Steorn vs Science

Teddies are thrown from cots, pigtails are pulled and feet are stamped very, very hard. Scientists are furious.

In an earlier post and in various comments, I’ve postulated that for Steorn’s tech to change the world, Sean & Co only have to be telling the truth. They can be wrong about the science stuff, but not the engineering. The idea that they could have made a measurement error is simply laughable. It is possible that their spinning thing spins, that it powers a revolution in energy generation and, as it does, it fuels an explosion so bright that shadows shatter and veils fall. New insights follow. Another part of our universe is revealed for what it truly is.

Science and Steorn kiss and make up.

The centre-piece in this drama is something scientists call, Conservation of Energy. A central pillar of science, the concept is used in thousands of calculations around the world on any given day. We cannot create energy; merely convert it from one form to another. This means that when a machine performs work, we always get less out than we put in. There are inevitable losses (heat, noise, vibration etc). Since these losses are forms of energy and we cannot create the stuff, we always operate below 100% efficiency. In saying that they have a machine that gets more out than it puts in, Steorn attracts scepticism. To go further and to say that it destroys the laws of physics is something else indeed.

So, what’s the beef? Why are they saying this? The truth is, I don’t know, but here are some thoughts:

When we’re talking about the impossible, anything’s possible – including Steorn being correct in their analysis. We know they’re smart and, I at least, assume they are truthful. They say that, to the best of their ability, they have measured every source and sink of energy they could and can find no sign of where the stuff is coming from. The corollary here is that they are somehow creating it out of nothing.

If you isolate a machine that is producing a particular power output, you can perform a thermodynamic analysis that should tell you if, for example, the energy is being drawn from ambient air temperature. This is one of the areas where it is easy to make errors in measurement and interpretation. However, it’s a lot simpler to do if the energy being ‘produced’ is so great that any corresponding loss to the environment should be obvious. This should be the case with an Orbo.

The energy density of Steorn-tech is so high that they feel confident in saying that it has to be coming from some mysterious and unknown phenomenon - that it is being created. However, if we are going to talk about new science, why not conjure up some new fuel source instead? Many physicists now believe that particles are created and destroyed all the time and all around us – even in the most absolute of vacuums. Who knows? There are so many candidates for analysis, that risking your credibility on an assertion that the foundation laws of science are wrong, is courting controversy.

They may believe what they say and turn out to be right, but I can’t help but wonder if they are simply picking a fight to gather a crowd to the playground.

Steorn - Summary 3

Thinking about what I’d like to see in a summary document it occurred to me that it may not be obvious to everyone what some of the terms used in the discussions actually mean. With that in mind here are some ‘facts’ about the technology as I see them:

The base output of this thing is mechanical. According to Sean, the quoted figure of 0.5W/cc includes the coils and other elements needed to convert this to electricity. We are talking roughly a half Watt in the approximate size of a sugar cube. If we relate this to quantities that we are used to dealing with, we might think of a 60W bulb or a 1KW electric fire. At first this might not seem very impressive. A 60W bulb would need around 120 ‘sugar cubes’ to power it. Remember though that this is a volume relationship, so a 5x5x5 stack would get us there. With LED and other energy-saving devices, we can get good quality lighting at under 10 Watts - a little over 2X2X2 cubes.

At the other end of the scale, imagine something the size of a small dining table (1 cubic metre). This volume would hold a million of these little buggers - a lot of sweetener or a lot of energy depending on how good you are at analogies.

That’s a half megawatt of power. If we were talking about a bank of batteries it would pack a powerful punch, but as a free energy device that keeps going and going and going, we start to get a picture of what all the fuss is about.

Knowing that this is the starting point for the coming revolution and recognising that it is likely to get even better in the near future, it’s likely that this thing is going to blow our socks off.

Talking of which…

I hear, from some quarters, that the output of a free energy device should be able to be routed back into the input to generate an infinitely growing supply of juice until it consumed the galaxy – or words to that effect. Forgetting the point that it would destroy itself before the universe, in the case of Steorn’s technology, this is not true. If an Orbo was an energy amplifier then, perhaps there would be some merit to the assertion, but it is not. For any particular configuration, there is a set energy gain and, unfortunately for those wanting to conquer the universe, there will be no death ray or planet eater to be seen anytime in the immediate future. So there!

If you have any suggestions for what should go into the completed summary, please let me know in the comments’ area.

Orbo - Does it Self-Sustain?

In the comments’ section of the last blog entry, a poster highlighted a misconception that I suspect may be shared with others. The language used by Steorn is unfortunate and, with so much else that surrounds the subject, it is easy to get the wrong end of the shillelagh. I thought that the point was so important that I would post here and clear it up as best I could.

In the Steorn public forum, the company CEO, Sean McCarthy, has said on a number of occasions that they are working toward a continuous motion device and, if I remember correctly, that they were 80%-90% of the way there. Taken with other comments regarding the stop/start nature of the current devices, it can easily be construed that after all this time, they have not been able to get the thing to self-sustain. While this interpretation is understandable if you have not been working on your next divorce by obsessing on the forums, it is in fact wrong.

The stop/start nature refers to a mechanism that self sustains, but whose movement may be analogous to a watch escarpment or a pendulum or even the piston of an internal combustion engine. The figure of 0.5W/cc refers to a self-sustaining device providing an excess energy that can be drawn as a load of up to that figure. When they said that they were 80%-90% on the road to a continuous motion device, they were referring to a superior design that has a smooth continuous action and that should be simpler to build, be more robust and, according to the man, should give a significant increase in power density.

Rather than being a cause for concern, if you assume as I do that they are telling the truth, this is tremendous news. As in any breakthrough technology, it is likely that early designs will be improved over time and what we are seeing is the tip of an energy revolution that can quite literally take us to the stars. (OK, so can our current technologies, but I couldn’t resist the gushing hyperbole in my current optimistic mood).

Hope this has been useful.

Steorn - Summary 2

The revolution started in Ireland.

In August 2006, Steorn, a small Dublin company, placed a one-page advert in The Economist. In effect, it said:

We have done the impossible. Prove us wrong.

That impossible thing was the production of free energy using a device that sounded very like a perpetual motion machine. If true, it would change the world and shake physics to its core. Frustrated at being ignored by the scientific establishment, Steorn admits that it was a publicity stunt designed to get scientists mad and make them want to prove them wrong. It worked. Thousands applied to test the technology and by December that year, they had 22 who were qualified and motivated to rip the claim apart. They are ‘the jury’. Driven entirely by its members, they would determine the how, where, with-whom, with-what, and how-long of the process. No matter the results, they are bound by contract to report to the public on a date yet to be determined – the so-called, Validation Day. Sean McCarthy, Steorn’s CEO, says that he has no doubt whatsoever what they will find.

Although there are parallels with both recent and historical claims that turned out to be bogus or mistaken, Steorn’s behaviour does not follow the pattern of scam artists gone by. Indeed, it is difficult to come up with a reasonable framework that would account for their actions if one were to start from the common sense position that they are lying or mistaken. Most observers now doubt any theory that has Steorn profiting from an illegal misrepresentation of their claims.

For a start, the company is privately funded and needs no more money to complete the process to its conclusion. It does not seek and will not accept offers of investment until after validation. It will sell nothing and will not enter into commercial agreements regarding future licensing deals. It has vowed that, once commercial operations begin, licensing will be inclusive – the company will not be bought out by a large corporation but will sell its technology to small and large concerns on an equal-access basis. Targeting a narrow market, McCarthy states that they have no wish to profit from those who cannot afford to pay for licences. To that end, the business model is designed to help the world benefit from their technology without raping it as they do so. Running alongside the profitable arm of selling licences to, for instance, the mobile technology sector, will be an ethos, mechanism and structure designed to spread the reality of free energy around the world with as few barriers to entry as possible. Individuals and groups working on humanitarian projects will pay Steorn nothing and a training database will be on-line ready to teach anyone with an interest exactly how to make it happen. A private developers’ club (SPDC), recruited from over 200 members of the global community, is working with Steorn to ensure that this database is ready and that when the doors open a small army of trained ‘seeds’ will help propagate the benefits to as many people in as short a time as possible. As I write this, a pilot project is under way somewhere in Africa to pump water to needy people. This is a symbol, in my opinion, of Steorn’s philosophy and a tiny example of the change that is set to cascade throughout the planet - all this as Steorn’s investors profit by selling their technology to a developed world desperate to free themselves from the tyranny of burning oil.

I hope they become fabulously wealthy.

To be continued…

Guerillas in our Midst

… it's utterly bogus… As all of this pseudo-content made its way online, the dance grew even more complex. At one point when the team thought the tension on the message boards was dissipating, it created … a character playing the role of a… the boards went wild...

…if you're on the side of the equation that believes [the hoax], then it's fascinating, and if you're on the side that gets that it's not real, then it's just great entertainment."...

The extract above is taken from an article in Fastcompany about the marketing firm, Campfire. Campfire is run by the people who turned a $22K unscripted movie with no-name actors into a quarter of a billion dollar take at the box-office. The movie is called The Blair Witch Project. Campfire has taken the lessons it learned and now sells its services to the likes of Sega, Audi and Pontiac. Please read the complete article, it is fascinating. Here are some more little gems; recognize anything?

… expands its audience by drawing in the gullible, the curious, and the merely bored--simultaneously... the audience needs enough backstory and a sufficient flow of detail to keep it guessing...

... To prime the palates of the conspiracy junkies…"what these guys are doing is strategically hiding parts of the story in an interesting and entertaining way, and getting people motivated to figure it out for themselves…

...The virus… catches on only if it forges a community where none existed. The infection has to start small and feed on fascination. "You can't start by thinking about what's going to appeal to the mainstream," says Monello. "You have to ask, 'What's this narrow target market going to embrace and absolutely make its own?'"
To create that kind of bond, Campfire immerses itself in the unspoken etiquettes and motivations of different target communities--Internet anthropology with a commercial twist....

… multiple layers of rabbit holes for people with varying levels of interest: the "divers," who participate minute-by-minute; the "dippers," who casually tune in on the message boards once a week; and the "skimmers," who accidentally read about it while surfing the likes of BoingBoing. Rather than cross its fingers and pray for the audience to pass the tale on, Campfire pushed people along by inventing a "fan" to track the saga on his own Web site, summarizing the story for casual observers. "You let the hard-core audience figure the story out and tell it to each other," Monello explains, "then archive it for people who are following along from the sidelines."...


You may ask yourself why I am posting this story if I am so convinced of Steorn's honesty. Good question. I want to demonstrate that I have not simply swallowed someone else's guff without researching and thinking deeply about the subject. So often, so-called believers are accused of having no idea of science, of unquestioning loyalty to a company that is using them as pawns, of a faith-based predisposition to being conned, of not paying attention, of not understanding the facts or how impossible all of this is, of having a poor grasp of the scientific method or of just being stupid. Some of these people, whose stance I can often otherwise relate to, seem to be stuck in a rut, unable to see that their mantras lose their power when they close their minds or denigrate others in trying to prove a point. Some are unable to recognise that, while scientific proof is the absolute and only end-game that matters, there are a myriad signals that could, if one chooses, be used to make an interim call. It is quite reasonable for someone to reserve their judgement, quite another to assume that this is what everyone should do.

I also want to encourage true vigilance and not simply have people buy into other's preconceptions of belief or scepticism. On either side of the fence, the ultimate proof is some way off and, until we get it, it is very easy to be wrong. What we read about in magazines is usually not the state of the art. Who knows what is happening now and where?

However, for me, the circumstantial evidence is so strong and the people that make up Steorn are so believable, that I intend to give them the benefit of the doubt while keeping an open mind (a truly open mind) to other possibilities. Thus, until I know otherwise, I will run with my conclusion that Steorn is going to change the world. If I had money, I'd bet on it.

The Great Stern Scam

There are a hundred good reasons to doubt Steorn’s claims. I’ve laid my stall out in an effort to explain why I jumped the fence into the believers’ side – at least in relation to the existence of their technology. A good friend of mine, worried about my sanity, gave me a book to read called, Selling Hitler (about a bogus set of Hitler diaries). I would recommend it to anyone. It shows how intelligent people can be duped and how ‘group think’ and wishful dreaming can cause the most ridiculous scams to gain credibility. In the case of the diaries, one of Germany’s most solid newspapers was caught out and lost millions over a period of more than a year. The diaries were obvious fakes but a number of silly errors during authentication let them pass muster. It was not lost on me that the name of this robust periodical was called, Stern. If you ever think that the Steorn phenomenon is just too big or too detailed to be a scam, then reading The Hitler Diaries will be an education indeed.

This blog is destined to be forward looking, but I think it is important that you make up your own mind with your eyes wide open and these early entries are designed to set the scene. Despite recognising the fallibility we all share with the rest of the human race, I still believe that Steorn is real. Tomorrow I will link to another incredible story that should sound a warning shot across all our bows. And yet, I continue to believe.

We need to be self-critical and guard against wishful thinking. Even so, I hope in pointing out the impossibility of Steorn’s claims, by drawing parallels with historical and grand manipulators, you will recognise the strength of my belief in Steorn. Despite it all, I am willing to risk my personal credibility and that of my writing (and therefore future) on the fact that Sean McCarthy and Steorn are telling the truth.

I can see my friend now, shaking his head in wonder.

Summary 1

As I write the summary document I promised you, I will post my interpretation of the details surrounding Steorn’s claims:

First, we have the broad claim (in my words):

Steorn has a machine that is able to drive a load continuously without external power and with no apparent degradation of its constituent parts. Within normal limits of mechanical reliability, the machine will run for the useful life of the product it powers, without any need for fuel. This means that from the day you buy a phone or a laptop you will never have to plug it in. From the day you sit in your new car to the day you scrap it, you will never have to fill it with fuel.

In particular:

• The machine outputs mechanical energy.
• It is built from readily available materials and works using a particular and very specific effect of magnetism.
• At present, the motion is driven by permanent magnets.
• It is a simple matter to attach the output to a generator to produce electricity.
• It is likely that, at some point in the future, where the desired output is electrical, the generator coils will be incorporated into the machine itself.
• They have made a small range of prototypes to check scalability (3, I think)
• From a device the size of your fingernail to one that could power a car, the technology has been shown to be linearly scalable.
• The first-generation implementation has an energy density of around 0.5 Watts/cc
• It is likely that this energy density will rise in subsequent generations of the technology.
• Steorn intends to target the mobile market as it is uniquely able to bring products to mass market quickly.
• The cost of manufacturing a module that fits in your laptop or phone will be commensurate with the cost of a modern battery pack you use now. It will not, however, need to be recharged.
• While the company makes money for its shareholders in the developed world, it has structured its business model to maximise the benefits to the planet and its people as a whole.
• After placing an advert in The Economist in August last year, they attracted thousands of applications to test their claims.
• They selected 22 scientists from several of the world's leading academic/scientific institutions to form ‘The Jury’
• The company is privately funded and has a healthy balance. They do not need and will not accept offers of investment. Neither will they sell anything until the jury report their findings.
• Steorn does not manufacture products, it merely licences its intellectual property.
• It has a manufacturing partner that will make products to Steorn’s specifications. This partner will make a significant number of demonstration machines that it intends to sell over the net after the jury validates their claims. This machine is simply another form of validation – one that thousands of people around the world will have sitting on their desks proving to us all that their claims are backed up by more than words.

I will continue to post extracts, as I draw up the summary.

Evil or Saviour

A few months ago, I stood with a pint of Guinness in my hand, talking to Sean McCarthy of Steorn. We were in Dublin and he looked at me bemused and said something to the effect, how can you believe us when you’ve seen no evidence? At various times and in so many words he has repeated that sentiment to others. I’ve never liked doing what I was told and I have no intention of starting now. It makes absolute sense to be sceptical of their claims, but there is also a lot of confusion out there stirred, in part, by Steorn's attack on science. With blood boiling , scientists and engineers talk about the scientific method and rage against the company's approach to launching their product. They see it as a perversion of the scientific method, I see it as good marketing. So, to clarify what I believe at this point in time:

Steorn has a machine that can produce free energy. It can be manufactured at reasonable cost. The energy density is useful and the technology has the power to change the world.

Notice that I say nothing about perpetual motion or the Laws of Thermodynamics or Conservation of Energy. The question of where the energy comes from could, when answered, change the world again, but for now these areas confuse the subject. When I say I believe Steorn, I’m not saying that I agree with their conjecture. They are not scientists, they are engineers. They say they have built a machine that could power a Porsche and fit in the engine compartment. You cannot mistake such a thing. There is no room for error. They have either done what they say or they are lying. It was this realisation that formed my frame of reference when trying to figure out the truth of it all.

Motivation

Whatever they’re up to it is costing them money. The expensive advert, the premises in Docklands Park, the staff, the admin, websites, software, marketing and security costs, all constitute serious and ongoing expenditure. SPDC and jury costs are significant and I estimate them to be around one million Euros. Over the past few years they have been funded by private investors to the tune of fourteen million Euros.

The risks they are taking are enormous. As an engineering firm, their credibility is on the line. I have met Sean’s wife, people all around the world know their names and some idiots have even posted his address on the net for all to see. You do not put you and your family on the line like that unless you are deranged, an uncaring and evil trickster, or you are telling the truth.

It’s reasonably safe to say that the motivation behind this is (at least, partially) money. Steorn has a responsibility to investors. When the story broke last year, many people argued that it had to be a scam. Most have moved away from that position now and, for those still unwilling to make the leap across the fence to the believers’ side, many wonder if it is a strange social experiment, a viral campaign for something all together different, or a weird art project where money is no object.

The reason I don’t go along with this is that McCarthy and the other Steorn employees would have to be incredible actors to pull this thing off in the way they have. Their public face is consistent and laudable. It’s not simply that they would have to be a collection of drama-trained engineers, but that they would also have to be incredibly evil to do what they are doing if they were not telling the truth.

Let’s put that statement in context. Steorn has publicly stated that it is building a water pump in Africa as part of a humanitarian drive to help those less fortunate than us. The company has set up the SPDC where over 250 members of the public are investing a lot of their time in the hope that they are working on a project with a strong moral imperative at its core. Many members believe that Steorn has the power, the will and the care to give water to the thirsty, irrigate deserts, desalinate seawater, feed the poor, stop global warming, turn oil nations into nations, shift trillions of dollars from destructive programs to constructive ones, level the playing field for third world countries so that they can jump directly to the 21^st century without having to pass through the 20^th to get there - and much, much more.

Sometime in July, the company will demo their technology to the public in London. It will run for ten days without external power and, they say, it will demonstrate a working machine based on their claims. Apart from members of the public being able to view the machine in person, millions of people around the world will be able to see it through a web-cam on the net.

These statements are so specific that there is no defence later in saying it was all a joke and that no harm was done. I have personally moved countries to be part of this incredible journey (albeit independently) and there are people planning to fly across the world to see the demo in July.

So, while I, and many others, have very specific reasons and strong circumstantial evidence that they are on the level, my early conversion came down to this:

Do I believe that these people are evil, or do I think they are telling the truth? In November last year, I jumped on a plane to attend a forum party in Dublin. I met the main players in this game and I can tell you that these people are genuine, honest, and know what they are talking about. To me these simple observations have enormous implications and, as I watch McCarthy & Co gear themselves to change the world, I cannot help but wonder at our fortune that it is them and not some Bill Gates wannabe who are driving this juggernaut onto the stage. The magnitude and importance of this statement will become obvious to all in the coming year.

Over the next week, I will draw up a summary of evidence and provide an introduction to Steorn that newcomers can use to bring themselves up to speed. I will make this a separate document that you can access at any time from a link on the right. Before I sign off, however, I should emphasise that the London demo is unlikely to kill the controversy surrounding Steorn’s claims. They will not provide proof or show the blueprint of the design. Many watchers will suspect some sort of trick. The company knows this and continues to emphasise that the only proof that matters is the one that will come from the team of 22 independent scientists who are, right now, examining their technology with complete freedom and with great care. Nevertheless, if this is not some sort of mirage, the demo in London will be a turning point for humanity whether it knows it or not.

A Mindset

So many discussions on Steorn deteriorate into a bun fight between believers and sceptics. Passions run high and the same old invectives fly at each other like virtual ammo in a networked game. For me, the argument is tired and will be answered soon enough by Steorn. That said, in following my thoughts, you deserve to know why I’m off the fence and exactly what it is that I believe. I’ll try to explain this over the next couple of entries and, in this post, I’ll set the scene on the mindset I’ve approached the subject with. In the next entry, I’ll summarise some of the facts that caused me to jump the fence and then we can get on to the forward looking stuff about what it all means.

When I was a kid, I was taken in by a well-known author who claimed to have evidence that aliens had visited us in the past and that they had given our ancestors’ skills such as the ability to perform brain surgery. I was obsessed. He’d written a book and I’d read it, so it had to be true. When I saw him admit (on TV) to fabricating evidence, I was devastated. I felt stupid and vowed never to be duped again. So started a life-long journey as a born-again sceptic. I was the guy to debunk any crazy claim. Ghosts, fabled monsters, religious cults – all were fair game. I wanted to believe in crazy things just like everyone else, but the truth is that the real world is crazy and exciting enough. There was simply no need to believe in fairy tales – the universe has it all.

And yet, here I am – a free energy believer.

The scientific method is one of man’s greatest achievements. It steers the practitioner from the tendency to see what he wants to see and not what is there. It kills subjectivity and replaces it with meticulous measurement and solid fact. Good scientists know that our view of the world is not the absolute truth. It is a mere snapshot of the best picture we’ve got so far. They look forward to the day when that view is shattered and another veil falls from our eyes. In recalling some of these shifts in viewpoint, it is easy to convince ourselves that scientists are myopic and that somehow, because they have made mistakes in the past, that they must be wrong this time. We have moved from a flat Earth to GPS, from Heavenly Light twinkling through the curtain of night to Hubble’s images of a billion galaxies, and from witchdoctor and voodoo to invisible body-snatchers determined to kill us all. Each advance is often more fantastic than the fable it destroys, but this is no excuse for lazy thinking. It would be folly to replace the scientific method that gave us these truths with wishful dreams. The notion that science is flawed because it doesn’t and can’t know everything is absurd. We need to guard against sensationalism, stamp on the need to inflate our own egos by attacking those more knowledgeable than ourselves - twisting their successes to failures. There are lessons, sure. But beware. The fact that scientists have being spectacularly wrong in the past is not proof of failure but proof of success. It lends nothing to the truth or otherwise of our own unsubstantiated dreams. An open mind can also be an empty one.

So, what about this free energy thing? It seems curious to me that we exist in a vat teeming with energy, but we’re barred from using all but the outer froth to heat our homes and power our lives. The Earth spins, it flies around the sun, screams through the galaxy and careers around the universe faster than The Magic Roundabout on speed. Stars explode, galaxies collide, electrons perpetually twirl and energy is created and destroyed in the vacuum that exists in the interstitial lattice framing everything we see. Every year, scientists discover impossible things are real and it is no longer good enough to say that the truth as we know it is the only absolute worth talking about. Someday soon, we will discover a way to harness enough of this energy to change everything. Why not now?

Having laid out my stall and given you an idea of where I’m coming from, my next entry will try to explain why I have jumped the fence and why I believe that Steorn has what it takes to impact our lives on a scale that some equate to Fire 2.0.

Welcome

In a troubled world, good news is often ignored or trampled underfoot by sceptics who scream it's too good to be true. So goes the cry to Steorn.

A small Dublin company, Steorn is going to change the world. That is my prediction. If I am wrong then I eat a little crow and if I'm right, well, the world changes. My embarrassment is nothing - it is not going to happen.

I'm Paul Story; writer and self-confessed optimist. I am also a Steorn Private Development Club (SPDC) member.

In August last year, I visited Steorn's website to find out why someone would pay for a full page advert in the Economist to promote something that was obvious nonsense. They said they could power a car with no fuel, free us from household wires, tear down the power grid, humble oil barons, reduce global warming and generally save the planet. OK, the words are mine, but the implications of their claims were that profound and had to be utter nonsense.

The problem was, the more I knew, the less I understood. Nothing made sense until I did a crazy thing. I asked myself the question, what if? What if they were telling the truth? As soon as I did this, all the nonsense started to make sense - everything that is except the claim itself. That was still crazy. But, what if?

Over time, I will link to sites that give a fair and balanced view. They are well worth visiting if you want to get a complete picture of the mystery of Steorn. Fair and balanced does not mean that all comments in these blogs are reasonable and the current trend is one of scepticism. Fair enough. This blog will be different. It is my personal view and it is optimistic.

As yet, I do not have the magic formula, but as a member of the SPDC I have learned things that bolster my faith in the people behind Steorn. I am not their mouthpiece and I do not answer to them. However, I do believe them. This blog is an attempt to provide a point of view that seems rare among the clamour and vitriol that dominates discussions on the topic. It takes the, what if, and runs with it.

I do not pretend to be an expert on energy; my physics degree is relegated to informing my fiction. However, I have been following the story of Steorn closely from August last year and promise to write honestly as I see it. Over the coming months we will all discover the truth of it, meanwhile this blog will be my notepad to the world. I will present forward-looking ideas and I will attempt to deliver an independent view that is coherent and informative. If you think this view would be useful to you, subscribe to the newsletter (or the rss feed) and each entry will be delivered to your mailbox without you having to lift a finger. The address will stay with me and your privacy is assured.

The world is about to change. Hold on tight.