Reorientation

Well, It's been awhile. I've had a very busy schedule lately, and have not had the time to get to writing the blog.

I've gotten some reading in, and I'm well past due of turning in a review that I volunteered for. My apologies.

The book, The Wardog's Coin/ Qalabi Dawn by Vox Day is another part of the SF/F genre that Vox has been assaulting the SF/F readers with a blitzkrieg of material.

I'll be honest, this book, good as it may be; was not nearly as rewarding to read as A Throne of Bones, or A Magic Broken. It's good, but just not on the same level.

The Wardog's Coin

So, what's good? The battle. Epic, well played, well written, gives a great visualization. Think Spartacus meets Black Hawk Down. Vox delivers well without fault in this regard.

Weakness? The lead character. He's an roughneck sergeant in a mercenary army in battle. He's character makes you think his life is about war, boozing, and women. My issue is that his character didn't seem *entirely* authentic. During most of the book he seems simple, but in the end he poses an eloquent analogy of life from his perspective. That last notion seemed really out of character, more philosopher than warrior.

It's a small gripe. And it may not bother you at all. I'd give it a 7/10.

Qalabi Dawn

This story is classic Vox. It's out there, starts quickly, floods you with a foreign environment, and just as you move into a territory where you feel like you grasp the situation, the story begins to turn towards the climax. It's a somewhat classic clash of glory blinded officer against a much weaker, and more motivated foe. Maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses is what the strategy boils down to. Very much mimicking the Trojan siege of Troy through deception. Interesting characters, and an enjoyable story line. 8.5/10

The price is hard to beat on the two books, and they are short enough to be read in a couple of hours. They provide interesting details into the setting of Selenoth, the environment that A Trone of Bones takes place in. They are worth reading if you enjoyed ATOB, and are looking forward to the next installment. If you haven't yet explored the land of Selenoth but are unsure about tackling ATOB, I'd recommend starting with A Magic Broken.

Who needs enemies

When you can have friends like these?

Tonight, a large crowd gathered to remember Gray, and it apparently became unruly as the crowd walked between the shooting location and the 67th Precinct at Snyder Avenue near Nostrand—there were reports that bottles were thrown at police officers. NBC New York estimated the crowd at 70, and the Post says a crowd looted a Rite Aid. The manager said, "They poured in here like 40 or 50 of them. They pulled the registers off the counters, they flipped over everything. They punched me in the face. Several of them did, not just one [person.] It was insane." City Council Member Jumaane Williams lamented that a "peaceful vigil that devolved into a riot. The youth in this community have no outlets for their anger, no community center."

Yea, Jumaane, I'm sure it's because they didn't have a community center. So who is Gray, and why are they remembering him?

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne had said yesterday, "After the anti-crime sergeant and police officer told the suspect to show his hands, which was heard by witnesses, Gray produced a revolver and pointed it at the officers, who fired a total of 11 rounds, striking Gray several times." Police sources also told the News that "Gray has four prior arrests, including charges of grand larceny, possession of stolen property and inciting a riot." Still, Gray's sister Mahnefah Gray said that a witness told her that Kimani was adjusting for his belt and that even if he had a gun, he wouldn't point it at the police.

So let me get this straight. A 16 year old thug wanna-be with that prior, in possession of an illegal firearm in the grandest city of the world, wouldn't point said weapon at the police? You know, yesterday, I listed a bridge in Brooklyn for sale actually. I really like the part about his prior of inciting riots, in which he is remembered by.

Maybe more telling though.

the officers, who fired a total of 11 rounds, striking Gray several times.

What is several? 2? 3? 4? Out of 11 total shots fired, they hit 18-36%. Although this is higher than the statistical average, it's still a poor performance.

The 5th... Who needs it anyway?

Apparently, you or I won't after this precedent is established.

Defence lawyers have indicated that the former neuroscience graduate might plead not guilty by reason of insanity. If he does, the judge has ruled he might have to submit to a "narcoanalytic interview" - including the use of what some have dubbed a "truth serum" - as part of the evaluation of his mental state. A narcoanalytic interview is a decades-old process in which patients are given drugs to lower their inhibition. The judge said Holmes could also be given a lie detector test as part of the evaluation.

You have a right not to self-incriminate. Seriously, is it even needed at this point?

On July 20, 2012, police arrested an unresisting Holmes next to his car behind the Century 16 theater, moments after the 2012 Aurora shooting, in which Holmes allegedly set off several gas or smoke canisters and then opened fire on the theater audience, killing 12 and wounding 58. The responding officers recovered several guns from inside the car and the theater. According to two federal authorities, Holmes had dyed his hair orange and had called himself "The Joker".[59] Although it should also be noted, that Holmes calling himself "The Joker," was later retracted [60] to news sources such as "Face The Nation," on the CBS News network, by police. Once apprehended, Holmes told the police that he had booby-trapped his apartment with explosive devices before heading to the theater.[13][61][62] Police later confirmed the presence of explosives in the apartment.[63]

What would be infinitely more telling is the prescription medications he was taking at the time. I'd venture that he was on some combination of ADHD and anti-depressant medications, many of which can have serious manic-depressive side effects.

Hybrid..Ferrari...Supercar?

Ok, if that doesn't just confound everyone, I don't know what will. The car looks like an Enzo and 458 created a bastard child, and it went on to get mixed up with a Tesla Roadster. Needless to say it's pretty radical, and anyone who is a die-hard old school Ferrari fan will probably be disgusted. In a way I am. I don't like the idea of it. But I have to admit, the car looks good, and the torque that the electric could provide, instantaneously, could be very advantageous. I would be like a turbo, without the lag, and added back-pressure. I would imagine that when the electric engine is not consuming, and creating power, that it is acting as a generator to recharge the batteries. This would act as a power robbing feature during normal use, until it's disconnected. Assuming a 90% efficiency, it would rob 181bhp from the base 800hp.

Either way, it's 800bhp from the ICE, and 163 from the electric totaling a maximum of 963bhp. That's definitely enough to get the heart rate up.

Check it out here

how very fitting

This is certainly not what the WH wants after Rand Paul filibuster earlier this week.

Vice President Joe Biden swears in CIA Director John Brennan in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, March 8, 2013. Members of Brennan’s family stand with him. Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution, dating from 1787, which has George Washington’s personal handwriting and annotations on it.

That means, when Brennan vowed to protect and defend the Constitution, he was swearing on one that did not include the First, Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments — or any of the other Amendments now included in our Constitution. The Bill of Rights did not become part of our Constitution until 1791, 4 years after the Constitution that Brennan took his oath on.

It sure will be interesting to see if we get any politicians to stand up and say, "re-oath with the bill of rights, or GTFO"

Filibustered

There's a lot of talk this morning about Rand Paul's 13 hour filibuster last night. It is a good thing that an elected representative, not a "leader", if finally taking a stand against the White House. However, as many people have found out over the course of history, waiting until the enemy is battle ramming your gates is not the time to loose your archers. This should have been happening after Anwar al-Awlaki and his son were assassinated. They were both American citizens denied due process of law and their right to trial by their peers.

After all, does it really matter the geographical location of the strike carried out on a US citizen?

Income

Consumer spending increases, even as wages decline.

Household purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy, climbed 0.2 percent after a 0.1 percent gain the prior month, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 76 economists called for a 0.2 percent advance. Incomes slumped 3.6 percent, sending the saving rate down to the lowest level since November 2007.

Fear not, a minimum wage increase is on the way. That will resolve this minor inconvenience

Today’s report showed a price gauge tied to consumer spending, which are the figures tracked by Federal Reserve policy makers, was little changed in January from the prior month. Over the past 12 months prices rose 1.2, the smallest year-to-year gain since October 2009. The rate compares with the central bank’s goal of 2 percent. Excluding food and energy costs, prices climbed 1.3 percent in January from the same month in 2012, the smallest year-to- year gain since April 2011.

As Denninger likes to point out, stable prices are no change, not a targeted 2%. It is easy to see why they exclude food an energy, as it is a negligible expense, right?

wouldn't a 1.2% inflation rate, and only a .2% advance in consumer household spending, EXCLUDING fuel and food, yield a net decline in consumption? A growing economy should have growth rates exceeding inflation. This is coupled with large decline in savings.

The saving rate dropped to 2.4 percent from 6.4 percent.

Translation: inflation on the rise, people spending less, and still running out of money. If something doesn't change this trajectory, there is going to be some serious issues.

There is an interesting debate shaping up over at VP on money, it's value and inflation.

Tickercon 1

Karl Denninger thinks the proverbial fan is about to get messy.

Tickercon 1 Does it need anything more? Sure does -- an explanation. The sell-off today is the start. Not the end. And it's also the end of the rope for our Congress, if they don't get off their butts, which I do not expect them to do. Therefore, I hope you're ready. I bet you're not.

Koch's MBM

The Science of Success: How MBM built the world’s largest private company, by Charles G Koch.

An ambitious name, no doubt. “How MBM built the world’s largest private company”

So, is it worth it’s salt?

The book starts off with a brief history of the Koch’s including their immigration, history, business background, education and current achievements. It’s a very fortunate list, and definitely a very attractive appeal to the rhetorical ethos. He tells the story of entering into the family business after earning advanced engineering degrees from MIT. After restructuring the business, adding complimentary services, and expanding the customer base; turning the company profitable again. From there, the rest is history.

The Koch’s business is astoundingly massive. Easily in the top ten on the billionaires list, Charles and his brother David each are worth north of $30B. Growing the family business to a 2000-fold increase since entering it in 1961; a chart of the growth looks like an exponential function graph. Currently employing 60,000 people, and generating nearly $110B in revenue or approximately $18.3M/employee. Not too bad. The products owned vary widely in industry, and size. Of note: Georgia Pacific, Stainmaster(formerly of DuPont), and lycra. They are active in mining, forestry, paper, oil, refining, and agriculture.

Now, I know he’s probably smart. But there is no way he is top-dog-know-it-all in all those fields. Which means Charles’s talent in his ability to navigate to profitable ventures, and management of staff. That is where this book comes in. It also lends credence to his ability to instruct on the subject matter.

The formulation for MBM is rooted into Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek's most famouse works in Austrian economics. Often quoted and always apparent.

The gist of the principle is to create a thought process for employees and to align their motivations with that of the corporations, and the cultivation of talent. MBM is specifically broken down into these components Vision, Virtue and Talents, knowledge processes, decision rights, and incentives.

Vision is the most obscure in nature. I don't believe this can be helped, as it is a strategic element that is going to be very industry specific. The rest of the principles are better explained, and more insightful. Even then, there is a large amount of vagueness throughout the book. It does a good job of creating a framework of management, but it is hardly weatherproof. However, to go much deeper, the book would have to get much more technical, and resources regarding those particulars are readily available. Once again, the book lending itself to the policies and procedures, and less towards the mechanical aspects of ROI, P&L, capital allocation, and risk management. In fact, rubrics are only used in passing, and never elaborated on.

It is thought provoking, and challenges alot of norms seen in todays business. Especially that of the tyrannical CEO micro-managing the minute details of each facet of the business. However, the framework Charles is trying to established seems lost at times in the lack of some detail.

Ultimately, if you're in management, whether public or private, the this book can probably serve you in some form. It's also not a very long read, maybe 200 pages, making eat fairly easy to digest. At worst you'll gain some insight, if not appreciation for the world's largest private business, and at best it may help you become the next Charles Koch.

The Koch's stay fairly active politically and philanthropically through various foundations and publications including Cato, Charles Koch Institute, and various other activities. They are some of the more famous libertarian leaning individuals involved in politics, and a great asset in the promotion of liberty. We need more men like the Koch's, active in politics, with a foundation in libertarianism and the Austrian business cycle.

The physics of Musk Part 1

This post was originally going to start out as a brief expose regarding electric vehicles/solar technology. One topic led to the next, and now I've compiled a significant amount of data, some of it being quite interesting. It will probably become several posts, discussing several topics.

This started with a youtube of Tesla Motors/ Space-X CEO Elon Musk. The South African entrepreneur who's talent for physics and business gives Tom Perkins a run for his money on being the closest individual akin to Tony Stark. The competence Elon convey's is quite remarkable, and seems quite logical.

In the video, Elon elaborates that one day he'd like to see all domestic transportation being conducted by EV. Well, that shouldn't be a surprise, he does run an electric car company; but is it possible, and does it make sense?

There are a dizzying amount of ways to generate electricity, we are going to start with solar, as his involvement in Solarcity tends to make me believe that he sees that as the most immediately beneficial

The sun produces around 1330 watts per hour of energy delivered to earths atmosphere. Of that, approximately 30% is reflected back away from earth. The net is approximately 1000W/hr at the surface of earth, without cloudcover, based on the sun at zenith. The energy will follow a gradient up and down to it's maximum values, but we will use all maximum values for the purpose of this article.

So, if we absorb 1000W/hr of direct sunlight, how much does that translate to?

Quite a lot actually. If we took every single family household in the US, somewhere around 114,761,359 homes, and outfitted them with the as yet un-invented 100% efficiency solar collector array with average roof of 1500sq ft; we would collect 1.6x10¹³Watts/hr, Or 16,062.57GW/hr sunlight.

Current daily average electricity production in the USA is approximately 11,234.67GW.

So, the sun can provide more energy in 1 hr, than we consume in an average day? That's what the data says. It also merits this as an energy source worth investigating.

In order to get that energy you would need 100% roof coverage, 100% panel efficiency, 100% inverter efficiency, no cloud cover and have all systems up an operational. You would also need zenith light production for the the entire day to maintain that production rate.

But it all can't be that good. Solar panels on the north side of a standard pitched roof anywhere north of Mexico are do not have full exposure, they'll never collect the maximum value. The eastern and western faces will only have partial exposure, one in the morning, one in the afternoon--let's assume 60% total exposure. Most cities in the US fall between 25 and 75% sunlight exposure due to cloud cover, further reducing yield. These values cannot be altered, we cannot change our orientation to the sun, we can construct new homes to cater to it, but correction of existing is not immediately possible. This yields values between 2,400 and 7,200GW/hr. Still an astounding amount of energy.

So why hasn't this been invented? One of the inherent difficulties with sunlight is the spectrum. The light we absorb is approximately 52% IR, 44% Visible, and 3%UV. Current technology has been reasonably successful at collecting different parts of the spectrum, but doesn't yield much in comparison of the whole spectrum. An average panel can collect around 13.9W/sqft/hr, or approximately 14% efficiency. They also lose their ability geometrically with any shading or cloud cover. Inverters, friction loss of the wire, storage of the energy all present inefficiencies in the system.

The most detrimental issue they face though is the installed expense. At $2-3,000 per installed KW they are cost prohibitive, and do no serve any other function. If at some point in the future they can be engineered to collect a greater margin of power, and provide a secondary function, say that of the actual roofing material. They then may become economically feasible.

Stay tuned, more to come. Especially covering EV efficiency, drawbacks, the grid, other production and storage methods.

Book Review: A Throne of Bones

The first book that I've completed reading since the unceremonious inception of this blog has been A Throne of Bones by Vox Day. The book is a Christian SF/F novel printed by the newly minted Marcher Lords Hinterlands. The press, from my admittedly limited understanding of the publishing industry, was created specifically for this book, and has since expanded to Vox's other works.

This book is monumental. The sheer size of the hardback version is simply staggering. On the cover, there is an intricate array of bronzed scrollwork surrounding a skull. Its quality, finish, and attention to detail are readily apparent. It sits on my bookshelf and carries a commanding prescence that is only rivaled by Webster in mass, and very few in quality. Each chapter has a header using the skull and some artwork, it's a nice touch.

But you don't buy the book for its cover, so onto the details. The book uses multiple points of view throughout the book highlighting and interlocking web of storylines. Based in a timeframe that would be very similar to the Roman Republic. There are a dizzying number of characters, both overtly talked about and viewed in their own perspective, as well as substantial covert character array that I can only imagine will work it's way out in future installments. The book to me was initially very complex, between the characters, terrain, alliances, politics and military strategy. During the first 10 chapters I found myself spending more time than I'd liked to find out some basic Roman Republic terminology, study the map of the world, and re-reading certain sections to be clear on their meaning. Not a large complaint, but it was something that mildly annoyed me. By midway through the book, it really didn't seem to be an issue. There is no predictability for the first 2/3 of the book. I had absolutely no success in predicting future events. When you think you would know how something was going to go, or how you expected it should go. A significant change of course would send you reeling back from what you thought you know. This happened on more than one occasion, and although startling, it was entertaining.

The characters are well developed, accurately portrayed, and are consistent in their portrayal. Their variances are far and wide, from the rebellious teenage girl, the gruff dwarf, the crafty mage, the honorable general, the savy politician, and the child prodigy.

The ending of the book is a little coarse, with no real closure to any aspect of the storyline. It's been confirmed that there will be future installments in the series, and for most readers this probably won't be an issue, but if your a single serving type of reader, don't expect closure.

I read an advance copy of Vox's previous work A Magic Broken. At the time I assessed it as on par with the quality of work to which this book will be most commonly compared to, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. Many will know Martin's series has been converted to a successful HBO series. I stand by my previous assessment of the author's work. If the author can successfully complete at least a trilogy from this world he has created I think it can stand to become one of the great SF/F series's, and garner him accolades along with Martin, Tolkien and other fiction greats. I would recommend this book, without reservation.

Favorite character: Marcus

Favorite event: Corvus speech at the naturalization debate

Favorite quote: “You can bargain with everything but trolls and devils. Trolls are too stupid, and devils are too damn smart.”

My prediction is that Corvus was based on one Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.

Zero Sum

The first sentence is always the hardest. At least for me it always has been. I've never been a comfortable writer. Although there have been days in my past when I've felt that I've written something noteworthy. I've always felt more comfortable in the reasoning. Following and idea from origin to destination. To establish, to contemplate, to expose to criticism, to conclude. Saturate, incubate, illuminate; to borrow from the book The Mission, The Men, and Me. The blog is intended to be a place to expound on ideas, to expose them to criticism, and to reach conclusions. My fascinations, and henceforth topics for this blog, have been and are: Business, economics, physical fitness, philosophy, current events, automobiles, history, diet, and random conflagrations of other topics. Ciphra Summam, the latin translation of this blog being Zero Sum, is a concept I've used commonly in evaluating ideas. The concept is simple prima facie. The use becomes more complicated. The concept is that if there is a credit, there should be a debit to match. If there is a gain to be had, there is a debt to paid elsewhere. If there is an intended consequence being achieved, there is an unintended consequence that will surface. Zero Sum is not the answer to any question, it is only a tool, a tactic if you will, to reach the conclusion. Logic must dictate the conclusion. I'm the master of my logic, the captain of this blog.