MICHAEL MATZA

Energetic Engineering

MICHAEL MATZA — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:11:38 GMT

The man behind a far-out idea for providing solar power
This article originally appeared in the June 27, 1978 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

This article originally appeared in the June 27, 1978 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

Before you can be ushered into the bare, blackboard-and-conference-table office of Dr. Peter Glaser, the Czechoslovakian-born mechanical engineer and vice-president of engineering sciences at Arthur D. Little, his colleagues take pains to prepare you for a close encounter with genius. “When I’m in his presence I often feel as if I am standing close to a figure who will go down in history, next to someone who I will tell my children and grandchildren that I knew,” says one admirer.

To be sure, there is an other-worldly quality to encounters with Glaser, created as much by his soft, visionary voice as by the ideas in which he is immersed. Since 1968, his views on solving the global energy shortage by using huge, orbiting solar-power stations have captured the imagination of aerospace scientists and drawn the criticism of those who dismiss his project as an intriguing yet nonetheless unworkable Buck Rogers fantasy. When Glaser in 1973 patented his model for satellite solar power, critics began snickering a little less loudly. Now that the full House of Representatives has voted to approve $25 million for NASA and Department of Energy research into the feasibility of satellite solar power, the long-embattled Glaser is basking in vindication.

“At the time I first began talking about this, the kindest word anybody ever used about the solar alternative was that it was ‘exotic.’ What they meant was that it was ‘irrelevant,’ Glaser recalls. “People didn’t find out that the sun was shining until 1973.”

Like other scientists working on the long-term energy needs of the planet, Glaser cites the Arab oil embargo of 1973 as the catalyst for exploring alternatives. Unlike other proponents of renewable solar power, those who would capture the sun’s energy through decentralized, ground-based collectors, Glaser advocates centralized power production on a scale that is truly staggering. His scheme calls for numerous 20,000-ton satellites to be placed in synchronous orbit 22,000 miles above the earth. Solar panels on them would collect the sun’s energy, convert it to microwaves and beam it to earth. Huge, six-mile-diameter receiving antennas located on earth would catch the microwaves and reconvert them to electricity. The resulting energy would be distributed to regional utility power pools and sold to consumers. At the orbital height envisioned by Glaser, the satellites would be exposed to sunlight for 24 hours nearly every day of the year (minor eclipses twice a year would be the only interruptions). Because the satellites required would be larger (72 miles square) than any we could hope to launch from earth, they would have to be constructed in space by a team of at least 400 trained astronaut-laborers. It’s here that the project begins to sound like science fiction. According to one plan kicking about, the required materials for the satellites would come from mining the moon.

Building better bodyguards

MICHAEL MATZA — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:32:56 GMT

Inside a Connecticutt "anti-terrorist driving school"
This article originally ran in the May 2, 1978 issue of the Boston Phoenix .

This article originally ran in the May 2, 1978 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

The car is traveling at 40 miles per hour when the left boot comes down hard—with almost enough force to penetrate the firewall—on the specially rigged emergency brake. The locked rear wheels squeal like pigs bound for bacon, and a coat of rubber lubricates the resulting skid. The steering wheel gets twisted violently to the left and a ton and a half of late-model automobile pirouettes across the track, swapping ends before startled eyes can adjust to the 180-degree change. Dressed in a quilted vest, camouflage cap and huge wrap-around sunglasses, a tough-looking guy who, for reasons of security, identifies himself simply as Joe, steps from the passenger seat, drops to his knees, throws back his head and shouts, “Love it, I love it.”

At Thompson Speedways in Connecticut, where Tony Scotti’s “anti-terrorist” driving class—grown men, aged 20 to 60—is practicing the “bootlegger turn,” it’s tempting to write the exercise off as adolescence gone mad. For Scotti, his two assistants, and the students who pay $750 for the five-day “Executive Protection” course, however, the business of bootlegger turns, J-turns, off-road recoveries, and assorted evasive driving maneuvers is deadly serious.

The recent wave of kidnappings and assassinations in Germany and Italy has produced in the American business community a demand for levels of security once reserved for James Bond and the man from U.N.C.L.E. Despite such notable exceptions as the SLA abduction of Patty Hearst and the Weather Underground bombing of the Capitol, the United States generally has not experienced the kind of political terrorism that dominates the news abroad. Nevertheless, American businessman—particularly those with holdings in South America, the Mideast and volatile European countries—are enlisting the professional services of hostage negotiators, kidnap-insurance underwriters, bodyguards trained in anti-guerilla tactics, and chauffeurs who can put a fancy limousine through the paces of a halfback on a broken-field run.

Tony Scotti’s anti-terrorist driving school is one of four in this country, and the effusive, 37-year-old Somerville resident and one-time race car driver boasts a list of graduates—mostly chauffeurs, although some executives have themselves requested “hands-on” training—from the top 15 corporations of the Fortune 500. Scotti says he restricts enrollment to those clients with “a valid need to know,” which, it turns out, means being listed with the Washington, DC-based American Society of Industrial Security. To date, his students have come from oil companies, banks, utilities, and multi-national corporations who consider themselves the likely targets of attack.

All talk, no action

MICHAEL MATZA — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:20:14 GMT

Aural sex comes of age
This article originally appeared in the January 26, 1982 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

This article originally appeared in the January 26, 1982 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

…Seconds later, a silky voice answered and I told her what was on my mind. ‘I understand you can help me set up an hour of good chat,’ I said.
‘Sure, honey. What do you have in mind?’
‘I’d like to discuss Melville.’‘
Moby Dick, or the shorter novels?’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘The price. That’s all. Symbolism’s extra.’
'What’ll it run me?’
‘Fifty, maybe a hundred for Moby Dick. You want a comparative discussion — Melville and Hawthorne? That could be arranged for a hundred.’
‘The dough’s fine,’ I told her and gave her the number of a room at the Plaza.
‘You want a blond or a brunette?’
‘Surprise me,’ I said, and hung up…
-Detective Kaiser Lupowitz, from Woody Allen’s “The Whore of Mensa”

As usual, the Woodman was a beat ahead of his time. He first published those lines, in the New Yorker, in 1974; today, the “chat” industry is booming. Although it’s not news that a well-timed sigh, or a sweet-and-raunchy nothing, can be a turn-on, a new breed of sexual entrepreneur has turned all talk/no action into an equation for success. Heavy breathing cum heavy breathing is a big — and ostensibly legitimate — business. Even in establishment circles, the arrival of the new, aural sex is talked about openly.

“Always alert for signs of cultural progress, I was startled to discover recently that it is now possible to dial an obscene phone call,” New York Times magazine columnist Russell Baker recently observed. “This is not one of the telephone company services, like Dial-a-Joke. It is the brainchild of various small-business people who have detected a need and found a way to satisfy it profitably.” He went on to describe the modus operandi of the so-called fantasy-phone services, a number of which advertise in this periodical and others that permit placement of such ads. “You dial a number (and) tell an operator which woman… you’d like to do the talking and how long you want her to talk. Then you give your credit card number. The operator checks a computer to make sure you’re not a deadbeat, then clears you to listen to the amount of obscene phone calls you’ve ordered. The expense is paid at the end of the month when the credit-card company bills you.”