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For those of you who know about the book:  it made it into the top 100, but Labyrinth of Night didn’t make the cut to the final three.

Ah well. Back to looking for an agent the old-fashioned way.

Posted on May 15th, 2009 under Entertainment, PPC, Science Fiction. Tags: ABNA, Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, book, Labyrinth of Night, mars, novel, Science Fiction. Comments: 8

Tale #1: A Visit to Borders

I visited Borders over the weekend to buy a gift certificate.  The first thing I noticed when I entered the store (having not been to this particular location in perhaps six months) was the vast expanse of empty racks in the middle of the place where CDs used to be displayed.  According to the counter clerk, they were in the process of phasing out most of their CD products — all but new releases — due to the rising popularity of iTunes and other internet-based digital music sources.  “Nobody is buying CDs anymore,” she explained.

Apparently, nobody is buying books at Borders anymore, either.  Something about the book racks also struck me as odd while I was standing in line, and as I was leaving I figured out what it was: the racks had been cut back to half their length. That is, the racks perpendicular to the walls used to be made up of two oak shelving units, but the units on the end had been removed.  Now, they may plan to simply reshuffle their existing book inventory into the space vacated by CDs, but this particular change didn’t look recent – and why would they remove a good portion of the existing inventory from the floor, rather than waiting until the new area had been prepared? 

Given the company’s financial situation, it may be that I was witnessing one small step in the slow demise of the Borders chain:

Borders (BGP) has struggled for several years as the No.2 operator of book store behind Barnes & Noble. When Border’s released its last set of earnings it said it would cut the number of Waldenbooks stores from about 300 to 50 or 60. With Border’s losses, that won’t be enough. The pressure from online book operations led by Amazon (AMZN) and new e-book readers is overwhelming Borders. In the fourth quarter of last year, sales at Border’s branded stores dropped 15.3%. For the full year 2008, Borders lost $157 million on revenue of $2.8 billion. Borders recently extended its $42.5 million senior secured term loan with Pershing Square Capital Management, moving the due date to April 1, 2010. That may be the day that Borders goes away. Border’s shares trade at $1.47, down from a 52-week high of $8.02.

Tale #2: A Visit to the Dentist

Two years ago, I was glad to finally have an excuse to get rid of my last unsightly amalgam filling. Unfortunately, there was some sort of material flaw in the porcelain crown that replaced it, and today I had it replaced gratis.

Only, they didn’t replace it with quite the same thing.  Or in quite the same way.

Rather than the two-visit process I had to go through the last time, with those gag-inducing trays filled with molding putty and seemingly-endless custom fitting of the crown made from the resulting molds, I was in and out in about three hours, of which maybe ten minutes involved fitting and polishing.  Best part: no molds.

The new process involved inserting a small scanning device into my mouth before and after the old crown was removed, to create 3D images of the perfectly-fitting existing crown and the cleared-out bonding surface along with the surrounding molars.  Immediately after the second scan, a 3D image of the tooth as-it-was appeared on the screen next to my chair, the dentist made a few adjustments to add some material at certain adjustment points and then fired it off  to a milling machine in the next room — just as if she were printing a document.

About fifteen minutes later, she returned with the new but uncured crown to make a few adjustments to the fit. After about five minutes of grinding and test-fitting, it was into the curing oven for about 40 minutes. Then it was bonded in, and after another five minutes of fitting, it was done and I headed back to work.

That’s a pretty neat bit of medical technology, I think.

This is the same dentist with whom I first experienced digital X-rays a number of years ago, and who (with improved resolution on the X-ray interface) determined at my last exam that I have extra roots on all of my teeth, and not just the molars…something the new technology is showing to be surprisingly common.  Even better – she’s bringing in a 3D digital X-ray system soon, which should provide images at even higher resolution.

While I figured out the bricks-and-mortar bookstores’ days were numbered the first time I ordered something from Amazon back in 1996, the rapid evolution of medical technology is pretty surprising.

Posted on May 13th, 2009 under Economics, Useful Technology. Tags: amazon, bankrupt, bookstore, borders, commerce, dental, digital, downloads, medical, music, online, shopping, technology. Comments Off

This article on Parametric Technology’s connections to allegedly corrupt lobbying firm PMA Group explains a lot.  Wow.

For two years, the Kansas City Democrat has secured earmarks totaling about $2 million with the aim of supplying a south Kansas City defense plant the latest in design software technology.

What seemed to him an easy chance to bring home some bacon, however, turned into a lesson on why earmarks are so controversial and difficult to follow.

For starters, the local plant he sought to help — the federally owned Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies Kansas City Plant — never asked for the money, plant officials said.

In fact, most of the public dollars are slated to go to Parametric Technology Corp., a for-profit software developer based 1,200 miles from Cleaver’s district.

“I’d never heard of that company in my life” until recently, said Cleaver, voicing agitation that a lobbying group may have used his appetite for earmarks to its advantage.

In tracing the origins of one little earmark — just a drop in a $7.7 billion bucket of pet projects earmarked in Congress’ recent omnibus spending bill — The Kansas City Star found that a lobbying group working for Massachusetts-based Parametric pushed for the funds.

That lobbyist, known as The PMA Group, is under federal investigation for its dealings with lawmakers. It was a major campaign donor to an Indiana congressman and others who served on the appropriations panel that signed off on Cleaver’s earmark…

Congress tucked into the latest omnibus bill, for the second year running, Cleaver’s submission of MDICE funding for the plant.

An allocation of $951,500 for the 2009 fiscal year was on top of $1 million that the software project secured from Cleaver for fiscal year 2008…

As for the stated merits of MDICE, “it sounds legitimate. … It uses all the right wording,” said Neal Schmeidler, president of Omni Engineering & Technology Inc. of McLean, Va.

Schmeidler reviewed the MDICE application at The Star’s request. He is an industrial engineering consultant specializing in defense procurements.

“One of my questions is, why not compete this thing out in the open market?” Schmeidler asked.

“Why do it with a special earmark where only one firm can get the money? And who’s going to check if the system even works in the end? … It seems a little odd.”

One reads this and wonders whatever happened to Chuck Grassley’s probe into NASA’s flawed awarding of a software contract to PTC back in 2005.

Welcome to the ‘aristocracy of pull’.  I guess if you can’t compete in the open market, you can always call in favors.

Posted on May 10th, 2009 under Economics. Tags: CAD, Chuck Grassley, corruption, earmarks, Emanuel Cleaver, Honeywell, MCAD, MDICE, Murtha, nasa, NNSA, Parametric Technology, PMA Group, pork, Pro-Engineer, ProE, PTC. Comments: 1

By NASASpaceFlight.com. At their subscription site.

Jon Goff has a few interesting details from his first look at the appendices:

Now, having seen some of what’s in them (I’ve mostly been focusing on the 300+ page appendix to Chapter 6, that details all of their launch vehicle related decisions), I can understand why some people might not want that data to see the light of day. I was hoping to get permission to post a screenshot or two and some direct quotes, but for now you’ll have to get a subscription and check it out yourself.

Some gems to look for when you get a chance, all within the first 40 pages:

• Exceptions given in the ground rules and assumptions on maximum dynamic pressures to In-line SRM based crew launch concepts that weren’t given to any other vehicles (without the exception, all of the five-segment Stick concepts would’ve been ruled out from the start).
• Unrealistically assuming a fixed LAS mass regardless of first stage characteristics (like T/W, max-Q, and whether you can shut them down or not).
• Inaccurate dry mass numbers for existing EELV upper stages (just as some of the guys on NASASpaceflight.com had been saying for years now).

Hmm… It’s almost as if the study was rigged to generate a particular outcome…

I can’t wait to see what other “gems” are buried in the full text. Of course, I will wait, since I’m not going to pay for a “level 2″ subscription at NSF to obtain copies of information that I’ve already paid for (that, and I’m not going to help support a site which I loathe for its constantly-flickering animated ads).

[hat tip to the vactioning-in-our-home-state Rand Simberg]

Posted on May 3rd, 2009 under Constellation, Moon-Mars Plan, Orion, Space Policy, Space Technology. Tags: altair, appendix, ares, Constellation, ESAS, launch vehicle, Mike Griffin, nasa, Orion. Comments: 2