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Monday August 14, 2006

Subject: Letter from England

Jerry, I'm holding my judgment about last week's events until I see the long-term outcome, but I do have some comments at this point: it's clear that al Qaeda operations in Europe are taking longer to plan and are requiring more assets, especially local assets, for less outcome. That's making it harder for them to maintain operational security, so they're losing ground.

Although I'm hoping al Qaeda is getting tired of playing grab-ass with real professionals and is ready to redirect their attacks at the local bean field, I'm worried about where that bean field might be located. Isn't it about time America was doing something serious to end the al Qaeda threat? As it stands, they're getting multiple swings at the ball, and anyone can hit a home run from time to time. So far America has been protected by its oceans, and hasn't been engaged seriously since 9/11, but if al Qaeda can figure out some way of getting access to North America, I have no confidence in America's ability to stop a real attack.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4788101.stm> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4787733.stm>  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4783215.stm>  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4787855.stm>  <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2310645,00.html>  <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2310625,00.html>  <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2310626,00.html>  <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2310298,00.html>  <http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1218895.ece>  <http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1218874.ece>  <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1843667,00.html>  <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1843605,00.html>  <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1843666,00.html>  <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1843523,00.html

The Telegraph <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/>  has a story about the involvement of Islamic university students in these operations. My priest expressed some concern today about the possibility that some of ours might be involved. I doubt it, though. I stay in touch with them closely enough to be invited to their parties and weddings, and I haven't heard anything.

-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information Systems Security, University of Sunderland. <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw>  Weblog at: <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php>

The Bush Doctrine was supposedly to strike first; the problem is, at whom do you strike?

We could have bought an awful lot of special forces and intelligence operations for $300 Billion, with a hundred 1000 Megawatt fission reactors thrown into the bargain. Would that have made more sense than the Iraqi invasion?

==================

Subject: Media Thoughtfulness

Thoughtful of the media to tell the world about acetone peroxide, wasn't it Dr. Pournelle?

Now anyone can easily go to

http://www.roguesci.org/megalomania/explo/acetoneperoxide.html 

and find out just how to make it, when most wouldn't have known about it otherwise.

Charles Brumbelow

I doubt they told them much they didn't know. I considered making that stuff in high school, and opted to make Nitroglycerine instead as being safer. If I could figure out how to make it in the 1940's, I suspect it's not much of a secret today.

==

Subject: Playing to the camera 

Playing to the camera?

Dr. Pournelle,

Here is a link to some purported Lebanese propaganda. The video was supposedly shown on German TV. Makes you wonder about the number of people who take all their news from TV.

I, unfortunately, have no verification of this video but it certainly looks compromising.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vPAkc5CLgc

Terry

==========

Subject: How to develop sensible polls 

There are a lot of us -- probably more than the number who are rabidly ant-Bush and possibly a majority -- who are not enamored of every move the Administration makes (though we don't have a consensus on what might be done better) but who disagree even more bitterly with the appeasement crowd.

Is there any way we can get the pollsters to develop polls with seriously non-binary decision sets?

JW

Assumes a fact not in evidence: that the pollsters want an honest poll and have no agenda of their own.

But I will agree, properly constructed polls would be useful.

==============

Aliville.

http://politicsofcp.blogspot.com/2006/08/
aliville-another-islamist-village-in.html

-- Roland Dobbins

Is comment needed?

================

Subject: Regarding TSA and screening...

You said:

"What I do not expect is that the threat will come from American Christians, Jews, WASPS, retired generals..."

Only because the old high school debater in me simply loves to play Devil's Advocate, I must note via a brief knee jerk that Mr. McVeigh was a white, ex-military, American citizen. Can't recall at the moment if he also professed to being Christian...

Grin.

Seriously, however, even though I truly attempt to hold views that would be considered reasonably liberal with respect to many social issues, I cannot disagree with your assessment that the current security situation is an utter mess and despite (or perhaps in spite of) the political incorrectness really must be fine-tuned to the exigencies imposed by current events. Like Mr. Dodd, I have taken to long road trips for vacations over the last two to three years, and honestly I think the entire family has been more relaxed overall in our travels as a result.

There are many things that could be done to implement an acceptable level of security without forcing lipstick and laptops into the cargo holds. Similarly, there are many things that could be done from the standpoint of U.S. foreign policy to ameliorate many of the conditions that are spawning thousands of disaffected young men who fall for memes that should have been shelved several centuries ago. Note that none of the practical plans will result in a one-hundred-percent guarantee of safety, but then freedom always tends to be somewhat messy.

What I worry about more than anything is that (a) most of our citizens appear to not have the wherewithal to confront the delicate decisions and trade-offs that really need to be made, and (b) most of our leaders, for any number of ideological, political, or financial reasons, appear quite unwilling to do the same.

-dean

Dean Riddlebarger

McVeigh was after government targets, and not terror targets. He was more competent than many of the others, but not enough so to get away with it.

We can make it a bit more difficult for those who want to bring down an airplane and do not mind being killed in the process. We can never prevent it entirely. On the other hand, you are safer in the airplane than in the car headed there. And were I a terrorist I would find the enormous lines at security check points very tempting.

=================

Subject: we can build a democracy in Iraq

It's human nature to accept the familiar without question. It's human nature to avoid examining one's own beliefs closely. In order to build a democracy in Iraq, we have to be there forcibly upholding a democracy for at least two generations (i.e., long enough for the majority of the population to have been born and raised in the democracy). Britain managed to create a democracy in India (that was a little shy of 200 years). Please note that I do not suggest that Iraq would stay in one piece even if the U.S. did not leave for two generations. The ethnic and sectarian differences make it highly likely that it would break apart (see India and Pakistan). However, the new states would stand a chance of being democracies. Britain has more experience in successfully building democratic countries than the rest of the world put together. You'd think that the current administration would have looked at the history of the British Empire as a possible example of how to go about the task of nation building. However, based on the conduct of the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, I do not see much evidence that the administration took any lessons from the history of the British Empire. Of course, if we followed Britain's example, it would be very hard to convincingly argue that the U.S. is not an empire.

Rene Daley

I am not convinced that many in control have much sense of history at all.

==========

Subject: The Egregious Frum ... and Lowry

The neocon memory is remarkably short. Here is a recent essay by Rich Lowry that doesn't even suggest NR and its neocons were major boosters of the Iraq Attack.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTExNmE3
OTJhOGEwNzIxMzIzZjVhZmE1MzNlODY1YmI= 

In reading it, one would suspect that the entire plan sprang complete from the forehead of our American Zeus: it is "Bush's plan" and "Bush's misunderstanding" and "Bush's belief".

Lowry comes across as a mere spectator, saddened that Bush, in his evangelical zeal, failed to see the obvious: the Arabs cannot be Democratized.

L

Which is why the Freeman article is important.

============

Subject: Windmills as weapons,

Jerry

Finally, someone has found a situation where sun- and wind-power makes sense:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlog/articles/20060813.aspx 

Of course, it has to do with the extreme expense of fuel delivered to these places. It is basically the old lesson: "God bless the child what has his own." Which then of course brings us back to energy independence.

Ed

==============

Subject: Citizenship for foreigners serving with the US armed forces

Dr Pournelle

Recently you commented that US citizenship should be made available to foreigners after 20 years of service with US armed forces.

Under current law, foreigners may apply for citizenship after 3 years of military service. Foreigners take the same oath as citizens: To support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

By treaty, Filipinos may serve with US armed forces without risking their citizenship.

Respectfully h lynn keith

I understand we have such arrangements, and I really haven't thought too much about the implications. Rome chose to make career soldiers citizens on retirement (or invaliding out) which was what I was thinking of, but of course I know that the US has a different arrangement.

I would myself recruit the Constabulary from candidate citizens; but confine the actual army and Marines to citizens. It would take pages to justify that, but I draw largely on Machiavelli.

=============

'Hostile Intent'.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11555179
3796934752-2hgveyRtDDtssKozVPmg6RAAa_w_
20070813.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

--- Roland Dobbins

And indeed this kind of security makes more sense than the searches.

===============

Subject: On another note from view

This paragraph should be enough for context: "In a word: Fred has it right. The Administration when it went into Iraq had no freaking idea of how human beings work. What Fred doesn't understand is that a good half of the American populace has been taught political principles and citizenship by professors and high school teachers who have no freaking idea of how human beings work, or at least have none when it comes to their political preferences and policies."

I am not sure very many people who are not Mohammedan understand that human beings do not all work the same. This goes for Jacobins as well as paleocons as well as anyone else. The quoted paragraph suggests some special understanding of how people work. Yet I've not noticed yet that there is an understanding that we're trying to fight people who don't give a damn if they die as a result of their actions and indeed think their actions are going to get them a short path to Heaven. They do not care if large numbers of their fellow Mohammedans die with them because "Allah will know his own." They get a short pass into Heaven.

I submit that this is a VERY significant difference between Mohammedans and those of almost any other religion in the world or no religion at all.

I submit that they do not respond to the stimuli of the modern world the same as you or I might respond.

They hurt and bleed when cut. But their reaction is that hurt incurred fighting the infidel greases their path to heaven so it's welcomed rather than shunned.

If you examine the profiles of the people involved in the British plot you'll notice that it is not the ethnics of the situation that matter. It is the religion. Indeed, most "Arabs" or "Rag Heads" or pejorative du jour are Mohammedans. However, it is a serious lapse if we do not pay attention to "who is Mohammedan" as much as "who is 'du jour'". As a case in point note that Abdul Waheed was formerly Don Stewart-White six months ago. He grew up as the son of a Conservative Party official. And he has a sister who is a supermodel. He also left a martyrdom video. He is VERY positively not Arab, Persian, or anything other than British turned Mohammedan and astoundingly quickly radicalized. See this site for details courtesy of Ace: http://ace.mu.nu/archives/190401.php 

Given what it appears we are facing are we going to be able to combat this evil using "mere" "Western" tools? Are our laws and ethics going to allow us to successfully combat this religion of thuggery, at least in the hands of radical mullahs who teach the Koran as it is written without "interpretation?"

(I've long been suggesting friends visit this site and read as long as your stomach can take it. http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/  I've read about as much as I can stand, the first few chapters and a large pieces of the rest of the book. It gets grimmer the further into it you get. Jerry, if you remember a Lutheran friend of ours from BIX, "vanhorn", his daughter married a Mohammedan and converted. He's been reading it, too. And he is starting to sound more like me than the Van of old.)

(And note: I use Mohammedan very specifically, not with any intended insult. They are followers of the teachings Mohammed transcribed. They insist on being called "Muslim". That word simply means "submissive". And I submit that I know Christians, good gentle Christians, who are at least as submissive to God as any Mohammedan is to Allah. And given the derivation of the Mohammedan religion God and Allah are two different designations for the same entity.)

{^_^} Joanne Dow

==

Subject: We've lost to Islam, 

No bare shoulders for passports in England because they might offend? Hello?

Sue

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/14/npassport14.xml 

("offensive" picture at link above)

Passport photograph of girl's bare shoulders rejected 'as it may offend' By Paul Stokes (Filed: 14/08/2006)

A five-year-old girl's passport application was rejected because her photograph showed her bare shoulders.

Hannah Edwards's mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country.

The photograph was taken at a photo-booth at a local post office for a family trip to the south of France.

Because of the way the camera was set up, the picture came out showing Hannah's shoulders.

The family had it signed and presented it at a post office with the completed form but were told that it would not be accepted by the Passport Office.

A woman behind the counter informed them that she was aware of at least two other cases where applications had been rejected because a person's shoulders were not covered.<snip>

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide. And John Stuart Mill revolves in his grave.

==========

Subject: Media fraud expose' video 

Dr. Pournelle,

You really need to see this. It's a news report exposing a large number of outright fradulent manipulation of images coming from Lebanon.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/209315/photo_fraud_changes_war_perceptions/ 

This is the best reporting on this I've seen, pointing out about a dozen fraudulent photos and stories.

Sean

This is a critical part of the war.

==================

On another subject from another conference:

Subject: Harvard Study Finds Advantages for Private-School Students

On 8/14/06 12:46 PM, "Joel" wrote:

> My private high school had a huge advantage in test scores over the
> public high schools in the area. This huge advantage came down to one
> simple teaching method: an entrance exam. Strangely, none of the public
> schools had one.

In Japan, since compulsory education is only thru middle school, **all** high schools have entrance exams. There is a food chain of high schools for those who don't have the horsepower for the best. However, vocational high schools are pretty well funded.

Steve

Note that last. Vocational schools teach skills. For many skills are the proper form of learning. Not all students need world class college preparation education. This is not Lake Woebegon. Half of the students are below average. Half of the students are below average. Half of the students are below average.

=========================

 

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Tuesday,  August 15, 2006

Begin with mail concerning the Lebanese War and Cease Fire:

RE: Monday Mail

You own it – if you’ve turned it into Trinitite.

This situation might come to that yet.

Israel made many mistakes here. Having decided to fight back, they should have really fought back – and leveled, preferably by conventional means, everything that would have made southern Lebanon habitable. No inhabitants, no human shield and anyone in that area is fair game, and no rockets fly.

But they didn’t. We’ll all be paying for that by and by. Including all of Islam, after the first mushroom cloud rises somewhere in the West.

Regarding the revelation of the explosive recipe; so what? Much better recipes, including Sarin, are floating around on the Net. And it was a common observation, when I was studying chemistry in the late 70s, that if you couldn’t blast open the building you were sitting in you were a pretty poor chemist.

As it happens, I was creating, for fun, thermite when I was 15.

Regards,

Ian Campbell

One view. Scorched earth in Southern Lebanon.

==

Why Israel Lost.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/Article.aspx?id=081406G

- Roland Dobbins 

Which lays out a number of reasons for the conclusion; and refers to

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/lessons
_so_far_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters.htm

August 13, 2006 -- ISRAEL'S war against the Middle East's first true terrorist army provides tough military and strategic lessons - old, new, and all too often disheartening. Israel's been winning on the ground. And still losing the war.

This bitter conflict - in which most casualties on both sides of the border are civilians - raises troubling questions, too. Some are identical to those confronting us in Iraq. Many have troubling answers. Others have no real answers at all.

The elementary fact - which far too many in the West deny - is that our civilization has been forced into a defensive war to the death with fanatical strains of Islam - both Shi'a and Sunni. We may be on the offensive militarily, but we did not start this war - and it's all one war, from 9/11's Ground Zero, through Lebanon and Iraq, and on to Afghanistan.

which Joel Rosenberg also referenced in the note I quoted yesterday. Now of course

 This shouldn't surprise anyone.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/15/wmid15.xml 

Quote from the piece. ---------- In a garden next to a junction used as an outpost by Hizbollah lay eight Kornet anti-tank rockets, described by Brig Mickey Edelstein, the commander of the Nahal troops who took Ghandouriyeh, as "some of the best in the world".

Written underneath a contract number on each casing were the words: "Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia."

John

and probably doesn't.

For another view:

Subject: Hezbollah won? 

So everyone agrees that Hezbollah won. Just how dumb is the Arab street? Do they huddle in the bazaars and relish the victory of Hezbollah? Do they do this in Lebanon? In the end, Hezbollah did Israel a small hurt, and Lebanon got a lot of damage to their country as well as their prospects of future stability. And who exactly is responsible for unleashing the military might of the Israelis?

When the smoke clears, and the Lebanese look at their damaged buildings, they will hate Israel, but the next morning will they love Hezbollah? Will Hezbollah then get money from Iran, like they got the missiles they fired at Israel, and rebuild the towns and cities that the Israelis destroyed. Will the international community want to send aid to rebuild Lebanon with the prospect of Hezbollah doing something incredibly stupid again and the Israelis breaking things again? The war may have set back relations between Israel and its neighbors; it certainly made its neighbors more wary.

But exactly how does this make Hezbollah a hero in Jordan or Egypt, where relations with the Israelis are more pacific? Someone explain what the long term benefits to Hezbollah are when viewed by any neighbor who wants peace and good trade. What does the Lebanese civilian do when Hezbollah again moves in a rocket launcher next door?

Charles Simkins

My guess is that the civilian cheers. The cheer may be a bit forced, but the alternative would be worse. Hizbollah won because it will continue to exist, continue to patrol the streets, continue to be the de facto government of much of Lebanon; and the cost to Hizbollah was low. A thousand martyrs is a low price to them.

An alternate plan

 What would happen if an non-state entity systematically assassinated every Islamofascist leader over 35?

Would that send the right message? If their leaders cried “Uncle”, would the true believers turn on their leaders out of shame and humiliation over the revelation that their religion is nothing but a death cult—unless as a leader of same you’re old enough to be comfortable in your present living circumstances as an “Imam”? But what entity would have the courage to do so?

Best regards,
Jim Floyd
Woodinville, WA

And on that subject:

 Letters of marque and reprisal in the modern world

Dr Pournelle

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to " grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water".

In 1856 the major European powers entered into a treaty that prohibited further issuance of letters of marque and reprisal. (The terms "marque" and "reprisal" are used in their archaic sense: "marque" being an old French term for border and meaning empowered to cross borders; "reprisal" meaning to take prizes.) The United States never signed the treaty but abandoned the practice anyway.

Recently there have been some aborted attempts in Congress to revive the practice against terrorists. I say, "Why not?" Let private citizens expend their funds and efforts to seize terrorist funds. Write the law and command the administering agency to promulgate implementing regulations iteratively. Based on history, I am persuaded that private parties can adapt to changing conditions much, much more quickly than gov't bureaucracies.

Respectfully
h lynn keith

So that the property of terrorists becomes lawful prizes for those who can take them. Privateers...

Poul Anderson made some use of this in his novel Star Fox

George Will weighs in:

Will: The Triumph of Unrealism.

from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081401163.html

-----

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

-  Roland Dobbins

As I have said before, $300 Billion Dollars buys a lot of intelligence, energy sources, mass migration and law enforcement, border security...

Of course it is all part of a war in another theater:

In the Post Vietnam era today's wars are fought as much in the media as on the battlefield. Those who study such things call it "Asymmetrical Warfare." The Western nation states are NOT doing well in this media war. Here are two examples:

1. Why don't they connect the dots? The attacks in the US are not unrelated, but are part of Islamic Fascism. The most recent attack was right here in the Pacific NW. See:

The Myth Of The Lone Gunman - Cinnamon Stillwell Wednesday, August 9, 2006

"Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the claim has often been made that no further acts of terrorism have occurred on U.S. soil. But anyone following the news closely knows better...." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/08/09/cstillwell.DTL 

2. Why isn't false media reporting exposed by the media itself? An example was the recent conflict in Lebanon. Too many media reports have been stage managed. The work isn't up to Hollywood standards, but the Media is strangely silent about obvious fraud by their colleagues. See: Subject: Photo Fraud in Lebanon http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp 

I know many reporters are honest, professional, and hard working, and I welcome comments by my friends in the media. To me, neither political party has done well at preventing or containing Islamic Fascism. For ten years, we did nothing, and that didn't work. For five years, we've been aggressive, and that's not worked very well either. I welcome a public dialog that shapes better answers and it disturbs me that distorted and false pictures are being constantly reported to misshape world opinion. What am I missing here?

Best,

John D. Trudel

And

Subject: RE: What would happen if an non-state entity systematically assassinated every Islamofascist leader over 35?

Jerry,

I wrote my earlier message for shock value.

Israel “lost” in Lebanon in the eyes of the press because its victory cannot be called decisive. Wars cannot be fought using “Politically Correct” rules. Unless we can stomach inflicting multiple Dresden-like attacks--multiple torchings similar to that inflicted on Tokyo--we cannot expect our enemies to behave as though they are utterly defeated. I cannot help but think that the elders of Islam are entirely content sending their youth to fight and die while they luxuriate in silks and fineries of all sorts paid for by western treasure for oil. To achieve victory, we must exact a punishment that shows the Islamofascist leadership and populace that their present course has a heavy price—heavier than Israel has exacted, a price that should be exacted from Tunis to the Philippines, with a suspension of habeas corpus and infinite imprisonment for Islamofascists wherever they are found around the world—something that shows the Islamofascists that the battle is truly joined, and that their jihad cannot be won against 21st century civilization and all its terrible might.

I doubt our leaders in this moment. I wish for the second coming of the equal of Churchill, with his wisdom, his courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and his ability to rally the people against the howls of the defeatists and the appeasers. We cannot pull our heads in, like 300 million turtles, and hope for the best. Build the reactors, pilot the coal gasification plants, drill in the US in any promising areas; and yes, let the aftermath be that the lovers of the 7th century are left to their desert hovels, impotent in their inability to build a single useful thing except a vessel of death—and especially let there be no doubt in their minds that the words “Don’t tread on me.” still ring true now as then.

When Churchill sat thinking of the breadth of Nazi power as Hitler stood on the outskirts of Stalingrad and the shores of France, of imperial Japan poised to overcome China, of the advances of the Afrika Corps and Italy in North Africa and even the conquest of Norway and Finland, he must have wondered if enough power could be mustered to defeat all the evil in the world. We don’t have to wonder; we have the power. We must decide whether we lack the will or not.

Best regards,

Jim Floyd

You all may recall that I advocated monuments after 9/11: in every city where they danced in the streets in joy, we create in the central part of the city an area of rubble the size and shape of Ground Zero. And keep it that way: attempts to rebuild will be met with bouncing rubble. I was told that was too severe and heartless. It almost certainly would have been insufficient, but coupled with border security and steps toward energy independence would it have been at least as effective in keeping the US safe as what we have done?

As a response to the kidnapping of two civilians, the Israeli actions of destroying civil society in Lebanon and ending the Cedar Revolution was disproportionately severe; as an action to end Hizbollah's domination of Lebanon, it was too small; and showed that a few hundred casualties is too high a price. If Israel had acted this way in the formation wars, there would be no Israel.

That is my view. I wish Israel well. I spent too little time in the company of then President Weizmann, but we agreed on many matters. I see few like him in the current leadership.

============

Modern Science Fiction: Cyberpunk

The scarlet 'I'.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/14/news/korea.php

- Roland Dobbins 

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well-informed just to be undecided about them.

-- Laurence J. Peter

==

More science fiction in reality:

Subject: The Neighborhood War Zone, 

Jerry

This piece makes me re-think some of my long-held beliefs:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/08/11/AR2006081101333_pf.html  

Robert Heinlein posited a society of people who were civilized because they were armed in "Beyond this Horizon" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743435613/). It certainly sounded good. People were polite because if they were not, they would have to defend their actions with their lives.

But what happens when the less-civilized people in our society take up this aspect of culture? They are armed, and ready to avenge any slight with a bullet in the back, not a face-to-face duel.

"The Marching Morons" was scary enough. But The Marching Morons with guns? Brrr.

Ed

Barbarians at the gates are frightening, but in today's world the barbarians are within the gates. We have often thought that "an armed society is a polite society", but it depends on the society, doesn't it? Can civilization survive barbarians within the gates? Of course it will, but at what cost? We may be sure a Caesar will arise. But who will follow him? Augustus? And who will follow Augustus?

Someone long ago said, Freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free.

============

Active Security and Security Theater:

Subject: Bruce Schneier's Comments 

<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/terrorism_secur.html>

He discusses the difference between effective security and security theater. As long as we rely on security theater, we'll be vulnerable to the first terrorist thinking outside *our* box.

-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information Systems Security, University of Sunderland. <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw> Weblog at: <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php>

As any fool can plainly see...

=============

And now for something completely different:

Subject: David Copperfield says he's found Fountain of Youth - Yahoo! News

Stay tuned for more Bahama Weirdness!

Petronius

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060815/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_copperfield

And meanwhile he owns the islands...

============

Subject:  BBC: "Crime spike hits Katrina evacuees"

One has to admire the commitment to political correctness that leads to such deceptive writing.

Jim

I hope my home town has learned its lesson and the next time levees break in New Orleans we will have the Texas National Guard seal the border between Texas and Louisiana.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4795899.stm 

BBC NEWS

Crime spike hits Katrina evacuees By Nick Miles BBC News, Washington

Police records from Houston in Texas suggest that evacuees from Hurricane Katrina are increasingly at risk of being involved in violent crime.

One in five of the murders in the city over the last year involved an evacuee as either the suspect or victim.

There was also a marked increase in the overall number of killings.

Almost a year since the hurricane hit New Orleans, hundreds of thousands of people are still living in temporary housing across the United States.

The figures are striking. Murder rates in Houston are up by almost 20% in a year.

A disproportionate number of them involve people who fled Hurricane Katrina.

Houston received the bulk of those rescued after the flooding in New Orleans - 150,000 of them.<snip>

Astonishing. Take 150,000 people from the most corrupt and least law abiding city in the country, move them elsewhere, and you expect?

============

Subject: ] BBC: Germany hits new birth rate low

These statistics would be even scarier if they distinguished between taxpaying class and poverty class births.

Jim

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4793997.stm 

BBC NEWS German births decline to new low Germany has seen another decline in its birth rate, which is Europe's lowest.

Official figures show that the number of births fell by a further 2.8% last year. Meanwhile, the mortality rate rose by 1.5% compared with 2004.

The birth rate is exceptionally low in the former East Germany, where the city of Chemnitz is thought to have the lowest birth rate in the world.

Economists say Europe's population decline threatens to damage economic growth for decades.<snip>

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide. Soon enough many First World countries will not have enough productive citizens to sustain a first world economy. The results are predictable. Work the able until they give that up. Then 

And not unrelated:

Subject:   ACT gaining on the SAT

  Another factor going on is demographic. Colleges are having problems finding butts to put in all their seats, so they are dropping requirements that are barriers to prospective students becoming their "customers".

Jim 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14325062/site/newsweek/ 

NEWSWEEK Aug. 21-29 issue

MSNBC.com

Test Wars

Despite repeated promises of reform from the SAT's keepers, critics still find plenty to talk about. Could the ACT finally conquer all?

By Jay Mathews

For one brief moment, after years of fear and loathing, America seemed ready to make peace with the SAT. When the University of California several years ago threatened to treat the test like a bad batch of cafeteria food and tell applicants not to buy it, the College Board junked the bewildering analogy questions (warthogs are to pigs as politicians are to what?), created a writing section (including producing an essay), added tougher math questions and more reading analysis-and had everybody talking about the new-and-improved SAT.

Then the first students to take SAT: The Sequel were seen stumbling out of the testing centers as if they had just run a marathon, and all the happy talk ended. The students, their parents, their counselors and the $1,000-per-course SAT prep companies said the new test was too long and exhausting, with the three hours and 45 minutes stretching to five hours with breaks and instructions. And it got worse. Nobody is sure how, but moisture in some SAT answer sheets caused pencil marks to bleed or fade, producing more than 5,000 tests with the wrong scores. Even after that was fixed, several universities reported a sharp drop in their applicants' average scores, which many attributed to exhaustion, and more colleges told applicants they would no longer have to take the SAT.

All of which stoked interest in the ACT, the SAT's less famous and less feared rival based in Iowa City, Iowa. The shorter test is now becoming a welcome alternative for many high schoolers who no longer see a need to endure the usual SAT trauma. "I think the ACT is a true player in the college-admissions game these days," says Robyn Lady, until recently a college counselor at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Although most Jefferson students still take the SAT, the number of ACTs there has tripled in the last two years. It's a shift that, if it continues, could change the balance of entrance-test power, since the Fairfax County, Va., magnet sends more kids to the Ivy League than almost any other U.S. school.<snip>

And as they fill the seats, the quality of education plummets. When people insist it's not about the money, it's about the money. (and see below)

Also not unrelated:

New Data Shows Immigrants Growth and Reach http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/us/15census.html 

By RICK LYMAN

The number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled largely by recent arrivals from Mexico, according to fresh data released by the Census Bureau.

And increasingly, immigrants are bypassing the traditional gateway states like California and New York and settling directly in parts of the country that until recently saw little immigrant activity regions like the Upper Midwest, New England and the Rocky Mountain States.

Coming in the heart of an election season in which illegal immigration has emerged as an issue, the new data from the bureaus 2005 American Community Survey is certain to generate more debate. But more than that, demographers said, it highlights one reason immigration has become such a heated topic.

What's happening now is that immigrants are showing up in many more communities all across the country than they have ever been in, said Audrey Singer, an immigration fellow at the Brookings Institution. So its easy for people to look around and not just see them, but feel the impact they're having in their communities. And a lot of these are communities that are not accustomed to seeing immigrants in their schools, at the workplace, in their hospitals.<snip>

Liberalism is -- well, you know.

 

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Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Dobbs: It's good to be a superpower.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/15/
dobbs.august16/index.html

-- Roland Dobbins

What a blessing, all these superpower advantages. What other people besides Americans can afford not to make their own clothes? The world has other people for such menial tasks, and they sell us all but a few of our shoes, shirts, slacks, suits, dresses and coats (and, of course, accessories). We now import around 96 percent of our clothing.

What other nation can afford to dismantle its manufacturing base and export high-paying middle-class jobs overseas to lesser, cheaper foreign labor markets and then buy back the goods those poorer people provide us?

And energy? Why, we Americans have money to burn. We spend $15-20 billion each and every month to import fuel for our cars, trucks, office buildings and few remaining factories and plants

But economists will tell you this is all wonderful. Of course we are living off borrowed money, but that's all right. We'll borrow enough money to get completely out of debt.

==============

From the Wall St. Journal:

PORTALS By LEE GOMES

What Are Web Surfers Seeking? Well, It's Just What You'd Think August 16, 2006; One thing about us Internet users: We like our music, we like our pictures, we like our sex -- and we like them all free.

Last week, AOL released a trove of what it thought were anonymous Web-search data from 650,000 of its customers. While intending to help researchers, AOL instead set off a privacy controversy because some of the users could, in fact, be tracked down. But taking up AOL on its original intentions, I got hold of the data set -- 2.27 gigabytes' worth, loaded it into my shiny new SQL Server database software, and started my own research project into how people really use the Web.

One learns, for instance, that excepting prepositions and conjunctions, the most commonly used word in the 17.15 million separate searches was "free." If something isn't free, it better at least be "new," as that was the next-most common word. Excluding proper nouns, the next most popular words were "lyrics," "county," "school," "city," "home," "state," "pictures," "music," "sale," "beach," "high," "map," "center" and "sex."<snip>

=============================

Subject: J. Mathew's letter re SAT/ACT

Jerry:

I write as one who has taken the "old, old" SAT's, the ACT, and the "Iowa tests" that preceeded those. First, I regard the analogy material as bewildering only to those with an inferior understanding of the language.

Isn't mastery of that language the very item that the verbal SATs are supposed to measure, and doesn't such a measurement require some kind of

ranking mechanism to be valid? The SATs I took _did_ include an "essay

writing" section. It was part of the optional Reading Comprehension section. Having taken the "Iowa" and ACT tests many times beginning in the late 1950's, and the full SATs twice (1966, 1967), my clear recollection is that the SATs were by far the more (legitimately) challenging of the two test sets. Students emerge from the test exhausted? Considering that the test results may have an influence on students' future lives equivalent to the transcripts from >12,000 hours of study, I find that complaint amusing.

I strongly suspect that the switch to the ACT, which is clearly "on", to be an extreme example of "grading on the curve", i.e. massaging results to validate the desired outcome, for the purpose of finding nonexistent value in the educational system, aided and abetted by the teachers' and administrators' unions and their lackeys in the media.

-Scott

==========

Subject: Branches of Service

I just read http://www.jerrypournelle.com/alt.mail/infantry.html  for the first time. I think you and your correspondents might have missed some issues.

Cavalry still exists, mounted in helicopters. Helicopters and helicopter-mounted troops are the normal forces deployed for a reconnaissance in force, the classic mission of historic cavalry. In the first US-Iraq war, the Chinese were astonished at the speed of the U.S. attack. They concluded that mostly helicopters fought the U.S. side of the war, with mop-up by armor moving at "only" 50kph. Much of the direction from CENTCOM to the armor was along the lines of "please move faster, you're behind the line." Helicopters were actually fighting the forward edge of battle. This situation first began to change in the Vietnam War. Helicopter-mounted troops saw nearly forty times as many hours of shooting-war per deployment-month as conventional troops in World War II. They're something very like dragoons.

I think the air-force has a role. Strategic forces are a historically new type of clearly military force. I'd argue that strategic forces' missions are sufficiently different that boomers should be reassigned from the navy to the strategic forces. The Navy does these missions, "CAN DO," but it's a cultural stretch from conventional surface warfare. Ask your son.

I agree that the bomber stuff is obsolete. Even fighters, now that forward-deployed UAVs can out-fight manned fighters. Most should be removed from the inventory. Manned platforms are flexible, so a few should be kept, dispersed among the other forces.

The U.S. aerospace force mix is clearly wrong for fighting imperial-style wars. We need an efficient, low-altitude fixed-wing light bomber, something like the OV-10A Bronco. In modern swarm tactics, it could orbit slowly over the battlefield, and be johnny-on-the-spot with large amounts of precision-guided munitions to support ground forces. Like a helicopter it would depend on air-superiority, but once that's achieved it would stay overhead longer and cheaper than either helicopters or a heavy antiarmor platform such as the A-10 Warthog.

The Air-Force never has understood ground-support, and consequently never did understand ground support of light infantry and counter-insurgency forces, which is even more tenderly helpful. That's why the USAF designated the Bronco an "Observer" craft, and decommissioned it ASAP, while the Marines kept it in service until budget cuts in the 1990s. The Warthog is a lovely creature of its type, but like the standard U.S. heavy infantry division, it's far too precisely designed for a nuclear battlefield filled with heavy armor.

As for your correspondent's desire for a medium-range light-artillery weapon, I personally still mourn for the fiber-optic-guided missile: http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-157.html , which is pretty-much designed for that mission. It's a precision-guided-munition controlled directly by the ground commander... Right now the U.S. really has no good way for infantry to shoot fast armor, GEVs, helicopters and bunker holes.

Ray

Think of air cavalry as light infantry.

So long as the Air Force owns the field army support mission, there will never be adequate air support of the field army. No pilot wants to opt for close air support; it's a career killer.

===========

Subject: This is what we are fighting and what we shall become under Mohammedan rule

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5764  http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4857  and somewhat more than a few words about dhimmitude by a world renowned scholar on the subject: http://www.dhimmitude.org 

I hope our liberals like this idea. It's what they'll get if they persist in thinking it is not the religion itself leading to the current problems.

Joanne Dow

{^_^}

=============

Subject: When with the targeting shift?

Jerry,

One of the things that surprises me a little is the continued obession that Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda clones seem to have with spectacular airplane attacks. Maybe the attention that 9/11 drew was just too good to let pass without a second try. But it seems like they could produce equally disruptive effects on our society with more frequent, less spectacular attacks against less protected targets. Just look what John Allen Mohammed did in the Washington, D.C. area with only a rifle and a jury rigged shooting platform in the trunk of his car. Coffee shops, buses, and the like have been more than adequate targets for the terrorists at war with Israel. Not that I wish to encourage this kind of creative thinking on the part of our enemy, but I do keep wondering when/if this kind of persistent, smaller scale terrorism will visit us here?

CP, Connecticut

One does wonder. Those huge compact crowds of people in airport security lines, as an example... I am sure this has been discussed before. One does hesitate to point to obvious targets.

===============

Subject:  Designing the new moon mission by studying Apollo hardware in museums

Jerry,

Sigh. This shouldn't surprise me, but what a commentary on where the manned space program is these days.

http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?ps=969&id=
13018177&_LT=HOME_LARSDCCL1_UNEWS    

Well, they can do worse than copy the Apollo designs. My father in law worked on the Saturn first stage, and those guys did it right. His main comment on the effort was that -everyone- simply said, "It isn't going to fail because of MY part." He had two heart attacks during those years, clearly attributable to the stress. If you ever view Saturn ascent films, you'll doubtless notice that when the F1 engines light, they swivel as the thrust comes up. Among other things, Frank designed the gimbals for those engines...the largest ever built.

It is a shame and a waste that NASA had to wait until nearly all of that talent pool is no longer with us. The accomplishments were incredible, and even more incredible for the times.

Chuck

The Iron Law has long ago prevailed in NASA

===========

Subject: weirdness

Dr. Pournelle:

The StarTribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul) reports today that an urban legend, the $5 rapist, has been circulating in the area. (Supposedly a man holds up a $5 bill to a woman in a car, tells her she dropped it, and when she rolls down the window . . . )

Last year, a music professor at a small religiously oriented college in outstate Minnesota was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography. Child porn was found on his computer, and his credit card number was found on a porn website.

The common thread: the credit card number was found by Homeland Security, which also called the police about the $5 rapist, even though this story is an Internet hoax at least three years old, and probably much older as an urban myth.

So why is Homeland Security concerned? Despicable as child porn is, neither possessors of child porn nor $5 rapists can be true security threats unless they're also Islamofascists. One police officer was quoted by the paper as saying, "This is weird. Aren't they supposed to be catching terrorists or something?"

j

 (I'm concerned enough about Homeland Security that I'd like to ask you to publish neither name nor ID. I know a Lutheran pastor who has an FBI file, because (gasp!) she studied Russian as an undergraduate.)

And was the web site where the credit card number was found one that dispensed child pornography in the first place? I doubt that anyone can be absolutely certain that there are no illegal images on his hard drive. While I have never given a credit card number to a pornographic web site, and I don't follow links from that kind of spam, I have subscribed to several gaming strategy web sites, some of which may have dubious connections. I think my ports are closed and my systems secure, but who can be sure?

We engage in security theatre, and the Iron Law says that Homeland Security will attract many people with their own agendas unrelated to actual homeland security. Eternal vigilance is a price we no longer are willing to pay, and liberty is the loser; but we shall have Liberté, égalité, fraternité .

We sow the wind.

==============

Subject: the Fools at the Top

Bush, over a period of years, seems to have thought that one of the most important things, maybe the most important thing, is to have an Iraqi government in place that publicly expresses gratitude for our invasion. More importantly, that whether the Iraqis have jobs, or electricity, whether they got oil production going, more important than anything.

I wonder why.

Gregory Cochran

P.S. This review is worth reading.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18771 

In Bremer's account, the President was seriously interested in one issue: whether the leaders of the government that followed the CPA would publicly thank the United States. But there is no evidence that he cared about the specific questions that counted: Would the new prime minister have a broad base of support? Would he be able to bridge Iraq's ethnic divisions? What political values should he have? Instead, Bush had only one demand: "It's important to have someone who's willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq." According to Bremer, he came back to this single point three times in the same meeting. Similarly, Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, became Bush's candidate for president of Iraq's interim government because, as Bremer reports, Bush had "been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition." 

by the way, the 10,000 number for the size of the Shi'ite crowd cited in the following article is almost certainly wrong. Much larger in reality.

today. in the NYTimes:

" More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/washington/16policy.html?ex=
1313380800&en=e141814081b4bec3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

I too have wondered why our goals in Iraq have been so odd. I would myself have set $20/bbl oil as the goal. Pump Iraqi oil and pump a lot of it; spend what it takes to make that happen. The Iraqis get the oil money, which should be enough to bribe off most opposition and build a working economy in which people are so busy getting rich that they have little patience for those throwing bombs; and the US gets a DOW at 14,000 or so due to the low cost of energy. I actually thought that was the goal of the invasion.

I have read Bremer's book and it is clear from the first 50 pages that no one -- NO ONE -- in the administration had a clue as to the size of task they had taken on, or what they ought to do first once Chalabi wasn't welcomed back with flowers and parades.

I never wanted in there to begin with; but had they gone in and got the oil pumping I probably would have concluded that it was worth it (depending on the side effects). Instead, they just went in, disbanded the Iraqi security apparatus, and let the looting times roll. By the time they figured out that this wasn't a great idea, it was a bit late.

You break it, you own it...

=============

A highly reliable source says:

> ...somebody who's actually studying this sort of thing weighs in with
> at least the start of an analysis:

Uh, no. He's confused.

It's quite easy to make acetone peroxide using drugstore 3% peroxide, although of course the yield per volume is much lower. There's also no need for concentrated sulfuric acid. The acid merely catalyzes the reaction, and any dilute mineral acid serves the purpose. I know, because many years ago as a teenager I made small quantities of acetone peroxide to use for making crackers.

Ordinarily, the problem would be that the reaction produces a mix, in order of decreasing stability, of the trimer, dimer, and monomer. At room temperature and neutral or slightly acidic pH, the least stable monomeric form predominates. With the reaction vessel refrigerated and at lower pH, the most stable trimeric form predominates, although even the trimer is less stable than nitroglycerine. Of course if your goal is to blow up an airliner, you don't really care about the isomer mix.

Just sign me

a former organic chemist

If you want to bring down an airplane, you do care about being able to make enough to do real damage before it blows up and kills you. Again my memories are fifty years old; but we concluded, with minimal experimentation, that it wasn't possible to make stable quantities of the stuff with any degree of safety; and mind you, I had made a fairly hefty quantity of nitroglycerine using ceramic chilled vessels and lots of dry ice. But I was probably more cautious after the humorously disastrous results of my nitro experiment, and anyway we were in a city not out in Capleville by then. In any event we decided not to do any real experiments with the stuff.

It does appear my first reaction as wrong: this was not merely a dangerous plot, but one that had a chance of doing serious damage. The problem with security theater is that once one sees it is mostly theater, one is reluctant to believe it when there really is a wolf. This time the wolf was at least half grown and had some whiskers.

PS: Incidentally, someone mentioned the other day that it was the monomer that was used in the London bombings, which would account for the premature detonation. -- Former chemist

===========

Everything old is new again.

Of course, they're too stupid to realize that using SRBs on a manned vehicle is a huge mistake. While they're studying history, someone should show them a clip of 51-L.

http://www.physorg.com/news74786119.html

-- Roland Dobbins

===========

Subject: Dr. Cochran's remarks on bush wanting America to be thanked

Jerry,

While it should not have been the only goal, securing sincere thanks to the American people for spending 100's of billions of dollars of their treasury and 1000's of their young people's lives seems like a reasonable beginning.

Phil

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Thursday, August 17, 2006

==========

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, Part XXXVII.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2006/08/16/AR2006081601500_pf.html

-- Roland Dobbins

No surprises here... A lawyer bureaucracy. Guess what...

==

One hour.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/08/16/AR2006081601622_pf.html

- Roland Dobbins

Nor here. The Iron Law is in good shape...

========

Subject: Sarcasm alert

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=
2&cid=1154525888082&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull 

"The [IDF] destroyed 90 percent of Hizbullah's long range missiles," said Halutz. "We knew what they were capable of... although we did not predict that they would fire thousands - 4,000 - rockets at Israel."

Ah yeah, they destroyed 90% by getting Hizbullah to fire them at Israel. I don't think that quite counts, eh?

{+_+}

============

Subject: Comment on Armed Society

Dr. Pournelle:

Regarding the exchange below, in Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon" the armed society was very different than the inner cities of America. In today's inner-city war zones, it is usually only the criminals and gang bangers that are armed. The average citizen is denied the bearing of arms, not by the gangs, but by his own government. Only if the citizen is willing to break the law can he arm himself for self defense.

An armed society is a polite society if all free men (and women) are allowed to be armed. When only the criminals and police are armed, you get Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

I would point to the real American West (not the "Wild West" of the dime novels and Hollywood) for an example of how things can work. Historians will tell you that crime rates were very low, including the homicide rate. With a population of armed Civil War veterans in many frontier towns, there was little tolerance for crime. (See, i.e., the the James/Younger gangs fiasco in Northfield, Minnesota).

What we need to get back is that sense of community -- the good guys willing to stand up to the bad guys. I am not sure how to do that, but disarming the population is not the answer.

Lee

Indeed, but it is always the first proposed "solution". Perhaps there are times when it is proper. But see Campbell on Tribesmen, Barbarians, and Citizens.

=============

Subj: WEAPONS: The Lieutenants Friend

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htweap/articles/20060817.aspx 

=The new GoBook XR-1 is what young infantry officers are going to be lusting after in the next few months. At 6.8 pounds, it is resistant to water, sand and multiple three foot drops on hard surfaces. It's also protected against the relentless vibrations found in military vehicles and aircraft. It will survive temperature extremes (from -10 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit). It has a glow-in-the-dark keyboard, and a 12.1 inch color display designed to be visible in bright sunlight. It's small (12x10x2 inches) and powerful (1.87 GHz Intel Core Duo CPU, using up to two gigabytes of RAM). The removable SATA hard drive (80 gigabytes and up) has a built in heater, to insure quick boot in very cold weather. ...=

http://www.gd-computing.com/index.cfm?page=Products:XR-1&locale=en_US

ITRONIX: Mission Critical Computing On the Move

Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com

 

 

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Friday,  August 17, 2006

AAAS no more.

http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5770

-- Roland Dobbins

And science is very much the loser.

=========

Three cheers for RyanAir!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5261908.stm

-- Roland Dobbins

Huzzah!

===========

Why go to war if you don't intend to fight?

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525886888&
pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

- Roland Dobbins

Close to what we said all along. Alas.

============

Subject: Re: Wiretap ruling affirms that presidents aren't monarchs (USA Today)

USA Today wrote:

> But the ruling does undermine Bush's main argument ‹ that the program is
> constitutional because the administration says it is constitutional.

Okay, so let me get this straight:

We can't say the program is constitutional just because the administration says it is.

But we can say the program is unconstitutional just because some left-wing judge in Detroit says it is.

That's exactly the sort of reasoning I expect from USA Today.

(Personally I think the program is unconstitutional, but I don't think that opinion ought to sway anyone. Neither does the Bush administration claim that we should just take its word as law. The administration has its legal arguments, the ACLU and others have their legal arguments, and everyone will get a chance to give their arguments before the US Supreme Court. Then we'll roll the dice and see what happens. All this preliminary crap is useless.)

. png

In any Constitutional Crisis, the Congress is supposed to prevail. That's the way it was set up. Congress can impeach any officers, judicial or executive. Which is one reason the executive and judiciary will work together to undermine legislative independence and why the Jefferson case was important.

=========

Subject: Go-Book

Jerry:

Heh. Thursday, Aug 17th's li'l blurb about the Go-Book caught my retired Seismic Surveyor's eye.

Folks, -10°F, to +140°F, temperature 'operating range', just will not cut it, even within the Lower 48! Go to more exotic climes, such as the North Slope of Alaska, or the High Arctic Islands of Canada, and -65°F is a likely working Winter air temperature. Wearing the silvery-looking, stretchy gloves, inside 'Green Ape' cotton work gloves, means being able to cope with 15 or twenty minutes of hand-use on Survey Instrument and handling pencil & Surveyor's notebook, before yanking-off the Green Apes, and shoving shivering silvery gloved hands inside the nice warm Arctic Gauntlets!

I even learned how to operate the Survey Instrument, and to write legibly, whilst wearing those same Arctic Gauntlets. Since they were War Surplus, they may even be a residue of Vladimir Stephanson's WWII designs, of Winter outdoor wear, for the US Army.

Secondarily, the _Display_, if a Liquid Crystal, needs must be 'doped' with Ether, to keep it from freezing. Check with Wild Heerbrug, in Switzerland, who finally came to know that their equipment was going to be required to work at much colder than the minus 20°F (iirc), that they had put into the Software of their EDMs! The things had their very own temperature sensor, so as to be able to apply the Curvature & Refraction Corrections, correctly, to on-board 'Difference of Elevation' calculations, for each Distance Reading done. Yes, the EDM would not only refuse to work at Cold Temperatures, it would even bitch about being too cold! Canadian Seismic Surveyors, already somewhat grumpy about having to work in cool weather, got _very_ sarcastic about the silk-pantied Swiss Surveyors, who were too delicate to work when it was cold! Grin.

The HP41CX is another example of a very rugged device, with a Liquid Crystal display. I have had it sitting on the giant baggy that held my 2.5ft x 3ft map, calculating a Sunshot, at -40° (C, or F, same, same), withjout any hiccups. Its built-in, very accurate Clock, made the Data-collecting Program a most convenient way to 'do' a Sunshot, since the Data-reduction Program had access to all the numbers.

A hint, for those who are yet to enjoy the cold: Bring alond a new, unsharpened wooden pencil, because the eraser end is perfect for pushing buttons, while wearing gauntlets.

Regards,

Neil Frandsen
 Lethbridge, Alberta. a very retired seismic surveyor!

============

Subject: Schneier Podcast

Worth listening to. <http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/network_securit.html

-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information Systems Security, University of Sunderland. <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw> Weblog at: <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php>

============

Subject: Jill Carroll's story....

If there is ANYBODY not reading Jill Carroll's story at the Christian Science Monitor get over there fast before it has any hint of going away. Inside the story of her ordeal and her parent's ordeal are bits of every day Iraqi life for women.

In one place it details a feast celebrating her kidnapping with all sorts of expensive (in Iraq) foods. The men ate. The dishes returned to the kitchen with bones gnawed clean. The women ate what they could find off the men's plates.

Is THIS the kind of people we want to let have even a miniscule particle of a say in how we live our lives? I've no problem with them being a little what I perceive as "goofy in the head" on their own turf as long as they abide by secular law and make no demands that it be changed to allow Sharia law. But they are so extreme they just basically scare me spitless thinking of them "running" America based on their terrorism. WE tolerate absurd depictions of Christ without ever demanding that the authors or artists be murdered. They don't. So we run cowed by their threat? Color me pissed at that cowardice on the part of our media and our government.

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/carroll/index.html 

{^_^} Joanne

============

Subject: Minority Students Decline in Top New York Schools,

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/education/18schools.html 

" Over all, Hispanic students are the largest group in the city's schools at 36.7 percent, and black students are next at 34.7 percent. The 1.1 million-student system is 14.3 percent Asian and 14.2 percent white."

" Still, during 2005-6, blacks made up 4.8 percent of the Bronx Science student body, according to city figures, down from 11.8 percent in 1994-95, when the institute was created. At Brooklyn Technical High School, the proportion of black students has declined to 14.9 percent from 37.3 percent 11 years ago, and at Stuyvesant, blacks now make up 2.2 percent of the student body, down from 4.4 percent.

Hispanic enrollment has also declined at the three schools, as has white enrollment at two of the three although it has risen at Brooklyn Tech. At the same time, the Asian population has reached as high as 60.6 percent at Bronx Science, up from 40.8 percent 11 years ago."

Given the known disparities in IQ scores, are we surprised? The entrance exam is essentially an IQ test. The above numbers occur despite desperate attempts to prepare Hispanic and black students for the entrance exam.

How politically incorrect of you!

Voodoo science has no explanation; but real science predicts such results. Of course the official view in these United States of America is the Voodoo Science explanation. And so it goes.

============

Subject: Re: BBC: "Crime spike hits Katrina evacuees"

I particularly liked the equivalence expressed in the lines below; killer and killee are both victims.

Police records from Houston in Texas suggest that evacuees from Hurricane Katrina are increasingly at risk of being involved in violent crime.

One in five of the murders in the city over the last year involved an evacuee as either the suspect or victim.

========

Immigrants Swell Numbers Near New York http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/nyregion/15minority.html 

By SAM ROBERTS

Immigrants have continued to surge into metropolitan New York since 2000, according to census figures released today, and that increase, combined with high birth rates, has elevated the foreign-born and their children in New York City itself to fully 60 percent of the population. The rate of change was even more pronounced in the 24 suburban counties around the city, where a record 20 percent of the residents are now born abroad.

The figures, while showing that the citys gains from immigration were not nearly as marked as they were in the 1990s, are nonetheless striking in their detail and magnitude.

In the city, the number of people who identified themselves as Mexicans, here legally or not, soared 36 percent in five years, and not merely as a consequence of improved counting. More than half the residents of Queens and the Bronx do not speak English at home. Nearly one in three black residents in New York City was born abroad.

The trends are reported in the American Community Survey, a new annual version of the federal Census Bureaus long-form questionnaire designed to capture the nations demographic profile in a more timely moving picture, rather than a once-a-decade snapshot.

That moving picture is changing most in the counties just outside New York City. In New Rochelle, where the number of Mexicans rose to nearly 12,000 from under 7,000 in five years, the share of foreign-born residents swelled to 32 percent of the population, up from 27 percent. In Danbury, Conn., a developing magnet for Asian immigrants, the proportion of Asians doubled, to 11 percent of all residents in the states seventh-largest city.

Among children younger than 15, white residents who are not Hispanic have become a minority in the metropolitan area, an indication that within just a few years the New York region will become the first large metropolitan area outside the South or West where non-Hispanic whites are a minority.

Some of the developments in the city over the first half of the decade amounted to modest but significant reversals. In Manhattan and, more recently, Brooklyn, the number of whites actually increased, and the number of blacks in the city, primarily native-born, declined, probably for the first time since the Civil War.

==========

I post the following without comment:

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the world population. [Source unknown.]

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib  Mahfooz.
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yaser Arafat
Physics:
1990 - Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewail
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000, or about 0.02% of the world population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis  Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine  Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias  Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri  Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips  Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya  Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L. Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul  Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus  Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985  -Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis

The Jews are not demonstrating with their dead on the streets, yelling and chanting and asking for revenge; the Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.

The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics; the Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

The Jews don't have the economic strength of petroleum, nor the possibilities to force the world's media to see "their side" of the question.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

==

Subject: Re: The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the

uh,

1) abdus salam considers himself muslim: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1979/salam-bio.html  (he's ahmaddiya, which sunnis consider heretical, far more than shia)

2) you seem to be including christian arabs? (medewar and corey) why not include raman and chandrasekar since they are south asian and many south asians are muslim too :) LOL.

=========

Subject: MRSA is now the most common cause of skin infections in most of the big U.S. cities

http://health.msn.com/centers/skincare/
articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100142966&GT1=8404 

Antibiotic-Resistant Staph Now a Major Threat By Amanda Gardner, HealthDay Reporter HealthDay

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 16 (HealthDay News) -- In emergency rooms across the United States, a tough-to-treat staphylococcus bug is now the leading cause of skin and soft-tissue infections, a new study finds.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is resistant to many standard antibiotics that have been used for years, but it can still be effectively treated with one of several antibiotics, experts say.

"MRSA is now the most common cause of skin infections in most of the big U.S. cities," said researcher Dr. Gregory Moran, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine. "When doctors are deciding if a patient needs antibiotics, they should be given them antibiotics that cover MRSA. That's a change from things we've been doing for a decade. This has changed. A different type of bacteria is now the most common cause of infections."

The study is published in the Aug. 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

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Saturday, August 19, 2006

Subject: Nobel Prize and Ethnicity

Jerry:

First, the premise is itself ridiculous. Islam is a religion, not a race, as is (to a lesser extent) Judaism. Are those on the Jewish list all Ashkenazi, all Sephardic, or a mix? If a mix, what is the degree of genetic divergence from Islamic "Arabs"? On the gripping hand, for quite some time Nobel Prizes have been awarded on the basis of politics, not merit. Were such a list printed on paper, the presence of Arafat on the one hand, and Paul Erlich on the other, would be sufficient for me to consign it to a wooden roller in my lavatory. YMMV.

-Scott

Come now. You seem to be a victim of the modern rhetorical device that attempts to show that anything not absolutely true has no value, and is trash, and ludicrous, and "ridiculous", and you and I both know that is not true in general, nor in the case at at hand.

You raise valid points, but no one asserted that this phenomenon is more than highly suggestive. Certainly some Nobel prizes are political. Very well, eliminate literature and peace, and even economics if you will -- although we all certainly know that some of the literature and economics prizes are well deserved. I won't argue about the peace prixes, but they were included not to inflate the prize list for Jews but for Arabs.

And we all know that while Islam is not an ethnicity, it is highly correlated with ethnicity; but of course the suggestion here is not ethnic at all, but cultural. The Bell Curve would insist that among the billion or so Muslims on this earth, a significant number will be out among the very brightest no matter how large the mean differences in IQ between, say, Muslims and ethnic Jews. We are not dealing with tiny numbers here.

While I have no great regard for Paul Erlich of Sanford, the butterfly entomologist  who has made a reputation for incorrectly predicting famine and doom in the latter part of the 20th Century, the 1908 date suggests that this Nobel Prize must have gone to a different person. Professor Erlich is a man my age, and I was not born in 1908; nor was he. Google suggests

Paul Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915) was born near Breslau—then in Germany, but now known as Wroclaw, Poland—and studied to become a medical doctor at the university ...
 

and I would guess that to be he.

Not to break a butterfly on the wheel, I do suggest your approach, while fairly typical of the quality of discourse that passes for intelligent debate in this age, needs a bit of refinement.

The numbers speak for themselves: A small percentage of mankind seems to have gathered a disproportionate number of prizes that many feel worthy of respect, while a very much larger percentage of humanity has gained a disproportionately small number; and since we cannot conclude from any theory I know of that there are not, among the billion people of Muslim faith, a significant number of high IQ individuals, there is at least the suggestion that the Muslim culture is suppressing that kind of activity. We know, of course, that the Jewish culture encourages intellectual activity. The data are not conclusive but they are highly suggestive.

As to Sephardim and Ashkenazim, there is no need to differentiate, since I saw nothing to suggest ethnicity rather than culture as a factor here.

In short, I find the data suggestive and interesting, not ridiculous; as to the degree of absurdity of the "premise", perhaps you will tell me what premise that is, since I don't recall presenting one.

===========

Subject: NYC Elite Schools

Jerry -

Though not emphasized, I think that the most notable point in the NYT article (must click on the Multimedia link in the article for the accompanying chart) is the dramatic drop in white students in these schools. Even with their economic and social advantage (extra tutoring and expensive prep classes), the whites cannot keep up with the Asians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/education/18schools.html 

Ray

==============

Free! Live Free!

Subject: free energy, again

Hi, Jerry -- we have yet another contender for the free energy crown, and another chapter -- or perhaps, just a footnote -- is being generated.

An Irish-based company called Steorn (web site here: http://www.steorn.net/frontpage/default.aspx?p=1  ) claims to have created an "over unity" device -- that is, a device which generates more energy than is used to run it. They have filed a patent, which you can peruse at the following URL:

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/fetch.jsp?DISP=25&IDB=0&SORT=
1183897-SCORE&LANG=ENG&LANGUAGE=ENG&SERVER_TYPE
=19&FORM=SEP-0/HITNUM,B-ENG,DP,MC,PA,ABSUM-ENG,,SCORE
&IA=IE2005000107&TOTAL=1&C=0&SEARCH
_IA=IE2005000107&START=1&QUERY=STEORN&DBSELECT
=PCT&TYPE_FIELD=256&RESULT=1&IDOC=1141841&DISPLAY=DESC"> Link</a>

I've reviewed the patent, and as near as I can tell, it seems to be based on the manipulation of magnetic fields; acceleration is achieved through magnetic attraction, and de--acceleration is prevented by blocking the magnetic field with a mechanical moving shield at the appropriate point.

What makes this interesting is that the company has taken out a full-page ad in The Economist, seeking 12 high profile scientists to investigate the companies claims. I fail to understand why it is important to the company to validate the technology, prior to putting it into production. Steorn makes the claim that the technology will be useful for everything from eternal power for your cell phone, to endless fuel for your -- presumably electric -- car, to endless power for your home. I would have thought that it would be simpler to design and produce and market an eternal flashlight battery, than to take out an expensive ad in The Economist. But perhaps I'm missing something.

At any rate, the web site is worth visiting, simply because it is one of the most beautifully done web sites I've ever seen. It is visually compelling, must have been incredibly expensive, and does a wonderful job of creating a great deal of excitement while avoiding anything resembling factual content. There is absolutely nothing on the site that discusses the technology; however, the patent link listed above does provide a significant amount of factual information. Meanwhile, the web site is truly beautiful, and worth visiting for that reason alone.

It would be interesting to have someone with more physics background of myself review the patent, and see if there is anything here that is either new or interesting.

Best wishes, Charlie

==

Dr. Pournelle,

I'm not sure if you've seen this yet, but here's the obligatory "we've discovered free energy" claim for the decade/year:

http://www.steorn.net/en/news.aspx?p=2 

Apparently they're actually inviting critics to prove them wrong.

Ryan Brown

I have not looked at the patent. The technology description is an assertion, not a description.

My comment on this is the same as my comments on reactionless drives: build something that works. It need not work well. It need not be the finished product. Just show a result. Do not spend time presenting theories. Show a result.

I would not myself think that taking an advertisement in the Economist would not be productive, but it is not my decision. I can wish these people well, but I presume that the Second Law of Thermodynamics will prevail, as I expect Newton's Third Law to prevail. It is not that I believe those irrefutably true, but the revision in physical theory required to accommodate an actual result in contradiction to either of those principles is very large, and thus highly unlikely.

I wish them well, but I would not invest money in this. I await an actual result.

===========

Subject: a good articulation

Hi Jerry,

quote

By the very nature of what we have built here this "intelligence filter" which works to my benefit is available to everyone else who reads this place.

That, and what surrounds it, is well said. Might add to keep current with the articulation one must read threads daily, and the accumulation of eclectic lore becomes invaluable in making on the fly thoughts.

I just read Singers of Time, by Pohl and someone...finished it off camped in Bloody Canyon with the wind howling all nite...

When I'm in the dentist chair I revert to being about six years old, or whenever that first early visit occurred...something of the same when I open a science fiction book.

David
 Yosemite CA

=========

Subject: More dumbing down

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-te.md.
promotion15aug15,0,1701987.story?coll=bal-home-headlines 

Al Perrella

Soo-prize!

===========

Subject: The Law of Unintended Consequences

http://www.newsobserver.com/125/story/468483.html 

The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker is apparently making a comeback in south-coastal North Carolina,

“The woodpecker's status as an endangered species requires special measures to try to prevent its extinction and restore its population, wildlife officials say. That's the law. Wildlife officials gave the town maps pinpointing woodpecker nests. No building or tree cutting is allowed within 200 feet of a nest tree without a federal permit. Some restrictions on development also apply to 75-acre circles around each nest site to provide foraging area for the birds.

… federal wildlife officials are drawing a new set of woodpecker nest maps, due any day.”

The entirely foreseeable effect, to everyone except the federal government? Developers and individual lot-owners are rapidly clear-cutting every property they own and hope to build on someday. Even lots that may never be developed, and could in the meantime provide habitat for the birds.

-- Cecil Rose Department of the State Treasurer

Soo-prize!

==============

Subject: Mutiny on Flight 613.

Mutiny on Flight 613.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/
news.html?in_article_id=401419&in_page_id=1770

---- Roland Dobbins

=========================

 

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