Category Archives: Space

Connecticut Optimism

Fast-forward to the present and our point of view is very different. This region has provided everything we could hope for and more. We have earned graduate degrees from local universities, purchased a home and put down roots in our community. Professionally we found the senior leadership of the Hartford region engaging and inviting. Our efforts to reach out to these “cold New Englanders” have been met with interest and a focus on what we can accomplish together.

He’s writing about opportunity and involvement and the future of Connecticut. I think he nails the relationship. He’s also given me more to think about for course content in the Fall.

But how about a little web design.

DOT, Contracting, and the Wonders of Road Work

I’ve been following this story in various areas of this weblog and the news has perhaps spread widely now on the I-84 imbroglio. Edmund Mahony of the Hartford Courant reports:

The transportation department paid the now defunct L.G. DeFelice construction company about $52 million to build the redesigned, 3.5 mile stretch of I-84 in Waterbury and Cheshire. The state paid The Maguire Group, a private consulting engineer, another $6 million to inspect the DeFelice work.

The audit by J.R. Knowles/Hill International concluded that DeFelice did millions of dollars of work incorrectly or not at all, that Maguire failed to inspect the work or ignored incorrect work and that the state paid for the work “without following proper procedures including field verification and signoffs.”

Sounds pretty complicated to me. Nevertheless, the results of incompetence will be felt for years to come and projects that would have been good for the state will probably feel the pain. How to trust any budget then that has gone through any sort of prioritizing. Whose priorities? Against what standards?

Mahony continues:

Although transportation officials have said nothing to indicate that there is any immediate hazard, the Federal Highway Administration is concerned that failures in the highway drainage system may be creating underground washouts that could lead to road collapses.

While placing most of the blame for the problems on the contractors, Rell said the audit also shows a “cultural failure” by the transportation department because it “did not anticipate or expect that deficient work of this magnitude by the contracting and inspection firms could even occur.”

The audit confirms one fact that has been known for months: that the redesigned roadway’s drainage system is a nearly complete failure. Other experts have estimated the state may have to pay anywhere from $20 million to $30 million to correct the drainage failures alone.

In addition to the FBI investigation, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is looking into the project. “This audit reveals outrageous and far-reaching failures at every level in the I-84 expansion project,” he said Friday.

What does that first sentence mean? “Although transportation officials have said nothing to indicate that there is any immediate hazard, the Federal Highway Administration is concerned that failures in the highway drainage system may be creating underground washouts that could lead to road collapses.” Let’s parse this: “Although transportation officials have said nothing to indicate that there is any immediate hazard . . .” The problem with this statement is that it’s written in prepositional status yet doesn’t link to a subject. It should’ve been cut from the paragraph. The paragraph should begin: “The FHA is concerned that failures . . . ” What does it matter that “transportation officials” either confirm, deny, or say nothing about . . . Was there a question?

Thousands of people drive I-84 everyday. Do the “officials” have some newfangled spyglass that can see under ground and into a “complete failure”? What does complete failure mean, by the way? If I build a structure and it’s pronounced a complete failure does this mean it would last a windstorm? Underground washouts. Governor Rell wants to change the culture of the DOT and reform the agency, but how does one reform DOT? I suggest that government hire people who can actually do inspection work themselves. The governor also wants DOT Commissioner Carpenter to “take action against any workers who have performed inadequately on the I-84 project .”

What does “inadequately” mean? Does the audit not answer some of this?

So many holes.

Connecticut Geography

Rick Green in this column scratches his head at the recent Julie Amero case, where new media meets law

The state of Connecticut spent two years investigating before it won a speedy conviction of Julie Amero – the infamous Norwich porn teacher – this January.

But it was never as tidy as the Norwich Public Schools, the Norwich police, the state of Connecticut and the Norwich Bulletin newspaper made it seem.

In truth, Amero, a clumsy computer novice, was the victim of malicious software that took over the PC in the classroom where she was substituting on Oct. 19, 2004. Since Amero’s arrest, the state has refused to even consider this possibility.

This case has been a mystery to many people, especially the degree to which officials, including ASA Smith, have expressed ignorance of pretty basic technology and IT issues. The state’s inflexibility has also been strange, as illustrated by Green in this section of the piece:

“The evidence is overwhelming … she purposefully went to these websites. … We know that the images on there were offensive,” Smith said, ramming his point home. “She clearly should not have allowed this to happen. The evidence is clear. She is guilty of all the charges.”

Except when you consider the facts.

Thankfully, a team of computer security experts from throughout the country, drawn to the case by outraged Internet bloggers and a handful of journalists, has presented Smith and his bosses with the truth.

Amero didn’t click on the porn. Software that might have blocked the porn was months out of date. Critical evidence was mishandled. School and police computer “experts” who testified were woefully ignorant about computer security and porn spyware to the point that their testimony was blatantly false.

The state’s case began unraveling soon after the hapless jury voted to convict. A firestorm of pressure – from university professors and software executives to programmers – forced repeated postponements of Amero’s sentencing.

Smith “closes the case,” then reality slowly sinks in. That the case even went to trial reveals what?

This gets me to the point. I often talk to students about what we mean by relationship building under the rubric of critical thinking. In a critical context, linking seemingly unrelated information together is important to innovation and problem solving. A classic example of this is the Cosmic Background Radiation and the Big Bang.

It may be that the Amero case relates to more than just pop ups, aging IT, and the the welfare of children. Kevin Minor, in a Courant opinion piece titled Why I’m Leaving Connecticut Just as Fast as I Can, outlines his reasons for seeking a living in Texas. He writes:

At 25, I am part of the fastest-growing age segment that is leaving Connecticut. I did not want to leave, but a prohibitively high cost of living coupled with widespread complacency and ineptitude at the state Capitol have sealed my fate. I liked Connecticut’s shorelines, its state parks and its midsize, human-scale cities. How many more people like me have to leave before the rest of the state gets the message?

How are the fumbling of the Amero case and Miner’s perception of a stagnant Connecticut related? The Amero case appears to reveal an inability to meet new technological demands, a reluctance to approach people with decency, and a failure in Connecticut’s leadership to keep up with the realities of change. My technological premise is not to plunk technology into a space for its own sake but to use it as a tool with which to engage people in new and different ways. If computers are going to placed into classrooms, then these items should be used and maintained appropriately. “Appropriateness” is a key criteria for judging technological use and digital application. Teachers should be trained to manipulate the equipment and to tease out its potential and they should be provided equipment that meets their evolving needs and knowhow. This costs loads of money, but if done properly, it can surely be more beneficial than a court case that may do more to push good people out of teaching than to invite them in. Smart people don’t like being bullied. And smart citizens shouldn’t bow to dumb government.

The Amero case could have been handled with a meeting between parents, Amero herself, the principle, and an IT person who knew what they were talking about. This would have been the decent approach. Instead, the State’s legal engine got going and in its typical Kafkaesque rotundity, made a fool of itself. Why would Miner want to remain in a state that appears to enjoy ignorance and ineptitude. The state loves education but doesn’t put its resources behind learning. It loves to claim high SAT scores but will not design and maintain spaces that encourage people to remain and revise the revision, wifi or no wifi. Park development, scenic urban boulevards, local markets, public garden space, new media industry, controlled traffic flow, art space, energy innovation, local design, deschooled learning.

By the state, I mean its leadership and its decision-making citizens, who appear lost to the power of good design and to the power of urban potential and networks. In this world, change is inevitable. OS will be upgraded and idiots will attempt to destroy systems, thus one of the critical abilities for which Connecticut’s leaders should go back to school is an attitude that simply says: “I will keep up so that when it comes time to legislate, moderate, litigate, and amplify, will know what I’m talking and thinking about.”

I think we need to instill good critical and analytical habits into our students (speaking from the POV of a college teacher). We also need leaders who have them as well (one of the lessons of Beowulf, who was praised for his fairness, intelligence, as well as fighting skill). Speaking from the POV of a citizen, I think we all need schooling in relationship building.

I wonder how long it would take to create the clean energy sector if Connecticut up and said: “We will be converting all our schools to solar power within 5 years.”

But what politician would dare make such a call. We can’t even get Simsbury citizens to get out and vote on their own budget.

New Media, Laptops, and Learning

About a month ago I wrote a little on a study that found little improvement in learning from educational technology. Unable to find the study, I had to take analysis from the newspaper to form a conclusion: that studies critiquing edutech will always come to wrong conclusions if questions are begged. Now this article on laptops in schools is making rounds (may require login). Here’s a snip:

Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.

Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.

Again, the question of “no difference in academic achievement” comes up as a focal question. The problems at Liverpool Central School District are foreseeable: tech support, abuse, and pedagogy. Those of us who have been working with technology for a while, in my case it’s nearly 17 years, have learned a lot about benefits, limitations, and the questions that need to be asked before money goes into the techno sink hole. How will the technology be used? How will it solve problems of collaborative work and learning, team problem solving, and design work. I’ve never heard people who have struggled with technology talk about “improving learning.” They talk about alternatives, contexts, and specific problems, such as lab times, augmentation, and effect.

I’ve never thought providing laptops to students at school is a good idea. Were the teachers provided laptops? Now we’re in a bad apple situation. When ill results come from underdeveloped questions, people with good intentions will be required to prove possible conclusions first then get the technology they think fills a gap. That line on the requisition form that says “How will this device improve your students’ learning?” should be stricken. Only students can improve their learning.

If people write more with word processors, their writing will improve; it’s not the word processor that is making the improvement.

Spatial Sense

One of my hobbies is studying how the design of spaces–landscape, architectural, digital–shape experience and encourage problem solving, creativity, and interaction. So it was fun to finally experience the Stata Center. A few photos from the trip on Friday:

The Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences is built on the site of MIT’s legendary Building 20, a “temporary” timber-framed building constructed during World War II that served as a breeding ground for many of the great ideas that were born at MIT. Designed by renowned architect Frank O. Gehry, Stata is meant to carry on Building 20’s innovative and serendipitous spirit, and to foster interaction and collaboration across many disciplines.

Open Borders

I’m an advocate of open borders. I’d like to see gates and walls come down and any plan to maintain and build structures along the US Mexico border cease. This is, of course, a position of hypothesis that asks: what would happen if border gates, walls, and barriers were removed? And why would a particular a set of results happen given conditions? I enjoy conjectural tests and simulations.

If A results then what policies and positions would prove correct or incorrect? How would the idea and arguments behind nationalism and protectionism change? Why let oranges and poetry through and not people?

It’s a serious prospect. The United States invests billions in maintaining its borders, as do other countries, billions that could be spent in better, more constructive ways, such as on increasing the imagination of people. We know that walls will not keep people out. But can the arguments for borders ever go beyond vague comparative analysis without flexible spatial change?

Source:http://aviewtothesouth.blogspot.com/2006/10/mexico-us-helped-create-migrant-flow.html Image source: Leftside.

Border walls remove a huge swath of landscape from human vision. They hinder sight, seeing, travel, distance, and the imagination, a wasted canvas. They construct difficult metaphors to overcome in debates about identity, safety, economics, and law.

Futures Investment

Emily Gertz has this to say about future investment in clean tech, which bring back to mind Connecticut’s plans for the future.

Are clean technologies the investment opportunity of the 21st century? That was the breathless question at the panel I went to on Thursday, the second day of the “Advancing Sustainable Prosperity” conference in Boston. And some of the answers suggest to me that however much the private sector comes around to acting to slow, stop, and even reverse climate disruption (and let’s hope that’s 100 percent), we can’t rely wholly on market forces to transition to a low or no-carbon energy future.

The information the panel shared was dizzying from an investor’s perspective: clean technologies have accelerated rapidly over the last four or so years to become a $70 billion market worldwide, according to Kenneth Locklin of Clean Energy Group (a trade group representing power generators and distributors advocating for sustainable energy generation, that has worked closely with CERES on its Investor Network on Climate Risk), and current growth rates this will get close to $100 billion by the end of 2007. This year biofuels are one of the most exciting investment arenas, Locklin said, displaying a graph showing skyrocketing amounts of ethanol production.

American Life, This?

I caught Ira Glass on television last night. This American Life is an amazing radio program. I was a little leery of the visual version but was pleasantly surprised. TAL is an amazing offering. There’s nothing like it either on the radio or on television. Why, because even the modern pig farmer is trapped.

Taxpayers/ratepayers Continued

“The last thing we need is more tax increases,” said House GOP leader Lawrence Cafero of Norwalk. “We have a realistic, responsible budget. I didn’t want to stand up here and talk just in terms of charts, rhetoric and one-liners.”

This sort of statement is pretty point blank. It sounds good. But it’s meaningless. We can refer to ourselves in all manner of terms, such as “taxpayer” and “ratepayer.” Recall yesterday’s post on the question–partly–of the color of money and the color of corruption. CT on the current budget wants us to believe that the politicos are worried about tax increases or targeted taxes. But a rate increase for energy either way you color it hues the same: green tossed out the window. CT should take the millions it would use to build generation plants and distribute solar and wind power. I wonder if the Dems’ plan to tax online items would cost more than it would solve.

The Republicans are looking at the budget in a fundamentally different way than Rell and most Democrats.

Republicans say they cannot understand why the state needs tax increases when it has $1.1 billion in the “rainy day fund” for fiscal emergencies. In addition, the state surplus is projected at $628 million – a jump of $92 million from last month’s estimate because collections from corporate taxes have been better than expected. With the economy still relatively strong and the Dow Jones industrial average breaking records recently on Wall Street, Cafero predicted that the state’s surplus this year will reach $800 million.

It’s not STUPID stamped on my forehead, it’s a markered grin.

Just to pursue this a little more:

Blumenthal claims that a Maguire supervisory inspector, William Fritz, was told by a DeFelice worker that DeFelice was doing “substandard work,” some of which involved unacceptable materials, such as unapproved drainage pipe.

“Defendant Fritz, aware of the defects and aware of the use of substandard materials, told the worker to go away and not to advise him any further of any deficient work,” according to the suit.

Fritz, who has resigned from Maguire and is now Clinton’s first selectman, denied participating in such a conversation.

“I don’t remember ever saying that and I wouldn’t,” Fritz said. “Come on, that’s bizarre.”

Fritz also raised questions about the role of state Department of Transportation inspectors and engineers in approving project work and materials, questions that have been raised by several industry sources but which were not addressed in the state suit.

“Any of the pipe that came in on that job was certified by the state (transportation department) lab,” he said. “Any of the metal pipe that came in, the state came out and checked the pipe. And it all gets submitted through the state’s testing process.”

Ray Garcia, an attorney representing DeFelice, criticized the suit for ignoring the state’s role in any construction failures. As did Fritz, he contended that state inspectors were closely involved in the project, signing off on DeFelice work before the state issued the company regular payments for work in progress.

“It is impossible for the alleged defective work to exist at the level described by the state … without the direct current knowledge of direct (state transportation) employees who control every phase of the work all along the work timeline,” Garcia said. “So the state knew about the problems they claim currently exist and they actually approved the work and paid for it. The job wasn’t perfect, but the state approved everything for which payment was received.”

Senior state transportation officials have said repeatedly that the state has no responsibility for the project failures. They have said that since they hired Maguire as their consulting engineer, the state had no inspection responsibilities. State employees were involved, for the most part, in reviewing project paperwork, they said.

The state officials have refused to disclose the identities and responsibilities of employees assigned to the project. The transportation department also has been reluctant to make public copies of quality assurance tests done on project materials, such as pipe.

Come to Connecticut. Start a business and a life here. Stay and grow. Three examples of irony.

Future Design

A couple of depressing items in the paper this morning, both having to do with hypertexuality. The first has to do with I-84 in Connecticut and the corruption of road building. The FHA will be withholding 5m in highway aid until CT comes up with a plan to fix whatever problem needs fixing near Waterbury. Here’s some gist:

Although transportation officials have said nothing to indicate that there is any immediate hazard, the Federal Highway Administration is concerned that what experts call “stunning” failures in the highway drainage system may be creating underground washouts that could lead to road collapses.

“The type of things that might be worthy of immediate action are any cavities being developed underneath the pavement due to the drainage deficiencies,” Bradley Keazer, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration’s Connecticut office, said in an interview. “We need to have those identified and fixed so that we don’t have pavement subsidence on the interstate facility or the ramps.”

Judd Everhart, spokesperson of ConnDOT, responded this way:

“The department was surprised to receive this document, and Commissioner Carpenter will be in touch with the [Federal Highway Administration] regarding it,” spokesman Judd Everhart said. “We were puzzled by the request for a `comprehensive risk assessment’ for this project because we believe that the safety issues of immediate concern have been identified and corrected.”

Not much help here. What does ” . . . we believe that the safety issues of immediate concern have been identified and corrected” mean? But there’s more context, in terms of the legal and criminal proportions orbiting around the business:

Some industry experts say Keazer’s letter may be a sign of growing federal impatience over contracting irregularities at the state Department of Transportation, an agency that receives $400 million a year in federal subsidies for highway projects.

Last year, state prosecutors accused a half-dozen state transportation employees in connection with an alleged scheme to rig contracts to repair highway cracks. So far, one employee has been acquitted, one returned to his $135,000-a-year job after getting a special form of probation on reduced charges, another was convicted and three more are awaiting trial.

The Federal Highway Administration also has demanded the return of $9 million of the $12 million it agreed to give the state to subsidize the crack sealing.

In a separate case, later in 2006, two more transportation employees were convicted in federal court of rigging a contract to renovate part of New Haven’s train station, a program that involved federal mass transit, rather than highway, subsidies.

On the I-84 project, government and industry sources are complaining about delays in correcting the problems – delays they say are at least partly attributable to Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s promise to fix the highway at no additional cost to state taxpayers. Rell has said she wants to pay for I-84 repairs with money obtained from the parties she believes to be responsible – the state’s highway contractors and the insurance companies that guaranteed their work.

The targets here are insurance companies, the Maguire Group, and the original contractor DeFelice. The article also informs of further lawsuits to come. The questions about the I-84 project get stickier and more complicated. Last I checked, if you are coming from New York, I-84 is a pretty good way of doing it. The fix-it project has been a bang-up job.

But there’s more, too, this having to do with energy and power contracts. Mark Peters reports on some new power plants slated to beautify the CT landscape:

Power plant projects in Middletown, Stamford and Waterbury were selected to receive contracts worth more than $300 million through a ratepayer-funded program designed to promote construction of new plants.

A 620-megawatt plant proposed for Middletown was the largest of four projects awarded contracts Monday by the state Department of Public Utility Control. The natural gas-fired generator planned along the Connecticut River by Kleen Energy Systems would produce enough electricity for 550,000 typical homes.

Here people are not referred to as consumers or taxpayers, but “ratepayers” involved in public service. Here are arguments for:

Regulators and power plant developers have said the capacity contracts will ensure that badly needed new plants are built. The new generation facilities would help keep up with rising demand for electricity on the hottest days of the year and displace older, inefficient plants, which are dirtier and more expensive to operate. They also would reduce the penalties the state faces for not having enough generation to meet federal standards, the DPUC said.

“This is a significant and concrete step in transforming Connecticut generation facilities from old, expensive and dirty generation to new, clean and efficient facilities that will help to drive down electric prices,” said Donald Downes, the DPUC’s chairman.

He estimated the cost to ratepayers for the new contracts, which run for 15 years, at more than $340 million. However, the savings during that time would average more than $500 million, according to DPUC estimates.

I read those last few bits above and just had to chuckle. Part of the problem has to do with objections to these arguments on the part of Blumenthal and others, that energy upgrades provide no guarantee of reducing or providing “reasonable” rates to “ratepayers.” This is trivial because, of course, “ratepayers,” a special breed of consumer, will not be provided with “reasonable” anything, not even roads. It’s an odd formula. An agency or group can begin building a redundant machine, ignoring alternative sources for spinning or riding, and have the “ratepayer” pay for it without any guarantee that the thing will even spin or that the roads will even ride.

Public works. Poor design. This is a fantastic way to sell Connecticut.

P.S. This is all written with fond memories of Palo Verde, the “hypertext” part.