September 24, 2008

Mousey Fate

I was visiting my family in Wyoming recently.  Apparently my folks had a mouse in their basement.  Mom went to town to get some traps and poison.

Meanwhile, my aunt chased the little fucker down and ended its scurrylous ways with a claw hammer.

Posted by: roggowj at 02:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.

September 17, 2008

We're Running Out of Alphabet

Being a computer guy, I have to know a lot of acronyms.  PHP, SQL, LAMP, WAMP, CMS, and so on.  Further more, I used to work for the DSS (Department of Social Services) which became CPS (Children's Protective Services) which then became DHHSCPS (Department of Health and Human Services Chilren's Protective Services).

Frequently I had to fill out a collection of forms to request a certain document.  I filled out the ADM-2, ADM-2A, and the ABCDM-4.  All of them in triplicate, two of them with nearly identical information only in different boxes.  Talking to co-workers was a gabble of letters and numbers.  I swear we all sounded like Star Wars robots talking dirty to each other.

Posted by: roggowj at 11:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 121 words, total size 1 kb.

September 16, 2008

The Sky is Falling!

We seem to be running out of light sweet crude, but that's only a fraction of the oil resources in the world.  Even now refineries are upgrading to handle heavy sour crude which accounts for much more of the oil resources in the world than light sweet.  Beyond that we have tar sands(pdf), oil shale, and coal (all of which, with a bit of chemical hocus-pocus can be turned into fuel and such).

Those who tell you otherwise are Chicken Little types screaming about the falling sky and you should be skeptical.  There are oodles of energy resources in the world.  We will use them as the economy demands.  With light sweet crude resources dwindling
we will switch to heavy sour crude.  Current prices and technologies mean that oil shale, tar sands, and coal liquefaction are also economically viable.  Hopefully we will take this opportunity to begin switching to other technologies for energy as well.

That bad news is that we will face a transition.  It will cost money.  Prices will go up.  On the other hand, we are resilient, I simply can't believe we're facing a catastrophe.

I think I'll write a series on the realities of energy production in the near future.  It's something that quite interests me, so consider this the first in that series.

Anywho, we are not running out of hydro-carbon fuels.  Not in my life-time, my kids' life-times, nor their kids.  The grandkids will wear nylon, use plastic bags, fertilize their gardens, honk down pharmaceuticals, and probably even drive many of the same vehicles as we do today.

The world goes 'round because of energy.  Humanity exists in its current state because of our manipulation of energy.  Nearly every advance in our history has been the result of better ability to manipulate energy.  We started with the taming of fire, then water pumps, then windmills.  Today we are nearing the point where we can harness the mechanism that powers the sun.  I'm a bit of a science fiction nut, but when we accomplish that we will finally be a Type I civilization.

Posted by: roggowj at 03:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 352 words, total size 3 kb.

September 03, 2008

"Firestar"

I finished a book today called "Firestar" written by Michael Flynn, published in 1996.  It was in a collection of books given to me after my aunt died.  It's an ambitious book and would have been better served if it were written as a number of volumes rather than a single tome.

As far as the writing goes, it was mediocre. The dialogue didn't exactly compare to Oscar Wilde.  The story was moderately predictable without being tiresome.  I would describe the theme as being a business-opera meets techno-drama.

In "Firestar" a rich heiress witnesses a meteor during the day in Jackson Hole.  This event drives her to get mankind out of the cradle.  All of her wealth and business acumen is directed to create an orbital industrial base and send humanity to the stars.  Meriesa van Huyten's efforts create a sprawling conglomerate of industries from smelting and plastics to MEMS and school administration.

I would have found the book truly riveting had the author focused a bit more on the intrigue and politicking of VHI (van Huyten's Industries).  The plot is more of a backdrop aimed at developing character stories, and thus the plot suffers.  Potentially exciting intrigues and political wranglings are introduced and solved pages or chapters later with a few sentences. This particular technique relieves the reader of any pesky suspense.  It's also a bit of a pie-eyed story, but I don't mind that so much.  Fiction is an exercise of the imagination, and as a techno-optimist I rather enjoy reading feverishly optimistic stories of future tech.

As a bit of an aside, the book is very timely in its treatment of technology.  It got a few things wrong, like voice-actived computers; a few things right, like remote-controlled armed-forces units; a few things not yet realized, like the aerospike.  The timing was a little optimistic since it has only been in the last five odd years that private enterprise has actually begun to pursue a potentially lucrative space industry.  There's also an important sub-plot on education which is a source of some of the other (interesting) characters in the book.

But, as I mentioned the book is primarily character driven and I will discuss that below the fold as I wouldn't want to ruin anything.
more...

Posted by: roggowj at 06:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 985 words, total size 6 kb.

<< Page 1 of 1 >>
16kb generated in CPU 0.007, elapsed 0.0452 seconds.
45 queries taking 0.0398 seconds, 86 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.