July 2011 – Page 5 – Chaos Manor

3D Printers; deficit debates; poor enough Mail 683 20110719

By Jerry Pournelle | Jul 20, 2011 - 12:10 am | Updated: July 20, 2011 - 12:10 am | Mail

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Mail 683 Tuesday, July 19, 2011

3D Printers

Jerry,

We bought a 3D printer from Z-Corp about 5 years ago ($70,000) and it does make the models. The problem we have with the printer is that if we make scaled models of our structures the models break before we can remove the powder. Unless they have improved the binder I don’t see how it’s possible to reach into the powder and remove the wrench without breaking the model. The binder is used to hold the powder together then the extra powder is removed an super glue or epoxy is applied. If you want, I can send some pictures of the models we have made, it’s no hoax.

Regards,

Curtis Owens

I never seriously thought it was a hoax or that it would not prove to be important. The news to me is how far along we are already.

= =

3d printing

They are called Fabers. One of my USB core customers is Stratasys which makes the competing product to the one on the you tube video. Both companies have made products for several years in the 100K class price range. Both companies are pushing the price point down. We will all have one on our desk sooner rather than later. A friend of mine makes high end telescope mounts. His newest model was completely designed in Solid Works, a 3D cad program for mechanical design. He designed and simulated the mount before the first piece of metal was cut. He did not use a faber, but he could have used one to "print" his design and have a working model. The model, of course, would not have been made of metal and would not have been suitable as a heavy telescope mount, but he could have printed an accurate model that would have moved.

Phil

= = =

Dentistry and 3D Printing

My dentist has a system (for a couple of years now) that works like this:

For crowns (I have had four done this way) he uses a scanner to map the surface contours of your existing tooth. This is done with some datums taken for use later. He then manually, and in about 10 minutes, touches up the contour scan to eliminate/check for spurious artifacts.

The next step is to mill down the tooth to prepare for the crown. The scanner is synched to the existing datums and maps the recontoured tooth.

The software then mates the inner and outer contours to produce a 3D model of the crown. A CNC control file is then generated, which is fed to a small machining center. The machining center, about 1 ft by 1 ft by two feet in size, has , I think, about 7 degrees of freedom and uses small ball end cutting tools to mill out the crown from a block of green ceramic which is premounted on a spindle. The machine has two cutting spindles and cuts from two sides at once. Fascinating to watch! When finished the crown is separated from it’s mount and fired to proper hardness in a small oven. Elapsed time is about 50 minutes for the machining and firing.

In my case, two crowns fitted and finished, with excellent matching against the mating teeth, in about 4 hours. The machines and software, all PC based, are about $450,000 as a complete system. Charge for the crowns is about $1600 each. The dentist can run about 4 patients a day with proper staging of the appointments, so it is a money maker with good patient results.

Best regards,

John Witt

And the conclusion is that we are closer to Minsky’s ‘Thingmaker” than ever we thought.

Deficits History

Jerry,

RE historic deficit sizes, the chart at http://logisticsmonster.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/deficitgraph.jpg is worth a look – it gives deficits by year through 2010, in both dollars and as a percent of GDP.

That "Largest Deficit In History" (less than a third of current levels) under Bush was in 2004. Interestingly, and little-mentioned, deficits dropped steadily after that through 2007.

Things started heading skyward again in 2008, allowing Dems to say "this started under Bush", but I expect the key factor there was actually Pelosi-Reid taking over the Congress in 2007. Congress writes the checks, Presidents only cash them. FY’08 was the Dem Congress’s first budget, and it shows. Then in ’09 we added Obama in the White House asking for a stimulus, and the era of trillion-dollar deficits had arrived.

My take is, Bush gets more blame than he deserves, and going along with this only helps the Dems obfuscate their responsibility for the current mess. Which in turn only encourages them in their current campaign to extend the mess till after the election next year.

Henry

I do not see this as a blame fixing thing. I have no brief for the Country Club Republicans with their crazy spending spree, and the fact that it wasn’t as bad as it could be, and that the Left predictably spent even more isn’t as important as that nothing seems to be halting the trend. Either you believe in liberty – which is to say that government isn’t the optimum means of allocating investment – or you don’t. More and more don’t. The argument that government ought to take any money lying around to spend as government wants, and that this is ‘fair’ so long as it soaks ‘the rich’ seems to be gathering strength.

I don’t want to fix blame, I want freedom back. Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

= = =

factcheck.org

I offer this:

http://factcheck.org/2011/07/fiscal-factcheck/

“Washington’s spending has recently been higher as a percentage of the nation’s economic output than at any time since World War II. But by the same measure, Washington’s revenues are the lowest in more than 60 years.

“So does the U.S. have "a spending problem," as Republicans keep repeating in the current debate over how to reduce the nation’s record deficits? Or is the problem that taxes are not high enough? Those questions frame a long-running partisan debate, and as usual we won’t offer an opinion one way or the other. But for those seeking their own answers, we can offer some fiscal history and factual context.” <snip>

Mark

The argument is essentially that revenue as a percentage of GDP is very low, and more taxes are fair: we can afford all this spending, we just need to raise taxes in order to pay for it.

Obviously I don’t believe that, but the argument is made. As for me, I want to eliminate the bunny inspectors, and a great deal of other stuff that the government is doing for us. I want to restore the Republic of de Tocqueville in which citizens and associations did most of the civic functions, not government. Give me liberty…

= = =

The Debt Ceiling debate in US

Hi Jerry

I came across this blog recently and have found the content riveting. From the global warming climate debate, to war in the Middle East and central Asia, to the domestic concerns of the USA. As a Canadian living close to the border, local news from New York often times feels like local news just down the block from Oakville where I hale from (just west of Toronto).

Here is my take 2 cents for what it is worth, as an outside observer. Obama is well on his way to herding the GOP elephant into another political box, in which it will be perceived by the independent vote — which seems to control all Presidential elections, but not the Congressional majorities — as close to treasonous.

History operates in a long arc, and as you point out on your site often, in the greater sceme of things this too may pass.

But as a fiscal conservative what is happening in the US makes one apprehensive. That a great nation and the last defender of free market principles is being hurt in the process only renders the tragedy more painful.

Gold at $1600 an ounce may be a commentary on the behaviour of the Fed; but you can’t eat the stuff. One must take with a grain of salt any politician who says we have a plan to balance the budget in five years. What can one say about politicians who have no plan to ever balance the budget?

My best to you….

Sam Mattina

They show no means for getting rid of the bunny inspectors, either. And it’s a joke that the shovels weren’t as ready as we supposed. Let’s go borrow more mone. We are only borrowing $180,000,000 an hour now…

The article puts an important point most clearly

Being poor in America is NOT being homeless on the street. It’s just a whole lot better than being poor in Brazil or most any other country.

63.7% of our "poor" have cable service. 38.2% have computers. 48.6% have coffee makers.

Being poor isn’t what it used to be http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/07/being-poor-isnt-what-it-used-be

If I recall correctly the official definition of "poor" in America is the bottom X% of the nation’s incomes set as a dollar figure. If it is set as a percentage of all incomes you can never spend you way into being a nation with nobody in poverty. You’ll always have X% poor. So poor that 78.3% have air conditioners. 32.2% have 3 or more TVs.

Click through to http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty to see a full report.

This is nonsense. We need to set the bar at say "air conditioning" rather than at jacuzzi (0.6%). They can bloody well do their own dishes (25%).

{^_^}

I would go further. While no one should be starving, poverty is primarily a local problem, and is best left to civic pride and charity. It is not charity to send the public hangman to collect money to give to the poor. We can institutionalize a safety net, but what we are building is not a net.

Dentists and dancing inspectors View 684 20110719

By Jerry Pournelle | Jul 19, 2011 - 11:19 am | Updated: July 19, 2011 - 11:30 pm | View

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View 684 Tuesday, July 19, 2011

· 3d Printing and Dentistry

· The Dance Continues, with bunnies and now cows

If you didn’t see my interview with Glenn Reynolds on the Last Shuttle, it’s here.

I have a dental appointment today. Oddly enough it involves something that would definitely profit from my dentist having a 3D printer as described in yesterday’s Mail.

Today I got

3D printing luddites.

The video you linked to is now a part of a new internet meme, wherein the entire field of 3D printing is being called a hoax…because of the way the video was edited and because of the manner in which the technology was presented.

Almost everyone is using, or has benefitted from, a product that was proto-typed in whole or in part by 3D printing. Yet, many people who use those same products on a daily basis think that the technology is a hoax?!

The technology is so disruptive that people are having difficulty facing the reality.

Wait’ll they see what’s happening with nano-biotech. That oughta be fun to watch!

Warren Bonesteel

When I did my Googling on 3d Hoax what I mostly found was convincing arguments that the technology is real; I didn’t see anything convincing to the contrary. It’s with us and more coming. I’d think dentistry would be a major use for this.

The largest year deficit in history was the Bush $500 Billion deficit, but that was dwarfed by the latest Obama deficit: it is now estimated to be $1.65 Trillion. That’s Trillion with a T, the largest deficit in the history of mankind. The Wall Street Journal has an op ed “America’s Debt-Ceiling Opportunity” trying to see the bright side of some of this, but it’s actually chilling. The President continues to act as if failing to increase spending on various projects is the same as failing to send Social Security and Veteran Benefit checks. He insists that the only remedy is to raise revenue, with symbolic “cuts”. This turns out to be a continuation of tax and spend, and none of it would eliminate bunny inspectors, Department of Education SWAT teams, etc. Of course if we eliminate the Department of Education – if the House simply refused to fund it, appropriating no money whatever for the Department of Education – we could not only save a lot of money but possibly save a few schools. Leave education to the States. They can’t do much worse that we are doing now, and some might even do a lot better, saving money while educating kids; others might see something work and try it. The United States spends more per pupil than any nation in the world with the possible exception of Luxembourg; and we don’t get much for that. Try something else.

Now that would help reduce the deficit and might even help the pupils. Of course no one will try that. The “solution” to our lousy schools is always the same, pour in more money. Don’t fire incompetent teachers, but perhaps we can give a hand to those whose education was wrecked by a tenured teacher?

And of course nothing will eliminate the bunny Inspectors. Instead we have proposals to expand those activities. We can borrow more money to federalize agriculture.

The Chicken Inspectors Are Coming –

Now the USDA will implement new rules for egg production similar to what California did with Prop 2.

It’s not just bunnies. We have to stop this cruelty to chickens. Surely the have a right to be free and the Feds must be called in to enforce it….

Law would be first federal legislation addressing treatment of animals on farms

Release Date: 07 July 2011

The United Egg Producers and the Humane Society of the United States http://www.humanesociety.org/ have partnered to work toward the enactment of federal legislation that would set national standards for hens involved in U.S. egg production. The proposed standards, if enacted, would be the first federal law addressing the treatment of animals on farms.

…

The two groups will jointly ask Congress for federal legislation which would require egg producers to increase space per bird in a tiered phase-in, with the amount of space birds are given increasing, in intervals, over the next 15 to 18 years. Currently, the majority of birds are each provided 67 square inches of space, with roughly 50 million receiving 48 square inches. The proposed phase-in would culminate with hens nationwide being provided a minimum of 124–144 square inches of space, along with the other improvements noted.

http://layer-cages.com/2011/07/08/egg-growing-and-layer-cage-conditions-to-change-in-usa/

Surely a whole new arm of USDA chicken house inspectors will be needed.

First the bunnies, then the chickens, tomorrow the pigs and cows.

Dave K

And of course any attempt to cut back on the expansion of these activities is a “cut” and balancing the budget on the backs of – well, of something. Perhaps not the poor. Dumb animals. Whatever. We need to borrow more money, because there is a problem that we have to fix, and Federal Inspectors are the only way to fix it.

While we are at it we can expand the budget of the BATF so that it can sell more guns to Mexican cartels in order to track where they go.

And the Dance goes on.

3D printer, bunnies, and other matters Mail 684 20110718

By Jerry Pournelle | Jul 19, 2011 - 12:53 am | Updated: July 19, 2011 - 12:53 am | Mail

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Mail 684 Monday, July 18, 2011

· 3D Printer

· The bunny story

· Borders

3D Printer

Some of you have seen this, and others haven’t.

Here’s one of the futures of computing. Very cool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw

We saw prototypes at CES this year. Remarkable! Really cool

On bunnies

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

Here’s some more bunny-related idiocy for you to contemplate.

http://biggovernment.com/bmccarty/2011/05/20/family-facing-4-million-in-fines-for-selling-bunnies/

Regards,

Tim Scott=

Actually we have seen this story before but it does no harm to be reminded of it. The program has to cost millions of dollars a year in borrowed money, yet there appears to be no off switch. There just isn’t any way to get rid of silliness like this. It goes on and on, at millions a year, and you can’t stop it.

Birth Certificate Forgery

You’ve probably heard this about five hundred times by now, but they’re referring to the Dan Rather "Texas ANG Memo" scandal, dubbed "Rathergate".

The "birth certificate variable type" is much less convincing. It depends on quibbling over whether a blotchy reproduction of a typed character on a 40-year-old piece of paper is .002" bigger than another.

You say "the people who handled this could have handled it better", but this is like the "9/11 Truth" movement. It doesn’t matter how well you handle it, because the people who want the certificate to be fake will just find other ways to convince themselves it’s fake.

—

Mike T. Powers

It’s a distraction. If that turns out to be a forgery and can be shown to be one, it says a lot about the competence of the forgers, but not much about the birthplace of Barrack Hussein Obama.

Borders left the business:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576454353768550280.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

——–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

First the chains took over the independent book stores, then the big stores drove the chains out of the malls. Now the chains devour each other. The distributors went from a couple of hundred to about 3. The publishing business implodes and concentrates. We watch in fascination or horror. Or both.

Surveillance Grid Goes Green

It took Americans 30 years to figure out that Don King rigs his

fights. How long before they figure this con out?

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/07/18/city-testing-new-technology-aimed-at-reducing-traffic-congestion/

——–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Probably not a lot longer.

Too Big to Fail

"Any enterprise that is too big to fail should be too big to be allowed to exist."

And at what point does the US government become "too big to fail"?

Karl

Clever

CERN ‘gags’ physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/18/cern_cosmic_ray_gag/

CERN ‘gags’ physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

What do these results mean? Not allowed to tell you

The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment.

= = =

Slide show of Bert Rutan’s designs

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/18/rutan_bipod/

Cool!

Money we don’t need

Hello Jerry,

Well, it is official: "All your money and stuff are belong to us!".

The ‘us’ in question being the government. Of course we will be

allowed to keep what we ‘need’, but THEY will be the self-appointed

arbiters of that need.

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/13/morning-bell-obama-aims-for-the-money-you-dont-need/

Bob Ludwick

The theory is that government will spend any surplus funds better than those who have the money, and after all, those who have it probably don’t deserve it. I vaguely remember thinking that way when I was an undergraduate. Lyndon Johnson spoke of the haves and how they had to give up some for the have nots who need it so much. It is standard undergraduate socialism. Most undergraduates grew out of it in my time. Not so much now.

Obama’s War in Libya View 684 20110718-1

By Jerry Pournelle | Jul 18, 2011 - 1:32 pm | Updated: July 18, 2011 - 4:47 pm | View

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View 684 Monday June 18, 2011

= = =

I was interviewed by Glenn Reynolds on The Last Shuttle: http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86&load=5745 ·

Obama’s War

Obama’s War continues in Libya with both sides claiming victory. Obama and some NATO allies proclaimed the rebels as the recognized and legitimate government of Libya. In retaliation Qadaffi took a victory lap with Mission Accomplished parades in various parts of the country he still holds, celebrating his continued rule. Some of the ceremonies were elaborate. Meanwhile the rebels celebrated the successful retention/re-conquest of the port of Brega in the province of Cyrenaica over in the eastern part of Libya, far from Tripolitania where Ghadaffi pretty well rules; considering that NATO has given them total air supremacy and a great deal of air support, the only surprise here is that it has taken the rebels so long to retake Brega. Perhaps they have decided that it is more effective to fire their weapon in the general direction of the enemy rather than in the air in exuberation.

Brega is about 100 kilometers east of Marble Arch, the jumpoff point for British Forces in the game Afrika Korps. The Marble Arch was built by the Italian colonial authorities to mark the border between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica provinces of Libya and also as a sort of celebration of the creation of Libya as an actual nation.

Probably the most objective reporting coming out of Libya is from Al Jazeera:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/
africa/2011/07/2011718131010939797.html, which reports that Brega has changed hands several time. Al Jazeera has not declared a winner here. It reports that rebel advances in the west out of their Tripolitanian enclave of Misratah have been indecisive, and

Russia criticised the United States and other countries on Monday for recognising the rebel leadership as the legitimate government of Libya, saying they were taking sides in the rebellion to oust Gaddafi.

"Those who declare recognition stand fully on the side of one political force in a civil war," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced recognition of the rebels on Friday during a meeting of the international contact group on Libya in Turkey.

While the US, UK and France have taken a stronger line towards Gaddafi, Russia and China have taken a softer line, with both countries not attending the contact group meeting.

In a speech on Saturday, Gaddafi described the rebels as traitors and rejected suggestions that he was about to leave the country.

Strategies

Most of the world sees the Libyan war as a test of the power and will of Western Civilization. The President of the United States, once said to be the most powerful nation in the world, indeed in the history of the world, has made the overthrow of Qaddaffi a major goal; but as the world watches, weeks go by. The United States lets it drag on, breaking things and killing people but accomplishing little else. Libya is not recovering. There is no major economy. There is merely a slow grind, life with land mines and snipers, neither peace nor war in the rebel areas; in Qaddafi’s areas there is mostly stability but one never knows what NATO will consider an important target.

Our strategy seems to be to continue to borrow money so that we can keep on breaking things and killing people, mostly Khaddafi supporters but sometimes rebels (we apologize and borrow more money so that we can pay reparations). We have recognized a rebel “government” but no one can name its leaders or what its objectives are other than turning Khadafy and his sons out (dead or alive; alive they are to be sent to a court in Holland). We have made no deals with these rebels regarding being repaid for our efforts. We don’t have oil deals.

President Obama has not stated his goals in Obama’s War.

In the old League of Nations world, Libya might become a mandated territory under some colonial power which would try to establish rule of law and some kind of orderly means for changes in government. That won’t happen now, although it is probably the best thing that could happen to Libya. In a real world in which things are left to their own devices, Libya would break into at least two nations, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, as it was before Italy united those former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. That would leave the interior desert Fezzan to fight over, but the break would be at Marble Arch, which is, not astonishingly, about the dividing line between Loyalist (Qadafi) forces and rebels.

In a world of US realism, the United States might make the rebels a deal: We will throw out Khadaffi and we will establish a government under US supervision with a US – or possibly British – Resident Advisor. That will endure for ten years. During those ten years we will develop oil resources. We take 60%. That’s half for development and 10% to repay ourselves for the costs of your liberation. We will deal with Khadaffi as we choose: possibly we will hang him, but we reserve the right to use silver bullets. You will get Delta Force and the SAS for as long as it takes to throw the Colonel out and restore order, then ten years of occupation by constabulary. We will also provide security of your borders in the event that your neighbors find the attraction of your oil coupled with your military helplessness irresistible. Now go find someone willing to sign this agreement. We will recognize him as President. Have a nice year.

Of course President Obama won’t do that. What he will do is not at all clear, but it probably involves continuing to borrow money so that we can go on breaking things and killing people.

The Budget Dance

The budget Kabuki continues.

The Republicans want to get out with a whole skin. They don’t know how.

The Democrats want new taxes; they prefer it if they can blame those new taxes on the Republicans.

The Tea Party Independents continue to be disgusted – and they are the key to the Presidential Election. They abandoned the Democrats for Reagan. They abandoned the Republicans for Clinton after Bush pledged “No New Taxes” and flipped them the bird with his “Read My Hips!” tax raise. They abandoned the Democrats for the Gingrich Coup when Clinton showed that he was a New Democrat in name only. They abandoned the Republicans after the Great Republican Spending Spree that followed Newt Gingrich’s resignation. They went for Obama in hopes of Hope and Change, and they abandoned Obama and the Democrats in the 2010 election.

The Country Club Republicans want to continue their ruling class collaboration with the Democrats, and do not seem to understand that the American Middle Class has had enough of the Kabuki Dance.

And the beat goes on.

Irrefutable Evidence

For what it is worth:

CERTIFIGATE

‘Irrefutable’ proof of Obama forgery

Document details show typewriter had variable type way back in 1961?

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=322389

As for me, I don’t think it is worth much. I include it mostly as a curiosity. Irrefutable Proof that this document is a forgery does not prove that Obama was not born in Honolulu. It would say a lot about the competence of the intellectuals who were put in charge of making this issue go away.

Worth Your Time

These are open tabs in my Firefox. They have been recommended, I opened them for a look, promptly lost the recommendation in the vast swim of stuff that comes in, and now there are far too many open tabs. I need to close them which will result in their being lost. given the flow of information around here. There’s no optimum solution to this, but one thing I can do is just make a list of places you might find it worth while to visit. I had intended to write comments, and indeed I reserve the right to do so in future, but I do have to clear some space in my tabs, and I seem to be falling further and further behind.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/
columnists/tr_fehrenbach/article/American-
space-age-is-finished-1468100.php

http://www.space.com/11959-gop-
presidential-debate-nasa-future-republicans.html

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/
press_releases/press_release.php?id=1541

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/18/
byte-retracts-anti-apple-rant-by-blogger/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/
why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html

http://kriswrites.com/2011/06/29
/the-business-rusch-you-are-not-alone/