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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 134 January 1 - 7, 2001

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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this place is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE.

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Monday  January 1, 2001

HAPPY NEW MILLENNIUM

We begin a new millennium with something odd, and not what I would have chosen to begin it with, but I had this mail about, of all things, The Velikovsky Affair, and I have posted it on the appropriate page. The new correspondence is bookmarked for those who have no desire to read through the whole Velikovsky discussion.

Perhaps this isn't as odd a way to begin a new century as I at first supposed: how does one treat an oddball who makes assertions contrary to every scientific theory, and who gathers a large following? As David Stove has shown in some of his wonderful books (Anything Goes is readable and amusing) our modern intellectuals seem unable to believe or prove ANYTHING, and have rejected the whole notion of science and truth; yet few would reject the proposition (what he calls "A") that we know more now than we did in, say, 1500. 

Velikovsky was wrong. Dead wrong. And yet he challenged a fundamental assertion in the science of 1950 that was itself dead wrong, and was more religiously than scientifically based. How should he have been treated? How should we treat people who challenge our basic scientific beliefs? Perhaps this is not as frivolous a way to start a new millennium as I first thought. In any event, that is how we begin...

 

 

 

 

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Tuesday, January 2, 2001

It feels odd to write 2001. And we don't have a Moon Colony, although we could have. I used to say in 1986 I could build on for about $4 billion as a private foundation. USAF or other military organization not subject to the Armed Forces Procurement Regulations and various Americans with Disabilities Act restrictions could probably do it for $10 billion. A straight government procurement contract subject to all the regulations would probably cost about $20 billion, about what Apollo cost but in 1984 dollars, not 1964. 

NASA's official estimate was $80 billion but no one believe they could do it for that.

Meanwhile Roland was over all day and we have server stability: there is no longer a single point failure at Chaos Manor.

 

 

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Wednesday, January 3, 2001

The CHAOSMANOR domain is now served by one Windows 2000 server whose hard disk is mirrored, and a second Windows 2000 server that doubles as a backup storage system. Now all I need is a schedule for pulling critical files off to CD-R and another to move things to a good magneto-optical drive system. And finally a THIRD Windows 2000 server with a full RAID array. Tape sounds more convenient and reliable than it has proven to be for me. A full backup computer with dual mirrored hard drives costs less than tape systems did not long ago, and they're a heck of a lot more convenient.

 

Regarding what I was saying about 2001 and Lunar Colonies. I could have done it in 1986 for about $4 billion. Now I think I would need $10 billion as a private non-profit foundation (I have one if you have $10 billion). A military project done black -- that is exempt from Americans with Disabilities Acts that require you to hire deaf programmers and provide them with a hearing programmer who can do signing so your deaf programmer can sit in meetings, and yes, that happened to a company last year -- and exempt from other regulations designed to provide employment for regulators at a cost of enormous inconvenience to most of us and a small benefit to a few people --  could probably manage for $20 billion now. I don't think a straight civilian contract, competitive bidding, could get it done for any price, and NASA, which once said it could do it for $80 billion, would probably want twice that and still wouldn't be able to get the job done.

Why? What has changed since 1984 when I was certain a Lunar Colony could be built with a single item of legislation:

"The Congress of the United States has determined that an American owned Lunar Colony is in the national interest of the United States. The sum of $10 Billion Dollars is hereby authorized and appropriated to be paid by the Treasurer of the United States to the first firm owned by US citizens and chartered in the United States which shall place no fewer than 39 US citizens on the surface of the Earth's Moon and maintain them continuously there for a period of not less than 3 years and one day."

That would have done it. It might now; it certainly would have a better chance of getting the job done than contracting The One Big Aerospace And Defense Company to do the job.

But in 1984 I estimated that it would take about $4 billion for me to do it. (Incidentally, by "me" I mean a non-profit that I chair. It's not that I am so smart or so good at this, as that the people who are will work for me, and many of them will not work for each other.) Second note: General Graham would have been an even better choice, and him being dead is one reason it will cost a lot more. In any event, we thought we could get the job done a lot cheaper 16 years ago: why so much now?

Well part is inflation, but that's not the major part.  The major reason it would cost so much now is that we've lost most of the capability for doing that sort of thing. The great management and engineering teams of the old days are gone, gone, gone, replaced by a management style that is inimical to bold and innovative large projects. By the time I was 30 years old I had been in charge of several large research projects. Most of us in aerospace who were headed upward had been. Now it is rare to find anyone under 50 who has actually made something happen, built something that flew or even built a component that flew. Software and computer companies are the exception, of course, but no one has the kind of experience in structures, propulsion, and dynamics that is needed. The teams have been broken up, or never allowed to form.

Half my $10 billion will go to developing reusable spacecraft and building a fleet (something like 6) of them. And of that $5 billion, about half would go to rebuilding experience, small projects and small steps, parallel approaches to keep things competitive, learning how to compete again; rebuilding the kind of splendid teams we had back in the days when we built the first IRBM and ICBM systems; back when we had the "good old American know-how" and the experimental mechanics on the production lines capable of devising new ways to make complex parts and just get the job done.

People are still smart, and computers are very useful, but we don't have people who know how to do the kinds of things needed to build reusable space ships, fly them, do the on-orbit assembly (our only on-orbit assembly people are 40 year old Ph.D.'s; if you were going to build a deep sea oil well would you send a 40 year old geologist down to the bottom or would you want a 20 year old rigger? Same with space), and generally apply human ingenuity to situations where we don't know in advance what the problems are.

A Lunar Colony could still be built and be operational by 2010. It's clearly too late for 2001.  Oh well. The Cold War is over.

In 1984 if you had asked me which was more probable by 2000, a US Lunar Colony or the defeat of the USSR, I would have chosen the Lunar Colony; but offered my choice of a Lunar Colony or having those 20,000 nuclear weapons pointed at the United States taken off line, I'd have chosen the collapse of the USSR. But now that the Seventy Years War is over, we've dismantled many of the teams that won it -- and doubled the numbers of bureaucratic parasites who lived off the war effort and who will not go away.

Over in Mail I have had another request for the Chaos Manor Reading List. I have at least a partial answer there.


HELP WANTED: I need furniture. To be exact, a way to stack two mini-towers one on the other and still be able to get the bottom one out when needed. I need several of these, preferably in a system with adjustable shelving. I don't think I want to go three high. Anyone know sources? What I need would be easy to design and have built, but that takes time I don't want to put into it.


At Niven's New Years party Warren James who does the Hour 25 Web site (formerly a KPFK radio SF review broadcast) took the trouble to find me to tell me how happy he was with my recommendation of PAIR.COM as the place to host their web site. They've been there a while and they are very pleased. So am I, after a couple of years. Pair will get an orchid in the next column.

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Thursday, January 4, 2001

Column day. Resetting the domain. This time we managed to recover the user settings, thanks to user mail. I now have the domain set up with two servers, one with a mirrored hard drive. 

Some more problems with old UPS; if you have UPS more than a couple of years old, TEST THEM and check their batteries and such like. Catastrophic failure of an UPS can be a catastrophe indeed. We avoided doom and destruction, but you want to be careful. See the upcoming column.

If you are interested in the late H. Beam Piper, go to www.hostigos.com where my former Senior Editor John Carr has built a splendid little site complete with essays on Beam's life, and information on how to find the Carr/Green book Kalvan Kingmaker, which continues the saga of Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. 

Over in Mail Ed Hume has a joke about Clinton and "cattle guards". I find I had to post a warning that this is a JOKE. To wit:

(Lest anyone think different, this is a JOKE. It seems to be listed as "urban legend" among the people who list that sort of thing, which makes me wonder if they are all crazy; how would anyone suppose it was anything BUT a joke? But in any event, I do not assert this as something that happened, nor does Dr. Hume.)

That does make me wonder: who does this "urban legend" stuff anyway? If it is people with so little sense they believe a story about firing cattle guards is believable and needs refuting as 'urban legend' one must wonder at what else they don't know, and how authoritative they really are. People with no common sense are often not worth consulting as authorities, especially when they assert themselves as authorities on common sense...

 

 

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Friday, January 5, 2001

Does the future need us? See http://www.wirednews.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html 

for quite a good look at the question.

 

I need to write a major essay on California's energy crisis. Since I wrote "OUR LOOMING ENERGY CRISIS" back in 1972 and gave that lecture to most of the energy companies of the time, I am hardly astonished that our "conservationist" driven energy notions have finally come home to bite us. If you give up regulation of a vital resource; require that the distributors of that resource sell off their capacity to produce it; forbid them to build more, and make them buy from those who now own their former production capacities; give up all control over the prices charged to the distributors, but continue to control the prices the distributors can charge; and make it nearly impossible to bring more sources on line --- what the devil would you expect to happen?

The demand for energy constantly rises, and all efforts to "eliminate poverty" will inevitably increase the demand for energy. Any darned fool can see that. And if we could really conserve our way to energy prosperity, Bangla Desh would be the wealthiest nation on Earth. Any darned fool can see that, too.

Sure: conservation makes sense, but only to a point, and relying on conservation while protecting people from the consequences of not conserving --namely keeping prices low -- can only go one way. Just as making it difficult to build new housing while imposing rent control makes for fewer houses being built and thus -- surprise! -- more people without houses had only one possible outcome. (The answer to that one of course is to remove rent control on NEW housing. Of course the result of that will be that landlords will invest in new and neglect maintenance on the rent controlled properties -- what would you expect? -- but at least the transition will not be TOO abrupt. But since the people in the rent controlled places are well organized and use the political system to protect their advantages, the results are again predictable.)

The only answer to the energy crisis is new energy production; but no one is going to invest in that under present circumstances. All this was predicable back when the "soft path" people began their move to shut down any new production facility. 

My friend Ed Begley, Jr., one of the nicest people I know, is "off the grid" mostly: his house has enough solar power panels including a large two-axis steerable panel to run itself and he has enormous batteries in his garage.  It works, and he even powers an electric car, although I notice that his wife drives a more conventional automobile.  Ed sets a good example, but if we all followed it what would happen? The energy investment to build his system complete not only with panels but batteries is very large indeed -- just as, if some fiend were to instantly convert all our autos to electric the nation would be paralyzed. It takes energy to build alternate energy systems. Not to mention the financial: the interest on what Ed paid for his "off the grid" system would pay his electric bills no matter what rate increases the PUC allows. This is not to make fun of Ed. He sets other good examples including a very low maintenance yard that needs little to no water, a good idea if you live in a natural desert.

But I do not think that rooftop solar panels will solve our problems, even in Los Angeles, and they certainly won't in Chicago or Boston; latitude counts. If you want direct solar power the place to get that is in space; but to build space solar power requires an entirely different approach to space development than we have followed. It would work, but it takes work to get there, and we aren't doing it.

So. We have low snow pack in the Sierra, meaning low hydro electric power generation next summer. The Washington Public Power outfit was not allowed to finish its nuclear plant, and the aluminum industries up there are thus subject to the snowfalls in the northern Rockies, which are, we can hope, good this year because we will certainly use California's political power to drain the State of Washington of its electricity come summer when our runoff is low and our rates begin to skyrocket.

And everyone will be surprised when California has an energy crisis next August. Shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

Are people REALLY unable to foresee the consequences of their actions? 

 

 

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For a backgrounder on Global Warming:

http://users.erols.com/dhoyt1/index.html 

In listing the Mike Hodel's Hour 25 show website I gave the old one. The new site is www.hour25online.com and that ought to stay; they've hosted it at www.pair.com where this place resides, and they're quite happy with it.

 

 

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Sunday, January 7, 2000

Column is due. I am plugging away.

A fascinating exchange: as a result of my casual remark that Zicam, which may work, is labelled "homeopathic" although it certainly is not -- see View 124 -- I received mail from one of the investors in GUM. He signs himself an MD and says:

I am investor in Zicam through investing in Gum Tech International (Nasdaq:GUMM). The homeopathy "issue" is discussed on http://www.gumminvestors.com  in the "Q&;A" section where it is stated exactly how much zinc is in Zicam. People who shortsell GUMM stock have used the "homepathy" argument to badmouth the company.

I pointed out that (1) the label says Zicam is homeopathic, and (2) it most certainly is not, since the theory of homeopathic medicine is that you administer a substance that will cause the symptoms of your disease, but you do so in doses so dilute as to be meaningless. There are many variants on this and on the amount of dilution, but the essence, administer a drug that will produce the symptoms of the disease, is present in all of them; it is the very heart of homeopathic medicine (as opposed to "allopathic" medicine).

This produced more frantic mail including the statement that "The FDA makes the designation as to what is labelled as "homeopathic" and they do not care about the traditional definiton.    It is simply a labelling definition."

Now frankly I find that hard to believe. Under what authority does the FDA require someone to label a product in a manner utterly false in all ways? Whatever Zicam, which delivers small but finite doses of zinc to the nasal passages, can be called, "homeopathic" is certainly NOT a valid claim, since it doesn't attempt to produce the symptoms of a cold, and doesn't have such extreme dilution as to make chemical effects impossible. Whether or not Zicam is effective, it ain't homeopathic. So why is a product labelled homeopathic, then excoriated for being homeopathic, so that its investors are concerned that people are selling the stock short and spreading the rumor that it is homeopathic? Of course right on the label it SAYS it is homeopathic, which makes it just a little harder to deny. Or does it?

Or is this an attempt to get the people who believe in homeopathic medicine to buy it? There are apparently a sizable number of people to whom "homeopathic" is not a pejorative term (and in some drug stores and many health food stores there is a fairly sizable section of homeopathic remedies -- some of which, if you read he labels, are horrifying until you realize just how incredibly dilute this stuff usually is). I don't know what is going on here, and I don't really care, but it is odd. Incidentally, Dr. --- asked that his correspondence not be made public "after examining my web site" making me wonder what the daylight got him over here reading what I had said and sending me email without thinking that might get his letters published. I mean, I couldn't make it more clear. But I have withheld most of it and his name.

I don't see what is happening. Is there some deep game of stock manipulation going on? My wife thinks the Zicam helped. I don't, but I don't think it did any harm either, anmd how can you tell? It's not cheap, and I am not sure I will try the experiment again, but I might, depending on how I feel the next time I think I am coming down with a cold. After all, my last one hung on so long I missed some conventions, missed writing assignments, and was contemplating snake oil when it abruptly went away...

 

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