INDIA’s DEFENSE WOES

Seema Singh’s item on “Delhi’s Defense Spending Spree” [News, June] illuminates the dismal state of India’s defense planning, policy, and procurement, despite the country’s enormous scientific and technical manpower resources. Politics, corruption, indecision, and lack of vision have contributed to a situation in which there is no defense chief, no strategic planning, and no long-term investment. There is very little coordination among the three military branches and scientific organizations and only a haphazard shopping spree amid several weapons‑purchase scandals. India is a victim of a colonial past that has put incompetent bureaucrats in charge of critical technical and military institutions.

Nirode Mohanty

IEEE Fellow

Huntington Beach, Calif.

MEGACOMMUTES TO MEGACITIES

I was concerned by the assumption that it’s okay to commute 2 hours to work—each way! [“How To Keep 18 Million People Moving,” June.] Why does modern society think that it’s entitled to expend all that energy, in whatever form, merely to transport people to their jobs? No one mentions the toll that a 4-hour-per-day commute takes on relationships. And, by the way, the emerging world wants to emulate our folly.

What has always seemed more sensible to me is to live where you work. My commute is 10 minutes each way, on foot. And in my entire career as an engineer, the longest commute I’ve had was a half-hour drive. Even that seemed excessive to me.

Solution? Think about the whole system. For example, when designing new green buildings to house companies, add housing for those who will work there.

Peter Drexel

IEEE Senior Member

Plymouth, N.H.

The editor responds:We at IEEE Spectrum do not advocate 2‑hour commutes. We regret any perception to the contrary.

URBAN INDIGESTION

I applaud Professor Rees’s efforts to understand the way cities work and to measure their input and output [“How to Measure a City’s Metabolism,” June]. His conclusions sound an awful lot like communism, though. Professor Rees makes it sound as though the root problem that needs to be solved is prosperity. The United States, the United Kingdom, and most of the West are so prosperous because their people are free politically and relatively unencumbered economically. “Intervention in the economy,” “densification,” “appropriate planning,” and using the tax code to control consumption are completely at odds with political and economic freedom.

For the better part of the last century, the leaders of the Soviet Union arrogantly employed the sort of centralized planning, economic intervention, and densification Professor Rees seems to be recommending. They failed, and their system crashed. I hope I have misunderstood Professor Rees.

Justin Clack

IEEE Member

Vancouver, Wash.

I ♥ LAGOS

As a Nigerian scholar, I thought the piece on Lagos [“How Not to Make a Megacity,” June] was stereotypical, lacking in insight, and under-researched.

Lagos is improving. The Lagos business district wears a new look where multibillion-dollar businesses are leading a wave of capitalist revolution in Nigeria. A stock-market boom has led to the emergence of a new middle class, with planned communities like Lekki, in a Lagos suburb, springing up to accommodate it. New modern malls, cinemas, and shopping complexes welcome you to this urban wonderland off the coast of Lagos.

Maybe the next time the author actually gets around Lagos he will take off his “Afro-skeptic” hat and see the real Lagos. Then he can put the real story on view instead of hiding it in the mass of sensationalized pictures of filthy garbage.

Michael Oluwagbemi

IEEE Student Member

Houston

Newton, Not Bernoulli

“Fly Like a Bird” [May] promotes the ancient and popular myth that airplane wings provide lift as a result of Bernoulli’s principle. Actually, almost all of the lift comes from forces resulting from the large mass of air deflected downward by the wing passing through the air at a positive angle of attack. In other words, it’s more Newton than Bernoulli.

Using Bernoulli alone, you’d be hard-pressed to explain how most airplanes can fly upside down, rather than being forced downward by a double dose of gravity and Bernoulli. In fact, aerobatic airplanes, which spend a lot of time flying upside down, have virtually symmetrical top-to-bottom airfoil shapes.

Glenn Elliott

Albuquerque