US spending on cell phones has now exceeded spending on residential land lines.
One wonders how much of this is increased cell phone uptake, and how much is consolidation and profiteering by the wireless providers.
Year: 2009
Economics Update
Consumer spending fell for the 6th straight month in December, and all of 2008 turned in just 3.6% increase, the worst year over year number since 1961.
The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index was better than expected, but still an anemic 35.6, but better than the consensus prediction of 32.5, but 50 is neutral, so anything under 50 signifies more contraction.
In inflation, the “Treasury Real Yield” is at a 16 month high.
The Treasury Real Yield is the spread between TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) and regular treasuries, and is a measure of investor expectations of inflation….Which means that they are expecting more inflation…..Which is a good thing in this topsy-turvey economy.
Meanwhile in the Celtic kitten, Ireland is looking at injecting €8 billion into its troubled banks.
In Russia, and it looks like speculators are betting very heavily against the Ruble, which just hit a new low.
With Russia having already burnt through about 1/3 of its reserves in an unsuccessful attempt to maintain the currency, this could get very ugly.
Shrinking consumer demand has oil prices dropping again, and has pushed the dollar down against the Yen and Euro, though it improved against the sick man of Europe, the British Pound.
Almost Forgot, Banks Shuttered on Friday
MagnetBank, Salt Lake City, UT
Suburban Federal Savings Bank, Crofton, MD, and yes I mentioned the possibility that Suburban Feceral would be the first MD bank to fail since 1992 on Thursday.
Ocala National Bank, Ocala, FL
That’s 6 banks shuttered in January total. (list here)
Broken News and Accusations of Witchcraft
So I’m surfing the net and come across PZ Myers on his blog Pharyngula talking about an ACLU press release about a student in Oklahoma who was suspended for allegedly placing a hex on a teacher which resulted in a “mystery illness”.
So I set fingers to keyboard, and write a ferociously critical piece, invoking knowledge, Texas, and, of course Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and while I’m Googling to see the outcome of the case I notice something in the ACLU press release:
ACLU of Oklahoma Files Federal Lawsuit on Behalf of Student Accused of “Hexing” a Teacher (10/26/2000)
(emphasis mine)
It’s from almost 9 years ago, and the events in question occurred 10 years ago, and Lifetime made a TV Movie about it, but that still does not mean that you can’t have a minor Blogasm over this. (Google Search Link)
I’m just glad that I noticed the dateline before I made a complete ass of myself.
For those of you wondering, the judge dismissed the case, and assessed legal fees against the parents, who then dropped the case in exchange for the fees being waived.
I still need an excuse to invoke Monty Python though….I’m Jonesing for it right now.
What the Littlest Gator Said
Update on Gregg as Commerce Secretary
It appears that Judd Gregg is demanding a promise that anyone who the (Democratic) governor appoints would caucus with the Republicans, and the word is that the rather Broderiffic Governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch would likely do this anyway.
Screw it. Why give a ‘Phant a leg up in the 2010 election in a state that is increasingly blue.
Update:
OK, the NY Times is reporting that there is a rumor that former NH Senator Warren Rudman would be appointed as a caretaker:
But there are no guarantees that Mr. Lynch would pick a Democrat: New Hampshire prizes its political independence, and the governor is a moderate. Some analysts say he could turn to a well-regarded Republican — former Senator Warren Rudman has been mentioned — to serve as a kind of caretaker to fill out the remainder of Mr. Gregg’s term, which expires at the end of 2010.
This might work, as Rudman is fairly clearly a vote against cloture almost all the time, and he won’t run in 2010.
Diamond Aero-Diesel Gets Euro Certification
I have been following the story of Thielert’s insolvency, and Diamond Aircraft has been hit particularly hard by the loss of their engines, which were a major part of their business strategy.
Diamond has now certified Austro AE 300 turbo-diesel, which it has been feverishly working on since Thielerts troubles, which means that it can start shipping aircraft with the highly efficient, and perhaps more importantly, jet fuel compatible, engines shortly.
They still need type certificates, but that should be relatively straightforward, as their engine uses the same Mercedes block as the Thielert, and so fit and mounting should be very similar.
More Defense Procurement BS, the Boeing Wedgetail
After $3.5 billion (Aus) it won’t meet specifications, and it is going to be 4 years late.
And the government of Australia’s response appears to be to say, “Thank you sir, can I have another,” they are revising the terms of their contract to match what Boeing isn’t delivering.
There is already so much money down the drain that Boeing owns the Australian ministry of defence.
Russian Defense Recapitalization Threatened by Financial Meltdown
Vladimir Putin committed to major new spending on the Russian military. He has committed to 1 trillion rubles ($30.5 b) on new procurement, upgrades, and R&D.(paid subscription required)
Notwithstanding this spending, the Russian defense industry is still not in great shape, as commercial credit has largely dried up:
Putin met with industry leaders recently at Tactical Missile Corp. headquarters in Korolev, a Moscow suburb. The package unveiled by Putin includes the injection of 35 billion rubles in additional capitalization and the allocation of 100 billion rubles as a state guarantee on bank loans. Along with the loan guarantee, there is a further 15 billion rubles to compensate for high interest rates.
(emphasis mine)
Additionally, there is likely to be further rationalization (mergers and tighter integration) among manufacturers, as is evidenced by the continuing submergence of MiG in United Aircraft Corp. (UAC) with Sukhoi firmly in the lead.
In terms of likely purchases, the Russian air force is looking for upgraded Su-27s (SU-35 shown) in the near term, and the Indo-Russian PAK-FA in the long term.
Talk About Gold Plated Weapons Systems
The US Air force is looking to buy 2½ inch diamonds as gunports for a high power microwave weapon.
Obviously, they will be synthetic diamond, and diamond already is used for high performance heat sinks, but 2½ inch diamonds? It sounds like something out of James Bond.
Is the A400M Cursed
In addition to everything else, it appears that the Airbus A400M is significantly overweight.
The first 6 produced will be 12 tons overweight, and the production models are looking at a 5-7 ton weight problem, which means that it would have to enlarge the wing to meet performance guarantees.
Further Delays in Indian MMRCA Competition
There is still no word on when when field trials will start for the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft fighter competition. (paid subscription required)
One of the issues that complicates this is mother nature: If the demonstrations do not finish by July, then they run into delays as a consequence of the monsoon season.
Current competitors for the medium fighter are the, “Boeing F/A-18, Lockheed Martin F-16, Eurofighter Typhoon, Mikoyan MiG-35, Saab Gripen, and Dassault Rafale.”
It’s intended to replace their fleets of older model MiG-21s, which are at end of life.
My guess would be the the MiG-35 has the inside track, the Indian AF already has operational experience with the MiG-29, though the least expensive over the life time is very likely the Gripen.
It’s unclear to me whether SAAB is submitting the base Gripen, or the improved Gripen NG.
Well, Paint My Ass Purple, and Call Me Shirley
OK, so I lost a memory stick that I’ve had for about 1¼years, Sandisk USB 2 Micro Cruzer 1Gb Pendrive U3.
It’s no big deal, really. I had all the data elsewhere, so I pick up a new drive, the 4GB variant for about $12 at the Radio Shack®, which is a lot cheaper than the $50 or so that I recall paying for the 1GB version.
Wouldn’t you know it, the next day, I find my old drive.
Actually, I didn’t find it, Sharon* did, in the dryer.
It had gone through the wash, AND the dryer, and it looked little worse for the wear. The printing on the case was a bit worn, but that could have happened over the past 15 months sitting in my pocket.
So, I leave it out and open for a day to ensure full drying, and I put it in my computer, and ALL THE DATA IS THERE.
Needless to say, this product has my seal of approval.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
People Make a Living At This???
Let me rephrase: Really Stupid People Make a Living At This???
Because it appears that Pajamas Media, a sort of Blogads for right wingers blew through its venture capital, and has told its bloggers that it is dumping them, because the next big thing is, “Internet television called Pajamas TV,” for which even stupider people will actually pay to listen to right wingers with faces made for radio.
The soon-to-be former members of Pajamas Media, such as Jeff G. of Protein Wisdom, are in full whine:
What this means is that as of April 1, I am officially out of work. So save going to a pay model, this site will likely have to shut down.
Small price to pay for helping PJM pick up an audience and credibility during its “formative years.”
I do this blog mostly to make regular notes for my annual newsletter (it’s about 5% of the content), and I’ve gotten a bit of money from Google ads, a $107.24 check in October, and I’ve been blogging since May, 2007.
The idea that someone could make a living at this is just a complete mind f%$#.
H/T TBogg, for letting me know that, “Nobody could have anticipated that Pajamas Media would sucker the rubes and then destroy teh intertubes.”
Republicans Formally Come Out in Favor of Syphilis
Mark Steyn supports Syphilis and other STDs because they might prevent people from having sex outside of wedlock:
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?”
“I’ll tell you how,” says Speaker Pelosi. “I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It’s about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures.”
Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off, but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won’t be any children or grandchildren, so there’s that problem solved.
I really cannot read this as anything but an endorsement of STDs, and this is not The Onion.
H/t Booman Tribune.
Scary Picture of the Day
Jess Bachman give us this chart explaining the current unemployment rate.
Zoinks!
He’s an impoverished graphic designer with some neat posters for sale.
Rumors of FCS Cuts
According to this report, half of the FCS-MGVs models would be significantly delayed, with only the NLOS-C (howitzer), C2V (command post), RSV (reconnaissance), and the Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) staying in the pipeline.
This would mean that the MCS (tank), both medical variants, the mortar carrier, and the FRMV* recovery vehicle would be placed in limbo.
This makes sense. The howitzer is the most advanced, being given an aggressive development schedule following the demise of the Crusader, and the C2V and RSV are most heavily tied into the net-centric warefare.
As to the ICV, it carries a 9 person infantry squad, as opposed to the 6 person capacity of the Bradley (because if its manned turret), and the army has found this inconvenient in combat operations, to say the least, because it meant dispatching 2 IFVs if you wanted to send a full squad somewhere, so it actually would be a significant improvement over its predecessor.
Of course, there are a lot of unmanned turrets on the market now, and you could get the same for less by retrofitting them to the Bradley.
*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
Military Industry Complex Bullsh%$: FCS Armor Edition
It appears that the good folks at Aberdeen Proving Ground just set up a petting zoo for the press with a dog and pony show on the high tech armor for the manned ground vehicles (FCS-MGV).
I have no doubt that this armor will be more effective on a per unit weight and a per thickness basis, but the following is a flat out lie:
All these materials had apparently been used in the search to create the “B” armor for FCS. They are using what is called B-1 armor now and plan to come up with two more variants, using B-3 as the main armor once the FCS vehicles make it to LRIP in fiscal 2013. B-1 provides, a very careful public affairs officer told me, protection roughly equivalent to the Chobham armor on the Abrams tanks. The next variants should be much lighter and provide even greater protection.
(emphasis mine)
Simply put, you are not going to get higher armor levels out of a 25-30 ton vehicle than you do out of a 70 ton vehicle, the laws of physics.
It could be that they are factoring in the effects of an active protection system (which could be easily retrofitted to legacy vehicles) and greater situational awareness (which also could be easily retrofitted to legacy vehicles), but if they are, they are ignoring the realities of modern combat (IEDs, EFPs, and an insurgent enemy who has information superiority).
In other words, it’s a lie.
Hypersonic Engine Tests Continue Despite Blackswift Demise
Facet Common Inlet
It looks like DARPA is continuing to develop turbine/ramjet hypersonic propulsion systems, (paid subscription required) called the Turbine-based combined-cycle (TBCC), despite the cancellation of the Blackswift demonstrator last month.
Williams International XTE88 (Histed)
The concept remains the same, a turbine to get the vehicle off the ground and through Mach 1, with some level of cocooning beyond that as a Ram/Scram jet takes over.
DARPA is continuing to test the Falcon combined-cycle engine technology (Facet) developed for Blackswift, along with the high-speed turbojet engine development (Histed).
Basically, they are looking at integrating previously pieces, inlet, combustor and nozzle primarily, into a complete engine system.
Following this, they intend to combine Facet and Histed.
Obviously it is a non trivial issue to test the engines throughout their range without a flight test.
Alkali Laser?
It looks like General Atomics has snagged a $667,000 contract to develop a high power alkali laser. (paid subscription required)
As I noted last week, they are already working with the USAF on solid state lasers (HELLADS), but this is a different technology, a “diode-pumped alkali-vapor laser” (DPAL), which may be more efficient, and would likely be easier to cool, as the alkali-vapor could just be conveyed to a heat exchanger.