As Promised - An Engine

As promised last week, a running little steam engine.  As I said, the plans and a kit of stock came from Little Machine Shop (LMS). They sell a 2 DVD set of instructions and demos of how to make the engine made by company called SwarfRat . Don't recall if I got the plans from SwarfRat or LMS, but I think it was from SwarfRat.  Since this is pretty much a beginner machining project, if you're buying the LMS kit, you will probably benefit from the DVDs. 



This is my first little engine, and a fun project.  Although I used the CNC mill, it was almost exclusively used as a drill press with accurate readouts for where (in X and Y) and how deep to drill.  Aside from that, the mill was just used to square the two pieces of plate to size.  LMS says the engine can be made with a lathe the size of a Sherline and a drill press; I think that's right.  The majority of the project was lathe work, turning the flywheel and smaller, but more fiddly crank wheel (you literally cut away something like 80% of the aluminum you start with).  The cylinder is machined on the lathe with the four jaw chuck because of the square shape (doesn't go well with a three jaw chuck) and the need to drill and size the cylinder about 1/8" off center of the 1" square block it's made from, and then the cylinder is reamed to a final diameter.  In this case 0.499"  - here's my 0.499 reamer as the cut is starting.

After reaming the cylinder, the chuck is put back to centered, the four-sided cylinder cut to final length, drilled for a single intake and exhaust hole into the cylinder and another hole drilled and tapped one for a long, spring loaded screw that holds it to the upright part of the support.  Finally, the four jaw is replaced with the conventional three-jaw and the piston cut to fit the cylinder. 

Naturally, I did some things wrong and made some mistakes.  I've always said that life, much like working in the shop, is all about recovering gracefully from screwups.  The graceful recovery I get the biggest chortle from concerned a very minor part: a little steel pin: 0.142" diameter that's supposed to be threaded to 6-32 for 0.350" and then cut to be only 0.600" long.  I had only one die for 6-32, in a cheap Hazard Fraught tap and die set, and it simply wouldn't cut the steel.  In an effort to help it out, I trimmed back the pin from.142 to .134, which is probably too small in diameter to thread properly.  The die still wouldn't cut this soft, steel pin and just roughened the end.  In a final test, I turned back a little scrap of 1/4" diameter aluminum to .140 and tried cutting it with the die.  I could feel it cutting, but when I went to unscrew the die, all I found was the end of the aluminum pin sort of gnawed off with a large step in diameter. 

So I had to order a die.  I discovered these dies - with a built in die wrench (the eBay seller - no relation, etc.).  When it got in, I thought that I had messed up the pin too badly.  So where do I get a .140 pin or "rod" of it to cut?  At some point while pondering, one of the voices in my head said, "why not a nail?"  I didn't even know if I could thread a nail, but after a quick test showed that it would cut, I cut off the head and chucked up a few inch long piece of nail from my junk collection.  It was .160 diameter, so I turned it to the right size and threaded the nail.  The new die worked perfectly. 

This is just as I was preparing to cut it to length with the cutoff tool on the lathe.  The pin is in the engine as you see it.

There are more stories from making it, but probably not worth getting into.  While it's "done", I'll probably work on this a bit more.  It has had very little finish work done to it.  I'd like the look of a polished aluminum version, but that means taking it completely apart and lots of sanding time.  Still, it might be worth it.  

I've had it completely built since Friday, but was unable to test it because I didn't have a way to get compressed air from my compressor to the engine.  The last couple of days were spent coming up with ways to do that and rounding up parts around town. 

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

First, I hope if you're interested in following some quality writing on the Las Vegas massacre that you're reading the Raconteur Report, who has done some really good reporting on it.  I think a worthwhile read for everyone is yesterday's post on a Plea to Stop the Derp.  It's simply too full of weapons-grade snark to quote pieces of.  So just a couple of lines:

1) "I can't believe he got all that crap up to a 32nd floor suite"

That's because you're an idiot, or unfamiliar with Vegas, firearms, and about 48 other facts that many people find to be common knowledge.

We know now Paddock checked in on September 25th, giving him only six f***ing days to get a $#!^load of guns and ammunition to the 32d floor from his car. Seriously, anyone who thinks he carried them out in the open, and up 32 flights of stairs, on his back, is a fucktard. If that includes you, step away from the keyboard.

In Vegas, like many hotels, there are these things called luggage carts:

There's more.  I suspect most of you have seen it since everyone seems to be recommending the blog, but go read if you haven't.

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During the power outages from Irma, we ran for a little while on APC Uninterruptible Power Supplies.  One of them seemed to start giving off the unmistakable odor of burning electronics, so it was powered down and sent into a secure isolation facility (the shop).  After running off the battery for a few hours, the smell returned.  I took it apart and started a few days worth of testing the batteries (it seems I spend a lot of my spare time testing and reconditioning batteries).  To discharge these batteries, I ran my AC inverter and a 60W bulb.  I recharged them with my storage and AGM charger.  There will likely be a few cycles to 50% capacity and then recharging, in an effort to recondition them, but they look like old gell cell batteries whose internal resistance is getting too high.  I'll know better after a few more days.

---

I got an ad from Home Depot in today's email .  In itself, that's hardly unusual.  It was when I clicked on the sale link that it got a little surprising.

Huh.  I would have guessed that Home Depot would localize their ads to the cities or states where people register as living and not just send a national ad.  By coincidence, I was at the local HD store today and I didn't see a single snow shovel, show blower, salt spreader or bag of salt on display. 

I'll take the chance I can extend my record of never needing one for a while longer.  Like the rest of my life. 

Is Hurricane Nate A Hurricane?

Trick question?  Nope.  Bear with me.

From the 8PM EDT Statement:

SUMMARY OF 700 PM CDT...0000 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...29.0N 89.2W
ABOUT 10 MI...15 KM SW OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
ABOUT 100 MI...160 KM S OF BILOXI MISSISSIPPI
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...85 MPH...140 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...N OR 350 DEGREES AT 20 MPH...31 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...982 MB...29.00 INCHES

Winds 85 mph, forward movement North, or 350 degrees, at 20 mph.   Around the time of Irma, last month, I learned that the winds are reported, the forward motion is already taken into account. It raises the question of just what the winds in Nate really are.

In general, the strongest winds in a hurricane are found on the right side of the storm because the motion of the hurricane also contributes to its swirling winds. A hurricane with a 90 mph [145 km/hr] winds while stationary would have winds up to 100 mph [160 km/hr] on the right side and only 80 mph [130 km/hr] on the left side if it began moving (any direction) at 10 mph [16 km/hr].

Note that forecasting center advisories already take this asymmetry into account and, in this case, would state that the highest winds were 100 mph [160 km/hr]. [Note: emphasis in original - SiG]

Consider the geometry they describe:

In this case, the red arrow is pointing north.  The winds on the right (east) side of the storm are reported at 85 mph and that includes the 20 mph forward motion.  That means the winds on the north side of the eye where the forward motion contributes nothing are 65 mph, 10 mph below Hurricane strength, and the winds on the west side of the storm are (WindReported - 2 x (forward speed))  or 45 mph.  That's the weakest wind defined as a tropical storm.  The winds along the south side of the eyewall, where forward motion again contributes nothing to the speed, are 65 mph again.   Stripped of the effects from forward motion, it becomes a tropical storm with 65 mph winds everywhere.

There is only one area in Nate that's a hurricane force storm and that's a small area in the eyewall on the east side of the storm.   Normalized to 10 meters (33 feet) elevation. 

Why does this matter?  Follow the money.  Far more geographical area is going to be affected by Nate than will experience hurricane force winds.  Because this is called a hurricane, it will invoke the higher deductibles homeowner's insurance charges for hurricanes.  That's typically a much higher deductible than if this was treated like a thunderstorm, which can easily generate winds that will be seen in most of Nate.  I honestly don't think Nate should be called a hurricane.  If the 85 mph winds were on the north and south sides of the eye wall, and the east side became 105 because of forward motion, that seems more like a hurricane than a storm with a tiny area that reaches 85 because of the geometry of its path.  Which means the NHC would have to describe the winds as if the storm weren't moving. 

Reasonable Gun Laws

Are you as sick as I am of hearing that phrase?  It's not just in the last few days, it's always there to some degree.  I'm sick of explaining there is no such thing as a gun show loophole; there are no laws that don't apply at gun shows or to internet sales.  I'm tired of explaining that we already have background checks on all new guns, we don't do them on private sales because it's an individual selling their own property and the Federal Government doesn't seem to get involved in private sales of private property.  States do; if I sell a car, boat or whatever, I have to do a bill of sales and the buyer pays sales tax.  I know of no place where the Fed.gov does that.  I'm really sick of the "why does anyone need (fill in the blank)?? Which we hear from an alarming number of people who are nominally on our side.  Fudds.  Why does anyone need 42 guns?  Why does anyone need 30 round magazines?  I want to ask why does anyone need 42 books? That's also a constitutionally protected right.  Why does anyone need a TV in every room, or a muscle car or you name it.  BFYTW  It's None of Your F**king Business.

I'm even more sick of late night comedians insisting that you and I, as law abiding gun owners, are to blame for mass murder.  No, Kimmel, you sanctimonious copraphage, the only person responsible is the one pulling the trigger.  Not obeying laws is sort of a minimum job requirement for criminals, and if someone is going to commit mass murder, which usually includes suicide, I don't really think minor process crimes are going to slow them.

So since the start of the reports coming in involved this mysterious new term "bump stock" (Paul Ryan said he had never heard of them), they've been on the chopping block.  Several bloggers have already said they'd gladly trade the bump stock for national carry reciprocity and/or the SHARE act and/or lots of other things. I like Aesop's over at Raconteur Report best of what I've seen but I can honestly feel the fear emanating from Slide Fire.  They're selling a perfectly legal product to perfectly willing buyers and they're going to get run out of business because of a lunatic and the cowardly rush to "do something" even if it's not right.

Regular readers will know this is one of my regular rants, but I have a whole bunch of things I consider reasonable gun laws.

Let's start here.  I just bought my Ruger Precision Rifle (The Precious) online from Palmetto State Armory in July.  Any non-prohibited person can walk into their local sporting goods store and walk out with one of those, or a shot gun, or any other long gun just by plunking down their payment, filling out the 4473 and getting the NICS check.  So why did it have to go through a local FFL's hands?  All that did was raise my price $35.  Why can't I fill out an electronic 4473 online and have it shipped directly to my house?  The local FFL had an electronic 4473 I filled out there, why can't I connect to that server from my home and use that form, or connect to one where I bought the gun?  What advantage is there to society from shipping it to an FFL?  They can look at my driver's license and verify I'm me?   Puh-lease.  With today's computer security and ability to forge documents?

In consumer goods, your local camera shop, say, really does have to compete with the big guys in New York. Gun shops don't have that. I can see how local gun shops might really like this setup. They get an easy 35 bucks for filling out the forms and "receiving" the shipment, but I don't think there's any value added to us or society.  There was certainly no value added to me.

If there's a mandatory 3 or 5 day waiting period for a handgun where you live (Florida waives that for Concealed Carry licensees), why can't you order it online and wait 3 or 5 days for UPS to deliver it?  Again, with today's computer security, you could verify age, do a NICS check - anything the local shop can do - online.  I think the waiting periods are all bullsh*t anyway, just another way for government to yank our chains and make it harder than it ought to be.  I've never seen any data that waiting periods have ever done anything except inconvenience legal purchasers.  But, fine, we'll play your infantile waiting game -- now how does waiting 3 days to pick up a gun in my city differ from waiting 3 days to get it delivered by UPS or FedEx?

What possible arguments are there against this?  We can't guarantee security, we can't guarantee that criminals won't order guns online?  Criminals don't have any problems getting guns now while staying out of the system entirely.  If we use strong security, it's as good as what we have.  One time I posted something like this and a commenter said,  "what if your kids used your ID?"  I wouldn't want my kids buying anything under my ID on my computer.  If you can't control your own kids in your own house, I think that's a bigger problem than what they're buying.  Maybe you should be making sure they don't know the combination to your safe and don't know where to find matches.   

I guess I'm arguing for a complete end to the FFL to FFL monopoly.  Why not?  Along with that, I want complete deregulation of silencers (SHARE makes them subject to the 4473).  This one actually is for the children.  And for anyone who moves next door to gun ranges or clubs and gets disturbed by the sounds.  From what I read, I don't think I'm dropping my hearing protection even if I have the can, but Show Me the Data.  It strikes me as absurd that we require mufflers on cars or motorcycles but prohibit them on guns.  I know it originally goes back to preventing people from poaching the King's deer, but now it's all about the Hollywood mythology that Hillary espouses. 

We should eliminate postal restrictions against mailing of firearms. We can ship them via UPS, or FedEx, why not USPS?  Don't they need every penny of revenue they can get?

Get rid of the stupid “sporting purpose” tests for firearms. The Heller decision makes it very clear that the Second Amendment isn’t about duck hunting. This particularly affects imports.  No restrictions.  

Get rid of the stupid laws on short barreled rifles and shotguns.  The idea that a shotgun barrel 18.05" long is fine, but one that's 17.95" is some sort of monster death machine-weapon is just silly.  It's there simply to create law violators.  It's also one of their most enforced laws - probably because it's really easy to measure barrel length.

How's that for a start?  It doesn't take away enough of BATFE's work to close them down, but maybe downsize them 50%?

There are many competing companies providing improved online ID verification; this one is from LexisNexis, the database giant.  How is comparing all these documents worse in any way than filling out some lines on a 4473 and showing a driver's license to the clerk at the local FFL?

I Wish I'd Seen This In 2014

Back when we were starting to work on the addition to the house for my shop. 

Even better than 30 years from now, it would be great to mess with some future archaeologist! 

Mass Shootings - A Different View

Anonymous commenter Bob posted an interesting link to my frustrated post about the Las Vegas shooting.  It was a link to FiveThirtyEight for a very reasonable article about gun control and mass shootings.  Of all places you'd never expect to see such a thing, they're one.  I think it's worth reading simply because it's so unusual for a liberal "rag" like them.  The author says mass shootings don't contain much information if the goal is to stop the larger issue of "gun violence" because the only thing they have in common with so-called gun violence is that someone is holding a gun. 

Then author Maggie Koerth-Baker goes places I've never seen liberal sites go.  She admits right up front that almost 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides and people find ways to kill themselves if there are no guns.  She talks about the racial disparity of gun violence victims, with 66% percent of murder victims black.  She concludes with:

If we focus on mass shootings as a means of understanding how to reduce the number of people killed by guns in this country, we’re likely to implement laws that don’t do what we want them to do — and miss opportunities to make changes that really work. Gun violence isn’t one problem, it’s many. And it probably won’t have a single solution, either.

It's almost like she wants to solve the problem, not just "do something" as the refrain from all the late night comics goes.  She brings up the uncomfortable subjects (for the liberals) of violence being more common in young black men.  If she would go get John Lott's research showing the enormous concentration of murders in just a small percentage of the counties in the US, and then realize that most of those places already have draconian gun laws, maybe she'd get somewhere.

I can respect the honesty she shows about the problem.  Nobody wants to see mass shootings like we just had, but those shooters seem to be so atypical compared to the usual murders, and nobody wants to see murders of any kind.  I suspect that gun and non-gun murders have more in common with each other than they do with mass shootings.  Yeah, I'd like to get her to drop the whole "gun-violence" term because murder is murder whether it's done with a handgun or a hammer, and I have several of those gripes, but I can deal with honest questioning a lot better than I can live with politics as usual, like Useful Idiot Feinstein dropping a bill to outlaw bump stocks already.  The guy was literally shooting fish in a barrel.  The bump stock probably made his count lower.  

Shifting gears, I don't have to introduce Bill Whittle to this crowd.  Bill, of course, left PJ Media a while back and started BillWhittle.com.  I subscribed the first month and renewed this past May.  Bill asks us to think about the mass shootings in a different way.  (Sorry, it was members only video or I'd link).  

Most people who have worked in industry have probably heard of Six Sigma programs - I first ran across them in the mid '90s.  The idea is that everything your factory produces should fit within its specification envelope within six standard deviations.  Most "statistical quality control" before Six Sigma said your products should fit within 3 sigma.  The problem is, that makes your factory repair or rework too many rejected products. 

Anyone here saying, "Hold on a minute - what's a sigma?"  The term is used for a standard deviation in a Gaussian distribution - the famous "bell curve" everyone has heard of or seen.

Note that it shows the number of rejected parts in Defects per Million.  In percentages, it looks like this:

Producing something that worked to 3 sigma meant 93.3% of what you built worked right the first time.   If you're producing big assemblies, that might be acceptable to you.  The six sigma movement is trying to make the product work the first time it's tested 99.99966% of the time. 34 out of 10 million would require either scrapping or fixing, depending on the cost to the company. 

What Bill says is that we can consider a mass shooter to be a "defective" human.  How many defects are we producing compared to six sigma?  How many mass shootings have there been in 2017?  I went to this archive, which I know nothing about and found by web search.  I think I recall that the general definition of a mass shooting is 4 or more people killed, and they list mass shootings by more than 4 injured.  By the 4 or more killed convention, I count 16 (by 4 or more injured there are many more: 273).  In a country of 320 million that represents .05 Defects per Million.  That's considerably better than 6 sigma of population being "defective" in that way.   

I don't know if it's reasonable to count this as per year, or just how.  Bill seems to think of it as a potential number of shootings per day.  Which is right, per day or per year, or is neither right?  Beats me.  In a day, there are many hundreds of millions of interactions between people, the vast, vast majority of which don't end up in any sort of violence.  On the other hand, when the people calling this a terrible, depraved place start to get to you, it's a little optimistic to think just how stunningly rare these things are. 

Sneak Peek

There is some greater-than-zero chance that I'll be able to show you all one of these running.  Real soon now.  With stories to follow.


Just a couple of pieces left to solve.  Video from the NYC CNC channel.  Need I say "no relationship, just a channel I sometimes watch"?

Here We Are Again

Another horrific mass murder.  Another scumbag who is miserable in life and thinks it's his prerogative to give everyone else his misery.  Unless Isis isn't just taking credit for nothing and he really is one of theirs. 

I'm sickened by not just the attack itself, but by the immediate reaction that it's time for more gun control.  If Weapons Man was right, there's about 600 Million guns in America.  That means all of about 1 millionth of 1 percent were involved in this attack.  So naturally we need to go after all the innocent people who did nothing today.

You know what?  I was going to post some of the idiocy from Hillary, Shannon, and all the anti-gun idiots who are thrilled to be out dancing in the blood again, but I just don't have it inside.  The comments are so appallingly stupid, I just can't even. 

Let's mourn for the dead, let's rally to help the wounded, let's wait for healing to take place.  We'll start the fights some other time. 

Another A380 Loses an Engine in Mid-Flight

By now, everyone has heard about the Air France A380 flight yesterday that had an engine break up in mid-flight over the North Atlantic (one report says over Greenland).  The aircraft declared an inflight emergency, was re-routed from its path to Los Angeles and landed safely at Goose Bay airport in Canada.  The pilots handled the emergency well and the plane landed without further problems. 

Passenger photo.

The thing is, this isn't the first engine issue they've had, on an airframe that hasn't flown that long.  Soon after the A380s were delivered to Qantas airlines in Australia, 2010, one of their A380s lost its port side inboard engine to an explosion on takeoff.  The engine threw debris through the wing of the aircraft and could have just as easily thrown debris through passengers.  The pilots handled the emergency expertly and safely landed the aircraft.  The cause was judged to be a quality problem at Rolls Royce Trent engines, and resulted in grounding of several aircraft, including among different airlines to have engines inspected or replaced. 

Are two midair engine explosions in seven years unusual?  That's a little awkward to answer because if you search for any model aircraft, you'll find stories about engine explosions.  Despite that, I'm sure that everyone in the design chain does their best to make sure they don't explode.  Is it worth asking if the A380 system has some issues with its engines?  Not so much that the engines aren't built right, which was the case with the Qantas incident, but if there's something about their operating envelope that wasn't adequately specified?  What I mean is that the engines were specified, designed and then tested to a specific set of requirements, so I'm sure they meet the requirements.  Is it possible that the requirements are wrong? 

It's rough for outsiders to the industry to find real numbers for the number of flight hours, failures per flight hour and so on.  We always have to keep in mind that if two very rare occurrences happen in rapid succession, they might legitimately still be very rare.  People do hit the lotto twice.  It does, however, make me want to keep an eye on the A380 from a respectful distance. 

End of September

It's September 30th, or as we call it around here: August 61st.  The end of September with only one sign that it's not August: the sunset getting earlier every night while sunrise gets a little later every morning.  To be honest, it's not quite August.  Yeah, it has been in the 90s if it's not raining, but over 90 doesn't ordinarily last as long as the high temperatures in August.  Accuweather's long range forecast guesstimate doesn't really predict a overnight low under 70 until Halloween Weekend, but nobody should trust a forecast that far out.  They do show some highs in the low 80s in just two weeks, which is marginally more believable. 

And we're ending the month much as it began, under what the Hurricane Center calls "Invest 99".  (For those who aren't familiar, an "Invest" is an area of investigation, the first stage in the sequence of development of a hurricane: Invest - Tropical Depression - Tropical Storm - Hurricane).  That only means a few more storms and a bit more wind than usual.

Tonight's weather shows the center over NE Florida, with a predicted 20% chance of developing through the next five days.  That area over the Caribbean is given a 0% chance of developing over the next five days. 

 Just think; it's just under 8 weeks from last Thursday will be Thanksgiving. 

Best Thing I've Read on Artificial Intelligence Taking Over the World

By link at an out of the way place, CNCCookbook.com, I ran into this cool article, "Camels to Cars, Artificial Cockroaches, and Will AI Take Your Job?" This is really a well done piece and I recommend you Read The Whole Thing. Best thing I've read on this topic in quite a while, if not best ever. 

CNCCookbook publishes the "Speeds and Feeds" calculator I'm using, GWizard.  The owner is a guy named Bob Warfield.  Bob's an interesting guy; he has founded a handful of companies in the software world, and I think he says CNCCookbook is his seventh company. 

Before I launch into my reaction to these all to common predictions that AI is right around the corner and will take all of our jobs, let me establish my own credentials.  Hey, anyone can have an opinion, but like everyone else, I think my opinion is better!

I have worked in what many would call the field of Artificial Intelligence.  I made the largest return I’ve ever made selling one of my 6 Venture Capital Startups to another company.  The technology we built was able to automatically test software.

Bob points out that AI has been riding the Gartner Hype Cycle for a long time. In last summer's Gartner summary, they put it near the peak.  For the third time.

In fact, all of these technologies are near the peak of being over-hyped:

• Deep Neural Network ASICs
• Level 3 Vehicle Autonomy
• Smart Robots
• Virtual Assistants
• Deep Learning
• Machine Learning
• NLP
• Autonomous Vehicles
• Intelligent Apps
• Cognitive Computing
• Computer Vision
• Level 4 Vehicle Autonomy
• Commercial UAVs (Drones)

What's different about this time?  Is anything different about this time?  This time we have demos!  We have Deep Blue beating the world's chess champion.  We have Deep Blue beating the worlds Go champion.  Well, yeah, we had demos the other times, too.  In the last peak of the hype we had

• Medical diagnosis better than what human doctors could do. See Mycin for prescribing antibiotics, for example.  It was claimed to be better than human doctors at its job but never saw actual use.
• All manner of vision and manipulation. Blocks? So what. Driving cars?  Yeah right.  Turn ‘em loose against a New York cabbie and we’ll see how they do.  The challenge for autonomous vehicles has always been the people, not the terrain.

No matter how many autonomous cars drive across the dessert (talk about the easiest possible terrain), they’re nowhere until they can deal with stupid carbon units, i.e. People, without killing them or creating liability through property damage.

By the way, despite awarding numerous prizes of one million dollars and up, so far the DARPA Grand Challenge has failed to meet the goal Congress set for it when it awarded funding–to get 1/3 of all military vehicles to be autonomous by 2015.  But the demos sure are sweet!

• Computers have been solving mathematical theorems for ages.  In some cases they even generate better proofs than the humans.  Cool.  But if they’re so good, why haven’t they already pushed mathematics ahead by centuries?  Something is not quite right with a demo that can only solve theorems already solved and little else.
• Oooh, yeah, computers are beating chess masters!  Sure, but not in any way that remotely resembles how people play chess.  They are simply able to consider more positions.  That and the fact that their style of play is just odd and offputing to humans is why they win.  What good is it? One source claims Deep Blue cost IBM $100 million.

When are those algorithms doing to genuinely add $1 billion to IBM’s bottom line?  Building still more specialized computers to beat humans at Jeopardy or Go is just creating more demos that solve no useful problems and do so in ways that humans don’t.  Show me the AI System that starts from nothing and can learn to beat any human at any game in less than a year and I will admit I have seen Deep Skynet.

One of the marketing gurus doing AI demos says "all we gotta do" is wait for computers that are about 100,000 times faster than what we have, and then overstates Moore's law to say we'll have them in 25 years.  If computers get twice as fast every two years (and the actual clock speeds plateaued around 2006 and aren't going up, but let's ignore that and say we get twice as fast due to architectural improvements) that takes 17 cycles or 34 years for computers to get 100,000 times faster.  It's gonna be a long time before we have Hal "open the pod bay doors".  Besides, I have evidence Moore's Law died in 2012 so we may never get there.

Think about the problem the other way, though, if a computer 100,000 times faster would be as good as human brain (and we still have serious gaps in our understanding of just how the brain works - including whether or not our brains do quantum computing), what would be the comparison to today's computer?  Could we get useful work out of what we have?

So we need artificial brains that are 100,000 times more powerful.  In essence, we can compare today’s AI to brains the size of what cockroaches have.  Yet, we’re worried they’re going to take all of our jobs.

Are you in a job that a cockroach could do?  I hope not.

So far, I am not aware of anyone having harnessed cockroaches to do their bidding, but they are cheap, plentiful, and just as smart as today’s AI’s.  Maybe smarter if their brains are quantum computers too.

Maybe it would be cheaper to spend billions learning how to make cockroaches useful?

I don’t know, but we don’t even seem to be able to make much smarter animals useful.  Are there dogs running machinery somewhere in China?  Is a particularly adept German Shepherd behind the latest quant trading engine on Wall Street?

Nope.

Decades ago, I read about a drug company that trained pigeons to be Quality Control inspectors on their production lines.  The gelatin capsules coming off the production line would sometimes stick together, so you'd get two tops or two bottoms stuck in each other.  The production inspectors would watch the molding machine's output on something like a conveyor belt and pick out the defective gelatin caps.  The humans would get bored with such a menial task, their attention would wander, and defective capsules would get through.  The pigeons found it interesting enough that they paid more attention.  As a result, the pigeons were actually better inspectors than the humans - they found 99% of the bad capsules.  The only reason they didn't make the pigeons permanent inspectors after this experiment?  They were afraid what the competition would say about them if they discovered they were using pigeons. 

Can you imagine cockroaches on the production line doing this job?  Maybe you pay them with the gelatin capsules they reject.  And can you imagine what the competition would say about having trained cockroaches inspect the medical capsules? 

Again, let me leave you with a quote I've used before, because I think it's great.

William Bossert, legendary Harvard professor, summed it up by saying, “If you’re afraid that you might be replaced by a computer, you probably can be—and probably should be.” While it may not be comforting, it could be a wakeup call for continued education.

Since Tax Reform is in the News

I posted this back in June, but it really stuck with me and became one of those quotes I can't forget.  It's from David Stockman, Reagan's budget chief, who said,

The income tax has been slashed so many times since 1981 that it’s no longer a broad based societal tax; it’s a kind of luxury tax on upper income salary earners and the small share of households which garner most of the capital income from dividends, interest payments and capital gains…

Stockman went on to point out that 60% of tax filers accounted for 5% of tax revenue.  In addition, 35% of tax filers – more than 52 million filers at the bottom and middle of the income ladder – didn’t pay a single dime of taxes after deductions, exemptions and credits.  I think Stockman was sloppy with his wording in saying, "the income tax has been slashed so many times".  Tax rates go up and down regularly.  I think he means the number of people paying income tax has been slashed. 

Look at what he's saying.  The top 40% of incomes pay 95% of tax revenues, and the bottom 35% don't pay a dime once all of the deductions, and all other systemic ways to avoid paying tax.  The top 1% of earners pay 39.5% of all collected taxes.

From what I'm able to see, this isn't really a conservative plan it's more a populist plan.  From a populist president and party that aren't conservative, so what a surprise, right?   I hear the president insisted on leaving the highest tax bracket for the highest income earners where it is, at 39.6% so there's no "trickle down" aspect to this.  Supposedly Trump said that people in the highest bracket can afford that 39.6% rate, and he insisted it stay there.  Maybe that's his way of fighting the Evil party screaming that it's a "tax cut for the rich!!"  Maybe he honestly thinks a 39.6% rate is a good thing.

So if the lowest half of the income range doesn't pay taxes, and the top rate stays the same, who's getting what changes?  That's what the arguments are about.  From what I hear, the big proposal is a return to three brackets, 12%, 28%, and that 39.6%.  Exactly where those three brackets change will make all the difference in "who pays what".  The simplification part of the plan (they still keep using the "fill out your taxes on a postcard" meme) raises the standard deductions so the lowest income people are expected to pay even less than now, while the highest grade may benefit a little.

The big deal is dropping the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%.  That will make investing in the US look much better to companies looking to build new facilities.  Lower corporate taxes help everyone but this will have its greatest impact on small businesses and business start ups.  Since it uses the word "corporate", you can be sure the core Evil party hates that part.  Since they can't argue it's a tax cut for the richest, they'll fight that corporations are getting a break.  Corporations pass on their taxes to their customers, so their customers pay them.  Before this all started, Paul Ryan actually said something intelligent, when he said,

"We are actually unique in the world in the way we discourage capital from coming back to America and how we incentivize off-shoring jobs," ... "This is not the kind of exceptionalism we should aspire to ..." 

The overall progressive structure of the tax code doesn't change.  We still penalize success.  We have "sin taxes" on booze and tobacco to discourage their use.  And we have our highest tax rate on our highest earners to discourage success. 

Income and federal income tax, by standing in the income distribution, 2014 bar chart.  The leftmost pair of bars is the bottom 50% of wages.  The blue indicates 11.27% of total adjusted gross income (AGI) was paid to this group and they paid 2.75% of income tax.  The % of AGI is always greater than the percent of the tax burden until you reach the rightmost two.  The uppermost 5% to 1% of incomes group is the first one where the red bar is taller than the blue.  This group earned 15.38% of AGI and paid 20.48% of income taxes.  The top 1% earned 20.58% of AGI but paid 39.48% of income tax. 

Why I'm Not Boycotting the NFL

There has been almost a universal "Boycott the NFL" meme rippling through the blogosphere.  Many of you have said it.  I haven't.  I think a little explanation might make some sense.

To begin with, in terms of spending money on football, last year I spent a grand total of $0.00 - zip, nada, nothing.  I think that same sum holds for the previous decade or so.  I actually spent money on the NFL HD video package on DirecTV some years ago, and that would be all I spent.  A friend told me, "viewers = dollars" or eyeballs = dollars if you're online.  To be meaningful to the sellers, I'd have to be a viewer of their commercials.  I don't watch the commercials.  I couldn't even tell you who the advertisers are, except I'm sure there are beer commercials involved from somebody.  I'm not buying anything in response to any commercials during a game.

That means that in real dollars and cents, and in truthful "TV audience", I don't show up in the NFL's ledger at all.  I can't boycott what I'm not supporting with my money.  Do I end up paying tax money to support them?  If I lived in a city or county with a professional team, I'd assume so, but I don't live there.  Does the state tax us?  I honestly don't know, but I'm sure that nothing I could do in front of the TV would affect that. 

Second, I agree that the protests are stupid and juvenile; in other words they're just the thing you'd expect from a bunch of spoiled "man-child" brats.  Protesting "police violence"?  Please.  That's like "hands up, don't shoot", or the picture everyone has of Trayvon Martin as a 12 or 13 year old, not the large, functionally-adult man that died that night.  Both of those are total fabrications, lies from the get go. and to borrow the quote, the lies went around the world while the truth was putting on its pants.  The whole protest movement is based on a lie. 

To hear pro football players talk about being a disadvantaged class because of their race is insulting.  The minimum wage for a rookie drafted in the last round this year is about $485,000 year (average).  For a single person, that's over 40 times the poverty limit in this country, and in the top few percent of all wage earners.  Disadvantaged?  These guys have been pampered all their lives because they can run fast, throw well, or tackle hard.  Even the guys who technically didn't make the team, the practice squad, get $115,200 for the 16 game season.  

There's something more going on here, it's not just this protest stuff.  There seems to be an effort to shut down the NFL and football at all levels.  Think about the fuss about concussions, CTE and players dying from brain injuries.  What about boxers?  Boxers die from getting hit in the head repeatedly.  What about soccer or rugby or any other sport that involves getting hit in the head.  They don't seem to care about those guys, but they're trying to get parents to tell their kids not to play football and only football.  I think that the whole "kneel for the pledge" act is theater; something that Colin Pumpernick came up with to impress his girlfriend.  It's just been incorporated into a larger hard-left plot to get rid of football.  Rush Limbaugh has been talking about this for easily the last two years, if not more.

If it's really a hard-left plot to end football, then, well, why?  As I was putting together ideas on this topic, I ran across this piece on Hot Air, "The Left's (Brilliant) Scam Behind the NFL Anthem Protests."

Why? Because the activist Left has despised the NFL for years. They hate everything about it. It’s a game filled with big, tough, manly men engaging in the closest thing to warfare you can manage without guns. It’s a game rife with symbolism and, yes… nationalism. Even people who would never buy an album from a country singer could feel their blood heating up when Hank Williams used to sing, Are you Ready for Some Football. The military loves football and they fly jets over the stadiums in formation and send our nation’s finest out to pay tribute. And it’s not just the military. Our police and other first responders are frequently called out for honors at the games. Everything about it screams of apple pie, fireworks and patriotism. (Or, if you prefer, God, guns and flags.) And the activist Left hates it. Probably the only sporting event they despise more is NASCAR.

If I watch football, it's for escapism.  I want to avoid politics, and to see really good athletes do things very few people can do.  Avoiding the annoying politics is very easy.  I record the game and start watching an hour or two after the start.  I fast forward until the kickoff and miss the protest.  If the announcers talk about it, I either mute the audio or fast forward a little bit.  I fast forward through all the commercials, too, so I never really see any of them. 

Pro football players are skilled dancing monkeys.  All I want to see is some good dancing. 

Not a hard image to find. 

The inevitable conclusion to this line of thinking is that if we do bankrupt the NFL in five years by boycotting every business that sponsors them, we're handing the left a win.  If that matters.

The Feds Issue Autonomous Car Regulations

Self-driving or automated-driving-system (ADS) cars are a regular topic that has consumed a lot of bits here.  (All of my bits are 100% recycled; no electrons are harmed during the composition, posting or reading of a post - although I suspect some would complain of being inconvenienced if they could.)  For ADS cars to really take off as a product, they would need to be one part of an overall integrated system.  The cars would need to talk with each other, which means some sort of digital protocol has to be settled on, radio spectrum would have to be allocated by the Fed.gov, infrastructure for communications will have to be built out, and more. 

On September 6th, the House of Representatives passed the SELF DRIVE act.  As laws these days tend to be named, SELF DRIVE is an acronym: Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution  The act sets up a framework that the industry thinks is necessary. 

SELF DRIVE ... will allow companies to test up to 100,000 autonomous vehicles on regular roads, even if they don't meet current safety standards. What this legislation does is give companies researching and actively working on self-driving tech a chance to prove their technology is safe.

Machine Design opines:

The need for these regulations is important so that all car manufacturers work against set standards. This way Tesla cannot make ADS vehicles that operate different from Ford, which could lead to accidents. In addition, in the absence of federal regulation, states have taken to creating their own laws for ADS vehicles. This could prevent self-driving cars from crossing state lines.

Personally, I think this is a stupid argument.  Why should industry need Washington to mandate that Tesla not make ADS vehicles that operate differently from Ford?  It's like agreeing on specifications for modems: it's in everyone's best interest to come up with a set of standards everyone can live with; after all, look how successful electronics industry standards like RS-232 or Ethernet or about a zillion others work.  In the world I used to work in, committees of representatives from all of the competitors would meet in "impartial NGOs" to iron out how aviation systems should work.  In the auto industry, I don't know how it came to be, but having the same basic controls - the same basic User Interface - in every car has to help everyone.  Now, could Tesla or Ford or someone else come up with a vehicle that meets all the industry group standard but has some other advantages to try to capture sales?  Why not?  What's wrong with a company trying for competitive advantage by offering something above and beyond the minimum requirements?  I don't see why they want the heavy, clumsy hand of government.

The second part of that paragraph says states might impose regulations such that ADS cars could be illegal in some states while legal in others.  That's (as I've heard it) how the Fed.gov got involved with the unspeakable evil of low-flow toilets.  States had started specifying them on their own and there was no agreement in required gallons per flush.  The toilet companies begged the Feds for "one rule to flush them all" so to speak. 

The second part of the act allows car manufacturers to deploy 100,000 self-driving cars per year (25,000 for the first year the law would be enacted) that would be exempt from existing automobile safety standards. This is important for car manufacturers to design without needing certain safety features like a steering wheel or pedals, such as that for Google’s self-driving vehicles. The act is moving on to the Senate, where autonomous trucks might be added to the bill as well.

The US Department of Transportation issued some guidelines for ADS development and testing.  They eased requirements for safety equipment, so that these test cars are not legally required to have a steering wheel (I didn't know that was a law; I thought we needed one to make the car work). 

At the gathering, Secretary Chao introduced the guidance document A Vision for Safety 2.0, released by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The guidance, according to Chao, “supports further development of this important new technology, which has the potential to change the way we travel and how we deliver goods and services.” According to the press release from NHTSA, the voluntary guidance will help car manufacturers with the following:

• Focus on SAE International Levels of Automation 3-5 – Automated Driving Systems (ADSs) – Conditional, High, and Full Automation.
• Clarify the guidance process, and that entities need not wait to test or deploy their ADSs.
• Revise unnecessary design elements from the safety self-assessment.
• Align Federal Guidance with the latest developments and industry terminology.
• Clarify federal and state roles going forward.

The guidance document outlines 12 safety elements that car manufacturers can follow to help design ADS vehicles. Some of the 12 safety elements highlighted by NHTSA are human-machine interfaces, crashworthiness, post-crash ADS behavior, data recording, and object/event detection and response. Click here for a PDF of the full guideline document.

 (DOT Secretary Elaine Chao presenting at the kickoff meeting) 

 

The "Vision 2.0" safety guidance scales back some of the regulations, reducing the previous guidelines under the Obama administration from a required 15-point safety assessment test prior to deployment to a voluntary 12-point assessment. 

Machine Design looks at this with the view they entitled their article, "One Step Forward, One Step Back".  Why?  They like that SELF DRIVE passed and was sent to the Senate, so they see Federal involvement, but they don't like that the Fed.gov made the safety guidelines voluntary.  They don't like the "light regulatory touch". 

As we've all commented here before, I'm surprised this hasn't turned into a Celebrity Ambulance Chaser Free For All, with lawyers lining up to represent the first next person killed by a self-driving car.  The lawyers are drawn to "deep pockets" like a shark to blood in the water.  There aren't many pockets deeper than the major automakers. 

Decisions, Decisions

After living with my CNC G0704 since last spring, I'm pretty happy with it.  I can see a few things to improve it and reasons not to do anything.  Lately I've been asking myself what's worth doing.  I thought I'd update on what's going on in the shop. 

The three things that would make life a bit better are - in no order at all:

• Improve the enclosure
• Implement a standard way of handling and changing tools, probably the Tormach Tooling System
• Swap the motor - or change the way it's implemented - to double or triple the spindle RPMs.  Also, add turning it on or off and setting RPMs from the computer. 

The short story on the enclosure is that it wasn't very well documented and it's almost a bit of an afterthought.  It's not very robust and isn't the way I think I'd do one if I were starting from scratch.  I've seen better looking, and doubtlessly more expensive enclosures since then. 

The enclosure was based on one that Hoss built for his mill, and like many folks, my conversion was based on his DVD.  Of the many CNC-converted Grizzly G0704 mill/drills out there, it seems that the majority use some version of his approach.  It's not really shown on the DVD I bought, but rather there's a handful of videos on YouTube and many details get talked about in his CNCZone Forum.  

On the other hand, the purpose of the enclosure is to keep the chips and overspray from my misting cooling system inside, and it definitely does that and does it pretty well.  With the exception of the top rail being low so that when I lean inside I bang my head on it about 25% of the time (I am learning to reflexively bend over), it works.  It rattles if you bang it, but the latches hold it down, so this is a pretty minor "nice to have" upgrade. 

The Tormach Tooling System would be an absolutely necessary addition if I was a professional shop trying to recover my costs of doing things.  But I'm not.  For those folks not familiar, the way tools are mounted in mill like this (like most) is with a tool holder that goes inside the spindle.  That holder will hold the cutter, a drill chuck, or other tools.  The G0704 uses an industry standard spindle size, called R8, and R8 collets for all sorts of tool sizes, dedicated tool holders like drill chucks or other things can be found.  The way I change tools now frequently requires me to change the collet and the cutter, then find the new position of the tool.  Back in June, I told about a "touch plate" that uses a piece of software to set the Z = 0.000 inch point. 

What Tormach does is use one slightly-modified R8 collet that is permanently mounted in the spindle.  This is sized for a 3/4" diameter tool, and they have a series of holders that are a 3/4 bar on one end and a custom holder of some sort on the other end.  The feature here is that if the collet is slightly loosened, the tool and holder combination can be swapped with another combination and the system registers the position of the new cutter very precisely in all three dimensions. 

The holders are intended to be used with an automatic tool changer, but can be mounted by hand.  The R8 holder system uses a large bolt (7/16-20) that draws the collet up and tightens the hold on the tool; that task is frequently automated with a power draw bar that releases one tool and then grabs its replacement once the tool is mounted.  The act of tightening the draw bar is what precisely positions the cutter.

In principle, once you find zero for your axes, you always know where X=0 and Y=0 are, and the only axis that might change is just where Z=0 is, if the tool is longer or shorter.  My touch plate can give me that.  What this means is that it might take me extra time to change the collet, change the cutter or drill bit and re-zero, but if I'm not trying to minimize my cycle time in order to keep my price down, do I care?   Except for the obvious neatness factors, I'm not sure I do.

The big drawback to having a separate holder for every tool is that I'd need a separate holder for every tool.  Right now, my tool box has a lot of different size cutters in it.  Many of them need the same size holder, 3/8", but it would be extreme to get one for every cutter in the drawer.  There's a small number that I use the most often.  They would get a separate holder and a permanent place in a software tool table, so that my controller software knows the diameter and length of the tool. 

How much does all this neatness cost?  It could easily run several hundred bucks.  I haven't actually run up a total cost, but I've seen an eBay seller with "clones" of the TTS holders at about $18 each, including shipping (from guess where), if I buy 10.  In addition to those, I'll need collets for the tool end of the tool holder.  There's a few series of standard collets, called ER and then two digits to designate the series.  ER-16, ER-20 and ER-32 are commonly used and I'm likely to need a bunch of those.  In the case of the 3/8 shank end mills prices on Little Machine Shop tell me I'd need an ER-16-9 collet at $9.66 (based on being one of a set of six different sizes), and a TTS ER collet holder at $34.75.  That's $44.41 to hold one tool - and those are "real" TTS tools, not the cheap clones.  As a WAG, I could cut that to about $25 each.  Still not insignificant if I have 10 or 15 tool holders. 

Yet it seems all it really does for me is to make getting a precise Z-axis position easier, a task I've already automated.  Since I'm not trying to shave seconds of a mass production product, it just doesn't seem to matter. 

Finally, the motor.  Here I know the least amount of hard details, but the issue I'm trying to fix is that the max spindle RPM I can get is around 2200.  Another thing to upgrade is that I currently turn on the motor manually by pushing a button on the mill and set the speed with a knob next to it, but both of those operations are simple, standard CNC code.  I just don't have a control that works over the interface yet. 

Virtually every time I'm cutting aluminum, my speeds and feeds calculator tells me to run higher RPMs than 2200.  What's wrong with going 2200 when the software would rather have me go 3600 or 4400?  It wears out the tools faster.  Tool life is a balance of how fast it rotates and how fast it cuts into new metal.  On the other hand, whenever I cut steel, the recommended spindle RPM drops down well below the 2200 limit.  The current motor is specified at 1 HP (750W) and while I'm not sure it even does that (I know... running downhill with the wind at its back), I don't think I'd want to go much above that.  I understand that 3 phase motors are quieter but that will require an electronic box called a Variable Frequency Drive.  A motor like this has been recommended to me.  Whatever motor I'd choose would end up needing an encoder to send speed information back to the controller program, and would need to accept control inputs. 

(Automation Direct GS3-21P0 VFD)

Again, I'm looking at around $500 to implement a better motor.  I might only need the higher RPMs sometimes, but it would be quieter all the time, and I could control it with my CNC control box. 

Since I'm not Elmer J Fudd, millionaire, this raises the usual questions everyone has about the budget only being so big.  Of the three, the motor upgrade might well be the most expensive, but it seems to  make the most sense. 

The Day Got Away From Me

Didn't pay a moment's worth of attention to the world outside or whatever the Trump Derangement Syndrome Outrage of the Day is, so cartoon!  This is one of my all time favorite Dilbert cartoons; perhaps my most favorite.  I had a faded, slightly-yellowed newspaper version of this on my bulletin board for nearly 18 years back when I was working.  Not quite from the first time it appeared in 1994, but close.

Recently appeared here. 

Mythbusting - Economatrix Style

A couple of days ago, The Vulgar Curmudgeon posted a piece called "This is Why You Never Get Ahead".  It's a good economatrix summary, and although I know we've discussed lots of that here, it's good to see lots of good graphics.  Both Raconteur Report (a new link in my blog reading list) and Bayou Renaissance Man did summaries of it.

So why am I here?  It really comes down to one comment from someone who's just not awake to what's really going on; a comment at both Bayou RM and Vulgar Curmudgeon.  I don't want to pick on just this guy because other comments say basically the same thing.

Looking at that chart, we see that a new car doubled in price between 1990 and 2014. That's 24 years. Using the "rule of 72" that I learned in Econ 101, we can easily determine the average annual rate of inflation is 3%. This is also the official rate. I don't see the problem.

Instead of arguing over whether real inflation is his 3% or closer to 9% like Shadowstats calculates (using the methods from 1980 instead of today's methods), I have a different approach.  If you like the 1990 method better, Shadowstats provides that on the same link - using the 1990 method, inflation is closer to 5-1/2%, but again, even though either one of those numbers obliterates his argument, I don't want to go there.  Where I want to go with this is to step back and ask, why should there be inflation at all?  Why do we expect inflation?  The Fed targets 2% inflation, what's a reasonable amount? 

I maintain the ideal value for inflation is 0%.

Since we started out talking about car prices, why should a car get more expensive at any fixed rate?  I can see cars getting more expensive as car makers add mandated features and other costs, but an iron law of manufacturing is that the more experienced you are at making something, the cheaper it gets.  Why aren't cars getting cheaper over the years instead of more expensive?  Are they paying more for materials? Probably, but again, why?  Why should the prices of aluminum, plastic, or iron have anything to do with the nominal inflation rate?   I can see there might be real supply/demand unbalances that make some materials more expensive, but why would supply/demand unbalances produce a curve that looks like "...the average annual rate of inflation?"

Let's not talk about cars.  It's really easier to see with a house.  Have you ever asked why should your house get more valuable with time?  If you're not continually improving it by upgrading things that you'll sell with it, your house should be worth less as it ages, not more.  It's getting older; it's deteriorating.  If the area where you live becomes more desirable, the price would go up, and if your neighborhood has become less desirable, the price would go down. Yet everyone expects to sell their house for more than they paid.  Why should that be?  

Notice the "50 Year Trend Line" of housing prices going up?  Notice that the continuous rise of that line starts around 1971 when Nixon got us off the gold standard? 

Has it occurred to you that our system might be based on a continually devaluing currency?  That's exactly what's going on.  The currency gets worth less and less every year, due to Federal Reserve manipulations.  It's what they're trying to do.  In 1970, gold was $35/ounce while today it's hovering near $1300/oz.  If gold is your measuring stick, today's dollar buys $35/$1300 of what it did then, just under 2.7%.   

There's a difference between inflation and actual economic growth.  Economic growth comes from creating new wealth; either producing things others value out of raw materials, growing crops or mining new things out of the ground: whether minerals like diamonds or metals like iron.  I like to think of this from the viewpoint of the Information Theory of Money: wealth is created by adding information.  A car is good example here.  Creating the car creates wealth for the people who design and make the car.  Now smash that car into a wall at a high rate of speed.  Every single molecule that was present before the crash is present after the crash; what's missing is the ordered information that arranged those molecules into the car.  The pile of parts is worth much less than the shiny new car because the information is now gone.  That's saying that the real wealth; the real worth of the car is the information.  Creating the car consisted of imposing new information on raw materials.  That was the creation of wealth.  Creating currency by manipulating digits in a computer is not creating wealth at all.  What it's doing is diluting all the other currency that already exists, making each unit worth less.  That's inflation. 

The monetarists at the Federal Reserve define GDP growth as economic activity, deliberately conflating inflation with actual economic growth. 

Wages have been in stagnation since the mid 1960s.

On average, workers born in 1942 earned as much or more over their careers as workers born in any year since, according to this research — and workers on the job today shouldn’t expect to catch up with their predecessors in their remaining years of employment.

Workers born in 1942 were probably working for a living by 1960 to 1962, perhaps 1964.  From the group of men that entered the labor market in 1967 to the group that entered in 1983, median lifetime income of men declined by 10%–19%. This problem has been going on for more than the 50 years back to 1967.   Most people will say it's because of off-shoring or outsourcing jobs or blame it on the Evil Rich People.  Bill Bonner had a good summary in a piece I quoted more than a year ago. 

Most economists (and politicians) have blamed world trade for stagnant U.S. wages. The median wage in China is only $8 a day. No wonder U.S. factory hands can’t catch a break; who can compete with that? 

But Germans compete with the Chinese, too. And their wages have gone up! In real terms, after adjusting for inflation, wages in France and Germany have been going up at a 0.7% rate for the past 15-20 years.

While the Germans and the French have a central bank, they're not working under the US Federal Reserve.  Not having the so-called "Reserve Currency", perhaps their banks are required to be not quite as manipulative as ours, allowing some sanity.  

Well, I often say the only privilege that comes with running a blog is getting to respond with a wall of text to a comment.  Today, I respond with a wall of text to a comment that wasn't even to my blog.  It just seem to me that not enough people ever ask why there should be a constant increase in the prices of everything.

Cars with most of their information mostly removed, rendering them worth far less than when their information is intact. .

US Navy to Use X-Box Controllers on Most Advanced Subs

It's safe to say that only a very tiny portion of the population has actually been in a modern submarine so what we think we know is heavily influenced by Hollywood.  Depending on your age, your first thought is probably either something with tons of analog gauges and dials from vintage movies, or something with computer monitors from a more recent flick.  The fast attack submarine USS John Warner is called "the Most Advanced" submarine in the fleet, and is filled with sophisticated computers with flat-screen monitors to replace much of the conventional instruments and gauges. In those old submarines movies, the periscope was a single optical tube that would be raised above the surface so that a submerged submarine could get a look around.  One man at a time could look.  In the John Warner, those days are gone:

It's been replaced with two photonics masts that rotate 360 degrees. They feature high-resolution cameras whose images are displayed on large monitors that everyone in the control room can see. There's no barrel to peer through anymore; everything is controlled with a helicopter-style stick. But that stick isn't so popular.

The stick is a system designed by defense giant Lockheed Martin - LockMart, as we call them - and it's a $38,000 box.

"The Navy got together and they asked a bunch of J.O.s and junior guys, 'What can we do to make your life better?' " said Lt. j.g. Kyle Leonard, the USS John Warner's assistant weapons officer, referring to junior officers and sailors. "And one of the things that came out is the controls for the scope. It's kind of clunky in your hand; it's real heavy."

The solution?  A video game controller, Microsoft's X-Box controller, something very similar to the Logitech Rumblepad that I just added to my CNC milling machine.

The Xbox controller is no different than the ones a lot of crew members grew up playing with. Lockheed Martin says the sailors who tested the controller at its lab were intuitively able to figure out how to use it on their own within minutes, compared to hours of training required for the joystick.

The Xbox controller also is significantly cheaper. The company says the photonic mast hand grip and imaging control panel that cost about $38,000 can now be replaced with an Xbox controller that typically costs less than $30.

(Photo source)

The crew, after all, is primarily young men who grew up in a digital world playing video games. What could be more natural than a game controller?

The John Warner at her public commissioning ceremony.  Wikimedia photo.

The Navy says that the system has gone through extensive testing over the past two years and that the Xbox controller will be included as part of the integrated imaging system for Virginia-class subs beginning with the future USS Colorado, which is supposed to be commissioned by November.

Just a nifty little story.  Caught my eye because of the similarity to the hardware I've just started using.

Ambitious... and Impressive

A shop built 1/3 scale model of a V-10 engine with Electronic Fuel Injection.  And, yes, that is a supercharger on top.


Full build details at the Model Engine Maker forums (where you can look at the 20 pages of text and pictures without being a member).  It took about three years of maker Keith5700's time to design and build this impressive little (125cc) engine.  If I understand it correctly, no CNC was involved.  All pieces made by turning the hand cranks on mill or lathe.  Lots of very precise drafting.  Lots of the ideas involved and the skills needed came from an earlier V8 model that he finished in 2013.  

The guy is an amazing artist in metal.

What Happens If Maria Meets Jose?

As most of you know, while Hurricane Maria has made all the news today as almost certainly the strongest hurricane in the modern era to hit Puerto Rico, Tropical Storm Jose was sitting off the mid-Atlantic coast as it has all week, aggravating fishermen while exciting surfers.  A storm only sits in one place due to a lack of steering currents, which means the large scale movement of air masses has halted in that area.  A strong low behind a cold front would fling Jose out to sea.  A strong high would fling it into the coast. 

The model runs on the two storms are a study in contrast.  The model runs out to 5 days for Maria show strong agreement that it continues on a more northerly course, paralleling the coast while staying well offshore at least through the 5th day.  The model runs for Jose look like a cat horked up a hairball or someone threw a loose handful of yarn on the map.  A handful of models bring it onshore the Delmarva peninsula, and another group shoves it opposite that, offshore.  Others send it to New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania or most anywhere. 

With my lame photoediting  skills, I combined the NHC plots for both storms into one graphic.  The scales they use are slightly different, so I made them line up around the Outer Banks, NC. 

Simply, both of these can't continue as they are for a full week.  Something's gonna give.  In these plots, it's helpful to remember the stippling means that the storm can be anywhere in that area.  Maria's 5-day location covers what looks to be roughly 500 miles, consistent with the accuracy of about "100 miles per day" that the old forecasters claim.  Jose, though has an oval of uncertainty that looks to be 800 miles or more across - from onshore anywhere from Virginia to New Hampshire,  to still at sea, a bit east of where it is right now. 

So what happens?  There is an uncommon phenomenon called the Fujiwara Effect, named for a Japanese meteorologist, in which the storms start to circle each other and then spiral into each other, becoming one storm.  At their closest - in this plot - they look to possibly be within a couple of hundred miles. With tropical cyclones, they typically interact within about 850 miles, according to that Wikipedia article.  They are absolutely going to be that close to each other, that is, according to tonight's models.  The Fujiwara interaction happens on occasion in the Atlantic basin, but not often.  We may get to see it.

To me, what hurricanes "decide" to do is like whatever two consenting adults decide.  I don't care if they check into a Motel 6 and merge repeatedly.  As long as they keep their Fujiwara-ing away from anyone else, and don't hurt anyone while they're at it.