Malaysia Pushes Joint Development to Solve Asia Sea Disputes

There are several insignificant islands in Southeast Asia whose ownership is disputed. The islands themselves are of no particular use, but the territorial rights to undersea resources that accompany those islands are. This story showed up on Bloomberg today:

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called for claimants in the South China Sea to jointly develop resources to avoid conflict and prevent “extra-regional states” from becoming involved.
Najib cited a joint development zone in waters claimed by Thailand and Malaysia as a precedent that could be applied in the South China Sea. Vietnam and the Philippines reject China’s map as a basis for joint development in the waters, part of which are also claimed by Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
“Agreeing to share prosperity, rather than let it divide us, is infinitely preferable to the alternative,” Najib said in a speech yesterday in Kuala Lumpur.
Competition for oil, gas and fish threatens to disrupt the estimated two-thirds of global trade that passes through the waters. China favors joint development of resources, while the U.S., Japan and the Philippines advocate international arbitration.
Najib said a code of conduct for operating in the waters would be a “good start” to prevent tensions from escalating. He warned that involving unspecified “extra-regional states” may “add yet another layer of complexity to the dispute.”
“For Asian nations, this problem is ours to solve,” Najib said. “Should we stray from the path of dialogue and cooperation, we may pave the way for other parties to take remedial action to protect the freedom of navigation and safe passage.”

“Extra-regional states”? I wonder who he was thinking of. And then there was this: China favors joint development of resources, while the U.S., Japan and the Philippines advocate international arbitration.

Of course it's hard to tell what China really favors being as they are so inscrutable (other than total world domination, bwah hah hah hah hah). Naturally the U.S. would favor arbitration. I mean we are a half a world a way, how else could we justify stirring that pot? And you can bet stirring it is our intention, because sure as shooting we are hoping to get our fingers on some of that pie.
     Now that it looks like we are finally starting to pull out of Afghanistan, I'm sure our national security advisers are looking for someplace else we can pick a fight. Isn't it about Southeast Asia's turn again? Otherwise it's gonna be Africa. I'm not sure which one would be worse.

Puzzling Quote

Found this over on Military Photos dot net:

Respect of the dead is something pretty much any culture do. It's actually one of the mark of intelligence in human development. Djihadist desecrates bodies and tombs, because there a bunch of savages. - Bidoul33t 

Never mind the misspellings, I wonder about the substance. Is respect for the dead a mark of intelligence, a mark of civilization, or just a mark of compassion that any feeling creature can have? And aren't we all savages? The only difference between "us" and "them" is we have a more reliable history of civilized behavior, or maybe just a selective memory. And doesn't how you treat the living count more than how you treat the dead?

Super Creep

Super refers to Superalloys, and creep is what Superalloys do when they get really hot, like in a jet engine, which is where you need superalloys, the lack of which was one of the main stumbling blocks in developing the first jet engines, and which are still giving engineers fits.

I'm reading about the TU-160, Russia's giant supersonic nuclear bomber. It uses four Kuznetsov NK-32 turbofan engines.

KUZNETSOV Factory. I'm guessing early 20th Century.

 Kuznetsov NK-25 engine. No, not the engine from the TU-160, but similar.

I'm looking for pictures and I stumble over a Portuguese language blog with a story about the Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprop engine. Same company, similar large turbine engine. The Google translation was interesting enough that I stole the story and polished it up a bit. The Portuguese story mentions an alloy called Nimonic. (Wait, what? You mean mnemonic? No, not Johnny.) Nimonic leads me to Wiggin, which leads to Inco, which leads to Special Metals, which leads to Precision Castparts, which leads to union organizers, which leads to commies, which is where we started. Full circle in one paragraph. Marvelous.

Nimonic was the original high temperature alloy. A person by the name of L. B. Pfeil, working at the Henry Wiggin company came up with it when they were first trying to build jet engines back in 1941 in England. It was 50% nickel. It has evolved over the years and is still being used in the latest Rolls Royce hi-bypass turbofans and for the valves in your ordinary automobile engine. Henry founded the Wiggin company, on Wiggins Street, in Hereford, England. He eventually sold out to Inco, which used to be called International Nickel, and which used to be an important company in it's own right: Paraphrased from Wikipedia:

Prior to 2006, Inco was the world's second largest producer of nickel. It was also a charter member of the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average formed on October 1, 1928. It is now part of the Brazilian mining company Vale.

Inco sold their foundary business to Special Metals, which was recently acquired by Precision Castparts. Precision Castparts is an Oregon company that has been making great strides making parts out of exotic alloys, much of which is going into military hardware. Union organizers are trying to organize the workers at Precision. I don't know how much luck they are having.

Update: Stu challenges us to identify the five aircraft shown in silhouette in the Nimonic ad above. Only two of them looked familiar, and even after spending some time with Google and Wikipedia, I only managed to identify four of them. Stu supplied the last one, #4. Highlight to read, or click to follow the link. From left to right:

1. Gloster Meteor
2. de Havilland Vampire
3. Supermarine Attacker
4. English Electric Canberra
5. Grumman F-9 Cougar

Uncooperative

One of the themes, and a source of constant irritation, in Absolution Gap is the continuing conflict between nominal allies. All humans in this story, indeed, all living, intelligent creatures are at risk of extinction from the "Inhibitors". You would think that when they were facing a common enemy our gang of thieves would be able to put aside their differences and band together to defeat this threat. But that never seems to be the case. They spend as much time fighting amongst each other as they do fighting their one real threat. After a bit of stewing in frustration over their obvious stupidity I realized a group of disparate individuals can only join together if they can agree on a common strategy and/or are willing to accept one person as their leader. If you can't get over that hurdle, you will continue to have conflicts between factions as well as the main war with the enemy. I suppose it's more realistic this way, having all these dominant personality types vying for control, but it's not as much fun as having all these petty differences shoved under the rug.

Flooding in Germany

Stu claimed there was flooding in Germany. Guess it's kind of serious.

Space Exploration

I finally got around to ordering a copy of Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. It's the third volume of his Revelation Space trilogy. It's chock full of strange new worlds, giant machines, demented personalities and evil monsters baying at the doors. It's great stuff. Some of the dialog is a little, um, what's the word? Childish, maybe? Kind of reminds me of what you hear on television. And then it struck me - this is exactly the thing that determines whether I will like a book or not. I used to think it was realism, that is whether the characters in a story were behaving in a believable manner or not. Now I'm thinking it's whether the dialog is intelligent or dumb. That's why I like James Bond movies, because of all the witty remarks and the absence of banal chatter. Realistic? Hardly, but witty.
    Last year I was reading John LeCarre espionage novels. I was enjoying the heck out of them until I got to one that struck a little close to home, or something. It was the one about the arms dealer selling weapons to the drug lords in Central America. It put me off his stories, but for  another reason entirely, not because of the dialog. Recently I picked up a copy of his The Looking Glass War. This was the first book he wrote after he made his first big success. It is supposed to be a more realistic look at the world of spy-v-spy, and it's a real downer. You have never seen such stupidity or incompetence. If this is what our intelligence agencies are made of (and being as they are made of people, not James Bond super-heroes, I imagine it probably is) it's a wonder they can manage to tie their shoes in the morning, much less figure out what our "enemies" are doing, assuming they can even figure out who our enemies are. I didn't even get half way through before I got totally discouraged and put it down.
    So Absolution Gap is a mixed bag. It's got a lot of really good stuff in it, like characters and concepts and conflict, but it's got a little of the stupid thrown in as well. On balance though it's pretty dang good.
    There are some uneven story lines. He will spend a hundred pages setting the stage for a climatic event, and then later on, in the middle of another story line (there are three main story lines) he will spend a couple of paragraphs explaining how the other story played out. Disappointing. But then the book is over 500 pages as it is, and I imagine that he might have wanted to wrap this story up in three volumes and not spend the rest of his life writing it.
    This is the third Science Fiction book I've read this year that had:

• millions of people
• living in tunnels underground
• on an airless world.

The others were 

• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein,
• Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

Quote of the Day

"This book fills a much-needed gap."

- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review