All posts by James O'Keefe

Games, Miniatures, When Imagination Fails

ACTA – Narn vs. Shadow game

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Two of us met and gamed a Narn-Shadow meeting engagement. 

Pictures up on flickr or you can view them as a slide show turn by turn.

Here is the description:

Setup

The Shadows on the right had:
2 young cruisers
2 scouts
The Narn on the left had:

1 Bin'Tak Dreadnought
1 G'Lan cruiser
2 T'Loth Assault Cruisers
1 Dag'Kar Missile Frigate
1 Ka'Toc Battle Destroyer
1 Sho'Kar Light Scout Cruiser

Shadows won initiative and the Narns started setting up first.

Turn 1

The Shadows won initiative and had the Narns move first.

The G'Lan cruiser, Dag'Kar Missile Frigate, Ka'Toc Battle Destroyer held back while the T'Loths, Bin'Tak and the scout advanced.

The Shadows advanced at max on all fronts. However, the two scouts were
out of range and saw no action this turn. One Shadow cruiser
concentrated its fire on the vanguard T'Loth, while the other attacked
the Bin'Tak. Both Narn ships took significant damage. The Bin'Tak
remained in the battle, but the T'Loth was immobilized and one crew
point shy of having a skeleton crew.

The vanguard T'Loth attacked the closest Shadow scout, but wasn't able
to destroy the scout. The Bin'Tak and Dag'Kar loosed the energy mines
and other long range armament, but aside from damaging the scout
closest to the vanguard T'Loth, the Shadows took little damage.

The Narn scout reduced the stealth on a scout, but didn't much damage.

Turn 2

The Narn won initiative and had the Shadows move first.

One Shadow cruiser attempted to move into a flanking position on the
Bin'Tak, while the other moved to engage the undamaged T'Loth and
G'Lan. The damaged scout flanked the immobile T'Loth. The other scout
played chicken with the Narn scout and ended up getting hit in the
rear, but no damage result owing to the Shadow scout's shields.

The G'Lan cruiser, and the mobile T'Loth moved up next to the ailing
T'Loth as did the Ka'Toc Battle Destroyer. The Dag'Kar Missile Frigate
held back while the Bin'Tak rotated in place to engage the Shadow
cruiser. Both traded blows with one another, with the Shadow cruiser
received scratches while the Bin'Tak took it on the chin, but still
focused it fire.

The damaged Shadow scout finally dispatched the immobile T'Loth while
the other Shadow cruiser concentrated on the G'Lan and gave it quite a
bruising including critical hits that left it immobilized.

The Dag'Kar and Ka'Toc attacked the Shadow scouts, but did not take either down.

The Narn fighters did engage the Shadow fighters, but with the local
advantage in numbers, the Shadows prevailed in the two dogfights.
Amazingly, a Shadow scout was able to avoid significant damage from a
cloud of Narn fighters.

Turn 3

The Shadows won initiative and had the Narns move first.

One Shadow cruiser continued its attempt to flank the Bin'Tak, and
positioned itself just to the side of the Bin'Tak and out of range. The
other Shadow cruiser continued to engage the G'Lan.

The Shadow damaged scout turned its attention on the Ka'Toc and was
able to reduce it to a skeleton crew in the first shot. The other scout
focused its attentions on the G'Lan.

The Dag'Kar Missile Frigate, its energy mines fully loaded, attacked
the Shadow scout attacking the G'Lan. The Narn scout sailed behind the
Shadow ships. The remaining T'Loth contemplated opening a jump gate
next turn.

Over all, while the scenario was balanced points wise, the Shadows were
able to out maneuver the Narns and were well on their way to winning
the day. Both players felt that the Narns needed more ships to balance
the game out better.

Fun

My so called tweet

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I probably put to much time into reading the status messages, notes or what not that friends post on Facebook, Twitter, or their blogs (RSS feeds are your friends). 

Part of my motivation is that several of my friends from bygones past died before I got back in touch.  Indeed, in one case, I googled a friend to find that her only reference was her obituary from a few months before.  While I know that it is just life, using these tools helps me, as Glen Daniels pointed out, to keep a finger in the lives of my friends whether we met 20 years ago or 2 months ago.

In someways I think I know more about some friends now than I did years ago.  It is weird, fun and somewhat reassuring all in one

Politics

How we aren’t Japan

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Paul Krugman writes:

So far the Obama administration’s response to the economic crisis is
all too reminiscent of Japan in the 1990s: a fiscal expansion large
enough to avert the worst, but not enough to kick-start recovery;
support for the banking system, but a reluctance to force banks to face
up to their losses. It’s early days yet, but we’re falling behind the
curve.

He has likened our government's response to that of Japan during its "lost decade" in the 1990s after the crash of its property bubble and resulting financial crisis. 

In a number of ways I agree.  However, there are three things are very different between Japan then and the US now: two economic:

  • US corporations, and likely foreign corporations operating US factories and offices, will not hold back on laying off workers.
  • The US savings rate is abysmal.

and one political:

  • The US is not dominated by one political party.

This later point is the most important one. 

While I have long maintained that the Democrats and Republicans are, in regards to the economy and capitalism, very similar, there are differences.  After all, 36 of 41 Republican Senators supported the DeMint amendment to the stimulus bill which would have reduced federal government revenues by over $3 trillion and further enriched corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

If Obama cannot clean up the mess GW left us by 2010, or at least show enough progress, things could get very difficult for the congressional Democrats on election day.

Economy

And in Iceland

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Common Dreams has a great article
by Rebecca Solnit on the situation on Iceland (from TomDispatch).  She
goes into more depth than other articles I have seen and provides some
useful analysis and history.   I liked the characterization of Iceland
as a hedge fund and a country rolled into one. 

There is now a Socialist & Left-Green coalition running the
government.  Everyone seems to be blaise about the fact that the new PM
is an out lesbian, which is most gratifying.  It also looks like the
Left-Green Party *may* come out on top in the April elections, though
we shall see.  Back in October, Doug Henwood interviewed Ögmundur Jónasson, head of the Left Green delegation in the Icelandic parliament on his radio show.  If you don't, you should subscribe to his newsletter, or at least read his blog.

Economy

Interesting Economic Tidbits

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Dollars & Sense posted some interesting links (many from the Financial Times, it would appear) on their blog including:

  • The double digit annualized GDP falls in Japan and Latvia.  Other parts of Asia don't look very healthy either.
  • The health and economic cost of the increasing obesity epidemic in Mexico (MY NOTE: spurred by all of our subsidies to corn production.)
  • Several analyses of the new financial stabilization plan announced yesterday.  D&S summarized with:
This is simply unbelievable: assets worth virtually nothing because
they consisted of much less than their hyper-excessive leverage
multiples are to be peddled to the very same sort of investors who have
just been burned by these things, simply because the leverage is now to
be put up by uncomplaining (not to mention increasingly skint)
taxpayers and foreign investors, and not the banks. And this in an
attempt to make a transition to a less-leveraged system! It's no
surprise that nobody seems to be buying it.

All together, the
proposals put forward today could amount to nearly $3 trillion. And
everyone except the administration seems to believe that won't be
nearly enough.

You should read the article yourself.

Economy

A little on the economic stimulus bill

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My brief review of the economic stimulus bill is that it will be too little to buoy a US economy that is dropping off of a cliff and is directed at the wrong areas.  There are too many tax cuts, which will end up being saved rather than spent, and too little government spending, especially to state and local governments who will end up cutting tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs, further increasing unemployment.

If you doubt that the US economy is dropping off of a cliff, then check out these graphs.  First, from The Big Picture, personal consumption expenditures is falling at a rate not seen in over forty years:



And second this graphic on the change in industrial production now, versus the average of all post war recessions as well as the best case and worst case [from Brad Setser’s Follow the Money Blog].  If this were a “normal” recession, we would be starting to bounce back.  This is not a normal recession.

Personal Development

Project Sweet Tooth Progress – January 2009

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I found that my previous Project Sweet Tooth incentives proved to be unworkable, because if I did use them I would end up frittering away all my time reading things on the web.  So I changed the incentives back to how I had originally envisioned them:

  • 1/2 hour for each day without sweets or soda
  • 1/2 hour for each night of eight hours of sleep

During January, I avoided sweets for 23 of 31 days and got at least eight hours of sleep for 5 of 31 nights.  This brings me to 14 hours towards my hobbies (aka me time).  Of this time, I used about five hours, and carried over nine hours into February.

Miniatures, When Imagination Fails

Torvalus Dark Knives Complete

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I completed the Torvalus Dark Knives a week or more ago, but I finally got around to photographing them.

Torvalus Dark Knives

You can find a larger version on Flickr.

How I made them:

  1. primed them with a black spray primer
  2. painted them with two coats of Floquil NATO Black
  3. painted the three engines with Floquil USSR Underside Blue and a small sharp brush.  I used the Floquil NATO Black where ever I painted beyond the lines.
  4. painted the lights with Floquil’s Railroad Signal Red and a small sharp brush.
  5. finally, I sprayed them with Testors dullcote and then mounted them.

The Torvalus are:

A race of Gamblers and tricksters, roughly resembling a meter tall transparent protozoan covered in scillia. They, and the Kirishiac, are the only First Ones not to ascend into energy beings, mostly because of philosophy. They bet on everything, what race will exterminate which species, whether this star will blow up in so many years, stuff like that. They maintained fairly good relations with their inferior middle-borns, but
often as not posing as someone else.Therefore, they invested enormous amounts of research into stealth. Their ships can hide from any of the First One’s advanced sensors, even from the Walkers and the Triad, using what is called the “Shading Field”. It works as damage prevention, as well. They can create sensor ghosts, fully realistic projections, they have a microjump system called a Transverse Drive that bypasses intervening space by means
other than hyperspace.

Their weaponry is rather straightforward, using a variety of highly advanced lasers. Their drone fighters are among the best the First Ones make, capable of inflicting more damage than any but the Triad Order aspect Sereph super-heavies. Fighting the Torvalus is like fighting ghosts, even among the first ones.

[From Agammemnon at http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=78015 ]

Economy

We’re Big in Japan

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Well, it looks like Obama's financial team has its head just as much in the sand as Bush's team, and more importantly, Japan's team from their ten year financial crisis in the 90s.  Tim Duy (by way of Mark Thoma) reports that Obama's plan to deal with financial crisis:

… will be "smaller" than originally expected, said the industry
source, and centered around government guarantees and insurance of troubled
assets …

As the post points out, we tried this with Citigroup and Bank of America, and, at least by the measure of their stock prices, it hasn't worked.

Quick history lesson: 

When Japan's asset bubble burst in 1990, many banks were left insolvent with loans that just weren't going to be paid.  The Japanese government didn't insist that such banks update their balance sheets to reflect the insolvent loans.  On paper the banks were fine, but in reality they were bankrupt.  The end result was that these zombie banks lived on for years, suppressing lending and helping to keep the Japanese economy in a recession for ten years.

Apparently we are repeating Japan's mistakes as Tim Duy says:

Classic. Absolutely classic. Is this really addressing the
problem of pricing? Are we not in the same boat of “if we pay too little, the
bank is undercapitalized, but if we pay too much, the taxpayer holds the bag and
therefore we need to nationalize”? Obviously we are in the same boat, because
the new plan may cause an “accounting problem.” Like insolvency. That is, in
fact, a problem, no argument from me. Apparently, though, the Administration’s
solution is a suspension of accounting rules. Translation – we are going to try
to hide the problem.

The solution, of course, is for federal banking regulators to examine banks that look troubled, and nationalize insolvent banks.  The share holders get scalped, but what did they expect?  Once the feds clean them up, they can then sell them off for a profit when the economy bounces back. 

We did this for many savings and loans in the late 80s, but Obama's economics team seems to be avoiding nationalizing troubled banks (Citygroup, BoA, …).  Instead, the federal government will guarantee or insure the toxic assets on the bank balance sheets.  Heads the banks and their shareholders win, tails the taxpayers lose.

These folks should know they are putting good money after bad, here, but I guess they still believe their precious neoclassical economics more than reality.  Its looking like it will be a really long recession, it not something worse.

NOTE: Dollars & Sense has a partial reprint of a Yves Smith article on the same subject.  Naked Capitalism has the whole article.  Both this one and Tim Duy's are worth the read.