Volume 1, "The Stones of Silence" - 64 reader reviews
Volume 2, "An Airless Storm" - 32 reader reviews
Volume 3, "The Pride of the Damned" - 9 reader reviews
When NATO expanded eastwards a unique set of logistical problems were encountered. These new problems were not fully appreciated until 2015 when the United States decided to send military units by road (and railroad) to the easternmost new NATO members.
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While the armed forces available to NATO far outnumber those of Russia, there is a major impediment to assembling and moving those forces by road to the aid of NATO nations bordering Russia. That enemy is the ancient bureaucracies that control the movement of foreign troops crossing borders, even those forces coming to your aid. This was demonstrated in early 2015 when a U.S. Army mechanized battalion made a very well publicized road march from Poland, Lithuania and Estonia back to its base in Germany. The American battalion required hundreds of hours of effort to complete the paperwork and get the permissions required to cross so many borders in military vehicles.
The pile of paperwork and weeks required to handle it were used as very concrete evidence to persuade the East European nations to streamline the process, a lot, or have themselves to blame if reinforcements did not arrive in a timely fashion. As usual a compromise was worked out and by 2016 six NFIUs (NATO Force Integration Units) were organized, each consisting of 40 troops trained and equipped to handle the paperwork and traffic control measures required to get military convoys across eastern borders as quickly as possible to specific countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania). The NFIU work out of embassies and stay in constant touch with the border control bureaucracies of the East European nations involved. NFIUs also arrange for rest areas and resupply for the convoys.
Thus NFIUs ensure that the routes used have roads and bridges that can handle the heavy trucks and armored vehicles involved. This is a crucial matter in East Europe. Since the 1950s West European nations have constantly upgraded and maintained roads and bridges to handle heavy vehicles, but East Europe had not, at least until the 1990s and the deferred upgrades, after decades of communist misrule, are still underway. The dozens of Russian divisions stationed in East Europe until 1990 were brought in piecemeal over decades, often transporting heavy equipment by ship or rail. Moreover, NATO heavy equipment is heavier than their Russian counterparts so even East European bridges built to handle Russian tanks often cannot deal with heavier M1s and Leopards.
The NFIUs must maintain a new database on 15,000 kilometers of East European roads and hundreds of bridges. Available cross-country routes have also been mapped and put into the database.
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While all these rules and approvals would not stop invading Russians they would, in theory, slow down reinforces from the West. The Russians also know that even with NFIUs the movement of these troops is a slow and frustrating process and are ready to take advantage of it. So NATO continues to battle the bureaucracies to speed up the flow of reinforcements.
The mental disorder colloquially known as Trump Derangement Syndrome is widely distributed throughout society at this point. Baseless accusations of treason were thrown around casually by all sorts of TDS sufferers, including sitting members of Congress.
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... it’s become increasingly clear that Russiagate has become something akin to a religion. It’s adherents have become so attached to the story that Trump’s “wholly in the pocket of Putin,” they’re increasingly lobbing serious and baseless accusations against people who fail to acquiesce to their dogma.
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Calling someone a traitor for stating obvious facts that threaten the hysteria you’re trying to cultivate is a prime example of how this whole thing has turned into some creepy D.C. establishment religion. If these people have such a solid case and the facts are on their side, there’s no need to resort to such demented craziness. It does nothing other than promote societal insanity and push the unconvinced away.
When Gallup recently asked Americans what the most important (non-economic) problem facing the country today is, the amount of people saying Russia was so low they couldn’t even attribute a number to it.
Think about that. We’re being divided into two camps of increasingly insane and angry people because of hysteria surrounding an issue nobody even cares about. As usual, we can thank mass media for turning this topic into its singular obsession as well as promoting an environment of cultural insanity and stupidity.
As a result, people aren’t having intelligent conversations with one another. They’re just yelling at each other. The dialogue feels more like a political hunger games where people see everything as a linguistic competition of kill or be killed. Language itself has become debased as individuals try to one up each other with name calling and hyperbole. Demonizing and dehumanizing the other side appears to be the primary goal, which will only lead to a very bad place if we don’t take a collective deep breath.
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A major problem with today’s charged political environment is too many people have become too attached to outcomes. Whether that outcome is removing Trump from office, or reelecting him. If you’ll do anything to achieve your goals, anything to grab power, or deploy any tactics to prove your point then you will become the monsters you claim to be fighting.
Airships, Guns, and Gadgets! The Knights of the Crystal Spire are more than ordinary fantasy knights.
Life as an apprentice knight hasn’t been easy on James Gentry. As a commoner and an outsider, he’s been ridiculed, picked on, and shunned by the other boys. But he’s determined to become one of the finest knights Rislandia has ever seen.
During his training, James stumbles upon a master knight selling information on Rislandian troop movements to a Wyranth spy. To keep Rislandia safe, he must root out the traitor and put a stop to the enemy's schemes. Does he have what it takes?
A new, Spanish-designed submarine has a weighty problem: The vessel is more than 70 tons too heavy, and officials fear if it goes out to sea, it will not be able to surface.
And a former Spanish official says the problem can be traced to a miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place.
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The Isaac Peral, the first in a new class of diesel-electric submarines, was nearly completed when engineers discovered the problem. A U.S. Navy contractor in Connecticut, Electric Boat, has signed a deal to help the Spanish Defence Ministry find ways to slim down the 2,200-ton submarine ... the preference has been to extend the length of the submarine’s hull, perhaps by 5 to 6 metres, to increase buoyancy.
Otherwise, the weight of the submarine would have to be reduced, and ... the Spanish Navy would not want to compromise features such as the combat system or an air-independent propulsion system.
The newest problem will force Spain’s government to soon announce a budget increase for the project. Each of the four new submarines will end up costing almost $1.2 billion, nearly double the initial budget, according to El País.
After the buoyancy problems were discovered in 2013, the submarine was redesigned and lengthened by about 33 feet. But the changes did not properly take into account the size of the docks in Cartagena.
Now, the port will need to be dredged and reshaped — an overhaul that alone will cost about $18.6 million, according to the newspaper. The submarine project has other issues, and engineers have still not settled on the design of its propulsion system, according to El País.
Kaitlyn (not her real name) just moved here from Georgia. Her husband is an auto mechanic. “He can fix anything with four wheels! Well, except my car – it runs like crap!” She went on at some length about how good he was at fixing things. His plan was to start his own shop once they moved here. They moved into a double-wide trailer that had a nice pole barn out back, which he planned to outfit with electric and a high-end air compressor, maybe even a grease pit, and start his own business.
He spent almost a year working on permits, licenses, inspections, and so on. He spoke to people from the county, city, state, feds, and the EPA. He talked to attorneys, accountants, and consultants to help wade through all the red tape. After about a year, he realized that the start-up costs were more than he was willing to gamble on the eventual success of a business that did not yet exist, so he got a job with the city, maintaining their trucks and mowing equipment. It doesn’t pay very well, but it has good benefits. It’s not a bad job, she says. Nothing to complain about. Everything is ok.
Kaitlyn did a great job on my hair, was very pleasant and personable, and is clearly very intelligent. She said that a few miles from their house, a barber recently retired. She considered buying his shop. She’s always dreamed of owning her own business. She said that’s the whole reason she went to cosmetology school. I said that sounded great – the shop is already set up, it has a large group of established customers, and she could expand from there.
She said that she spent several months looking into it, but she would need permits, licenses, inspections, and so on. I pointed out that it has been a barber’s shop for years, so the inspections, permits, and so on would already be done. She said that it would be a new business, and she would have to pay for all that to be done over again. She spoke with attorneys, accountants, and consultants to help wade through all the red tape – some of the same individuals that her husband had just consulted. She soon realized that the start-up costs were more than she was willing to gamble, so she got a job with a chain. The pay is not very good, and the benefits are lousy. One reason her husband took a government job was for the health insurance for their family. But she doesn’t mind working for Sport Clips – it’s a decent job, she says. Nothing to complain about. Everything is ok.
So how does this story end?
Well, in my view, it’s already ended. This young couple from a modest background has all the potential in the world. They’re both ambitious, intelligent, and very good at a valuable skill. They’re devoted to their family, their dreams, and each other. They dream of better things and are willing to gamble, willing to work hard today for a better tomorrow, and willing to take on the additional responsibilities that come with owning a business. They’re savvy enough with modern government to hire attorneys and consultants to help with the red tape.
And even they can’t open a new business, to do something they already know how to do.
Riding the rising tide of energy prices—and the job growth that goes with it—Texas claims the top spot in CNBC’s 2018 America’s Top States for Business rankings.
This is familiar territory for the Lone Star State, which becomes the first four-time winner in our annual study, now in its 12th year.
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Texas has added more than 350,000 jobs in the past year, with the largest increase in the energy sector. Put another way, 1 in 7 jobs created in the United States in the past year was created in Texas.
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But Texas is no one-trick pony, notching top 10 finishes not just in Economy but in five of our 10 categories of competitiveness, including Workforce (No. 7), Infrastructure (No. 1), Technology and Innovation (No. 9) and Access to Capital (No. 3). The state finishes with 1,651 out of 2,500 possible points.
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Since we introduced our rankings in 2007, Texas has never finished outside the top five overall, always following the same basic formula. It started under former Gov. Rick Perry, who is now U.S. Secretary of Energy, and has continued under his fellow Republican successor, Gov. Greg Abbott. The state prides itself on business-friendly regulations, smart spending and low taxes. Texas levies no individual income tax and no corporate tax.
A friend I highly respect commented "There is simply no question that they did it. You can legitimately claim that it’s not important or that there has been no tie to Trump shown. On the Russians’ side, they can say, screw off, we were pursuing our interests. But you can’t take the view it did not happen. It happened."
There is a question who did it. Indictments are just that, not proof.
The US fabricated evidence to start the Vietnam war and the US fabricated WMD talk on the second war in Iraq. US intelligence had no idea the Berlin Wall was about to fall. The US meddled in Russia supporting a drunk named Yeltsin because we erroneously thought we could control him.
It's a mystery why anyone would believe these proven liars. That does not mean I believe Putin either. They are all capable liars.
Let's step back from the absurd points of view to reality.
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Six Questions:
- Is this a trial or a witch hunt?
- Do we need to see the evidence or do we believe known liars?
- Is Trump guilty of treason? Before we even see proof Putin was involved?
- Is the CIA incapable of fabricating evidence?
- Even if Russia interfered in the election, why should anyone have expected otherwise?
- Has everyone forgotten the US lies on WMDs already?
I don't know about you, but I have no reason to believe known liars and hypocrites.
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The amount of venom on Trump over this is staggering.
I commend president Trump. Yes, I am serious ... Nearly every political action that generates this much complete nonsense and hysteria from the Left and Right is worthy of immense praise.
It is becoming practice to put undersized engines in oversized vehicles ... Today you pay [for this] in other ways [than just fuel economy].
Power/performance is one way.
The [Mazda] CX-9’s no-longer-available 3.7 liter V6 was much stronger than the turbo 2.5 liter four which replaced it – 273 hp then vs. 225 hp now, a difference of almost 50 hp, which is a difference with a distinction.
Another is stress – and expense.
Undersized engines rely on turbo boost as the replacement for displacement. The theory is that you’ll use less gas when the engine isn’t being turbo-boosted. Which is fine – and true – when the engine is idling and the car isn’t moving.
The reality is that because the engines are too small (and not strong enough on their own) to adequately propel the vehicles they’re tasked with moving, they are on boost almost all the time once they’re not sitting still. The turbo boosts the power to adequate-engine levels, but also results in about the same amount of fuel being used by an engine that is working harder to make it and meanwhile, as a result, its internal parts are subjected to higher stress because of the higher pressure experienced inside a turbo engine.
An engine that isn’t turbocharged sucks air into its cylinder via the vacuum – negative pressure – created by the pistons as they travel downward, inhaling (so to speak) the air that will be mixed with fuel to create the explosion which makes the power to propel the vehicle. A turbocharged engine is force-fed air, which is crammed into its cylinders under positive pressure (boost) which is typically in the range of 18-22 pounds per square inch.
Turbocharged engines can be built with tougher internals, to withstand the additional pressure – but the fact remains they are subjected to higher pressure (and stress) than engines which are not force-fed air. And no matter how tough-built they are, they are built with additional parts – the turbocharger and all its related bits and pieces. This adds certain expense up front – when you buy the car so equipped – and at least possible expense down the road, in the event a problem develops with the turbo and/or any of its related bits and pieces.
