About Sci Fi Engineer

Husband Father Writer Engineer

China’s Maturing Modern Navy

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

The Chinese Navy ( sometimes still called the PLAN/People’s Liberation Army Navy/) appears to have finished it’s experimentation~development with their premier surface combatant, the medium DDG 052C/D producing a rough equivalent of the western Aegis (at least in their boosters eyes.) the ship very obviously follows western design concepts but appears to be a very competent design, at least from “it’s likely right if it ‘looks’ Good metric,” though the radar and computer part of the system are probably not that good, yet. This good article in the Diplomat discusses this and its implications in some detail.

iPad , iPad

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

Not sure what I think about the iPad these days, it’s still the single most used computing device I own but to be honest its the one that I would give up first as well.

Which seems odd. But while I can do many things with the iPad (reader, Music, light blogging, internet addiction) even creative and work related if I have to, it is by its nature more limited in the depth of work that it supports. It allows one to create a document and presentation or spreadsheet very well but linking them together is far harder than on a PC. The scientific calculators I have worked with are simply remarkable but their results are hard to integrate with other packages. Pictures etc are the same, it’s not that the iPad can’t it’s just that with the App model and its flat file structure you cannot organize or cross pollinate work like you can on a PC.

I am sure that many out there would argue with this, they probably feel that the iPad is liberating or does this or that better than any PC, and they could be right. I also think that I could get used to using the iPad for many more things, but the effort to change over and figure out how to do things differently would be a very deep time sink.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is a remarkable development, the culmination of many attempts over a long time, but it’s not clear that it’s the be all that some, even I, thought it to be.

That said you’d have to pry my iPad out of my cold dead fingers if you just wanted to take it away now (though if you’re thinking of mugging me for it, you can have it, gives me an excuse to go buy a newer one.)

I am disappointed that no one has developed a better stylus technology, for the iPad. It needs a pen like system as well as the finger painting mode (the Blue Tiger device that was being hyped a few months ago seemed promising.) And I also feel that the iPad could do with a daylight readable screen at the current or only slightly higher resolution, with a longer battery life, faster processing and graphics and better error handling (than my old iPad v1). One cool idea would be a two-faced version. One with eInk on one side and the existing screen on the other. That way you could do what you most often want to do in daylight, read and interact with documents, and you still have all the capability of the main screen on the other side.

Ah well, who knows what’s to come in the months and years ahead. Hopefully someone at Apple will think of a better way of doing the things I want the iPad to do.

What the Hayek?

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

Economist Philosopher F.Hayek

The Road To Serfdom is often referenced and probably like many such books rarely read. This link goes to a real life Readers Digest version, that seems to hit hard and capture well his central thesis, at least it seems so from the references to his writing.

Its certainly making me think of buying a version either at Half Price books or more likely for Nook.

From the Post Referenced above a few key pieces:

From the preamble:

At that time it was a political philosophy that stood for progress through preserving the Autonomy of the INDIVIDUAL, and the protection of the INDIVIDUAL’S civil liberty. Oddly enough, today “liberalism” equals “socialism.” Equally as odd, conservatism (and in many instances, libertarianism) champions the independence of the individual.

From the first section:

Yet is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

Planning and Power

In order to achieve their ends, the planners must create power – power over men wielded by other men – of a magnitude never before known. Democracy is an obstacle to this suppression of freedom which the centralized direction of economic activity requires.

And despite the somewhat old fashioned and formal words this should have striking impact because it tells you exactly what is going on today and why so many fear it. It does not matter that we voted ‘the planners’ into place or that they are bureaucrats subject to dismissal. We are providing the keys to power and we are then likely to forget about them until they are far too entrenched to remove easily.

It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. When all the means of production are vested in a single hand, whether it be nominally that of “society” as a whole or that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us.

Now this sounds like Communism, Socialism or Fascism not the American way but the truth is that any major part of the social structure-economy in one groups hands creates a massive center of power, privilege and patronage, the 3P’s of tyranny writ small or large. The 3Ps lead to lawless, corrupt and ineffective organizations.

Individualism, in contrast to socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism, is based on the respect of Christianity for the individual man and the belief that it is desirable that men should be free to develop their own individual gifts and bents. This philosophy, first fully developed during the Renaissance, grew and spread into what we know as Western civilization. The general direction of social development was one of freeing the individual from the ties which bound him in feudal society.

This is not a theologian’s statement it is a philosopher’s recognition of the Christian-European (unstated but clear) understanding of the centrality of the individual as the basis of societies. That societies are are the emergent organization of many individuals interacting with each other. And societies that provide ‘room’ for people to find their own level and best place in the social fabric are vastly more fair and kind than ones organized in rigid hierarchies and treat or form the person as an interchangeable cog.

From the post script a quote from Frédéric Bastiat.:

Individualism, in contrast to socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism, is based on the respect for the individual man and the belief that it is desirable that men should be free to develop their own individual gifts and bents.

Not Everything that President Obama has done is wrong…and by the way he hasn’t shut down a lot of things that President Bush started either

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

There are far too many conservatives of various flavors who seem to have gotten lost in their own narratives. Fortunately we have some smart conservatives watching out for the overspill.
This is an excellent piece by Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings blowing away a rather ignorant rant against NASA’s Space Station Commercial Access plans, which by the way is going well and attracting a huge amount of investment by pure play commercial space entrepreneurs.
I believe that what we are seeing today is what the first generation science fiction writers of the 30’s to 50’s predicted, it’s just taken a whole lot longer because the technology they thought would allow us to blast off (atomic energy) was shut down due to fears, founded and unfounded. It has taken us five decades to develop technologies that enable us to get to space inexpensively (in relative terms) burning tons of liquefied oxygen and kerosene.in what are essentially tightly controlled explosions.

Musing during a presidential election year…

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

Disaster! Panic! Politics! Society! Government! Federal, State and Municipal Finances! Conservatives! Progressives! Libertarians! TeaParty! Occupiers! Obama-Biden! Romney-Ryan! Truth-subverted! Facts, obscured!

Its got to be a presidential election year!

Let’s start out with pointing some things out about some definitions:

Truth- Is always subjective, tied to the person assessing it and thus subject to that person’s knowledge and understanding of the facts , cultural background, personality, prior experiences, etc.
Lie- An untruth and subjective, what is clearly a ‘lie’ to one person may equally clearly be‘ Truth’ to another. There is no directionality to the words though it is often assumed, the one promulgating may know it is a lie and the person receiving could receive it as truth, or the opposite.
Fact- Is based on the physical world and physical record, is objective and concrete.
Fiction is as close as we come to the Lie equivalent to Fact. But Truth vs Lie is not equivalent to Fact vs Fiction . Fiction depends on lies (often willingly accepted) whereas Fact does not depend on Truth, Truth depends on Fact . Actually a lie can be tied to a fact as easily as truth the only way to distinguish is to analyse other facts about the first one more deeply
Accounting- Theoretically the objective, fact based ‘counting’ of sums and valuations. It can be almost pure arithmetic but when the sums are in computers and the valuations are subjective and relativistic then it becomes something more about Truth than Fact.
Finance- Formulating, creating, ‘raising,’ distribution of and ‘payment or rental’ of the discretized units of valuation we call money.
Statistics- Numeric / mathematical analysis of distributions and relationships within and between groups of related measurements.

It’s obvious that the past was simpler, in the 19th century even up into the mid 20th century you had a certain number of tons of gold in various repositories around the world. Finance and accounting were all about arithmetic tied back to those hillocks of gold stashed away under lock and key. We could count the number of ships in our fleets, measure the throw weight of their guns and the length of the coast or sea lane to be protected. The number of Aristocrats, Plutocrats, Technocrats, Artisans, Storekeepers, Farmers, Workers, Farm Hands, etc and know they would reliably vote one way or another (if there was a vote at all.) That world was chaotic in the eyes of those who lived in it, to us it looks like a pool of tranquility.

Today we have fiat money (its value is based on the credit of the person, corporation or government issuing it.) And the money is not in the form of a fixed number of coins or even pieces of paper, its an approximate number based on accounting that is based upon assumptions and approximations of a hundred different variables. While we know that the US has more firepower than the rest of the world combined we cannot really be sure that provides the level of assurance and protection we need, or if its vastly too much. The population is far more diverse in what they do and how they perceive themselves in relationship to others now and the fragmentation makes it almost impossible to create a coherent platform for change.

Everything has become political (in the worst sense) because there is no agreed upon foundation of facts and truths. The only time things get done effectively is when the (till the moment before, unseen) rocks of fact tear the guts out of the ship of state (the municipality goes bankrupt, etc.) So the guys who want to be in charge are always trying to predict the next disaster either to flog their favorite solution or to steer the ship away to keep it going for a few more weeks, months or years. While most ‘politicians’ are men and women of good faith in their own minds, they also WANT to hear Truth from their own side and Lies from the opposition, and consequently do so. Most are not able to unravel Facts from Fiction, Truth or Lies because of the complexity, (until the rocks start smashing in the planking.)

So…Panic! Disaster! Despair! Outrage! Fraud! Corruption! Cowardice! On and on, and on…..

So at the end of the day what? View the recent past in light of what history has to say and pick your poison. I see that regulation while important cannot run amuck and it is running amuck. I see that no state can run a deficit forever, and we need to have a long term plan. I see that there is only so much the state can take out of the pockets of the people and corporations without doing harm (or having to provide a substitute service of some kind) and we are at a decision point, and I do not want a government substitute. I think that government can only get so large before it distorts the society and market network, and government is definitely at that point and must be reigned in before we become utterly dependent on it. No government lasts forever, and when it collapses it pulls the society down with it, the US was designed so that ‘the government’ is always in a state of creative destruction, and we – society at large, are able to keep on going. There are forces (I think emergent from historical and social movement rather than Dr. Big Brain) at work in the US economy and political class to make the government – more and more rigid, this has to be stopped, and that means less government, less regulation, lighter taxes, and probably more personal risks, and I am ready to accept that trade-off, as are I think most citizens…

And that leads to one last definition: A citizen is not a legal title in my usage, its an attitude/philosophy. If you care about the future of the country and want what is best for ‘the country’ and other citizens, understanding that there is no free lunch, no equal outcomes or natural fairness in this world, you are probably a citizen of the US, not just someone who happened to be born lucky.

A world apart

Posted on August 25, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

We each live in a world apart from all others with only limited senses, knowledge and above all time, to understand the worlds of others, we tend to associate with those of a similar mindset either on purpose or by happenstance [family, region, career, religion, etc.] We associate with the similar because its easier and more effective than having to form a common base with someone whose world is very different.

Is the internet while making many things more common on one level, is breaking down some of the commonality that provided the ability to quickly relate to those you meet on a day-to-day basis?

With that rapid assimilation gone do we tend to live in a field of strangers who are getting less familiar all the time. And does that limit trust, the trust that is so critical to the success of the greater American culture?

The above is just a restatement of concerns expressed many times before. I guess I just had never thought through the ‘world apart’ metaphor and the reason we are worlds apart, even when we are touching each other.

Romney’s Successful Foreign Trip

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

Really good counter to MSM crap regarding Romney’s foreign excursion: The Governor’s visits to Israel and Poland formed the core of the trip, so, of course, drew less press attention and what attention it did draw minimized or misinterpreted the real meaning of the visits. Contrary to most press reporting, the Romney trip was not primarily about Jewish or Polish votes back in the US. The trip was about highlighting what should be the US relationship with two critical allies located in two very tough neighborhoods. Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is virtually surrounded by anti-American retrograde forces out to destroy it. Poland finds itself confronting a resurgent and increasingly anti-American, aggressive and even Stalinist Russia that greatly resents Poland’s remarkable economic success and its close relationship with the West, especially the United States. Both of these nations live on the frontiers of freedom; both have been shabbily mistreated by the Obama misadministration. Neither Obama nor Hillary Clinton have shown any regard for the importance of these two allies to the United States or for the difficult and even precarious conditions which they confront. In fact, actions by the Obama misadministration, e.g., precipitously canceling the anti-missile defense system in Poland’s case, and demanding Israel’s return to the disastrous borders of pre-1967, have strained their alliances with the United States and put their national security at risk. By visiting these two nations, Romney has signified how his foreign policy will be different than Obama’s. The Governor realizes something that the President does not: we should stand with our allies.

From the Diplomad blog, well worth following.

Key Insight regarding Gov’mt in America

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

An important, simple point from: Backers of government-run healthcare, including the single-payer concept, think regulation by government and intelligent planning will work better. I think that these people are well-intentioned but wrong. If we follow their suggestions, we are more likely to end up with something like the U.S. Postal Service than a high-tech, streamlined medical system that can work in the future. This is not because governments can never do anything right, but because the American political system works the way it does. Other countries, usually smaller and more homogenous ones, can do these things better. Approaches that might work in Denmark don’t work well here. The messy compromises and one-size-fits-all solutions that usually come out of Washington generally can’t provide the kind of guidance our healthcare system needs.

How can Romney respond to Candidate Obama’s exposure of his underlying socialist mindset?

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

Respond to what, it was just a misstatement, right?

Wrong!!

if you listen or read more it’s quite obvious he meant it in a deeper sense than a softly communitarian sense, he denigrated the hard work and smarts it takes to build up the smallest or commonest business. Yes you need infrastructure to build on, but it was leaders and tax paying citizens who built that, government is at its best when it’s a framework of self organization not the organizer.

How could Romney respond…by declaring a regulatory holiday, for two years. Also rescinding all new regulations from the last eight years unless the were a relaxation of prior rules or to do with acute toxic threats…and I know that even that would be abused.

During the holiday the US’s regulatory framework would be changed from mostly a matter of sovereign law to contract law. Regulations would be matters of goals and baselines and an standard if unwritten contract line item not a legal straight jacket. Don’t feel the regulation is best for your customers, neighbors, employees etc? Then write it up and submit it as a change to your social contract. Regulatory law is ‘now’ contract law, you pay for your day in court to review your change, if someone protests they have to pay the extra court costs (and by the way court is in your HQ’s state capital or a nearer regulatory court, not in your or their venue of choice.) If you’re sued on a ‘regulatory’ item, first hearing is split if it’s extended the ‘suit filer pays’ unless they can prove that you lied, if it’s a question, you split costs.

Simple minded you say? Good laws are simple and philosophically clear. Applying law to complex and ambiguous reality is what we pay judges and lawyers for.

Such a plan would lay the foundation for a new US boom, it would take the shackles off and let people’s ingenuity and desire to build something for the future blow the roof of the doldrums the regulatory over reach of the last several decades has built over our dreams.

How can Romney respond to Candidate Obama’s exposure of his underlying socialist mindset?

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

Respond to what, it was just a misstatement, right?

Wrong!!

Simple minded you say? Good laws are simple and philosophically clear. Applying law to complex and ambiguous reality is what we pay judges and lawyers for.