Quotulatiousness

May 13, 2012

Greek railway dis-economy of scale

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Greece, Railways — Nicholas @ 11:22

It would actually be cheaper to send all Greek train passengers by private taxi than using the public rail network:

The claim that it would be cheaper for Greece to send every rail passenger to their destination by taxi was most recently made in the book Boomerang by Michael Lewis, the Moneyball author.

But it was first made by Stefanos Manos, the former Greek finance minister, in 1992. Manos used the railway system to illustrate what he saw as gross public sector waste.

“I was in favour of the Maastricht Treaty and was supposed to defend it in Parliament,” says Manos, now heading his own party, Drasi.

“I said we should drastically reduce the size of the public sector and its expenditure. And I gave as an example the railway where there were exorbitant wage bills compared to the revenue of the country.”

He says it was an off-the-cuff remark but about right.

“I knew the number of passengers and I made a brief estimate of what it would cost to send them from Athens to the north of Greece and I decided it was quite obvious it would be cheaper to send them there by taxi rather than train.”

It’s not quite true now: two passengers would have to share each taxi. If you got three passengers into each taxi, the government would be saving money.

The military trade-off between protection and mobility

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

Strategy Page on what’s weighing down American infantrymen now:

There is a rebellion brewing in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. It’s all about the protective vest. This lifesaving bit of equipment has saved thousands of lives in the last two decades, but has, because of political grandstanding and media distortions, become too heavy and restrictive. The troops want lighter body armor, even if it does increase vulnerability to bullets. Marine and army experts point out that the drive (created mainly by politicians and the media) for “better” body armor resulted in heavier and more restrictive (to battlefield mobility) models. This has more than doubled the minimum weight you could carry into combat.

Until the 1980s, you could strip down (for actual fighting) to your helmet, weapon (assault rifle and knife), ammo (hanging from webbing on your chest, along with grenades), canteen and first aid kit on your belt, and your combat uniform. Total load was 13-14 kg (about 30 pounds). You could move freely and quickly like this, and you quickly found that speed and agility was a lifesaver in combat. But now the minimum load carried is twice as much (27 kg) and, worse yet, more restrictive.

While troops complained about the new protective vests, they valued it in combat. The current generation of vests will stop rifle bullets, a first in the history of warfare. And this was after nearly a century of trying to develop protective vests that were worth the hassle of wearing. It wasn’t until the 1980s that it was possible to make truly bullet proof vests using metallic inserts. But the inserts were heavy and so were the vests (about 11.3 kg/25 pounds). Great for SWAT teams, but not much use for the infantry. But in the 1990s, additional research produced lighter bullet proof ceramic materials. By 1999, the U.S. Army began distributing a 7.3 kg (16 pound) “Interceptor” vest that provided fragment and bullet protection. This, plus the 1.5 kg (3.3 pound) Kevlar helmet (available since the 1980s), gave the infantry the best combination of protection and mobility. And just in time.

Eating experience mediated by the metal in your cutlery

Filed under: Food, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:41

An interesting post at Edible Geography on a recent taste-test:

Previous studies have suggested that some metals in solution actually produce a “metallic” taste — a distinct sensation to add to the standard sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami descriptors. This is still a controversial idea in the world of sensory science, where umami took nearly a century to gain official recognition, although among water engineers iron and copper are known to affect the taste and consumer acceptability of drinking water.

In any case, Laughlin, Miodownik, et al. wanted to test the taste of solid metals. They speculated that metals such as copper and zinc that were less stable, and thus more likely to acquire electrons, would taste more metallic because their atoms would form a solution in human saliva more readily. Their blindfolded spoon-eaters (with each lick of a spoon, as Miodownik explained to Dunlop, we are not just tasting metal, but actually “consuming ‘perhaps a hundred billion atoms’”) confirmed the scientists’ suspicions, rating the less chemically active gold and chrome spoons as the most pleasant and sweet tasting, and the more reactive copper and zinc as bitter, strong, and metallic tasting.

[. . .]

Using four samples of Tesco extra thick double cream with sugar, lemon juice (sour), lemon pith (bitter), and salt added, four teaspoons of identical weight, electroplated in stainless steel, copper, zinc, and gold, and thirty human guinea-pigs, Laughlin, Miodownik, Charles Spence, and Betina Piqueras-Fiszman concluded that “cutlery coated with different materials really does taste different,” and, what’s more, that these differences are significant enough to “influence the perception of taste and pleasantness of food consumed from them.”

The more metallic tasting copper and zinc spoons enhanced or added bitter qualities to each of the creams, as expected, but — to the scientists’ surprise — they also boosted its dominant taste. In other words, the sweet cream was perceived as being slightly sweeter when eaten from a copper or zinc spoon than a gold or stainless steel spoon, while the salty cream tasted saltier.

China increases their naval presence near Scarborough Shoal

Filed under: China, Military, Pacific — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

I posted an item last month about the stand-off between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the Philippine ship BRP Gregorio del Pilar (a former USCG cutter) in the Scarborough Shoal. Now there’s a report from Hong Kong’s largest English-language newspaper that China is sending another flotilla to the area:

China has sent five warships to the disputed Scarborough Shoal off the west coast of the Philippines with the warning that Beijing is ready for “any escalation” of the conflict.

That comes as the outgunned Philippines looks to the United States for naval support in South China Sea territory that may be rich in energy sources.

The five warships are said to be among the most advanced vessels in the Chinese fleet.

They include ships with state-of-the-art systems against attack from the sky, while one is an assault ship that carries 20 amphibious tanks and specialized fighting teams among 800 personnel.

Japanese surveillance aircraft saw the flotilla west of Okinawa and sailing south on Sunday.

Without American support, the Philippine navy is completely out-classed by the PLAN (aside from a large number of in-shore patrol craft, there are only 14 combat-capable ships). And it’s not clear that the US will want to escalate tension at this moment, especially over something like the Scarborough Shoal.

H/T to David Akin for the link.

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