharge (which seems to do 0.6 C) and Minit-Charger, both aimed at the industrial market. A typical manufacturer peak charge rate specification is 0.4 C, which is still enough to get you back on the road after a stop for coffee. Actually achieving these charge rates for a large battery requires a fairly powerful charger, however, which is expensive, so mostly EVs have made do with slower fueling. And finally, to have a truly long and happy life, lead acid batteries like to get fully charged every once in a while, which really does take eight plus hours.

Other chemistries do better. The nickel-cadmium reaction is endothermic, so charging the battery cools it. It can be charged at several C, up to 70% SOC. Nicad charging is more energy efficient when it’s faster, too. (Nicads also like to be fully discharged, making it the most abuse accepting chemistry. Too bad cadmium is so toxic.) NiMH also requires about 1C charging.

Lithium seems to normally be around 1C, though Kokam has some material talking about the behavior of their RC batteries up to 5C. So what rate is this fancy new battery, full of nano-magic? In one minute, it’s supposed to get 80% charged, which corresponds to about 48C. Very fast, about 10x the rate of anything else (except maybe ultracaps), but only 10x faster. So maybe it’s possible. Being able to do it at low cost and with a long lifetime may be the hard part, lots of things work in the lab.

David Bernstein in The Volokh Conspiracy:

I’ll be bold enough to predict that we are at or near (within a few months) of a market top now. And if you don’t believe me, my dad sold off his REITs this week!

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Happy Easter.

I’ve read that NYT Magazine article — found it on Mark Shea’s blog a few years ago. Here’s my post on the subject.

I just read this Florida Probate Court decision authorizing the removal of the feeding tube. I guess I would still be happier if a jury had been convened, but it’s certainly possible that the Schindlers would have had the right to demand a jury trial, but declined to exercise it. In any case, I can see that due process has been observed.

I’m still concerned that the court is willing to take hearsay evidence as a substitute for a written living will, but I suppose in the absence of a written will that’s all one has. Still, I’m sure I have made similar off-the-cuff comments — either out of a desire to be nice to someone whose relative had just died/been unplugged, or else out of my then-convictions. And I would like to go on record now as EXPLICITLY REVOKING anything I may have said or written previous to this date that might be construed as a living will. (That should hold ‘em until I get the papers signed.)

At any rate. It is Easter. “I am the resurrection and the life”, said the Lord. There are all sorts of sarcastic things I can say at this point, but I’m trying to avoid that.

It got warm enough (5 C) to try a no-pedal ride till the battery gave out. Starting voltage 26.4, decreasing performance over the ride (first time up the hill 21.6 km/hr, second time 21.0). It went for about 18 min total, 6.65 km, 21.1 km/hr average till it cut out going up a hill. 24.7V final. This is pretty much totally unacceptable, something like a third of what I would expect. I think it’s time to declare the battery pack toast.

In some ways, it’s a classic pairing. She’s the passionate old South belle, he’s the cool Northern rationalist. Both are smart, serious, and successful. And they meet under, um, adverse circumstances. I think it’d make a great Hollywood movie.

These are both real people. Harriet McBryde Johnson is a disability rights lawyer and lobbyist in NC, sharp, severely disabled and devastatingly effective. Peter Singer is a bioethics professor at Princeton, whose moral calculus prohibits eating a hamburger but accepts offing babies and adults whose remaining functionality don’t make the grade. Naturally, he’s fairly controversial, and Johnson’s group, Not Dead Yet, substantially disrupted Princeton on the occasion of his hiring. (And yes, Johnson has weighed in on Schiavo in Slate, a nice piece, but not the one I want to talk about.)

And they have met, face to face. The story I want you to read is Unspeakable Conversations, written by Johnson, published in the NYT Magazine. It’s a wonderful, very personal piece, full not only of her philosophy, tactics, and life, but also of the evolution of her relationship with Singer. The intensity of emotion is there from the beginning. “Should I shake hands with the Evil One?” He turns out to be a nice guy, but weren’t the SS officers also nice, went home and played with their kids?

For the movie, of course, you’d have to Hollywoodize it. They fall in love, get married, natch. It’s a chick flick, raising big moral themes and playing in the art houses, so it’s got to have a sad ending. Maybe work takes them apart, as she goes off to Washington as a political appointee, and he takes up with some floozy undergrad. Doesn’t matter how you end it, it’d be a great story.

While riding a bicycle, the rider balances and steers through feedback from (along with sight) the motion sensors in the inner ear. There are in fact three separate motion sensors: one tracks side-to-side balance, one front-and-back, and one for spin. The front-to-back balance is most sensitive, because that’s the one used to keep you from falling on your face while walking. However, front-to-back is irrelevant on a bike, because you face forward, and the wheels maintain front-to-back balance, and you must use side-to-side balance for control. If you’d like to control using the best receptors, there are two choices. One is to put the wheels side to side, and use the fine front-back receptors for speed control, like the Segway does. Another is ride sideways. In other transportation modes with a choice, this is usual. Eg., you can face front or sideways on a surfboard, but it’s much easier to balance facing sideways, with the best receptors aligned with the difficult axis. On snow, skiing use side-to-side receptors for turning, whereas snowboarding uses front-to-back receptors, and which sport carves better turns?

So, why not a bicycle which is ridden sideways? All good ideas have usually been done, and this is no exception. Photos, both geeky and nongeeky, below the fold:

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Another reason to oppose mandatory living wills is that they are just plain hard to write. The last time the Schiavo train wreck was crashing through the media, I looked up the applicable laws, and sat down to do my good duty and write one for myself. After I’d spent an hour or so developing my philosophy of life and end-of-life care, and starting to realize how much research would be required to actually set out what I’d want done in various circumstances, some more interesting or important activity came up and it got set aside. The problem is not just that I feel certain that I’m going to live forever, or at least a long time anyway, nor that my opinions are likely to change over the years. The big problem is that such a document is irrelevant unless your mind and person are permanently destroyed, are effectively (though not quite legally/medically) dead, never to return. The purpose of the document is to tell your survivors what to do with your dead corpse. Do whatever’s cheapest / easiest / makes you feel better, I won’t care, I’ll be dead. And if my lack of a living will creates havoc on an international scale? Well, that’s too bad, I guess, but I will still be (quite literally) unable to care.

The right thing from a policy perspective is to ensure that there are reasonable defaults, with some procedures and case law surrounding how to deal with the difficult cases. That was my other problem — once I understood what the default was, I was perfectly happy with it, and felt no need to modify it. There are areas where the defaults are so dreadful that the law effectively bans the default (US estate law eg), but I don’t think this is one of them.

Today is the last day of our non-vacation vacation. We are flying back tonight.

Sunday afternoon we met with a lot of college friends and had wine, fruit and cheese in the courtyard; then we grilled chicken and sausages. It was so yuppie I could die; and yet it was so… appropriate. I guess age, such as it is, has finally happened to us.

The next morning I was reading work emails on the laptop while my daughter played on the floor. After about fifteen minutes, I couldn’t take it anymore: I picked her up went to the park where we kicked the soccer ball for a good hour. It was just too beautiful a morning to waste on work.

Of course, an hour later, a client’s mail server was having problems.

Apparently there are six inches of snow at home. Bleah. I think I’ll go back to the park.